Missing: A Collection of Short Horror Stories

Classically Creepy Cellar

"I lived in an old farm house that was over 150 years old in the 1990's and at some point had been used as a headquarters for union troops in Northern Va. Lots of creepy shit happened there, but this is the shortest story I've got. The house had a stone cellar, divided into two rooms and it always made me uncomfortable going down there to get anything for my parents. One day I was asked to find some menial object that was in the cellar, and I knew it would be in the room with the boiler in it, the room that also had a dysfunctional light. So I made my way into the basement and low and behold the damn light wouldn't turn on, but the object I needed was within the frame of light reaching into the blackness of the room through the doorway. So I walked a few steps into the room, grabbed the object and randomly glanced around. In the corner of the room was a dark shadow about 6 ft in height, and humanoid in shape. No worries though, my dad kept his 6 ft tall John Wayne cutout in the basement, so that had to be it. I calmly turned to my left and nearly jumped out of my damn skin as I came face to face with John Wayne just inside the doorway and leaning against the wall. I spun on my heels and stared into an empty corner where the dark shadow had been only moments before, and sprinted my ass out of that cellar. I refused to go down into the basement for at least a month after that happened."