The Creepy House

By: Eve Odum Staff Writer

Like any small town, we all have our share of creepy houses.

Everyone knows about the house a teen broke into with a shotgun and shot an elderly couple dead in their bed. Everyone also knows about the house a woman and her child died in during labor because the family didn’t believe in doctors. But, there’s a house that not many know the backstory to. A house that no longer stands.

As with any good ghost story, the house was built in the 1800s with beautiful wooden architecture and narrow hallways. A young Christian couple moved in a few decades ago, despite the pleading from the townspeople. Rumor has it that a drunk lived there over a century ago and accidently killed his daughter in a fit of rage. Since then, the house has had few tenants but each one left in a frenzied hurry without much of a warning or explanation.

The couple moved in and two soon became three. To understand the story, you need to picture the layout of the house. Proceed up the stairs to the second floor and you’ll find the master bedroom on the left. If you look right, a banister lasts about five paces before turning into a hallway. A door, also on the right, leads to a small bedroom. The only other important aspect of the house that pertains to this story is the stairs that lead to the cellar. They were steep and made of old wood.

It wasn’t more than a week before the baby started waking up, as if on clockwork. Every two hours it would let out a shrill screech. In their sleepy stupor to console the baby, it took the parents a few nights before they realized that the cradle was rocking. Slowly moving—back and forth—as if being pushed… The parents attributed it to the draftiness of the old house.

After nine months, the parents moved the child to the room down the hall. They called the doctor, concerned that none of them had been able to sleep through an entire night. “Let the child cry. It won’t hurt it,” the doctor advised. But that night the baby wouldn’t stop. After two hours, the mother burst into the room to find her child lying on the rocking chair—the chair still swaying gently.

The next day, the husband consulted his co-workers at the church. Two clergymen were sent to the house to purify it. One of the men opened the door to the cellar and a chill crawled through his body. He held a small wooden cross extended in front of him and took a few steps down. His foot slipped and he tumbled to the bottom. The clergyman yelled from the cellar, “It felt like something grabbed me and bit me.” That night when the man was changing for bed, his wife asked him what that mark was on his butt. Sure enough, a perfect circle was punctuated onto his lower right cheek.

The family didn’t return to the house after that day; the mother refused to enter. And so, it was once again vacant. It’s unclear exactly the cause of what happened next. The house burnt down less than a week later. Some say it was a pyromaniac. Others think it was the ghost of the drunken father, angry that his second chance of being a dad was taken away. However, most people think something more demonic took place.

They claim that Lucifer was mad at the demons that reside in the house and decided to open the pits of hell and punish them.

Trick or Treat?