Captain Hook

I never used to believe in ghosts and was never scared when I heard a ghost story. My friends and I would always go to "Haunted Houses" and they would come out crying. Me...laughing my head off, thinking how an invisible creature can scare so many people. That all changed July 4th 2002.

My family goes to my Aunt's house every 4th to celebrate. We call it "the cabin". We usually see our entire family there. It's like a big reunion. Anyways, my sister and I always like to go because it gives us a chance to see our cousins and second cousins, plus we have a ton of fun.

I was 15 and my sister was 23 so she drove separately with her boyfriend. My cousins were much older than me. Like 10 years older so I didn't really hang out with them much. I hung around my second cousins who were around the same age as me. We would stay all day and all night playing hide and go seek in the woods at night and riding on the four wheelers to Goldy Lock's house (That's what we called it ever since we were little because it was a cottage in the woods and we thought we saw bears there) Kids... how they imagine. Anyways, going to the cabin was a blast and I never wanted to go home.

That night my cousins Max, Jason, Jamie, Kristine, Tony, and John decided to take us kids to the haunted house down the road. Max would always make fun of us girls becasue there were so many of us. There were 11 and only 2 boys, ranging in age from 3 to 18. We all wanted to go of course and the youngins were already getting scared. Some chickened out, but the rest of us were going. Especially me...I wasn't scared of anything.

We all hopped onto the four wheelers/gators/rangers and went down the road to this really creepy house. It was dark out, but we had spotlights to see. It was a white wooden house about to fall down any second with a little shed behind the house and a half fallen down barn to the left of the house. My cousins ran off into the house to wait for us to come in so they could scare us, but we went into the barn first. It was really disgusting. There were skeletons of cats and animals laying around and the creaks of the barn added to the faces of fear of the 7 year olds.

Me..I was holding Tanya's hand because she was freaking out and crying. I told her nothing was going to happen and that ghosts aren't real. She said she wanted to go back to the gator (a six wheeled motor). I brought her back and started to go back in the house. Tanya started screaming saying she didn't want to be left alone. So I said "then you're coming because I'm not missing this for anything". She came and I gave her to someone else so I could look around more. A tale was told to me that a man, a woodcutter, would go in the back of the house and cut wood. He was homeless and would stay in that house where we were. You know me..."yah right" I said. Anyway, the story went on that he cut his hand off with the chainsaw and for a hand he used a garden tool he found from the shed because he didn't have any money to go to the hospital or to see a doctor. It was a hoe type thing with 3 prongs. You use it to get the weeds out. They say he died, but they're not sure how and he goes to the house and cuts wood and still lives there. So, again I didn't believe it.

We were still in the barn and Brittany said that they were going in the house now, but I told them to wait a second because I was going to climb through the broken half of the barn to check the rest out. She thought I was crazy, but waited for me anyways. I climbed through and I stepped on a broken chain. You know the ones you use for a chainsaw. I thought, wow they are really good at making up a story, who would of thought there would be a chain here. I moved on and saw a lot of garbage everywhere and old appliances and more broken chains. I guess you could say I was a little freaked out so I got out of there as fast as I could. I didn't tell anybody what I saw because I knew the little kids would get scared and I didn't want them chickening out.

We walked through the tall grass along the sidewalk to the house. Patty went first in the house and there was Max jumping out scaring all of us. Yes including me...If you had someone jumping out at you, you would jump too. Anyhoo, we asked where everybody else was, but he didn't tell us. We walked on not caring who was there ready to scare us. This house was standing there for over a hundred years and 20 of the years it has been vacant. Right? If it was vacant for 20 years and was about to fall down would the electricity still work? And even if it did, would the bulb still light? Yes, I guess it would, but how can a bulb stay in its socket for 20 years without breaking or decaying or something. That bulb lit, it was only for a few minutes, but it still lit and no other bulb worked. In the entire house, that one that was in the front room, lit. That really freaked me out. I'll be honest. I was getting scared. We thought maybe Max or Tony brought a bulb in, but if they brought a bulb, it wouldn't only stay lit for a minute, it would stay lit for a long time. Kids were crying, people screaming, but we weren't finished.

Patty wanted to check out the basement, but she didn't want to go alone so I went with her. The stairs were made of cement and they went down in a spiral way. It was dirty and musty down there and you could here Max and Brittany and everyone else walking around. The floor was dirt. No cement, no wood, just dirt. Bumpy, rocky, dirt. It wasn't dug up for years you could tell because it was so hard and when you touched it and tried to pick up the dirt, you would only get a pinch. We walked upstairs to the first level and wanted to go to the second level, but it was too dangerous, someone could fall through the floor. We still didn't find the rest of the gang and so we went out the back door through the tall grass again and into the shed. The shed was perfectly clean. No garbage, no walls falling down, and the work bench had tools on it, neatly in a row. "Funny"..I said to Max. "Yah get Jason and Tony to come out here and clean this up and put some tools on the bench to make it look like its being used". I walked over to the bench and picked up every tool, every shovel, every hoe until I got to the last one. This tool had the handle cut off, with only 3 prongs attached. I picked it up..screamed and dropped it on the ground. At that moment we heard engines running and as we turned around Max was running, laughing. They left us there. 10 of us there, standing crying screaming wanting their parents. I snapped out of it and thought to myself, wow they really got me this time. I picked up the 3 pronged hoe and threw it as far as I could. I laughed at myself and said come on lets go home.

We all walked along the road and when Brittany and I turned around we saw the front light on again, this time, it stayed on for as long as we could see it. We looked at each other and yelled "RUN!". We ran all the way back and saw everyone laughing at us. This wasn't over. There really was something back there. Brittany knew it and I knew it.

Morning came and we woke up around afternoon time because we didn't get back home the night before until 4:00 in the morning. Brittany and I were curious and went for a little ride on the four wheelers. No Max, no Tony, no Jason, not anybody. Just me and Brittany. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked her. She said "yah" and we were on our way over to the house. The light was off and we pulled up next to the house, our ATVs running in case we needed to leave in a hurry. We got off and heard something really weird. We turned off the ATVs and listened. We heard a cry. Like a baby crying. All I could think was oh great there's a baby up there in the window. We didn't know what to do. It stopped then cried again. Then it stopped and we didn't ever hear it again. That was weird. We went in the shed again just for the fun of it and I looked in and saw a ripped up jacket and a hat hanging on the wall. Then I went over to the bench and screamed as loud as I could. There it was the 3 pronged hoe sitting there. The same exact one. Handle cut of. We ran to the ATVs and tried to get them started but mine wouldn't start. Of course, a typical ghost story..oh no it wouldn't start, but I'm not kidding here. It really wouldn't start. Brittany got off and helped me, I must of hit the kill button when we got there so it wouldn't start back up. I took the button off and it started. And as we were about to leave, we saw a man standing in the doorway waving his hand yelling at us to never go back there again and it took him forever to find his hand. I just screamed and drove away really really fast. Who ever thought you'd see a ghost in the middle of the day?

Today, the house is gone. They knocked it down. The shed, the barn, the house, but I still think Captain Hook (That's what we call him) is there, and one day I'm going to go back, but until then, I'll never forget that day.