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GBE (HALLOWEEN) Petrified Estates
Category: Life
The Group Blogging Experience (a.k.a. GBE) is pretty much where each week Alicia gives you a general topic, then you have all week to work up your own interpretation of it. The only limits on what you choose to blog about are the time you want to put into it, and your imagination.
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Where all eyes are upon you.
The tale I'm about to tell you is so strange you're sure to not believe it. But I'm here to tell you I don't know how any of us survived such a night. Or did we????
Halloween night was one of dad's favorite nights of the year. He loved all holiday's but always loved seeing us get involved with the traditions he was raised with.
Mom on the other hand was against celebrating any holiday, including birthdays.
It was like an ongoing battle for dad when he tried to stick with family tradition. After he died it was mom who ruled, which meant celebrating no holiday's or birthdays. Although throughout the years I was growing up mom preached to us on how celebrating holiday's and birthdays were wrong, I never once seen her pick up a bible. Throughout my childhood I only seen her pray one time and never did she ever step foot in a church unless it was for a funeral.
As we grew into our latter years as teenagers we decided to set our own family traditions, or have our own kind of fun whichever the case maybe.
A good instance of this: We didn't have money to spend on Christmas but we still wanted to celebrate. We still wanted to feel the love and the warmth we all felt at Christmas time as it did when dad was alive. Maybe in a sense this was our way of keeping dad's memory alive.
Going and chopping down a tree where we lived was impossible as the land was flat and barren. We didn't have the money to buy a tree so we took a tumble weed and made our own decorations for it. Okay, it looked kind of strange but to us that was okay as we never really had much. The gifts that were placed under this tumble weed were made with love and we knew it was the thought that counted.
One year when Halloween rolled around some friends, my sister and I and a couple of cousins decided it was our turn to go do some trick or treating of our own.
We didn't have much money but we could buy little things which would help us create a character for our night of excitement.
We dressed as pirates, zombies and witches. Some were even more creative and went out on their own on creating a character.
We carefully chose the area we'd trick or treat. The idea was we'd hit one of the richer neighborhoods that might be rarely hit so we'd get more treats than usual. Of course, back then filling the old goodie bag with baked goods were about as good as it got as that was about as close to a healthy meal as we got sometimes. We made a game of it where the winner received a well earned prize for being the one to bring in the most amount of goodies.
The area we chose was called Petrified Estates. This was a large private community of nothing but mansions located out in the middle of nowhere.
As we got to the main entrance there was a huge sign in the middle with pillars on each side. You had to drive between two huge pillars on either side to enter the menagerie.
When we got to the main entrance it was still daylight and it didn't look so scary though some of the mansions you seen were a little rough looking on the exterior. Each mansion had it's own private drive. The driveways were lit by either sconce or lamps so as you did not drive on the lawn.
It seemed to take forever to reach the first mansion and by the time we reached it dusk was upon us. We got out of the car and rang the first doorbell. After a few minutes the older gentleman came to the door with a bowl of candy and started putting candy into each of our sacks. We were sure to thank him before leaving.
After we got back in the car we talked about the fact that these people seemed like normal people. We drove on to the next mansion and was treated just as graceful as we were at the mansion before.
This area was way too big to walk and the mansions were spaced a good ways from each other. Some had a bowl of treats setting out by their main entrance gate with a sign saying take one and light shining on the bowl of goodies. Others were dressed in costumes for this scariest occasion.
Driving through this place was like driving through a huge maze, turning this way and that. As you pulled into their driveways from one direction, you might be pulling out through another. We were never really sure if we came out on the same road. Some would have somebody standing by the main gates to hand out the treats.
Others invited you up to their mansions with signs and arrows.
Some of them had such spooky setups we weren't sure we even wanted to enter.
We came across this one mansion where a woman was standing outside the gates like she was trying to hold the gates shut. She looked like death warmed over.
She said, "Go on by. Do not enter these gates."
We came across one where the woman was standing behind the gates as though she did not know how to get out.
This woman said something about leaving this place before it was too late. Too late for what we didn't know but we had a pretty good imagination.
We came across this one mansion where this woman was standing at the gates ready to open them for us as we approached. She was dressed in a beautiful costume.
She opened the gates and ushered us through the gates. After we passed through the gates the woman shut them and motioned us forward. We drove ahead and followed the lights until the lights disappeared but there was no mansion insight. We kept looking and inching forward following a paved drive but still couldn't see the mansion ahead.
Wendy was already screaming for us to turn around and go back. We all thought this a little too weird as we hadn't come across the mansion. We decided this time Wendy had a good point. She wasn't just being a crybaby, their was something definitely wrong with this picture. We kept driving forward looking for a place to turn around. We couldn't find a place to turn around so we turned around on the lawn and headed back toward the gates.
We seen the sconce on each side of the drive and all breathed a sigh of relief as we approached the gates. As we got closer we realized this could not possibly be the way we entered.
All of a sudden we got a knock on the window. This Gypsy seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere. She said, "Your only escape depends on you." She reached into thin air and handed each one of us a card. They all read the same thing. 'Sometimes the way forward is sometimes the way back.' Then she vanished into the night.
None of us had a clue as to what this meant. We decided it must mean in order for us to get out of here we would have to drive through the gates ahead so we proceeded forward.
As we drove through the gates we could see it was full of old head stones. As we slowly drove through there seemed to be a thick mist floating across the grounds. Shadows seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappeared again. Figures made of fog seemed to move from one grave to another as if to take inventory of their own.
As we approached a building that looked like an old mausoleum the door swung open as though it were inviting us in. We drove passed without uttering a word. Up ahead seemed to be another building looking just like the one we'd just passed. Again, the door swung open as if it were expecting us. This time as we passed I know I heard someone call my name. We all only heard our own names called.
Just after we passed the mausoleum for the second time we decided to stop and take a closer look at this card.
'Sometimes the way forward is sometimes the way back.'
Wendy started crying. "We're going to die out here and nobody is going to know where to find us." But as her tears hit the card more words seem to appear. In a smaller print it read, 'Turn left at the mausoleum and you will find your way home.'
The End
Happy Halloween
Written by
Angie
1:58 PM
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After we were seated Frank took a taste of the fish. The look on his face told me I wanted no part of it.
I asked her what she'd ordered and she told me "This is the Salmon." Frank loves salmon where I wouldn't hardly touch the stuff with a 10 foot pole. I leaned over to Frank and said, "It's a good thing you didn't order the salmon, you'd starve to death." 
And he nodded in agreement.
) and visited with the rest of our group which consist of Frank & myself, Aaron (my son) & Jennifer, (Jennifer's mom and dad) Mark & Jan and another couple whom was an aquaintance of Aaron's from work, David & Janice.
I was convinced they shut down the elevators on purpose just to make me get that exercise.
At this point I was sure glad we wasn't on the 9th floor. After a short rest I went on up onto the 9th floor as that is the Lido deck where I could enjoy a well deserved cigarette and drink. 
I couldn't eat or drink anything. Normally I go through about 6 bottles of water a day but not during this illness I barely drank three for the total time I was sick and couldn't hold any of it down. After a couple of rough days I finally got over the worst of it. Frank thought I might dehydrate so he brought home the equipment to give me an IV. Wouldn't ya know it, I started feeling so much better after I seen him walk in the door with that thing. 
And I've never done it before in my life.
for the rest of the day. The next day we got a new alternator for my car.
