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Boo! Hi everyone. Sorry if I scared you there. It’s just me, Andrew, from the Too Beautiful To Live podcast. You probably thought I was a ghost or something! But it’s just me. I began this email by scaring the living heck out of you because I now want you to scare the heck out of me. Halloween is just a few weeks away, and I thought it would be fun to collect your scariest stories and share them on the podcast. Have you ever been spooked beyond belief? Found yourself in a haunted graveyard after midnight or a haunted IHOP around brunch time? Maybe you’ve felt a ghostly presence while alone in your drawing room, surrounded by gothic portraits of long-lost family members. Whatever your story, tell us all about it on the TBTL listener line. Just call 206-414-TBTL (8285), and we’ll include your stories in our upcoming Halloween Spooktacular! I didn’t want to give you this assignment without also applying it to myself. I’m not someone who particularly believes in ghosts or otherworldly powers, so I don’t have a heck of a lot of scary stories of my own to share. But I do remember one eerie occurrence in my life, and I’ll be honest with you -- it got even eerier today as I revisited it. Back when I was in high school, I would often find myself out galavanting with my friends until well after midnight, especially on weekends. My habit when I got home was to quietly sneak in the back door, grab a snack from the kitchen, then tiptoe downstairs to my basement bedroom to enjoy my bounty in front of the TV. I remember coming home one particular night and grabbing two oranges from the crisper. I wrapped them in a paper towel (you can’t eat oranges without a paper towel), and headed down to my private lair. I set the oranges down on my bed, quickly used the bathroom, washed up a bit, and got ready to tuck in for the night. But when I returned to my bed, the oranges were gone. Completely disappeared. Vanished. I want to be clear, here: I did not just imagine grabbing the oranges from the fridge. The paper towel I wrapped them in was still there, sitting on the mattress, maintaining the round shape of the missing fruit it once held. Only the oranges had suddenly gone missing. I shook out all the blankets, I pulled everything out from under the bed, and I even dragged the furniture away from the wall to make sure they hadn’t slipped down by the radiator. Nothing. The oranges were gone. After about 20 minutes or so of searching, I finally gave up. It was such a weird feeling, a frustrating feeling, like I was losing my mind. There must be a good explanation, I figured. I’m just too tired to figure it out now. So, releasing desire on the whole situation, I switched on the TV that perched above the foot of my bed. It was getting pretty late now, which meant that the local UHF station was probably airing old episodes of my favorite show, The Kids in the Hall. In fact, I was just in time to catch the very beginning of an episode I’d never seen before. As a commercial break ended and the show began, I suddenly froze. The hair on my arms stood-up straight. I could not believe what I was seeing on my television screen. The episode opened with a shot of Bruce McCullough (one of the eponymous Kids) sitting on a park bench, talking directly to the camera. He was completely alone on the bench, with the exception of two objects sitting to his right: Two unpeeled, navel oranges. MY oranges. Just sitting there next to Bruce McCullough. Uncommented upon, and with no purpose in the sketch whatsoever. Then the camera cut away for a second, and when it came back to Bruce on the bench, the oranges were gone. If you think I fully freaked out at this point, you are right. I started pacing around my room again. I wanted to call all my friends, wake up their families, tell them that Bruce McCullough somehow stole my oranges and took them into the television with him. I don’t know how he did it. But he did it! I SAW THEM ON THE TV WITH MY VERY OWN EYES. I’ve told this story many times over the years, but with much less frequency as I’ve gotten older. As I reach my late 40s, I don’t trust my memories as much as I used to. At a certain point, you start to remember the storytelling more than you actually remember the experience. And I start to worry that my brain is filling-in gaps to make narratives seem more coherent or poignant than they really are. That is why, dear reader, I decided to quickly check something before sharing this story with you today. Losing confidence in my own tale, I thought, “If there’s a scene from the Kids in the Hall where Bruce McCullough is sitting on a bench next to two oranges, it must be findable. And if there’s not, this was clearly just the fancy of a tired teen with an overactive imagination.” Assuming it would be fruitless (as it were), I typed “Kids In The Hall Park Bench” into Google. And friendos, what do you think the very first result was? A link to this sketch.
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