ok, ok.. I know it’s been a while since my last confession but hear me out. Many things haven’t happened so there isn’t much to confess. Ok, so I turned 30, big deal, almost everyone will at some point. I still act like I’m 5 so nothing has changed. The immigration papers are all in order and mentioned in other blogs, so no news. The house is now clean, a miracle upon miracles . And now we get closer to the move and I’m scared, so that hasn’t changed either. Now don’t take the scared to be a bad thing.

Those who know me will know I LOVE horror and the feeling of fear doesn’t come easily to me anymore after many summers at Glendorn. I shall elaborate on that one. When I was a kid we would go to Bradford, PA to my family’s (whole mom’s side) camp like getaway. Well camp like makes it sound rustic and it is anything but. It is a large piece of land my great great grandfather bought for the family. A large house (the Big House, so original ) was built in the style of the great camps of the 1920s and 30s (well it WAS built in the great camps era). Later as the family grew cabins would pop up. But when my grandfather’s generation were young, they decided to build their own little fort. There was a clearing about 1/2 mile up into nowhere and they “borrowed” wood from the wood shed and wood-shop. The parents found out and decided to build a rustic cabin in place of the shanty town shack. It was then properly named “The Robber’s Nest”. This was truly rustic. It had water that came in from the stream outside (if you remembered to turn the knob in the ground that fed it to the cabin) I”m not sure but might have had an electric light at one point, and to finish it off, an outhouse for your needs in the nights .

For generations after, this was the place to test your courage, dispel fear and eat a crap load of candy that would send a normal person into diabetic shock. Since it is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on one side by swamps and the other sides by woods, it is the perfect place to scare the ever-living piss out of kids. The house itself consists of a screened porch (with barbecue inside) that only has two doors going to the outside. Once you have walked through the door there is another door that leads into a dark, creepy, wooden house. The house had two rooms and not very big ones. The first one you walk in to has a fireplace and one window. Then there is a large opening to the other part of the shack. That has windows over looking the swamps, one on each wall. And wooden bunk beds and old army/navy cots hanging on the wall. Now I might change tenses through out this thing cause the Robber’s Nest from my past has had a face-lift.

Now the tradition was, when it was your turn to go stay at the Robber’s Nest you got to go to the huge well stocked kitchen pantry in the Big House and take what ever you wanted. That usually meant M&M’s in the 1 pound bags, chips with dip, coke, marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers for smores, and anything else you could possible want to satisfy the sweet tooth. You would then pack a little bag of stuff, your old sleeping bag, pillow and flashlights. You would be taken up in the old barn truck and dropped off before dinner. When I was little we would have a feast up there. Dan, the director of the children’s activities, would cook steak on the grill in the screen porch, you would have these wonderful soft white rolls and the best was Dan’s Robber’s Nest potatoes. Now if you want to know what heaven is, this is it… mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, spring onion, bacon bits and a little sour-cream in it. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it. And after the feast the other kids would go back to their cabins and you would be left alone with your age group and a counselor. There was a fire-pit outside and we would build a campfire and sit around telling ghost stories, daring the other to do something stupid, and share our innermost girly thoughts.

Then the fun would start when it would get dark. Ever since we could walk we are told stories about the Swamp Lady that lived in the swamps there, there was a Pipe Monster that lived in one of the pipes that was buried under one of the dirt roads and if you walked over his pipe you had to make a funny face or he would come and get you. There was an albino escaped lunatic that haunted the woods and also bears. The last one actually being the true one . So we would get nice and revved up for the evening’s activities. After dark the kids would come up and try their best to scare us. There were twigs snapping, strange sounds or sometimes they would come out saying there was something wrong. It was never scary but bless them for trying. Then it would be quiet for a little longer. We would get out the old Ouija board and go in the house if it was too cold. That was the queue for the teenagers to come up. They would do more of the same with the breaking of branches, the scary noises and since we would be in the Nest at the time, they would bang windows and the walls. Sometimes they would run in, torn and dirty clothes saying something was out trying to get them. They would come up with these elaborate stories and since we were a little hyped up on sugar and little sleep deprived from getting to stay up past our bedtime, the horror would slowly sink in. They would continue this until they were either satisfied with the result or got bored and they would leave after helping themselves to the candy. We would be ready for sleeping by then. We would do another round with the Ouija and then get in the sleeping bags on the wooden bunk beds in the very small room that smelled all musty and was dark with no electricity. But that was not the end of it.

Did I fail to mention that the parents always love to go in for the scare? A lot of times they would wait until we were really tired. Then they would slowly go around the Nest and start to bang on it. There would be screaming coming from outside from one of our parents. There would be animal noises. I remember one year they did a scare with the swamp lady theme. This was one of the best I think. They had a regulator tank for scuba diving (we would scuba in the lake or pool) and someone dressed as the swamp lady, complete with the yucky stuff off the swamp surface. The have the regulator in the water and you could hear the bubbles sounding. They did something with lights a little over the swamp. There was screaming and one of the parents ran inside saying the Swamp Lady was going to get us and we had to leave. There was only one door that went in to the screen porch but most of the time we were paralysed or talked out of that option saying we can’t. Then there would be banging on the walls. One time the window broke by accident and that made us jump. It was awesome. I think the worse/best scare was when I was really little. I think it maybe my first time in the Robber’s Nest. My initiation, as it were.

As we were drifting off there was a parent or two that ran in. They said there was a mad man on the loose and he had a chainsaw. We needed to get out as soon as possible. But one of the counselors was dressed up in a Jason mask and clothes to match and we could see the eerie white glow of the mask in the trees. We could hear the crunching of the leaves and twigs breaking under his foot. Our counselors were holding us as tight as possible. They were not used to this so they were scared LOL. We could hear other things in the woods but not sure what it was. They gathered us into the screen porch since some of the Robber’s Nest is on stilts with a wooden floor and the screen porch had a concrete one. We heard a chainsaw in the woods and a parent scream. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. We were trying to figure out which parent it was that screamed. Then the chainsaw sound died and the white mask was out again. You could see it just faintly. Then it was gone. By now most of the cousins are crying. You’d think that would stop the parents from continuing wouldn’t you? But no, it is fuel for the fire. Suddenly we heard footsteps on the roof right above us. Counselors telling us to keep our head down as we could hear the chainsaw start again. I think that was the best time I had. No wonder I love horror huh?

Well at the end the parents would come out and say they were okay and kiss us good night and we would go to sleep at about 2am. This sparked my love of nightmares and horror. Ever since then I was hooked, a fear junkie. So now when you hear it scares me a little, you will understand the small things that make me tick