Lunar Eclipse

Last night, or early this morning depending on your point of view, a lunar eclipse was visible. Here in the US (EST), it started at 1:33 a.m. and ended at 2:41 a.m. While I find something like this fascinating, I’m not much of a scientific person. I was not planning on waking up for this event. However, I was awake at that time anyway. I looked out the window to see if I could anything. With the temperature at around 25 degrees F, I was not about to step outside to look for it. I couldn’t see anything. I heard from most people that it was too cloudy for anything to be seen anyway, so I’m glad I didn’t get all dressed up in my warm clothes to stand outside in the cold for nothing.

The pictures of the event from various places are amazing.

While lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep I kept thinking about a movie I used to watch as a kid – The Watcher in the Woods. I remember that it was a creepy kind of movie.

A brief synopsis: A family comes to rent a house in the country. The house is owned by Mrs. Aylwood (played by Bette Davis) who lives in the cottage on the grounds. She is a creepy character herself, but what’s more creepy is the events that happen and the feeling of the woods in general, like someone is watching the family. The family’s older daughter, Jan, looks a lot like Mrs. Aylwood’s daughter Karen who vanished one night during an eclipse. The family’s younger daughter, Ellie, is plagued by hearing voices, telling her what to do. One scene in the movie Ellie picks out a puppy to take home and a voice tells her to name the dog Nerak, Karen spelled backwards. Jan starts to see visions of a blindfolded young woman trapped in windows and glass. We come to learn that the woman is Karen trapped in another dimension, asking for help to be released from that dimension. It is up to Jan to figure out how she got there and how to save her. Her chance comes during the eclipse that is to take place one night. Will Jan successfully release Karen, or will she send herself to that same dimension?

A few years ago, I borrowed the movie from my library system. It wasn’t as creepy as I remembered it being, but since I’m no longer a kid, that makes sense. It’s still creepy to an extent though. Since I’m not much of a science fiction/fantasy person, I’m surprised by the fact that I liked it as a child, that I watched it at all as a child, though maybe it had more to do with the creepy factor than the actual story line.

All last night I kept remembering various scenes from the movie. If at the age of 32, 30 years after its making, that movie is still locked in my brain somewhere, maybe it had more of an effect on me than I realize.