True Ghost Stories and Hauntings 1

by Simon Murik

I ignored it and went back to looking around.

  I looked inside the break room: the microwave and the refrigerator doors were wide open. A carton of strawberry yogurt had been smashed into a thin, messy sheet of plastic and thick pink cream was splattered all over the fridge.

  A deep sigh echoed through the office and I jumped back out to the main area.

  Over the rows of cubicles I saw the light in the center manager’s office on.

  I stomped over there and once I got past the last row of cubicles saw a stocky man with thin, wispy hair sitting at the desk scribbling on a yellow legal pad. He didn’t work here and papers were scattered all over the desk and a container of paper clips and rubber bands had spilled onto the floor.

  The door was wide open and I walked up to the archway. The man looked like a blurry gray photocopy of a person. A face, hands, and a suit the color of elephant skin and a body that didn’t really have any definition or detail. Yeah, the guy definitely didn’t work here but he did seem strangely familiar—like I’d seen him somewhere but had no idea where. He scribbled for another few seconds and then looked up, wrinkled a crooked nose, and pushed back his few stands of hair. Raising his arms like some construction work had just started blasting outside his window, he sighed loudly again and then reached across the desk to a big stack of papers. The gray man swatted some of the papers away and then slid a thin book out from under the stack. He got up and almost seemed to glide as he moved behind the desk. When he rounded the corner, my heart seized when I saw that his feet were not touching the ground. He floated to me, stopped about a foot away, and held out the book so I could see the cover.

  It was the SK Digital corporate handbook.

  He opened the book, and as he thumbed through the pages I could see that his fingers were like thick wisps of gray smoke. He then held the book out to me as he pointed a cloudy finger at the top of the page.

  “Rule 27-92: No one except senior management allowed on the premises past midnight.”

  He folded his thick wavy arms and glared at me.

  I backed away from the office and then ran to the elevator, smacking the down button three times as I held my breath, waiting for the doors to open. After a heart-pounding minute they did and I got in and punched the lobby button. The doors closed and the elevator started moving. When the doors opened again I shot out of the elevator, across the lobby, through the building’s revolving door, and sprinted across the parking lot to my car.

  When I got home, Ashley was asleep; I did three shots of whiskey before watching TV the rest of the night.

  The next day I sat at my cubicle waiting for the hammer to drop. The report was still only 80% done and it was supposed to have been turned in 9:00 a.m. sharp. My IM window popped up.

  Seth, please meet me in my office in five minutes.

  - Max

  A few minutes later I was sitting in front of the office manager’s desk.

  “Work late last night, Seth?” Max asked, bringing his fingertips together.

  “Yeah, pretty late.”

  “You know the office was pretty messy this morning.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  Max sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “That damn old man,” he said looking at the rows of the dozen or so framed photos on the wall. I looked them over and then saw it. Bottom row, second to last on the left: a stocky, balding guy in a gray suit.

  Underneath the photo was a little plaque.

  Martin Sloan, Office Manager 1997-2003.

  Max cracked his knuckles and chuckled. “He works here thirty years, has a heart attack, and dies while burning the midnight oil and now his ghost thinks it owns the place after midnight.” Max winked at me, “You can have ‘till five to turn the report in,” he said as he turned to his computer.

  I gave a small nod, “Thanks, Max.” I pushed myself out of the chair and walked out of his office. Ten minutes later I’d cleaned out my desk, rode the elevator down to the lobby, and walked out of the building into the sunny late morning. When I got to my car I dialed Ashley’s brother’s number.

  “Seth, what’s up?”

  “Not much, Jake. You still need someone to come in with you on the fishing thing?”

  “I sure do.”

  I rolled down the window and looked out at the sparkling California coast line.

  “Well, I’m your man.”

  I was always a little afraid when I went to visit my Aunt Ruth because of the strange dreams that seemed to haunt me when I stayed there. Nonetheless, my parents were off on a business trip and needed for me to stay there. I had a hard enough time wherever I was due to my narcolepsy. Medication had helped me to get it under control, but it still came on me unexpectedly from time to time, washing over me a black cloud that shrouded my consciousness. When I was younger, I would have to wear a helmet to school and endure the jeers from my classmates. They would call me “special ed,” “helmet,” and other such things. I would come home crying almost every day until finally my parents went to see a doctor who recommended a drug that could help.

  By the time I reached the age of thirteen, I had blossomed into a beautiful girl with long, dark hair, large, hazel eyes, and a slender figure. The fits of narcolepsy had also become infrequent enough to allow me to lose the helmet, only occurring from time to time—like when Mr. Stevens would deliver one of his dry history lessons. When I went back to my aunt’s, I wanted to stay in the guest bedroom and read the whole time and avoid walking around too much. It seemed in particular that I had sleeping fits in the woods surrounding the house. It was too bad because exploring the woods was one of my favorite pastimes.

  “Rosie!” my aunt called from downstairs. “Can you help me with something?” I walked downstairs to see what my aunt needed.

  Aunt Ruth always had her gray hair tied back and always wore dresses. She was a beauty in her youth and the vestige of her elegance still lingered in her blue eyes.

  “Rosie, I know you don’t like going out to the woods, but we really need some firewood and you know my hip is still healing up from the fall I took two weeks ago,” she said.

  “Sure, Aunt,” I said, knowing that I couldn’t refuse.

  “That’s a dear,” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

  I ran outside, planning to grab the wood as quickly as I could and dart back inside. I crossed over the small spring that flowed through the woods and into the shade of ancient oaks and hickories, where the fading sun was blocked out. I was within steps of the woodpile when I felt my head began to swim.

  “Oh no!” I said as I fell over into the leaves and my eyelids began to flutter.

  I began to dream; in the dream, I sat up and caught sight of a young girl dressed in a bright-colored Easter dress running further into the depths of the woods. She kept looking back as she ran.

  “Help!” The young girl yelled. I got to my feet and ran after her. I lost sight of the girl and was practically knocked down by a shadowy figure that ran past. I was immediately overtaken by a feeling of danger and trepidation. I couldn’t make out the features of the man, but I did notice that the figure was wearing some kind of flat cap. Suddenly, I awoke and was lying alone by the woodpile in the fading light. I hurriedly grabbed the wood and carried it inside.

  “Are you alright?” Aunt Ruth asked, seeing the pale color of my face.

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying to fake a smile, but Ruth knew that I wasn’t. All the same, she let the matter go.

  The next day when a neighbor came over to visit Aunt Ruth in the early evening, her dog, Rufus, ran out of the door.

  “Can you go get him, dear?” Aunt Ruth asked.

  “Sure,” I said, running out of the door. The dog ran into the woods not too far from the spot where I had had the dream before. I felt a mixture of fear and curiosity as I followed the dog into the darker part of the woods where the trees grew taller and thicker. I felt my consciousness fall away again and fell down amongst the leaves.

  In the dream state, I
got up and looked around me. Again, I caught sight of the little girl and the shadowy figure that was hot on her trail. The figure was getting closer and closer to the little girl, who turned around to see how far away her assailant was. She screamed loudly as the figure grabbed the top of her dress and pulled her backwards. She fought hard, kicking and screaming, and suddenly the shadowy man held something up in his other hand, although I couldn’t make out what it was. The little girl screamed again, louder this time, and I caught one more glance of the figure, noticing that it was a man with some kind of trench coat on and a flat cap, although his features were indistinguishable.

  I woke up before I could see what happened next, but I feared the worst. Feeling shaken again, I got up and looked around for Rufus. Luckily, he was just behind me. He came up and licked my face; I picked him up and went inside as the shadows grew longer and twilight gave way to evening. I tried very hard to hide my fear from my aunt but I was beginning to get very curious about what I was dreaming about and whether the characters that I was seeing were real in some sense. Had this been an event that had taken place in the past or was it a nightmare of my fevered imagination? I knew I would have to go back to the woods to see if I could fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.

  It took a couple more nights before I was feeling brave enough to return to the woods.

  “Aunt Ruth, I’m going outside for a few minutes; I’ll be back soon,” I said.

  “Ok, dear, don’t venture too far into the woods at night.”

  I grabbed a flashlight and walked out into the woods past the spring creek and into the larger trees again. An eerie wind blew the few remaining leaves in the large oaks and a barred owl hooted some distance away, adding to the gloomy nature of the situation. I didn’t have to wait long before sleep overtook me again. It was odd the way my narcolepsy was so frequent in this one location. I couldn’t help but think there was something strange at work here, as if something were reaching out to me to tell me something through my condition.

  When I came back into the dream state, I looked around for the little girl again. I walked over to the place where I had seen the little girl struggling with the man but did not see her anywhere. Instead, I saw the shadowy man, his features obscured by the darkness, digging a large hole some distance further on into the woods. I crept closer and closer, moving from tree to tree in case the man might spot me. I stopped behind a large beech tree and saw to my shock and dismay a large cloth bag sitting beside the man. The hole that he was digging was quite deep; he stopped and stuck his shovel into the ground. He took the bag and hurled it into the hole. Then, a second later, the man seemed to look in my direction. My heart leaped in my chest as I ducked behind the beech tree.

  Consciousness returned to me. I looked at the spot in the ground where the hole had been dug and there was nothing there now but tall grass—nothing to indicate what I had seen before.

  “That horrible man killed that little girl,” I said aloud to myself. I felt the sudden urge to get out of those cursed woods and get away from the site of the grizzly murder.

  I went upstairs and called my friend, Kayla, who lived not too far away.

  “I’m telling you, that man killed the little girl and buried her in the woods just a mile or so from my aunt’s house,” I said.

  “It’s just a dream, Rosie,” Kayla said, doubtfully.

  “It was so vivid, and each new dream picked up where the other one left off. I’m telling you, it really happened at some point,” I insisted.

  “Tell you what, why don’t I come over there tomorrow and we can dig in that spot to see if we can find something? If nothing’s there, you’ll know they were just dreams,” Kayla said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed.

  The next afternoon, we set out for the woods. I wondered if the narcolepsy would occur again, but nothing happened.

  “It was over here in this small clearing,” I said.

  “Ok, let’s get digging,” Kayla said as she tied up her blonde hair and gripped the shovel. Kayla was a tomboy who was much more of a skeptic and less emotional than myself. She began to dig as the clouds obscured the afternoon sun overhead. As Kayla dug, I looked away for a moment, further off into the woods. Something brown and jagged caught my eye—it was the edge of a roof atop a small cabin.

  “Look, there’s a cabin back there. I never noticed that before,” I said. Something about it being back there was unsettling to me, like a secret spy that had been watching my activities in the woods. Then, something moved not too far from the cabin in the woods.

  “There’s something out there,” I whispered to Kayla.

  “Of course there’s something out there; it’s the woods. Probably a squirrel or something,” Kayla said. “Here, you dig for a while; I’m getting a little worn out.” she handed the shovel to me. I began to dig as Kayla wiped her sweat off her brow. I had not been digging for more than five minutes when my shovel hit something that felt like cloth.

  “I’ve found something,” I said. Kayla helped me uncover what looked to be a large cloth bag.

  “Oh my god, it’s the same bag from my dream, Kayla, I swear it,” I said in a frightened voice.

  Kayla didn’t know how to respond. She picked up the bag and set it on the ground beside the hole that they had dug. She untied the top and peered inside. Her expression was grave and white.

  “What do you see?” I asked, trembling slightly.

  “Bones,” Kayla said.

  We stared at each other for a second as we both realized that my dreams were connected to an actual horrendous murder that had taken place. We both desired to get out of there as quickly as possible and tell my aunt, and then the authorities, about what we had found.

  “Hand over the bag,” a voice said suddenly from the direction of the cabin. Both of us turned suddenly to face the direction that the command had come from. An old, haggard man with the same flat cap from my dream was holding a shotgun. We held our hands up in the air, and Kayla let the bag fall to the ground.

  The man strode forward and grabbed the bag. “Now you girls will be coming with me,” the man croaked. We didn’t see that we had any choice with the gun pointed at us. Then, all of a sudden the man’s attention as drawn to something that appeared to be a soft glow in the woods, not far from the hole that had been dug.

  “No, it couldn’t be!” He began to slowly back away. The apparition of the little girl in the Easter dress began to walk towards him. Kayla grabbed my hand and pulled it as she began to run away. The man did not attempt to follow us or fire the gun. He was already running back in the direction of the cabin.

  We did not stop running until we got back to Aunt Ruth’s house. I told her everything that had taken place; she called the police right away, making sure to lock all of the doors.

  “So that’s what happened to the Franklin girl. You see, the Franklins lived here before I did; their little girl disappeared in the woods one day, never to be seen again. Mr. Langston was the caretaker for the house and he still lives in the same cabin deep in the woods. I still can’t believe he would be capable of such a thing,” my aunt said.

  The police were unable to find Mr. Langston, who had fled the scene as quickly as he could. From that point on, I had much less of a desire to explore the woods around my aunt’s house.

  My brother Chris and I were always in trouble for venturing too far from home, staying outside too late, or trying dangerous experiments, but no time was etched in our memory like the time we investigated the old carnival. It was called “Dr. Danger’s Park of Amusements” when it was opened in the nineteen-fifties. It was one of those permanent carnivals like Coney Island in New York or the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz.

  The wooded hills that surrounded the old carnival had begun to take the land back over again. Vines and tall weeds now obscured parts of the ground as if nature was attempting to cover the unpleasant devices of mankind. A large switch that operated the Ferris wheel was now completely devoured by
kudzu; even the Ferris wheel itself had become a lattice for vegetation to grow upon. The ghost train sat rusting with an evil-looking clown still staring out maniacally from a window on the second floor, frozen in time.

  Being new to the neighborhood, we knew nothing of the carnival’s history. Our family moved there after our father took a new teaching position at a local university. We were used to life in the country, so our new home on the outskirts of town with its country aspects was not foreign to us. As soon as we were given permission to go out and play, we ran for the park that we had seen the day before when we drove by it. Our mother had told us specifically to stay away from the park; that is precisely why we wanted to explore it.

  “You don’t think she’ll ground us a whole month, do you?” Chris, usually the more timid of the two of us, asked. Chris was also the shorter and younger of the two of us. He was nine and I was ten, and I would never let him forget it. Chris had short brown hair and wide, hazel eyes. I had longer, blond hair and blue eyes.

  “Come one, Chris, when have I ever led you astray,” I said with a grin.

  “Every time we go outside,” Chris said, laughing.

  We got to the rusted gate that marked the entrance to Dr. Danger’s Park of Amusements. A huge padlock and chain, also rusted, hung across the gate, but Dr. Danger’s statue still stood with a cane and top hat just to the left of the gate. The mischievous look on Dr. Danger’s face gave us pause as we took a step backwards and contemplated where we wanted to go over the gate. As luck would have it, there was a place down the street where the gate was pulled upwards at the bottom just enough for two young boys to squeeze in.

  As soon as we got inside, we looked from side to side at the growth that had taken over everything. To the left was an aisle of games: shooting galleries, balloon dart stands, a strong man’s bell, and many others. To the right was the midway, where a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, ghost train, spider, merry-go-round, and a Tilt-a-Whirl all beckoned. A sign indicating the direction to various attractions was barely legible and dangling from the post it was nailed onto.