Have you ever been.......

scared? Really scared? The scary movie type of scared....but you can't shut it off like you can a movie. The type of scared where your common sense and your brain tells you you're being stupid.....but the rest of you just screams.....GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! All your instincts tell you that this is DANGEROUS and for you to flee but you try and pass it off as an over-active imagination.

I've read that we humans have a built in .....radar..... for lack of a better name right now. We don't rely on it like we would have had to if we were lower down the food chain and lived in the wild, so we have basically dismissed it and we don't pay attention to it anymore. Big mistake! I always try to listen to my "radar". I, of course, will never know, but I do think its saved me a bunch of times. One time at a spooky RV campground comes to mind......ewwwww....gives me the creeps just thinking about it. But that was one of those "you had to be there" type of stories and wouldn't make for good reading. However.....this one will.

This is another police story. How much more safe can a person be, you ask. Inside a police station with help only as far as the pressing of a microphone key. In the front of the building a fireman sleeps peacefully but is ready to respond at the mere flick of a red button on your desk. A person should be pretty secure. Should is the key word here.

Our little police station is located about 10 miles from the main "big" jail. We had a holding cell and sometimes there would be as many as four or five in there, awaiting transport to the jail. If they had bond coming, we wouldn't bother taking them down there....we would just accept their bond and release them from our site. As a dispatcher, it was one of our many duties to monitor the prisoners in the cell. This was before closed circuit TV was installed, so we had to physically walk back there and check on them every 15 to 20 minutes. What a pain! The male dispatchers didn't get much lip, but us females sure did. I've had more propositions and more insults levied at me than the average woman, that's for sure.

This one midnight shift, which had been pretty quiet by evidence of the empty holding cell, my officer radioed that he would be checking out a subject sitting in the middle of the five lane highway that went through town. Sitting.....crossed-legged, in the center turn lane. Its a wonder he wasn't run over but then again.....maybe even the cars were afraid. The subject was brought in and placed in the holding cell. He did have a warrant out of another department but he was definitely a couple sandwiches short of a picnic....either that or he'd taken some drugs and was zoned out. We never could tell which it was....sad to say. The officer put him in the cell and left. Now I am alone with this......guy. True the fireman is asleep up front but really.....I'm not going to wake him up to babysit me. I've been doing this way too many years.....watched way too many prisoners. The first time I check on him, he's sitting in the corner on the floor looking like Jack Nicholson looked at the very end of the movie, The Shining.....that "look" on his face. Chills went up my spine as I went back to the dispatch center. It was more than a little unnerving. Then I heard it. It sounded like there were 3 or 4 people in that cell. The guy was talking to himself and answering himself in different voices. You would have sworn that there was a bunch of people back there. I even went back and looked again just to make sure! I guess I could have put up with that except the one voice was Satan. He identified himself as such and it was pure evil sounding. It made all the hair at the back of my neck stick out, it made me almost freeze in terror. I tried to talk myself out of it.....told myself I had watched too many scary movies.....but the guy kept it up and it was terrifying. The things he said were terrifying and I wanted him OUT of there.

Well, of course the officers got busy and no one could come back for a while. I advised over the air that I'd like them to make this transport.....they asked if he was giving me trouble. Well, no, I couldn't say that he was.....cause he was only talking....in all those voices!!!!! The devil included. I knew I would forever be teased by the guys I worked with if I let them know just how scared I was.....so I hid it and put up with it for about 2 hours. I think I can honestly say that is the scariest experience I had ever had and I know it doesn't sound like anything in writing....but trust me, it was horrifying. It made me have a lot of respect for what some psychiatric nurses and attendants have to be around on a daily basis for their severe cases.

Yes....I know, I know. A lot of us pay good money just for the thrill of being scared. We read scary books and watch scary movies and TV programs......but we can always put the book down, shut off the movie and walk away and do something else if it gets too intense. Real fear is not like that. I hope I am never frightened in real life any worse than what I've just written about. Matter of fact, that one experience should do me for my lifetime, thank you very much. I don't need to be scared again period.

And even though I'm an old lady, I still walk a wide circle to avoid clowns.....I don't like them....they give me the creeps and I've always felt that way. I never let my children any where near them. I can't tell you why either.....its just that "feeling" I get and I'm not about to ignore it.

Anybody have some good true life scary stories they want to share? I know ya do.....we all do. LOL