My Haunted Tale

As an expert in the occult, many people ask me how I became interested in such an obscure subject. Some may think that my anthropological studies and folklore research lead to it. I suppose it really began in my younger life when my father went insane. I never knew the possible reasons for it until later much later on. My folklore research uncovered that the ashes of witches were often scattered in streams, if they were not burned, to prevent the return of their ghosts. Perhaps this might have something to do with my father’s breakdown and my obsession with the occult when I was a child.

We had moved from the west coast because of my father’s new job. My parents said that I would meet new friends and have a wonderful time in our new town. We lived in the older section, where the streets had trees with large trunks and heavy branches that darkened the ground below.

The neighborhood was what I would call “the newly wed and nearly dead” type. It had very few people my age who lived around. I spent the first few days walking the cracked sidewalks alone with my thoughts.

The house seemed to me to have been built a hundred years ago. Three stories, long narrow hallways and tiny bathrooms all furnished with radiators that no longer worked. The stairs creaked with an arthritic agony ever time I went to bed upstairs. I laid awake at night listening for any intrusions the stairway had to complain about. Sleep overtook me when the sounds yielded nothing more than settling decay and bad dreams.

I grew more accustomed to the house as time passed. Venturing into the attic, I found loose boards, cobwebs, and windows with smoky glass panes. Below the house, the basement was empty except for a few rusty old tools with spiders guarding their soft bulbous egg sacs. Through a window over the garage, I could walk onto the roof and survey the landscape of the adjoining overgrown backyards.

With my parents out one day, I investigated the closets. It was in the spare bedroom closet on the third floor that I noticed something a little peculiar. A tiny sliver of light outlined the bottom of the rear panel. I kneeled down, pushed my mother’s shoeboxes out of the way, and set my head against the floorboard. Yes! There was a space behind the wall that was lit from the outside.