To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.
This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.
And the third being The Graveyard (and there's a second part to that one ... you'll see the link to it at the top of the post).
Enjoy!
And now for your Halloween ghost story ....
In the Haunted story, I talked about a ghost that haunted the sub shop I worked in during college. As John and I discussed the possibility of a ghost running the juke box and occasionally making things fly around, he eventually told me that these things just tended to happen to him. If you're into the paranormal, you might call John a sensitive or a medium. Ghosts just tend to like him.
His first experience with a ghost was at seven.
John went to spend the night at a friend's house. His family lived waaay out in the country at a small gentleman's farm and they had just moved in about a month before. John met Kyle at school and the two fast became inseperable.
The two boys ran around the farm and played for hours and when it was time to come in, they played board games. Including ... well, what Halloween story would be complete without the Ouija board?
At first the boys played with it like most kids play with the Ouija board, making it say things and being silly. Then, for whatever reason, the little plastic piece begins moving on its own. John gave Kyle a look and Kyle snatched his hand off the toy. It was still moving. Half-convinced that John was just messing with him, Kyle began asking questions.
"Who are you?"
The board spelled out J - O - N.
Kyle laughed. "You can't even spell your own name right."
"I didn't do it," John told him.
Kyle laughed and put his hand back on the toy. "Right, John, right." He looked back at the Ouija board. "Where are you?"
R-I-G-H-T H-E-R-E
"No, I mean where do you live?"
H-E-R-E
M-Y B-R-O-T-H-E-R I-S S-C-A-R-E-D
"Why?"
D-A-D
"This is dumb, John, make it say something good."
"I told you, I'm not doing anything."
"I wanna talk to something good and scary."
"I don't wanna play this anymore, Kyle. I don't like it." John took his hand off the plastic toy.
With both boys' hands off the toy, it began flying across the board.
"What's doing that?"
I A-M J-A-M-E-S
Y-O-U A-R-E B-A-D
"Kyle? Make it stop. How are you doing that?"
Y-O-U-V-E G-O-T T-O B-E
John picked up the board and tossed it across the room. Kyle was white as a ghost.
At seven, of course, they did what any sane seven-year-olds would do -- they ran out to the living room for Kyle's mom.
Of course, Kyle's mom figured the boys had been telling scary stories and had just frightened each other. She gave them a snack and sent them back to Kyle's room and told them to go to sleep and not tell anymore scary stories.
After kicking the game under one of the beds, the boys wrestled and played until Kyle's dad came in and told them to knock it off and go to bed. So they did.
A few hours later, Kyle's mom woke up to all sorts of noise coming from Kyle's room. Convinced the boys were playing, she opened the door only to find everything in Kyle's room flying around in a circle. His clothes, his toys, everything. Completely unable to believe what she was seeing, she was convinced that she was merely dreaming and walked back to bed.
The next morning, Kyle's dad went out to the barn to muck out the horses' stalls and finally stormed back into the house. "Were those boys out in the barn yesterday?" he asked his wife.
"Of course, they were playing out in the loose hay."
"I have told Kyle a million times that pitchfork is not a toy." And his dad stormed off for the boys' room.
Every toy and piece of clothing Kyle owned was scattered around the room.
"KYLE!"
Neither boy moved. His dad, completely disgusted, turned around, surveying the "damage" of Kyle's playtime the night before. The door to Kyle's closet was open, the light was on and there was nothing in the closet. Every piece of clothing, every toy, jigsaw puzzle, everything was in the middle of Kyle's room.
Except the pitchfork, leaning against the back wall of the closet.
Kyle's dad snapped. He'd had it with his irresponsible son who just didn't seem to understand that the farm tools were not toys. This was the first time he'd found one of the tools in the house, but not the first time that Kyle had wandered off with one hand tool or another. Furious, he grabbed the pitchfork from the closet and began hollering at his son.
The two boys woke up to Kyle's furious father screaming and coming toward them, pitchfork in hand.
His mom walked into the room and screamed - partly at the total mess in the room (and remembering her "dream" of the night before) and partly at the sight of her husband wielding the pitchfork at the boys. Surely it was just to emphasize his anger, but still ....
Kyle's parents left the room and calmed down, got rid of the pitchfork and then came back in to talk to the now terrified young boys. They explained that the boys shouldn't have trashed the bedroom or taken the pitchfork into the house -- shouldn't have played with the pitchfork at all.
Of course, they both protested and insisted they had done no such thing. And of course, Kyle's parents assumed the boys were lying. His mom was somewhat disturbed by the odd dream she'd had the night before, but it had to have been a dream.
So, the boys' first sleepover was a bit of a disaster and John was in trouble again when he got home for not behaving properly as a guest.
But, a few weeks later, John's parents called and asked to come over with Kyle. Not sure what was going on, but responding to the tense voice of Kyle's mother, they agreed.
They sat around the kitchen table ... both sets of parents and both boys.
"I know this is going to sound strange, but I need to ask John a very serious question," Kyle's mom started. "What happened when you and Kyle were playing with the Ouija board?"
John blinked a few times and then told them. "At first me and Kyle were just making it move around and being silly. But then it started to move on its own."
"John!" his mother was shocked at this bald-faced lie.
"Vivian, wait, please. John, what did it say?"
He told them that it said its name was Jon, it lived "here" and that his brother was scared. Kyle's parents blanched.
"I told you!" Kyle said. "I told you!"
"Then what happened, John?"
"Well, Kyle thought I was doing it and he thought I was being stupid so he said he umm, that he wanted something scary."
"And then? This is really important, John. What did the board say next?"
"This is ridiculous," John's father said. "What are you getting at? The boys were playing silly games and they acted up."
"It's more than that. We've done a little research." Kyle's dad turned back to John. "What did the board say next?"
"It said we were bad. And it was gonna do something, but we stopped playing."
"Anything else?"
John thought for a moment. "James. It said its name was James."
Kyle's mother blanched.
"What the hell is going on here?"
"Boys, you go on up to John's room and play," Kyle's father said.
The boys, of course, scurried around the corner and eavesdropped on the adults.
As it turned out, John and Kyle discovered that about 20-30 years before, James and Madeline Winchester and their two sons, Kyle and Jonathon had lived in the farmhouse. Not more than a few months after moving in, however, James had completely lost his mind and murdered the two boys in their bed with his pitchfork.
After the third time the pitchfork found its way into Kyle's closet, his mother couldn't stop thinking about the "dream" that she'd had when John had stayed over and began asking around the town about the house. The local librarian helped her research the house and discovered the story of the Wincehester family.
Of course, John's parents took far more convincing than the boys did, but as it turns out, Kyle's folks just wanted to confirm with John what Kyle had already told them. The final straw for John's parents was the news that they had already talked to the local priest and scheduled a cleansing of the house which was to be followed up by something resembling an exorcism for the house itself.
At the very least, John's parents realized that Kyle's folks were taking this seriously. They went on to explain what Kyle's mother had seen that night and other things that the boys had not yet heard.
Of course, John's parents didn't want John spending any more time at Kyle's house ... and he was fine with that. He'd had the crap scared out of him waking up to Kyle's father and the pitchfork. Particularly when Kyle told him why his parents had begun researching the house. Kyle was now terrified to go to sleep in the house, and had, in fact, been sleeping with his mother in a motel for the past week.
His father had been caught sleepwalking several times, each time found either in Kyle's room or on his way down the hall to Kyle's room, pitchfork in hand.
A few weeks later, the "exorcism" of the house was ... well, not particularly successful. The priest insisted that the entire family needed to be present at the home. Kyle refused to tell John what had happened, but the family moved into a motel immediately thereafter and quickly moved to another town. John never saw him again.
And, of course, in the true tradition of all haunted houses like that, no one ever bought the farmhouse. By the time John left home and moved away to college, he said the farmhouse had begun falling down. The town had talked about having the house bulldozed in an effort to make the property saleable ... but it hadn't happened by the time John left.
Happy Halloween!!
Posted by Red Monkey at October 30, 2006 7:17 PM |
Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping.
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Happy Halloween ender, these stories rock! Thanks 
mike said:
Hey.....Happy birthday!!!
Smythe said:
HI! I came over here to read your blog after being thrilled with your response to Jane at The Lake or whatever the name of the blog is! I can't lend my name or comments to that kind of thinking but I do love this one. Great Blog and I will be back!
November 5, 2006 8:56 AMaww said:
hello aww 
Red said: