Halloween may be over, but I figure it's still the season to be scared out of your gourd, based on the weather, the impending Christmas shopping season and the movieplex.

(Note all the apocalyptic flicks in the theaters, plus I think we're up to "Saw 19" now.)

So I'm going to tell you a scary, scary story. Feel free to go get your blankie.

Ready?

It all started when I was in Sweden last Christmas.

A small posse of us headed to the tiny town of Uleviken, which is on the Swedish side of the border with Norway. We stayed in a farmhouse that was, if memory serves, approximately 200 zillion years old, utterly charming -- and totally haunted.

As the evening progressed, wine stained the teeth of host and guest alike, fueling Knutt's stories of ghosts patting his head as he slept, or dancing in the weensy ballroom upstairs in the wee hours of the morning, or the Danish poltergeist chasers who wanted to see the photo one ghost took of itself. (For real.)

After dinner, I tiptoed up the skinny wooden steps to the darkened ballroom and found not a ghost, but a super creepy little wooden cradle.

Before hurtling back downstairs, I asked the ghosts to please not pet my head; I'm a light sleeper.

When I returned, Knutt was talking about the lady in white who wanders the frozen lake outside at night, searching for her groom whose sleigh had fallen through the ice on his way to their wedding.

But I also might be making that up.

Naturally after all that wine, you gotta go. And because the farmhouse didn't have a traditional toilet, "going" was gonna happen in the outhouse, or what I (and most Norskis) like to call "the Utidu."

I believe it means "outside poo."

That's scary enough if you're a candypants like me, but my buddy, Jeanette, found trying to keep calm in the pitch black with pants twisted around her ankles far scarier.

If you were lucky enough to have a flashlight, there was also the Utidu Picture to worry you.

The picture is this hand-drawn image of a little boy, maybe 4 years old, with an "Eight is Enough" haircut and two big crocodile tears dripping down from his wide blue eyes. He looks terrified and it's hard not to stare at him while fumbling in the dark for the T.P.

Maybe he's afraid of his haircut.

The picture, called "Sirkulus Boy," is a staple of Norski utidu décor and it's haunted. Doesn't matter if it's not the original.

Not scary enough for you?

"Sometimes, the picture is supposed to cry real tears," Jeanette said while I stood guard outside in the dark, looking at the abandoned barn with the crooked doors.

We ran back to the house as fast as we could and steeled our nerves with Aquavit.

The next time I had to go, I told myself, "You either suck it up and go to the utidu, or you hide in the bushes by the house and utidon't."

I utididn't.

To be continued...

Jeanine Fritz's musings on Swedish ghosts and other bathroom-related subjects appear each Friday in the Colorado Daily.