I had to work on Saturday but the Doctor and I had a friend down from Boston, so after work I drove home and changed and we went out. I was not thrilled about going to the "Haunted Forest" but because our friend wanted to go and the Doctor wanted to go I reluctantly agreed. And as the Doctor pointed out it was with a group of nine people so it was an opportunity to make some new friends in the area.
Now here is some back story for those of you who don't know. I DON'T DO SCARY! I lie awake horrified for days after watching a scary movie, generally in a pool of sweat waiting for the man with the chainsaw to come bursting through my door. So a "haunted forest" was a very big step and quite honestly I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it at all.
When we got to the forest in the middle of Maryland it was already my worst nightmare, there were townies with hats and kids and I think I saw a man wearing overalls. Remember I grew up in the country but I am a city boy at heart, townies scare me! There was even a big ole RV with weird people in it. Yes, I was scared of this and then I looked at the line for this place. The line was literally "disneylandesque!" It went on for what seemed like miles in and out of a roped of queue. Seriously, we can't be staying here to do this, I know we drove about 30 miles out here but there is no way we will stay in line out in the cold for the time it will take for all of these people to get into the "attraction." But we stayed and waited and froze, until the obnoxious townies and there teens began pushing forward and cutting the line. Then we moved with a mass of people, I am not sure if my feet even touched the ground. After over an hour we were approaching the entrance. As we got there we were forced to sign a waiver, and then we were put in groups and sent to the cashier. This was the scariest part, it was $25 per person to "enjoy" this attraction. This is where the ride was going to end for me, I didn't have $25 in cash and even if I did I wasn't prepared to spend it on something that I knew I wouldn't enjoy. I bid the group farewell and went back to the warm car with 2 others to wait for them to go through the forest. About an hour later we had still not heard from the group except for a few text messages. Then the car door opened and it was a group member. We thought we were finally free to go home but we weren't it turns out that they were going to be able to get us in but they were still waiting.
I once again, very reluctantly, trudge back into the mass of people, and find our group, it is apparently a few minutes from the group number being called. I am cold and very nervous, I am holding onto the Doctor like I may actually have a heart attack. I try to calm myself down realizing that thus us just a fun spooky thing to do and I am not going to die inside the haunted forest. I manage to calm myself a bit as we enter, to once again see another line of people ahead of us. Others thought that this was the scariest thing they were going to see all night, I knew better.
What happened after we entered the haunted forest however, is not what I expected to happen. I was frightened to a fun and reasonable point as were most people during the first 1/3 of the trail, it was dark and things jumped out at you, I held onto the Doctor firmly and screamed a bit. Then about a third of the way through a man with a pumpkin on his head ran at me, I had a flashback to the attack and went immediately into fight or flight mode and punched the pumpkin head square in his "face." Pumpkin man was down and now I was fully panicking and wasn't sure I was going to survive.
Let's all say PTSD together! I never thought I could have been a victim of PTSD, but this was an intense feeling. I really did think I was going to die. As we continued down the trail I was holding the Doctor in front of me to protect me. I man comes running at me, I panic, scream, he pulls on me and I throw him off the trail all the while kicking him in the balls and almost follow him down a hill because of the momentum. The Doctor catches me and at this point I am crying like a little baby and shaking. I don't remember much of the rest of the haunted forest, I remember my heart beating and tears running down my face and just focusing on getting out of there. The Doctor did a good job keeping everything else away from me but the people we went with must have thought that I was completely nuts.
Needless to say, my therapist is going to hear about this one, and I have a free pass when it comes to scary things for at least a year.
Note to self: Crap I really need to find a therapist.
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