Once in awhile, the girls’ cross country captains decide to drag the entire team on a particularly difficult and far run.

The most painful course is called “Lookout,” a 5-mile run that goes through Downtown Saratoga and up an enormous hill that leads directly through the Montalvo hiking trails.

These types of runs are always accompanied with a series of complaints about the excruciating weather and our mysterious “joint pains,” which only seem to hurt when we actually start running.

But the one motivation for us to actually run, instead of our usual brisk suburban-mom-fast-walk, is the Saratoga Cemetery, also known as the Madronia Cemetery Home, a huge expanse of  endless rows of dusty tombstones.

Even though it is broad daylight, just knowing that there are hundreds of dead bodies buried there mere inches underneath our feet sends chills running down our backs. It sounds cliché, but it feels straight out of a horror movie.

One time, my friend junior Tiffany Huang and I dared each other to peek into the black mailbox nailed by the entrance of the cemetery; we were both curious as to why the deceased needed a mailbox anyway. But we instantly regretted it, because as soon as we opened the mailbox, cobwebs flew at us almost as if in retaliation for disrupting the peace. I slammed the lid shut, which made such a loud crash that it could have almost woken the dead, and we sped past the looming graveyard.

I’m usually a huge horror fan and having watched dozens of horror movies, I feel as if I’m conditioned to not get scared so easily. So how does an inanimate place manage to elicit so many shudders?

It’s not so much that I think one of the decaying bodies under the dirt will stick out its bony arm to grab my ankles and try to pull me into the underworld. It’s the fact that, inevitably, all of us will end up under that very ground with only a slab of rock and an engraved name to serve as the only reminder of your existence in the world.

And the thought that hundreds of years later, a group of cross country girls will run past without giving a second thought about who you were is just simply downright scary.