This took place many years ago. I won't state exactly how many but it may or may not have been in the spring of 1945. (My grandson showed me this site and let me use his account to tell my story.) Growing up in rural New Jersey there was a crumbling neighborhood in my town that was set back in the overgrown woods whose houses had long since been abandoned. Most of them became just chimneys and a pile of rotted wood. But there was this one house that stayed relatively intact called The Murder Mansion and as you can imagine that is where my story takes place.
Kids in my school always used to tell embellished stories about the family that had been murdered there and exaggerated ghost stories. This was not some elementary school phenomenon, going into the Blackwell Mansion was serious business. Even students from Princeton (the college was only about 10 minutes away) dared each other to go into the house.
When I was little, I always wanted to be with my older brother, Raymond, but he didn't like it went I hung around with he and his friends. One spring day when I was seven, I was tagging along with Raymond and his friends while they took a walk through the woods. To try and scare me off they said that they were going to the old haunted mansion but I didn't believe them... Until the six of us walked up to the house and he made me go in.
At first I refused but then he made his friends Joe and George escort me in saying that they'd be with me the whole time. So with Joe on my left and George on my right, I walked up the creaky steps. The boys pushed open the heavy door whose hinges creaked like a screaming little girl when opened. With them on either side of me, I walked in...
But as soon as I stepped in, the boys took a step back. I heard the door close behind and realized that I was alone in the darkness... Or was I? As I shouted and pushed at the door, I heard loud, slow, clonking footsteps behind me. I knew for sure someone was their.
I finally got up the courage to turn around and look. I saw nothing. Just then something whispered in a low, husky voice: "Get out of this house!".
I screamed bloody murder. I screamed like I had never screamed before. I couldn't have screamed like that if I weren't so paralyzed by fear. Just then Raymond and his friends came bursting through the door, laughing: "We knew we'd get you good", Raymond said. I gave them all their fair share of slaps across the face.
Once I calmed down I asked them: how did you get in and out of the house like that?"
He said: "What are you talking about? We were tapping on the window". I hadn't heard any tapping. I told them the story and they turned as white as snow. They started running in every direction. I was alone in the darkness, unsure where to go.
I ran down a long corridor but came to a dead end. Suddenly all the boys' screaming and yelling seemed to go away and all I heard were slow, heavy footsteps. I saw the shadow of a man who seemed to be holding and axe. I screamed even louder, higher and worse than the first time.
At that moment, a hand pulled me out of nowhere into the thorny, weedy backyard. It was Raymond who had found his way outside and pulled me from a door that I hadn't seen. Within a minute his friends all flooded into the backyard through windows and doors.
Apparently they'd seen a bloody little girl about my age. At first they all thought it couldn't have been me because the girl had blonde hair and blue eyes. I had black hair and brown eyes.
The six of us resolved to never go back and to not tell anyone. I stayed silent for years, even if I passed the house. I stayed silent until two days ago when I was in my house, I dug up a newspaper article in a box of old newspapers from 1880. It was a story about a family who had been axe-murdered in a house set back in the woods. The memory came flooding back into my mind.
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