For years, rumors had swirled about the old mansion on the hilltop:
“It’s haunted.”
“No one ever comes out alive.”
Jessica ascended the stairs to her luxurious master suite. Yes, her dream home had been a real bargain. A steal, almost.
And she never trusted a rumor… Especially her own.
I wake to familiar tapping on my fingers.
I live with my family of five and seven others. Among the seven are a young girl and a grumpy old man. He says he belongs. She looks for her mum.
No cupboards flapping; it’s not your cliché haunting. This isn’t Hollywood.
Michelle is a freelance writer who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is a regular contributor to the Briar Crier Magazine and has had her work featured recently in the Voice of the Farmer newspaper and the Focus 50+ newspaper. In April 2016 she was shortlisted as a finalist at the Ontario Writers Conference Story Starters Contest.
Jaden was unimpressed. The occult museum wasn’t even scary as Gramma’s basement. He rolled his eyes at a doll slumped in a cage.
Hannah kept still. She’d waited a long time. She’d prefer a girl, but the boy would do.
Hannah blinked her doll eyes. The little boy was hers.
Ah, there’s a car door. I hope it’s the realtor.
Come show this place, please. Sell it.
Get rid of it for me, finally.
The story of this house, of everything in it, has to end.
But how do you sell a house that so badly wants to be haunted?
Larry D. Thacker writes and paints in the mountains of Appalachia.
Floorboards groan, but there are no feet on them to make that sound. A crash from a window pane, but only cobwebs catch the breeze.
“Dawn, where is dawn? I’m so sorry I came. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe…”
The door knob turns. Click, it’s open. Creak.
I scream.
The bathroom lights flickered out, my phone casting a dim glow.
“Come out! That place is haunted!”
“Oh? Well, bathroom selfie!”
I turned on the front camera and pressed the button, a flash illuminating the room before I glanced down at the picture.
An arm was wrapped around my shoulders.
The neighbors had loud arguments at all hours.
I tried everything: I beat on the walls, left increasingly hostile notes, got up at night and screamed through the walls as revenge. Nothing worked.
Finally, I called the landlord.
He told me the unit next door had been vacant for months.