Slipping into the Dark Side

(More anniversary photos.)

So, in that house, you couldn't stay indifferent to the creepy things forever. At some point, you had to either embrace the creepiness (a'la the Addams Family) or go completely insane. Some would argue that there's not much distance between the two.

After that night, I had a newfound interest in all things spooky. I would get anything from the Scholastic Reading Catalog that had anything to do with Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, and so on.

My mother actually found a way to take advantage of her love of dolls and my love of creepy things. The following Christmas, there was a haunted dollhouse waiting for me under the tree. My mother, normally a calm, quiet woman, described with unnatural zeal the vampire belfry, the secret passageway, the deadly bed, and the trap door that led to a dungeon in the mad scientist's laboratory.