No Ghosts, Please—I’m on a Peace Trip

They say, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” Well, I have a whole bucket list scribbled with dream destinations waiting to be read—Paris, Tokyo, the Northern Lights, the works! But when someone asked me which place I never want to visit, I was stumped. My travel dreams are endless… until my daughter, with her Sherlock-level observation, said, “Any place where horror movies are played.” Touché.

She knows me too well. Ghosts, creepy soundtracks, flickering lights? No, thank you. I don’t even want to visit my own living room when a horror movie is playing. I once made popcorn for a thriller night and ended up eating it alone in the kitchen, far away from the TV, where the only ghosts are the calories haunting my waistline.

There’s something about horror that unnerves me—the anticipation, the background score, the jump scares that give you a mini heart attack and make your soul do a backflip. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows,” they say. Well, my mind is deep enough to know—I’d rather dive into a beach than a blood-curdling scream.

Forget haunted mansions in Transylvania or spooky woods in the middle of nowhere. I’d even skip a luxury stay if it comes with “based on a true story” paranormal whispers.

As Mark Twain once said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” But when the power goes out during a thunderstorm? Suddenly, every horror plot seems a little too real.

Thought to ponder:
What if the scariest place is not on Earth, but within the corners of a mind that refuses to believe in happy endings?