Creepy Christmas

Maybe it’s not Christmas that’s so creepy, just the neighbor. Any honest outside observer would have to admit though that the way in which we celebrate Christmas does have it’s creepy elements. I’ve always been leery of this one neighbor’s house anyway. He keeps a mannequin behind the rippled, smokey glass by the front door. That’s all well and good, to each his own, it’s just that he changes the mannequin regularly. I simply find this behavior a bit odd. Maybe it’s just me. Actually it’s not. I’ve taken several friends past the house who have been haunted by such a sight. I’ve had this desire to photograph the mannequin but childhood memories of Sally Carter’s house, a haunted house in my home town always surfaced and I couldn’t bring myself to take the risk. I mean, what if it turned out to be the last photograph I’d ever made?

This Christmas I couldn’t resist. He’d changed the mannequin to fit the season. I put all childhood fears behind and courageously walked into the yard to make the photograph. It’s not in sharp focus, as I was snapping it I was certainly already backing away. At least it was in broad daylight and surely they’d see the large arm pulling me into the house to disappear forever, the camera lying in the yard the only remaining evidence of my existence. Somehow, I survived to tell the tale.

Creepy Mannequin

I went to photograph with a nephew last weekend. We were driving through the Alabama countryside looking for old buildings to photograph when we ran across an abandoned house that had some photographic potential. The roof was completely collapsed, hanging only in places by it’s weary old wooden bones. Each step caused me to give a word of caution, lest my nephew disappear forever into the hollows of the basement. There’s a theme emerging here. As we studied the house we noticed one thing. It had been abandoned some years before – at Christmas. Kind of creepy, don’t you think?