Boyle McCauley News

Since 1979 • April-May 2024 • Circulation 5000

Donate

Laughter is Contagious

When I was younger, every August the five of us would go to our grandparents’ house to enjoy the scenery there.

One time we came in the house, unpacked, and prepared dinner. A thunderstorm stated to roar. The lights went out. We all were scrambling around, looking for a candle. Just as the candle was lit, my younger sister whispered in my ear, “Someone is in the living room.” I looked up and dropped my candle. The darkness engulfed us again.

I could hear our heartbeats even though the thunder was roaring. The sky lights were flashing. Silence surrounded the five of us. Suddenly, we saw the lights coming towards us. We screamed very loud. My other sister bumped into a cassette deck on the floor and the music went on. We stopped screaming for a while. I lit up some candles and we burst out laughing. There were no strangers in the living room. We created our fear of ghosts from listening to ghost stories.

We went to the living room with some fruit and the battery powered cassette deck. We ate and talked and listened to the old music.

My youngest sister suggested that we should record our voices instead of listening to music. We sang loudly and some of us were out of tune. We laughed when we listened back to it. We burst out laughing so hard, that we were in tears.

My other sister suggested that we record ourselves laughing as long as we could. We all participated. This time we could not stop laughing and we played it over and over until we were out of breath. We then had a very good sleep until the sunrise next morning.

We had created fear and revealed a method to overcome fear with laughing. We kept the tape and have played it many times. Laughter really is contagious.

Subscribe to our newsletter

News from the neighbourhood delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up and stay in touch!