Why Ditch ‘Witch’? He’s Far Too Scared, and Not Afraid to Say It

A careful examination of all the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by movie viewers of “The Blair Witch Project” will reveal that not a penny of it came from your pal Denis.

Nor will one ever.

I don’t do “The Blair Witch Project.” I don’t do “The Sixth Sense.” Nor will I do any of the upcoming horror films extending the summer’s silver scream. I don’t do scary movies, thank you.

Maybe you have the idea that I avoid scary movies because I am some sort of wimp, easily terrified or given to nightmares. You’re exactly right. And I am not about to pay for the privilege of making it any worse.

The last scary movie I knowingly went to was “The Phantom of the Opera,” which had nothing to do with the musical but which was, instead, the ancient black-and-white Lon Chaney version. I was about 6 years old, and I was so scared that I ran out of the movie theater, in deep terror at every shadow and sidewalk stranger, crying all the way to my grandmother’s house, where I was taken up into a huge, warm, protecting embrace that made all the monster-man’s fright vanish. That was enough of a scare for this lifetime.

I don’t like bugs but can sit through a bug movie without having a heart attack because I am pretty sure that there are actually no gigantic insects likely to eat me for dinner. I am afraid of roller coasters and tall women but have never run into a movie about them that wrecked my day. Alien creatures in space are sort of sickening, but I am quite sure that I am not going to outer space, so those movies leave me yawning. If they made a movie about jellyfish, I could probably survive it even though I really, really do not like jellyfish; I figure I could probably outrun one.

But movies about blood-dripping madmen leaping out of closets and lurking around in the shadows give me the willies. Why do these guys always lurk? Don’t they ever have jobs to go to? If they were sitting in a chair or playing billiards or doing the jitterbug, they’d fit in more and wouldn’t have to be so evil all the time.

Instead, they lurk.

Minus me.

It may be all the rage to see movies about a man in a hockey mask with iron fingernails who slashes to ribbons screechy teenagers who likely deserve exactly that, but I will skip them. I will stay home and do my hair instead of taking in a movie about a malevolent doll that comes to life and kills everyone around it. The homicidal creep may not know what I did last summer: It’s easy, I did not see any of his movies.

Sure, getting the heebie-jeebies is as old as the hills. At Camp Osamaquin, I don’t think I got a minute’s sleep, lying pop-eyed for the entire summer just knowing that the Hairy Man was just outside or that the snapping sound in the nearby woods was the drooling Wolf Boy, who feasted on campers at Camp Osamaquin, legend had it. Oh, my.

People love to be thrilled and to be made afraid, the learned scholars tell us. It juices their lives. Puts them in touch with their basic feelings. Good for them. There are also people who like to hit themselves on the head with ball-peen hammers, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pay money to watch them do it.

I’ll skip the scary.

“The Blair Witch Project” may be attracting millions of oddballs who don’t find their own lives frightening enough, in a political year yet, but here’s one who’s staying home.

Where it’s safe.

Mostly.