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The wierd thing from that is now that I'm older I like looking at skulls.

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Now, Bentonsport is an old riverboat town. OLD. It has a big ol house that is now a bed and breakfast, which everyone says is haunted. (It's got a whole chapter about it in the book "Haunted Hotels.") There is supposed to be an old lady ghost there, who was the original owner, who haunts the place. EVERYONE who works at the bed n' breakfast says they've experienced her, from shadows passing in your peripheral vision to a rocking chair moving in front of a window and then rocking, like someone is sitting there looking out. Some have seen her.

Anyway, it was dark when I was there; I first walked across the river bridge (built 1882) that crosses the Des Moines river (which was eerie in itself. Weird feelings, the hairs raising up on the back of your neck, all that.) Coming back I watched the hotel as the current owner went from room to room turning out the lights for the night. One room upstairs was lit (presumably occupied) and one downstairs.

Anyway, I walked the "main drag" (tiny) looking at all the other old weird things (the remaining foundation of an old flour mill, creeeeepy), then returned to the by now darkened hotel. The front door has two long rectangular windows in it, and one long rectangular window on each side.

The hotel was dark. I was looking at the front door... and saw an image which looked human passing by only one of the windows. Clear as a bell.

I tell ya, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck on that one! I know it was the old lady who used to own the place, the one everyone now says haunts the place.

Brrrr...!

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I know the feeling: I live in the country and we have packs of feral dogs and coyotes here, too. I hear 'em howling and carrying on nearly every night... every day I do a nose count of my cats!

They're "nasty," that's for sure, and just why you said: because they're not afraid of people. (There's a town in eastern Iowa having such a problem with feral dogs that the sheriff's dept. has basically said, "just shoot 'em, and we'll look the other way..." Stupid law about shooting a dog, feral or not; it has to be a special case, and then distinguishing the difference between feral and nonferal and so on, blah blah blah... heh, like the Sheriff said, "Just shoot 'em. We didn't see nuthin'!")

All I can say is that if you are ever confronted by these guys, stand your ground and stare 'em straight in the eye. In dog language you're telling them that you're the boss. You have to take a passive aggressive stance or they'll be all over you. If you show your teeth, you're threatening them back.

And if they attack, try to get to the leader and get him down on the ground and lay across him. That's saying that you've won.

Of course this is going to be nearly impossible to do if you're already terrified yourself, but it might keep you from getting sliced n' diced!

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I know my dog is frightened of fireworks so maybe keep some black cat fire crackers.

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As soon as we showed up, they started giving us growls and that "you'er dead" sorta look you see in movies and such. Of course, being the wee inexperienced lad I was, I was about to high-tail it as fast as I could. Of course, my godmother being a wee bit wiser (duh) just told me to shut up and stand still.

It turned out that the dogs had killed 11 cats and maimed 6. Moral of the story? There is none. Scary as hell when in person? Oh yeah!

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