A Ghostly Encounter

Sidney and I were playing basketball the day Kathy Frasier whipped into the driveway so hard she almost slid off the cattle guard. She came to a skidding halt at the end of the gravel drive pelting our legs with stones. Before I had a chance to say anything she was out of her car running toward me.

"I need you to come with me!" she blurted out as she came to an abrupt stop in front of me.

"Come with you where?" I asked, already determined I wasn't going anywhere with this crazy woman.

"I'll tell you all about it on the way." she replied and as she reached for my arm she added, "Come on, let's get going!"

"I can't just up and leave with you Kathy." I told her, "I've got things to do before dad gets home."

She turned, ran to the back door and yanked it open, then rushed inside.

"What the heck was that all about?" Sidney asked, bouncing the basketball on the ground in front of him.

"I don't have a clue." I replied

"Are you going to go with her?" he asked.

"Absolutely not!" I replied with a stern look on my face. I snatched the basketball from him, bounced it once and made a wild toss toward the hoop. The ball hit the rim and bounced right back into Sidney's hands.

Just then the back door opened and Kathy reappeared followed closely by my mom. "Bob, I want you to go with Kathy." she said adding "I'm sure you'll be back in time to do the chores your dad wanted you to do."

"Go where?" I asked again.

"Just go with her son, she needs to have someone with her." Mom said.

"Have fun." Sidney said with a laugh.

I spun around and grabbed his arm. "Oh no!" I said, "If I have to go then you have to go too." I informed him.

"No way!" he tried to pull away.

"I think that's a great idea." Kathy chimmed in, "Let's get going before it gets any later."

Sidney and I reluctantly got into the car, he in the back and I got in on the passenger side while Kathy slid under the wheel and cranked the car. She yanked the gearshift into reverse and spun in the gravel as she tromped down on the gas pedal.

It was just a good thing there wasn't any traffic coming, because she whipped back out onto the road, and jamming the transmition into drive and sped away. Mom stood there watching, shaking her head.

We were almost to Nine Pines Store before I could get her to start talking about why she wanted me to go with her.

"I went to look at a place to rent this morning." she said glancing over at me. "And I got the strangest feeling I was being watched the whole time I was there."

"And you think having a highschool kid with you is going help?" I asked with a touch of sarcasm.

"There's always strength in numbers." she said.

For most of the trip after that we rode along in silence except on a couple occassions she would start telling us about this house out in the country and how much she really wanted to live there. "It's really a nice place." she stated several times, "I was just getting this really strange feeing while I was walking around it."

"Like you were being watched." I commented each time she said that.

"I get goosebumps just thinking about it." she said once, holding her arm out so I could see there really were goosebumps covering it.

Sydney was constantly making faces and snickering at me from the back seat while we were driving.

Finally Kathy turned off the main road onto a graveled one lane driveway. She came to a skidding stop as we pulled up to a low water crossing. You have to understand, it was the middle of the summer in Oklahoma and it hadn't rained in days. And here this low water crossing had swift running water almost to overflowing.

Of course I had no idea of how deep it was, but Kathy refused to drive through it claiming that it was too deep. She claimed that when she left there a little more than an hour before it had been completely dry.

I tried to talk her into turning around and we could come back another day to look at the house.

"And let someone else rent it out from under me?" she asked. "No way, we'll walk from here."

"You mean wade?" Sidney asked.

"Yep!" she replied and got out of the car.

Sydney and I looked at each other in disbelief then got out of the car.

"If you have wallets you might want to put them in your shirt pockets." She said as she eased herself into the swift water. She quickly slipped into chest deep water.

I decided to hold my wallet over my head while wading through. Sydney, of course, never carried a wallet but he took off his new sneakers and held them up to keep them from getting wet.

About halfway across Sydney lost his footing in the current and fell, going completely underwater, shoes and all. When he popped back up you could see the disappointment on his face as he drained the water from his shoes.

"You probably wouldn't have fallen if you'd kept them on." I laughed.

We stumbled up out of the water on the other side and stood there for a few minutes letting the water drain from our cloths. Being over 6 feet tall my shirt pocket was still dry enough to put my wallet in without getting it wet.

Kathy looked down at the waterline across her chest and laughed. "It's a good thing I wore a bra today." she said

When we finally started walking down the road Kathy began telling us more about the house. She described a white picket fence and a screened in front porch that ran the full width of the house.

"There's a stairwell leading to the upstairs bedroom on the outside of the house." she said with a puzzled look on her face. "Why would anyone put the stairs outside?" she asked no one in particular.

It was well over a half mile from the low water crossing to the house and because of the bend in the road you couldn't see anything until you were almost there. The large Oak tree was the first thing we saw, then the picket fence started coming into view.

"I can feel it already." Kathy said as we rounded the bend enough to see the screened in front porch. She ran her left hand up and down her right arm, feeling the goosebumps that had popped back up.

When we reached the gate to the picket fence Sydney opened it and we strolled into the side yard to the house. We hadn't taken more than 4 or 5 steps when Sydney stopped dead in his tracks and said "I thought you told us this place was vacant."

"It is." Kathy assured him.

"Then who is that old man staring at us through that window right there?" he asked, pointing at small window on the side of the house.

Neither of us saw anyone in the window and both commented as such. But Sydney insisted there was an old man in that window and started describing him. A broad face with gray hair and big bushy eyebrows. "And he looks mad, Kathy" he said, glancing over at her.

"Where'd he go?" he asked when he looked back at the window.

"There was never anyone there, Syd." I told him.

When we started moving again Sydney walked straight up to the window he claimed the old man was looking out of and tried looking in but it was too high off the ground. I, for some reason, started walking around the back corner of the house and just as I stepped around the back corner I felt a sharp pain in my left rib cage.

The pain was so intense it dropped me to my knees. Both Kathy and Sydney came running over to me.

"What's wrong?" they both asked at the same time. I explained about the pain through clenched teeth, holding my side with both hands.

With one on each side they gripped my arms and virtually dragged me across the yard almost to the spot we were in when Sydney saw the old man in the window.

By the time they stopped so had the pain.

"If you want to leave now, we can." Kathy said, looking concerned.

My curiosity had been peaked though and I wasn't about to leave without trying to find out more about that place.

When we started moving again we all walked around to the front. There were no doors on the screened porch. Someone must have removed them long ago, cause there was no sign of them. On the porch just to the left of the steps an old wooden rocker lay on it's side against the wall and a feather mattress from a single bed drapped across it.

While we stood there Kathy admitted that it wasn't a feeling of being watched she had experienced that morning. It was a feeling of an evil presence that scared her away.

"I wanted to go up on the porch and look through the windows to see what it looked like on the inside." she told us "But I took one step up and was literally overcome with fear."

"So why did you come to get me?" I asked, feeling quite puzzled by her admission.

"Because I've known you were sensative to such things since the first time I met you." she replied.

"How do you figure that?" I asked.

"It's just a feeling I get about people." she said.

I really didn't know what to think about her claim, but I hadn't seen anything yet and was pretty sure I wouldn't. So without a word I boldly stepped up on the porch, walked past the rocker and bedding and leaned down to look through the window.

I cupped my hand over my eyes to block out the glare of the sky on the window and peered in. For a brief instant I saw the bare hardwood floors and dingy painted walls and suddenly the view changed.

Before me, sitting on a couch in the front room, was a boy who appeared to be about 8 years old. In his hands was a broom handle which he was slowly and systematically moving it back and forth in front of him. He seemed to be intently watching something in the front corner of the room (to my left). My first impression was he must be watching television, but I could hear no sound.

A woman entered the room, obviously his mother, and stopped partially turned away from me. From the reaction of the boy she must have been talking to him, but again I heard no sound coming through the window.

As it dawned on me that I was witnessing something supernatural I turned to leave the porch. When I did I found Sydney's old man sitting in that rocking chair with a shotgun in his lap. He was just staring out across the field in front of the house. I stood frozen in my tracks.

"What do you see?" Kathy yelled, I don't know how many times she had asked before I finally told her about the old man and what I had seen inside the house.

"Get off the porch!" Sydney started yelling at me repeatedly.

There was nothing I wanted more, but there he was, virtually blocking my way. There was just enough room for me to walk in front of him. I finally decided that he wasn't real. "There's no way he can hurt me." I said aloud.

"What?" Kathy asked.

"He can't hurt me." I repeated, "He's not real."

I decided to concentrate my attention on the corner post in the front yard and start moving toward it. I could still see him out of the corner of my eye, but I didn't dare stop.

When he finally passed out of my peripheral vision I couldn't help myself and turned to see if he was still there. The rocker was back on it's side covered once again with the mattress. As soon as I saw that I bolted off the porch and ran almost to that corner post before spinning around and knealing down. I don't remember ever being so frightened in my life.

Kathy and Sydney joined me and we started discussing what I saw. I told them I believed the boy was mentally handicapped because of how he was waving the broomhandle around.

We talked for a few minutes when suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

"We're being watched!" I told them and started looking around to see who might be there. I saw no one, but the feeling just got stronger and stronger. I don't know what caused me to look up at the second floor window, but there he was. And when I looked at him he smiled and started dancing around.

"It's him!" I said pointing at the window. Both Kathy and Sydney looked up and saw him in the window. Without a word we all jumped up and ran for the gate.

The next thing I knew Kathy and Sydney were yelling for me to stop. I did stop and suddenly realized I was heading for the barn. How I had gotten over the fence I didn't know. But when I stopped I swore I heard a loud rumble come from inside the barn, and there he was again, looking out at me from just inside the barn door.

I jumped back over the wooden gate and started running for the car. Behind me I could hear Sydney pleading for us to wait. As long as I had known him he had been overweight and he just could not keep up with us.

I plunged into the water and settled near the far side sitting on the concrete base, out of breath. Kathy was just coming around the bend and I could hear Sydney begging her to slow down from beyond the bend.

After Sydney caught up to us we climbed out of the water and stood by the car long enough for most of the water to drain out of our cloths. None of us said a word, we just got into the car and Kathy turned us toward home and started driving.

About a mile after we'd turned back onto the main road Kathy suddenly said "I'm thirsty." and whipped the car into a driveway leading up the hill to a house. There was an older woman sitting on the porch who simply smiled as we came to a stop and Kathy got out.

"Would you mind terribly if I asked you for a glass of water?" she asked stopping just short of stepping up on the porch.

"Not at all." the woman replied, then looked at me and Sydney still sitting in the car and added. "As a matter of fact, I just made a picture of fresh lemonaide. Would you all like a glass?"

Kathy turned and looked at us for approval then turned back. "That would be wonderful." she said.

Sydney and I got out of the car and walked over and sat on the steps. The woman came out of the house with a tray of glasses filled with iced lemonaide and served each of us a glass.

Still no one was talking. We sipped our drinks, while passing looks back and forth.

It was the woman who broke the silence when she asked. "You've been to the Anderson house, haven't you?"

"Where's the Anderson house?" Kathy asked.

"The house that's for rent about a mile back up the road." she replied.

"What makes you ask?" Kathy asked.

"Well, from the looks on all your faces." she replied, then added "they've been trying to rent that old place for years without any luck."

"Why's that?" I asked. But I already knew the answer.

She began to tell the story about the couple who'd lived there. The land had been given to the highschool sweethearts for their wedding gift. "They built that house with their bare hands." she said.

Mr. Anderson had desparately wanted a son and they tried for years and had all but given up when Mrs Anderson finally became pregnant at the age of 35. She gave birth to a healthy boy and the old man was so proud until the day came when the doctor informed them the boy was mentally retarded.

"In time it literaly drove him crazy." the woman said. "When the boy was big enough to be moved to the bedroom upstairs Mr Anderson tore out the staircase inside and built the one on the side of the house. He absolutely refused to let the boy come downstairs when he was in the house."

"During the day, when Mr. Anderson was out working in the fields his wife would go bring the boy down so he could be bathed and spend some time playing around the house before having to go back up there." she said.

"Then one day, Mr Anderson had come back to the house with a load of firewood and was in the back yard splitting wood." she shook her head. "Mrs Anderson had just let the boy out to play in the yard when he heard his father working in the back. They say he must have went running around the corner of the house and met with his father's axe right there."

"The pain in my side." I said looking at first Kathy then Sydney. They returned my gaze with a knowing look.

"He took the boy's body out into the field behind the house and buried him," she said, "and when he returned to the house he shot and killed his wife. Then he sat in that rocking chair on the front porch and killed himself."

By the time she finished her story we were all sobbing uncontrolibly. We left that ladies front porch that day and swore we'd never go back to that house again. And, with exception of telling my mother the story we never spoke of it again between us.