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Several friends and I, inspired by some videos we watched online, decided we were going to try our hand as amateur ghost hunting. There was an area at the end of a long-abandoned dirt road where several buildings, including two churches, still remained standing despite the fact all the other buildings there collapsed years ago.
The ghost town was one we visited on many occasions while we were growing up, but that was always during the daytime. Although we frequented the desolate hamlet many times, none of us ever had the nerve to step inside one of the buildings. Never in all the years I lived near this long-deserted village did we ever explore the overgrown area at night. Now we decided we were going to do both.
We planned our excursion for more than a week. Anthony came from a wealthy family, and it was not difficult for him to take several video recorders and cameras without being noticed. His parents were rarely home, and when they were home, they paid little to no attention to him.
Terry was into music, playing guitar in a band with some of the other local teens, and he had various audio recording devices he planned to bring with us. Some of his equipment would take a little setting up once we got there, but he had several handheld recording devices for us to use as well. We would have to get out there several hours before dark to make sure we had the time we needed to get everything prepared for our night in the small, deserted town.
I did not have much to provide as my family was not as well to do as those of my friends. One thing I did have was some good flashlights and a shotgun of my own. A gun would not do us any good if we really did encounter a ghost, but bobcats and such were known to roam the area. My shotgun would come in very handy if we were attacked by a wild animal.
All three of us were juniors in high school, and we were waiting for this last week to come to an end. As soon as our summer break began, we wanted to play our little game of ghost hunting in the old ghost town. We originally had our excursion planned to take place several weeks ago, but the seasonal rains ruined our plans. Since it was so close to the end of our school year, we decided to wait and do our investigating during the first week of our summer freedom.
No one was really sure why the small collection of buildings came to be abandoned. Families who lived in the region for generations all gave differing accounts. Some people said there was a sickness, and the people of the town thought it was something in the soil. Following several deaths, the rest of the townsfolk left. Others said it was something more sinister, a curse put on the town because of some evil they committed. Another rumor said the people simply began to move away. With no one moving in, the unused buildings began to decay, driving out the remaining residents.
Whatever the reason for the exodus of the town’s members, the crumbling buildings, small scattered trees, and tall grass made the place a creepy one to visit during the daytime. This was going to be the first time we ever went there at night. The anticipation made this last week of school pass miserably slowly, and it seemed like our vacation was never going to begin. The day finally came though, and we were already prepared to spend the night in the empty town.
We loaded all our equipment in Anthony’s truck and drove down the long-abandoned dirt road that headed into the center of the forgotten town. It was a rough ride and there was no way my or Terry’s cars would ever make it. Being that we walked the road as many times as we had, we knew how rough it was going to be. Everything was strapped down and cushioned to prevent anything from being damaged on the drive.
We chose a small house close to the two churches we decided previously would be a good place to set up our equipment. This house was constructed mainly using huge cedar logs and chiseled granite blocks making it probably one of the most stable buildings in this abandoned village. Most of our time would be spent in this building monitoring our equipment, so obviously we wanted to make sure we chose the safest building possible.
Anthony set up the cameras and video recorders and Terry set up the audio equipment in the same areas, running the wiring to our computers in our base camp. From there we could monitor multiple locations at once. As they set up their equipment, I strapped my father’s hunting cams to trees on opposite sides of the village. It was not difficult to set them so they were both looking down the middle of the ghost town.
Several hours passed as we got everything set up and working. We had to change out some of the cables after a frustrating hour of trying to figure out what was wrong with some of the connections. We did not get everything working as it should until thirty minutes before the sun set behind the tree line. I was glad we got everything working before dark. I did not want to have to bother with running cables through the grass filling the once populated roads of this old town in the dark. The task was difficult enough to pull off during the daytime; doing it at night would be incredibly frustrating.
Our night began with all three of us monitoring the audio and video surveillance we had set up in key locations throughout the town. Terry kept an eye on the audio readings while Anthony and I watched the computer screens for any sign of movement. We could see most everything on the outside, but we only had equipment set up in two of the buildings; the jailhouse and one of the two churches.
None of us knew what difference there was between the churches, such as the denominations or if one was for whites and one was for blacks. The two buildings were close to being identical, and the front entrance way to both were facing each other no more than twenty feet apart. We always thought that to be the most peculiar aspect of the whole town. The one notable difference between the two was one had an exterior basement door while the other was built completely above ground.
On one side of them, and behind the churches were the remnants of the homes that once held the residents of the town. On the other side was a wide courtyard with the jailhouse being opposite of that. It was our assumption this courtyard was probably where the gallows once stood. It was the only place in this town for something as large as that, but it seemed very odd the gallows would be right in front of the two town churches. There was one camera between the rows of houses looking toward the churches and another in front of what we think was a shop of some sort. This second camera watched the courtyard ranging from the churches to the jailhouse.
For the first hour following dark all we did was monitor the cameras and audio for anything. We were not only looking for things out of the ordinary. Our hope was to catch plenty of ordinary things to have to compare to anything we discovered outside the realm of ordinary. After that hour passed, we drew straws to see who was going to be the first one to walk around the town with a handheld video camera.
Anthony drew the short stick and therefore had the honor of being the first one of us to walk around this long-abandoned hamlet at night. We would not be able to review the contents of the handheld camera until we could remove the memory card and place it in one of our laptop computers. Terry and I kept an eye on the multitude of night vision cameras set up around town while our friend left to take his solo walk around the grass covered roads.
Keeping a red filter on the flashlight he was carrying so as not to interfere with the resolution of the night vision cameras, Anthony could not see very far, but it allowed him to see much better than having no light at all. Terry and I watched Anthony as he walked between the buildings, snaking up and down each passable road. We saw a few small animals on the monitors, some birds and several rabbits, but nothing that could remotely be called paranormal.
Anthony was far beyond relieved when he finally returned to what we called our base camp. He told us about how nervous he was walking around in the dark like that, not very able to see what was around him. He said he could swear he heard some voices coming from some of the buildings as he walked past them. I took the memory card from his camera and had its contents downloaded to my computer within minutes.
We spent the next half hour discussing what we wanted to do next. Watching through the footage Anthony captured in fast motion, we did not see anything unusual there either. This time we flipped a coin, and I was the loser. This whole expedition was initially my idea, and now I regretted ever having the thought. At first, I was sure there was nothing really out there, but I was beginning to doubt myself.
Was I only being brave until the day finally arrived?
Regardless of how scared I was, I could not let on to my friends or they would never let me live it down. I took the camera Anthony used on his excursion, and Terry prepared for me a small audio recording device I could carry with me. If Anthony really did hear some voices out there, we thought it might help to pick them up if I had an audio recorder with me. I really did not want to go out there walking around this place at night, but I did not feel I left myself with much of a choice.
Stepping out of the cobblestone house we were using as a base, I walked out into the dark night. I wished we were going out two at a time, but we needed two people to watch all of the audio and visual recorders we had set up throughout the small, abandoned town. I could not even say how many times I came to this village during the daytime, but the darkness made the crumbling buildings and weed filled roads seem so much scarier.
There was no moon shining out tonight, and the red filter on my flashlight did not allow me to see very far. The stars brightly filled the sky, but it hardly did anything to illuminate the ground. We planned for our little ghost hunting project for the darkest night we could.
Swallowing my mounting trepidation, I started out on the preplanned walking route. Every time I heard a frog croak, or a bird take flight, I nearly jumped out of my own skin. Throughout my childhood I spent plenty of time in the woods, even during the dark hours, so I should be used to the noises of the nocturnal animals.
Slowly strolling along the overgrown road, I scanned around the nearby buildings with my flashlight. I would feel much more comfortable without the red filter on the lens, but Anthony insisted it would blind the night-vision cameras. We spent too much time getting all that set up to go and blind everything with an unfiltered light.
It was rather hot out, and I would prefer to be wearing shorts. Out here at night though, I was afraid of getting ticks. My jeans, thick socks and heavy boots should keep the little blood suckers off of me. If we were only spending an hour or two out there, I would not worry about it. As it was, we were going to be out here all night, and that simply gave the pesky arachnids too much time to feast until they nearly popped.
My thoughts were interrupted when I thought I saw something moving to the left of me. Scanning around the area as best I could with the dim red flashlight, I did not see anything out of the ordinary. I was sure I saw something, but I assumed it must have been a bat fluttering down quickly to catch itself a snack. Possibly it was a moth I just happened to see momentarily out of the corner of my eye.
Continuing my walk through the town, I tried to pay as much attention to my ears as I did my eyes. Growing up in a small rural community, I spent more time in the woods than I did at home. I trained myself years ago to pay attention to my other senses, especially when in the woods at night. There were more than a few animals out here capable of mauling and killing three young men, which is why I was so glad I brought my shotgun with me.
Anthony did not want to carry it with him when he made his rounds, but I was not going to venture into this foreboding ghost town without some kind of protection with me. When I reached the far edge of the town, I felt like I was walking for hours. Looking down to my watch, I saw only ten minutes passed since I left the base camp.
I began to wind my way around some of the buildings. I knew this place quite well, but it was still difficult to get my bearings. Occasionally gazing up at the stars to make sure I was heading in the right direction, I weaved my way up and down the overgrown dirt roads in much the same manner as did Anthony. Some of the roads were buried underneath debris from the buildings, logs that somehow made their way into the edge of town, and brush growth. This made it feel more like walking through a hellish maze than it did during daylight hours.
I began to try and picture what life must have been like for the people of this small town. The oldest of the buildings were the ones that were still standing. Those were constructed from stone and large cedar logs. The newest buildings, the ones in the worst shape of all, were built sometime later from cut wooden planks. The latter just could not stand the test of time and collapsed, often falling over into the road. Thorns, vines and other vegetation grew out of the debris of these buildings, the foliage so thick in some places it completely obscured the rotting wreckage underneath.
What really made those people abandon their town like they did? Could it really simply be a matter of all the residents moving away and no one moving back in to replace them? Was it possible it was really something sinister like a curse on the town?
It would be impossible for me to count the number of times my friends and I discussed this. We shared all the stories we heard, and many times we added our own theories to the mix. I heard so many different tales about this crumbling place, I did not know what to think.
Raising the handheld video recorder up to my face, I wanted to get a circular scan of the area before moving on to the next abandoned street. Walking around here in the dark watching through the eyepiece of the camera would surely get me hurt, so I only held and scanned around with it until now. I nearly dropped the expensive video camera when I thought I saw something moving in between two of the still standing buildings.
Quickly, I removed the camera from my face to try to get a look with my naked eyes. There did not appear to be anything moving. The only thing between the two buildings was a tree whose branches shaded the roofs of both the decaying structures. Raising the eyepiece to my face once again, I examined my surroundings with the camera some more. Even with the night vision capabilities of the camera, I did not see anything between the walls of the buildings.
My heart was racing; the rush of blood caused my ears to roar, and sparks floated in my eyes. I needed to calm myself back down, but doing so in this setting was not easy. Finally convincing myself I probably saw an owl flying behind the other side of the structures, I continued along my way. Regardless of how many times I told myself there was nothing there, I could not get past that feeling I was being watched. I tried to explain that away as Anthony and Terry watching me on the monitors.
When I saw a light in the window of a two-story house, tilted and half covered in vines, I decided to head back to base camp. My full hour was not up yet, but I wanted to go see what was going on. We agreed when we first started planning this that only one of us at a time would be out walking around the town. It would be too easy for us to lose track of one another if two or more of us were away from base camp.
Once the building we used to house our equipment came into view, I zoomed in with the camera I carried to see if I could see anything going on. It was too difficult to say which, but I saw one of my friends run out of the base camp heading in the direction of the house with the illuminated window. Something had to be wrong. Relying on my own eyes once again, I tried to increase my pace as much as I could without serious risk of falling and hurting myself.
The light jog down the grass covered road felt like it took forever. As much as I wanted to get to my friends to help them with whatever was wrong, there was nothing I could do for them if I broke my leg. My whole body trembled with anxiety and panic as I reached the structure and turned into the door of the base camp. My breath was heavy and labored as I looked into the building to see both Anthony and Terry sitting there in front of the monitors. Both appeared as though they were a bit shocked over my abrupt return. Simultaneously my friends asked me why I came running back like I did.
“When I saw someone come running out of here, I thought something was wrong,” I replied in a quivering voice.
There was a brief pause, then in my confusion I asked them who it was that came running out of this building. Now sharing in my confusion, they both insisted there was no one else there; we were the only people in that building all night. They did not believe me that I saw someone, or something come bolting out of that door and down one of the crossroads. Despite my insistence, they simply did not believe me. They thought I was joking with them.
They were not going to listen to me, so I took the memory card out of the camera and put it in one of the computers. Skipping ahead to the last part of the video, I showed them what I saw when I came around the corner with the camera. This time Anthony and Terry both saw the clear image of a humanoid figure appear to exit the base camp and run south down the remnants of what was once a road.
All three of us stood there in silence for how long I could not say for certain. Almost as if on cue, all three of us looked out the door and then back to the monitor. We simply could not believe we actually caught something on camera, something that shows the image of someone who was not there. It was not there in any way we could understand.
“M-maybe someone should go check out that light you saw,” Anthony suggested.
“Hell no,” Terry whispered loudly. “There’s no way I am going out there by myself now.”
I offered up the option of all three of us going to check out that leaning house. That appeared to be, at least in that direction, where the spectral image was running. Terry was worried about leaving his and Anthony’s expensive equipment unattended, but it was either we all went, or no one was going to go. No one wanted to stay behind, and no one wanted to go out there alone.
I had no stake in the equipment, so that was not a worry of mine. We found something out here, and we knew where we could probably find it again. I insisted the equipment would be fine for the short time we would be gone. Each one of us was taking a camera and an audio recorder, so the only things we were really leaving behind were the computers.
As we slowly walked down the road, heading south toward the house in which I saw the light, each of us scanning with night vision cameras in search for anything our eyes could not see. I remarked in a soft whisper that we would need to go back over the other footage and see if Anthony and Terry missed anything on the monitors. Surely if my camera caught the image, so did the others. Neither one of them answered me, but that was probably because they were too scared to speak.
I had my shotgun tucked under my arm. The barrels were loaded but the chamber was not closed. I do not know what I thought it was going to do against a ghost, but I felt a small measure of security having it with me. I wished my friends were armed as well, but neither of their fathers hunted, so neither did they. I was the only one of the three of us who owned his own gun.
I thought I heard Terry whisper something to me from my right side, but I could not hear what he said. I got much closer to him and asked him what he was saying. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, very quietly telling me he did not say anything. I was sure I heard him say something, but I let the matter go. We were only a block away from the leaning house when I asked him what he said. I did not want to continue talking if I did not need to.
Thus far we did our best to stay as near the middle of the road as we could, but when we approached the leaning house, we veered in a little closer. I was walking in the center, more focused on holding my shotgun at the ready than looking through the camera. There was no longer a light on inside, at least not that we could see. I did not believe a light as bright as I saw earlier could be glowing and us not see it, even from outside.
Positioning ourselves in line with the front door of the tilted building, we slowly and cautiously made our way forward. At this point I had the barrels of my shotgun closed and ready to fire if necessary. It was difficult for me to carry my gun and look through the eyepiece of my camera at the same time. I wished took a camera with a display screen and not an eyepiece, but we were afraid this would produce too much illumination and give away our position. Using the night vision cameras seemed to be the only way to see the specters that appeared to roam the ruins of this old ghost town.
The doorway was quite narrow, and the building looked as if it could fall at any moment. With the mass of vines covering nearly half the structure, I am surprised it remained standing this long. With speed that bordered on the edge of stillness, we slowly crept forward, everyone watching with their cameras for anything out of the ordinary. The doorway was narrow, so if we were going to go inside, we would have to do so single file. At this point I really wished my friends were armed as well, because the gun should probably go in first. There would be no room to step past anyone to shoot otherwise.
It was not easy trying to keep my shotgun at the ready while holding the camera up to my face. The floor was a lot more solid than I expected it to be. It appeared the first story of this building was constructed from cedar logs, and perhaps the upper level was added later using cut wooden planks rather than logs. While the top of the house was obviously leaning, the lower floor seemed to retain its form.
I was happy when my friends entered the building with me. For at least a little while I was going to have to rely on what they could see and strapped the camera around my arm. It was much easier for me to hold the flashlight and keep a proper grip on my firearm than when trying to hold the digital video camera. As dark as it was in the building, the red filtered light provided me with plenty of light to see.
At one time this was probably a very nice home, even for its time. Cobwebs filled the entrance room and dust coated the hardwood floors. There were still paintings on the walls and decorations on the mantel, like whoever lived here fled and left everything they owned behind. Although the paintings, upholstery on the furniture and leather chairs all succumbed to the ravages of time, the overall structure seemed to be quite sound. I turned my shotgun toward the ceiling and was about to tell one of them to lead the way into the next room when they both ran.
They did not shout out any warning to me at all, they just turned and ran. It took me a few more seconds to react since they gave me no warning. By the time I turned towards the door, I saw both of them disappear down the old dirt street. When I started to run, something caught my left heel and pulled me hard to the ground. I tried to get back to my feet, but this unseen force instantly pulled me back to my face. When the thing began to drag me into the other room, I almost lost my shotgun. Scrambling as I was being dragged across the dusty room, I managed to gain a grip on the butt just as I was almost out of range.
When I again came to a stop, I tried to get back to my feet. This time I felt something pressing on my back, like someone’s large booted foot was holding me down. I tried to plead for help or mercy, but the dust stirred as I dragged across the ground choked me and made it impossible to speak. Something grabbed my hair and pressed my face into the splintery floor.
“They went off and left you,” I heard a hissing voice say into my ear. The hate and malice inside the voice was more than obviously apparent, and it made my bones turn cold with terror. “Friends? They left you to die.”
Suddenly the pressure on my back vanished and I no longer had anything holding my face to the ground.
I scrambled to my feet and ran out of the building as fast as I could. When I reached the grass and brush covered road, I could see my so-called friends in our base camp. It looked like they were trying to get the equipment together so they could leave. They were more worried about taking their precious computer equipment with them, but they did not care if they left me behind to die. Whatever tossed me around in that dark room surely had the strength to rip me apart, and they left me there.
A scowl covered my face as I began to walk towards the two people I never thought would leave me behind. Anthony and Terry were my friends since we were in the first grade, and when I was absolutely reliant on them to tell me if anything was coming, they fled and did not say a thing. Moving at a rapid pace, I managed to keep a solid footing even though I paid no attention to what was right in front of me.
When I was about fifty feet away from the base camp, I raised my shotgun and planted the butt firmly in the socket of my shoulder. Rage filled me as I thought about that melevolent force pulled me to the ground and drug me through the house. Pain from the splinters burned my stomach and chest, and I was not going to let these two get away with it.
Anthony was the first to see me. Initially he looked relieved, but then he saw the gun I had pointed directly at his chest. He began to explain that they did not know what to do, and they were so glad to see me okay. Although it was very hard for me to accept it, I can understand how they would feel completely helpless in that situation.
“Do you know what I could have done to you,” that sinister voice whispered seductively in my ear. “DO YOU!”
When that thing spoke to me again, the burning fury and hatred filled my soul once more. They were not going to get away with abandoning me and leaving me to whatever horrible fate awaited me. When that voice again shouted in my ear, I raised my shotgun and pulled the trigger. I watched Anthony’s sweatshirt tear open as the shot ripped at the flesh and bone in his chest.
I let his lifeless body crumple to the ground, and as soon as I had an opening, I let the second blast hit Terry in the lower chin and throat. The blast nearly severed his head from his body. Somehow, he managed to remain standing for a few seconds as his blood sprayed the inside of the base camp.
As Terry’s body finally toppled backwards, I quickly reached down and grabbed the camera Anthony dropped on the floor when I put a large gaping hole in his chest. Reluctantly raising it to my eye, I looked into the room in which the bodies of my former friends lay. Hunched over Anthony’s body was something, but what I could not say. It was not human, and I did not think it was a ghost because it did not look like it was ever human. The body was narrow, and its limbs extremely long. It glowed brightly under the night vision of the camera, and I was sure I could see what looked like fur outlining its body. The unholy creature had large eyes, and a gaping maw full of needle-like teeth.
“A-are you going to kill me now?” I inquired of the inhuman beast, my voice wavering as I tried to make myself breathe.
The invisible entity grabbed Terry by the foot, and using its other massively oversized hand, took Anthony by the head and started dragging them toward the door. I stepped out of its way to give it plenty of room, and when I did, I lowered the camera. There I saw my former friends’ bodies being taken away by some unseen force. I raised the camera back up to my head in time to see it turn and look back at me.
“You brought me these, so you can go,” it said. “I will let you live, but you can never tell anyone what you saw here.”
Every word the ghastly beast spoke stoked the flames of my anger, my rage. I was glad to see him dragging away the bodies of those two cowards who left me for dead. It was not only what the creature said. There was some power, some energy that increased my hate for those two beyond the scope of normal human emotion.
I knew from the tone of the creature’s words that this was not just a warning. It was telling me if I ever revealed what happened here tonight, it was coming for me next. Already once having the honor of feeling the super-human strength of this thing as it tossed me around like a rag doll, I took its warning very seriously.
I was furious my friends made me kill them like that, I was furious that thing was dragging them away, and now I was furious I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison for this. I considered taking my own life as I watched their bodies drag away into the night. That was when I glanced down and noticed the drag marks from the two corpses the demonic thing carried began to fade away. I turned to look around the base camp only to find the massive amounts of blood that spilled from the large wounds I gave my friends appeared to be absorbing into the walls and floors. It was as if the events were somehow covering up what happened.
Around the doorway of the base camp and beyond my footprints began to disappear. Now I finally knew what happened to this town. The invisible demon coaxed the people into killing one another. Those it let leave the town, it made sure to keep quiet. As was the situation with me, those people whose life it spared never told anyone what happened here. We were all afraid that, if we even uttered one word about it, the creature would take its revenge. That eldritch being told me it was letting me go, and it did. Before retrieving my trail cameras and walking through the forest to go home, I watched the thing that haunted this town for centuries drag the two lifeless bodies into the basement of that old country church.
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