It was a few days after their wedding day when Timothy and Jane bought their first house together. It was a small home, perfect for the two of them to grow into, located on a hill that overlooked the town they lived in. From the outside, it wasn't much to look at, but on the inside, Jane had done everything she could to make it their own before she and Timothy went off on their honeymoon. While they were away, trying to make the most of the time they had to simply be husband and wife, tragedy struck, rocking their small town to its very core. It was a car accident, or so the story goes. One of those accidents that left nothing but twisted metal, brain matter, and blood splattered across the two-lane highway, leaving coroners to scrape the remains from the road because there were barely any bodies left to seal away in a bag. The legend has changed so much over the years, though, that few people are aware of what is fact and what is fiction. This hasn't stopped it from being passed along - whispers in the street as people drive by the road that leads to the house they'd owned so many years ago. One that sat in disrepair for years because potential buyers always pulled out at the last minute, citing a change of heart or a change of mind as they all but ran to their cars and never looked back.
The things left behind after every showing were what truly baffled the owners and realtors. A box of wine on the kitchen counter and a television remote laying on the floor near the cable jack. They were sure neither of those things had been present prior to potential buyers arriving, but there was no other explanation for them suddenly appearing. Maybe they'd always been there. Maybe they were forgetting things. Maybe the buyers had brought them in - though why each one would come armed with a box of wine and television remote was beyond them. It wasn't that they were naive. They'd heard the stories just the same as everyone else, but ghosts weren't real. Scary stories were just that. Stories passed around from one person to the next. Sometimes to teach a lesson, and other times to ensure that the kids in the town didn't sneak into the home in the middle of the night when the rest of their part of the world was fast asleep. But maybe it meant something that Jane, while alive, loved her Box-O-Wine. And maybe it meant even more that Tim, while alive, spent most of his nights sitting in front of the television set, remote in hand, while eating dinner. Or maybe it meant nothing at all. Coincidences happened everyday, and that was all it was. If they made themselves belive it, it had to be true.
Eventually, after the home had sat unoccupied for too many years to count (some say a decade, some say it's been far longer than that), the home was sold. The townsfolk caught their first glimpse of the new owner when he moved in, the day after Halloween. Jerome was an odd man - both in demeanor and in appearances. The kind of person that everyone in the small town whispered about - just the same as they always had about things that concerned the legendary home. And whisper they did, with hands cupped around their mouths, telling tales that not a single one of them could possibly verify. For five years, he lived there. Coming and going at strange hours, and always with a menagerie of items much more suited for a museum of some sort. On some nights, nearby neighbors swore they could hear horrifying, blood curdling screams coming from the home, but by morning all was forgotten. Or perhaps no one cared enough to look into it further. After all, Jerome's mere presence was enough to frighten most of them, and somehow, they'd all unknowingly decided it was best to keep their distance. But on November 2nd of his fifth year living in their little town, in the house on the hill overlooking everything, he was eerily absent. Months went by, seasons bleeding into the next, with no sign of him.
And so the house reverted back the county, and realtors went to work once again, determined to find the answers to the questions that everyone had but no one had ever voiced. What they found inside the home was enough to send anyone running from the hill, but investigators stuck it out as they uncovered room after room of tortorous objects and blood splattered walls. The man that they'd all whispered about, spinning tales of the life he lead and the reason he moved about so stealthily, even in the middle of the day, turned out to be the most prolific serial killers any smal town had ever seen or heard of. Bodies were piled up a basement freezer that no one had known existed, and missing persons cases that had been left unsolved for countless years were finally answered as victims were ID'd and returned to their loved ones for a proper burial. But even those things - the weapons used and the bodies discarded as if they meant nothing - weren't as strange to law enforcement officials as the empty wine boxes and useless television remotes that were tucked into hidden nooks and crannies, or unearthed from beneath a pile of old clothes and blankets that had seen much better days. It was easy to place the blame for this oddity on Jerome as the town tried to return to their normal lives.
Years continued to pass by, but no one dared enter the old home again. It didn't matter what strange sounds they might've heard in the middle of the night, or that lights flickered off and on sporadically. No one who had been around when Jerome had lived there cared to go back. It wasn't until three decades later, when the stories had become nothing more than local folklore, that people started paying attention again. To the high school students, it became the best haunted house around. Ever year, kids can be seen entering the forbidden home one by one, rolling kegs and carrying sound systems on their shoulders as they shout the tales back and forth and talk about what they'll find behind doors that can barely stay closed anymore. What is there to find, though? Legends speak of more objects appearing, seemingly out of nowhere. Lamps and kitchen knives and axes. Chains that clank together loudly, as if someone is struggling to break free. Where are they coming from, if not the party-goers tripping over a threshold into a world they never dared imagined? Are they being used on the teenagers who are never seen or heard from again, despite exhaustive searches into their disappearance? Does anyone ever make it out alive? Unscathed? Do they become spirits too, trapped in a home no one wanted?
The tales of who haunts the old southern estate change from person to person, and decade to decade. Jane and Timothy. Jerome, and his many victims. The teenagers who thought nothing of the warnings their parents gave them year after year. Despite that, the history of the old home on the hill remains the same. Sad and grisly as it ever was.
The things left behind after every showing were what truly baffled the owners and realtors. A box of wine on the kitchen counter and a television remote laying on the floor near the cable jack. They were sure neither of those things had been present prior to potential buyers arriving, but there was no other explanation for them suddenly appearing. Maybe they'd always been there. Maybe they were forgetting things. Maybe the buyers had brought them in - though why each one would come armed with a box of wine and television remote was beyond them. It wasn't that they were naive. They'd heard the stories just the same as everyone else, but ghosts weren't real. Scary stories were just that. Stories passed around from one person to the next. Sometimes to teach a lesson, and other times to ensure that the kids in the town didn't sneak into the home in the middle of the night when the rest of their part of the world was fast asleep. But maybe it meant something that Jane, while alive, loved her Box-O-Wine. And maybe it meant even more that Tim, while alive, spent most of his nights sitting in front of the television set, remote in hand, while eating dinner. Or maybe it meant nothing at all. Coincidences happened everyday, and that was all it was. If they made themselves belive it, it had to be true.
Eventually, after the home had sat unoccupied for too many years to count (some say a decade, some say it's been far longer than that), the home was sold. The townsfolk caught their first glimpse of the new owner when he moved in, the day after Halloween. Jerome was an odd man - both in demeanor and in appearances. The kind of person that everyone in the small town whispered about - just the same as they always had about things that concerned the legendary home. And whisper they did, with hands cupped around their mouths, telling tales that not a single one of them could possibly verify. For five years, he lived there. Coming and going at strange hours, and always with a menagerie of items much more suited for a museum of some sort. On some nights, nearby neighbors swore they could hear horrifying, blood curdling screams coming from the home, but by morning all was forgotten. Or perhaps no one cared enough to look into it further. After all, Jerome's mere presence was enough to frighten most of them, and somehow, they'd all unknowingly decided it was best to keep their distance. But on November 2nd of his fifth year living in their little town, in the house on the hill overlooking everything, he was eerily absent. Months went by, seasons bleeding into the next, with no sign of him.
And so the house reverted back the county, and realtors went to work once again, determined to find the answers to the questions that everyone had but no one had ever voiced. What they found inside the home was enough to send anyone running from the hill, but investigators stuck it out as they uncovered room after room of tortorous objects and blood splattered walls. The man that they'd all whispered about, spinning tales of the life he lead and the reason he moved about so stealthily, even in the middle of the day, turned out to be the most prolific serial killers any smal town had ever seen or heard of. Bodies were piled up a basement freezer that no one had known existed, and missing persons cases that had been left unsolved for countless years were finally answered as victims were ID'd and returned to their loved ones for a proper burial. But even those things - the weapons used and the bodies discarded as if they meant nothing - weren't as strange to law enforcement officials as the empty wine boxes and useless television remotes that were tucked into hidden nooks and crannies, or unearthed from beneath a pile of old clothes and blankets that had seen much better days. It was easy to place the blame for this oddity on Jerome as the town tried to return to their normal lives.
Years continued to pass by, but no one dared enter the old home again. It didn't matter what strange sounds they might've heard in the middle of the night, or that lights flickered off and on sporadically. No one who had been around when Jerome had lived there cared to go back. It wasn't until three decades later, when the stories had become nothing more than local folklore, that people started paying attention again. To the high school students, it became the best haunted house around. Ever year, kids can be seen entering the forbidden home one by one, rolling kegs and carrying sound systems on their shoulders as they shout the tales back and forth and talk about what they'll find behind doors that can barely stay closed anymore. What is there to find, though? Legends speak of more objects appearing, seemingly out of nowhere. Lamps and kitchen knives and axes. Chains that clank together loudly, as if someone is struggling to break free. Where are they coming from, if not the party-goers tripping over a threshold into a world they never dared imagined? Are they being used on the teenagers who are never seen or heard from again, despite exhaustive searches into their disappearance? Does anyone ever make it out alive? Unscathed? Do they become spirits too, trapped in a home no one wanted?
The tales of who haunts the old southern estate change from person to person, and decade to decade. Jane and Timothy. Jerome, and his many victims. The teenagers who thought nothing of the warnings their parents gave them year after year. Despite that, the history of the old home on the hill remains the same. Sad and grisly as it ever was.
(warning: if you aren't a fan of horror/gore, don't click on the above link!)
LEADS: falafelstand, hotnready, philtippett, tangled
PARTICIPANTS: bluth, brotatochip, btsk, dirtbag, falafelstand, hotnready, mermaid, novel, nyquil, philtippett, slipper, tangled, timeofcholera, waterfalls, webarebears