WEEKLY FEATURE: OUT of CONTROL! with Kelly Karius
Fear Itself.
Laughter, nervous but genuine, rang out as the doors of the van swung open.
Light flashed as a picture was taken of the creepy three story brick structure.
“I remember when this was actually a real parking lot, for staff, on this side.” I said.
The two friends walked through the dark parking lot, butterflies rising in their stomachs.
Lois wondered, “Why the Hell am I doing this to myself?”
I thought, “This is crazy, bizarre.” The adrenalin translated itself to giggles, two grown women clutching each other and simply laughing.
They approached a shaking teenager, her friend running towards her,
“C’mon, come in, it will be fun!”
“No, I can’t, I can’t do it… I need an adult.”
“Here, look,” The friend came running towards us, “Will you help us? Can we go in with you?” Lois and I looked at each other, still giggling.
Adults…HA!
The gloomy structure loomed above us, windows boarded over. Memories flashed through our brains of past trips to this doomed brick, events both happy and sad. Children born, tonsils coming out, parents dying. I remembered when my daughter was two, and so very sick with something yet undiagnosed. I remembered following her into the playroom, pushing her IV, trying to keep her from falling…but she’d wanted to walk. I remembered the playroom, the magical cupboards where so many toys rested waiting for small fingers to bring them to life, the colorful hopscotch carpet, the television, up high in the corner…It seemed like Mr. Dress-up was always on stage in the hospital playroom.
We walked through the porch up the wide steps, remembering the statue that had been there. Expecting that everything would be different, and shocked when it was.
“Look at that door…I don’t remember that.” Lois said.
“Me neither.” I said.
“That was the geriatric testing unit.” A lady in the line ahead of us said. “The door was never closed.”
The door spanned the width of the hallway, the wide hallway. One door, metal, braced with larger pieces of metal across it. An asylum door. I wondered what ghosts and memories were locked behind the giant door.
The teenagers stayed with us…till the very front of the line, when they decided they didn’t need adults.
We stood at the front of the line, chatting with the ticket taker – talking of the bugs in the basement, and the moss growing in the corners. My eye rested on a sign.
A splatter of blood on the plasticized sign that read: PLEASE CLOSE BOTH ELEVATOR DOORS SO THE ELEVATOR CAN BE RETURNED TO THE UPPER FLOORS.
A sign that had been there in all my memories of the old hospital. Despite passing the cemetery in the waiting room, and glancing at the pictures whose eyes followed us down the hallway, this was the creepiest part yet. Reality meets fantasy.
Passing the sign on our left we headed up the stairs…three flights of brightly lit stairs, and into the dark of the hallway on third East. The adrenalin still rushed, but the giggles had subsided as we walked down the long hallway, waiting…walking…holding each other’s arms. We passed an open room on our left.
“Go that way.” Lois said, pushing me forward.
Still so slowly we entered the room, the hospital bed empty, the IV swinging eerily, we crept around the corner, past shelves and towards a door – not a door, a cement hole in the wall.
“We’re going the wrong way.” I whispered.
We turned to leave the room, and back in the hallway, we realized there was no other way.
“They expect us to go through THAT?” Lois asked.
“I think so…”
Hunching our shoulders, and steeling our nerves, we tiptoed through the crumbling cement hole, through a small room and into another….
BANG!
Both screaming, Lois pushed me out the door ahead of her and back into the hallway. Making our way through rooms dripping with gore, bloodied writings on walls, disembodied heads set on countertops, waiting for the next walking zombie, we cringed at the running footsteps behind us.
A piercing scream rang out…
“If I die… tell my mom that I love her!”
True story. It took a few days of discussion for Lois and I to decide we were up to the Haunted house experience. We were still talking reluctance on the way from the house to the van. Why are we doing this to ourselves? The old hospital is creepy enough as is, never mind having been turned into a walking zombie house. A good friend once told me to think a little less, to have some experiences without thinking about them so much. To just live them. He’s right. Sure, we need to think about situations that are truly dangerous, and we need to be aware of where our choices might lead us, but there are also times when we need to sit back…and have an experience, leaving the anxiety behind. At the end of the night, we were both glad we went.
Our thinking can get us riled up, can talk us into believing that unfathomably negative things are going to happen. Our thinking, ultimately, leads to our behaviors and our responses. Our thinking can hold us back.
Take some time this week to notice your thinking and how it blocks you. Once you notice the unhelpful things being thought, change is the next step.
Kelly Karius is the author of This is Out of Control! A Practical Guide to Managing Life’s Conflicts. She began Karius & Associates in her basement and has grown the business into a office-based firm where she & her staff passionately design & produce webinars, distance learning programs and motivate clients through consultations and life changing seminars that help individuals & businesses build healthier relationships at home & at work.
Learn more about Karius & Associates by visiting their website or call: (306) 728-2075. Email Kelly at: kelly@kariusandassociates.com
November 5, 2008 by Network Abundance Publications
