Scary Stuff

Just Your Typical Haunted House.... Horror/Mystery

        So in my new neighborhood there's this house that everyone says is haunted. I never really believed them- I mean, come on, I'm not 8 years old anymore- but the day before Halloween, I found out that the guys here have an "initiation" ceremony for new kids. They dared me to spend Halloween night in the old Evans manor. Of course I said yes. I figured they'd sneak up on me in the middle of the night and try to scare me.
        I wasn't worried. Back home, we'd have scare parties on Halloween night. The whole grade would camp out in the graveyard down the street from my friend Matt's house and try to scare each other. It was always super fun, and the last time I'd actually been scared on Halloween was when I was 6 and Alex managed to convince me that Matt had fallen out of the big oak at the gate and died.
        So, yeah, not worried.
        Anyway, the ringleader of our grade is Erik (he's the one who actually told me about the old manor in the first place). He said all I had to do was show up- he gave me directions- at 7:30 sharp with a sleeping bag and flashlight, go inside, and come out alive in the morning.   
        "Alive?" I laughed. "Really? Like I'm gonna come out dead? You can quit trying to spook me, man, its not gonna work" Then I thought for a minute. I decided to tease him a bit. "Has anyone ever come out dead?" I asked, trying my best to sound like I was trying NOT to sound worried.
        Erik shrugged. "You never know. Sometimes they show up dead on the porch in the morning. Sometimes they don't show up at all. For the most part they live, but, like I said,  you never know. We had a guy call from Minnesota three years after the police quit investigating."
        "So he ran away. So what?"
        "Zeke, he was the same age as when he disappeared- six years before."
        I was taken aback for a minute, but then I recovered. "Whatever, man. You're just trying to scare me. I told you, it won't work."
        Erik gave me a pitying look. "It's almost always the ones in denial."
        Whatever that meant.


        Halloween night, I met the other guys in front of the old Evans manor. It was a big Victorian, and I guess in its earlier days it must've been really beautiful. You could just barely tell that the paint was- or had once been- blue. It had lots of big windows, a covered porch, and what used to be a huge, probably gorgeous, garden. Now, it was overgrown with weeds and vines, and the trees looked less like trees and more like giant mutant octopi with too many tentacles flopped all over the place. The metal rails beside the front walkway that led to the door were rusted to the point of disintegration.
        When I got there, everyone else had already arrived. They were standing in a half circle around the front gate. Erik had told me that the tradition was, no one told me anything about the house- besides its hauntedness- until Halloween, when they would tell me everything just before I walked in. I guess so that I would have the terror fresh in my mind or something.
        I walked to stand in front of the gate that would obviously no longer keep anything out, and the guys gathered around me. Alan, our designated ghost-storyteller, began the tale. Despite its obvious fakeness, I have to admit it was chilling.
        "200 years ago, the Evans family lived in this house. Their lives were perfect. They had only one child, Maria Katie, and she was smart, beautiful, valedictorian of her class. They had money, servants, everything. Then, the night before Halloween, a neighbor alerted the police to a disturbance- long, horrible screams coming from inside the house.
        "The police arrived and battered down the door- it wouldn't open, but they could hear the screams, too. They followed the screams into the kitchen, where Mrs. Evans knelt on the floor, screeching at the top of her voice. Her husband and daughter lay on the ground in front of her, their mangled bodies giving off the horrid stench of death. All three of them were surrounded by a large pool of blood, and Mrs. Evans was covered in it. In her hands she clutched a carving knife, and she was repeatedly stabbing her husband in the back with it.
        "When the police finally managed to calm her down, they arrested her for murder and took her to the station to give a statement. She said she had been upstairs in her room. Mr. Evans had promised her a surprise for her birthday and told her to wait there. She was just beginning to wonder if she should go and check on him when she heard a crash, a scream, and a thud. She raced downstairs to the kitchen to find her daughter on the floor dead, arms cut off and with three knives in her chest.
        "Her husband stood over their daughter, hands covered in blood. Then he turned on his wife, a murderous gleam in his eye. She grabbed a carving knife off the counter and stabbed him first, before he could get to the scissors he'd been reaching for. She'd been so upset that she just kept stabbing him even after she knew he was dead. She hadn't realized she'd been screaming.
        "The case would've gone to court, but Mrs. Evans told them she deserved jail. She'd killed her own husband, after all, even if it had been in self-defense. The next morning, she was found dead in her cell. The examiners were stumped. She'd had access to no weapons or poisons, there was no blood, no bruises, and her body was still warm. And it got worse. When the autopsy was performed, it seemed at first as though her heart had simply stopped, not given out, not a heart attack, but had simply stopped beating. Upon further investigation, however, her heart was found to be completely missing. There was no incision, nothing to indicate that it had been removed, but it was clearly not there.
        "Mr. Evans was determined to be criminally insane, homicidal, and Mrs. Evans has remained the "Unsolved Case". Now, the manor is haunted by the murderous ghost of Mr. Evans."