Yes, It's True

The house was huge and loomed in the dark, with turrets and gargoyles etched against the rising yellowish full moon, a grove of tall rustling pines standing sentinel at its sides. It was Halloween, but the house needed no Jack O'Lanterns or fake cobwebs to be the perfect example of a haunted house. One light only showed on its porch by the huge double front doors. Kids of all ages were running the trick or treat marathon, but most stayed on the other side of the street, giving the dark and sibilant half block where the dark house held sway a respectful distance.

Those kids were not from the neighborhood. The few who lived in the homes that were neighbors of the big old house, made their way quietly up the path and across the porch to the slightly ajar front door, They walked tip toe across the entrance hall with its looming staircase and lurking shadows, through the fireplace-lit library, and into the beckoning light of the ball room.

Dressed in an old fashioned three piece suit and string tie, the elderly man who met them at the door, commented on their costumes and recognised their eyes through their masks before he let them pass into the warmth and light where cookies, candies and apple cider sat on a large table. A tin vat sat filled with water and apples. On the floor, the painted runner for a race horse game waited. Antique wooden horses "ran" down the canvas driven by the dots on a pair of dice. The horses were poised at the gate. A pin-the-tail-on-the-black-cat board came next and then a box that required marbles to be successfully maneuvered through a path strewn with holes. Finally a small table held a basket of gifts wrapped in tissue paper--the prizes for the lucky winners. As soon as a child won a prize, they were given a candy apple and escorted from the ballroom. Oddly, every child won some game and took away a prize. Leaving as quietly as they had entered, each child knew to say "thank you" and "Happy Halloween" and walk out past the hollow darkness of the dining room, through the library, and across the shadowed stair hall, carefully leaving the door ajar as they left.

No one was inclined to wander into the parlor with its closed pocket doors and certainly no one even considered climbing the stairs. The house really was haunted you see, although none of the children knew by what or who. It had been built in the mid 1800's and added to extensively as its family had eleven living children in the first generation. The ballroom sat under the second floor dormitory and school room that had housed them. By the mid 1950's the family had dwindled, generation by generation, until now the sole occupant must have been nearing 80, if not more, and was living in the same style and with the same furnishings as had his forebears.

The old gentleman was eccentric--and kind and loved children. Those of us who were amenable to the old fashioned manners he was comfortable with were welcome visitors any time his front door was unlocked. Protocol demanded that we knock and that we leave his bedchamber alone. Otherwise we could run free in the 34 furnished and neglected rooms that made up the house. I was one of those children and so was treated to conversations on poetry and invited to tea (and expected to pour, me being a lady) and helped him "exercise" by tossing a heavy medicine ball.

But the house was haunted. In all my life--including as an adult--I could never make myself enter one of the rooms on the third floor of the turret. I simply could not make my feet move toward the door. I tried for years, thinking that age would give me courage--but it never did.

It was common knowledge among the neighbor children that going into the house after dark was not something any wise child would do and the old gentlemen was careful to lock the doors at dusk. Even when we were sitting with him on the porch, he would casually get up and lock the door with the palm sized brass key he kept in his pocket and then sit down to chat until we had to answer the calls and whistles and the glowing street light's mandate that it was time to go home.

Halloween was the exception. Then the door stood ajar and it felt that we were invited by the house itself. I would say that the activity was shared word of mouth--but I don't remember who told me or my telling anyone else. The neighbor kids just knew and those who did not know, well, apparently the house had not invited them to the party.

Whenever I see a Halloween picture with a haunted house standing in the moonlight, I am reminded of those Halloween parties in a real haunted house and the fine old gentleman that was its keeper. Collecting candy bars had nothing on a Halloween party in a truly haunted house.