Carnivals are evil. They come to steal souls and then they sneak away in the dead of night. The shrieking thrill of the midway is there to tempt you and lead you to destruction.

Don’t be fooled, friends. Don’t be deceived by the lights and that maniacal music. Weird, misshapen monsters have invaded our community in the guise of merrymakers. A world of screaming metal and demented sights has moved in just down the road. Take cover. The carnival can lure even the strongest with its insane melodies.

You think I’m nuts, don’t you? You think I’m overreacting. Fool! I’ve been to the dark side. I’ve stood in the neon glow of those heart-stopping rides. I’ve heard the lunatic come-ons of the barkers at their booths. I’ve been lured into the funhouse more than once and it’s a miracle I’m still here to talk about it.

Think about it: Have you ever seen the carnival people rolling into town? Have you seen their trucks at a gas station or truck stop? You have not. Because carnivals don’t really travel, they just appear like freak storms. Carnivals are wicked societies from other dimensions that spring upon us without notice. They’re like mutant flowers rising in a desert.

You wake up one day and wander outside. The scenery has changed since the night before. What was an empty lot is crowded with rusted metal contraptions from a medieval nightmare. Cages, buckets and carts ascend high into the sky. Bright, flashing lights illuminate all manner of unimaginable activity.

The Ferris wheel is always there to announce the arrival of the carnival. The Ferris wheel looks like a huge, demented mouth frozen in a scream. You rub your eyes and wonder if you’re really seeing it. Yesterday, you parked your car in this sleepy lot. Now the landscape is buzzing with the bizarre.

When I was a lad, my brother took me to a carnival in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t old enough to ride the big rides, but I was somehow OK to check out the freak show. I loved it immediately. Tall, gaunt men who could contort themselves into impossible positions. Frightening women with spiders and snakes crawling over them. A fellow who pierced his skin with swords and arrows and smiled wickedly as he did so.

I was most mesmerized by the woman who had been buried alive.

I don’t know if it was authentic or not. She lay in a coffin with a sheet of glass revealing her shrunken, skeletal face. A sign explained that the woman had been buried prematurely and later exhumed. The ugly discovery revealed claw marks on the lid of the casket. The carnival presented, for a small fee, the nightmarish image of a dead woman screaming for all eternity.

It could have been bogus, I guess, but the image stuck with me. I had bad dreams about the buried lady for weeks. I later wrote a bunch of short stories about her and I should probably be in therapy.

But the point is, the carnival is there to tempt you with forbidden thrills. You shell out five bucks for cotton candy without hesitation. You step onto the creaky planks of the funhouse without a care. You walk through their freakish landscapes smiling and laughing – as if the squealing, screaming cacophony is perfectly normal.

That tinny, winding music that fills the night must be what hell’s doorbell sounds like. Carnivals blind and engage us by appealing to our secret tastes for the lurid, the ludicrous and the lascivious.

So, it’s after hours on Wednesday. Just before midnight. I’m on my way home and I’ve just got to stop and watch as the carnival people continue to set up.

The carnival-in-progress is an eerie sight. A circle of motionless horses are trapped in mid-bray. Eight-foot bears stand silent and menacing, waiting for someone to switch on the power so they can begin spinning at dazzling speeds. The lights are flashing everywhere but no music plays. The carnies are sitting around and smoking. They look at me as though I’m the strange attraction here.

I might have fled in horror then, never to return. But my eyes are drawn to a sign. Doughboys, it says. Doughboys and fries. Those are the crinkle-cut type, I think. The kind of fries you can drench in vinegar and salt. My, how I love salty fries soaked in vinegar. With a greasy doughboy in a free hand.

I may have been overreacting. The carnival is not evil at all. That’s just an absurd notion. The carnival is merely a clamorous example of the human enjoyment of all things excessive. Yes. I see that now.

I’m going back. As soon as that freakish music starts to play, I’ll be right in line behind you. Say hello and I’ll pay your way into the freak show. But man, keep your hands off my fries.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He revels in anything bizarre.