Work Stories: Episode 21: A Killer Story

Last week on Work Stories, I laid down a story of life or death.  It was an experience that I went through once and hope to never go through again.  Alas, I’ve had a few times when death was near but didn’t actually occur.  I’m lucky.  I’ve never experienced any actual fatal moments though.  I’ve experienced nothing like the Boston Marathon explosions, or that crap that West, Texas is going through.  That kind of stuff is terrible.  Like I said, I’m lucky.  I’ve come close enough that a wrong move would result in death.  That’s a daily occurrence in life.  But I’ve never been a part of something that caused death.  Anyway, onto something less sad.  Onto this week’s Work Story.

There are two things that I need to set up for this work story.  Well, more than two, but the other ones are the general things.  There are two that are much more specific that I will need to go over.  Why don’t I just get into it now?

This week’s Work Story is another story pertaining to the museum that I currently work at.  It also happened late at night.  It was after we closed, to be exact.  My coworker and I were heading up to the parking lot.  Now, this might not seem like a big deal.  You leave work, the parking lot is right there.  You leave right away.  Right?  You would be wrong in this case.  Our parking lot is not located at our work.  All of the parking in the area is public paid parking, or parking for hotels.  How else would the tourism industry get their money?  The workers must suffer.  This means that we have to walk three blocks to get from our work to the parking lot when we are going home.  It’s not a particularly long walk.  It only takes five or ten minutes to walk it.  The thing is, we have to walk by a lot of other buildings to get from our work to the parking lot.  There are a few hotels, some restaurants, four bars, two nightclubs, and other attractions, including three haunted houses.

That’s right.  On our way to the parking lot we have to walk by three different haunted houses.  This might seem strange to you, but it’s not as strange as the fact that there are two more haunted houses within a three minute walking distance of them.  That makes a total of five haunted houses in the area.  We only have to pass three of them on our way to the parking lot.  So, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  Except, sometimes it is.

After we had closed the museum for the night, my coworker and I were walking to the parking lot.  We passed the first two haunted houses without anything crazy happening.  They were both closed, so there was nothing going on.  It was the third haunted house where things got a little bit crazy.  As we approached it, I was looking ahead at the intersection.  The light was switching from green to red when I heard the scream.  My coworker was screaming.  What was happening?  I looked to my right and I saw it.

Coming out of the third haunted house was a man.  He was dressed in a costume resembling what I can only describe as a dirty Michael Myers.  Perhaps not as dirty as the Michael Myers in the Halloween remakes, but still pretty dirty.  Take the mask, put dirt on it.  Grease the hair so that it is sticking up in all directions.  Grease probably isn’t the right word for that.  Whatever.  I’m moving on.  The outfit looked like the outfit, but dirtier.  It looked like he had rolled around in a pile of dirt.  It was a dirty Michael Myers.

I began laughing.  Obviously, this guy worked at the haunted house.  He wasn’t going to hurt us.  He was just trying to be menacing.  It was part of his job.  My coworker was shaken.  She was scared of this guy.  I laughed all the way up to the parking lot.

That’s the end of the story, I guess.  Nothing much came of it.  It’s just a funny little experience I had.  I’m sure that everyone has their own funny little experiences that they are amused by.  They are good to you, but might not be good to other people.  That’s how I feel about this one.  I find it to be amusing, but I can completely understand if you don’t.  Maybe you’ll enjoy what I write about next week.

Until then, the tribe has spoken.