Creatures Caves

Well, Halloween isn't far away and though I've never actually dressed up in a costume, there is one thing I enjoy about this time of year (besides the food) and that is the spooky stories you end up hearing. I've always found urban legends and traditional ghost tales way more interesting than horror films or novels!

So without further ado, what is your favorite spooky story that you've written or read or that someone has told you? Or, what kinds of spooky things have happened to you in real life?

There are a couple of real events that I could mention, but one of the ones that stands out the most (and had the best ending) happened when I was six and my family had just moved into this old farmhouse. It was about 100 years old and had two barns some distance from the house.

When we first moved in, the barns were used to keep some of our landlord's cows, but not long after we arrived he ended up moving them to another farm, so the barns were left empty. When my mother was around, we had a great time exploring, looking at the bizarre stuff that had been left lying around, and having "hay fights" in the loft. But when I was alone I could barely bring myself to go inside, even with our five cats for company. Some parts of the place just had bad vibes, and the barns were one of them.

My mom was fine with me playing in the barns unsupervised. In fact I think she was a little perplexed sometimes that I was so reluctant to go in there alone. I felt sort of embarrassed about it, especially since most of my friends seemed totally unaffected by the barns' creepiness. So one day I screwed up my courage and decided I'd go up into the hayloft, bad vibes or no bad vibes. I had the idea that the loft was basically like a fort and that being up high would negate the creepiness.

It was a bad idea.

The ladder leading up to the loft wasn't your average sort: it was totally vertical and the rungs were big blocky beams of wood, so you couldn't close your hands around them. It made climbing a little tricky, especially with kid-sized hands. It probably took me a minute just to get high enough so my head was level with the loft opening.

I looked up to try to figure out how to most effectively shimmy up into the loft, and realized suddenly that I wasn't alone. I hadn't seen or heard anything when I was standing on the ground level but now I saw two huge glowing green orbs, like cat's eyes, very close to my face. I couldn't see any other part of it, just those eyes. SOMETHING was already in the hayloft and it had been crouched or lying there on the floor, watching probably the entire time I was climbing up toward it!

I climbed down as fast as I could without falling off the ladder and ran back to the house, crying and screaming my head off. My mom probably thought I'd cut a finger off or something. She came running out to see what was wrong and I told her about this horrific thing I had seen.

For some bizarre reason she thought it was funny. She convinced me to go back into the barn with her, and called up into the hayloft: "kitty-kitty-kitty!"

I had no idea what she was doing at first, but down came the gnarliest old gray tabby I have ever seen, with tumors, ripped ears, and cataracts in his eyes. He was a stray mom had met the day before. She'd seen him hiding up in the hay loft earlier that morning, but hadn't thought to warn me he was up there since I normally never went in the barn.

Once I knew the SOMETHING was just a sweet, harmless old kitty, I was a lot more willing to hang out in the barns. They never lost their "bad vibes" but I did end up spending a lot of time there, often with one or more of our cats for company.

So that's my story. What's yours? :]