Are You Scared of the Dark? Pretty Serious Poltergeist Puddle Review

Getting back to my overall Halloween type theme I've got going this month, I wanted to show you a polish from Pretty Serious's last Halloween collection. They do have a new one out this year, and I do have a review coming up, but I wanted to take a little trip back in time and cast some much deserved light on this older collection that is still available, and still well worth getting your mitts on.

Poltergeist Puddle is a really gorgeous purple, with hints of a slight pink duochrome shimmer. It reminds me of a purple version of Galaxy Invader - a colour that seems relatively plain on the surface, but that actually has a lot of depth and a bit of a foily shimmer to it as well.

These pictures are both two coats under artificial light. As you can see, there isn't a lot of duochrome visible on the nail, but it's still an absolutely stunning purple. (The site says it's blurple, but it looks purple to me)

Because I took these pictures while I was off work for a couple of days, I had the time to do a little bit of nail art over the top - as much as I love the colour, I couldn't resist such a smooth pristine canvas. Because it's named for poltergeists, I did some cute little ghosties.

I took these pictures out in the sun so you could see the different shades this polish shows up as under different light. The ghosts were done with acrylic paint, which was a new experience for me. I've always considered using acrylic paint kind of...well, cheating, but I decided to get over myself and it turns out it is actually WAY easier than using polish. I'll definitely be doing more with acrylics in the future.

Continuing on the theme of ghosts and poltergeists, I thought I would also tell you all a little story about the time I lived in a haunted house. Not a carnival one, a real, honest to goodness haunted house.

You might have assumed from my overall cynical nature that I wouldn't be the sort of person to believe in ghosts, and until I moved into this particular house, I wasn't. I still remain stubbornly skeptical of the whole thing overall, but to this day I simply can't explain the things that happened in that house any other way.

It started when a good friend of mine who often stayed over complained someone was moving the dining room chairs around during the night. Apparently she would go to sleep, get up in the middle of the night, and walk into a chair that was in the middle of the room that hadn't been when she went to sleep. I immediately assumed this was my housemate's idea of a joke - he was exactly the kind of guy who would think freaking my friend out was HILARIOUS. But he swore blind it wasn't him, and one night I saw this phenomenon for myself. I went to bed, and the dining room chairs were tucked neatly under the table. I got up in the middle of the night to get some water, and they're about a meter away from the table, still facing in, like someone has just dragged them backwards. I got angry and pounded on my housemate's bedroom door, intending on telling him to knock it the fuck off before someone broke thier leg tripping over the damm things.

Only, he wasn't home.

Maybe he'd done it and then headed out for...whatever, I told myself. It must be. Maybe they actually hadn't been tucked under the table and I was just remembering it wrong. Whatever. It's nothing, I told myself.

A little while later I started a new job, and suddenly had to start getting up early and spending a bunch of time out of the house, whereas I had previously been kind of bumming around. About a week in to my new job, I woke up with a start to realise I'd overslept horribly and was going to be really late. My alarm hadn't gone off, and when I looked down at my phone to figure out why, I saw the charger had pulled out of the power point. Not just a little bit out though - the phone was sitting in it's charger cradle, and the cradle was sitting about a meter away from the wall, with the cord pulled straight out like someone had grabbed the cradle and yanked it in the night. At this point, I started getting a little freaked out, and when my housemate came home that night I asked again if he was doing these things to mess with me. I explained it really wasn't funny, and if I got fired I wouldn't be able to pay rent etc etc, and he  just shrugged and once again swore it was nothing to do with him. In exasperation, I said, "What, so it's a ghost doing this shit then?" He shrugged again and said remarkably calmly, "That's what I think. I think it's lonely because you're not around anymore. You should talk to it. " I rolled my eyes and declared I would be doing no such thing, and that he should hush up with his nonsense.

Unfortunately, I found my phone pulled out of the wall three more times the following week. The third time I finally broke down and talked to....whatever. I wasn't sure I believed, but I really couldn't afford to have my phone getting fucked up, and it seemed worth a shot.

After that, my phone charger was always exactly where I left it.

Still, at this point, I was telling myself that somehow it MUST be my housemate, or a friend playing pranks. But there was one last instance that convinced me there was something peculiar, if not supernatural, going on.

I was at home by myself on a Saturday night reading in my room (because I've always been a Cool Kid), and I heard heavy clumping footsteps in the hallway going into my housemate's room. My housemate worked on a construction site, so he always wore heavy boots and stomped around like he was walking on his enemies faces, so I had no reason not to assume it was my housemate coming home and going straight to his room. I went back to my book, and was happily reading away when I suddenly heard a huge crash from my housemate's room. I ran in to see if he was okay, to find it empty, and the curtains lying on the floor. The entire curtain rail had somehow come down, and brought the curtains with it, scattering his CD collection in it's wake. I thought about cleaning it up, and then decided it wasn't my problem, and that my housemate probably wouldn't like me touching his stuff, so I went back to my room.

It wasn't until I was back in my room, and had been reading my book for a minute, before it clicked that I'd heard my housemate come in, but not leave again, and his room had been empty. I popped my head back into his room to see if he'd just stepped out for a minute and come back, but it was still empty. However, the curtain rod was back on the rail, and the CD's were all neatly stacked again.

It was at this point I pretty much freaked the fuck out. I called my housemate in hysterical tears demanding he explain himself, only to learn he wasn't just out of the house, he was actually out of the CITY. There was no way the footsteps I heard could have been him. There was no way he could have gotten into the house, knocked the curtains down, scampered out, scampered back in again, put it all back, and then scampered out once more without me seeing him. There was just no way.

I stayed at a friend's house that night, because I was too shaken to stay there by myself. When I came back the next day, I asked...whatever it was to not do that again, and explained how it had scared the shit out of me. I felt completely ridiculous talking to an empty house - I have no idea if it heard me, understood me, or if there even ever was anything to hear me. But I couldn't afford to move out, and I was terrified. So I said my piece, and I never saw anything that outright spooky happen again. My housemate says the poltergeist, ghost, whatever looked after him while he was sick, pulling up his blankets and stroking his hair. He was, however, running an VERY high fever at that point, so I've always regarded that addition to the story as rather...suspect. Still, maybe it did. It would be nice to think so.

What do you think about poltergeists? Are you a staunch skeptic? Are you totally on board? Or are you somewhere in between? Do you have a spooky story? I LOVE other people's spooky stories, so let me get some marshmallows, and then tell me all about it in the comments.