You know how sometimes you go into a restaurant and order something, like maybe a glass of tea, and when you get it, you just don’t care for it. It’s not what you wanted. Others may be sitting around having the same tea and seem to like it; they’re actually enjoying the tea. It’s not bad tea; it’s just not the tea you had in mind.
The creepy crawly pub tour was like that for me.
I’d wanted a haunt tour that gives you that slightly spooked feeling that you get walking home late at night, as you walk past the dark, wooded area, when, even though you don’t believe in ghosts, as the wind starts rustling everything around you, you’re suddenly less certain there’s not something sinister lurking out there after all.
Some humor would be fine, certainly. Some history would be welcome.
But to me, creepy crawly had too little creepy and too much corny.
It was my Shazam of haunt tours. My sons loved Shazam when it came out this year. I hated it. Thought it was too jokey. Borderline hackneyed. But lots of people liked Shazam.
And lots of people in our group - probably 10 of the 15 or so present - seemed to like creepy crawly. They were laughing. They were having a good time. They were entertained much as a crowd might be at a theme park listening to an over-the-top southern belle character deliver a light hearted tale of some historical event with a few puns, a few tongue-in-cheek scary references, and a few too many (for my liking) “why sir! Ah do declare’s.”
All of the references to ghosts or spirits were followed with a wink and a nod, a joke and a pun, to verify neither the guide not any of us on the tour took such things seriously. I didn’t necessarily want to take them seriously ...
But I wanted a great ghost story, a little uncertainty, an unease, that maybe, just maybe, out there in the shadows, just on the periphery of our vision - that whatever was moving may have just been the wind but also may have been something sinister, something foreboding, that caused me to walk a little faster, a little more nervously, to get back to the safety of the next pub to laugh it off and rekindle my courage.
Creepy crawly wasn’t bad. Others enjoyed it. It was just unsweetened tea with a packet of artificial sweetener when what I’d wanted was real southern sweet tea.