Haunted Humpday III - A birthday party with cake, clowns and a diabolical barn

Happy Haunted Humpday III

Burt and Ivy are joining Marfi at Incipient Wings for some spooky fun leading up to Halloween.  

This week the skeleton crew is celebrating the birthday of their favorite writer, Stephen King.

Ivy and Burt went to see It on the first night the movie opened and they loved it. Now they're planning on going again when it gets closer to Halloween so they can relish all that horror in the spookiness of autumn. Will it be less frightening the second time around . . . or more? 

To me it's always interesting to find out what inspires people to create works of fiction. According to Stephen King, It came out of a desire to write a really big book, one that would incorporate all the monsters plus an super monster-of-all-monsters. At over a thousand pages, It is a big book. Several years ago Conan O'Brien asked him how he decided on a clown to personify the evil entity in It and he had this to say about going to the circus as a child:

"there would be like twelve full grown people who would all pile out of a tiny car,
their faces were dead white, their mouths were red, as though they were full of blood,
they're all screaming, their eyes are huge . . . what's not to love?"

He makes a good point.

    

Stephen King has even admitted that there were parts from his books that gave him nightmares.

I wonder which ones and how many? You would think he wouldn't be able to sleep at all.

In honor of the master of horror's birthday, Ivy has decided to go a little crazy and . . . 

make a birthday cake!

Happy Birthday Stephen King! Keep up the good work.

I have a spooky story to tell about a clown but it didn't take place at a circus, it happened at the county fair. Every August practically my entire family would stop whatever they were doing to take part in  the county fair. Mom and Gram made pies for the church stand and Dad took a turn frying burgers. One of my uncles was a board member and my Mom's little brother always drove in the demolition derby.  Grandpa had a booth because he had invented a manure removal system and was marketing it himself. Like my cousins, I spent most of my time in the cattle barn primping my calf for the judges ring. It was the day before the fair was set to open and the sun was beginning to set when I noticed a clown standing all alone by the manure pile. He just stood there, intently watching the activity inside the barn through the big open doors. It struck me as odd because no one in their right mind spent any more time than was necessary in the vicinity of a heap of manure, except grandpa.

There was still lots to be done that evening and I was expected at the Round Barn to help set up my 4-H club's booth. When I noticed the clown was still there, I left by a different door. The main exhibition hall (seen above) is the Round Barn. The ground floor has two rows of booths around the outside perimeter rented to retailers. The center circle, used for crafts and produce judging, is open all the way up to the peak of the roof. Two narrow staircases lead to the upstairs booths used for 4-H club displays. They are all lined up against the outside wall but the soaring center space is blocked off by a display wall that is too high to see over. It's a maddening place if you were trying to find someone because if that person was on the opposite side of the building you couldn't see them. If you were both walking at the same pace but on opposite sides of the barn you could just keep going round and round and never run into each other. Plus there were two stairways so it was possible to come and go without being noticed. This led to a lot of pre-teen angst. 

When I got to my 4-H club's booth it was about half set up and there was no one around. Having no patience and even less sense, I started walking around the upstairs hoping to run into someone from my group. As I passed by an open window I looked down and caught the eye of the clown as he was entering the barn. We stared at each other for a moment until I stepped back from the window. It gave me goosebumps on my arms.

Still brushing it off as nothing, I had just started on my second lap around when I suddenly caught a glimpse of the clown right in front of me! Even though there were other people about, I was starting to feel uneasy. Then I remembered my grandpa's booth on the ground floor and decided to turn around and go down the stairs I had just passed. Just as I reached the top step, someone grabbed my arm from behind! When I spun around to discover it was the clown I started screaming and pulling away, nearly falling down the stairs.

The moment I stopped screaming I recognized that evil laugh, the clown was my cousin Gerald! As it tuned out, he had gone over to the cattle barn looking for his brothers but found his parents instead. He had just finished having a cigarette and didn't want his mom to yell at him for smoking so he stood next to the manure pile hoping to cover up the smell of cigarette! He did offer a half-hearted apology for frightening me. A couple days later he gave me a large plush Panda he'd won playing one of the carnival games and it is still sitting in a corner of my old bedroom at the farm.
He never did explain why he was dressed up as a clown though.

This badly deteriorated polariod is the only photo of Lady and me I could find. I don't know why I look so angry because she had just been awarded a blue ribbon! Although it's hard to tell from this photo, she was a Guernsey and I named her after Lady from Lady and the Tramp because they shared the same golden brown coloring. She was very lovable when she wasn't stepping on my feet. 

Last month was the first time I had been back to the Pierce County fair in thirty years. It has become larger but I have to admit that it still looks and smells the same. Happily, no clowns either.

As for these clowns, they will probably be giving us all nightmares tonight.
(Actually, they kind of remind me of the Simpsons, doh!)
Maybe The Dead Zone would have been a more appropriate book to turn into a movie this year.

Happy Birthday to Stephen King and Happy Haunted Humpday to all!