William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist lost the title, to me, for being the greatest producer of scary material, when I discovered he ghost of Laurier House, a national treasure in Canadian history.
The house had been owned by Wilfrid Laurier and it was haunted; ergo, we toured the house every year, hoping to see a ghost. One year, one of the Mounties (RCMP) who guarded the house and its contents told a group of us they were certain the place was haunted. In fact, they said, a fellow mountie heard or saw someone that scared him so badly, he spent the rest of his shift sitting outside on the front steps.
Whoa!!!! that gave me fuel for my fire. "Our teacher might con us, but the mounties would never sink so low" became the refrain." They believed the mounties' story and chatted about the ghost of Laurier House on and off all day, asking me questions and doubting my answers. Finally I told them the following story.
"I heard this story last year and it sounds true. It seems that 4 students wanted to join a club called "the succubus chapter" a goup dedicated to bringing the most evil dead men and women back to life and the 4 newbies were required to attend the next seance to bring Henry VIII back from the spirit world. The 4 students joined hands and called for the evil Henry to appear. After just a few minutes, the spirit appeared before them in the form of pulsating ball of green light. The newbie succubi had coaxed it from beyond there was absolute silence as it flew into the body of one of the 4 students and took over. At first the body just made gutteral sounds, but soon it morphed into a face and a hand....a hand holding a knife. He turned to his left and then to his right and carved up one of them leaving a bloody corpse writhing on the floor. Fortunately the leader of succubus cult had his face painted in the ancient manner which caused the ghost to be repelled."
Stopping there, he gave the 4 a chance to back out because as he said, I can't exert much control over my bloody instincts when the spirit is inside me. The mounties certainly believed it so the 4 should think about not participating.
They wanted in but I said NO unless your face has the magic words "bah, sueg socah toah" (Klingon characters I told them later) meaning "no fear. I am here". They agreed and I used a grease crayon to cover their faces in colourful dodads.
The seance began. I was at my evil best, making dark noises and sudden movements. There was much squealing and one girl crawled under her bed. I convinced them of the green ball of light coming toward me and entering my body. All hell broke loose as the 4 (and there were about 8 spectors) started screaming and hugging until in my evil voice I said "I am the ghost called Casper and you all look ridiculous"
All hell broke loose again, only this time with laughter and cajoling.
Of course this is just a summary of events I performed each year on a class trip to Ottawa. The actual seance took over 45 minutes of fear and enjoyment.
The power of suggestion! Has it any place in the war against PD?
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