Haunted House

These stories were all written by my Great Grandfather, Homer, a week after I was born in 1983. When my grandfather, Daniel Lee, passed, I was given a copy by my Aunt Janie. I plan to write a series of his stories. The first one sets the stage, and gives some history of the area he lived in. This is the 2nd in the series. –DM

At the edge of town stood an old two-story building that looked like it had once been used as a store or a hotel. It never did have anybody living in it as far back as I could remember. Everybody in town called it “The Haunted House”. We were afraid to go near it.

As the story goes, two brothers John and Albert Spicer and their brother-in-law Charley Webster, went into the house to divide some money they had stolen. They got into a fight and John got shot and died. Charley got his throat cut from ear to ear, but lived. And Albert disappeared with the money and was never heard of again.

One day several of us boys got to talking about this old haunted house. We decided to go into it some night when we could get up enough nerve. One night when the moon was about half full we dared each other to go looking for a ghost.

We went in the double front doors, having to push real hard to open them. The hinges were rusted and began to squeak; the squeaking made us nervous. The top hinge broke and threw the door sideways, leaving just enough room for us to squeeze through one at a time. We all got inside but only had a flashlight and a candle for light. We began to look around when a board in the floor broke and my foot slipped down through the hole. I dropped the flashlight and broke it. After pulling my foot out of the hole we were all scared to death and just stood there real quiet. All we could hear was the beating of our hearts, and they were going real fast. All at once we heard something thump, thump, thump. The noise kept getting louder and louder. We got scared and ran towards the door quicker than a wet cat.

One boy tripped over something and fell. He thought the ghost had him, and began to holler like he was bilging killed. We all started out the door at the same time. My brother, Milton, was the last one to get out. He got his pants caught on a nail that was sticking out of the door, and began to cry and holler; he thought the ghost had a hold of his pants. He finally broke loose.

When we got outside we saw a big white horse with a witch riding on its back coming towards us. We ran around the side of the building and hid in some tall grass and weeds. When the horse came up in front of the building it stopped. The witched hollered out, “Haw, haw, haw, I will get you the next time.” and went on its way.

There we were in the tall grass and weeds with our mouths open and our eyes as big as half-dollars, thinking “there wouldn’t be any next time.” We ran home as fast as we could get there.

The next day the good Dr. Backus was laughing about scaring a bunch of boys over at the haunted house as he was on his way home from seeing a sick man on down the road. He never knew about the poison ivy and chiggers we got!