Haunted House Tales

by Riley Amitrani

  The kitchen, remarkably, remained relatively unscathed save the gaping hole through which Wendy Newton had fallen after being struck by the falling timber from the ceiling. This is where Josh and Sabrina’s fate drifted toward a semi-reasonable explanation possibly bolstered by circumstances that even Josh and Sabrina were unable to explain—even to themselves. After a thorough investigation, the fire chief determined that a faulty gas line had caused the explosion that initiated the fire which spread due to the age and lack of proper maintenance of the old estate. Josh and Sabrina naturally did not offer anything concerning the demise of the Wilder-thing which certainly had added to the fire as the chief seemed to be satisfied that the gas explosion was responsible for the whole accident.

  As for Wendy’s death, weak supporting floor joists were found to be at blame, and no more inquiries came forth concerning that. It was written off as an accident as well, and Josh and Sabrina arranged for her body to be returned to Indiana so that her family could give her a proper funeral and burial. Then there was the case of Glory Trevil. Fortunately for Josh and Sabrina, Glory had gone far enough down the corridor to be consumed by the fire following her death at the hand of the spirits of the mansion. All that was left of her were charred bones, as the fire had burned away all the blood from her wounds as well as any evidence of the knife lacerations in her neck that led to her death. She was listed as another casualty of the fire, and her remains were sent to the only distant relative that could be found in the deep bayous of a small town way south of New Orleans that neither Josh nor Sabrina had ever heard of. Once all of the details of that night at the mansion were cleared by the St. Francisville authorities, Josh and Sabrina headed back to Indiana with heavy hearts even though they had successfully, with Glory Trevil’s assistance, ridded the mansion of its most dangerous ghost.

  The ride home was long and quiet as Josh and Sabrina talked little of the events they had just left behind, occasionally speaking of other things they saw as they drove. It was only once back in Evansville that they discussed the project in St. Francisville. They did not touch any of the material they had collected at the mansion for a few weeks, as each bit of footage, each interview they had made, each monologue that Sabrina had done over the filming reminded them of Wendy and how she had given her life to save what they had. Eventually, Sabrina updated their website with a summary of the project saying a full presentation of it would soon be available to current subscribers. With Josh’s invaluable assistance, they did put together a show that ran for over an hour and a half and to great acclaim from their fan base.

  Word soon spread across the internet, and what had once been a respectable but not overwhelming subscription audience soon exploded. It was what they had been hoping for when they had taken on the project initially, but the loss of Wendy made it a bittersweet success. Sabrina was not sure if it had made a difference in attracting subscribers or not when they had dedicated the show to the memory of Wendy Newton, partner, friend, and heroine, but that was not why she had done it. Wendy had been a dear friend of hers as well as a skilled and talented videographer, and Sabrina was not sure when she would ever heal from her death. In retrospect, she wished on some level that she had paid more attention to Josh and Wendy’s concerns over going to St. Francisville in the first place, but it was too late for that now. She was carrying the burden of guilt over Wendy’s death, though this was an onus that was her making only. Josh never said anything, nor did he think such thoughts.

  The fervent activity over the new project’s show did, in fact, draw attention from some mid-level cable TV executives who contacted them with the pitch for their own show. Again, it was what Sabrina had always dreamed of, ever since she had begun Elkton Ghost Hunters, but she had never wanted this success at the price tag that had come with it. The Haunting of Daucourt Mansion was aired by this network in a few test markets, and it ended up being an even bigger success on television as it had been on the internet airwaves. The dedication of Wendy Newton remained in place, and Sabrina had been inundated with as much mail from viewers expressing their condolences for Wendy as in praise for the show itself. That helped Sabrina begin her long and arduous healing process, and she was quite touched by the outpouring of genuine compassion in the otherwise snarky and jaded world of television.

  On a final front, Josh began to get curious as to why he had been able to so easily perform Glory’s ritual of cleansing, assuming he had no prior knowledge of such things. He pondered this for months on his own before consulting some professionals focusing on past life regression and other related topics to see if he could resolve this conundrum in his life. After a series of sessions, Josh found out he had indeed been of a like mind of Glory Trevil in a past life from many generations ago. In addition, he was informed that he had a gift as a psychic which seemed to come from his intuition that he often had downplayed in the past. It was nice to get this question in his life finally answered, but he did not share this with Sabrina, though she often asked him about it once all the dust from the mansion project had settled.

  It was not that he was trying to keep it from her, but more that on some level it embarrassed him as he thought back to how he had thought so little of such things when he had first met Sabrina and gotten involved in Elkton Ghost Hunters with her. But the bigger picture was that once this had been revealed to him, he was now being visited by all manner of apparitions and entities in his dreams as well as in his waking life. He had no control over it, and while some were just passersby, a few were of a more malevolent nature. It was the latter variety that had brought him insomnia for the first time ever in his life…especially this series of visitors from the deep south.

  He could not be sure until he did some more research, but superficially they sure seemed to resemble people from the era of Charles and Suzanne Wilder. Had there been much more going on at that mansion than they had been aware of? And while they had presumably destroyed the angry Charles, had they perhaps opened some sort of portal to another layer of spirits in that place? Deep in his heart, Josh wanted to go back to make sure, but the wounds of the loss of Wendy were still too fresh for Sabrina, and he did not want to put her back through that trauma again. But as hard as he tried, the visions and the voices would not stop. Josh knew it was just a matter of time before he could no longer ignore them…unless he decided to just join them just to put and end to their assault…

  The Haunting of Crooked Cottage

  By Riley Amitrani

  Prologue

  Whitby, Yorkshire, UK, 1990

  Since its earliest record as a permanent settlement in 656, Whitby has been the site of intrigue for Brits as far away as London. From the original name of Streanaeshealth, named by Oswy, the Christian king of Northumbria, Whitby has been known for its development in the fishing and shipbuilding industries. It was renamed Whitby in 1078 following the establishment of a second monastery after the Old Norse dialect for “white settlement.” It remained a strong fixture as a fishing settlement until the 18th century, when it was further developed as a port and center of shipbuilding and whaling. Over the years, Whitby has claimed many notable cultural and historical landmarks, the most significant of which include being where Captain Cook is said to have learned seamanship and where Bram Stoker is thought to have been inspired to pen his classic “Dracula.” Stoker was so taken with the town and the Synod of Whitby that it is where he had Dracula make his first appearance in England…and all that from an alleged discovery of the name “Dracula” in the old public library there.

  Following in the footsteps of more traditional purposes, Whitby soon became a draw for tourism in the Georgian Period, roughly from the mid-1700s to mid-1800s. Eventually, fishing and shipbuilding faded as economic support for the village and began to rely more and more on tourism as well as its cultural and historical heritage to support the residents. For visitors to Whitby, the coastal enclave has never lost its innate charm with its narrow, cobbled medieval-looking pathways as they wind through
the town. Even though its diminishing employment opportunities, mostly reliant on low-wage and low-skill jobs sent many of Whitby’s younger residents south to London and elsewhere for better opportunities, many longtime residents could not be happier. Among those who could not imagine living anywhere other than Whitby was Cecelia Adams who had been born and raised in Whitby and was living in what had come to be one of Whitby’s most popular tourist attractions, the so-called “Crooked Cottage.”

  The house itself is just a small place that perches on some rugged, craggy cliffs that overlook the sea. It is nothing of great stature or significance in architecture or design, but draws in visitors merely by its appearance and notoriety as well as its macabre backstory. No one could say just how old the little place is and why it has come to have the slant to it that makes it the subject of many visitors’ snapshots. Much like the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy, though obviously not nearly as majestic and fawned over, the Crooked Cottage just seems to have arisen from its foundation at a slight angle to the eye. Its architecture is a classic beamed design with small windows and a quaint thatched roof with a single chimney that sits along at the same angle as the house.

  It might be enough if the cottage was just odd-looking, relative to what most people expect—that is, a simple upright and erect form—but the Crooked Cottage comes supplied with a creepy backstory that certainly makes the home a must-see sight for travelers passing through. No one seems to linger for very long at the place. It is certainly not an open museum or showcase of any kind to the curious, and visitors merely take their pictures of family members mugging for the camera in front of the off-center abode and then move along. There is no one to chase them off exactly, but more that the legend of what has occurred there under the hand of Cecilia Adams that gives them the shivers. Despite the apparent look of being tiny, the cottage inside is much more spacious than seems likely, with an upper floor of several bedrooms, a lower level of a kitchen and two living areas, all of which span the basement below.

  From all accounts, nothing ever seemed to want to grow near the structure itself. Even today this remains the case. The back of the cottage backs right up to the sheer, jagged cliffs overlooking the North Sea with its northwestern flank giving a pleasant view of the River Esk which feeds into the sea. In front of the cottage, however, is an expansive, if barren courtyard. Local historians say that the once lush vegetation of the courtyard went oddly dead once Cecilia Adams took over as its owner. It was not a sudden die off, but a gradual and progressive thing that soon gave the little house a look incongruent with the rest of the Whitby. Cecilia was not an especially unattractive woman, but no one who knew her—well, of her I guess is more appropriate, as she mingled with none of her neighbors—made more than a cursory attempt at friendship. The common reply was:

  “She just seemed to exude a coldness about her. She was not rude nor impolite, but made it clear with just one look that she had no interest in anyone…”

  To add to the inexplicable nature of the courtyard, Cecilia added this collection of creepy-looking statues of children that were set about in the courtyard, looking like unmoving sentinels to guard against anyone who might be considering dropping by for a visit with Cecilia. The combination of the morbid statue collection plus the dead plants withered about the courtyard as well as desiccated and clinging vines across the front and sides of the cottage was enough to ward off the most insistent of neighbors. It was, as Herman Eldridge, Whitby’s oldest living resident told anyone who was interested, “a living, breathing Halloween House, 365 days a year…”

  Cecilia had been the current owner of the Crooked Cottage since the mid-1970s, and once the line had been drawn in the sand between her and her neighbors, everyone just kept their distance and let her be. Oddly eccentric was the kind version of how they saw Cecilia. The not so kind opinion? Well, it seems no point to go there. Then one day in April of 1990, an event occurred at the cottage that made the residents of Whitby consider that Cecilia would break the mold she seemed to have been encased in. At least initially. And take this story as you like. Some say it is a factual account, while some wave it off as mere legend and creative writing on the part of locals. Anyway…here goes. You can decide for yourself.

  In April of 1990, three young children arrived at the doorstep of Cecilia Adams. Everyone in town held their collective breath as the haggard-looking man who had brought them talked with her briefly before saying his farewell to her and the children. It is not entirely certain how the story of this arrival was made public knowledge, but somehow the news leaked out mysteriously as these things often do. The man who had brought the children to Cecilia was an authority from Middlesbrough where the children had been living with their parents. As the story goes, their father had abandoned them long ago and bolstered by a number of circumstances their mother had turned to drugs and had fallen into a very dark hole of addiction, no longer able to cope with the responsibilities of motherhood. An official from social services in the region stepped in to remove the children from this situation and had ordered them remanded to a foster home until it had been disclosed that Cecilia was the children’s aunt, the sister of their father.

  Shocking as it was to the residents of Whitby to see Cecilia even open her door to any outsiders, it was even more amazing to them that she took the children in with seemingly no questions asked or any other objections. The three children, two boys, Ted and Josh plus their sister, Alice, the middle child soon seemed to adjust to their sudden relocation in a new and foreign village, and all in Whitby went back to normal. The only thing that made any sense to the residents of Whitby was that perhaps Cecilia had always wanted children, but for some reason, unbeknownst to them she was unable to. Perhaps, one local commented:

  “Maybe the statues were her surrogates for such a hidden desire…even as creepy as they appeared to us…”

  In any case, they were seen playing happily around the cottage, despite the barren grounds of the courtyard, often dancing in and about the weird statues that Cecilia had erected on the property, and even seen on occasion to wander along the uneven and weed-choked rim of the cliffs behind the Crooked Cottage. From other children and some school officials that spoke to the three, they had nothing but wonderful things to say of their Aunt Cecilia and their new home. Even Cecilia herself seemed to undergo a mystifying transformation once the children had arrived and settled into her home. Marvin Charles, the closest neighbor to the Crooked Cottage, was remembered saying how he was nearly “knocked off his pins” when Cecilia looked his way one morning and smiled broadly as she waved to him.

  Though the children came from a similar background in Middlesbrough, they gravitated toward much different proclivities as children often do. Alice seemed to be the more extroverted of the trio and made fast friends with a little girl named—oddly enough—Pixie in town and the two were rarely seen apart. Their one real haven, though, as in the low-ceilinged attic of the Crooked Cottage where they played all manner of games they just made up as they went along. The oldest of the three, Ted, the most introverted of the clan, was drawn to sketching and other artistic pursuits. He spent the majority of his free time from school in the cellar of the house creating page after page of intricate and detailed drawings. Soon the walls and rafters of the basement were adorned with Ted’s creations as he saw the somewhat dark and dank space as his own private studio. And finally, Josh, the youngest of the set, was often seen playing this old trumpet that he had found in a dusty cupboard in one of the unused bedrooms. He had never had any real musical training, but seemed to possess an innate talent for the instrument.

  All in all, the children seemed inordinately happy and content. It was hard to believe that they had come from the horrid and neglectful scene in Middlesbrough. But as is often the case, children can easily adapt to new surroundings and environments much more easily than adults, and this certainly seemed to be the case with Alice, Ted, and Josh. That was until one hideous and frightful night as fall was transition
ing over into winter. Alice was awakened unexpectedly by a passing electrical storm as a clap of thunder shook the cottage, and despite the patter of rain on the roof that usually comforted her, she could not get back to sleep. She looked in on both Josh and Ted, who seemed unaffected by the storm outside and then wandered down to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  As soon as she flicked on the overhead light and stepped into the kitchen, she froze and then uttered a scream that pierced the otherwise quiet silence of the night which brought both Josh and Ted running immediately. They found Alice on her knees in the kitchen entrance shaking uncontrollably as she wailed and sobbed away. They looked across the room and saw the source of her distress: Cecilia was splayed across the floor, unconscious and covered in blood, long jagged lacerations on her wrists. Josh gathered Alice in his arms and got her to her feet, taking her away from the nightmarish scene and into the living area while Ted burst from the cottage and dashed through the pouring rain to summon Marvin Charles next door for help. Cecilia had no phone and Charles had offered his when needed.

  A disheveled Charles answered the incessant pounding on his door to find the drenched and chilled form of Ted who pulled at him emphatically, hysterical, though his words were too jumbled and choked with emotion for him to understand. Without another moment’s hesitation, Charles threw on his Mackintosh and a flimsy cap and followed Ted back to the Crooked Cottage. There he found the nearly disconsolate Alice rocking back in forth as Josh tried as best he could to calm her. Ted urged Charles forward toward the weak light that was leaking from the kitchen where Charles spotted the body of Cecilia on the floor, a sharp kitchen knife nearby. Despite his own shock, he acted merely on instinct and raced from the cottage back home to summon an ambulance and the police.