True Ghost Stories and Hauntings 3 Read online

  True Ghost Stories and Hauntings

  True Ghost Stories and Hauntings

  Chilling Stories of Poltergeists, Unexplained Phenomenon, and Haunted Houses

  Volume III

  Simon B Murik

  Published by:

  Paranormal Publishing

  www.ParanormalPublishing.net

  Copyright © 2016 by Simon Murik and Paranormal Publishing.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Acknowledgements

  A special thank you to all those who shared their experiences of the paranormal to make this collection of ghost stories and hauntings possible. Whether you believe in ghosts or are just curious about the other side, we sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

  Names and places within the stories have been changed to protect the privacy of those who contributed to this book.

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Angry Librarian

  Writer’s Block

  The Old Red Barn

  The Snow Fort

  The Restaurant

  Cat Scratch

  The Neighbor

  The Past That Follows You

  Death Tower

  The Robber Who Won’t Quit

  True Ghost Stories and Hauntings, Volume III, is the third in the extremely popular series of books featuring true ghost stories and hauntings which have been collected, reviewed, and edited by Simon B. Murik. Simon is the son of a long line of mediums and sensitives originally from Eastern Europe. Many of the stories come from his own experiences while others have been contributed by family members and those who have shared their paranormal experiences with him.

  If you enjoy ghost stories and reading about paranormal experiences, you will love this book. Get ready for a few chills and goosebumps as you read about haunted houses, poltergeists, and other unexplained phenomenon!

  Be sure to check out Volumes I and II of True Ghost Stories and Hauntings as well as other offerings from Paranormal Publishing at www.paranormalpublishing.com.

  I ran as fast as I could down the marble hallway but my heart sank as the number eight bus shut its doors and rumbled off. I stopped and set my backpack on the white marble floor. Through the school’s glass doors I watched the line of yellow buses ease into traffic and head off into the early evening twilight.

  My mom was going to be pissed.

  I slid my phone out of my khakis and tapped her number. She picked up on the second ring.

  “Hi, Stan. Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, Mom. I had to stay late in bio class to finish a project and I missed the bus.”

  “Stan, I won’t be able to get you for another hour,” she sighed.

  “It’s OK. I can just go into the library and do my homework,” I said, gazing at the lockers lined up along the empty hall.

  “That sounds good. Be more careful next time, OK?”

  “I will, Mom. Sorry.”

  “OK, see you in a little while.”

  The phone clicked off and I picked up my backpack and started walking past the green metal lockers to the library. I turned right at the end of the hall and was a little surprised to see Alec Hagan leaning against the library’s floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hall. Alec was an eighth grader and had the rep of being the school’s resident weirdo troublemaker. His eyes widened when he saw me and I felt the back of my neck tense up a bit.

  “Library’s closed, kid,” he called out.

  I ignored him and kept walking towards it but I noticed that I couldn’t see anyone in there. When I got to the door I pulled at the handle and sure enough, it was locked.

  “Told you, dummy. Library’s closed. Ms. Kay got sick and took off early.”

  I rubbed the side of my face. This was a real drag. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Serving out a detention for tossing Jenny Slater’s math book in the big trash bin behind the school last week.”

  I nodded. That figured.

  Alec’s eyes narrowed and he looked to his left down the wide, empty hall towards the cafeteria and then back at me. “Hey, do you want to see something cool?”

  “It’s not the trash bin, is it?” I asked, shoving my hands in my pockets.

  “No,” Alec chuckled. He looked around again and took a step towards me. “You ever notice how modern the library is compared to the rest of the school?”

  I looked through the glass at the clean, light wood tables framed by the electronic security system you had to walk through to go in and out of the checkout area and the curved, crimson metal bookshelves that looked straight out of a magazine about future living.

  “Yeah. I mean I never really thought about it, but yeah, it’s not exactly Gothic style.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So there was another one here before it?” I asked.

  Alec shook his head. “No, there was nothing here before it. It was just open space. No, the real library, the one built when the school was built eighty years ago, is in the basement.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.” Alec rubbed his hands together. “And guess what?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The angry old hag who worked as the librarian down there for thirty years before falling flat on her ugly face from a stroke haunts it.”

  “Oh, shut the hell up,” I said, looking back down the hall at the lockers and wondering if I should just go wait by the front doors.

  A smirk crept onto Alec’s face and he took another step closer. “She was a mean old bitch, yanking kids around by their collars when they didn’t put a book back in the right place.”

  Alec stepped closer again until I could smell his oily breath as he stood over my left shoulder. “What’s wrong? Are you scared?”

  I checked my watch. Damn, still forty-five minutes to go. “No, I just think you’re a liar.”

  “Fair enough,” Alec said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll show you where it is and twenty bucks says you won’t go inside and walk through it and back.”

  I looked Alec up and down. This was the closest I’d ever been to him and there wasn’t anything physically scary about him. He was a skinny kid and only a couple of inches taller than me. But he had a strange desperate thing going on with his messy brown hair and intense, ice-blue eyes. Like he was running against the clock and had to make as much mischief as he could before time ran out.

  Still, it sounded like an easy twenty bucks.

  “All right, man. Show me where it is,” I said.

  Alec walked past me and waved his hand for me to follow him. We went back past the lockers and down the hall towards the gymnasium at the far end of the building. The lights in the trophy cases were still on and I looked at the little golden statues of tennis players, gymnasts, and wrestlers that went as far back as the 1940s.

  Alec cut right and I followed him down the wide hallway that ran between the science labs to the hallway with the English, history, and math classrooms. We went left and Alec picked up the pace.

  “Just the auditorium is down this way,” I said.

  Alec said nothing and turned right towards the auditorium. He then stopped at an unmarked door that I’d never even noticed before. He took a paper clip out of his pocket, pulled it into a straight line, and slid it into the keyhole. He jiggled the clip for a few sec
onds; there was a clicking sound and he turned the knob and opened the door.

  “Come on,” he said and walked inside.

  I walked through and my eyes went wide.

  A staircase a good ten feet wide went down a tight corridor to a pair of doors held open by doorstops; beyond them was darkness.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Yep—it’s all down there. Now here’s the deal: at the far end of the library is a section on medieval history. Go down there, grab a book, and bring it back here.”

  “And what about lights?” I asked.

  “There’s a switch on the left wall when you walk in,” Alec said.

  I bit my lip and stared into the darkness.

  “OK,” I said. “Don’t run off.”

  “Oh, I’ll be here,” Alec said, his voice a little higher than usual. I started to walk down the stairs and little spats of dust floated in the air as I hit each step.

  It’d been a while since anyone came down here.

  When I get a little past halfway down, the library came into view. There were three thin windows lining the top of the wall and some faint gray light crept through, but not enough to really show me anything. My foot hit the floor and I looked back up the stairs.

  Alec stood there with his mouth in a straight line and his arms folded.

  I turned back to the library and walked in.

  As soon as my feet hit the carpet my body shivered. It was a good ten or fifteen degrees colder in here than the stairway had been. They must have kept the heat turned down in here—or maybe the vents were clogged with dust? Thanks to the light from the stairwell I saw the light switch on the wall and I walked up to it and flipped it on. Faint orange lights flickered on across the ceiling, lighting up the tops of the wooden bookcases like a hazy Halloween sunset. I could see now that the carpet was a dark gray color and that the dark-red wooden reading tables had thick, deep scratches and dents in them.

  I’d liked it better when the lights were off.

  The opposite end of the library looked like it was a good twenty or thirty yards from me and it was amazing that the shelves were still filled up with books.

  “All right, there and back. No problem,” I said to myself and started walking.

  The floor was hard, almost like the carpet had been laid over cement. My eyes started to adjust to the dim light and I gazed over the rows of three-level bookshelves as I went past them. American History, Earth Sciences, Fiction, Philosophy. And then, just after a row without a nameplate, was Medieval History.

  I looked back to the library entrance and felt a bit of a cold sweat trickle down my chest. It seemed farther away than it should. Like the library had stretched itself out as I’d walked through it.

  But that was silly. I was just a little weirded out from being in here.

  When I went to the Medieval section I didn’t waste any time and grabbed the first book on the shelf.

  The Hundred Years’ War

  Good enough.

  And then the lights went off.

  I spun around, expecting to see Alec grinning by the light switch, but instead I saw the doors closed with only a bit of yellow light from the stairwell coming through the window.

  The sharp smack of two books being slammed together echoed through the library as my heart nearly shot into my throat. I rubbed my hands over my arms as it felt like the temperature just dropped another five degrees; I could feel my skin turning into gooseflesh.

  Just walk forward and get out of here.

  I started to move towards the doors and in the corner of my eye a wisp of white light floated through the bookshelves.

  I stopped and stared through the darkness. Dust particles floated in the thin gray light in front of the windows—that’s the only movement I saw.

  But I was sure I’d seen something.

  I took a step down the aisle and looked over the books. Strangely, none of them had any dust on them. I peered over the tops of the books into the next aisle but didn’t see anything.

  Something gripped my collar and jerked my head away from the books. I blindly swatted at whatever it was but my hand just hit air. My collar was released and I spun my head around, but no one was there.

  I stepped back from the shelf and my throat froze as a pair of ghostly skeletal hands shot out of the books and swiped at me, barely missing my face. My heart banged against my chest as the hands sank back into the books and disappeared. I stood there with my knees shaking, too stunned to move.

  The shelves around me started to creak and I backed out of the aisle, watching as the books rattled against each other. When I got out of the aisle, I turned towards the exit and began to move my trembling legs towards it.

  “Bad boooooy,” an old raspy voice hissed behind me.

  I knew I shouldn’t look, but I did, and my spine felt like it’d turned into a rod of ice.

  A bone-thin old woman floated a foot off the ground. Her wrinkled, dented face was sunk in purple light and her hair swirled above her head like wispy snakes. I took a step back and her mouth spread in a black, ear-to-ear grin.

  My hands started to tremble and my stomach felt like I was going down the world’s steepest roller coaster.

  I turned and started running.

  “You’re a bad booooy,” hissed against my eardrums as I ran past the reading tables and a chair slid in front of me. I stumbled over it, banging my shin hard against the seat. I scrambled back to my feet, made it to the doors, and shoved them open. Lunging through, I put my hands on my waist, shut my eyes, and breathed heavily as I listened to the slow creak of the doors shutting.

  When the doors settled back in place, I opened my eyes and looked up the stairs.

  Alec was gone.

  And a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill was laying on the first step.

  My heart was still beating fast and my legs quivered like Jello. It didn’t surprise me that Alec had taken off. But at least he’d paid up.

  I then realized that I was still clutching the book.

  Setting the book onto the floor, I walked to the steps and picked the money up. I folded it in half, slid it into my back pocket, and checked my watch.

  My mom should be waiting out front by now.

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and ran up the steep corridor of steps. When I reached the top I shoved the door open and ran back out into the hallway. My footsteps echoed through the building and I had no interest in going all the way back through the school to the front entrance. I hadn’t seen a soul other than Alec since the buses took off, but who the hell knew what went on here after the students left? I just wanted to get out of this place as fast as possible and I headed straight for the side entrance right across the hall. Pushing the door open, I hurried through and into the chilly October air. The eight-space parking lot where some of the teachers parked was empty and I started to jog along the sidewalk that wrapped around the school. A silver BMW appeared on the road that stretched around the building and pulled into the parking lot. I stopped and watched as the car glided up to me.

  It was my mom.

  The car stopped next to me and I opened the door and got in.

  “Why weren’t you waiting at the front of the school—and why is your face so pale?” she asked.

  “I just … I don’t know; you wouldn’t believe it,” I said and leaned back against the leather seat.

  “I swear, Stan, sometimes …”

  My mom started to swing the car around the parking lot and I looked back at the school. A faint purple glow flowed out of the three thin windows than ran along the ground at the bottom of the school wall.

  The cold sweat on my chest returned and I closed my eyes and felt the push of the heavy car in my stomach as my mom accelerated away. If I didn’t like going to school before, you can be sure I never wanted to go anywhere near the place after that!

  The white-and-blue cottage sat on a stone-covered hill about thirty feet from the shoreline. There wasn’t another home within a hundred yards
of it and when I hopped out of the Jeep and walked to the front door the only sounds I heard were the ocean tide and the soft breeze blowing across the black, paved driveway. It really was a hell of a deal for $800 a month and if I couldn’t get a novel done over the summer I’d probably never see another advance for a very long time.

  When I got up to the patio I lifted the welcome mat, and like Tony, my realtor, had promised, the keys to the front door were waiting underneath. I took the keys, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. To my relief the house looked just like the photos online. A clean, white hallway with a hardwood floor ran straight to a big glass doorwall that showed the beach and the sparkling blue sea. There was a small dining room to my left and a staircase on my right, which I assumed would take me to the bedroom. I walked to the doorwall and looked around the room. It was basically an indoor patio with three framed photos of different types of seashells hanging on the far wall and a light green recliner in the corner with a square wooden lamp table next to it.

  This was where I’d write.

  I went back to the Jeep, got the rest of my bags, and brought them upstairs. The second floor was simple. A single hallway with a bedroom facing the ocean and a small bathroom right across from it. The bedroom itself was tight but cozy with a quene-sized bed taking up most of the space. I set my bags in the walk-in closet and went over to the window. It was now just after 7:00 p.m. and orange streaks of light from the setting sun glistened across the sea.

  Perfect.

  I went back downstairs to the doorwall, unlocked it, and slid it open. A path about three feet wide ran between the rocks down the hill and I headed down it. There was a small two-person rowboat sitting in front of the hill at the edge of the shoreline and when I got to the sand I stopped and inhaled the salty-sweet sea air. I could definitely do some writing here.

  Part of the sun had now dropped behind the mountains and the water had become dark gray. I started to turn back to the trail when a shadowy, skinny figure popped into view in the water. It was sort of in the blurred shape of a boy and maybe 200 feet out with what looked like thin arms flailing over his head. I had no idea how I hadn’t seen him when I first came down here, but he bobbed up and down over the waves like a bottle tossed to sea and I hurried to the shoreline.