Dare We Share Some Spooky Stories?

[Lilias]

The Yellow Ranch
by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

“But is the house really haunted?” Tasha asked Arturo, leaning over a chrome café table, a metal glow lightening her eyes. They were in Boulder, a desolate patio on Pearl Street. He was visiting for only a few days.

“It was,” Arturo said and let out a clipped laugh. He wasn’t wearing his wedding band and was husky in designer denim and mall cashmere. “I had the cleansing done by a local woman, Lucille Mestas. She described it thoroughly, how the house held unrested spirits, a little girl, she had said, attached herself to me.”

“Horrible,” Tasha said. “I don’t know if I can stay in a haunted house.”

“It’s just an old house now,” he said. “All the spirits are gone.”

He drank a cappuccino from a white cup, trailing his upper lip with foam. Tasha ran her index finger along her own lip. Arturo grinned, dabbing a paper napkin to his mouth of pretty bright teeth. He appeared much younger than fifty-two, early forties at most. Tasha thought there should be a word for the way he made her feel, but she found too many at once, and so she settled on pulled.

She then asked with seriousness, “It’s safe, right? I’ll be OK alone?”

“Not just safe,” he told her. “It’s sacred. People are different down there. You’ll see.”

Keep reading...

[Valerian]

A helpful ghost:

I was staying with my friend J in his new apartment, located at the very top of a mostly empty five-story complex, in an absolutely terrifying high-crime part of the city. The entire building, except the very bottom floor, was vacant except for J. It was a particularly isolating sense of freedom being there, as well as extra creepy.

We knew right away that this place was trouble. There was no end to the weird shit that routinely comprised an average day in his tiny one-bedroom. Set something down? It would disappear immediately. Walk into a room? The door would slam behind you, only to immediately re-open itself. Ready to force yourself to sleep through the confusion and only slightly-amusing terror? Hear the sounds of dishes and cupboards being banged around in the kitchen. One night J’s boyfriend stayed over, and the guy woke up the next morning with a stinging red bite mark on his wrist—the teeth marks didn’t match his or J’s (or mine), and we had been the only three there.

So it was absolutely no surprise when J’s house keys went missing. We tore the place apart looking for them, to no avail. It was Christmas Eve, so getting in touch with the apartment office to get a replacement key was not possible. J’s mom, in the meantime, had invited the two of us over for dinner that night, so we made the decision to just leave the door unlocked this once, so we could go. “We won’t be gone long,” we reckoned, and headed out bundled up for the walk to J’s mom’s house.

We ended up leaving a bit later than expected (about 11 p.m.), but the streets were totally isolated by this point due to the holiday and freezing weather. This made it particularly noticeable when we realized we were being followed home.

The man behind us was making no effort to hide his action. He came out of nowhere, and stayed behind us keeping a pace of only about 9 or 10 feet. I looked over at J, and this was the first time I had ever in my life seen him scared. The man behind us was easily 6'5", 300 lbs of fat and muscle. If you’ve ever seen a professional NFL player in real life, he was that size. His black eyes were laser-focused on us, a couple of scrawny teenagers in thrift store polyester bellbottoms. We were clearly poor, so he must have wanted... I don’t know... something else from us, which gave this whole scenario an even darker turn.

We increased our pace, he increased his pace. We turned a corner, he turned a corner. Unfortunately, every shop or business front we passed was closed, and cell phones were still brick-sized novelties used only by Miami Vice villains or dickheads in convertibles. There was literally no one else around except the three of us, lit only by passing Christmas lights.

We finally approach the apartment stairs. We are terrified to go up and announce where we live to this freak, but we didn’t know what else to do but to get inside, lock the door, and maybe call the cops if we had to.

We ascend to the first stair landing. He follows. Second floor. Third floor. J and I are sharing looks of panic as we try and remain calm as he clomps slowly right behind us. Fourth floor. There he is, close enough to reach out and grab us. We get to the apartment door, and the man has stopped, and is now just staring at us intently from the landing... waiting... as J and I stare helplessly at each other for what seemed like an eternity. I reach to open the door, and it is LOCKED.

Deadbolted from the inside.

I start to sweat and almost scream, when J decided to knock on the door. I began knocking, too, and said as casually cheerfully as I could to the door, “Hey, it’s us! Open up!” The deadbolt clicked. The man, seeing that there was someone unseen inside the apartment, TURNS AROUND on the landing, and walks away.

We run inside, slam and lock the door behind us. Pretty sure we pushed the couch in front of the door, as well. We holler out “Thank you!!!” to the ghost, and laugh nervously at our sudden relief of fear, though still too shaken up talk about what just happened—any of it.

The next morning, J’s house keys were mysteriously returned to the bare counter by the door, where he’d always kept them.

It did not occur to me until later, that had the keys not been missing, this gigantic night stalker would have known that we were there all alone.

[Lilias]

A final, brief chill, just before the sun starts going down across the Atlantic.

[Valerian]

One last tale:

This happened when I was 11, visiting a lighthouse in Michigan that was supposedly haunted. My parents wanted to take a tour with the tour guide, but I wanted to play outside, considering we had been touring various sites in the upper peninsula that day. No one was around, so my parents ended up letting me play outside the lighthouse while they took a quick tour. As I played outside, a really beat-up ball rolled up to my feet. I bent over to pick it up, and as I stood back up, I saw a boy standing next to the edge of the lighthouse looking at me. I assumed the ball was his, so I tossed it over to him, and he wandered away. I didn't think anything about it, but when my parents were done with the tour, they asked what I did. I told them something along the lines of: 'I was just wandering around. Oh, and I helped this kid get his ball back.'

The tour guide was with my parents, and when I mentioned the kid, he looked startled because as I mentioned earlier, there was no one other than us at the lighthouse. Only three cars: My parent's car, the tour guide's car, and the car belonging to the person at the front desk.

The tour guide asked me to take a look at a picture in the lighthouse. I know this sounds super cliché, but when he showed me the picture, it was the picture of the exact same boy with the exact same beat-up ball. Apparently, that kid died at the lighthouse. (On a side note, we checked around, and there was no boy.)

What really creeps me out is that I touched that ball. It felt solid, like a real ball. If it was a 'ghost ball,' then how the heck do you explain what I touched?

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you, Valerian and Lilias, for sending us out with a fang!  Spooky upon spooky...

As if she were a mist caught by the rays of a rising sun the Season of the Witch begins to withdraw.  We're coming to the end of this year's round of storytelling.  The drizzle remains chill and will soon turn to snow; no more, though, will it bite in quite the same way.  The winds will continue to gust, but their strange, mournful sighs will subside.  The nights will grow longer and longer, colder and colder; the spirits that prowled through their gloom will retire, though, their thirsts sated -- for now, anyhow.

Yes: Dawn is beginning to chase off the dark.  As I mentioned in my first post this season, a fear of the dark is called scotophobia.  One of the primal fears, it's most common among children but scarcely unknown among adults...

But what about photophobia, a fear of the light?  And why might one become a photophobe?  Maybe our penultimate tale will shed some -- uh, will give us an idea as to the why...

Scared of the Light

I work IT for a banking corporation.  A coworker ("T") and I were sent a state over to install new hardware in about 40 branches in the span of a week, which all had to be done after hours.  At about 3 am one night/morning, we get to this large, old bank that also housed multiple floors of offices.  That being said, it was put together a lot differently than most of the cookie cutter branches.  In order to get behind the teller line, you had to go down a short hallway located on the opposite side of the lobby, open a locked door, which led you to a longer corridor to the left, which then finally led to the teller line on the left.  In that longer corridor was a door leading into the office part of the building.

We couldn't find the light switches, so we decide to just work off the security lights (not the first time we've had to do it).  We are installing new hardware at each teller station, so we start on opposite ends of the teller line and meet in the middle.  Tellers are supposed to log completely out of their terminals every night, but more often than not, they just lock them, meaning we have to power fail the PC in order to log in ourselves.  It shows the name of the person logged in on the lock screen.  The design of this particular teller line had the PCs really tucked underneath the counter, meaning you had to climb underneath completely to power fail the PC.  I see T duck underneath the counter on his end, and I do the same, while yelling "Dammit [name of teller who didn't log out properly]!" and I hear what sounds like "What?" and then a soft thud, like a door closing.

T and I emerge from under the counter at the same time, and I look at him and ask "Was that you?"  "Was what me?" he replied.  I explained what I heard, but he has no idea, claims it wasn't him, and that he hadn't even heard it.  I shrug it off for a second until we both seem to come to the same realization... the lights are on.  Every light in the lobby and behind the teller line is now on.  He asks me if I turned the lights on, and I, of course, did not.  We think about it for a second and come to the conclusion that they must just be malfunctioning motion sensor lights, which would explain why we couldn't find the switches.  Motion sensor lights aren't uncommon in other branches, we just weren't expecting them in this old branch.

I had forgotten something in the car, so I left for outside to get it.  Still thinking of what I heard, I took a quick stroll around the parking lot to make sure no other cars were there, and there were none.  On my way back in, I walked into the short hallway and stopped at the lock door.  Oddly enough, the light in the hallway was still off.  I grabbed my key ring and started fumbling for the right key when the light comes on all of a sudden.  I figured this was proof that they were motion sensor lights, so I yell out "Definitely just motion lights, T", and then just like that, the light goes out.  I unlock the door to find the lights in the longer corridor were also out.  As I'm walking down the corridor, the lights flash on and then off real quick.  I'm a little spooked at this point, but the rational part of me just keeps telling myself it's probably just light malfunctions.

I get back behind the teller line and proceed to tell T what just happened.  We were still standing on opposite ends of the teller line, looking at each other.  All of a sudden there was a flash of light somewhere between the two of us, about eye level, in the middle of the air.  I decided to not say anything, because I didn't want to sound like a mad man, but before I could even say anything, T says "I saw it too".  We decide to just try and get all the hardware installs done as quick as possible and get the hell out of Dodge.

A little while later, I look up at the wall behind the teller line and see a pair of switches, near the end of the teller line I had started on.  T was standing near them, so I tell him to flip them, just to see what they do.

The lights.  Go.  Off.

This tells us two things: They aren't motion sensor lights, and whatever or whoever turned the lights on while we were under the counter was behind that teller line with us.  And for me, who had it in the back of my mind that it was T fucking with me the whole time, it told me that it wasn't him because he was under the counter on the opposite end of the light switches when the lights came on.

We are both freaked the hell out at this point.

At some point during all of this, I also noted that the air conditioner was running, which may not seem strange except for the fact that the AC systems in all of these banks are on a timer, and at about 6 o'clock they go into "Unoccupied" mode and shut off.  On top of this, even if you can find the thermostat, they are locked so that you can't even turn it on without a PIN.  Regardless, the AC seemed to be making a racket with this shaking sound from above.

T and I keep working, and at some point I'm standing right about where the flash of light occurred.  I noticed that the shaking noise that I assumed was the AC was coming from right about me.  I look up, expecting to see an AC vent.  Instead, I see one of the fluorescent light fixtures... and the diffuser is shaking like mad.  I kind of involuntarily exclaim "Holy.  Shit!"  T asks "What, what?", but being that he's already absolutely terrified, I say "I'll tell you later".

We finish up the hardware install and all the paperwork, and we head straight into the long corridor, I go "lets get the fuck out of here".  The lights in the corridor flash rapidly 3 times as soon as I say that, and we booked it.

The lights in that corridor had stayed off the entire time w were behind the teller line.  It's not as if they were just malfunctioning lights flashing all the time.

Not the most exciting sounding story, and I know it probably doesn't sound super scary just reading it, but that was honestly the first time in my life that I was almost certain that I was in a haunted building, and I could feel it.

The light! -- the light! -- time for just one more...!

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

We started this year's round of spooky storytelling at the end -- with death -- with thanatophobia -- with that disagreeable morgue door -- with "The Morgue Door."  So perhaps it would be fitting should we end at the beginning.  Fear so often starts with surprise: our split-second reaction when nightmare seizes reality.  Please prepare yourself for this season's final offering, Richard Matheson's "Big Surprise"...

Big Surprise

Old Mr. Hawkins used to stand by his picket fence and call to the little boys when they were coming home from school.

"Lad!" he would call.  "Come here, lad!"

Most of the little boys were afraid to go near him, so they laughed and made fun of him in voices that shook.  Then they ran away and told their friends how brave they'd been.  But once in a while a boy would go up to Mr. Hawkins when he called, and Mr. Hawkins would make his strange request.

That was how the verse got started:

            Dig me a hole, he says,
            Winking his eyes,
            And you will find
            A big surprise.

No one knew how long they'd heard the children chanting it.  Sometimes the parents seemed to recall having heard it years ago.

Once a little boy started to dig the hole but he got tired after a while and he didn't find any big surprise.  He was the only one who had ever tried --

One day Ernie Willaker was coming home from school with two of his friends.  They walked on the other side of the street when they saw Mr. Hawkins in his front yard standing by the picket fence.

"Lad!" they heard him call.  "Come here, lad!"

"He means you, Ernie," teased one of the boys.

"He does not," said Ernie.

Mr. Hawkins pointed a finger at Ernie.  "Come here, lad!" he called.

Ernie glanced nervously at his friends.

"Go on," said one of them.  "What're ya scared of?"

"Who's scared?" said Ernie.  "My ma says I have to come home right after school is all."

"Yella," said the other friend.  "You're scared of old man Hawkins."

"Who's scared!"

"Go on, then."

"Lad!" called Mr. Hawkins.  "Come here, lad."

"Well." Ernie hesitated.  "Don't go nowhere," he said.

"We won't.  We'll stick around."

"Well -- " Ernie braced himself and crossed the street, trying to look casual.  He shifted his books to his left hand and brushed back his hair with his right.  Dig me a hole, he says, muttered in his brain.

Ernie stepped up to the picket fence.  "Yes, sir?" he asked.

"Come closer, lad" the old man said, his dark eyes shining.

Ernie took a forward step.

"Now you aren't afraid of Mister Hawkins, are you?" said the old man, winking.

"No, sir," Ernie said.

"Good," said the old man.  "Now listen, lad. How would you like a big surprise?"

Ernie glanced across his shoulder. His friends were still there.  He grinned at them.  Suddenly he gasped as a gaunt hand clamped over his right arm.  "Hey, leggo!" Ernie cried out.

"Take it easy, lad," soothed Mr. Hawkins.  "No one's going to hurt you."

Ernie tugged.  Tears sprang into his eyes as the old man drew him closer.  From the corner of an eye Ernie saw his two friends running down the street.

"L-leggo," Ernie sobbed.

"Shortly," said the old man.  "Now then, would you like a big surprise?"

"N-no, thanks, mister."

"Sure you would," said Mr. Hawkins.  Ernie smelled his breath and tried to pull away, but Mr. Hawkins's grip was like iron.

"You know where Mr. Miller's field is?" asked Mr. Hawkins.

"Y-yeah."

"You know where the big oak tree is?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I know."

"You go to the oak tree in Mr. Miller's field and face toward the church steeple.  You understand?"

"Y-y-yeah."

The old man drew him closer.  "You stand there and you walk ten paces.  You understand?  Ten paces."

"Yeah -- "

"You walk ten paces and you dig down ten feet.  {i]How many feet?[/i]"  He prodded Ernie's chest with a bony finger.

"T-ten," said Ernie.

"That's it," said the old man.  "Face the steeple, walk ten paces, dig ten feet -- and there you'll find a big surprise."  He winked at Ernie.  "Will you do it, lad?"

"I -- yeah, sure.  Sure."

Mr. Hawkins let go and Ernie jumped away.  His arm felt completely numb.

"Don't forget, now," the old man said.

Ernie whirled and ran down the street as fast as he could.  He found his friends waiting at the corner.

"Did he try and murder you?" one of them whispered.

"Nanh," said Ernie.  "He ain't so m-much."

"What'd he want?"

"What d'ya s'pose?"

They started down the street, all chanting it.

            Dig me a hole, he said,
            Winking his eyes,
            And you will find
            A big surprise.

Every afternoon they went to Mr. Miller's field and sat under the big oak tree.

"You think there's somethin' down there really?"

"Nanh."

"What if there was though?"

"What?"

"Gold, maybe."

They talked about it every day, and every day they faced the steeple and walked ten paces.  They stood on the spot and scuffed the earth with the tips of their sneakers.

"You s'pose there's gold down there really?"

"Why should he tell us?"

"Yeah, why not dig it up himself?"

"Because he's too old, stupid."

"Yeah?  Well, if there's gold down there we split it three ways."

They became more and more curious.  At night they dreamed about gold.  They wrote gold in their schoolbooks.  They thought about all the things they could buy with gold.  They started walking past Mr. Hawkins's house to see if he'd call them again and they could ask him if it was gold.  But he never called them.

Then, one day, they were coming home from school and they saw Mr. Hawkins talking to another boy.

"He told us we could have the gold!" said Ernie.

"Yeah!" they stormed angrily.  "Let's go!"

They ran to Ernie's house and Ernie went down to the cellar and got shovels.  They ran up the street, over lots, across the dump, and into Mr. Miller's field.  They stood under the oak tree, faced the steeple, and paced ten times.

"Dig," said Ernie.

Their shovels sank into the black earth.  They dug without speaking, breath whistling through their nostrils.  When the hole was about three feet deep, they rested.

"You think there's gold down there really?"

"I don't know but we're gonna find out before that other kid does."

"Yeah!"

"Hey, how we gonna get out if we dig ten feet?" one of them said.

"We'll cut out steps," said Ernie.

They started digging again.  For over an hour they shoveled out the cool, wormy earth and piled it high around the hole.  It stained their clothes and their skin.  When the hole was over their heads one of them went to get a pail and a rope.  Ernie and the other boy kept digging and throwing the earth out of the hole.  After a while the dirt rained back on their heads and they stopped.  They sat on the damp earth wearily, waiting for the other boy to come back.  Their hands and arms were brown with earth.

"How far're we down?" wondered the boy.

"Six feet," estimated Ernie.

The other boy came back and they started working again.  They kept digging and digging until their bones ached.

"Aaah, the heck with it," said the boy who was pulling up the pail.  "There ain't nothin' down there."

"He said ten feet," Ernie insisted.

"Well, I'm quittin'," said the boy.

"You're yella!"

"Tough," said the boy.

Ernie turned to the boy beside him.  "You'll have to pull the dirt up," he said.

"Oh -- okay," muttered the boy.

Ernie kept digging.  When he looked up now, it seemed as if the sides of the hole were shaking and it was all going to cave in on him.  He was trembling with fatigue.

"Come on," the other boy finally called down.  "There ain't nothin' down there.  You dug ten feet."

"Not yet," gasped Ernie.

"How deep ya goin', China?"

Ernie leaned against the side of the hole and gritted his teeth.  A fat worm crawled out of the earth and tumbled to the bottom of the hole.

"I'm goin' home," said the other boy.  "I'll catch it if I'm late for supper."

"You're yella, too," said Ernie miserably.

"Aaaah -- tough."

Ernie twisted his shoulders painfully.  "Well, the gold is all mine," he called up.

"There ain't no gold," said the other boy.

"Tie the rope to something so I can get out when I find the gold," said Ernie.

The boy snickered.  He tied the rope to a bush and let it dangle down into the hole.  Ernie looked up and saw the crooked rectangle of darkening sky.  The boy's face appeared, looking down.

"You better not get stuck down there," he said.

"I ain't gettin' stuck."  Ernie looked down angrily and drove the shovel into the ground.  He could feel his friend's eyes on his back.

"Ain't you scared?" asked the other boy.

"What of?" snapped Ernie without looking up.

"I dunno," said the boy.

Ernie dug.

"Well," said the boy, "I'll see ya."

Ernie grunted.  He heard the boy's footsteps move away.  He looked around the hole and a faint whimper sounded in his throat.  He felt cold.

"Well, I ain't leavin'," he mumbled.  The gold was his.  He wasn't going to leave it for that other kid.

He dug furiously, piling the dirt on the other side of the hole.  It kept getting darker.

"A little more," he told himself, gasping.  "Then I'm goin' home with the gold."

He stepped hard on the shovel and there was a hollow sound beneath him.  Ernie felt a shudder running up his back.  He forced himself to keep on digging.  Will I give them the horse laugh, he thought.  Will I give them --

He had uncovered part of a box -- a long box.  He stood there looking down at the wood and shivering.  And you will find --

Quivering, Ernie stood on top of the box and stamped on it.  A deeply hollow sound struck his ears.  He dug away more earth and his shovel scraped on the ancient wood.  He couldn't uncover the entire box -- it was too long.

Then he saw that the box had a two-part cover and there was a clasp on each part.

Ernie clenched his teeth and struck the clasp with the edge of his shovel.  Half of the cover opened.

Ernie screamed.  He fell back against the earth wall and stared in voiceless horror at the man who was sitting up.

"Surprise!" said Mr. Hawkins.

The end.  Not much of a surprise here, granted: We knew what this dawn would bring.  Thank you again, Valerian and Lilias: The thrills and chills that you deliver are always much appreciated.  And thank you, too, you silent listeners.  I hope that all of your fears have been satisfied.

"The end."  Mm.  Let's not forget, though, that we all flow in cycles -- cycles of night and day, of clear skies and cloudy, of spring and autumn, of life and death.  The Season of the Witch is no exception: She, too, is destined to return and return and return just as she's destined to depart and depart and depart.  Perhaps, if our fears do not preclude it, you and I will gather together again next year, raise our glasses in toast, and once more pour

            Some spooky rhyme,
            Some spooky reason,
            Some spooky rhythm
            Into the season --
            The Season of the Witch.

Spel