Scary Stories to Tell :
The house on Maple Street had always been a topic of huffled whispers and wary glances. It stood isolated; a monolith of decrepit wood and crumbling stone that, even on the sunniest days, cast long shadows. For decades, it had been abandoned, its windows like hollow eyes staring into the souls of those who dared to look too long. That was the backdrop of the most terrifying scary story our town had ever known.
It had started on a crisp autumn evening, when a group of teenagers, egged on by dares and the forbidden, went raiding the old house. He had heard the stories: Mrs. Whitaker was this reclusive woman, who lived there all alone when he mysteriously disappeared. They said she had gone crazy, performing strange rituals in a desperate attempt to bring him back. And when she disappeared too, the house was allowed to fall into disrepair—just the right setting for a scary story.
Foreboding wrapped itself around the teenagers as they made their way up toward the house. It nearly opened with a silent groan itself, as if welcoming them inside. Their flashlights threw eerie beams all around the vast expanse inside. The most putrid odor was that of decay and mildew, but the thing that struck them most was the silence. It was as though the house absorbed every sound, every whisper, every call for help.
They saw weird symbols, in a frantic hand, Mrs. Whitaker’s desperate scrawls across the walls to raise the other side. The more they went inside, the chillier it got; it felt as if someone had lowered the thermostat and was even cold enough to see their breath. A girl, Emily, felt a cold hand on her shoulder. She turned to see that no one was there. Others laughed it off nervously, writing it off as her imagination, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
They found an old wooden box, quite dusty, in the basement. Inside, they found old pictures of Mrs. Whitaker and her husband, but something was twisted. In each picture, the face of the husband was either scratched or torn down and, in his place, there appeared a nasty drawing of a twisted, demonic figure. Their shoulders jumped, and their hearts pounded, for there had been a roaring thud that echoed as though something unthinkably heavy had fallen right above their heads.
But their hearts knocking with increased speed, they dashed down to the main floor to find the front door, which wide open, now shut tight, and anyway, their panicking hands soon realized, when they reached it, that it was locked. It simply felt assuring as if the house had come alive, trapping them within an evil embrace.
Emily screamed and once again felt the cold hand reach out for her. Despite her friends holding onto her as hard as they could, they watched her be pulled away with an unconvincable force. They watched in horror as she was dragged up the stairs, her screams echoing through the house.
They pursued her, and in pursuit, fear turned into desperation. They found her in front of a great ornate mirror on the second floor of the house. Her eyes were blank and in the reflection, there was not Emily but Mrs. Whitaker. An old woman smiled—a grotesque twist of lips—and she spoke in a voice that seemed to be Emily’s and her own: “Welcome to my home.”
The mirror shattered and so did Emily. She lay unconscious, yet her friends were able to discern a faint pulse. The four of them carried her out of the house, looking back at that house that seemed at last to give some sign it would release them. They never spoke about that night again, but they all knew something was severely wrong within those walls, waiting like an anticipation nightmare, waiting on the next scary story to imminently begin.
Years later, still standing, it was like a beacon to thrill-seekers and curiosity hunters, but none of them stayed there for long. They say you can still hear Mrs. Whitaker’s whispers in the dark, calling out to those foolish enough to listen, drawing them into her eternal nightmare.
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