Well, since people seem to be asking for ghost-stories, I figured I'd tell a story about a house that was about three blocks away from where I grew up.
Let me be clear: this story is a compilation of rumors about a specific house: I will take care to confirm those portions of the rumors that I know to be true, but will debunk those that I know to be false. Anything else is likely to be the product of several overactive imaginations.
The house stood on the corner of Marie Crescent, the street where I lived, and Rita Crescent. As a corner house, it had a large piece of property, and was next to the power company Right of way and across from a large, open field which was a community park. The house itself was rather plain: the sort of house that is the staple of suburbs everywhere: two story, two car garage, etc. The owners of the house moved out when I was 9: they just up and moved, the house didn't go up for sale nor did the property.
The speculation at the time was great: the couple _might_ have been heavily in debt to the mob, and the rumor was that they fled the country. The truth is that several dark cars did pass by the house at all hours fo the night, but that could've been bank or IRS or anything else and not mob. Still and all, the house was vacant and I never heard anything else about the family.
Now, a house can't stand vacant for very long in a suburb without SOMEONE trying to sell it. About a year after the family left, when the weeds were overgrown and the house itslef was in some serious disrepair, it did go on the market. It was being sold by a local bank. At this point, things get really strange. I can confirm the fat that the houe was shown several times, and can confirm at least once that one of the potential buyers ran out of the house and tossed her cookies on the front lawn (which had even been, well, sort of mown for the occassion) The agent came out after her, followed closely by the womans husband, who jumped into his car, started it up, retrieved his ill wife, and shouted typical New York obsecenities at the agent. All in all, quite a site. I figured that she had see some animal which had died in the house: my friends all figured she had seen HIM.
Now, HIM was elusive. It sounds like a weird term, but none of us had wanted to speculate too much: what my friend was alluding to was, of course, Satan.
In those days on Long Island, Satanic rituals seemed to be, well, everywhere. I was about 11 and was what my guidance counselor called advanced. I read at the level of a 10th or 11th grader. So I had read all of the stories about the slain cats which were appearing in various parks, surrounded by black candles and pentagrams. I knew that some of the older kids at school (by older, I mean 14 and 15 year olds) were into this stuff in a big way. I also kenw that they had broken into that house on several occassions and used it for there own little rituals. So did my friend. I had even seen them break in to the house (from a distance: I wasn't stupid enough to get close or smart enough not to spy on them entirely). So I figured that at the worst the woman had seen some sort of shrine they had set up.
At any rate, the house didn't seel for another year.
So the house was sitting nearly empty for a year. People did use it, but their purposes were obscure. The power to the house had been cut for quite a while. No one in the neighborhood was sure who owned it anymore, but there were rumors at the time (later confirmed) that a couple from California had bought the house (site unseen) and promised to rebuild it. But for now, it was the local derilect house.
The strange part of the story occured just before the couple from California, the new owners, moved in. The house was in such a state that even the local youths didn't use it much anymore. And than there were the lights...
The house, it seemed, was haunted. Or, at the very least, occupied by something unworldly. Lights appeared in rooms where no one was. The lights danced around the house on the inside, moving through walls and from one floor to another without benefit of stairs. Unreal things. Bizarre things. Things from Hell, some speculated. A floating cats head was seen once, though I don't believe the person who told me that. Nor do I believe the person who told me that he had seen a naked woman in a second floor room, with the light that had been seen in the house before literally dancing on her as she writhed in pleasure, almost hanging in mid-air. I really don't believe, therefore, the more outlandish stories. But I believe the next part.
The house burnt to the ground one night. It was an early, fall day. THe house by this point had been boarded up, the interior was nearly inaccessible by anything other than a climb to the second story, where a window in the back had not been properly boarded. But the house lit on fire.
I've seen house fires before and since. But this one was incredible. The housefire apparently started just a little before 6:00 pm. No one, thankfully, was in the building. But a neighbor saw a second story window, one of the ones which was boarded up well, on fire. They called the fire department, which was only about 3 blocks away. Their response time was phenomenal, only about 6 minutes, but by the time they got there the fire was through the roof, and the second story room where the fire was seen first had collapsed onto the first story of the house, which than proceeded to fall into the basment, and than a wall on the side of the house fell. I saw it from about this point on, and it was a site. The fire fighters didn't stop the blaze: they just contained it, and the house had collapsed completely in about another fifteen minutes. It was nothing but smoldering ruin, mostly in the basement of the house, in about 45 minutes to an hour. Nothing left but charred wood and a foundation, along with some cracked brick all over the front lawn.
The paper the next day said that the fire was the work of vandals, who had, believe it or not, covered the walls in a large amount of an accelerant that the fire chief believed to be nail polish and than lit it with something like magnesium wire. They get their kicks that way he was quoted as saying.
The vandals were never caught, the couple from California moved into a new house which they built on the property, and that, as far as I know, was the end of that.
But later, when I was a junior in high school, I heard something which hit a real nerve.
I was at lunch at Burger King, and I was sitting with a friend who had gone to get some more fries or something. The people behind me were talking in low, hushed tones.
Did you see the new house there, over by the park.
Yeah
You couldn't pay me to live there, no f**king way.
Do you think we really did get HIM. Do you think he really came to us that day?
I don't know. I really don't want to know. Ohh.. F**K Man. I hope to God it wasn't HIM, cause if it was, what'ta ya think he'll do to us for bugging him?
He was all in black, he came right up to the front door of that place. He just came in on us while we were doing that shit on the floor.
You think he was just a bad trip.
I F**king hope so. Cause if it wasn't, I think he burnt that place to the ground.
They both paused, I think the one was drinking something, but my friend came back and I didn't catch the next part of the conversation. What I did hear was this.
You ever go back by Marie anymore, back by the powerlines? By that house? Where you think you dropped your wallet when we ran?
No way. Never. Cause if it _WAS_ HIM, I ain't gonna make it any easier, ya know? Forget it. If Satan burnt the place to the ground, I don't wanna f**k with it ever!
They both fell silent. My friend was looking at me like I was insane, because I was purple.
I had found a wallet there, shortly after the fire. No I.D., no nothing, just some cash and a hand-rolled cigarette that looked like pot and smelled like shit. I had ditched the whole thing, money and all, down a drainage pipe on the road. I never remembered why. I didn't think $20 was worth it, I guess (though I would normally have thought so.) but the wallet was just creepy.
And besides. I didn't want to keep it on me. And right than I knew why:
The Devil's due would've been greater than a twenty dollar bill and a shitty joint.