Full moon plus brain equals extremely spooky run

Holy crap that was a spooky run.  

Trust me. I have felt a lot of things while running: euphoria, calmness, excitement, annoyance, anger … but pure, unadulterated, irrational fear was a first. 

It was easy to attain – and, in hindsight, it was brilliant. It was the night of the super blood moon, late in September 2015. The full moon was at its closest to earth – and with a clear sky and cool temperatures, it was an ideal night to go for a post-work midnight run.

Or so I thought. After half a mile running down a quiet street, I darted up a skinny tree-lined trail that went up a hill to a glade. And there is where the noises started. And the shadows moved. And the trees loomed.

Once I got to the glade the moon – still silver, not yet red from the eclipse that was due to occur in the small hours – was directly above me, making the trees silhouetted against the night sky. They looked twice as tall as they did in daylight.

Spooky moon overlooking spooky glade

The trail went downhill into a small dip that was flanked by pines. In daylight, the trail is wide, soft, straight and stunning. This night, it was a recipe for getting freaked out. And I did. To put it bluntly, I shat myself, metaphorically speaking. 

I have never taken any strong hallucinogens – and after this run I vowed to never do so. If a few endorphins were enough to make me see gremlins and snakes, what horrors would my brain conjure when on strong drugs?

You see, as I ran down a trail I'd been on dozens of times before, I saw things. And I found myself nervously glancing to my left and right at every flower or fern that caught the moonlight.

A clutch of dandelions became the eyes of a particularly fierce rodent. A glistening fern frond turned into a fox's head, its mouth dripping with the blood of its last victim. And the moonshadows of the pine trees … they turned into scorch marks from alien spaceships that had just taken off.

Same spooky glade with flash turned on

It didn't help that in this very forest I'd once seen an adder slithering across the trail. A real one, not sticks rendered reptilian 

by my midnight imagination, like the ones I repeatedly jumped from side to side to avoid.

And the spookiness didn't end once I'd escaped the forest. What was a pleasant, wide heathland trail with grassy clumps in daylight became a path dotted with slumbering animals. Big ones.

Dangerous ones, no doubt. Maybe wild ones, with big teeth.

A stick in the path. Not a snake. No, definitely not

Of course my rational brain was telling the lily-livered part of my skull that there is nothing dangerous in these woods (except for the snake) and if I did happen to meet anything, it would probably be more scared of me than I would be of it.

As if that helped my tight chest or urge to sprint the entire run.

I did stop every now and then to take in the silence and look around at the eerie grey that the moon had turned everything into. It was awesome.

But then I noticed a dark area towards the edge of the field … and a bird screeched. Then another did. Or were the screeches actually screams of lost spirits? There was a burial ground nearby after all... I thought it best to carry on running.

I returned via a road and after the irrational fear I had felt while running through the forest had finally dissipated, the road felt dull. Safe. Boring, even. I wanted to scare myself again. In fact as I ran past the path that had led me into the forest, I nearly ran straight back up it for another go.

It was only the thought that it was nearing one in the morning and I needed to be awake less than six hours later that stopped me.

Man, spooked

Looking back (and writing this) I feel a bit silly that I was so spooked by a quiet forest in the middle of the night. I mean who is scared of the dark? 

At no point was I more than about two miles from my front door, so it was a safe bet that unless I tripped over a root or rock and broken my ankle, I'd return unharmed. 

But at the same time I am pleased that my brain was able to freak me out so much and that I was able to conjure a new emotion from a run. I might even go out again next time there is a full moon.

But I will take my anti-monster spray. And alien repellent. And a snake trap. And a clove of garlic. And some rosary beads. Holy water too. Gaiters, no doubt – strong ones, that big-toothed rodents can't pierce. It'll be fun.