Melanie: What scared you most as a child?

Jeff: When I was four years old, my family lived in the small town of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in the central part of the state. My bedroom was in the upstairs, back corner of the house. The room had maroon shag carpet and dark wood paneling on its walls. On the wall opposite my bed hung a reproduction of an old-style telephone with the horn-like microphone you speak into mounted on the front, the listening device hanging from a string on the side, and two bells mounted above the mouthpiece.

In the summertime, I went to bed before the sun was completely set, so my room was still pretty well lit when I got under the covers. Shortly after dusk, there was just enough light to make everything in my room lose its color -- the Irish call this brief period of day "the gloaming."

As the light faded, I would stare and stare and stare at that phone and watch it turn into a hideous, dark face -- the long mouthpiece was the protruding snout, and the two bells were the eyes of the boxy-headed monster. Each night I went through this fear until I fell asleep. Why I didn't ask my parents to take the damn thing down, I'll never know. I think I didn't want them to think I was a chicken.

Then one night things turned from fear to complete horror. I used to own a Mr. Mouth game -- a motorized head that spins in circles, while opening and closing its mouth randomly. The object is to flip your colored chips into the open mouth from a little spring-loaded hand. The game sat on the top shelf of my closet -- to get to it one needs a chair or an adult. Unbeknownst to me, my sister tried to get the game down that day to play with it. She poked at the box and jumped, trying to knock it to where she could grab it, but she never quite got the game down. She did, however, move it to a teetering position. That night, just as the room went dark and the phone face faded, the Mr. Mouth box decided to slide a foot or two -- just enough to click the motor into the "on" position and start a low "rrrrrooowwwwrrrrr, rrrrrooowwwwrrrrr, rrrrrooowwwwrrrrr" from my closet.

That was my first encounter with a true monster. I screamed. I felt raw fear -- the kind of fear only a demon can evoke. My dad ran in the room to see what the fuss was about. Then he slew the dragon within my closet.

Tamara: Wow! No wonder you like scary tales. That was too terrific, Jeff. I'm saving mine for later!

Melanie: Great story, Jeff. It brought back some scary childhood memories for me too--stuff that still has almost enough power to freak me out even as an adult. A china doll on my dresser that I swore moved around at night, the demonic jack in the box toy I had that would randomly pop out for no apparent reason...umm, if you need me, I'll be hiding under the bed!

Tamara: You actually had a jack-in-the-box in your room? You're brave! I was much too frightened of them to do that. I threw them in the garbage can any time some misguided idiot gave me one. They were so evil they couldn't even be trusted to be left in the bottom of the toy box crammed under thirty pounds of junk. They can still get out.

 Thanks so much for heating up our first threesome, Jeff! Will you come back again when your next book is out?  Because we'd love to have you!

Jeff: The next book is called "Communicating with the Dead: Reach Beyond the Grave" and comes out in June 2005. Thanks for having me as a guest for your first Ménage au Talk -- I didn't even realize you were French! I'd love to come back for more supernatural talk tantalizingly wedged between Tamara and Melanie. Until then, I'll leave you with the words of a great French philosopher: "Voulez-vous cesser de me cracher dessus pendant que vous parlez!"

Tamara & Melanie:  Merci! The only thing French about us is our bises, but we’ll be happy to parlez tu again soon! You’ve been a magnificent brie in our baguette!

 Part One of Menage au Talk, with Jeff Belanger
 Part Two of Menage au Talk, with Jeff Belanger
 Part Four of Menage au Talk, with Jeff Belanger

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