Karla's Kolumn:

We have a lot of fun in our office with practical jokes and employees trying to scare other employees but the best tricks are ones that happen without you trying.

Case in point one of our coworkers came into the office earlier this week. The first to enter for the day, the place was dark and the light switch is not immediately located inside the door. As the coworker turned to go down the hall he saw something sitting in the hallway, some "critter" with a very short tail.

The coworker backed out of the office, retrieved a flashlight and returned to the office to confront this dangerous critter. The flashlight moved to the critter. The coworker expecting maybe to see one of the many feral cats that are seen around the area instead was confronted with a deflated purple balloon with some tape on the tied up end.

Now we have been giving this coworker a hard time since they volunteered to tell the story.

But truth be told we have all let our imagination run wild in the dark.

I was scared as a young child in our home in Hamilton Dome by my father's suit that my mother hung on the back of the door. I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom. I came out to head back to the bedroom and saw this person standing at the end of the hallway. I didn't say a word just ran back to bed and under the covers. The next morning I discovered the man was just a suit.

Years later I tried to do something nice for my best friend's birthday. She was a huge fan of Jack Skellington from "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Her birthday falls the day before Halloween so I purchased one of those huge balloons with the "arms and legs" and I got into her house. I put it toward the back so it would not scare her. I was intending to provide a pleasant surprise.

I forgot two things. It's dark early in October and I placed the balloon right next to the furnace. So my friend came home in the dark and the furnace had blown the balloon closer to the door and was blowing the arms and legs around when she entered. After calming down, she did appreciate my thoughtfulness.

But, one of my best stories, and I initially wrote about this when I was working for the Lovell Chronicle, was my experience with cowbears. They are real, they are scary and they live in the mountains.

This was when I was single and I went camping with my neighbor and her two children. Her husband was joining us later in the weekend but that particular night he was not in camp.

We had just enjoyed our dinner and were sitting by the campfire. My beloved dog Jake was lying next to me when all of the sudden he began to growl. That low, guttural growl that lets you know something is out there, that something is not right.

We had the radio on listening to music so we immediately turned it off and listened. Only silence. Jake still heard something. He was standing, growling.

OK, what do we do?

Well dagnabit.I thought to myself I have to find out what's out there. I'm not sure if it was brave or stupid, but I'm leaning toward the latter. Anyway, I announced I was going to wander out in the field to see if I could hear or see anything. We were all wondering if it was a bear, deer, mountain lion?

My friend and her children backed me up, literally, several feet behind me. My dog Jake was right there with me. (Better than young Shadow who waits for me at the end of the driveway when I go out to turn the water off.)

You ever notice a flashlight in the pitch black really does not light up much. But there I was waving it, listening and then finally in the distance I hear a "moooo" and then another "mooo." And we all started laughing and that is how the legend of the cowbears got started.

We all love to be scared and we all love to laugh and there's nothing better than stories or experiences that can combine the two.