Halloween Stories

 

My family has always lived in California, but my parents just moved us into a huge Victorian home that was built in the late 1800s.  It was originally built by a doctor for a dual purpose: it would be a home for his family and would also serve as a private hospital for his patients.  Over the years it has been completely renovated and modernized, so it isn’t as if we’re moving into a rundown house with the wallpaper and paint peeling off the walls.  The kitchen isn’t old fashioned and there aren’t cast iron tubs and no showers in the bathrooms.  In fact, everything is very modern and it’s actually quite nice. 

Let me attempt to give you an idea about what the house looks like.  It is comprised of two stories, plus an attic, and a basement and its most distinctive feature is a round corner tower.  The tower is located on the front left side of the house and is capped with a witch’s hat turret that extends above the roof on the rest of the house.  There is also a large porch that covers the front of the first floor and wraps around the left side of the house, including around the base of the tower. 

The exterior of the house is painted forest green with banana yellow trim around the windows, the frieze beam that supports the porch roof, and the fascia, or trim, which runs along the edge of the roof.  The Balusters, or spindles, on the porch railing are also painted banana yellow, while the handrails, or top of the railing, are painted a dark red.  The columns that support the porch roof are also painted a dark red with white capitals, and there is a covered deck above the porch, directly over the double front doors of the house.  The deck extends from the tower to the middle of the porch roof on the right side, and the deck is painted using the same color scheme as the porch. 

My parents told us the house is painted similar to how it might have looked when it was first built, and there are grey shingles on the roof.  The house also has a plethora of windows, because when it was built the inhabitants and staff relied entirely on natural light during the day. 

The interior of the house is extremely spacious, and when you enter through the double front doors you are in the foyer, directly in front of a splendid mahogany staircase that leads up to the second floor.  Off to the right is the living room, which used to be the waiting room for visitors when part of the building was used as a hospital.  Behind the living room is the family room, which was previously used for storing the medical records.  It was also a place where the staff could write down the information about the patients before filing their notes away, and they could also use the room to relax and take a quick break. 

To the left of the foyer are the dining room and kitchen.  The kitchen used to be much larger than it is now and the dining room was merely a small area where the family and staff would sit and eat their meals.  When the building was remodeled, the kitchen was made smaller, although it is still quite large, and more floor space was given to the dining room. 

Behind the main staircase is a half-bath, and across from it is a small office that my dad will use when he brings work home.  In the rear left corner of the house is the master bedroom, which has its own large bathroom, and to the right of it is a back staircase that leads up to the second floor.  To the right of the staircase is a smaller bedroom that my older sister will use, and in between my sister’s bedroom and the back wall of the family room is a full bath. 

Across from the staircase is the laundry room, which remains as large as it was when it was used to do the laundry for both the family and the hospital.  At the top of the staircase are two more bedrooms and another full bath.  One of those bedrooms will be mine, and my younger brother will use the other one.  Since the original owner only had one daughter, the family used these two rooms for privacy when the hospital was the busiest.

Even though there are two bedrooms at the back of the second floor, they are completely separated from the other bedrooms on the same level.  When this was a hospital, the remaining area was split into two wards for the patients – one at the front of the building and the other running across the center of the second floor.  That ward was next to the wall separating the two bedrooms and bath on the other side. 

When the house was renovated, two more bedrooms were added at the front of the second floor.  The one on the left side of the building has its own bathroom and a door that leads out to the deck, and there is another bedroom to the right of that.  Three more bedrooms were added where the second ward used to be, and in between the two rows of bedrooms are two full baths.  They are located at either end of the hallway that runs from one side of the building to the other at the top of the main staircase.

When the house was remodeled, the second floor was intended to be a separate apartment, and those three bedrooms would have been used for other purposes.  The bedroom on the left would have been used as the dining room, the center bedroom would have been turned into a kitchen, and the bedroom on the right would have been the living room.  The contractor didn’t install the kitchen, however, and left that up to whoever purchased the house, so now you should have an idea about how massive this place is. 

I imagine you now want to know why my family would want to buy such a huge place, since there are only my parents, sister, brother, and myself.  They purchased it because my mom wants to turn it into a bed and breakfast and plans to use the bedrooms on the second floor for those booking rooms at the bed and breakfast.  The front bedroom on the left, which includes a section of the rounded tower, its own bathroom, and access to the deck will be designated as the ‘Honeymoon Suite’.  And since it has more to offer than the other rooms, it will rent at a premium. 

My mom plans to furnish each of the bedrooms used for the bed and breakfast into different themes.  One will have a 1950s décor, the next will have furniture from the 1960s, the third decorated with items from the 1970s, and the fourth, the other bedroom at the front of the house, with furniture from the 1980s.  The ‘Honeymoon Suite’ will be furnished as elegantly and modern as possible. 

I suppose this would be a good time to tell you about my family.  My dad’s name is Albert Morgan and he owns a large real estate agency.  When the previous owners of the house decided to list it, they did it through one of my dad’s agents.  As soon as it was on the books, my dad told my mom, Marcia, about the place and took her to see it.  She immediately fell in love with it and they made a purchase offer on it, and it was accepted before any other potential buyers had a chance to see it or make their own offers.  It didn’t matter to the previous owners, though, because they were happy that my parents were willing to pay the full asking price. 

Before they bought the house, my mom had been in charge of the housekeeping staff at a major hotel, but she’d always wanted to have her own business.  Once she saw this enormous place, having a bed and breakfast seemed like the perfect choice. 

As I told you, I have a sister and brother, and my sister, Erica, is 17.   She is two years older than me, and my name is Seth.  My younger brother is named Matt and he’s 12.  For the most part, the three of us get along fairly well, although we have the typical sibling spats from time-to-time.  This house should help to alleviate some of that, since it’s large enough that we can easily get away from one another, if we want. 

We moved into the house in mid-June, because my parents wanted us to finish the school year first, since this house is in another school district.  Moving after school ended also meant we were available to help with the move and getting the house set up.  It also gave us a chance to completely explore the place before school started in the fall.  

We spent the summer packing up our things at our old house and cleaning the new one, and then we moved everything from one house to the other and started to unpack.  It was a lot of work, but it made my mom happy, so we were willing to do this for her.  It will probably be a while before she starts advertising and opens the bed and breakfast, though, because now she has to shop for furniture for the bedrooms that will be used by the guests. 

When the summer came to an end and school started, we eventually started making friends.  One of the first questions they would ask us was where we lived, and when we told them, Erica’s and my friends were eager to tell us about the history of our new home. 

“That’s the old Schneider home and hospital,” Jennifer, one of Erica’s new friends told us.  “Dr. Schneider ran it from 1892 until 1936 when he died.  They say he died in his sleep, but I heard that one of his patients or one of the people that worked there might have killed him.  Once he was gone, though, the people living around this area started hearing that he’d been performing illegal and very dangerous experiments on his patients.” 

“Yeah, I heard that most of the patients he experimented on came to him because they couldn’t afford to go to the other hospital,” Stacey, another of Erica’s new friends added.  “He wouldn’t charge them for anything if they agreed to let him use experimental procedures while he was treating them.  They just didn’t know what they were agreeing to, because he didn’t explain everything to them.”

“My dad said most of his patients immediately regretted to agreeing to let him do this,” added Kellin, one of my new friends, “cuz what he did to them amounted to torture.”

“Yeah, I heard he operated on them and used little or no anesthesia,” stated Barry, another of my new friends.  “One of my teachers said he was actually worse than that Nazi doctor, Dr. Mengele, and Dr. Mengele was the one they called the ‘Angel of Death’.”   

“So did many people die in our house?” I asked, growing concerned. 

“Yeah, lots of them,” Stacey replied.  “Besides Dr. Schneider, a lot of his patients died there too, and later Dr. Schneider’s wife also died there.  She kept the house after her husband died and lived there with her daughter, but it was no longer used as a hospital.  She closed off the second floor and it sat empty for a number of years.”

“So, what happened to the house when she died?” asked Matt. 

“She left the house to her daughter, Lucinda, and she continued living there until she died, but she died in a nursing home.  Lucinda left the house to her daughter, April, but April refused to live there and the place sat empty for a really long time.”

“Then who fixed it up?” asked Erica.  “It’s really nice inside, so somebody must have renovated it.”

“Yeah, I heard that Alice practically gave the house away to a contractor so she wouldn’t have to continue paying the taxes,” replied Stacey.  “My dad said the contractor worked on the house for a couple of years to fix it up as income property, but then he decided to sell it.  That’s probably who your family bought it from.”

“No, we bought it from a couple,” Erica responded. 

“Yeah, but it was probably the contractor and his wife.”

“Oh, ok.  I guess that makes sense.”

After we were told all of this information, Erica and I were a little freaked out about being in the house.  How many people have died there and were their ghosts still around?  I’ve heard that people who died suddenly or in terrible ways often stuck around afterward and haunted the place where they died.  Nobody said anything about stuff like that, so maybe there aren’t any ghosts here, at least that’s what we’re hoping.  I’ll keep my eyes and ears open from now on and I’ll talk to Erica about it too, but we won’t mention it to Matt.  He’s so young that it would probably scare him even worse than it’s scaring us.

We hadn’t heard or seen anything that would make us think there were ghosts in the house, and we’d been here for about four months now.  In fact, Halloween would be here in another month, so I decided to ask Matt what he was going to dress up as this year.  I thought that would keep him from thinking about things, in case he’d heard similar stories from the kids at his school, although he didn’t seem to be as concerned about anything, as Erica and I were.

“I don’t know,” Matt answered when I brought it up.  “I did Harry Potter last year and a Stormtrooper from Star Wars the year before that.” 

“You like transformers, so how about one of those costumes.”

“Yeah, I guess that would be alright.”

“If you want, I’ll go online with you and we’ll look around to see what’s available.” 

“Ok, let’s do that.  If I find somethin’ I like, then I’ll tell Rory and Paul so maybe we can all go as transformers.”  Rory and Paul were the new friends Matt had made since moving here. 

After looking at the costumes on a couple of different sites, Matt decided that he wanted to go as Optimus Prime, so I kept the window open on my laptop while he went to call Rory and Paul.  When he came back, he was very excited. 

“Yeah, they want to do it too, so we’ll hafta get Mom and Dad to order this costume for me.”  He then ran off to talk to them about it and came back a few minutes later.

“Dad said he’d order it for me, so take your laptop down so he can do it.  Mom said she’ll drive the three of us around on Halloween and let Rory and Paul tell us which houses to go to, cuz she doesn’t know very many people yet.” 

“Yeah, that should work.”

“Are you gonna go trick-or-treatin’ this year?”

“Nah, I’m getting too old for that.” 

“Ok, but I’m not givin’ you any of my candy.”

“That’s fine.  Maybe I’ll just see if me and Erica can have our friends come here while you and mom are goin’ from house to house.  She’ll prob’ly let us do that, since Halloween is on a Saturday.”  

“Are they gonna sleep here too?”

“I don’t know, because Erica and I haven’t talked to them about it yet.”

“If they do, then I’m gonna ask Mom and Dad if they’ll let me have Rory and Paul stay over after we get back from trick-or-treatin’.”  

After we cleared the idea with our parents, Erica, Matt, and I talked to our friends to see what they thought about the idea of coming to our house for Halloween.  They all thought it sounded like a great idea, because they were anxious to see this place as well.  They were going to bring their sleeping bags with them, because our beds weren’t big enough for three of us to sleep together. 

“Me and my friends are all gonna be Optimus Prime,” Matt told me, “cuz the only other Transformer costume they could find was for Muscle Bumblebee.” 

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said to make sure he wasn’t upset about it. 

“Yeah, they showed me what their costume will look like and both of their Optimus Prime costumes are different than mine, and I think my costume looks the best.”

“That’s even better then.” 

“Yeah, cuz it would prob’ly be weird if our costumes were all ‘xactly the same.”

                                                *           *           *           *

On Halloween, our friends came to our house early, because my mom had invited them to have dinner with us too.  We had time to give them a tour of the place first, and after we ate, Mom and Dad took Matt and his friends trick-or-treating and left the rest of us at the house alone.  Almost immediately, Erica’s friend, Jennifer, made a suggestion. 

“I brought a spirit board with me so we could see if there are any ghosts here.  I know you said you haven’t seen or heard anything to make you think this place is haunted, but there can still be ghosts here.”  She then pulled out a package that she had wrapped up in her sleeping bag. 

“Hey, that’s a Ouija board,” snapped Barry, one of my friends.

“Yeah, different people use different names for it, and some even call it a talking board, but it’s all the same thing.”

“How are we going to do this?” Erica asked.  “We won’t all be able to do it at the same time.”

“No, so we can take turns,” offered Stacey, Erica’s other friend.  “Three people can do it together, so the three of us will ask a few questions first and then the guys can do it next.”

We were all fine with that, so she set the board down on the dining room table and placed the planchette, a small heart-shape pointer or indicator, on it.  Spirit boards can vary slightly in design, but they all include the same basic information.  On the spirit board that Jennifer brought with her, the alphabet was arranged in an arc at the top, split into two rows.  In the middle of the board were two words, ‘YES’ on the left and ‘NO’ on the right, and below that was a row of numerals.  At the very bottom of the board was the word ‘GOODBYE’. 

Erica and her friends put their index and middle fingers of each hand on one of the corners of the planchette and Jennifer asked the first question.  “Dr. Schneider, are you here with us?”

Nothing happened after quite a few seconds, so she assumed it meant he wasn’t here.  She immediately followed it with another question. 

“Is there anyone here with his tonight?”  Slowly, the planchette began to move and soon covered the word ‘YES’. 

“Are you the only one here?” Stacey followed, and once again the planchette began to move.  This time it didn’t stop until it was over the word ‘NO’.

“How many spirits are there?” asked Erica. 

The planchette moved more quickly this time and slowly hovered over various letters of the alphabet. M-A-N-Y it spelled out. 

“I guess that means there are too many to count,” Jennifer stated.  “Were you all patients of Dr. Schneider?”  The planchette immediately glided back to the word ‘YES’.

“Did you die because you were ill?” asked Stacey. 

“The planchette moved to ‘NO’, and then it went to the alphabet and spelled out another word.  K-I-L-L-E-D. 

“Did Dr. Schneider kill you?” Erica blurted out.  The planchette sped over to the word ‘YES’.

“Do you mean because of his experiments?” questioned Jennifer.  The planchette went to the word ‘YES’ first, and then back to the alphabet.  T-O-R-T-U-R-E.  

“Does that mean the experiments were torture?” followed Stacey, and once again the planchette zoomed over to the word ‘YES’.

“Let us take a turn to ask questions,” I urged.  “We want to try this too.”

Reluctantly, the girls switched places with us and Barry, Kellin, and I placed our fingers on the corner of the planchette. 

“Is that why you’re still here?” I asked.  ‘YES’ came the reply. 

“Why did you stay here?  Why didn’t you just go toward the light?” demanded Kellin.  R-E-V-E-N-G-E came the reply.

“But how are you going to get revenge if Dr. Schneider isn’t here?” asked Barry.  Y-O-U came the response.

“So, you’re going to take revenge on us for what Dr. Schneider did to you?” I followed.  ‘YES’ came the answer. 

“But why us?  We didn’t do anything to you,” pleaded Kellin. 

’YES’ was the response, followed by C-O-N-T-A-C-T.

“So, you’re pissed at us because we used the Ouija board to contact you?” asked Barry. 

‘YES’ was the response, and then the planchette was ripped away from us so we were no longer in contact with it.  Once that happened, the planchette sped around the board as if it was possessed and spelled out a series of words.  G-A-M-E, H-U-R-T-F-U-L, R-E-L-A-T-E-D, and H-A-T-E.  

“Fuck, this was a really bad idea,” stated Erica, and then the spirit board and planchette suddenly went flying into the air and landed on the floor.

“We’re sorry!  We didn’t mean any harm,” cried Jennifer, since she was the one who brought the spirit board with her. 

The spirits couldn’t reply because the board was face down on the floor, but they communicated with us in another way – by knocking Jennifer out of her chair.  She landed on the floor with a thud and bruised her right arm in the fall, and shortly after that happened, I felt a burning sensation on my back, but I had no idea what had caused it. 

“Kellin, will you see if there’s something wrong with my back,” I asked as I lifted up my shirt. 

“Fuck, you’ve got three long scratch marks that run across your back, just above your waistband.”

“I though they did something to me, cuz it hurt like hell.”

“What are we going to do to make them stop?” asked Stacey. 

“I have no idea,” answered Erica.  “I guess we’ll have to wait and ask my parents when they get back.”

Just after she said that, we heard a crash in the kitchen, so we all ran there to see what had happened.  As we moved through the doorway, we could see there were pots and pans strewn across the floor. 

“They’re obviously knocking stuff out of the cupboards!” Erica screamed.  

“We should be grateful they only did it to the pots and pans and not the dishes,” I countered. 

As soon as she said that, dishes came flying out of other cupboards and crashed onto the floor.  Most broke into pieces, but others somehow survived intact, but it startled us badly.

“Don’t give them any more fucking ideas!” Erica screamed at me in response. 

“Let’s go to the family room,” I suggested.  “Maybe they’ll leave us alone if we’re not near the spirit board.” 

“We can try,” Erica concurred and then we all raced to the family room. 

We merely stood around in a group when we first got there, because we were waiting to see if anything else was going to happen.  After doing this for a minute, we began to feel we were safe, but that’s when something else happened.  I heard a growl, or possibly a groan, coming from behind me, but when I turned around no one was there.

“Did you guys hear that?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I thought one of you did it,” Stacey replied.  “I thought maybe one of you got scratched or punched.”

“No, that wasn’t it,” I replied, but then Barry got shoved so hard that he crashed into Kellin.

“Hey, watch out!” Kellin screamed. 

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Barry stated.  “One of the ghosts pushed me.” 

“Would it help if we went upstairs?” Stacey wondered, and just at that moment we heard someone stomping around on the second floor.

“I g-g-guess they’re already there,” Barry stammered. 

“And the spirits might also try to push us down the stairs if we go up there,” Erica pointed out. 

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t think about that.  I was just thinking that there isn’t anything for them to get into or throw at us.”

No sooner had she said this than a brass candle holder with a candle in it came flying off the fireplace mantle and was heading directly at us.  “Fuck!  That nearly hit me,” Kellin screamed. 

“Let’s wait in the foyer then, cuz there’s hardly anything there for the ghosts to throw at us,” Erica offered. 

We had only been in the foyer for a few seconds when the front door suddenly opened.  We all jumped when we heard the door hit the stop, because we’d been looking toward the family room at the time, and as we turned toward the door, we saw my mom, dad, Matt, and his friends.  We were surprised to see them there, because we hadn’t heard the SUV pull into the driveway or its doors slamming shut and thought the spirits had opened the front door instead. 

“What are all of you kids doing in the foyer and why did you jump and look so frightened when we came inside?” asked Dad. 

“We’ve got a big problem here,” Erica answered, and then she gave my parents a quick rundown of everything that had happened since they’d left the house earlier. 

“Messing around with a Ouija board wasn’t a very smart thing to do,” Dad scolded us.  “The spirit world doesn’t like it when the living starts using it to bother them, and since you’re all kids, they probably felt you were making fun of them or just playing games at their expense.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the words they used.  They spelled out the words game and hurtful, but we didn’t mean anything by doing it,” said Jennifer sheepishly.  “We just wanted to see if Dr. Schneider or any of his patients were still here.” 

“It appears that you’ve received your answer then.”

My brother and his friends had come into the house last and hadn’t bothered to close the door, and now it slammed shut.  This caused all of us to jump and turn in that direction, while the girls and Matt’s friends all began to scream. 

“That scared the crap out of me,” gasped Matt.

“Yeah, me too,” I confirmed, “but what are we gonna do to stop this?”

“Let me call a few people I know and see if they have any suggestions.  We probably won’t be able to do anything about it tonight, so I hope the spirits calm down a bit now that your mother and I are here.”

Dad had no sooner finished saying this when we began hearing banging noises that sounded as if someone was pounding his fists or head into the wall.  While that was happening, Dad went off to make his call and Mom went out to the kitchen.  She swept up the broken dishes and disposed of them in the garbage, and then she picked up the remaining dishes, pots, and pans and washed them off.  She then placed them on the counter to dry and had just come back to join us when we heard another loud crash. 

“I guess they must like those things better on the floor,” she said with a disgusting look on her face as she rolled her eyes. 

Dad was gone for more than a half hour, and during that time the pocket door to the living room, which could be closed to separate the living room from the foyer, began sliding back and forth.  This happened multiple times and finally ended with a loud thud as it moved into place in each direction. 

“It’s like the ghosts are doing all this stuff to drive us crazy,” stated Kellin. 

“Yeah, we bothered them, so now they’re botherin’ us,” I agreed.

When Dad came back, I immediately asked a question.  “Did you find out anything?”

“Yes, one of the people I called knows a group that deals with situations like this.  He’s going to give the guy who runs the group a call to see if they can help us.  If they agree, he’s going to have the guy call me back.”

“Are we going to be able to stay here tonight?” asked Erica. 

“Let’s wait to see if I get a call back, and if I do, I’ll ask him the same question.”

It was nearly 10:30 before my dad’s cell phone rang, and he went into the other room to talk so we wouldn’t overhear his conversation.  When he returned, we all held our breath while waiting to see what he had to say. 

“The guy whom I just spoke to has a group of several mediums that deal with haunted locations.  Unfortunately, they won’t be able to get here until tomorrow afternoon, but he told me what to do and what to say to get the spirits to calm down until they arrive.”

“So, we can stay here then?” Erica questioned.

“Yes, he said if I do what he’s suggested then we should be fine until they get here.”  We all breathed a sigh of relief. 

“So, what are you supposed to do?” asked Mom. 

“This is what he told me to say,” Dad replied, and when he continued, he was speaking in a much louder voice.  “I’m addressing the spirits in this house and I want you to know we mean you no harm.  I also want you to know that my children and their friends didn’t mean to offend you when they used the spirit board.  We are not related to Dr. Schneider and we had nothing to do with what happened to you, but this is our house and I command you not to harm us.  We apologize if we offended you in any way.”

I was happy that the spirits hadn’t thrown anything at him while he was speaking.  

“We’ve heard that Dr. Schneider did terrible things to you,” Dad continued, “and he possibly cost you your lives, but that happened around a hundred years ago, which was well before any of us were even born.  Once again, we apologize for bothering you this evening and we’re sorry for the pain and suffering that Dr. Schneider caused you.”

Nothing more happened for the next few minutes after Dad said this, so he turned to ask Mom a question.  “Would you happen to have any sage in the house?”

“Actually, I do.  I used some in each of the dried arrangements that I’ve placed around the house.”

“Will you go collect the sage for me?  I was advised that I should light it and then blow out the flames so it’s merely smoking, and then I’m to take it around the house and fan the smoke into every room.  It may not get rid of our boarders completely, but it might get them to quiet down until the others arrive.”

Once Mom had collected the sage and given it to Dad, he lit it, blew out the flames, and then began fanning the smoke throughout the various rooms of the house that we lived in.  He started with the bedrooms, and once he finished there, he urged us to take our friends to our bedrooms and try to get some sleep.  We did as he suggested and went to use the toilet and brushed our teeth before turning in, and while we were doing that, he finished taking the sage around the rest of the downstairs.  Mom said he then went up to do the empty rooms on the second floor, and when he finished, he and Mom went to their bedroom for the night.

Things were quiet for the next ten or fifteen minutes after we closed my bedroom door, but it didn’t remain that way for very long.  All of the sudden, we started hearing footsteps going up and down the stairs, and then my bedroom door began to open and then slammed shut on its own.  When that happened, Barry and Kellin climbed out of their sleeping bags and jumped into bed with me.  We crammed into it together and buried our heads under the blankets, and then something grabbed the blankets and attempted to pull them off of us.  Fortunately, we were all gripping the blankets tightly as we hid, so they were pulled completely off of us.

I wondered if Seth and Erica were having similar problems in their rooms, but I wouldn’t find that out until the morning.  In the meantime, the noise from the door continually opening and banging shut made it nearly impossible for us to fall asleep. 

After an hour of these shenanigans, the house began to quiet down and we were finally able to get some shuteye.  Even though the spirits had quieted down, I believe each of us saw and heard them in our dreams.  It wasn’t a very relaxing slumber. 

The next morning, the three of us and our friends got up and dragged our weary bodies downstairs to have breakfast with everyone else.  I told my brother, sister, and their friends what we had experienced after my buds and I went to my room and they replied that they’d dealt with similar problems.  Our parents wouldn’t admit if they’d experience similar situations, but we suspected they had.

“Did any kids die in Dr. Schneider’s hospital?” asked Stacy.

“I’m not sure, but some kids might have been treated by him and died here too,” I answered.  “Why do you ask?”

“It’s because I woke up in the night and heard laughing, and it sounded like little kids.”

“That might explain a few things then,” Dad quipped.  “Maybe it was the spirits of the children, not the adults that kept opening the bedroom doors and slamming them shut again,”

“Yeah, and they were probably the ones that kept trying to pull the blankets off our bed too,” added Rory.

“Yes, that would make more sense,” Mom mused.  “They weren’t trying to harm anyone and were merely pulling pranks they thought were funny.” 

“We didn’t think they were so funny,” all of us kids responded at nearly the same time. 

“Yes, I suppose you didn’t.”

“Yeah, they kept us up when they did those things so we didn’t get much sleep,” Erica added. 

“Well, you can all take a nap later, if you’re still tired.”

When we finished eating, Dad told our friends to pack up their things and he’d take them home. 

“And don’t forget your spirit board,” Dad advised Jennifer. 

“Ok, I won’t,” she confirmed, “and I think I’m going to stick it in the trash for the garbage men to pick up this week.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.”

We all went with them, because none of us wanted to be left behind.  Even Mom rode along, since she didn’t want to be left alone with the spirits. 

After dropping each of our friends off at their house, we returned to face the spirits again, but surprisingly they were very quiet this time.  It made us wonder if this was due to the fact that Jennifer and her Ouija board were no longer here, but whatever had caused it, we were grateful for the peace and quiet. 

The guy who’d called Dad showed up with his group of mediums shortly after we finished lunch and they asked us to either wait outside or take a ride while they did their thing.  They claimed it would be easier if we weren’t there to cause a distraction and explained that it would probably take them a couple of hours to finish up.  They agreed to tell us all about it when we returned. 

Dad drove us to the public library so we could ask the librarian if there was any information about our house or Dr. Schneider in their vast collection.  Luckily, we were told they had several documents that we might find interesting, and then Dad read the newspaper clipping and other articles so he could summarize them for us.  The librarian made him do this, since the materials were old and delicate, and Dad had to put on gloves before the librarian would let him handle those items. 

“It says here that Dr. Schneider operated the private hospital for more than forty years, and after he died stories about his experiments began to circulate throughout the community.  He’d been performing dangerous and unproven experimental procedures on the patients and often operated on them with limited or no anesthesia.  Those operations were believed to be excruciating for his patients and nearly all of them died, either from shock or infections afterward.  That’s why it wasn’t discovered sooner, because no one lived long enough to tell anyone else what was being done to them.  They only found out about this when searching his medical records.”

“No wonder the spirits wanted to get revenge for what he put them through,” I stated.  “Not only did he do those things to them, but he made them suffer too.”

“Yes, it wasn’t very humane or ethical.”

Dad called the man to see if we could return home, and when we entered the house, the man greeted us.  “I believe we’ve been able to eliminate your problem,” he began. 

“What did you do?” Matt asked. 

“We talked with the spirits about what had happened to them and explained that the people currently living in the house had nothing to do with it.  We then urged them to move into the light and explained that it would give them the peace and tranquility that they’d been seeking.  Some left fairly quickly, while others were more reluctant to do as we suggested.  After the way they’d been treated previously, they were afraid we weren’t giving them all of the details and possibly trying to trick them, the same way that Dr. Schneider had done when they signed up for his help.  They were leery that this was just another scam.”

“So, how did you convince them?” asked Erica. 

“I’m not sure we did.  I think that after watching some of the others doing as we suggested and they didn’t hear any screams or see any problems, they finally convinced themselves it was safe to do as we asked.”

“I’m just glad you were able to help us,” Dad responded, and then he paid them for their services. 

We didn’t have any more incidents at the house after that, and the following Halloween Matt and I had our friends over again.  Erica and her friends were in college by then, so this time it was just Matt and me with the same friends as before, but we enjoyed a much quieter evening this time. 

The only thing that’s happened, and it’s happened every year since, is that Matt has confirmed the scars on my back would get enflamed and this would last for a few days before they went away again.  It’s possible that the guys my dad called didn’t get rid of all of the ghosts, just most of them, because why else would those marks on my back reappear every year?

I never understood why I was the one that the spirits had picked on in the first place.  It was Jennifer who was the one who had brought the spirit board and that’s what annoyed them, but we eventually decided that since she had gotten rid of it, the spirits must have felt she was no longer a threat and decided not to do anything to her.

We also did some more research and discovered that Dr. Schneider’s full name was Dr. Albert ‘Seth’ Schneider, so maybe that’s what the spirits meant when they’d spelled out R-E-V-E-N-G-E.   It’s possible that since my name is Seth, the spirits must have thought I was directly related to Dr. Schneider.  In any case, we’ll never forget the first Halloween we spent in this Victorian mansion. 

 

THE END.