My name is Jason. I’m 17 years old. A bit too young for this crap, if you ask me. But that’s the problem. Nobody has asked me. It has just happened. Too young for this.

 

I mean, what did I ever do to deserve this? I…

 

Hold on. Let’s not jump ahead. You normally start at the beginning, don't you? Let's just do that then.

 

Sit back, relax and enjoy this tale of terror, fear, weirdness, horror and haunted…ness. Allow me to present… the scariest night of my life.

Except maybe that one Christmas when I discovered Aunt Jenna and Grampa doing... No. No, this is still worse.

 

I call this story

 

HAUNTED HOUSE HORRORS

(*lightning crack*)

 

 

Prologue

 

“Holy fucking shit,” Freddy exclaimed. He was one of my friends. He was weird. Nerdy, timid, anxious and all that. But I was okay with that. You can’t choose your friends, can you?

Oh wait, yes you can. Well, I did kinda like him. Guess I’m weird too.

 

“Che figo. Dis is awesome,” Mike agreed. He was my other friend. He was the exact opposite of Freddy. He was cool. Popular with a girls. Good at sports. You might call him a jock. He was a bit stupid though. It's worth noting that he was of Italian descent. Sometimes I thought he’d make a nice Mafia boss if he hadn’t been one sandwich short of a picnic.

 

“I know, I know. It’s really rad. Totally,” I said, joining their ardor. “I've found it on the internet. Just typed in ‘Haunted House’ in Ogle and that was the first result. Wait, I've printed it. Let me show you.”

 

I frantically rummaged through all the paper and clutter on my desk. Lots of travel brochures for the next summer holiday. I hadn’t decided yet where to go though, because they all seemed promising. I took a quick look at each of the brochures as I put them aside. Some rentable colonial house in Amityville, New York. Springwood, Ohio. Woodsboro in Northern California. A nice hostel in Slovakia. A farm in Texas. Camp Crystal Lake. That sounded promising. I’d enjoy doing some swimming. Maybe I’d even play some hockey. I guess mom would like that.

 

Finally I found it. An article about Lecter Hall, an old mansion not far outside of town. It was a pretty good article. Very interesting. It even had some pictures. Mike would like that.

 

“I like dat,” Mike said. “Pretty pictures.”

“Yes, but what does it say about the house?” Freddy asked impatiently.

“Too lazy to read it yourself?” I said. “Fine, I’ll tell you the gist of it. Apparently, the house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. The first owner of the house, Anthony Lecter, went mad one night and slaughtered his family with a kitchen knife and then killed himself. Oh, and it has a pet cemetery behind it.”

“So, nothing out of the ordinary, then?”

“Nope.”
“I say: We go dere and invessligate da shit outta dat house,” Mike excitedly exclaimed.

“Agreed,” Freddy said in an agreeable tone. “Though I have to wonder why we’ve never noticed that house before. It’s not like it’s inconspicuous.”

“You’re right, that really is inconp… impo… inspi… weird,” I pondered.

“You are aware that inconspicuous and weird don’t mean the same thing, right? They are not synonyms,” Freddy replied

I just stared at Freddy for a moment, confused. “Nerd,” I eventually said, applauding myself for such a witty retort.

“Maybe some ghosts made da house appear outta thin air,” Mike suggested.

“Then why did I find an article about it on Frickipedia™?” I asked, waving my print in front of his face.

“Maybe da ghosts wrote dat.”

“You know, he could be right,” Freddy said. “Anybody can edit that site nowadays.”

“Whatever. We’ll go tonight,” I said triumphantly, slamming the print on the table, and then resting my hands on it. At the moment, the table broke in two with a loud crash. I fell flat on my face, papers and other junk falling on me. An old banana spattered on my head. Banana juice ran down my face. “Crap,” I muttered. I never really liked bananas anyway.