Phantasmaphiles stand tall ... or hide behind the couch, whichever works...

I learned a very important lesson last night.  It turns out that when you sit down at five pm and start watching a Paranormal State marathon, by the time you're finished at eight it'll be pitch black out ... and you won't have thought to turn the lights on ... and the cat will be wildly unhelpful when you ask her to get up and turn them on for you.

I do love a good ghost hunting show, and the more over the top the better.  The formula is always the same, a group of people who get together and investigate a supposedly haunted location, usually loaded up to the gills with high tech equipment.  Some of them lean towards the scientific explanations with lots of talk of EM readings and the like, while others go for more spiritual explanations and tend to focus on what psychics have to say.  But I don't care which angle they take, I love them all!

Paranormal State isn't the best (that'd be Ghosthunters), and it certainly isn't the worst (Most Haunted, hands down), but it's a good, solid mix of science and psychics and they're not above drawing some pretty far fetched conclusions.  Hell, they'll actually link a death from miles away to their haunting just because the story is interesting and the photos look good.  Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, as they say!

But as much as I love them, it doesn't stop me from freaking out after watching a few episodes.  Suddenly ever creak of the floor boards, every rustle of the trees outside, every twitch of the cat's tail all signalled the arrival of some demon coming to drag me away.  I couldn't even bring myself to put my feet down off the couch in case some unseen boogie monster reached out from underneath and grabbed hold of me!

I'm well aware of the fact that there's no ghostly activity in my place (it's a bit of a dead zone as far as ghosts go), but it was a little hard to convince myself of that when I'd just finished watching a bunch of investigators running around in huge manor houses, getting tapped on the shoulder all over the place, and recording EVP like it was going out of style. By the end of the three hours I was ready to hide under my doona with my stuffed dog ... if only I could make myself get off the couch!

It ended up taking a liberal dose of Disney (I went with Tangled) before I felt up to tackling the long walk to the light switch, and I'm happy to report no ghosties or ghoulies got me on the way.

At least not this time.