The Haunted House

By: Abhi A., Age 9

This summer, I got a chance to go with my family to visit our old friends in Colorado. After a long flight and driving through the mountains, we finally reached their house in Golden, CO. I was so excited. We talked and played for a while, ate lunch and then got on our bikes to visit the area. Soon we were biking by open grasslands. There we saw a big, old house covered with creepers and high walls with thorny bushes around it. The house appeared empty. There were five black crows sitting on the gate watching us. It was getting quite dark so we headed home. We decided to come back next day.

Cock-a-doodle-doo, the rooster crowed the next morning. We got up early and were all very excited. We biked to the house. The front yard had very tall grass with shrubs and weeds. The door creaked loudly as we pulled it open. We went inside. It was dark. Suddenly, the door started to close by itself and strange scary sounds filled the air. As we turned on the light switch, a big spark lit up and everything was dark again. We wanted to escape but were trapped! We were scared.

We turned on our flashlights and searched around. As we kept going from one room to another we found lot of silky cobwebs. The rooms smelt of mold. Suddenly, my foot hit something and I tripped over and fell down. It was a handle of a trap door on the floor. We opened it and found a passage inside. Curiously, we crawled in. The door closed automatically. It was a tunnel with light at the end. We could not turn back. We kept going.

Finally, after five minutes, the tunnel opened in a place that looked like a barn. We were in the backyard of the house. This was our chance to escape. We grabbed our bikes and fled home as fast as we could.

We told our parents what we saw. They immediately called the police and took us back to the house. As we reached the house, things looked different. The crows were gone. The door did not creak or close behind us. The rooms were empty but clean and had no cobwebs or mice. We were really confused. We ran out and looked for the barn. There was none. There was a children’s swing set instead.

Our parents looked at us and frowned. They thought we lied and made this story up. As we slowly biked back to our homes, we continued to wonder what happened.

Next day, we headed back to the airport. In the plane I sat quietly and wondered. Why doesn’t anyone live there any more? Was the house haunted? Did those crows have anything to do with this? Maybe we will never know.

As the plane took off, I looked down and saw a flight of black birds flying away into the sky.