Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 822, Having a Frightening Experience.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 822.
I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Go to our website at eslpod.com to get the learning guide for this episode.
If you need to improve your English as fast as possible, well, the learning guide is what you need.
This episode is a dialogue between Oliver and Elena about being scared or having a frightening experience.
Let's get started.
I had the most hair-raising experience of my life this past weekend.
What happened?
You know that George bought an old house, right?
Well, he's been telling us that it's haunted.
So for a lark, a few of us decided to spend the weekend there to see if we would have any supernatural experiences.
Are you telling me that you saw ghosts?
I'm not sure what we saw, heard, or felt.
Everything was fine when we got there, but then we started hearing strange noises and I started to get goosebumps.
What did George say about the noises?
He laughed. when he saw us jump out of our skins and told us we were wusses.
He said he heard those noises every night and they didn't have him quaking in his boots.
Did anything else happen?
Well, when we went to bed, the house got very cold and drafty, like there was something passing by me very closely, but I couldn't see it.
That sent me over the edge.
Has it ever occurred to you that George was playing a prank on you guys?
A prank?
It was no prank.
In the middle of the night when we saw the strange faces in the windows, even George was scared stiff.
By that time, all of us were petrified.
It was no prank.
That house is haunted.
Ooh, a real haunted house.
I'd love to spend the night there, too.
Do you think George would let you stay there again and let me come, too?
You want me to go back to that house?
Forget it.
Wild horses couldn't drag me within 50 miles of that place again.
Oliver begins by saying, I had the most hair raising experience of my life this past weekend.
I had the most hair hyphen raising experience.
Something that is hair-raising is something that is very scary, something that makes you afraid, something that is frightening.
It's so scary, so frightening, that the hair on your arms or on your neck begins to stand up, begins to be affected somehow.
The idea is, when you're very scared, somehow your hairs on your hands or your arms or your neck or your nose well, maybe not your nose they become affected because you're so scared.
Oliver had a hair-raising or scary experience this past weekend, meaning the weekend that just ended.
Elena says, what happened?
Oliver says, you know that George bought a new house, right?
Well, he's been telling us that it's haunted.
When we say something is haunted, we mean that it is being visited by ghosts or spirits of dead people who've been dead for a long time.
That's haunted.
On Halloween, on October 31st, we have haunted houses where children go, and the idea is that the house has ghosts and other spirits in it that try to scare the children.
It's a lot of fun.
Well, George says his house is haunted.
So for a lark, Oliver says, some of us decided to spend the weekend there to see if we would have any supernatural experiences.
The expression for a lark, L-A-R-K, means for a joke to be entertaining or funny.
So Oliver and his friends stayed at this house to see if they would have any supernatural experiences.
Supernatural means not explainable by science, something that seems impossible, something that is above nature, above the way things are supposed to work according to scientific laws.
Elena says, are you telling me that you saw ghosts?
A ghost, G-H-O-S-T, is the spirit of a person who has died.
Usually in the movies or on television, you see this person as being sort of I don't know sort of cloudy, sort of unclear.
That's a ghost.
Oliver says, I'm not sure what we saw, heard, or felt.
Everything was fine when we got there.
But then we started hearing strange noises, and I started to get goosebumps.
So Oliver and his friends go to this house as a joke because their friend George said that it was haunted.
And now when they get there, they actually hear some strange, unusual noises.
Oliver says he started to get goose bumps, G-O-O-S-E-B-U-M-P-S, one word.
Goose bumps are when you're either very cold or very frightened.
You have these little bumps, these little areas of raised skin that you can feel on your arms and on your legs.
That's goosebumps.
Goosebumps could be a negative thing.
It might also be a positive thing.
You might hear someone singing, and it was so good you get goosebumps.
It's like your body is somehow affected by it physically.
Goosebumps was also the name of a popular book series for mostly young boys fourth grade, fifth grade boys.
It was very popular in the 90s and perhaps still is.
Oliver says the other guys, the other men, tried to play it off.
But I know they were scared too.
To play it off means to pretend that something is not important.
You're trying to show how brave you are, how calm you are.
And so you're not paying attention to it.
We might also say, perhaps a little more commonly, to laugh it off.
To say, oh, that's nothing.
You make a joke about it.
Well, Oliver says that he thinks the other guys were scared or frightened or afraid, just like him.
Elena says, what did George say about the noises?
Oliver says, George laughed when he saw us jump out of our skins.
The expression means to be very frightened, to be very scared.
Oliver says that George told them that they were wusses.
A wuss W-U-S-S is an informal insult, somewhat vulgar.
That means that you are not brave, that you are very scared, that you don't have any courage.
It's usually something a man would say to another man or perhaps a boy would say to another boy.
Oh, you're a wuss.
You're not brave.
You're not strong.
That's the idea.
Another word would be a coward, C-O-W-A-R-D.
That's probably a more polite and common word.
Well, not polite.
If you're insulting someone, you're not trying to be polite.
But it's a little more acceptable in conversational English to say someone is a coward.
And that's the word you would find in the newspaper or in a book that talked about this same idea.
Oliver continues by saying that George said he heard those noises every night and they didn't have him quaking in his boots.
To quake, Q-U-A-K-E, means to shake.
To quake in your boots means to be very frightened, to be very scared.
Your boots are like big shoes that you have to cover your feet.
Well, to quake in your boots means to be so scared that you're shaking.
That's the idea.
Elena says, did anything else happen?
Oliver replies.
Well, when we went to bed, the house got very cold and drafty, like there was something passing by me very closely, but I couldn't see it.
So when they went to bed, when they went to go to sleep, Oliver says that the house got very cold and drafty D-R-A-F-T-Y.
Drafty means there's a lot of air moving through the building, a lot of cold air, almost as though the walls have holes in them.
Oliver said it was as if something were passing by him, coming very close to him.
He says, that sent me over the edge.
To send someone over the edge, E-D-G-E, means that you become very frightened or perhaps very angry.
It's when you lose control of your emotions, of your thoughts.
Sort of like going crazy.
Elena says, has it ever occurred to you?
Have you thought about this possibility?
Has it ever occurred to you that George was playing a prank on you guys?
Prank P-R-A-N-K is a trick, sometimes called a practical joke, where you do something that is funny, but you are doing it with someone else to make them look foolish or to make them look silly.
Oliver says a prank, it was no prank, meaning no, it was not a joke.
In the middle of the night when we saw the strange faces in the window, even George was scared stiff.
To be scared stiff, S-T-I-F-F, means to be very frightened, to be very scared.
So Oliver says they saw some strange faces in the window late at night and this made them scared stiff, even George.
By that time, all of us were petrified.
To be petrified, P-E-T-R-I-F-I-E-D, here means to be very scared, to be very frightened.
Oliver says it was no prank, he repeats.
That house is haunted.
Elena says, ooh, a real haunted house.
Now, when she says this, she's being sarcastic.
She's making fun of Oliver.
Or perhaps she's just interested in haunted houses.
She says, I'd love to spend the night there, too.
I'd like to go there and sleep there overnight.
Do you think George would let you stay there again and let me come too, meaning I would go with you?
Oliver says, you want me to go back to that house?
Forget it.
Wild horses couldn't drag me within 50 miles of that place again.
Oliver is saying, no, I'm not going back to the house.
He uses an old expression, wild horses couldn't drag me.
The phrase is used to emphasize that something will not happen under any circumstances, something that you absolutely will not do.
Wild horses could not drag me to go see the movie by Adam Sandler.
Wild horses couldn't drag me.
To drag means to pull someone, usually against their will.
They don't want to do something, but you pull them physically, perhaps by the arm, so that they will come with you.
If you had wild horses running very fast dragging you, that would be a lot of force.
That would be very difficult to resist.
So the expression is used to show that even if you did something terrible to me or forced me, I would not do this thing.
In this case, for Oliver, it's going back to George's haunted house.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I had the most hair-raising experience of my life this past weekend.
What happened?
You know that George bought an old house, right?
Well, he's been telling us that it's haunted so, for a lark, a few of us decided to spend the weekend there to see if we would have any supernatural experiences.
Are you telling me that you saw ghosts?
I'm not sure what we saw, heard, or felt.
Everything was fine when we got there, but then we started hearing strange noises and I started to get goosebumps.
The other guys tried to play it off, but I know they were scared too.
What did George say about the noises?
He laughed when he saw us jump out of our skins and told us we were wusses.
He said that he heard those noises every night, and they didn't have him quaking in his boots.
Did anything else happen?
Well, when we went to bed, the house got very cold and drafty, like there was something passing by me very closely, but I couldn't see it.
That sent me over the edge.
Has it ever occurred to you that George was playing a prank on you guys?
A prank?
It was no prank.
In the middle of the night when we saw the strange faces in the windows, even George was scared stiff.
By that time, all of us were petrified.
It was no prank.
That house is haunted.
Ooh, a real haunted house.
I'd love to spend the night there, too.
Do you think George would let you stay there again and let me come, too?
You want me to go back to that house?
Forget it.
Wild horses couldn't drag me within 50 miles of that place again.
There's nothing scary about our wonderful scripts written by our wonderful script writer, Dr Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
