The Haunted House

I believe all kids are fascinated by "The Haunted House." I really feel that every kid wants to go to a haunted house. If you don't have a haunted house in your neighborhood you pretend that you do. That's what the kids in my neighborhood did growing up. We had a vacant house that we considered haunted and made several field trips to until one evening something happened that scared us all so bad we never went back there.

The house was on the far northwestern border of our neighborhood. We would go to Pat and Kathy Roche's house and walk through the back yard. We then crossed the field and headed west. It set back about 100 yards off Belt Line. It was a large, old, vacant, and dilapidated house. The doors were open so we could go in any time we wanted to. I went inside that house a few times during daylight hours but I would never go there at night. It was spooky and it was frightening. Part of the fear was deep down inside we all knew that our being in that house was wrong and that if we got caught we were in big trouble. The thing that really fascinated me about this house is that it had a storm cellar. It remains to this day the only storm cellar I have ever seen. It was much like the one in the Wizard of Oz. It was next to the house and it had a trap door that covered it. The door was hinged at the top and required lifting up from the bottom to open it. It was full of trash and was very scary to go down into. That storm cellar gave me the creeps.

One day we were thrown a weird curve ball. Someone had cleaned out the storm cellar. It had a little ledge inside and there was even a mattress on it. This freaked us all out. We decided we had to find out who did that and what was going on in there. We decided to make a field trip out to the place and check it out. We went around dusk and there was still a small amount of daylight left. About half of the kids in our group were there but I really can't say exactly who was there and who wasn't there that night. I do know my brother Dave was not there. Our leader David Skaggs was there and he led the way. There was comfort in knowing David was in charge. We tried to make our way silently towards the house and as is the case with a group of kids silence was next to impossible. I have a clear recollection though of the closer we got David Skaggs telling us over and over to be quiet. David made it to about five feet from the storm cellar door. Mike Skaggs was a few feet behind his brother and Jimmy Cox and I were a few feet behind them. We had actually arrived at our planned destination. We just had no idea what to do next. That decision was made easy for us. There was a sudden creak coming from the cellar door and we could all see that the door was starting to raise. It took about 6 inches of raising for us all to reach the same conclusion and that was we needed to TURN AROUND AND RUN FOR OUR LIVES. Seeing who was down there was no longer our mission as survival was our new goal. Our leader David left nothing but a cloud of dust for us to follow and follow it we did. I had never in my life felt as much sheer terror. I could picture Dracula turning into a bat and flying after me just before the Wolf Man jumped on my back. But somehow we all survived. We ran as a group to the Skagg's house and just trembled with fear for about 30 minutes until we could catch our breath and calm down. We came to a realization that night. We decided that playing records with the girls was a much better way to spend our time. None of us ever went to that house again.

I'm back Wednesday with the weigh in...off and pedaling for now.