Tag: Terror

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Terror, by Ricky

Not to “down-play” the feelings, but terror is nothing more than extreme fear. Fear caused by circumstances that are too horrible to even think about, like: being buried alive or being a passenger on an airliner that is falling to its doom from 40,000 feet or catching the Ebola virus or discovering too late that vampires, werewolves, and zombies are real. Since these thoughts really are too unsettling to think about, I will write about other forms of terror. (Those of you with weak hearts or stomachs may wish to skip reading this posting. Going to read on are you?? Well then, you have been warned.)

Among the less fearful terrors in the animal kingdom are the Wire Hair Fox Terror, the Boston Bull Terror, and the Scottish Terror.

Moving up the fear ladder, most of us can remember Dennis Mitchell, commonly known as Dennis the Menace. His neighbor, Mr. Wilson, considered Dennis to be a Holy Terror. Another such boy you may recall is Johnny Dorset who was made famous by O. Henry in his book, The Ransom of Red Chief. Johnny is such a Holy Terror that his kidnappers have to pay the boy’s father to take him back. Even “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” is known as “The Terror of Colorado Boulevard”. Hmmmmm. Here’s a thought. Before their son was old enough to know right from wrong, would Joseph and Mary have described a mischievous Jesus as being a Holy Terror?

If you stop and think about it, we all have been a terror at one time or another. Most notably when we try to open a small letter or package where the instructions tell us, “To open, tear along the dotted line.” The act of doing so identifies us as a tearer. People who are very good at tearing are known as tearerists.

To paraphrase FDR, “The only thing we have to fear is…” in two years Republicans may again control Congress and the Presidency. Now that is a fear worthy of producing terror!

© 17 November 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Terror, by Gillian

I don’t understand terrorism
or terrorists. I mean, intellectually of course I do. I understand what
psychiatrists say about the factors causing people to become terrorists; but I
can’t get inside their heads. I simply cannot feel what it is they are feeling.
With an estimated minimum of a thousand young people a month from different
parts of the globe currently rushing off to join forces with ISIS, however,
it’s clear that creating terror holds an attraction for a significant number of
people.
Not only am I completely
mystified by that desire, or compulsion, to bring terror to others, but I am
fortunate enough to be able to say that I have never felt true terror myself.
That is not because I am remarkably brave and tough. Neither am I in denial of
some unacknowledged terror. It is simply that I have lived my life in a place
and time that has been terror-free. For me, that is. Not, alas, for everyone.
I can only imagine the utter
terror I would feel, hiding in the bushes in Rwanda, waiting to be discovered
and hacked to pieces by my erstwhile friends and neighbors. Or hiding in a room
in Nazi Germany, waiting to be turned in to the Gestapo by my erstwhile friends
and neighbors. Sadly, the list is endless. I would know what real terror was in
Stalin’s U.S.S.R and Mao’s China: the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge and on and on
to today’s North Korea and most places in the Middle East.
I say I can only imagine, but
in truth I’m sure I cannot. I have lived so far from the horror of so many
people’s lives that I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like. I
have lived in my own little warm and cosy cocoon, safe and secure. Oh sure,
I’ve been a bit afraid occasionally. For instance, long before the advent of
cellphones, on business in Florida, I got lost in Miami in the dark and pouring
rain and my rental car broke down in a part of town which looked seriously
uninviting. Walking home in Denver one night after dark someone followed me
step for step. When I slowed, the footsteps behind me slowed; they kept pace if
I walked faster. Nothing bad resulted from these minor incidents, and the most
they made me feel was a bit nervous: just a frisson of fear. I’ve had health
issues that made me feel much the same, but that’s nothing approaching terror.
They call it a cancer scare, after all, not a cancer terror, though I’m
equally sure that being diagnosed with some horrific Stage Four cancer would
certainly invoke terror.
The most frightened I have
ever been, I think, were two instances involving airplanes.
One was on a flight from New
York’s La Guardia to London Heathrow. It was at the height of the Falklands
“war,” so it must have been 1982. I was working God knows how many
hours a week at the time and as soon as I settled to watch the movie, which was
Tora Tora Tora, I fell into a deep sleep. Over the mid-Atlantic we hit
some really rough air, and even that didn’t wake me, but a combination of
things suddenly did. We were bouncing around so badly that one of the overhead
bins bust open – it must not have been securely latched – and a hard-sided case
fell out onto the woman directly in front of me. It must have been heavy as
blood started pouring from her head and she began to scream. At precisely the
same moment, a voice from the cockpit announced with regret that the H.M.S.
Sheffield had been sunk with heavy loss of life. Well, you know what it’s like
when you are rudely awakened from a very deep sleep. You lust can’t get your
bearings. I was awash in confusion. My last memories, from the movie, were of
air battles; planes crashing into the ocean. The name Sheffield bothered me
because that’s where I went to College. Were we at war? What was happening? Why
was that woman screaming and bleeding?
Why was the plane pitching and
reeling? Were we going down in the ocean? I’m sure this complete lack of any
grasp on reality was very short-lived, but it seemed like forever and I was
truly scared. But I think I was too confused to be really terrified, and I
realized well enough that I was confused. Had we really been going down, yes,
then I’m sure I would have felt undeniable terror, for real. I think, now, of
those doomed passengers on that flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11,
and more recently the one that wandered off course around the skies for several
hours before, they think, ending up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean; some
terror involved there, I would guess.
The other time was when my
husband of the time was flying us back from California in our little
four-seater plane. There were the two of us and my two youngest step-children.
We had just cleared the Sierra Nevada summit, heading East back to Colorado at
about 8,000 feet in a clear blue sky. Suddenly an invisible hole in the sky
opened up and we fell through it like a rock. My stomach hit the roof. The
clipboard securing the navigation charts, which I always held on my lap, shot
up and the metal clip gouged a big gash under my chin. My step-daughter started
screaming. The hillside was coming up to meet us at a really frightening speed.
The plane stopped falling as suddenly as it had started, and we landed at the
first available spot to make sure there was no damage. There was a crack in one
wing and in the tail, but not enough to stop us flying on home. We later
calculated that we had dropped about 6,000 feet in very few seconds.
And it was scary, but it was
all over before I had time to work up to real terror. Maybe it’s just that my
reactions are too slow!
I had planned to end there,
but you know how these stories go. Sometimes they seem to take on a life of their
own and go off on a tangent you had not planned to take. So we’ll just follow.
Some of you may remember that
several months ago I wrote about my dad, who, lost in a daze of dementia,
created havoc by trying to liven up their electric heater, which was made to
look somewhat like a real fire, by jabbing at it with the old metal poker. 
I was writing this current
story, last week, on a very cold day, around zero outside. Somehow when it’s
that cold, it seems to seep into the house regardless of how you have set the
thermostat.
I was cold. I huddled closer
to the cozily-glowing gas insert fireplace and noticed that there was a
considerable gap between two of the “logs.” No wonder it’s cold in
here, I thought, and unbidden the next thoughts leapt into my head. I
need to get the poker and rearrange those logs a bit, that’ll warm things up.
Now that truly terrifies me.
© 24 Nov 2014 
About the Author 
I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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A Travelogue of Terror, by Phillip Hoyle

I suppose I’ve always held an
exaggerated sense of the word terror and an exaggerated sense of my own safety.
Still, I do recall one dark night thirty years ago when I realized some of the
big things might not go well. It was during a family trip to celebrate Christmas
in western Colorado. Packed into our VW Jetta, we left our home in mid-Missouri
stopping overnight at my parents’ home in central Kansas. The next morning we
continued on our way with my sixteen-year-old son Michael driving. I wanted him
to experience driving on a long trip since in my teen years I did the same
thing. I recall that while driving those long hours I had become used to where
the car was on the road and no longer had to calculate its position by keeping
the white marks on the right of the lane lined up with a certain point on the
fender. It worked for me and I hoped it would for him. He drove well, but on
our approach to Limon, Colorado, a light snow began to fall. “I’m not ready to
drive in this,” Michael announced, so he and I switched places. Like a good
navigator, he tuned in the radio for more information about the storm. Since it
was moving toward the southeast, I decided we should change from our plan to
drive through Colorado Springs and continue on I-70 through Denver and over the
mountains. I couldn’t imagine crossing the high plains country on US-24, a
two-lane highway that had always seemed rather narrow. I didn’t want to risk
getting stranded out there with its few small towns and few snowplows. Certainly
I didn’t want an accident. I hoped by going northwest we would drive out of the
storm.
The snow picked up just west of Limon
in that high country known for its terrible winds and difficult driving
conditions. In fact it became so bad we saw lots of semi’s jackknifed in the
ditches along the road. I had driven in snow many times, so confidently and
carefully we continued west. As we neared Denver the snow on the road got
deeper and deeper and the Interstate became nearly deserted. Since I didn’t
want to get stuck in Denver for Christmas, I proposed we stop briefly for
gasoline and a quick meal.
We got back on I-70 as evening darkened.
The snow kept falling, the driving conditions steadily worsened. As we started
into the foothills, I said to my family, “I’m going to follow that tan 4-wheel-drive
vehicle. Its big tires should keep a track open for us.” My idea worked well
enough. Then we were climbing the incline past Georgetown, still in the tracks
of another SUV. Entering the Eisenhower tunnel at the top of the divide gave me
a great sense of relief. With no snow falling, the windshield warmed up and I
felt calm; that is until we emerged into a whiteout with 20-miles-per-hour
winds and a minus 20° F temperature. Immediately the windshield frosted over.
All I could see were the out-of-focus red lights on the car in front of me. “See
those lights?” I told my family. “I’m going to follow them and hope for the
best.” That road is steep, a fact I was all too well aware of as I downshifted and
said my prayers.
We made it safely to the bottom of
the incline, exited the road at the first opportunity, and pulled into a
service station with a restroom. I ran inside only to find a long line of
people impatiently waiting to use the all-too-inadequate toilet facilities. The
terrifying ride into Denver, up the divide, and back down was bad, but the wait
in that line with the prospect of wetting my pants was for me an even greater
terror. By the time I got into the restroom, I was shaking. Some minutes later
more relaxed, a thankful man emerged. I ate some unhealthy but comforting snack
food, drank a Coca Cola, filled the gas tank, and gathered the family again to
travel on to Battlement Mesa. Thankfully the snow gave out on Vail Pass. The
snowplows kept that part of the road passable. We spent the night at the home
of one of my wife’s relatives before driving the rest of the way to Montrose the
next morning in full, dazzling, comforting sunlight.
That’s about as close to terror as I
have come, and I freely admit it was quite enough for me. Furthermore, I
realized far beyond the fears of driving snowy roads that needing to pee and
not being able to do so presented a new threat of terror to a middle-age man.
Now as an old man, I have known that terror way too often.
© 28 Oct 2014 
About the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs
at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Terror by Pat Gourley

I have fortunately never really experienced terror certainly not in any sustained fashion. Anxiety about something or the other that progresses to what I guess could be called a ‘panic attack’ has certainly occurred in my life but even that phenomenon is quite rare these days. I am lucky not to be living in Syria these days, or a young woman in Afghanistan trying to go to school, kids trying to play outside in the Yemen countryside with American Drones constantly hovering above or a black teenager on the south side of Chicago simply wanting to walk down the street without getting gunned down.

None of these situations though are anything more than things I read about and they are far from my life. I have had no feelings of terror with any of the current boogeyman-issues like Ebola or Isis. I suppose though I could put myself into a fearful state of agitation if I spent much time thinking about the upcoming senatorial term for Cory Gardner here in Colorado, but he too will eventually go away or quickly fade into irrelevance hopefully.

Being white, male and middleclass in America has many built-in safeguards that make experiencing any terror short or long-lived for me extremely unlikely. The afore mentioned panic attacks I have experienced were in actuality more my own escalating emotional reaction to something that usually could be brought under control by a bit of mindful focus on the moment and a few deep breathes. I have been very lucky in that regard I guess since I do know some people who do suffer from ongoing bouts of near debilitating anxiety. Certainly not a few men and women who have been in combat in our country’s often fabricated wars experience recurrent post-traumatic stress for example.

I am sad though about how much of the terror in the world is fostered and supported by the U.S. government on so many innocents abroad. It must be terrifying in the minutes or just seconds before you become collateral damage from a drone strike. No amount of mindfulness and deep breathing is going to deflect the incoming missile. War is a great source of terror for those experiencing it firsthand and the simple truth is that the U.S. is far and away the largest arms merchant on the planet. A fire always needs fuel.

I am though these days running into folks some of whom are experiencing what I think is real terror in their lives and these are the homeless I work with in my current nursing job. Being homeless is always a scary challenge but all the more so when the temperature outside is below zero and you can’t get to a shelter or refuse to go to one because your mental health issues make being enclosed with a bunch of strangers more anxiety provoking than facing the brutal elements.

A fellow I took care of last week during the coldest of the current polar invasion is a prime example. This guy was very streetwise and as is the case often with the homeless these days was carting and wearing everything he owns. He was a frail little guy but managed to look twice as big as he actually was because he had no fewer than four large coats on. He unfortunately suffered from a chronic bladder problem, which has resulted in his having an indwelling urinary catheter for over two years. The presenting issue was that he was leaking urine around the catheter and his pants and boots were totally saturated with piss. Now this is something that would be an obnoxious occurrence whenever it might occur but think about trying to sleep outside in 10 degree below weather sopping wet from the waist down and unable to make it stop.

My intervention depended somewhat on where he planned to spend the night with temperatures again forecast for well below zero. He is a fellow well know to the system and having a rather prickly and at times obnoxious, or perhaps just independent, personality he was persona non-grata at several homeless resources, not an easily accomplished record on his part actually but certainly working to his detriment on a cold night.

As it turned out the problem was easily fixed with a bit of catheter irrigation. Like many folks with long-term catheters he had issues with permanent ongoing urinary tract infections with bugs resistant to plutonium including some yeast that could survive a trip to Mars. It was our best guess that these yeasts were what clogged the end of his catheter so it didn’t empty his bladder and the buildup then leaked out the path of least resistance, which was not into his leg bag but rather into his pants, and eventually down into his shoes.

So after fixing the issue, at least for the time being and administering some peanut butter, graham crackers and apple juice and getting a pair of dry pants he was ready to go. He was not going to part with the boots, piss or no piss. I ask if he was going to sleep outside again that night and he said empathically that he was. Always a bit curious about these things I ask where that would be. His response was a bit cagey but rather spot-on I guess when he said it was a “safe but secret place”.

For me personally it would have been terrifying to venture into the cold with wet boots and a catheter in my penis that could get plugged again any time. For this really hearty soul it was just another night and he had only needed help fine-tuning a few things to make it happen and still be around when the sun came up the next morning hopefully terror free.

I have had the privilege of traveling and spending a few weeks in several European cities. Most notably Paris when during a combined stay of over two weeks I only saw one homeless appearing individual begging on the streets and he wasn’t French! I am sure there are many more but I find it depressing that an almost universal observation of European tourists staying at the B&B in San Francisco I help cover regards the sheer number of homeless on our streets. They often relate that the homeless problem was so much greater in the U.S. than than they had ever imagined. Actually I suspect they hadn’t even thought of it until confronted around nearly every corner with someone begging with a sign or asleep or passed out on the sidewalk in an area with some of the priciest real estate in the world. Terror inducing maybe not but it is certainly a terribly unnecessary phenomenon in the world’s richest nation. The issue really isn’t a problem with the homeless but rather the society that creates the situation on the scale we see today. That is the real terror.

© November 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Terror by Will Stanton

Back when I was around twenty and still living in my hometown, I met and briefly knew a young woman of about the same age named Ann. Physically, Ann was rather short and squat, what one would call, using a hackneyed expression, “not very attractive, but with a nice personality.” In retrospect, my guess is that Ann turned out to be gay. People said that her older brother Tim was, too. I guess it can run in some families.

Like many young people, and especially in that strange town, Ann had been interested in the occult for some time. She tended to hang around similar young people, using Ouija boards, reading about pagan practices, and becoming involved in who-knows-what.

Ann soon discovered that there was a new, young English-professor on campus who, supposedly, also was involved in the occult, claiming to be a witch. He also had a surname of “Oakwood,” which is singularly appropriate for someone claiming to practice the “old religion.” I saw him on campus. I must say that he certainly sounded and looked the part, tall and thin, very dark hair and eyes, always dressed in black, and tending to speak and behave in a mysterious manner. Ann actually went to the effort to sit in on his class, just to be there and to observe him. Eventually, she had the nerve to ask him, “Are you a white witch or black witch?” Apparently, Ann had watched “The Wizard of Oz” far more than having read reputable textbooks on pagan history and anthropology. The ancient pagans did not practice “dark magic” and actually believed that, if one did something evil, that evil would come back upon the person threefold. Naturally, the mysterious professor responded, “White witch.”

I met Ann at the same time that I briefly knew Ned. One evening when the three of us were together, Ann suggested that we go back to her house and hang out in their little basement-den where she had a small TV. So, we ended up at her house. The three of us, along with her cocker spaniel, went down to the den to watch TV and chat.

Suddenly at one point, I felt terror, as though a lump of ice had been thrust into my gut. I instantly noticed that both Ann and Ned were responding the same way, – – and so was the dog! That poor dog’s eyes were wild, and it howled and howled. This continued for at least a dozen seconds, which is a long time to feel terror. Then, the feeling and the dog’s howling abruptly stopped. We just looked at each other. Finally, Ned said, “What was that?!”

The following day, Ann attended Oakwood’s class as usual. As she was leaving at the end of class, Oakwood casually mentioned to Ann, “I visited you last night.” That really spooked Ann.

I eventually learned that Ann had gotten herself so deeply involved with the occult that she increasingly felt fear and anxiety, so much so that she finally concluded that she had to get away from it all. She approached the young, assistant priest at our town’s Episcopal church, begging him to perform an exorcism. Noting how distressed that Ann was, the priest actually did perform the ritual; and Ann never returned to her old practices.

An ironic postscript to all of this is that Ned got to know that young, handsome priest, and had sex with him. I guess that there is more than one way to reduce stress.

© 5 November 2014

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Terror by Ray S

Seems like there is
almost too much TERROR to even write about. Come to think about it this
subject, terror is what even you or we choose to make of it.
It is sort of like what
FDR said long ago on a cold February day at our Capitol: “The only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.” Well, likewise, we have our very own terrors—it comes
with the territory.
Like suddenly waking up
from a nightmare where the demon is right on your back, and your feet refuse to
pull up out of the quagmire keeping you from escaping an unforeseen terror, or
being secured to a torture rack and a mad doctor is poised with scalpel to
attack and ultimately emasculate you–now that’s a really personal terror.  My apologies to the ladies, they have a whole
laundry list of terrors which again come with the territory.  Another bad dream.
Personally my little
terror recently has been clearing out the residue of family memorabilia,
another name for trash depending on how you look at it.  But the (you would think benign) terror that
I’ve been facing is not being able in clear conscious to discard all of those
family photo albums with pictures of people I have no recollection of, the
yellow newspapers someone saved marking the end of WWII, letters saved from
birth to deaths.  My terror has been
facing the necessity of this sorting out of family life so that I might save my
survivors from this same fate.
Not too important on a
world wide scale, but I dare say, it might be to you very deep down and
personal someday.
Good luck and sleep sans terror.
© 17 November
2014
About the Author