It is that time of the year when spooks and goblins come out of the closet, or sheds or from dark niches in the basement. The following somewhat describes what the Askildt twins, aged five or six, experienced on dark and dreary fall nights… or was it still daylight?
There was an old pear tree in our yard and at night when the wind caught that one branch, it would make scraping noises on the living room window, giving us a creepy feeling. We lived on the second floor, so we imagined it to be a big scary troll!
It was on one such occasion that our mother asked for more coke for the stove and a glass of jam from our storage room in the basement. Those kinds of chores were usually done by one person, and it was our big brother Moritz’s turn. He, however, had mysteriously disappeared, so the task fell on either my twin brother Kjell or I. We were already creeped out and decided to go down into the basement together. I grabbed the coke scuttle and away we went.
As we got to the bottom of the poorly lighted basement stairs, we heard strange sounds, almost like sighs, from behind the dark area of the steps. Our eyes bugged out and we almost went back up the stairs, but we decided to complete our chore, because we didn’t want our big brother Moritz to think that we chickened out. We belted out one of the psalms we had learned in Sunday school while we strode to the storage room. There we turned on the 25-watt lightbulb which gave us barely enough light to complete our task. We took our time loading the coke in the scuttle while listening to the strange sounds emanating from behind the dark stairs.
We put the jam inside the scuttle as well to keep it safe. Kjell grabbed the handle of the scuttle while I locked the door to the storage room and turned off the light. Then we took a couple of deep breaths, carried the scuttle between us, singing aloud while striding in the pitch dark towards the stairs and the strange noises. As we got closer to the stairs, the noises alternated between sighing, growling and roaring sounds. All of a sudden a strange figure jumped out from behind the stairs, and came at us with a roar and the limbs outstretched! We got so scared that we farted and ran up the stairs. We had dropped the scuttle, and the coke scattered on the cement floor, but the glass of jam didn’t break! Our brother Moritz then turned on a flashlight to lighten up his face. He was laughing so hard that he almost fell over, whereupon he cleaned up the mess and brought the scuttle and the jam upstairs.
The poorly lit basement was a sinister place, and we were sure that there was a spook or goblin hiding in a dark niche between the stairs and our storage room. It was Kjell’s turn to go down in the basement to get coke, so I snuck down into the basement ahead of him and steeled myself to enter that scary niche. I used our dad’s old signal flashlight from the war to shine into the niche to make sure there was no monster hiding there! The light could change colour by sliding a green or red cover over the lens, and it also had a hood that would cover half of the lens. I flipped the hood down, slid the green cover over, and waited for Kjell. He descended the basement stairs while belting out a psalm as loud as he could to keep the niche troll at bay! He took a few tentative steps towards the storage room, and as he was about run the rest of the way, I turned on the flashlight lighting up my face from the chin up with that gaudy green colour, and started swaggering towards him making growling noises. Kjell got scared out of his mind. He felt his blood freeze and he thought that his heart had stopped beating, but realized that it was still going as he dropped the scuttle with a bang! He, however, was glued to the floor and unable to move when I jumped up and ran past him laughing hysterically.
One time we got down into the basement ahead of Moritz. He wasn’t too fond of the basement either, so he stealthily made his way down the poorly lit stairs. He heard noises in the storage room where he thought Kjell and I were, but we were hiding behind the stairs. He tiptoed over to the electrical panel and removed the fuse for the basement lights. Then he made some scary sounds, ghostly growls and scraping noises on the cement floor with his leather soled slippers, causing our mother to come out of the storage room with her flashlight to investigate. Mom got so scared she could hardly breathe, but recovered when she saw that it was Moritz who had tried to scare her. Kjell and I jumped out from behind the stairs and scared both Moritz and Mom. We laughed all the way up the stairs!
Ole and Sven were attending a Halloween party dressedup as monsters. They sat at a table drinking Akevitt. Suddenly Ole said to Sven, “Lena just rolled her eyes at me! What should I do?”
Sven smiled at Ole and said, “Just be a gentleman and roll them back to her!”
