I am sixteen years old and before I can remember, my family have always insisted on weekend trips with friends into the country or to the coast. So when the October holidays (two years ago) came, we were off to the Woodhouse homestead in the Adelaide Hills. I've love old buildings ever since I was little, but upon reaching this particular house, I couldn't help but feel a little resentful and nervous as I entered the front door. The homestead was a two storey building, with numerous dorm rooms upstairs, a large kitchen, and an attached outhouse. It was dark before the first of our friends arrived and I seemingly jumped at every shadow that moved. Fortunately, soon the house was filled with adults' chatter downstairs, and children's laughter as they raced each other up and down the staircase.
My friend Mel and I were setting up her family's room (number 4) upstairs, while all the children were now downstairs, delighting in ghost stories told around the parlor fireplace. I had gone upstairs with an armful of bags to the room, while Mel was left downstairs trying to convince her mother that she should have brought her hairdryer. When I reached the top of the stairs, I found the air cold, and I immediately stopped to put on the sweater which was around my waist, thinking that someone had left a window open. I picked up the bags again and continued around the corner to face the open door of Mel's room. There, near the window, I saw a woman. she was not white but looked sickly pale, and I called out to her, for what reason, I don't know. She turned to look at me once, and then exited through the window. The window was closed. I was so freaked out that I dropped the bags in the hall and sprinted downstairs, unable to verbalize to anyone what I had just seen.
The next morning, after a restless night, in which I am sure I heard wailing and crying, I was the first awake in the house. Getting dressed, I found myself walking down to the front hall and opening the guest book on the table just inside the front door. In it, I found a description of a murder-suicide, conducted in the late 1800s. A man, who had owned the house, had been pushed out of the east window, by his jealous new wife. The man, it seemed, had been spending time in town with a mistress. The young wife had thrown herself out the window after her beloved, when she realized the full extent of her actions.
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