HALFWAY

A rather nervous young man recently moved into a halfway house in the city. He had been in a hospital for the last several years, but after having worked closely with his psychologist, Dr. Gallagher, he was granted permission to leave and live a more independent life. His halfway house was only two miles from the hospital, which allowed Dr. Gallagher to see both his committed and independent patients.

The man recently released from the hospital was named Joey, and he carried on with his life like most other folks. He met with Dr. Gallagher for one hour every other day, and Joey discussed how being on his own again was affecting him.

It was on their second session that Joey had confessed to feeling nervous in his new home.

“It will take some time to settle in,” explained Dr. Gallagher.

“It’s not the settling in that bothers me,” Joey said. “It’s the woman.”

“The woman?” asked his doctor. “What woman? Is she a neighbor?”

“No,” said Joey. “The woman who lives in my kitchen.”

“Is she a roommate?” asked the doctor hesitantly

“No,” Joey said. “She was already there when I moved in.”

Dr. Gallagher specifically remembered helping Joey move into his new home, and he most certainly did not see any woman. In fact, based on the look of the place, it hadn’t been inhabited in years.

The doctor was very concerned about these hallucinations and worried they could lead to a psychological regression. However, after having seen Joey spend so much of his life in a hospital, the doctor was determined to try to work through the young man’s psychosis between the two of them.

“Does this woman try to hurt you?” asked Dr. Gallagher.

“No,” Joey answered, “but I get the feeling she wants to.”

“Does she ever speak?” asked Dr. Gallagher.

“Kind of,” Joey said. “But she doesn’t speak with words. She opens her mouth, but it sounds like wind or something, like when you hold up a shell to your ear at the beach.”

Their session ended, but as Joey was getting up to leave, Dr. Gallagher calmly explained to him that this woman Joey was seeing could not hurt him, and that he was not in any danger. Because of this, Dr. Gallagher advised Joey to ask this woman what it was she exactly wanted. The doctor had decided to wait to hear the answer Joey came back with before determining just exactly what kind of help Joey really needed. Before he had something more firm to go on, he would only assume these hallucinations of the woman were a byproduct of Joey’s release from the hospital and his subsequent new environment.

Two days later, Dr. Gallagher was in his office waiting for Joey to arrive. His phone rang, and when the doctor picked it up, Joey was on the other line.

“She won’t let me leave,” Joey said. “She wants me to stay.” His voice sounded very tired and scared.

“Joey, this woman is not real,” Dr. Gallagher finally said, in a calm voice. “It’s just a product of your new surroundings, that’s all.”

“I asked her what she wanted, like you told me to do,” Joey said. “She said she wants company. She says I’m not allowed to leave her anymore.”

“Joey, we have a session today,” the doctor said. “You must come, or I have to report this to the hospital.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Joey said. “She won’t let me.”

The line clicked.

Dr. Gallagher hung up the phone, growing nervous. He knew it was his responsibility to report this to the hospital, but he wanted to give Joey one more chance. And if Joey refused to come to the office, then the doctor would instead go directly to Joey’s house and confront him.

Upon arriving, Dr. Gallagher knocked several times but did not receive an answer. He opened the door – which was unlocked – and he entered. He saw Joey sitting at his kitchen table and staring into a corner of the room.

“Joey, it’s Dr. Gallagher,” he said as he slowly approached. “Is everything okay?”

Joey didn’t turn his head to acknowledge the doctor’s presence, but he did speak. “Sorry I couldn’t come, Doctor, but she wouldn’t let me.”

Dr. Gallagher stepped into the kitchen and looked around. There was no one in the kitchen but Joey and himself. “Joey, there is no one here,” he said, patiently.

“She’s here, doctor,” Joey said. “I’m looking into her eyes right now. I have to look into her eyes. That keeps her in place. If I look away, she comes out from her hiding place to hurt me.”

“Joey, there is no woman,” the doctor countered, growing exasperated. “If you keep up this behavior, I’m afraid I will have no choice but recommend you be re-committed to the hospital.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t like that,” Joey said. “She wouldn’t like that at all.” He continued to stare forward, not even blinking.

“Joey, where is she right now?” the doctor demanded. “Where do you see her?”

“She’s between the refrigerator and the wall,” Joey said and pointed. “Do you see her?”

Dr. Gallagher looked where Joey had pointed—looked at the small space between the refrigerator and the wall, which was no more than three inches wide.

He saw a woman with long black hair and white eyes impossibly standing in that space. Her body was as thin as a broomstick, and her long fingers squirmed over the top of the refrigerator like snakes. She opened her mouth to speak, but the doctor heard only the wind. 

Photo.

EVP

"You can [faintly] hear the three females talking throughout the recording. You will hear a female – the family member – say, 'Hello, baby,' and another long conversation. Those are all human voices. But what sounds like a struggle or attack is going on as well.

"The male [voice] you hear was not present at the hotel. You will hear a cuckoo clock (which was not present) a ticking of a hall clock (which was there); you will hear what sounds like the microphone being moved (which was not touched) and then the sound becomes clearer.

"You will hear a creaking door and slamming of the door, which is real. Then you will hear a [unknown] woman say, 'Get off me,' and what sounds like the woman being attacked. The struggle continues for awhile, and during the EVP you can hear some of my investigators' conversations. After interviewing my investigators, they said they went and sat on the stairs of this hotel, because they heard from an above floor, what sounded like footsteps and conversations, not what you hear on this recording. When the noises stop, you hear the investigators participate in a lulled conversation. They stated that they started to talk when the noises stopped. In their conversation, you will hear a male voice say, 'Help me' several times."

Read more.

THE FUNERAL

When I was fourteen, my grandmother passed away. She wasn’t a very nice person, to be honest, and none of us kids liked her, but she was my father’s mom, and he was sad when she died, so we pretended we were sad, too. But we weren’t.

Whenever my grandmother came to visit us, she would say the meanest things. She would call my brother fat, my sister dumb, and me she called ugly. She never said anything mean when my parents were around, though, and even though we were kids at the time, we knew better than to tell our parents the awful things she said. We knew they would never believe us. Luckily, our grandmother only visited a few times a year— on holidays—so we never had to really see her.

On the day of her funeral, people gathered around her coffin on the church altar.

“She was a fine person,” someone said to my dad and shook his hand. They were sorry for his loss, they said. A lot of people said that on that day.

“Thank you,” my dad said and he looked pretty sad.

“I’m glad she’s dead,” I said to my sister that day. “She was terrible.” We were sitting in the back pew reading our grandmother’s mass card. Her picture was on the front, and even though she was smiling, there was still hardness in her eyes that gave me chills.

“That’s not nice,” my brother said. “That’s not nice to say about anyone who has died, even if you didn’t like them.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “She was mean to us our whole lives. Now she can’t be mean anymore.”

The funeral eventually ended and everyone began filing out. I waited for the coffin to be rolled out so everyone could follow it to the cemetery, and when it wasn’t I asked my mom why not. She said it was because my grandmother was being cremated, so instead the funeral home would take the body away to do what needed to be done.

The church had emptied out and we were all in the lobby, and I turned and looked back at my grandmother’s coffin. I could see the bump of her folded wrists, which sat on her withered chest. Her skin was sickly white, even from where I stood. Looking at her body, I remembered all the times she was mean to us, and I smirked, but I tried my best to hide it.

I turned back to my mom and said, “Can I go say goodbye one last time?”

“Of course, sweetie,” my mom said, and she adjusted the flower which was pinned to the lapel of my suit jacket. “That’s very nice of you.”

I walked back into the church as my family all talked amongst each other in the lobby. I strode up to my grandmother’s coffin and looked inside. Her face was wrinkled and strange looking—as if it had been re-formed with candle wax. Her dry lips were pursed closed.

I leaned over to her and whispered, “I’m glad your dead. You were terrible.”

I fell back and knocked my elbow pretty hard on a pew, and I was too terrified to even scream, because her eyes had popped open, and they were frosty and blue, like a foggy street after a warm rain. Her hand curled around the side of her coffin and grasped its rail, using it to pull her dead body into a sitting position. Her head turned robotically, the bones in her neck creaking like dry firewood, and she saw me through her cloudy eyes. She grinned, and the wires keeping her lips closed ripped through her skin.

“No!” I screamed and I turned to run. I heard her climb out of the coffin, and I think it was right when her feet touched the ground when the lights inside the church went off. The only light in the whole place came from the altar’s two candles, which were situated on either side of her coffin.

I sprinted down the middle aisle, and in the darkness I could see only the shape of her, lit from behind as she came after me, her burial dress swishing against her legs. I could see loose strands of her hair above her head, and hear her bones cracking as her dead brain forced her dead legs to walk. There was ragged breathing in the dark, and to this day I don’t know if that was her breathing or my own.

I made it to the lobby doors, but they had been closed. I wrenched helplessly on them and found they were locked. I screamed in terror and beat on the doors, but no one came to my aide. I looked through the small windows and saw that the lobby was empty—and that everyone had left me.

“No!” I screamed through the window. “Someone help me!”

A hand gripped my shoulder from behind—so hard I thought my bones would shatter. She turned me around and forced me to face her. Her grinning face was inches away from mine, and when she hissed, the smells of the chemicals inside her leaked down my throat and burned my lungs.

“Get off me!” I screamed again and tore away from her grip. I stumbled in the darkness and fell backwards into a pew. I covered my face with my arms and begged to be left alone.

I felt hands grabbing at me again, forcing my arms away from my face, and I fought them as best as I could, but the hands were too powerful. They grabbed my face now, and they were smooth and warm. I opened my eyes and saw my father. He looked very concerned, but there was also a glimmer of a faint, even sympathetic smile. The church’s lights were on, and the lobby once again filled with members of my large family, some of them looking in at me with concern in their eyes. I was crying very hard.

“I know, buddy,” he said to me. “I know you’re sad she’s gone, but don’t worry. She will always be with us.”

I grabbed onto him and held him tightly, and he held me back as we sat together in the pew, and when I looked over his shoulder and back to my grandmother’s coffin, where she was lying again, I swear to this day—as I swear that what happened to me on that day is true—that she was smiling.

And the flower from my suit jacket was clenched in her hand.

KEYHOLE

A professor was working late one wintry night when a sudden storm came, dropping over a foot of snow on the ground in record time. The professor, seeing that he had been essentially snowed into the building, readied himself to spend the night.

He alerted the university's security guard that due to the weather he was going to be spending the night. The security guard nodded, but then warned him of the things  he might experience during the night, such as knocking and footsteps, as well as the ghostly figure of a girl who is sometimes spotted roaming the halls late at night.

The professor found the security guard's claims dubious at best, but eager to get back to work, merely said he would keep an eye out.

After several more hours of grading papers, the professor saw that it was approaching three a.m. and decided it was time to turn in for the night. He stretched out on a couch in his office and had just fallen asleep when he was woken up by the sound of someone knocking at his door. The professor, remembering the security guard's warnings, became frightened and tried to ignore the sounds. 

As he tried to go back to sleep, the knocking came again. Wondering if maybe it was the security guard himself, he got up. To make sure it was the guard before opening, he peaked through the keyhole of the door. All he saw was the color red, and assuming that a person wearing that color was standing in the hallway, he opened the door.

No one was there.

He closed the door and went back to bed, tossing and turning for the remainder of the night.

When morning came, the professor located the security guard and told him of his strange experience, and how he had peered through the keyhole and saw a close-up of red - what he had assumed was someone's clothing. The security guard merely nodded, not surprised by the professor's description. The guard went on to explain that the spirit said to haunt the university was of a young girl - a former student - who had been ritualistically killed several years earlier. 

Her eyes had been carved out of her skull, leaving behind red, bloody holes.

THE HANDS RESIST HIM

In March of 2000, the below painting, officially titled "The Hands Resist Him," was sold on eBay with the description "The Haunted Painting." 

The original auction description (edited for clarity) is below:

When we received this painting, we thought it was really good art.  A "picker" had found it abandoned behind an old brewery. At the time we wondered a little why a seemingly perfectly fine painting would be discarded like that. (Today we don't !!! ) One morning, our four-and-a-half-year-old daughter claimed that the children in the picture were fighting and coming into the room during the night. Now, I don't believe in UFOs, or Elvis being alive, but my husband was alarmed. To my amusement, he set up a motion-triggered camera. After three nights, there were pictures. The last two pictures shown are from that 'stakeout'.

After seeing the boy seemingly exiting the painting under threat, we decided: the painting has to go.

[Wikipedia also states: "Included with the listing were a series of photographs that were said to be evidence of an incident in which the female doll character threatened the male character with a gun that she was holding, causing him to attempt to leave the painting."]

The original ad continues:

Please judge for yourself. Before you do, please read the following warning and disclaimer. 

WARNING: 


Do not bid on this painting if you are susceptible to stress-related disease, faint of heart, or are unfamiliar with supernatural events. By bidding on this painting, you agree to release the owners of all liability in relation to the sale or any events happening after the sale that might be [attributed] to this painting. This painting may or may not possess supernatural powers that could impact or change your life. However, by bidding, you agree to exclusively bid on the value of the artwork, with disregard to the last two photos featured in this auction, and hold the owners harmless in regards to them and their impact - expressed, or implied.

Now that we got this out of the way, one question to you eBayers: we want our house to be blessed after the painting is gone; does anybody know who is qualified to do that?

The size of the painting is 24 by 36 inches, so it is rather large. As I have had several questions, here the following answers.

• There was no odor left behind in the room.


• There were no voices, or the smell of gunpowder; no [footprints] or strange fluids on the wall.


• To deter questions in this direction, there are no ghosts in this world - no supernatural powers - this is just a painting, and [mostly] these things have an explanation; in this case, [it was] probably a fluke light effect.

I encourage you to bid on the artwork, and consider the last two photographs as pure entertainment; please do not take them into consideration when bidding.

As we think it is a good idea to bless any house, we still welcome input into that procedure.

 

 

After the posting of the auction, which attracted thousands of visitors, many people who saw the painting began to experience strange auditory/aural hallucinations and bouts of hypochondria...or genuine hauntings:

• One claimed to have heard a demonic voice speaking directly to them - a voice they claimed was quite similar to one used for the possessed Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. They also claimed to have felt a blast of hot air in their face.


• Another reported that the mere site of the painting caused them to fall instantly ill and even went as far as burning white sage to cleanse their house.


• Yet another person claimed to have suffered "blackout/mind control experiences."


• One person claimed that when they attempted to print their own pictures of the painting, their printer malfunctioned, as if refusing to print the image of the painting. 

The painting's artist, Bill Stoneham, explains the inspiration and origin of the painting:

"When I painted the Hands Resist Him in 1972, I used an old photo of myself at age five in a Chicago apartment. The hands are the 'other lives.' The glass door, that thin veil between waking and dreaming. The girl/doll is the imagined companion, or guide through this realm.

Both the owner of the Gallery where 'Hands' was displayed and the Los Angeles Times art critic who reviewed my show were dead within a year of the show.

I'm sure it was coincidence, but some of what I paint resonates in other people, opening the inner door, or basement. By the way, I still have no idea what happened to the character actor who bought the painting at the show (editor note: it was John Marley*, who died in 1984), or how it ended up abandoned in a building, though I could speculate." 

* The unfortunate movie producer from The Godfather who denied Johnny Fontane a part in his movie and got a horse head in his bed for his troubles.

Prints of "The Hands Resist Him" are available on Bill's official site.

Feeling brave?

DUDE, BRO! GHOSTS!

Possessions. Voodoo. Ghost sex.

It's all in a day's work for the hosts of Ghost Adventures, a highly entertaining ghost hunting show enigmatically featured on the Travel Channel.

While I am immensely interested in the paranormal, I consider myself a skeptic. I've never seen a ghost, nor ever personally encountered any strong evidence that would convince me of their existence. I have listened to several EVPs captured by someone very close I absolutely trust, and the voices caught on them certainly made me raise an eyebrow. But at the same time...that's not enough. Still, I remain open-minded to the possibility. To so assuredly proclaim that ghosts don't exist reeks of arrogance to me, because really, how do you know? Science unearths discoveries every day that sometimes contradict earlier findings. It's the nature of the thing. Who is to say what doesn't exist today will become otherwise tomorrow? But that's best saved for another debate between folks far more brained than I.

Ghost Adventures is a ghost hunting show like no other. It is not hosted by a drab old British man, or a couple of plumbers. It is hosted by three of the most entertaining frat guys you have ever met.

Your main host is Zak Bagans. His impetuous dynamism and intensity would almost be contagious if it weren't almost constantly teetering on absurdity. He religiously performs over the top monologues and speaks with HALTING. TONES. RIGHT. AT. YOU. Regularly dressed in paint-splatter crest t-shirts and black jeans, and with his hair seemingly its own living entity, one gets the feeling that his penchant for ghost hunting just about overshadows his penchant for male modeling. I once asked a fellow paranormal enthusiast what they thought of Ghost Adventures. They replied, "It's decent - but that main guy is kind of a tool." That's a pretty accurate summation of Zak Bagans, what with his macho-ism and bulging tattooed biceps. While an official label for Zak would be metro-sexual, I prefer the term Baganism. He truly is in a class by himself.

Zak Bagans.
Leader. Macho. Moe.

 
Next in the line-up is Nick Groff, certainly the least dynamic of the hosts, but probably the  bravest. He's usually the one getting locked into morgue drawers and sitting in rooms by himself. He is the Dean Martin of the duo, playing the straight man against Zak's Jerry Lewis. He comes across as fairly level-headed and not nearly as brutish as Zak. He is like a tabletop diner jukebox, or Vice-President Biden. He's just kind of there.

Nick Groff.
Zak's Number Two. Straight Man. Larry.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Aaron Goodwin. This lovable goofball is the heart of the show. He takes the most abuse and does whatever he is ordered to do, like sit in rooms by himself and ask taunting questions he really doesn't want to ask, or crawl under antique death wagons as Zak and Nick watch him on their monitors and snicker. If the Ghost Adventures crew were The Three Stooges, Aaron would be Curly. He has a charisma that goes beyond playing third fiddle on a reality television show. As tremendously entertaining as he is on the show, you just know the man is ten times as such off camera. He is definitely a guy with whom you wish you were friends. He also makes the best scared face in existence.

Aaron Goodwin.
Whipping Boy. Lovable. Curly.

The three men make for enormous entertainment - and the show is both intentionally and unintentionally funny. When each of them encounters something unexplainable, they are sure to shout, "Dude!", "Man!", or "Bro!" In one specific episode, Nick feels a cold burst pass through him, and he holds up his hands in surrender and shouts, "Whoa, dude!" It comes so close to bordering on self-parody that you have to wonder how aware the Ghost Adventure guys are of their own legacy.

While most of the intentional humor comes from Aaron, Zak manages to climb out from under his haze of self-serious theatre-delivery dialogue and make an occasional joke. Especially entertaining is when he demands a spirit to produce a sign of its presence, and when it does, he shrieks and hops out of the room in terror.

Because the investigations are shot entirely in full dark, there are many scenes of our hosts literally poking each other in the eye, walking into doors, stepping in puddles, and bonking their heads against something. They really, truly are The Three Stooges. But the real humor comes when the investigation begins...

The episodes are structured much like any other ghost hunting show: first, the story of the location; second, the eyewitness accounts; third, the plan; and then fourth, the investigation - your bread and butter of the episodes. This allows for Zak to practice his technique of literally pissing off the ghosts so that they will perform for him. And while this is essentially him wandering around empty rooms and demanding the entities make their presence known, the commands he delivers are often improvised (which at least lends credence to the notion that this show is definitely not scripted, and if it is, the guys are terrible at remembering their lines). They all literally stumble through phrases that are meant to incite a response from whatever entities may be around them, but instead, their output sounds awkward and instantly amusing. In the Scotland Edinburgh Vaults episode, a place in which the entities allegedly target pregnant women, Nick wanders around with his digital recorder and stutters, "Is it true... that you hate... pregnant... woman?" In the Ohio Reformatory episode, Aaron sits in the middle of the prison showers where one prisoner was once "gang-raped" to death. In an effort to reach out to the dead prisoner's spirit, Aaron states, "I'm sorry about how you were killed. That was a lousy thing for them to done." He then goes on to add, "No one should die naked."

The best line-flubs come from Zak, because he speaks with immense authority. He reaches Will Ferrell levels of unearned arrogance with some of the broken phrases he spits out. I wish I had an example for you, but they are just too numerous; however, there is one quirk of Zak's about which I can be specific, and one I find tremendously entertaining: his habit of going off on mini-tirades after having just witnessed something spooky, but then screaming at his counterparts to shut up the minute they open their mouths.

ZAK: Did you hear that? Did you hear that? I just heard something down that hallway! I swear, dudes, I heard it! I heard it!
AARON: I heard--
ZAK: SHUT UP SSHHH SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

It's something that never fails to bring me joy.

OMG!

Nine times out of ten (like any other ghost hunting show), the evidence the guys enthusiastically collect is not terribly interesting and is very inkblot-ish in nature. They'll record an EVP that they translate to be "I hate you" but in reality sounds like "...feh..." And while interviewees will describe eerie sightings of full-body entities in historical dress floating down hallways and beckoning to them; phantom dogs and children; the smell of nonexistent foods or perfumes; and the sounds of ghostly flute music or entire country songs, the evidence the guys collect with their arsenal of cameras never manage to reach these impressive levels. At most they capture garbled audio, wisps of something passing in front of the camera, or lights way off in the distance. They also show their arms to the camera so we can see their goosebumps or hair standing on end, something they attribute to the presence of spirits (but can also happen when your favorite song comes on the radio, or during Bill Pullman's riveting Independence Day monologue). Yes, in terms of evidence, the guys have never really caught something that is both entirely unexplainable and knock-your-socks-off insane (the thrown brick from their original documentary notwithstanding - I find that extremely suspicious).

But then in a complete 180, the guys will make some pretty outrageous claims: that they used the services of a witch to call forth a succubus (incubus? succubus? incubus?); that each of them have received scratches from angry spirits; that they used a voodoo priestess named Bloody Mary to call for spirits of slaves long dead; that both Zak and Nick were "possessed" at certain points during season two (the latter making what a friend has termed "the angry Facebook photo face").

And this is where I have issues with the show. As I stated earlier, I do not believe in ghosts, but I do believe their existence is a possibility. I want to watch a show like Ghost Adventures, or any of the other shows, and think, "This could be real." When the guys claim possession, or that voodoo and witchcraft calls forth spirits or demons at their own whim, or that ghosts of cowboys and prostitutes are fucking in an unseen netherworld - sorry guys, you've lost me.That's when the show strays into bullshit territory.

All of this makes me sound like I am picking on the guys - especially Zak - and the show itself, but that's really not my intention. I heart all three of these fellows, and I hope they never stop doing what they do. Their show has brought me immense entertainment - whether intentional or not - and I would never change a single thing about their investigations. Exaggerated - or even downright fake - the show is too entertaining to dismiss.

The show has many fans (1.7 million on Facebook), and they range from the casual, to the dedicated, to the fucking horrifying. Despite the subject matter of the show - ghosts, bloody murders, institutional abuse, child death - there is still one thing truly scarier than all of that put together, but yet still directly associated with Zak Bagans himself:

Fan fiction.

Yes, because of Zak's rippling muscles and shellacked hair, he has become a god amongst the Twilight teen crowd. Girls (and most assuredly some boys) dream of Zak holding them tightly in the night and protecting them from ghosts, all the while pointing directly into their faces and shouting that the kissing about to go down will be the MOST. EXTREME. KISSING. EVER.

GET. READY. FOR. MY. HUG.

This little bit, stolen from an online journal entitled "Zak Bagans - In the Flesh" gives me an extra dose of the willies:

“OOOHHHH ZAK…. OOOO YEA…. OOOO BABE, HARDER” i screamed.

“uuuuhhhhh” zak grunted as we both came.

an hour later we were cleaned up and sitting on the beach together.

“are you happy” zak asked.

“of course, more than ever” i smiled.

“me too babe” he said kissing me.

i apologize for how short the story is. i just got my daughter a puppy, and its been a lot of work, please forgive me, i promise you all i will post tomorrow and it will be a full chapter.

Dude...

I take great solace in the fact that somewhere out there, our three beloved frat brothers are wandering around an abandoned silo with flashlights, demanding in authoritative voices that the hiding ghost materialize in front of them...so when it does, they can shriek in the night and run for safety - tripping, falling, and saying, "why I oughta...."

Enter the world of Ghost Adventures. Your life will be all the better for it.

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THE PORTRAITS

The Portraits

There was a hunter in the woods, who after a long day of hunting was in the middle of an immense forest. It was getting dark, and having lost his bearings, he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the increasingly oppressive foliage. After what seemed like hours, he came across a cabin in a small clearing. Realizing how dark it had grown, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night. He approached and found the door ajar. Nobody was inside. The hunter flopped down on the single bed, deciding to explain himself to the owner in the morning.

As he looked around the inside of the cabin, he was surprised to see the walls adorned by several portraits, all painted in incredible detail. Without exception, they appeared to be staring down at him, their features twisted into looks of hatred and malice. Staring back, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Making a concerted effort to ignore the many hateful faces, he turned to face the wall, and exhausted, he fell into a restless sleep.

The next morning, the hunter awoke - he turned, blinking in unexpected sunlight. Looking up, he discovered that the cabin had no portraits. 

Only windows.

Image courtesy of Mark Coatsworth.