Shudders

I wasn't the smartest boy in the household by a longshot.
 I knew of wandering the graveyard that it's best met with an onslaught
 of something called shudders.
 It's when your body trembles and your heart skips, sputters,
 and you mutter counter-evils, and you grip on to your charms.
 I've never comprehended the alarm
 caused by things described variously as scary,
 terrifying, ghastly. Could I follow this? Barely.
 Certainly never felt it. Never shuddered, and my pops
 sent me packing, called me bad luck kid, head full of rocks.
 I talked so loudly of my ignorance as I roamed,
 complained I couldn't get frightened, and might have bemoaned
 that I'd been disowned. A friendly hangman beckoned
 but I partied with his danglers, didn't shudder for a second.
 Then I heard about a castle in the distance that was haunted.
 Nobody lasted there an evening. Could it be just what I wanted? Didn't know.
 Didn't know
 there was anything
 in the world
 to be frightened of.
 I wasn't the first one to show up claiming bravery.
 The rumored ends of my predecessors were unsavory.
 They'd become the catering at a feast of ghouls and spirits!
 Neither the king nor his people would set foot near it.
 This seemed good; fear, it glistened in their eyes as they spoke.
 I figured I could pick the habit up and go
 (maybe all the way back home, having understood shuddering).
 Did the townspeople deem me a simpleton? Utterly.
 What a first night it was, too! The hellbeasts
 were like from a nightmare. I think? I don't get bad dreams.
 I tried to nap but the furniture floated and spun.
 We did some doughnuts in the stable yard! Fun.
 The second night's vigilance wasn't any more fruitful:
 zombies down the chimney till the whole rec room's full.
 All-bone nine-pin, glad I brought my lathe.
 Though I lost some money gambling, my denseness was unscathed.
 Third and final evening, my reanimated corpse
 cuddle-buddy tried to strangle me. Reliable sources
 report that I chucked him back in his coffin and sighed,
 despaired of finding shudders locally and set to stride.
 Didn't I want my reward? The hand of the castle's princess?
 A path to power and riches, and this is its ingress?
 And this is my dimness, I guess, but I choose to keep questing:
 find the next hypothesis of scariness and keep testing.
 But here's that princess requesting that I reconsider.
 And as I spy her she reminds me of my babysitter,
 a village girl I had a crush on as a lad
 who never even noticed that I couldn't make eye contact.
 This one's staring me down.
 She's used to getting her way, been wearing a crown.
 Is she scaring me now, with her "think about it, please?"
 I got this odd involuntary shaking in my knees.