A Short Halloween Ghost Story

[Diamond Cross]

The Haunted House had become an annual even in the small town of Adelaide. It was held in the biggest building in town that was called the Mercantile, and it was established in 1879, at least, according to the art that was painted on its side. It was a three story structure and big as three large barns.

Jacob Higgs was its owner. It was his idea to have the Haunted House part every year on Halloween. To whet the appetite he'd spread rumors that there was supernatural things going on. Strange bumps in the middle of the night. A gentle pull of somebody's hair. A book or two falling off the shelves.

He'd garnered help from the local community college in five college students. Piers, Anna, Lewis, Charles and Lee. They set up the different rooms with the usual mparty flavors in different rooms. There was the spider room, in which they had made a big seven foot tall spider on a web with cobwebs and smaller spiders everywhere. Lee was dressed up in a cocoon and cried out for help.

There was a gypsy room with Anna dressed up as the old gypsy giving out fortunes. A room of dead bodies. A room for torture, of course. One thing they'd discussed was having a room full of curtains with spooky music and just having someone in dark robes jump out and go BOO! really loud to scare them. This was done the first two years but was not done because a leaky pipe had flooded the room. Anna missed out on that discussion though.

And of course, let's not forget the entrance which was full of snacks of every kind. Cakes, gumballs, sweet tarts, gummy worms, candy spiders and body parts. The works you could say.

So when the time came, Piers had dressed up as the torturer. He prerended to whip Anna and fake blood dripped down her back. The big kids giggled their way through this room, and a few of the toddlers cried because they didn't know it wasn't real. Their parents had to explain it was all pretend.

Charles and Lewis pretended to be Zombies in the room with the dead bodies. They weren't theater students but they were able to get good instructions on effective make-up techniques off of the internet by doing a search for makie special effects. Anna had decided to take a break to get something to drink.

She took a wrong turn and ended up in a room that was draped in dark curtains. Spooky music was being played and squirmy things were moving all abut the floor, scrambling to get away from being stepped on.

Something creaked behind her. She stopped. Yes, the boards were creaking like somebody was trying, and badly. They did this every year and she knew what to expect. Maybe, just maybe she could turn the tables on whoever it was trying to sneak up behind her.

Turning around quickily, she could see that nobody was there. Now that was funny. Funny funny funny. Really funny. Not.

She turned back around and a hooded figure appeared in the blink of an eye and said BOO to her. She was startled so much she fell on her butt.
She cussed out the fiigure as it withdrew back into the curtains.

She finally found her way out and went downstairs and got herself a soda.
Somebody was going to hear about this when this night was through. Hwer heart was beating so hard it felt as though it would burst through her ribs.

The next day was the bad part about having the annual AHunted House event: the clean up. There was a hug mess to clean up, from wheren people spilled food or drink, or left treash, or there was uneaten food. After the clean up though, JAcob would take them out for pizza the next weekend. She decided to take those curtains down but when she went to the room it had already been cleaned out save for the water damage the flood had caused.

So at the pizza party, she asked about who took down those curtains.
They looked at her, not know what she was talking about at first.

"What curtains?" Lee asked.

"The curtains we put up every Halloween in the scary room. You know, where somebody jumps out and goes BOO!" She said.

There was A moment of silent confusion.

"You missed one of our meetings," Jacob clued her in, "Where we decided not to put in a scary room because of the leak that had caused water damage. Nobody put up anything in that room."

"Then what was it I saw?"



End.

[Stylerod]

I'm speechless....

[KatKanPlay]

I hate those kind of endings!