The House on Raven Street

Some people swore that the house was haunted. Me though, I didn’t believe in that stuff. Old woman Madeline down the street used to tell me and the other neighborhood kids stories, all kinds of stories. She liked to make us laugh, get excited, or scared. Old woman Madeline lived on Raven Street in the same house for twenty-five years. She saw the once open fields turn into housing developments, kids turn into teenagers, she saw families come together, and fall apart. The neighborhood just seemed to age with her.

We would go over everyday after school for lemonade and a story. She would always tell us about how the old gray house at the end of the road was haunted. ‘But Miss Madeline, no one has ever been in that house!” we would say. “My dears, there once was a family that lived in that house, after they moved out, no one ever moved in, ever again.” We would then ask, “Why not?” She would say, “No one really knows, people have seen lights flicker on, even though there hasn’t been electricity there for years, they’ve seen curtains open and close, and I’ve even seen shadows in the windows!”

We heard the same story every time and every time we would get on our bikes and go spy on that old gray house. Joey from the neighborhood over, swore he saw the lights flicker once and Sarah from the end of my block, said she saw the shadows and would never go inside, but I didn’t believe the stories, I never saw anything. Even though I grew up never really believing anything or anyone about that old gray house Miss Madeline would always talk about, I always still wondered about it. It was only a matter of time before the stories, my thoughts, and getting older caught up with me.

I moved into that old gray house at the end of our street eighteen years later. Old woman Madeline died ten years prior, but that didn’t matter I could remember her like yesterday. I had missed her kind ways and her stories, until that one night.

When I moved in that house, it was completely run down. I had grown older, found a job in town, and I loved that neighborhood, so I bought it. I made some renovations just to spruce it up and make it livable. My third night there I sat on my living room chair and just laughed to myself. All I could think about was how I now lived in the haunted old gray house down the street. What would old woman Madeline think?

I was reminiscing…then, the lights went out and those damn curtains moved. My bedroom door slammed shut, my heart stopped. I thought maybe this was karma catching back up to me after all these years of not believing. Old woman Madeline was right, she always was. Nothing was ever the same again after that.