RDP Sunday:THUNDEROUS

If you have never taken a walking to through a cemetery for Halloween, I’d suggest you give it a try.

The first time I took a haunted tour through a cemetery was in New Orleans where I was pleasantly suprised to find you could wander around with a giant fruit flavored drink ( I think I had a strawberry margarita, but it may have been a daiquiri , I get then confused ) in your hand and along side the plastic straw jammed in the top of the cup  was a hallowed out red licorice stick encrusted with sugar.

I’m from Washington state and drinking alchohol as you stroll through a cemetery is frowned upon- and by frowned upon I mean it’s super illegal.

The tour group I had joined that Halloween was a haunted history tour- so there weren’t any ghost stories per se, but that’s ok. I know plenty of ghost stories and the only way you can come up with new ones  (when you’re a writer ) is to take reality and coat it with chunks of sugar and jam it into a giant plasitc mug full of Rum or Tequila.

Trust me here, sometimes it works.

Every  now and then I would peel off from my group when we were freed up for a bit to take pictures or wander around the masoleums on our own. I shadowed a group of  Wiccans,  a group of Vampires ( yeah, well it was daylight so that sort of hurt my brain ) and another group getting a pretty detailed and graphic description of Voodoo rituals.

Then I would find my group and the tour would start back up again.

I was drinking, I mean touring with a lady from Michigan when we found a few ruinous crypts. The marble had slid away from one masoleum and the plate on the door that told you who’s place of eternal rest this is was a pile of rubble on the ground.

” Can you inagine what that sounded like when this fell apart?” she asked me.

Just then the Vampires joined us and I figure they were sort of floating around behind us to freak us out a bit.

I mean they were in black and they fangs looked pretty cool and the ones who weren’t wearing shades were wearing contact lenses that made their eyes look purple or wolfish. It was Halloween and if you’re going to dress up like a vampire and walk around a cemetery I HOPE they were trying to have a little fun.

On the other hand, I was on vacation from work where  I embalm people so I didn’t spook easily.

” Must have sounded like the end of the world  here when that marble hit the ground. ” Michigan told me.

” Oh yeah. But you know what? It must have sounded worse from inside. I mean all that cracking and slithering and sliding when the marble and granite fell away and then BOOM.” I sort of bellowed.

Michigan jumped a little. She poked me in the side with her drink. ” How would you know what it sounds like from the inside. ”

I poked her back.

Then  I turned around and took a long drink from my licorice straw encrusted with sugar. ” Cause I’ve been in there  a few times when things went wrong.”

All of the sudden my Vampires decided to tour the crypts a row down from us and me and Michigan continued our stroll on what was a beautiful, sunny Halloween afternoon.