Am I a bad person?

[joflasher]

For wanting to spend the evening dressed in my tattered black witch costume and wandering the woods around my house playing my reed flutes (damn, I wish I still had my bassoon)? Cause really, those people camped out in my woods and driving up and down my road need SOMETHING to liven up their evenings and I feel a particularly mean spirited batch of vengeance brewing.

For those of you who don't know, I live on Old Dudley Road in Billerica, famous for its haunted abandoned convent*, its insane asylum**, its haunted cemetery*** and its sinking house****. Halloween brings out all the local and not so local ghost hunters. Do a search for haunted anything in the US and Dudley Road normally shows up on the list for one of those things.

So for the last week, all the freaks and wanna be's have been cruising my road. Now the road is appallingly narrow and completely unpaved in places. In one section, you can't drive one car down it without scrapping trees on both sides. So the additional traffic crawling along, cameras hanging out the windows? Not appreciated.

Also not appreciated is all you idiots hiking around on private property. You want to play in Billerica's spooky forest, the public conservation land parking is right up the fucking street. Stop parking your fat assed SUV in the middle of a barely one lane road, you morons and get thee to the public land. Can't you tell people actually live here?

It doesn't help that TrueGhosts.com has three ongoing discussions about my road. Can you people please believe me when I say Dudley Road is NOT a hot spot of ghost activity? The only thing you are going to see is wildlife and while a fisher cat is a pretty freaky looking beast, its not a demon from the depths of hell. It can, however, sound like one so no, there are not women screaming in our forests. There are fishers and there are horny tom cats and I highly suggest you learn what THOSE beasties sound like before you make a fool of yourself in public.

I swear, if I run into one more bunch of amateur paranormal experts poking around my swamp*****, I'm going to be forced to do something memorable to them involving a pumpkin.

______________________________________________________________________
* - Its not abandoned. Its currently a retreat house. The Daughters of St. Paul are in residence every summer, starting in late May and the last of them leave at the end of September. They are really nice ladies who love walking the conservation trails through the Dudley woods and along the Concord River. So yeah, the reports of gray clad nuns wandering through the misty woods in mid-September are true. Unfortunately for the true believers, they aren't dead and they certainly weren't hung for witch craft.

**Reports can't agree whether its supposed to be an insane asylum, a haunted hospital or a correctional facility. As far as I can find out, the stories refer to some of the buildings on the back of the convent. Some of the oldest buildings have barred windows, so I can believe that it wasn't always a convent.

*** - Its a lovely old cemetery like every other lovely old cemetery in New England. Over three years of coming through it around midnight and I have yet to see even one black cat. The fishers are efficient buggers.

**** - There are couple buildings that fit this description since, like most of eastern Mass, Billerica is 90% swamp. Most are just sunken up to their siding, though, and the land owners do not appreciate people prancing around their property taking pictures.

***** - And especially my standing stone. There's a stone wall that separates the yard from the swamp. The gate going through it has nice, chest high standing stone on one side of the opening. Yes, it is a little weird. No, it was no put there by indians as a marker for a burial ground. The last owner put it in during the 70s cause she thought it looked nice. Now fuck off my land, thank you very much. At least I can console myself with the knowledge that most of these smucks have to hoof it through immense poison ivy patches in order to get to my wall.

Comments

[nuns.livejournal.com]

It would be fitting if the SUVs got towed away while the morons traipse around your back yard. I bet you could arrange that.

[flasher.livejournal.com]

There's an idea. I've been tempted to toilet paper one.

[nuns.livejournal.com]

at that point, might as well just take a dump on the hood. The virtue of having them towed is that it's within the law, so you don't wind up the defendant if it all goes south.

[blk]

I think it's a grand idea. As long as no stupid tourists decide to "test" if you're a ghost with, like, guns or something.

[alabastard.livejournal.com]

I like your idea, give them something to scare about.

[prusik.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I'm all for getting them towed. A car stopped on your street effectively blocks traffic in both directions at once. Maybe they'll think some sort of spiritual presence has moved the car.

[starherd.livejournal.com]

Am I a bad person for envying your seasonal difficulties there? *sniffle* I always wanted to perpetrate a good hoax...

[flasher.livejournal.com]

I know its hard to compete with YaoiCon but we have gullible true believers! Come visit! I'll make cookies. We could rig something up to drop on them from the apple tree.

[coldtortuga.livejournal.com]

Sympathy: Years ago when I was living somewhat outside of Fairbanks, I came home one evening to discover someone had pitched a tent in the driveway. Their giant truck was parked about 10 yards before the driveway curved around to where you could see the porch lights. I would have pranked them, but people that stupid tend to (a) imbibe heavily and (b) feel justified by the risk of wild animal low-masculinity attacks to pack HUUUUGE frikkin' firearms. Yay for circular driveways; they were gone in the morning.

... I keep daydreaming about ways to scare off your unwelcome visitors. But they want to be scared: it might bring back more of 'em next year :-( Rrrrrr...

AHA, got it! -- commercialization! Put up signs demanding an outrageous fee for parking spaces, sell superheated bland hot chocolate from a run-down roadside stand, and string up a few lame decorations. Nothing ruins a tourist's "authentic local experience" like horrible little local capitalists.

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

You are not a bad person. That's a lot of paranormal rumors... o.O

*HUGS JO TIGHT*

[georgejas.livejournal.com]

at least it's not spooky all year round? (or is it?)

poor jo.

i remember josh likes to pee on cars when he's mad. he could make sure to target the door handles, or get ammo out of your cat boxes maybe. the nastiest thing ever happened to me was i opened a car door and someone had spit tobacco into the door handle. (luckily, i know the spit there was an accident, and it wasn't my car.)

my boy never understood how outraged and invaded i felt when there were people trespassing on our property. the way i look at it, is they wouldn't just walk into my house, would they? so stay the fuck out of my yard - it is part of my home.

[georgejas.livejournal.com]

oh, and chris would say:
a) paintballs
b) slingshot

vengeance = a x b