When I was fifteen I didn't like hearing ghost stories. I liked to joke around with my friends about stuff like that but I was very rational, and still am. While unexplained phenomena can normally be explained rationally, to this day I have a difficult time understanding what happened that day. I am a firm believer in science and I am not religious (I used to be Catholic). I am twenty-seven now.
One day after school I walked to my friend's house. She lived about a mile from my parents' place. It was the last week of October and I remember that day as being unusually cold. It felt like winter. A lot of the neighbourhood trees were shedding their leaves, and I found myself wading through a sea of brown and orange as I walked up her driveway. My friend's parents were really into Halloween, as my parents have always been. When I get to her house I was greeted by a line of Jack-o-Lanterns on the front porch. The front yard was spangled with fake gravestones. She had two sisters that were in grade school at the time.
When I came over this particular day her whole family was out doing something, but I can't seem to remember where they were. I do remember thinking maybe she was gone, because her house looked empty. There were no cars in the driveway and the lights were out inside. For the sake of anonymity I will call my friend "Karen" from this point on, though that's not her real name. I rang the doorbell and waited for a few moments. Nothing happened. I took a step back from the porch and looked up at the upstairs windows of the house. Karen's house was huge. Her dad was a dentist and her mom was a prosecuting attorney. They lived in this gigantic two-storey house with a big basement. It must have been built a hundred years ago because the place was just creepy. They kept it in good shape but it was still undeniably old. The roof was tall and steep and the windows had old fashioned wood shutters that slammed into the house when the wind was blowing hard. I was startled then by the sound of a door slamming in the backyard. I looked around the edge of the house as Karen emerged from the back walkway. She said that her cats had destroyed their front screen door earlier in the day and they were trying not to use it until they got the screen replaced. She had about ten cats (no joke!).
Anyways getting to the point, about an hour later we were alone in her room playing around on her computer, when we heard music coming from downstairs. This wouldn't have been strange except her family was not home. We both thought someone was back so we checked the driveway, and there were no cars. The music continued for a minute or so before we decided to go and check it out. It sounded like classical music from the upstairs. When we got down to the main level we were both startled when we realized it was piano music. Karen's grandmother had lived with her for five years or so before she passed away the year before, leaving her old piano in the basement. It sounded like someone was in the basement playing the piano. Whoever it was was playing beautifully. There was one thing wrong about that, nobody else in her family knew how to play piano. It just sat down there with a sheet over the top.
We both stood in the kitchen for what seemed like forever, listening to the sad piano music droning up from the basement. I looked down the stairs and the lights in the basement were off. I was terrified. We both discussed who would go into the basement to check, but were equally freaked out. Neither of us wanted to go and see who was down there playing. I think five minutes or so passed when I finally got the courage to shout down the stairs. All I could say was "Who is that?" I know, real tough. The music stopped abruptly. Karen and I just stood there in the kitchen, not breathing, until she finally switched the light on in the basement from the top of the steps. We went down there together and the basement was empty. The sheet still sat over the piano, untouched. We called the cops!
To this day I have no logical explanation for what happened.
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