Scary Ghost Stories

Odd Story

Well, since peopleseem to be asking for ghost-stories, I figured I'd tell a storyabout a house that was about three blocks away from where I grewup.

Let me be clear: this story is a compilation of rumors about aspecific house: I will take care to confirm those portions of therumors that I know to be true, but will debunk those that I knowto be false. Anything else is likely to be the product of severaloveractive imaginations.

The house stood on the corner of Marie Crescent, the street whereI lived, and Rita Crescent. As a corner house, it had a largepiece of property, and was next to the power company Right of wayand across from a large, open field which was a community park.The house itself was rather plain: the sort of house that is thestaple of suburbs everywhere: two story, two car garage, etc. Theowners of the house moved out when I was 9: they just up andmoved, the house didn't go up for sale nor did the property.

The speculation at the time was great: the couple _might_ havebeen heavily in debt to the mob, and the rumor was that they fledthe country. The truth is that several dark cars did pass by thehouse at all hours fo the night, but that could've been bank orIRS or anything else and not mob. Still and all, the house wasvacant and I never heard anything else about the family.

Now, a house can't stand vacant for very long in a suburb withoutSOMEONE trying to sell it. About a year after the family left,when the weeds were overgrown and the house itslef was in someserious disrepair, it did go on the market. It was being sold bya local bank. At this point, things get really strange. I canconfirm the fat that the houe was shown several times, and canconfirm at least once that one of the potential buyers ran out ofthe house and tossed her cookies on the front lawn (which hadeven been, well, sort of mown for the occassion) The agent cameout after her, followed closely by the womans husband, who jumpedinto his car, started it up, retrieved his ill wife, and shoutedtypical New York obsecenities at the agent. All in all, quite asite. I figured that she had see some animal which had died inthe house: my friends all figured she had seen HIM.

Now, HIM was elusive. It sounds like a weird term, but none of ushad wanted to speculate too much: what my friend was alluding towas, of course, Satan.

In those days on Long Island, Satanic rituals seemed to be, well,everywhere. I was about 11 and was what my guidance counselorcalled advanced. I read at the level of a 10th or 11th grader. SoI had read all of the stories about the slain cats which wereappearing in various parks, surrounded by black candles andpentagrams. I knew that some of the older kids at school (byolder, I mean 14 and 15 year olds) were into this stuff in a bigway. I also kenw that they had broken into that house on severaloccassions and used it for there own little rituals. So did myfriend. I had even seen them break in to the house (from adistance: I wasn't stupid enough to get close or smart enough notto spy on them entirely). So I figured that at the worst thewoman had seen some sort of "shrine" they had set up.

At any rate, the house didn't seel for another year.

So the house was sitting nearly empty for a year. People did useit, but their purposes were obscure. The power to the house hadbeen cut for quite a while. No one in the neighborhood was surewho owned it anymore, but there were rumors at the time (laterconfirmed) that a couple from California had bought the house (siteunseen) and promised to rebuild it. But for now, it was the localderilect house.

The strange part of the story occured just before the couple fromCalifornia, the new owners, moved in. The house was in such astate that even the local youths didn't use it much anymore. Andthan there were the lights...

The house, it seemed, was haunted. Or, at the very least,occupied by something unworldly. Lights appeared in rooms whereno one was. The lights danced around the house on the inside,moving through walls and from one floor to another withoutbenefit of stairs. Unreal things. Bizarre things. Things fromHell, some speculated. A floating cats head was seen once, thoughI don't believe the person who told me that. Nor do I believe theperson who told me that he had seen a naked woman in a secondfloor room, with the light that had been seen in the house beforeliterally dancing on her as she writhed in pleasure, almosthanging in mid-air. I really don't believe, therefore, the moreoutlandish stories. But I believe the next part.

The house burnt to the ground one night. It was an early, fallday. THe house by this point had been boarded up, the interiorwas nearly inaccessible by anything other than a climb to thesecond story, where a window in the back had not been properlyboarded. But the house lit on fire.

I've seen house fires before and since. But this one wasincredible. The housefire apparently started just a little before6:00 pm. No one, thankfully, was in the building. But a neighborsaw a second story window, one of the ones which was boarded upwell, on fire. They called the fire department, which was onlyabout 3 blocks away. Their response time was phenomenal, onlyabout 6 minutes, but by the time they got there the fire wasthrough the roof, and the second story room where the fire wasseen first had collapsed onto the first story of the house, whichthan proceeded to fall into the basment, and than a wall on theside of the house fell. I saw it from about this point on, and itwas a site. The fire fighters didn't stop the blaze: they justcontained it, and the house had collapsed completely in aboutanother fifteen minutes. It was nothing but smoldering ruin,mostly in the basement of the house, in about 45 minutes to anhour. Nothing left but charred wood and a foundation, along withsome cracked brick all over the front lawn.

The paper the next day said that the fire was the work ofvandals, who had, believe it or not, covered the walls in a largeamount of an accelerant that the fire chief believed to be nailpolish and than lit it with something like magnesium wire. "Theyget their kicks that way" he was quoted as saying.

The vandals were never caught, the couple from California movedinto a new house which they built on the property, and that, asfar as I know, was the end of that.

But later, when I was a junior in high school, I heard somethingwhich hit a real nerve.

I was at lunch at Burger King, and I was sitting with a friendwho had gone to get some more fries or something. The peoplebehind me were talking in low, hushed tones.

"Did you see the new house there, over by the park."

"Yeah"

"You couldn't pay me to live there, no f**king way."

"Do you think we really did get HIM. Do you think he reallycame to us that day?"

"I don't know. I really don't want to know. Ohh.. F**K Man.I hope to God it wasn't HIM, cause if it was, what'ta ya thinkhe'll do to us for bugging him?"

"He was all in black, he came right up to the front door ofthat place. He just came in on us while we were doing that shiton the floor."

"You think he was just a bad trip."

"I F**king hope so. Cause if it wasn't, I think he burntthat place to the ground."

They both paused, I think the one was drinking something, but myfriend came back and I didn't catch the next part of theconversation. What I did hear was this.

"You ever go back by Marie anymore, back by the powerlines?By that house? Where you think you dropped your wallet when weran?"

"No way. Never. Cause if it _WAS_ HIM, I ain't gonna make itany easier, ya know? Forget it. If Satan burnt the place to theground, I don't wanna f**k with it ever!"

They both fell silent. My friend was looking at me like I wasinsane, because I was purple.

I had found a wallet there, shortly after the fire. No I.D., nonothing, just some cash and a hand-rolled cigarette that lookedlike pot and smelled like shit. I had ditched the whole thing,money and all, down a drainage pipe on the road. I neverremembered why. I didn't think $20 was worth it, I guess (thoughI would normally have thought so.) but the wallet was just creepy.

And besides. I didn't want to keep it on me. And right than Iknew why:

The Devil's due would've been greater than a twenty dollar billand a shitty joint.