haunted mansions

Last night for Halloween a few of us decided that we shouldn't just sit in our apartments, but get out and do something. We set upon meeting up for coffee and shisha (also known as hookah for my American readers). However, Yazan, our Jordanian friend who happened to be driving, had another idea in mind. Soon enough, the other four of us in the car realized we were not heading towards a cafe but rather outside of the city. Yazan then informed us that we were heading to a haunted mansion that lies on the outskirts of Amman.

The story behind said mansion: years ago, Jordan would house their "crazies" in this mansion, an insane asylum. However, one of the crazy people began killing off the other crazy people, and eventually ended up killing everyone. Now it is closed off because it is haunted with all the ghosts of the crazy people, and no one wants to live there or go anywhere near it. Apparently, the occasional drug dealer will house up there and use the mansion as a crack den, so if you go you need to be careful of these drug dealers and the potential for being shot at. Lovely. Where are we going again?

At first Yazan was being rather coy saying he didn't want to go up the driveway, it's too dangerous, scary, etc. However as we were backing up the car to leave he hit this huge rock, and couldn't move the car. Not sure if this was intentional or not at this point. So he had the three other boys with us get out of the car to move the rock. As soon as they got out of the car and moved the rock, he took off up the driveway with just me in tow towards the gothic, haunted mansion. Needless to say, the mansion was quite creepy and definitely looked abandoned. But I'm not sure how scared I was compared to the three boys standing out in the middle of nowhere in Jordan at the bottom of the hill of a haunted mansion. In the car, Yazan and I promptly turned off our cells so they couldn't call us. Good times. It definitely made for a fun Halloween night, better than expected.

Text I recieved while the boys were at the bottom of the hill: You mind calling us? This isn't too funny lol

Once we picked up the boys and they got over their hissyfits of being abandoned in the middle of bufu Jordan, we drove over to the top of the hill where this lookout is. We just stood there and looked over all of Amman, and could even see over to Palestine. It was absolutely gorgeous. Definitely one of those "woah, am I really in Jordan looking over the whole city and onward to Palestine on just another Sunday night?" moments. Couldn't have asked for anything better; I attempted to get a picture but they didn't come out and I'm sure a picture wouldn't have done this view anywhere near justice.