The Clubhouse

This incident happened to three of my friends and I in 1980, when we were all just kids. It is a true story.

When I was ten years old, my mother, my sister, and I lived in a secluded part of Casey County. It was far from town with only a handful of neighbours, which consisted of the three friends I spoke of earlier, and one more resident in particular that everyone in town always talked about, Ms. Mackey. A cruel old lady, age and poor health had reduced her to no more than four and a half feet tall, with a large hump on her back. Her house was neglected and weed-consumed, and she also shared her living quarters with several goats and chickens.

Ms. Mackey was supposedly a witch but of course that was just talk, just something the parents use to scare their kids on Halloween...so we thought. My friends and I never believed it and so we never feared her at all. She didn't like anyone I don't think, but she hated all of us kids. If she was in her yard and we stepped too close to her property she would chase us (very slowly) swinging her cane and cursing at us. So, of course, we didn't care for her much either. One day we were at school and we heard that Ms. Mackey had passed away and that was that, until a few weeks later we all decided to build a clubhouse out in the woods so we could hang out. We pretty much had everything we needed but someone mentioned that we should try and find some chairs and maybe an old couch..then we thought of Ms.Mackey's house that was now abandoned. We knew no one had been there to collect her things because she had no one. Not many things to collect anyway, but there was a couch and some kitchen chairs. We quickly moved the stuff out and down to our clubhouse..man it was perfect!

The next night my cousin had come to visit and we were sitting in my room, which was in the back of the house facing the woods, playing a board game. All of a sudden we heard a slight tapping on the side of the house just outside my window, then it started to get louder and louder until it was a full blown slamming noise. We freaked out and ran to the other room of course, and the rapping stopped. My mother calmed us by saying it was just the wind, after all it had been storming that night. We went back in and continued our game not hearing anything else the rest of the night.

The next day I saw my friends and they said that they all heard the same thing, a loud banging just outside their window. It made us wonder but not to an extreme. That night I was alone in my room and the rapping started up again, only this time it was on my window. The curtains were barely open and when I glanced up I saw movement and the noise moved to the siding. I was scared to death at this point, I knew I saw somebody out there so I told my mom and she went outside to look. She came back in and said there were scratches and marks all over the house beside my window but no one is there, then she asked me if I had left a candle burning in the clubhouse. I answered no, knowing that we had yet to be in it after dark. She said there was a light coming from it! Then to my horror, I figured it out...that was Ms. Mackey and the noise I heard was her cane banging on my house. We had her things and she wanted them back.

The following day, I made my uncle go with me to return them, which was very scary even in daylight. You could feel someone watching you. I never heard the sounds again after that, and the old house burned to the ground a few days later. Nobody knows how.