What Scares You?

A countdown of the eight top (weird) things that scare me:

Number 8.
Turning on the water faucet and having no water come out. When you're on a well, and not on a water system, that's a very, very bad thing guaranteed to elevate the heart rate.

Number 7.
Gamma Ray Bursts. Anything that can arrive without warning, burn off the ozone layer, liquefy the crust and destroy most, if not all, life on Earth is right up there with turning on the tap and having no water come out. ;)

Number 6.
Rattlesnakes. Because I've met a couple in person. And trust me, that raspy-rattley sound they make with hissing accompaniment is guaranteed to make your hair stand on end. :0

Number 5.
Waking up and finding out I'm back in high school. Yeah, ok. Nuff said.

Number 4.
Lobsters. They're just...creepy!

Number 3.
Great White Sharks. Um, I live in the desert, so that's kind of in the phobia class. Lobsters are too, I guess.

Number 2.
Clothes with a lot of buttons. I don't know why but it totally freaks me out to be buttoned up with 50 odd little buttons. My wedding dress had a ton of buttons. I almost got married in my skivvies. It took a rational Mom to keep me from ripping it off and running away screaming. It had nothing to do with David. Really!

Number 1.
Sinkholes. Just...because. Who wouldn't be afraid of big spontaneous holes that swallow houses and just...happen. Anywhere.

My Night on The Queen Mary

Several years ago I went to a training event in Long Beach, California and was housed aboard the former luxury cruise ship The Queen Mary, now a floating hotel. This ship has a history of hauntings including phantom swimmers and wet footprints beside a long-drained swimming pool, a ghostly woman who roams the ship, the sounds of screams and scraping metal, and the occasional sighting of a man who was once crushed by a watertight door.

Now I've got a little tale of my own to add to the mythos.

First, let me tell you a bit about the ship. The Queen Mary is much larger than the Titanic. She's so big that when you look down her corridors, you can see how the deck is curved downward from bow to midship and back up again to the stern. She has several restaurants and bars onboard, and hosts a massive Sunday Brunch in the grand ballroom that I believe is toted as the single largest room ever built inside a ship. (Been there, in the dark and creepiness, and trust me, it’s huge!) There's also a small shopping mall, a large museum below decks, and a "Ghost Ship" tour that takes groups to some of the haunted locations and recreates spectral visits with special effects. The ship even hosts one of the largest Halloween bashes of ghost tours, mazes and all night parties in Long Beach: The Shipwreck--15 Nights of Terror.

While exploring the decks one evening, my husband and I got onto one of the many elevators and pressed the button for one of the upper decks. The door closed but instead of going up, the elevator went down. :O David tried pushing buttons to stop it, but it continued to carry us down, down, down, deck after deck. When the doors finally opened, we were seriously spooked, and in an unfamiliar place--a very dark, cavernous room. We stepped off, looked around, stumbled through the black toward a light. There were large glass cases with memorabilia, nautical pictures on the wall. Our wayward elevator had carried us down into the belly of the ship, and we were in the museum! Except the museum had closed hours before. We were the only living souls there (though I can't say we were the only souls). We wandered around looking for a guard, an exit, an escape…anything! The exits were all gated or locked. We yelled. No response. Tried to tap a code on the bulkhead. Nothing. At last we had to admit the obvious...there was no way out except back through the dysfunctional (?) elevator. But if we got back on, where would it take us next?

We eventually found our way back to our cabin with no more interference from mischievous spirits, but our fellow conference attendees were so intrigued by our story of the runaway elevator that they scheduled an impromptu—and self-guided—ghost tour of the Queen Mary to be held after dark the next night.

There is nothing like wandering around a really vast, reportedly haunted vessel in the pitch black (especially in places we really weren’t supposed to be, according to the cordial security guard who was quite amused by the merry band of camera-toting spirit seekers he confronted). We wandered decks, corridors, massive halls and deserted staff areas for hours in search of…something. Something we were sure was going to be around the next turn in the hall or empty room. But nothing ever…materialized.

Still, I can say that—aside from one possessed elevator—I think we did come away with a gentle contact from the spirit world. On our last night there, I was startled from sleep by the sound of my suitcase buckles rattling and shopping bags rustling in the next room. I woke David and we both prepared ourselves to confront a burglar…but when we went to the room and turned on the lights, there was no one was there. Our cabin door was still locked from the inside and nothing had been taken. It seemed our mysterious visitor had exited right through the door.

And that’s the slightly creepy story of my night on The Queen Mary.

Post Mortem Characters (PMCs)

No Halloween series is complete without the discussion of ghosts. But not all ghosts are banished to the Paranormal realm in fiction. Sometimes the most influential characters in a novel, other than the MCs themselves, are those of the departed. What would Luke Skywalker have amounted to without the spirit of Obi Wan Kenobi telling him when to use the Force? Would Aragorn have arisen to become the great leader against the forces of evil in Lord of the Rings if the cataclysmic failings of his ancestor, Isildur, hadn’t given him the strength of will to become a reluctant hero?

A Post-Mortem Character (PMC) is often someone who was close to the character, a relative, friend, or teacher. Or they could also be an idol (Elvis, Princess Di) or a person of political or cultural influence (Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa) or someone they admired…or despised. Any departed soul who is in a position to influence a character’s life, decisions, actions or plans could be a PMC. They can take an active role in the plot, taking on personality traits through flashbacks, memories, dreams or interaction with living characters. Or they can take a passive role through the living character’s thoughts. The influence of PMCs can take many forms.

The Mentor. The PMC can act as an active voice that lingers, guiding the character with their remembered wisdom. The character maintains a dialogue with the Mentor, whether real or imagined. The character might hear The Mentor’s voice in their head, see them in dreams or visions, or ask what would you, [insert name of dearly departed PMC], do in this situation? The aforementioned Obi Wan Kenobi was a Mentor PMC. Another example is in THE OUTBACK STARS. When Sergeant Terry Myell is close to death he is visited by his mother who calls him by his special name—Jungali—and gives him hints about the choices he must make.

The Inspiration. The character is compelled to complete a journey the PMC began, but could not complete themselves due to death. A son who takes up his father’s sword and vows to finish his quest is a common theme, sword being a symbolic word for cause. Although similar to a Mentor, there is no active dialogue between the character and the PMC, but the PMC’s influence is evident by the character’s motivation.

The Conscience. The PMC’s memory prompts the character to do things or make choices that would make the PMC proud, etc. This is probably the most universal passive PMC influence. My father always told me to… My mother wanted me to be… What would my grandmother think if she knew I…

The Reshaper. The grief of the PMCs passing results in life-altering changes in the character. The character might move away, change their lifestyle, because of--or to avoid facing--the memory of the departed one. The death of Duke Leto Atreides in DUNE sends his young son Paul into exile, where he raises an unlikely army of Fremen in the quest to avenge his father’s murder.

The Lingerer. This sort of PMC may incite the opposite effect of a Reshaper when the character holds on to their memories too tightly, whether or not he/she should, and this also causes life-altering events or conflict. In Ann Aguirre’s GRIMSPACE, navigator March is affected by the memory of his late Grimspace navigator/partner, while his new navigator, Sirantha Jax, still stings from the loss of her own pilot/partner/lover, Kai, a situation that causes a rift between them and threatens their freshly minted do-it-or-die alliance.

The Reverser. Not all PMCs are someone admired. Another aspect of a PMC affecting a character is when they vow not to behave like the departed, not to make the same mistakes, or carry the same negative traits. In contrast to a Reshaper who sends the MC off in a different direction or spurs them to begin their initial quest, a Reverser sends the character into gear-slamming reverse. In this case, the PMC lives on as an example of what not to do. Aragorn, meet Isildur.

The Haunter. This PMC can have the effect of the Mentor, Inspiration, or Conscience but they do so more directly—through fear. They mentally or physically haunt the character with lingering nightmares, apparitions or poltergeist activities. They may be adversaries, villains, abusers, or victims, but not always. The tone is threatening, but not all Haunters are evil. In the motion picture Dragonfly, the deceased wife of the MC haunts her husband through her former child patients and household objects, goading him to take a journey to South America to discover something very precious that he believed lost—their infant daughter.

In a twist on the PMC, the characters themselves may already be deceased, but that fact is concealed until the shocker ending when their lingering influence on others is revealed. In fact, this isn’t all that rare. Do any of these movie titles sound familiar? Sixth Sense. The Others. Psycho.

Now, here’s the real test. Can you think of a major novel or motion picture that didn’t have a character somehow affected by a PMC influence?

Good luck with that. ;)

Scariest SF Films of All-Time

Halloween is considered the turf of witches, ghosts, goblins, vampires and werewolves, but what about the impact of Science Fiction on Halloween? Haven't some of the most terrifying films of all time emerged from the realm of Science Fiction?

Here's our take on the Eight Scariest Science Fiction Movies of All Time. See if you agree. (Click on the titles to see movie trailers.)

Number 8: The Fly
A brilliant but eccentric scientist transforms into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly, disgustingly wrong.

Number 7: The Invasion (of the Body Snatchers)
A Washington psychiatrist unearths the origin of an alien epidemic. The latest incarnation of the often remade classic.

Number 6: The X-Files: The Movie
The truth is out there-in all it's glorious creepiness-from spooky bee experiments to an eerie Antarctic laboratory.

Number 5: The Thing
Scientists in the Antarctic find a creature that has been buried in the ice for 100,000 years--a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of the people it kills.

Number 4: War of the Worlds
Alien invaders wreck havoc on the planet and humankind in this modern remake of the radio classic that caused widespread panic when it first aired on August 21, 1953. Based on a novel by H. G. Wells.

Number 3: Signs
A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening. It soon becomes more than a suggestion when alien beings invade their home and their world. Signs made tin foil hats and baby monitors into something sinister.

Number 2: Jurassic Park
Scientists clone dinosaurs to populate a theme park which suffers a major security breakdown and releases the dinosaurs. Jurassic Park introduced us all to the two-legged terrors called Raptors, and an up close and personal staredown with a T. Rex. Several more Jurassic Park films were released, but none had the impact of the original blockbuster.

and the Scariest Science Fiction Movie of All Time...

Number 1: Alien/(Aliens)
In Alien, the crew of remote mining ship Nostromo investigating a suspected SOS lands on a distant planet harboring a hostile species and unwittingly take a specimen onboard their vessel. In Aliens, Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo still in hypersleep 50 years later is picked up by a salvage team. She returns to the planet of alien origin with a squad of Colonial Marines. The Alien franchise declares itself "The scariest movie ever made" and made Ripley (not to mention Private Vasquez in Aliens) an icon of savvy female heroines. Re-released on Halloween 2003.

Wait. We forgot the best one(s)? Tell us about it.

Thirteen Days of Halloween

'Tis the season to be...terrified!

For the next thirteen days,

Spacefreighters Lounge

will bring you

a collection of posts

in honor of

the creepiest holiday

of them all.

Happy Halloween