I’m sure I’m not the only one here who loves the month of October. I used to feel a little embarrassed at the child-like candor with which I approached spooky season, but at some point in my early-thirties, I learned to fully embrace it. Though my door was always bare for Christmas, as soon as September was over I made sure the yard was decked out with cobwebs, tombstones and hanging skeletons. My favorite prop was a life-size light-up Frankenstein that moved haltingly in a loop and emitted impressive groaning sounds. I was single and lived with just my cat, Damian, so I would even volunteer to take my friends’ kids trick-or-treating, just so I could have a slice of the fun without the burden of parenthood.
The very best part of the season was how all of my go-to streaming platforms filled their selections with horror shows and movies. My October ritual was to get home from work, microwave my dinner, and watch an hour or two of scary TV. Many of the movies were old favorites that I’d seen over and over again. Even if I knew the lines by heart, I still watched totally captivated and held my breath at all the most intense moments. And even if I knew it was coming, a good jump scare still got my heart racing.
In short, I was addicted to dread. Which is maybe why it took so long for me to notice that I was being watched.
The first time it happened was after episode 2 of The Haunting of Hill House. I turned off the TV and saw the shadowy likeness of my living room reflected on the black screen. Behind me, there were two glowing eyes. I whipped around but didn’t see anything. There was a tingle at the back of my neck that sent goosebumps down my shoulders. I sighed pleasantly at the feeling, glad that one of my favorite shows could still affect me in this way, even though I was on my fifth rewatch.
The next week, when an early victim of Jigsaw in the original Saw movie let out an ear-splitting scream, I heard a crash from behind me. I fumbled for a bit to pause the movie. Several books had fallen from my bookshelf and were now lying in a pile on the floor. The lights flickered as I examined them.
“Damian?” I called. He was the only other living thing around and frequently knocked things over with his big bushy tail.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt something shift by my side. Of course. Damian was looking up blearily at me from where he had affectionately buried his head against my side, wondering why I had called for him when he had been there for the last hour. He loved watching TV with me. Or at least sitting on me when I did so.
“Sorry buddy,” I said, patting him on the head. “Forgot you were here.”
A few days later, I was jolted into standing position when a zombie started clicking menacingly on the screen. I didn’t have any fancy sound system installed, but I had heard the click as if the monster had been right behind me, and I could almost feel its humid breath against my ear. My sudden movement had disturbed Damian as well, and he was standing up with his hackles raised, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him.
That was strange. He wasn’t looking at me though. My eyes followed the intense glare of my cat towards the darkest corner of the room.
Two pairs of glowing white eyes blinked.
“Woah,” I muttered, faltering backwards for a moment. I didn’t dare blink, in case those eyes disappeared again like they had the first time I’d seen them. I felt the temperature of the room drop at least 10 degrees. As if almost on cue, the lights flickered. There was a prickling at my neck again, and I felt the urge to turn on the lights and run.
Damian had no qualms. He stalked towards the eyes, growling and emitting some god awful warning sounds akin to a gurgling wail. The eyes took its gaze off of me and regarded him as he approached.
When he lunged, there was a loud echoing shriek that sounded like it had come from every direction. I watched as Damian’s body passed through a semi-transparent sheet, which slowly solidified into the shape of a man cowering with his knees hunched up to his chest.
“Don’t hurt me,” he sobbed. His voice sounded strange, like it was from far away.
Damian acted as if he had just pounced on a laser dot and didn’t have any real prey in his claws to show for it. He padded away with disinterest.
My mouth hung open, and I struggled to find words. “Are y–”
“I KNEW IT,” a woman’s voice bellowed suddenly as if from a loudspeaker. There was another strange shimmer in that corner, and the shadowy figure of a portly old woman appeared next to the cowering man. “I knew you would ruin it again!”
She tried to kick him, but her foot passed through his head.
“Useless, no-good, freeloader!” she screeched. I winced at the sharp sound, and felt claws of frustration and irritation on my back. “We’re never going to find one as good as this!”
“Find a what?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, noticing my gaze upon her for the first time. She straightened and pushed a strand of ghostly hair behind her ear as if embarrassed. “Oh, I do say I got carried away. Apologies.”
The room seemed to come back to normal, and the weird temperature and feelings that swirled around me suddenly were gone. But the two figures were still there. The cowering man looked up tearfully at me and even smiled.
“Okay… okay,” I said dumbly. “I gotta ask, you’re ghosts, right?”
“Yes, dear,” she replied impatiently. “Not to worry. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Wait!” I yelled. Both ghosts had started to gradually fade, and stopped. “Jeff, you’re DEAD?”
I hadn’t been totally sure, but the male ghost resembled my neighbor who lived down the street. He didn’t socialize much so I hardly ever saw him. But I suddenly remembered being woken up last month by the flash of ambulance lights.
He stood up at that, and smiled with real happiness this time. There were still tears in his eyes though, and I wondered if that was a permanent feature. “Yes, last month.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate.
“Oh, um,” he said shyly. “I died of fright.”
“That’s not real, is it?” I said incredulously. “Dying of fright? That’s so…”
“Lame, I know,” he said with the same self-deprecation he had when he was flesh and blood. “But to be fair, it actually was a ghost that caused my heart attack.”
The other woman stiffened. She huffed, “Well, I’m making it up to you by letting you tag along, even though you keep getting us found out. It’s already been a month and you still haven’t gotten the hang of staying non-corporeal.”
Jeff shrugged. “I don’t mind being dead. And Meredtih here isn’t bad company.”
I opened my mouth and closed it, and then opened it again, not sure where to even start. “So, why are you haunting me?”
Meredith cleared her throat. “We exist off of fear, dear. And I have found over the years, it’s easiest to just… well, to put it bluntly, bum it up with Horror fans such as yourself. Standard haunting is just so exhausting. Especially now - people are so good at rationalizing these days. You can’t imagine how demoralizing it is to think up a whole plot, spend months and months following a single person, just to be dismissed as some creaky pipes.”
She hung her head sadly and bemoaned, “And I died looking quite normal and un-intimidating. So once people glimpse me, it actually makes it harder to keep up the gig. But then I discovered that any fear would do, I didn’t need to have caused it to feed off of it.”
I stared at her. “So you just… watch people watch horror movies?”
“Yes,” Jeff answered meekly. “That’s how I died, actually. I saw her face perfectly superimposed on the TV during a jump scare and screamed so loud my heart gave out.”
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. “Anyways, we will leave you to it. It’s October, so we thankfully have a wide array of possible victims. Come on now, Jeff.”
Before they could even start to fade again, I blurted out, “Wait. I don’t mind. Just stay here.”
Both ghosts were so shocked, the lights started flickering again, and my Frankenstein outside whirred to life on his own suddenly.
“To be honest, I think you guys being around is nice,” I blabbered, almost in disbelief at what I was saying. “I don’t get scared easily, but I noticed that this October the movies felt more terrifying–oddly enough, sometimes even scarier than the first time I’d seen them. And it was really pleasant actually, made everything feel fresh. I thought it was just me noticing more details, or maybe the anticipation was more rewarding than not knowing what was going to happen, but you actually did some things to enhance the scariness, right? I noticed you had purposefully messed with the lights and reflections.”
“Well, yes,” Meredith said, offended. She was still looking at me like I was off my rocker. “Among other things. I never said I was a lazy ghost.”
“Soooo yeah,” I finished lamely. “I promise I won’t die like Jeff did. You can stay and watch with me for as long as you like.”
Jeff and Meredith looked at each and then back at me. Meredith shrugged, and floated over to the sofa. Jeff whimpered at the zombie on the screen and peeked out from behind my cabinet.
And that’s how two freeloading ghosts became my horror movie watch buddies.