Students relive frightening flashbacks
By Andrew Shandy
Staff Writer

 Fairy tales and folklore fuel our fragile minds every Oct. 31. Horrifying tales of murder, ghosts, and evil make falling asleep without the lights on very hard.

Thomas Watts, Hutchinson, remembers a time when he was scared on Halloween. The story goes that there is an abandoned house just outside of Hutchinson on 43rd and Kent where a boy is believed to have drowned. Thomas and a couple of friends went there to see for themselves if the house was truly haunted. While in the house, the boys beckoned the dead boy, but there was no answer. It was not until they called out for his dog that they got a response. Immediately a dog started barking; the boys were scared

. To this day, Thomas is unable to say with any certainty that the experience was more than just coincidence. He recounts the experience as “kind of freaky.” Other people have had similar experiences with urban legends.

As a young woman Cecilia Penia, Hutchinson, was frightened of an old myth that started in Mexico on the banks of the Rio Grande River.

 In the story, a young woman tries to hide an unwanted pregnancy by putting her newborn baby in a basket and sending it down the river.

 Her remorse begins to drive her insane, and she begins hearing her child crying though it has been gone for a long time. She walks the river, crying for her child every night. It is said that to this day on the Day of the Dead, brave children can go down to any river, call out her name, “La Llorar”  (the Crier), and hear her cries and the cries of her child.

“I’ve heard it,” Penia said. “It scared me when I was a kid.”

 Kids are not the only ones that get a kick out of Halloween.

English Instructor Peter Marbais knows how to throw a killer Halloween party. One year, during a one of his parties, Marbais and his wife won the costume competition in their classic getups.

“We went as sadomasochists, Marbais said. “I was the gimp, and she was the dominatrix.”

 Halloween is fun no matter what scares you, whether you’re a ghost boy, a strange girl, or just somebody’s gimp, you can still have a great time.