it was a dark and stormy night...

...i know, i know, that's supposed to be the worst, most trite sentence ever written, right? but i wanted to get your attention.

last week, as you know, my sister and her boyfriend were visiting and we made a little journey over to the west coast of denmark since they had a hankering to taste the north sea. i rented a little holiday apartment with a thatched roof in blåvand, which is just a stone's throw from blåvandshuk, the westernmost point of denmark.

it was after dark when we arrived and raining, windy and cold. our intrepid tourists were jetlagging and tired from the long drive and looking at large rune-covered rocks along the way:

the jellingesten - denmark's "birth certificate"

husband and i wanted to shake off the long drive and get some fresh air. outside, it was the kind of wind that drives the cold needles of rain straight into your face and leaves you frozen to the bone. but, being half danish (the other half is swedish, i'm still trying after ten years to determine which half is which), husband declared that there was no bad weather, only bad clothing for the weather, so we put on our wellingtons, coats, hats and gloves and headed out. monica, jason and sabin stayed behind in the warmth of the cozy little apartment. 

we jumped in the car and followed the signs for the beach. it was so dark, you couldn't see much else.

before long, the light from the lighthouse came into view, but otherwise, the night was pitch black, except for the reflection of the flash on a reflective sign. what was coming down was something near slush...an icy mixture of rain and snow.

we got out of the car and gave our eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness, then we headed down the path towards the wild sound of the north sea pounding on the shore. just as my eyes were more or less adjusted and i could make out the path, a specter arose on the right, blocking out the rhythmic and comforting pass of the light from the lighthouse.

i grabbed husband's hand and felt my heart race. it was an enormous, black shape with all sorts of strange spiny projectiles sticking out of it.

i blinked and blinked again, wiping the driving sleet from my eyes, trying to make it out. what was this strange and spooky structure?

all of a sudden, i didn't want to go all the way down to the beach anymore, the sound of the waves was eerily menacing as i stood there in that bizarre shadow which blocked the cheerful, life-giving light of the lighthouse. so, hand-in-hand, husband and i ran back towards the car. i felt the creepy, slow-motion horror movie panic of someone or something in pursuit of us. but there wasn't anything there. just the shadows, the storm and our own wild imaginations.

the next day, we returned in the light of day and learned the strange structure wasn't a specter at all, but just an ugly old grey tower from an old german radar installation:

so different in the light of day. it was also surprising to see that the road down to the lighthouse, which had seemed dark and deserted was dotted with picturesque thatch-roof cottages and while a bit grey and wintery, didn't seem the least bit spooky or desolate.

i definitely learned why hollywood and novelists have used a spooky lighthouse out on a point to create suspense and heighten the spookiness of a dark and stormy night.