In elementary school, I developed an intense fascination with the macabre and the supernatural.

I would skip recess and go to the library to read about ghosts.

I was a weird kid.

Who clearly had countless, adoring friends and the highest self esteem.

It was then I met a girl named Jennifer with the same morbid interests and we became a gruesome twosome.

She had written a ghost story if you will, however on the gory side. Filled with lots ‘o murder.

The plot was essentially about murderous specters, aptly penned “Ghosts of Past Time”.

After school, I would walk across town to hang out with her.

Her mother, also my Sunday school teacher, would tell us horrific, scarring stories of demons.

She had once walked into her baby’s room and saw demons standing around the crib!

Jennifer would tell how she was unable to sleep on her stomach as unseen hands would then press her head into the pillow.

Her sister, a delinquent deviant who tortured both of us endlessly, wasn’t able to sleep on her stomach as well – or suffer the same fate.

(Who were these people, the Addams Family??)

When I wanted to freak myself out, I would try to sleep with my face on the pillow. Usually only lasting a minute before I started to break out in sweats, assumed the jacket hanging on the door was a monster and turned on the light in a panic.

Even though I kept trying to poke holes in her stories, Jennifer stuck to her guns.

Funny enough, what I remember most about her was when she yawned, one eye completely closed.

This provided an unending source of amusement for me and I never failed to give her shit about it.

The third grade is when I began writing as well.

Every few months, the two of us would complete another bloody masterpiece, more graphic than the last.

When my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Herrick, found out that horror writing had taken hold of the class (a third person in our grade had completely plagiarized our idea), she decided to make it interesting.

She asked the class to compete with one other in writing the most terrifying horror story.

The winning tale was about roasting a baby’s brain over a fire.

No joke.

She actually congratulated the twisted student (not me) in front of everyone.

Can you imagine this occuring today??

Even back then I was stunned that aged Mrs. Herrick had taken such a liking to our secret counterculture.

She clearly was evil incarnate.

Soon, my interest in the supernatural began to intensify.

My stories, which started at a modest four pages, grew to almost 50 pages.

I would spend the entire weekend in my room writing, not eating and rarely leaving.

My friend and I were constantly congratulated in school for our grammar and vocabulary.

I kept having to look new words up to uniquely describe all the killing that was taking place.

By the time I was 14, I probably read every non-fiction publication on the supernatural in existance.

Then, I began to spend all my time reading sordid books by John Saul (Stephen King was too over the top for me) and avidly collecting horror movies.

I tried to check out “The Satanic Bible” from the library but they only allowed it to be borrowed, so I’d leave my library card with the gal while I snuck off to some empty table in the back and cracked it open with nervous trepadation.

I assumed this was the mother of all scary books.

Then I realized it wasn’t about Satan at all, it detailed a nihilistic, self-serving religion where if someone does good by you, you do good by them. If they do wrong by you, pluck their eye out.

Satanists are athiests, they believe neither in God nor the Devil.

People that actually worship Satan seem to be Christian rejects who pretty much choose to live in the dark side.

They are usually pale, overweight, unattractive, anti social goth wannabes.

“People don’t like me because I’m a Satanist!”, they espouse, taking sips from a goblet purchased at Hot Topic.

Yeahhhhh, THAT’S why they don’t like you….

My mother eventually sat me down and asked if I was a Satanist.

I was shocked at first. I was raised a Christian and I did believe most of what I was taught.

I had already spent the first part of my life embroiled in those beliefs.

Now, I simply wanted to see what the other side was all about.

In my late teens, I met a real life witch at my job at the mall.

She fascinated me.

She brought a parrot to work each day and we played innappropriate music to frighten the store patrons.

She was weirder than me. It was refreshing.

We once went to a cemetary where she performed a spell which would bring the power of the place into us.

I didn’t know what the hell she was doing or saying but it sounded cool.

We also were in my apartment one day and we tried to summon a ghost.

When I asked her what the spirit’s name was, we both anwered simultaneously.

Claire.

It was pretty trippy.

In my early 20’s I made the decision to close the door to the spirit world. Too much had gotten in.

I was ultra depressed all the time, I felt such a sense of oppression.

One night, I was sleeping in the basement of my parent’s house, which had been converted into a large bedroom with it’s own bathroom and entrance.

I looked up and saw an ominous shadow crawling along the ceiling toward me.

I’ve never since been so terrified as I was right then.

I started to pray furiously and eventually it went away.

My mother later told me the basement was the only room she did NOT have blessed by our pastor.

I was done with the ghost stories.

I began to retreat.

However, never fully.

There’s a part of me that’s still so mystified by the unexplained.

It’s so funny when I think back to being a morbid child/teen.

These days, that lifestyle would not fly.

Teachers and parents would assume that any day I’d show up to school with weaponry.

I’d be forced into psychiatric care.

But I had zero violent inclinations.

I had written zero manifestos.

I had owned zero trenchcoats.

I was just a weird little kid who loved the supernatural.

BTW, sorry guys for the diary entries recently. I don’t know what’s come over me this week.

RASCAL:

Rascal is a cute, semi-hip little restaurant on south La Brea with really tasty, fun food. These little bites above and below will delight in burning all skin from the inside of your mouth but before the last taste bud has crisped up and sloughed off your tounge, it will be worth it!