October 30, 2007, two guys, three girls, and one destination. They were on their way to a Halloween party in Cherokee all dressed in their costumes. They were at the party for several hours and decided it was time to leave and do something else.

After piling into the jeep they begin winding their way back towards where they live and decide to go to a haunted mine shaft. The mine shaft was full of chainsaws, broken elevators and wrong turns. Out of breath, and their adrenaline pumping they decided to get back in the car and check out a haunted trail. They drove for thirty minutes until they reached the trail. Stepping out of the jeep they see an old house with two cars parked outside. There aren’t many lights and it’s obviously dark outside. The girls are already scared and don’t even want to do the haunted trail but it’s too late to back out now. They walk up to the house and out comes an old man with a beard. “How are yall ladies doing tonight?” His voice was awkwardly cheery. He smiled and the shine off of his yellow teeth made Jeff clench. “They are fine… is this the haunted trail?” “Oh yes just keep following this road and it begins in bout half a mile.”

As they walked Sarah asked Jeff if they could go back and Jeff teased her calling her a wimp. Emily latched on to her older brother Mike in hopes that his big football player stature would scare any monsters away.

“CRACK” “What the hell was that?” screamed Jeff. Sarah dropped to the ground lifeless. Emily screamed. Jeff picked up Sarah “We have to get back to the car.”  As they were running back to the car like a bunch of pansies Tomas said “ yall com’on be real that was a sound of the show in the haunted trail.” So when Sarah ass woke up they began to make fun of her, but the boys still wanted to go through the trail.  The boys sat and begged Sarah to go for twenty minutes and she still wouldn’t come through the trail so. They decided to go without her. Emily was going to stay at the car with her while the boys went through but she said that she was alright.  So while Sarah sat at the car Emily and the boy went without her.

They were twenty feet into the mine shaft when Tomas pulled Emily aside into the shadows and began unbuttoning her shirt, mumbling “hey babies” and “doncha wannas.”

“What the?” Emily exclaimed. “Dammit, Tomas. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? Once you start to do that, we’ll start dying off.”

As if cued, Jeff walked into the shadows. The handle of an axe pointed downward at a forty-five degree angle from his back.

“Thanks a lot, Casanova. Now I’m friggin’ dead,” Jeff said, then collapsed into a puddle of his own blood.

“Oh my – did he – oh fu – oh sh – he’s dead!” exclaimed Tomas.

“Turd nuggets,” said Emily. “Now we’ve got to fight the armies of the undead to get out of this place.”

"Ahhh! Cried a man from the darkness. "What the hell are you doing in my mineshaft? Your startling my zombies." "What are you talking about?" Jeff asked. "These are my pet zombies and you  need to leave them alone. Leave now!" so they left with one less.

So far every weekend, since I've been in college, I've went home. But not this weekend. It was the first of many that I decided to stay. 

It started out weird because I wasn't too sure what to do. It was like I had a routine of finishing classes and hitting the road and now everything felt different. Some of us kind of just hung out around the dorm for a while relaxing from the week. 

There really wasn't much to do so when Saturday came we were all excited and couldn't wait to get ready and head out. This Saturday we were all going to dress up as something we weren't and go out in public . 

Once we were ready and all left campus the fun began. People would stare and occasionally whisper to the person they were with. The reactions were so different from the different people you passed that you didn't know what to expect.

It was so much fun but at the same time it went right along with how judgemental people are. You're told not to judge a book by its cover but everyone does it anyway. People were judging us on the clothes we were wearing. Not one of the people we passed, dressed as we were, knew us personally so they made assumptions as to who we were by the way we were dressed. The day was fun and I would do it again anyday, but it did teach me a lot about how you portrait yourself in public and the different ways people see you.

    One week, seven days, a lot can happen in that amount of time and it most definitely has. I've went from being totally depressed about leaving everything I knew in Lincolnton and starting completely new in Cullowhee. To loving being here with the new friends that I’ve made and the freedom that I now have. I did come to know and like a lot of people here at Western, but still home was where I belonged and where everything was that meant anything at all to me…or so I thought. 

    Friday I went to class, did laundry, and packed up as much stuff as I could for the weekend. And as I was riding the Cat-Tran to my car, with the girl across the hall in my dorm that I’ve gotten close with, I was a little reluctant to go. I would miss the people here that I had gotten to know but I wanted to see my family and the friends I had back home at the same time. So I drove the two and half hours home to Lincoln county, put my unfinished laundry and bags in the house [which at the moment was empty, as my parents saw fit to fly to the other side of the country to Las Vegas my first week of college.] and headed towards town to visit my friend while she was at work. 

    The entire weekend I talked with and visited with all three of my best friends and my family. While I had missed them terribly I caught myself occasionally wondering what the girls back at Western were doing. I received a text message from one of those girls informing me of what had happened that day and I longed to be there with them, included in whatever it was they were doing. 

    So while I enjoyed every minute of being back home I realized that maybe it’s not where everything that means anything at all to me is. It’s like I now have two different homes and belong in both places. And whether it be Lincoln county or Cullowhee you'll find people who mean something to me in both.