Once, years ago, my aunt and uncle's television had some problems and they called a TV repairman in to fix it. My little cousins were in awe of him, and from then on whenever anything unexpected happened with the television, they figured the "TV man" would show up and take care of it.

One night my aunt and uncle went out to dinner and hired a teenage girl to babysit the kids. The babysitter had just gone to see Poltergeist the night before, a horror movie in which evil ghosts come through a TV set to terrorize a little girl. There was a thunderstorm that night, and after a particularly close lightning strike the picture on the television flickered and turned to static. My cousin Brian -- who had an extraordinarily deep voice for a child -- turned to the babysitter and said gravely:

"The TV Man is coming."

My aunt and uncle returned to find every light in the house turned on and the babysitter huddled on the couch in terror as she waited for the angry dead to pour in from every corner.