Dinner, conversation and ghost stories

Posted by: fracas on December 26 @ 2:29 pm

Yesterday evening turned out to be excellent in the company of Reinout’s best friend MJ. He arrived pretty late, which was expected, and we sat down for dinner at 8.30 pm. Dinner consisted of leftovers from Christmas eve, but they tasted even better. Then it was time for another round of Christmas gift exchange. I got a Philip’s Wake-up light alarm clock. It was a completely unexpected gift, and I’m curious what the results will be. Perhaps it will improve our morning mood which can be rather unpredictable at best. Reinout got his Third Man article framed, which appears to have quite some significance to him. Victoria got about 800 Nintendo DS games. That should last her for the coming years.

We were suppose to watch a film but our conversations couldn’t be stopped. For some reason we got into ghosts stories and I told the story about the events surrounding the curious case of Madame Lalaurie. It’s in fact a gruesome case, that took place in New Orleans in the early 1800’s. I won’t go into great detail, but Madame Lalaurie has gone down in history as the city’s earliest as well as worst serial killer, torturing, mutilating and killing her slaves in rapid succession. The house still stands, a beautiful creol building in the centre of New Orleans and is said to be one of Americas most haunted hauses. It’s an interesting case and if you like me are interested in either serial murderers, ghost stories or both, it’s well worth a read.

At 1 am I said my good-nights, and let the boys continue their poker. But I couldn’t sleep. Eventually an hour and a half later I turned off the light. I think I just had managed to fall into a slumber when Reinout came upstairs. It was evident he was intoxicated on whiskey but he was in a good mood. He was very chatty and after 5 minutes of nonsense conversation I was wide awake. Reinout shoved me over on the other side of the bed and then he was out. I wasn’t. There I was lying awake on the wrong side of the bed. I must have fallen asleep around 5 or so because it felt like hours. At 1 pm I woke up. Reinout was stirring too. 2 minutes later the house hold was awake. Lola and Buddy were banging on the doors. Reinout got up to open it but before this he took the obligatory look in the mirror.

- Holy crap I think I have my antenna out, he proclaimed. I haven’t hear that one before, but realised moments later it was not one of his obscene remarks as he is talking about his hair that was protruding in every direction. Antennas or not, he looked very funny.