Ghost Stories in the Dark

A lot of our modern news reporting reminds me of sitting around a dying campfire on a summer night telling ghost stories, each storyteller challenged to raise the fright level over the last.

Take Melissa Huckaby, charged with the murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, which on its face, may qualify for the crime of the century – but that’s not quite enough. Reporters have dug up information suggesting that Huckaby has kidnapped children before and given them drugs. She also may be an arsonist. She did have past convictions for petty theft and also had a nasty divorce. Oh, did I hear them say that the Cantu murder occurred in a church?

I’m sure if they shave the back of Huckaby’s head, they will find the number 666 neatly tattooed above her right ear. Someone better get on the phone to Wes Craven – there’s definitely a movie here. I’m curious, however, in what country this woman is going to get a fair trial. If little green invaders come to Earth, let’s hope they’re available for jury duty.

What is the take-away from this reporting? Even your next-door neighbor from a respected church family could be a monster waiting to strike. You can change the scenery – make it Wall Street, and there you have Bernie Madoff. It all happened without warning, the story goes, until we get to the part about the obvious signs being there that were ignored – or no one listened to those few would who were trying to give us the heads-up.

It’s not that we shouldn’t hear about this stuff. It’s just seems to me that the media enjoy it a little too much, and so does the audience (My name is Mike, and I’m an adrenaline junkie….)That’s why horror movies have always done so well at the box office. But the stories that used to scare us aren’t good enough anymore, so the next camper has to tell us a better one. We all need to have our world rocked once in a while, but when does the rocking stop?

SARS and the bird flu didn’t quite cut the mustard, but now we have the swine flu. This could be the greatest pandemic to sweep the globe since 1918. Or not – we won’t know for a while yet. I do agree that most health authorities are taking the precautions they need to take. But in the meantime, it looks like we all get to share a good shiver.