My Short Stories

Ready for the Haunt!?! (Non-Fiction)

 The darkness quickly approached as hundreds of people lined up to visit our haunted house. As I was getting my costume on. I knew it would be a fun night to scare these people. My costume was a black body suit, I had it on backward so I could open it up a bit to see. On the skin that was showing from the zipper, I put black eye shadow around it. If you looked at me It would just be a single eye staring right back at you...

My family and I made a haunted house in our backyard from 2-by-4s, black plastic, and of course, hard work. Tonight was exactly eight days before Halloween, and the news was spreading like wildfire across the internet and the schools. Probably 10 people have come up to me and told me about it, not knowing it was in my own backyard.

"Staff! There will be a huge group coming by without a flashlight. You can scare them." My mom called over to the staff members, me included. Most staff were out taking a break because of a few groups with flashlights. Taking this as the right time and place to scare people, how could I not take the chance?

Walking through the back door, I went out onto the bridge. The boards creaked under each of my feet, my boots almost getting stuck between the planks. Moving the caution tape dangling from the roof, I stepped into the crime scene room. My shoes started clicking on the wooden floor.

Even though I was about 12 feet from the entrance, I could still hear my mom say, "Alright, once you walk through this door, the haunt will begin."

From what I saw, the group looked to be six or seven people, two or three adults, and four kids. The gears in my brain were turning at the speed of light. Calculating how long it will take for them to get to my scare spot and how many people were in front of me, which was about 13 people by the sound of their footsteps.

I would have to make it past around 13 people in about a minute or so, and without even realizing it, I found myself in the witch's room. Meaning I went through the graveyard with Jacklin in his plague doctor outfit. Jacklin scares people by just moving a few inches because he looks like an animatronic, as most of the volunteers do. While some hide in the shadows waiting for the right time to jump out.

Opening the hanging plastic from the middle, I stepped into the spider room, ensuring everything was working and moving on. Then, I went into the electrical hallway, pulling the wire to see if the animatronics were still intact and working.

I heard footsteps very close, and I picked up my pace. After making it through the electrical hallway, I stepped into the Ouija board room moving the piece to the 'yes' instead of the '6' to make it scarier for the people who come through twice.

I got to my least favorite room, the phantoms. I went straight past them as there was nothing to do in the room. Right after going into the next room, my eyes had to adjust as the phantoms had a blue light in them.

This room was decorated with pictures of people where if you looked at a certain angle, you would see them looking normal. On the other side, the people would be different, some were werewolves, bloody, or just inhuman. They were all different.

Walking into the next room, I had to bend down because about 50 or 60 chains were hanging from the ceiling. Slowing my pace just a bit more as I could hear the group getting farther.

Opening the plastic to the next room, I got jump scared by an animatronic, Bubba. Bubba is a dog that jumps out of his dog house. Even though he has been in my family's name for about 4 years, each year without fail, I still get scared of him.

After passing Bubba, I went into my custom-made room what I call The Darkness, an almost pitch-black room. The only light source was a flickering light in the corner. Moving the plastic strips that hung about three feet above the ground. I had to stop myself as I was about to hit another volunteer in the face.

"I didn't see you there for a second, Marlin sorry." I apologized, looking up at him as he was quite tall.

"It's fine. Is there a group coming?"

"Yes, in fact about six or seven people, no flashlight," I responded.

I could hear the group coming closer and spoke just so he could hear me, "About two rooms down, I'm going around the corner, be ready to scare them." After giving him a thumbs up I hurried down the hall into the next room.

This room goes straight, then turns to the left so someone could hide behind the wall and pop out from behind to scare someone. This was exactly what I was going to do...

Hearing a few yells and a robotic mechanism going off, I understood they were about to get scared by Marlin, then the one and only me. "AH oh my god, you scared the heck out of me."

Plastic moved and I got into position, my body was blending into the wall. An adult moved around the corner, saw my eye, and ran right back to the rest.

"There is a floating eye around the corner I think it was a prob but I don't know." I suppose that's what the person said.

"An e-eye, d-d-did it look human?" That voice was oddly familiar...

"Looked sort of bloodshot but human."

When they rounded the corner my eye was closed, but the eye under the suit was open. "I swear it was just there! I saw it with my own two eyes."

I opened my eye slowly while saying, "I see you~~ wanna play with me!?"

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