{"id":4608,"date":"2019-01-28T08:40:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T07:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2019-04-22T14:30:15","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:30:15","slug":"random-creepy-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4608","title":{"rendered":"Random Creepy Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Creepy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The building where I teach is a monument to communist era\narchitecture. It\u2019s tall, blocky, gray, concrete, mundane, and removes the will\nto live from whomever casts their eyes upon it. It fits right in with a lot of\nthe other monstrosities that popped up in the Czech Republic in the second half\nof the twentieth century. The buildings that ain\u2019t ending up on a postcard\nanytime soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But mostly I have found it to be a reasonably innocuous\nbuilding. It\u2019s got good Wi-Fi, the static electricity is pretty low, and you\u2019ve\ngot a killer view of the car dealership across the street. I mean, the toilet\nlights are set to shut off every nine seconds, so you end up looking as though\nyou\u2019re in a one-person synchronized pooping competition. But overall, what else\ncould you ask for? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well the building does take on a more sinister feel after\ndark as I have done for five years each Tuesday after my evening class in the\nwinter. When I leave the building at 7:15 pm in spring the sun is still out and,\ndepending on how my class went, my mood is not at its most morose. In the\nwinter, though, it\u2019s been pitch black since 4:30 and by 7:15 there\u2019s not a soul\nin the building. The students want to get home, so they run out of the place like\nit\u2019s on fire. By the time I drop my books in my office and head down the\nstairs, the only people in the building are me and the night guard who works\nreception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s then that I feel like Laurie Strode trying to get the\nhell out of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital on Halloween night. The long hallways\nand wide echoing stairwells take a different shape then to the lonely person\ntrying to get out. This is buttressed by the fact that the stairwell lights are\nalso timed to about ten seconds and only some of the hallway lights remain on. So\ninstead of total dark or total light, the stairwell lights snap off when you\u2019re\nhalfway between a floor. Or I must walk down a long mostly dark hallway, at the\nend of which is one (often fluttering, I shit thee not) overhead light that I\nfully expect Michael Myers to be suddenly standing under. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s in these evening escapes from the building that I\nremember the random creepy things about the building. The stairwells have an\nunsettling tendency to gather human hair into clumps like creepy-ass\ntumbleweeds. And so at any point in the day you walking through a hallway of\nhuman hair. Also depending on the time of year, there are zillions of dead\nflies in the stairwells. Hello, Amityville Horror. And then of course there\u2019s\nthe sound effect that the wind has on the only tall building around for a mile.\nSeveral times during a class I have to jauntily explain the moaning and\ngroaning wind rattling the windows. Depending on the class, I might do so\ndirectly. \u201cDamn wind.\u201d Or I might play with them a little. \u201cThe lost souls of\nstudents who didn\u2019t do my homework.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure there are explanations to them all. I hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are there any random creepy things about the places you\nwork, live, work out? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creepy The building where I teach is a monument to communist era architecture. It\u2019s tall, blocky, gray, concrete, mundane, and removes the will to live from whomever casts their eyes upon it. It fits right in with a lot of the other monstrosities that popped up in the Czech Republic in the second half of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/20170823_045538-e1503541421761.jpg?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1ck","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4609,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/4609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}