Watch Your Head!

Many years ago, I worked as a boarding house assistant and assistant teacher in a boarding school in Australia. During the holidays, I would stay at the school. I was the only one there, and it was slightly creepy wandering the empty rooms and corridors of the boarding house. There was a TV room, which was a large empty room with large windows, a TV in a cabinet in the middle of the room, and a sofa in front of it. I would get VHS tapes from the local library so I could watch movies on those long lonely nights.

One night, I rented “Sleepy Hollow”. I was sitting in the middle of this dark and empty room, while a storm was raging outside. Rain pounded against the windows, and I really regretted not pushing the sofa up against the wall so there would be one less direction the monsters could come from.

Suddenly, during the scene when the Hessian emerges from the tree, I heard a loud bang. The door had opened, and in the doorway I saw a tall figure in a long, black, shiny coat holding something in their hand, backlit by the light in the corridor.

I shrieked, jumped, and fell off the sofa. I lay there awaiting a gruesome death. Then, the light was switched on and the caretaker (wearing a rain slicker and holding a torch) asked:

Caretaker: “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

It turned out that nobody had told him that someone was staying over the holidays. Since then, I have only ever watched horror films with all the lights on. And the sofa against the wall.