The Time I Didn’t Get To The End...

I was a pretty sensible kid and as my parents worked during the day I was kind of left to my own devices after school.  I'd walk home alone, let myself in and do pretty much whatever I wanted.

Some kids may have used this time to wreck havoc or wander the streets. But I chose to do the opposite, I’d eat my after school meal that my mum always prepared, sit on my parents bed and tune into nothing other than cbbc (I was about 8 years old). I was a child of routine and did this everyday throughout the winter months for as long as I could remember. I watched whatever was on or if I really felt like treating myself I'd put on a movie. The genre didn’t matter because I wasn’t the most squeamish so would happily watch anything (apart from Cousin IT, the devil himself must have made that film).

However the tide turned on one warm spring afternoon, I was perched on my parents bed as usual watching an episode of my favorite TV show, Goosebumps. But then my front door knocked as the show reached it's climax. It was one of my best friends,  he asked me to play out and I quickly obliged, switching the TV off and running outside, probably the worse decision I have ever made.

All seemed well until later that night. As I lay in my bed and began to drift into a slumber, I realised something wasn't quite right, but couldn't put a finger on it. Now I am a person that doesn’t dream, for me, as soon as I close my eyes everything turns black, total darkness falls and before I know it, it's tomorrow. 

But no, not this night, my perfect darkness was hijacked within my unconscious mind and instead I was transported to a world I was unfamiliar with, an age I had no recollection of, a body I didn't recognise, but within a scenario which seemed all too familiar. Where was I? I was in the exact scene in the Goosebumps episode when I decided to join my friend outside. Except I was alone and I had no guidance in the unforgiving world of children’s television.

Now all those that had the pleasure of watching Goosebumps knew it could be a little thrilling, but on that day my merciless mind taught me that the imagination is scarier than anything that a movie could ever muster up. I don’t know what I had done to my mind on this occasion, but one thing was certain, it wanted to scare the s**t out of me. And oh did it succeed.  I was petrified, everything that could possibly happen to someone happened in that nightmare and boy do I remember it as vividly as ever. Everything was trying to kill me, I was drowning in sand, trapped in a pyramid maze whereby the walls kept rearranging themselves and if that wasn’t enough, I was being chased by a mummy, called Claudette, that’s my mums name. The one thing that I was familiar with was the main thing trying to kill me (ahh the irony). I literally woke up in about 3 cold sweats that night, afraid to even step out of my bed, terrified of even my own shadow, i'm sure if I took my eyes of him he’d have been added to the list of things trying to kill me.

I have gone through lengths to attempt to find this episode to eradicate my fears, finish watching it and to put an end to my elongated torment, but to no avail…until, last week, I found it! That dreaded episode that haunted me for years. Now I thought long and hard about sharing this link because when watching it back I thought to myself, how on earth could this have scared me into submission, but remember it was my memory that amplified the fear factor and I was about 8 years old, and I was home alone and... (all desperate attempts to try to save my man points).

Watch at your own risk, and heaven forbid your friend knocks your door whilst watching.