KID KLASSICS - HORROR OF THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL...

Art by STEVE DITKO, copyright MARVEL COMICS

Seeing as how it's Hallowe'en, I thought I'd re-post this
true tale from two years back to put you in the mood.  Are you
alone?  Are you sure you're alone?  Perhaps you'd better check
first before we proceed.  Ready?  Good, then I'll begin.

******

Not long after my family had moved into our new house back

in 1972, a curious thing happened.  My brother came downstairs

into the livingroom one night and claimed he had just seen an elderly

lady in white on the stairway outside his room.  My parents pooh-poohed

the notion, but, shortly after, my bed was moved from my front room on

the grounds that it was damp (the room, not the bed) into my brother's

room, which we then shared for a few months.  I suspect it was more
to do with my brother being scared to be alone than it was with the
risk of me catching pneumonia, but I grant that it could've been
a combination of both.

Some indeterminate time afterwards (a year or two perhaps),

my brother again came into the livingroom with a concerned look

on his face and called us upstairs, saying that someone was walking

around in the attic.  We all trooped up to my brother's room and, sure

enough, there was a sound of creaking boards - as if someone was walk-

ing from one end of the attic and back again.  My father got out the step-

ladder and tentatively poked the top of his head a few inches into the

hatch opening, but he was in no mad rush (nor were we) to more

thoroughly explore the vast confines of its black interiors, so we

put the noise down to some not entirely convincing 'rational'

explanation and retired downstairs again.  

Some years later, we moved house, and four years after that,

we moved back again - with the exception of my brother, who had

acquired his own flat in the meantime.  Now, I don't believe in ghosts,

but the couple with whom we exchanged houses in order to return to
our former abode, told me that one night while lying in bed, a ghostly
apparition had drifted through the wall from my brother's old room
into theirs, then floated right over their bed and melted through the

window on the other side.  They were a young couple and a bit

flaky, so I put their 'experience' down to having partaken of
a combination of too much alcohol and weed.

But here's where it gets strange (as you doubtless anticipated).

A few years after having moved back, I was lying in my bed one

night in the small hours when I suddenly became aware of a wizened
old woman in white shuffling towards my bedside.  She stopped and
stooped, lowering her crinkled face towards mine as if scrutinizing it
intently.  For a moment I was paralysed, but then, with a growl, I sat
bolt upright in bed to confront the ancient figure, who immediately
retreated (still facing me) into the far corner of the room
before fading into nothingness.

I sat stunned for a moment, not quite sure what had happened.

Had I seen a ghost, the very one my brother had claimed to have

seen so many years before?  Or had I only been dreaming and sud-
denly awoken - with the figure in my dream somehow still visible
before me, like some swiftly-diminishing after-image?

Who can say for sure?  I still don't believe in ghosts, but that

was certainly a moment which gave me pause for thought.  Any-
one else got any similar experiences?  Feel free to share.

Posted in: Cartoons