Basement Dweller

So far, I've been living in our new house in Kingston for two and a half weeks, and I have not yet ventured down into the basement. Why? Well, I'm not normally terribly skittish when it comes to basements, or attics, or other routinely haunted areas of buildings, but honestly our basement resembles the descent into hell itself. It's a dank dark grey tunnel down those stairs, leading to a dirt floor, and I have yet to locate any lightswitch. I took one look down there and announced to my housemates that whensoever someone should need to do ANYTHING in the basement it would not be me.
Well today at 9:30, the meter man knocked on our door and being the only one conscious, I let him in and into the basement where the meter is apparently -- or so he said. I have a tendency in this city to presume that every city worker I see is probably an ex-con who is casing our house, though obviously this cannot ALWAYS be the case -- but in Kingston it definitely could sometimes. Anyway, this guy came tramping through our living room (stepping over two coffee tables and an errant plastic bag, much to my female embarassment) and down into the basement. He too found no light switch and proceeded with a little pocket flashlight. Down down he went, and I heard him falling over Av's various plastic bags which he may or may not have thrown down there from the top of the stairs, and then silence. I stood in the living room waiting awkwardly for him to come back up so I could let him back out, and realized that I was sort of expecting to hear a shout of horror. I mean, that basement, it's not possible that there isn't SOMETHING scary down there. There's gotta be at least a raccoon or possibly the spectre of some long dead hooker whose bones are buried under the dirt floor. Something like that.