Best Bedtime Story Ever! NOT!

I closed last night's post with the announcement that I was about to watch Poltergeist.  it was just after one in the morning.  I figured I would get myself settled in bed first so that all I would have to do was close the DVD player and the laptop lid as the title hit.  I was due to be called before seven to get ready to go with my mother-in-law over to my husband's grandmother's to sit with her while my in-laws went grocery shoppign for both households.  I expected the movie to be over shortly after three, which would give me almost four hours of sleep. 

I knew little of the moive beforehand.  Only that iconic image of the angelic somambulant blond child approaching a TV screen ablaze with off-air white-noise and intoning "They're heeeere." If I had known (or remembered) that Stephen Spielberg was the director, I might have had an inkling of the potenial power of the special effects.  But even so, I doubt I could have reckoned on their after-effects.  I am a vetern scary movie watcher, tho seldom have I watched one all the way thru without commercial interruption.  Could that have made that much diference?

I've loved ghost stories since I could read.  I've read nearly every one of Stephen King's books.  I thought I was innured to them. That they could never do more than give me a frisson of virtual fear.  I even read them or watch them in the dark while home alone.  No big deal.

This time was different.  Maybe it was because I set it up so that there was no transition between the end of the movie and shutting my eyes to sleep.  Need I say that sleep did not come immediately?  Nor in fifteen minutes.  Nor in fifty.  Everytime I began to slide into the hypnogogic image stage of sleep, I had a major startle reaction as the images from the movie morphed and mashed in a kalaidascope lightshow behind my eyelids.  I wasn't scared.  I in no way bought into the story once it was over.  It was just that the antics of those images produced one startle reaction after another for the next hour or so.

Next time I plan to watch a scarey movie before bedtime, I will be sure to spend at least fifteen minutes afterwards looking at or doing something that will clear my mental cache and fill it with something safe to sleep on.  Say AFV of laughing babies or pet peccadillos.  Better yet, the first fifteen minutes of The Sound of Music.  If only I didn't have to send it back to the library this week.

But, I'm sure to have something of the sort on hand when i get my turn with Poltergeist II and III sometime in the next three to six weeks.  Especially if I continue to bring them home from the library at a similar rate with a similar range of mood and theme.  I mean, really, from The Sound of Music, to documentaries about the Constitution to Emma to Poltergeist inside 24 hours.  It's enough to make your head spin.