The Old House in the Woods

From: Anonymous
Story type: Ghost
Location: About 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pa.
Source: Form Submission

When I was about 12, my cousin Artie and I went squirrel hunting in the woods behind his house. On our way out, we passed an old abandoned house, very isolated, that he knew of but I had never seen before. Being pre-teen boys, we walked around it and tried to peer in the windows but then went on with our business. On our way back home, about dusk, we passed by the old place again. The back door, which had been closed earlier, now stood half open. The winter snow still held only our tracks from before. If anyone had been in or out of the place within the past several weeks, their traces would have still shown. Without a word, we both took off running. Afterward, we found that we had both felt the same intense feeling of threat from the place.

I had often remembered that day when I heard other people talk about their own "ghost stories". But it wasn"t until about thirty years afterward that I happened to mention the old house when my mother was in the room. Without knowing the rest of the story, she volunteered the information that when she was a little girl, there had been a fire and a woman had been burned to death in it.