There is an old town called Sleepy Hollow, which is right outside another town called Salem. The coincidence is that both towns are haunted by their legends and myths, from the Salem witch trials to the ghost of a Hessian soldier from the Revolutionary War who was beheaded in battle and who continued to haunt the town. Each town is known as one of the "most haunted places in the world" and one of the "best places to visit during the spooky season of Halloween." Many people from all around the country or even around the world come to visit, either to learn about the history or even get scared by the townspeople. Sometimes people like to visit both towns during the spooky season. I mean, who wouldn't want to visit both and experience what it is like to live in the haunted towns of America? There are many warnings for tourists that come to visit the towns, especially on Halloween. For example, there is a legend about Salam. If you visit on Halloween night, you will be kidnapped by one of the witches from the trails and burned at the stake for being out while the witches are doing black magic and their secret rituals.
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According to legend, on Halloween night, someone will go missing in the old haunted abandoned house and will never be seen again. I live in Sleepy Hollow, and I love Halloween. You can say I am a history nerd about each town, and I love learning about all kinds of things about the towns, especially the legends. This year, I am checking out the haunted abandoned house on top of the hill of the creepy old cemetery, which was built when the town was slowly building and coming together as a brand-new town. I asked a few of my friends to come with me on Halloween night to prove a point: the house is not haunted, and you will not go missing.
It was Halloween night in Sleepy Hollow. The weather was very stormy, with a huge severe thunderstorm. The cold, crisp air filled my lungs like a frozen popsicle stuck together. The old iron gate of the cemetery swings back and forth with a loud, creeping sound that makes you feel like something is going to happen. The wind makes the leaves swirl around grave headstones; a black cat hisses in a warning to turn back. The full moon shines brightly like a flashlight. The old stone pathway up to the top of the hill is cracked and very weak to step on, where you can fall and break a bone. My friends told me that I was crazy for asking them to come to the house with me. They stood behind me with a look of horror on their faces and were ready to turn around and run back home crying. I told them
"Hurry up, guys; we need to make it to the top of the hill and take cover before the storm gets worse."
"What about the warning signs?" "You do know this place is haunted, and what about the old creepy groundskeeper catching up?" One friend said as she hugged her bookbag,
"Well, if we get caught, we might become his next meal." "I heard he is a vampire, werewolf, or even a zombie," another friend said while hiding behind the girl with the extra bookbag.
Another friend yelled, "I heard if he catches you, he will make you into a witch stew—like what they did in the witch trials, but with real witches."
"Shhh, guys, we have to be quiet and watch our steps." "You can fall and break a bone or something on the old stone path," I told them, and they began to walk up the hill first.
"I don't like this at all, especially when I have to use the bathroom." "Are we almost there?" the guy holding the umbrella asked.
As soon as we get up the hill, you can use the bathroom. Okay, now let's get out of the storm before we end up in the "Wizard of Oz" with a tornado. Oh, look, it's a few monsters doing the graveyard monster mash. "I told them while joking."
It took us about ten minutes to walk along the jagged, broken stone path and onto the house. The house looked like it was hit by the tornado from the movie, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about where the evil witch was going to pop up to scare us. As I reached for the rusted old doorknob, the door slowly opened with a gust of wind, and then, boom, the door flew open as soon as a thunderclap sounded in the sky above us. It sent chills down our bodies and gave us goosebumps. We entered the forbidden house with flashlights while the lightning hit the mailbox. That made a sound that sent us into shock. Once we were inside the house, safe from the storm, we walked into the living room and saw a very old picture of the headless horseman in Salam with the witch trials.
The photo looked so old that it was peeling and disfigured. Yes, where you can't tell faces in the photo are showing, it was hanging over the fireplace with tons of spider webs and dust. I walked over to the fireplace and took a long match to light it; the fire turned a weird back and had a purple flame—like the virgin candle from "Hocus Pocus." There is another legend that says, "The Sanderson Sister used to live here a hundred years ago." For years, people believed that this place was haunted, and if you lit the fireplace, they would come back and take your souls and even put a curse on you. As I looked at the black and purple flames of the fire, one of my friends said...
"Well shit, you unleashed the witches, and now our souls will be stuck in this house," she said with a big gulp.
"Great, I am going to be the witches' first meal, and I didn't tell my parents that I loved them," another friend said while hiding behind her for safety.
"Come down; you don't believe in this witch legend, and it's just a bunch of Hocus Pocus." Oh, sh*t, who grabbed my hair? Seriously, guys, it's not funny: "I told them after my hair got grabbed the first time."
"Do you dare look at me, and what the fuck was that?" "Is that a black cat in the window?" the girl said while pointing at the window with a dark black object sitting there with glowing green cat eyes.
Is that the same cat as Thackery Binx? "If it says so, he better not steal my woman when he turns into a ghost," the guy friend says while blushing.
"He is so sexy, I can bang him anyway in human, ghost, or even cat form," she said and giggled.
I told them, "I think I might be sick." "While you guys set up our stuff, I am going to go find a bathroom and properly puke after hearing that," I told them, and I got up to leave.
As I walked throughout the house, I noticed old creepy things like a doll with large creepy eyes that followed me while I walked past. The doll looked so creepy that I started having nightmares. As I quickly walked out of the doll's view, I saw a bedroom with a bathroom. As I walked into the bedroom, I noticed an old note that said, "Warning: Do not play this on Halloween." You will be cursed for living at your own risk and playing at your own risk. I grabbed it from the closet floor and brought it back down to the party. As I was trying to figure out why there was an old, creepy warning note, I heard a scream and ran to the living room with the game box over my head. I was about to throw it at someone when I recognized the scream.
"What happened, and who screamed?" I asked with a confused look on my face.
"Sorry, I thought I saw a ghost of some sort," she said, trying to catch her breath with her hand over her chest.
I told them to look at what I found upstairs in a closet in one of the bedrooms, and I showed them the box with the warning note on top of it.
Let's play if you are not scared. Sorry, I forgot my flashlight and phone. "You know, just in case we do get kidnapped or, worse, killed in this house," another friend said.
"Okay, let's do it, and does anyone want to back out now?" I asked my friends while sitting next to the fire and around the coffee table.
As we began to play, the storm began to get worse, with more thunder and lightning that shook the whole house. Suddenly, a big gush of wind came through the window and made the doors inside the house slam shut. We looked at the fireplace and thought it was going to burn out from the wind, but it didn't. We went back to the cursed Ouija board and noticed that the planchette had moved all by itself and spelled out "get out now" as if as a warning. We laughed as though someone had moved it as a prank to scare us when it moved by itself. We ended up screaming at the top of our lungs and fainting. Once we woke up, we noticed that one of us was missing from the group. We got scared and started to panic, to the point where we almost had a real panic attack. I saw something creepy, and I saw the headless horseman with a sword in his hand, ready to kill us right here in the creepy haunted house on Halloween night. I started laughing and thought it was just a funny prank until he said...
In a creepy voice, he said, "You have been warned to play this game." "Now you are cursed for the rest of your lives because someone you love will die on the next Halloween night."
We looked at each other and then screamed while grabbing our stuff, then ran out of the house. We ran so fast that the cold air made us shiver with goosebumps. I ended up tripping over an old gravestone that said my name, birthday, the date of my death, and a small description. I just hit my head hard on a sharp stone and felt blood dripping down my face and into my mouth, which tasted of sweet iron and metal. I passed out from the smell and taste of blood. My friends ran so fast that they forgot that I was the last person left behind and didn't notice that I was missing. A few weeks passed, and the local newspaper and news channel said, "Missing local teenager from Halloween night in the haunted house with me on her throat." We have no leads on how this happened or why the police are still investigating. The girl's family has been contacted and will be planning a funeral service after the investigation is done and the killer has been caught.
I woke up from my deep slumber in a puddle of sweat with tears rolling down my cheeks. I knew I just had a nightmare, and I started to have a panic attack, knowing my nightmare was one of the worst I had ever heard of. As soon as I got myself together, I pinched myself so hard that I started to bleed from my sharp fingernails. I couldn't fall back asleep after that, and I couldn't wake up my parents to tell them about the nightmare. I stood up from my bed and tossed the history books, the hocus-pocus, and my notebook of the town's legends off my bed. I crawled back into bed and took the glass of water on the bedside table. I took a deep breath, and as I took a sip of water, I grabbed my laptop and opened it. After I put my glass of water back on the table, I begin to write one of my many short Halloween stories before I end up forgetting the horrible nightmare I just had. I now know to never read any more history about different legends while watching my favorite Halloween movie and eating tons of candy before bed.