A Summer of Fear: A True Haunting in New England

by Patrick-Howard, Rebecca

  Afterword

  The drive back home was long; it felt even longer than the thirteen hours it took me. I only vaguely remember parts of it. I pulled over into a youth hostel in Hartford, Connecticut and spent the night in an old, ramshackle house and then got up early the next morning and drove the rest of the way straight through. Somewhere in Pennsylvania I slept in the front seat of the car at a rest area until the sun got too hot beating in through the windows.

  I didn’t feel as defeated as I thought I would. I’d tried my best, but just wasn’t strong enough to work or live in that environment. It wasn’t the place for me, even without the ghost.

  Upon returning home I took a few weeks to readjust and pack my bags for Wales and then I got on a Greyhound bus and took off for Florida. It took me almost thirty-six hours to travel down the coast, but David was waiting for me there. I spend the rest of the summer recovering, relaxing, and recuperating. He provided me with a sanctuary and the friendship I needed.

  We spoke little of what transpired in the farm house. He’d already heard most of it by the time I arrived. Over the course of the next few months I tried to forget it. I wanted to move forward. In fact, in time the events even began fading from my mind. Had it not been for the letters I sent home and the diary I kept I might have been able to forget the details and pretend it never happened, that it had all been a nightmare.

  I left for Wales in October.

  To get to my university town I had to fly into London, take a three-hour train ride to Cardiff, transfer to a small town called Carmarthen, take a one-hour bus ride to MY town, and ride a pack mule the rest of the way. (Just kidding about the mule part…sort of.)

  Of course, the airline lost my luggage. I had nothing but my laptop and a small carry-on which, thanks to FSA guidelines, allowed me very little. Naturally, it was raining and frigid and I’d packed my coat in my suitcase so that I didn’t have to keep up with it on the plane.

  By the time I arrived at the university I’d been traveling for almost twenty-four hours. It was dark; I was cold and wet. When I found my way to the front office, I was informed that since it was so late they’d “accidentally” given my room away. Swell.

  “No worries, love,” the cheerful porter sang. “I’ll find you a room!” He loaded me up on a golf cart and drove me to a nearby dorm. There, he began opening doors at random, trying to find me one that hadn’t been taken.

  While he was doing this, I became aware of a tall, very good-looking guy standing in the hallway. He was movie-star handsome with bright blue eyes and blond, curly hair. I was worn out and looked like a drown rat. My laptop was heavy. “Excuse me,” the porter said to him. “Can she put her bags in your room until we find her one?”

  The guy’s name was Pete and he was waiting for his friends. They were getting ready to go out to dinner to celebrate their first semester of graduate school. The porter found me a room five doors down from him.

  Several weeks went by and we quickly developed a friendship. We shared a kitchen and I found that I was hanging out in it more and more, hoping to see him. Of course, whenever I went in there I was always in full makeup, cute clothes, and had great-looking hair. It wasn’t suspicious at all at 2am!

  I kept up this charade for almost a month. And then I got a job picking carrots at an organic farm. Since I hadn’t finished my contract at the resort, I’d arrived in Wales with very little money and it became essential that I pick up some work. I’d applied for several positions but, so far, only the farm had replied with an offer.

  It was dirty, uncomfortable work. The muck and grime would cling to my skin and hair and the thick gloves and Wellingtons I wore did little to protect my hands and feet from the mud and cold. I came home every day and quickly jumped into the shower before anyone could see me. The farm was beautiful but carrot picking is no joke; it’s a lot of work!

  One day, though, the weather was particularly miserable. It was raining, cold, and the mud was so thick it came up to my knees. I could barely see for the torrential rain and my hands were freezing before I‘d even stuck them in the ground.

  When we got to the field, I hopped off the tractor and started to take a step forward and…SPLAT! I moved but my feet did not. I wound up face down in the mud. I was mortified. The owners carted me home where I HOPED I could sneak in and clean up before anyone saw me.

  It was then I realized I’d locked myself out of my dorm room.

  A call to housekeeping told me they could be there in half an hour. Nobody else was around so I tried to hide in the corner of the kitchen, keeping quiet.

  Pete wandered in ten minutes later.

  To his credit, he didn’t laugh in my dirt-streaked face but he DID offer to let me use his shower and put on one of his T-shirts until housekeeping arrived.

  It was when he saw me, mud and all, that he says he realized he was in love with me. I’d known a little sooner.

  Two years later, we gave birth to our first child. We married, moved back to the United States together upon graduation, and (for the most part) lived happily ever after.

  About the author:

  Rebecca Patrick-Howard is the author of several books including the first book in her paranormal mystery trilogy Windwood Farm. She lives in eastern Kentucky with her husband and two children.

  Rebecca’s other books include:

  Windwood Farm (Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera)

  Griffith Tavern (Book 2 in Taryn’s Camera)

  Dark Hollow Road (Book 2 in Taryn’s Camera)

  Four Months of Terror

  A Summer of Fear

  Haunted Estill County

  More Tales from Haunted Estill County

  Coping with Grief: The Anti-Guide to Infant Loss

  Visit her website at www.rebeccaphoward.net to sign up for her newsletter to receive free books, special offers, and news.

  Visit her website at www.rebeccaphoward.net and sign up for her newsletter to receive free books, special offers, and news.

  Windwood Farm excerpt

  Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera

  Blurb: Windwood Farm has a terrible secret–one that’s been buried for nearly 100 years. Taryn Magill aims to uncover it…or die trying.

  As a mixed media artist and urban explorer with a love for abandoned houses and a big imagination when it comes to the past, 30 year old Taryn has never really met an old house she didn’t like. In fact, she’s made a career out of painting these sad, often derelict structures, to show them in their former glory for her clients.

  With Windwood Farm, though, she might have bitten off more than she can chew!

  The locals refer to it as “the devil’s house” and even vandals have stayed away from this once grand stone farmhouse in Vidalia, Kentucky. Hired by the Stokes County Historical Society to paint it before it’s demolished by a land development company, Taryn’s determined to make friends with the house and farm everyone around her seems to be terrified of.

  As it turns out, their fears may just not be unfounded.

  Who is the woman whose cries echo throughout the farm and what does she want? What negative force about the house is so powerful that it won’t even allow the upstairs bedroom to be touched? Does the 93 year old vanishing of the next door neighbor have anything to do with the house’s mysteries?

  Taryn wants the answers to these and the house may just be trying to tell her because now, when she looks through her camera, she doesn’t have to use her imagination to see the past–

  SHE CAN SEE IT!

  Will Taryn be able to figure out what happened here AND escape with her sanity and life before the house comes down? Because now it seems like someone is trying to kill her! Using what her camera reveals to her and her wits, she’ll try to unravel the mysteries of the farm and get out before it’s too late.

  After several hours of what she thought was pretty good work on her part, she stepped back and admired her own work, gave herself a pat on the back, and took a break. “Well done, old girl,” she sai
d aloud and then literally gave herself a pat on the back because, after all, she believed if you didn’t do it, then nobody else would.

  The sun had come out by then and the ground was starting to dry, but it was still very muddy so she headed to the car and sat on the hood while she ate her lunch—leftover Subway from the night before.

  Reagan had taken the boards off the windows like she had asked, and now that the sun had risen in the sky it caught the upstairs window and the glare made it appear to wink at her. In fact, it seemed to look right at her. Shielding her eyes, she turned away. “Damn it,” she muttered, as she looked at the ground and took another bite. The glare was so bright, however; she couldn’t ignore it.

  She had grown used to the uneasy feeling she’d developed on the first day and thought she might be making friends with the house. It didn’t feel as unwelcoming to her as it did in the beginning and she was almost certain it had even preened a little today while she was painting it, as though it knew it was posing for something that would make it immortal.

  Taryn was not a religious person, and wasn’t even sure she believed in God, or one powerful entity at all, but she did believe in energy and nature and if there was something bigger than herself in the universe, she always felt it outside when she was alone. She never found it inside the walls of a church or listening to someone preach. Sometimes, while she was painting, she’d get so lost in thought and deep into her picture that she even thought she might becoming a part of it, or with the world around her. It was the closest thing she’d ever had to a religious experience and the feeling of euphoria it gave her was similar to the one she’d gotten off some pain pills when she’d had her wisdom teeth removed.

  All of a sudden, a loud crash from inside the house sang out and caused her to jump off the hood and drop her sandwich to the ground. “So much for the five-second rule,” she cursed as she watched it immediately get covered with mud and ants. She was hungry, but not that hungry.

  Still, she was curious about the noise. She didn’t think anyone was in the house and it had been a couple of days since she’d been inside. “Eh, why not?” she mumbled, and made her way to the front door. “What’s it going to do?”

  Always taken a little aback by the amount of darkness that existed even with the windows uncovered, it took her a moment to adjust her eyes when she stepped inside. The living room was cleared of any items and was stark and empty. Taryn thought this made it feel less intimidating than before, as though the boxes had made it feel more lived in, as though someone was coming back. Even the curtains were gone. The peeling wallpaper was still on the walls, though, and it gently flapped as she walked by, stirred by her movements, the only testament to the fact she was actually there.

  The hardwood floors were still rock-solid, despite Reagan’s concerns, and didn’t make a sound as she moved through the rooms. Not a squeak was made. She was surprised by the lack of dust and smiled at the fact that Mrs. Jones had dusted them; that effort was made to sweep the house before it was demolished. It must be a southern thing to clean something before killing it; to fix something before destroying it. She marveled at the beautiful fireplace mantle, so detailed and ornate and yet at the staircase banister, so simple and plain. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why money was spent on some fixtures and not on others. Clearly, the original owners had possessed money, yet had been selective about how it was spent.

  The dining room and kitchen were also bare of belongings, as were the downstairs closets. There obviously wasn’t anything on the downstairs level that could have made such a loud noise that she heard it from the outside. At any rate, it was as quiet as a church now, or a library. It was hard to imagine this place ever filled with the sounds of a family: laughter, singing, dancing, chattering…Yet the house must have possessed such things and been host to such activities at one time, right? Someone lived in the house and loved it once. Yet there were no echoes of this former life in it now. She could barely even hear own breathing.

  Without the boards on the windows and door, it was easier to see. She thought (hoped) the extra light might make the house feel more gracious, yet the welcoming feeling she’d experienced outside disappeared as soon as she stepped through the front door.

  Once she circled through the downstairs, she made her way to the first set of stairs in the living room and put her foot on the first step. All at once, a roar so loud, she felt as though her ear drums would pop from the deafening sound filled the room to a raucous level. Staggering, she fell backward and scraped her lower back against the wooden stairs behind her. As she clutched at her chest, she pushed against an invisible force that seemed to thrust against her. The rumble continued all around her, filling the air at an incredible volume, the sound neither man nor animal.

  An astonishing wind swept through the room and up the staircase, whipping her hair around her and sending hot air down her throat, making her unable to talk or scream. Gasping for breath, she struggled to talk or breathe and began choking, gagging, wheezing. The front door, which she’d left open, closed with a bang. In horror, she watched small cracks appear in the living room windows and then watched as the glass shattered and flew out into the yard in hundreds of pieces. Using her hands and sheer strength, Taryn managed to grab onto the banister and pull her way up, inch by inch. Finally, by wrapping her legs around the banister, straddling it, and turning her back to the door and wind, she caught her breath. Using what breath she had left, she screamed with everything she had, “WHAT DO YOU WANT!?”

  As quickly as it started, everything stopped.

  Taryn was left on the banister, like a little kid who had simply been caught sliding down from the top of the stairs. There was utter stillness again with no sign that anything had happened, other than the fact that the windows were broken and the door was closed.

  Shaken, she unwound herself from the banister and ran out the front door, not bothering to close it behind her. She’d let the ghost deal with that.