At work everyone was talking about how it is a Friday the 13th, and a full moon.
I know that freaks some people out.
So I thought I would bring you something to put you at ease:
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult
This song was written by the lead guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser and is about accepting the fact that we are mortal and eventually our time will end. In the song he tries to talk about how we shouldn’t be afraid, after all:
And that when our time eventually ends the love we have with others will carry on until we can meet again on the other side.
“And then he [the third brother] greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I love this song, not just for the message, but the guitar:
And the cowbell! I just LOVE it. It is just perfect.
And of course this song has been on countless films and TV shows, including Halloween (original and remake)
One of the scariest things that can happen is when you hear strange noises and are home alone.
So this past weekend I was home alone with my three pets. I was just chilling, watching TV when all of a sudden I heard “Bump, bump, bump.”Almost as if someone was knocking on the windows.
I looked around but couldn’t find anything.
Strange.
So I decided to ignore it.
So I continued watching TV and I heard the banging again.
I’m scared!
So I decided it must be one of the dogs, maybe he got stuck in one of the rooms. I called him, but it turned out he was hiding in the top cushions of the couch next to me.
Okay I’m not going to lie, one of the scariest things is when you are home alone and you hear strange noises. I started to worry that it might be somebody trying to get into the house.
Oh Crap!
So I looked around the house and outside, but I couldn’t find anything.
And the bang, bang, bang continued…
So I’m not going to lie, being a fan of Supernatural, my mind did go there.
I decided that it was time to look around outside and see what was the cause of this noise.
Yes I know horror films, I know that usually meet disaster, but I decided I needed some proof before I called for help. So I armed myself and headed out.
I don’t actually own a gun so I brought out a bat instead.
And was ready to meet anything out there.
That’s right, you don’t want to mess with me.
Don’t mess with me!
I went out and found…………………………………………………………..
*GASP*
IT WAS A…..
Ahhh!
Bird.
Yes a little bird had flown in the open door that lead to our indoor pool. It had gotten stuck and was trying to find a way out. Every now and then it would stop and rest on the wooden beams, which was the same color and hid it from view. That’s why I couldn’t find it when it stopped banging on the windows in its attempts to get out.
It took about an hour, but I managed to free it from the room and release it back into the wild. Yep, mission accomplished.
We traced the call! It’s coming from inside the house! Do you hear me? It’s coming from inside the house! You need to get out!
So I love this movie so much! It came out during the period of remakes of 1970s horror films, you had Dracula 2000, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Carrie (2002), The Omen (2006), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Halloween (2007), and Invasion (2007).
I thought it was a great remake, although I’ve never seen the original. And as the trailer revels the climatic ending I don’t feel bad about doing so either.
So the film starts off a police cleanup as a baby-sitter and the kids she had been watching were ripped to shreds.
Then we cut to out protagonist Jill who is practicing track. She is suffering from a supremo of bad days. Her times are all off and she needs to improve her speed. Part of the reason she is sucking so much is that she is distracted by her broken heart.
It turns out that her boyfriend and best friend hooked up! What jerks!
And she is grounded because she went over the mins on her phone. Remember, back in the day when every cellphone plan had min limits, and everyone was going over them all the time?
Oops!
She really wants to go to the bonfire party, but the only place she is allowed to go is to babysit.
Yep, the money from the job is supposed to be enough to cover the cost of the phone bill. They must be paying her an awful lot of money.
To further her punishment, she can’t have her own car but has to be dropped off by her dad and then dropped off by the couple when they return from their night. Now this is a pretty sweet baby-sitting job. It is for a rich family, who lets you eat anything in the house, watch things on their massive TV, getting paid lots of money, and you don’t even have to look after the kiddos as they’re sick.
Only one problem, she is in the freakin’ middle of nowhere. But it is a beautiful house!
It has a so many glass windows and such, it also has an inside garden/aviary thing.
Now my home has a whole wall of windows, so when I first watched this with my friends we were all freaked out during the…well I’ll save that for later.
So Jill doesn’t have much to do as the kids are sick and knocked out upstairs. The maid is there, but will be leaving shortly after she finishes her rounds. The couple have an older son who attends college and he may or may not be coming back to visit, but if he does he’ll crash in the guest house in their backyard.
Seems easy enough
So Jill gets ready for a night o’ fun. She eats popsicles and tries on jewelry and clothes.
Everything is fun and games until Jill begins to receive anonymous and annoying phone calls.
Voice of the Stranger: Have you checked the children?
Jill Johnson: What
[Stranger hangs up. Jill runs and checks on the children. Comes back downstairs]
Jill Johnson: [phone rings] Hello?
Voice of the Stranger: [pauses] How were the children?
At this point in the film if you look hard enough you can actually see him watching her through the window while she is walking around and talking to her on the phone.
In between she gets some creepy calls from her ex’s friends. She gets even more calls, but then one turns out to be her ex-friend Tiffany. Tiff the big, bad, boyfriend stealer.
Tiff comes and tries to fix things between them, with Jill feeling lukewarm about the whole thing. She kicks Tiff out, who tries to leave but can’t as a tree blocks her path. A tree that wasn’t there earlier. That means only one thing, bye-bye Tiff.
Goodbye now!
The calls continue getting even creepier.
Jill Johnson: Tiffany, I know it’s you. I can see your name on Caller ID, genius.
Voice of the Stranger: This isn’t Tiffany.
Jill Johnson: Who is this?
Voice of the Stranger: [pause] Who is this?
Jill Johnson: Cody?
Voice of the Stranger: Who’s Cody?
Jill Johnson: You better cut this out!
[stranger hangs up]
Now for the most part Jill is pretty smart girl. She calls the police and tries to get them to trace the call and get rid of her stalker. She keeps the security system on at all times. When she sees a light go on in the guest house, she thinks it might be the son and tries to get him to come back with her to help.
She turns the security system off and runs down to the guest house to get the son. When she gets in there, she discovers that there is no one there.
Jill concludes that it must have been the maid, going over here to clean and then left after she completed the job. She runs back to the house, causing the security system to go off. She gets a call from the company, but tells them that it is only her. She must have only thought she turned the system off.
She continues to get more calls from “the Stranger”, telling her that he can see her.
Oh Crap!
Jill Johnson: He can see me!
Officer Burroughs: Sorry?
Jill Johnson: It’s Jill, the girl who called before about the man who keeps on calling.
Officer Burroughs: What’s going on?
Jill Johnson: He called me again.
Officer Burroughs: What did he say?
Jill Johnson: He’s out there, he’s outside, he’s watching me through the windows.
Officer Burroughs: Did you see him?
Jill Johnson: No, but I know he can see me, because I went upstairs…
Officer Burroughs: Okay, take a deep breath, where’s the house keeper?
Jill Johnson: I don’t know, I saw her purse and the keys but I can’t find her.
Officer Burroughs: The house locked up?
Jill Johnson: Yes.
Officer Burroughs: Alarm system?
Jill Johnson: It’s on.
Officer Burroughs: Okay, you’re safe inside that house. If he wanted to break in, he wouldn’t be calling.
Jill Johnson: But he must want something!
Officer Burroughs: Listen to me, Miss, it’s just some a****** trying to hassle you.
So when my friends and I were watching this film, we were in the living room which has a whole wall made entirely out of windows, similar to the house in the film. There is also a window behind the TV. As we were watching this part, something hit our window.
AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our cat had jumped up on the fence outside and hit the window with her tail. We were just so into the film that we were creeped out.
So back to the film. So Jill keeps trying to talk to “the Stranger” so the police can trace the calls. It is so creepy, it was like when that crazy girl kept calling/texting me last spring.
Jill Johnson: [On phone] You really scared me, if that’s what you wanted. Is that what you wanted?
Besides Tiff, Jill also finds the body of the housemaid. She tries to help save the children, but end up getting in a deadly fight with “the Stranger”.
Save the Children!!!!
Jill is awesome how she takes down the stranger, totally kicking butt.
Kudos for carrying the crowbar
The cops come and capture the killer and cart him off, taking Jill with them to be looked at.
The ending is great, with its nod to Friday the 13th. Check it out, it is an amazing film!
The creepiest thing about this film is how the guy watches her and how he gets in the house and does the whole cat and mouse game. It is such a creeptastic film.
So I decided to do this post in honor of Bastille Day! Yay! You know I find the French Revolution so fascinating on how things got so ugly, so quickly. Also the complete irony on how they tried to change everything about France and erase all shreds they were ever ruled by a monarchy, but yet at the same time, find themselves being ruled by a king in about 10 years. By the way this is Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1830) about the July Revolution of 1830 (the 26-29), which ousted King Charles X of France. For those of you wondering, this took place two years before the June Uprising depicted in Les Miserables. So in this image we have liberty, represented as a woman (as usual) leading the people onward. This painting helped end the Enlightenment period and made way for Romanticism, the style that revolved around political events and current issues to try and evoke emotion out of the viewer. The people in the image following liberty and the French flag, are a wide range of people from different classes. To the far left is a poor peasant, and next to him a member of the bourgeois in a top hat, and to the right of liberty a member of the military.
Anyways, this post is also a response to Girl on Fire, my post on The Hunger Games quiz result I got. I mentioned how I would start a revolution as I have tried before at an Oxfam banquet.
So at my school we do an Oxfam banquet every year that raised awareness of hunger and homelessness in the world, U.S. and city that we live in. Each person who visits picks a name/occupation out of a bowl and it determines where you will be placed, and what your economic status is. Those who are lower class are the majority, sit on the floor, are treated rudely, have to drink water with coffee grounds in it, share a thing of rice, and eat last. Those who are middle class are seated at tables and get clean water, beans, and rice. Those who are upper class get bread rolls, salad, clean water in glasses, eat off glass plates instead of paper, cookies, and some kind of meat dish. They get the most attention and there are only like five of them, but yet they have more tables set out with food that remain empty. Throughout the night they have speakers and do a discussion of how we felt about the activity.
Now the first year I worked the bowl, holding it and making sure no one cheated, and all went to their right place. At the end of the shift, I pulled out a name and ended up getting upper class. Unfortunately, the waitstaff forgot to serve us the main dish so we only had salad and bread.
The next year they didn’t need volunteers so I just went with my friends. This year I got middle class (pooh) and in order to eat we had to do “chores”. They gave us a bag with holes in it and we had to clean up the newspaper pieces they had ripped and thrown about. The poorer class had it worse as they didn’t have a bag and the people get throwing more and more paper at them.
So I came up with the idea to tie the holes up as otherwise, we were going nowhere. After we finished we got our nasty food (it was horribly done as our caf sucks). Then we sat there. Now we had plenty of food left over, and I tried to give it to the other group but they just wouldn’t take it. They felt that it was their role so they were going to accept that. Well I wasn’t. I saw all those tables with empty people and I was hungry. So I told my friends, let’s start a revolution! Look at all the uneaten food that is going to be thrown away afterwards. Let’s go get it. Come on, there is plenty for us. We won’t have to take anybody’s stuff, we won’t force them to do anything. We’ll just rise up and take the stuff we need. I was very much Maria from Metropolis.
Maria, leader of the Rebellion
Come on everyone! Let’s do this!
But sadly, none of my friends wanted to as they “thought they would get in trouble”.
But I was like
And went and took the food.
Yum!
A few people followed my lead, but mostly everyone was too complacent to stand up for their rights or scared they would get kicked out. So what if we do? Then we do. That’s the problem with revolutions or fighting for a cause. You need others to fight with you, but sometimes you just can’t convince them to take that chance. 😦
According to Buzzfeed I’m a real revolutionary and belong during this time period
As a kid I remember that this movie used to scare the bejeezus out of me. The headless horseman was uber creepy.
Ghosts are bad, but the one that’s cursed, Is the Headless Horseman; he’s the worst!
But the film is amazing!
One reason why it was so fantastic was that they had the very handsome, and very charming Bing Crosby be the narrator and singer.
I love this man!
He doesn’t even have to show his face, just listening to his voice is enough for me.
With this film, Disney actually manages to do an extremely good job at creating a fun, but still creepy children’s film. They also managed to keep it very similar to the short story, in fact taking pieces from the actual text and placing it in the film.
🚨FYI Spoiler Alert🚨
So the cartoon starts out with the classic Disney opening:
All fairy tales or films based on short stories and novels used to open with the pages of a book. I miss that opening and wish they portrayed it in more films. I know they brought it back for Enchanted, but I still wish there was more of it.
The first person we are introduced to is Brom Bones
I never liked Brom. He always seemed like a jerk to me. He was big and brawny, “handsome” to some; but a mean bully. He reminds me of a lesser cool Gaston. (I love Gaston, even though he is a jerk. His song is awesome)
Anyways, Brom is shocked at the appereance of a new man in town. In fact this stranger suprises everyone. It’s Ichabod, Ichabod Crane, the school teacher.
“Debonair and devil-may-care It’s the new schoolmaster What’s his name Ichabod! Ichabod Crane!”
He’s tall, rail thin, and has one heck of a schnozza; but I always liked him better as he was well-read and not a loser like Brom.
Icabod also loves to eat. He goes to his student’s homes to partake in their food, making it a complete part of his lifestyle.
Even though Ichabod isn’t really a looker he still has all the girls in town’s hearts a flutter.
With a voice like Bing Crosby’s who could blame them?
This of course upsets Brom, who tries his best to prank Ichabod and make him seem dumb.
Next to enter the scene is the lovely Katrina Van Tassel. Not only is she the prettiest in the town, but her father is the richest man.
“Narrator: Oh, Katrina, my love. Who can resist your grace, your charm? And who can resist your father’s farm? Boy, what a set-up! There’s gold in them acres…Dear Katrina, my love, my treasure. Treasure? Ah, that barn’s a gold mine. How I’d love to hit the jackpot. Sweet Katrina, Papa’s only child. Papa? Well, the old goat can’t take it with him, and when he cuts out, that’s where I cut in.”
Every guy in town wants to get with Katrina, Ichabod included. The only problem is that Brom is interested in Katrina, in fact he is planning on marrying her. Katrina however is enjoying the attention of Ichabod. She likes the fact that he is so different from anyone she’s ever met.
Ichabod is also able to to best Brom in every way, by using his brain over brawn.
However, Ichabod is also a very superstitous person. We saw in his song how he doesn’t like black cats, walking under ladders, salt over the shoulder, etc.
Brom catches on to this and tells a horrific story about the Headless Horseman.
“Brom Bones: [singing] When the ghosts have a midnight jamboree, they break it up with fiendish glee. Ghosts are bad, but the one that’s cursed, is the Headless Horseman; he’s the worst! Chorus: [singing] That’s right, he’s a fright on Halloween night! Brom Bones: When he goes a-jogging across the land, holding his noggin in his hand, demons take one look and groan, and they hit the road for parts unknown!…I’m telling you, brother, it’s a frightful sight for what goes on Halloween night.”
Its midnight and Halloween, and after hearing the story, Ichabod is doubly freaked out on his walk home.
Of course on his way home he runs into THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN!
“Next morning, Ichabod’s hat was found, and close beside it, a shattered pumpkin, but there was no trace of the schoolmaster. It was shortly thereafter that Brom Bones led the fair Katrina to the altar. Now, rumors persisted that Ichabod was still alive, married to a wealthy widow in a distant county. But of course, the settlers refused to believe such nonsense, for they knew the schoolmaster had been spirited away by the Headless Horseman.”
I always thought that the horseman was Brom and not a ghost, but I like how they end it so that you can draw your own conculsion as to what has really happened.
Hope you enjoyed this hair-raising tale. More to come!
Here is a cover page I made for my facebook for my Halloween countdown
![Erik: [at the Bal Masque as "The Red Death"] Beneath your dancing feet are the tombs of tortured men! Thus does The Red Death rebuke your merriment!](https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/unknown-15.jpeg?w=474)
![Oh Crap! [Note: Pic from When a Stranger Calls not Phantoms]](https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/unknown1.jpeg)
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