Hey Guys, it's been a while since my last post, I've been really busy finishing up exams at TAFE. Unfortunately I had to retire the Fairlane, as its transmission gave out, and it's now sitting under a tarp in my backyard, slowly gathering dust and rust. I think it's right that the fellas finally get some peace.
The first first experience I'd like to relay is one that happened at a local abandoned house, dubbed by my friends as "The Manson House" (God knows why, the people who lived in it had a German surname, but hey, teenagers.)
The story with the house is that an old widowed woman lived in it up until the late 1990s, when she passed away. She had no living relatives, so the house and land were passed on to the local council, who tried to sell it several time without success (it sits in a low-lying part of town that floods very easily). It's now an unkempt, unstable old wooden structure that no-one owns or maintains. Because both sets of stairs that lead to the house are either rotten or termite-ridden, the house has remained practically untouched. Now, a mate and I decided as a dare to spend the night in the place for $50 and a carton of beer. My mate being the skeptic he is called BS on the ghost thing and decided it would be easy money (and drinks). He was wrong.
We turned up in the overgrown driveway at about half past 5 in the afternoon, and things escalated quickly from there. The first thing I noticed from outside the house was that there was a light on inside. I knew this was impossible, as my dad switched the power off there in about 2005. My mate wrote it off as a reflection, and walked up the back steps. The first thing we noticed when we stepped inside was how freezing cold it was. It could have easily been 20 degrees inside, compared to the 42 degree summer heat we'd just been in. Next we saw just how long it'd been since someone had been inside. There was a 1999-2000 calendar on the wall, a pack of Camel Cigarettes on the table, a peeling fridge still full of food, a teacup on the coffee table and an old Hifi still switched to the on position, Hank Williams record sitting on the LP deck, covered in dust. We sat on the mouldy old couch and settled in.
The first hour or so was pretty uneventful, but then we noticed that every now and then we'd hear something like someone marching up and down the front stairs (that were laying in the overgrown garden downstairs, where they'd collapsed a few months earlier). As 9PM approached we cracked a few beers then settled down for the night. That was when things got really eerie. I'd just started to drift off to sleep when I saw a face out of the corner of my eye. I sat bolt upright, accidentally kicking my mate and waking him up. He yawned and then I saw every hair on his body stand up as he mumbled "F**k off" and looked in the same direction I'd seen the face. Standing in the hallway was a middle aged woman in a long, floral blouse, just staring blankly. I think we were out of there in under a minute. We ran back to my place (couldn't drive, as we'd been drinking) before we realised we'd left everything in the house. We walked back at about 4am, hoping that every thing had calmed down.
As we walked through the back door, we saw that everything had been thrown across the room, every beer bottle we'd opened was smashed, and my torch had somehow found its way into the kitchen. We very quickly grabbed our stuff then piled it into the car. My mate now refuses to go anywhere near the place.
The second experience was a bit less intense, but odd all the same. My band was playing at a hall that was supposedly haunted. Midway through our set, I noticed a young man standing at the back of the hall. Compared to the rest of the crowd, he seemed out of place. He was wearing a long-sleeved paisley shirt, faded jeans and comically large Buddy Holly-esque glasses. After we finished our set we go talking to the venue manager and asked about the guy in the back. Apparently he'd been standing at the back of the hall the whole time and hadn't seen anyone matching that description, but mentioned that we'd pretty much described Jimmy, the ghost who was supposed to be hanging around.
The thing that seems to be coming up most often is the "food" in the fridge. As you've said, it wouldn't be much more than black pulp, which is what it was. Aside from a pair of Wurst (very German town) which were still recogniseable, beer bottles, margarine tubs and such, everything was pretty much black or brown goo. I'll try to be a little more descriptive next time I post. 😊