On October 1, 2008, an innocent woman was shot, and killed. Not only was she a woman, but a mother as well. The neighborhood is quiet, although there is a painfully loud echo of silence. The only sounds that are heard at night, are the occasional sound of a passing train. Sometimes there is an echo of footsteps, walking by in the darkness, and around October, those footsteps crunch loudly over leaves. A train sometimes goes by, usually once an hour. Other than that, there is complete silence. It is so painfully quiet, possibly as quiet as the suburbs. Then at the ungodly hour of 5:00AM, BANG. Then a short pause. BANG.

Shortly after, sirens were heard, approaching from miles away. A river of people, flowed up towards the end of the block, standing by the yellow tape surrounding the house. A few crying, some questioning authorities or fellow neighbors, some children, all ready for school. The block was on lock-down. The killer was on the loose, as an innocent mother was rushed to meet her tragic fate.

I didn't personally know this woman, but when I saw her photo on the news, I recognized her. A familiar face that I had seen through passing, maybe exchanged a friendly smile once or twice. What makes the story tragic though, is that this woman had a young child. She also had a roommate, around the same age, who is also a single mother. The roommate had to witness possibly the most awful thing she would ever have to see in her entire life. Shortly after the shooting, the roommate left the house behind, and the fences were chained. They were most likely chained to keep people out, but the fence is not high and actually quite easy to hop over.

To this day, I'm still unsure what happened to the roommate and the two children, but now the house is completely empty. Whenever I have to pass by the house, I walk by very quickly, and every time, I get chills down my spine. A few times in passing, I was brave enough to look at the house. You can see right through the house, to the next street. The floors are bare, no furniture, just nothing but the structure of the old house. Around the house, the grass is brown and there is still a rusty old, red pickup truck in front of a rundown shed.

For quite a while after the shooting, I would see things as I passed by the house. Most of the time, I would see an old woman in the front yard. She would just stand there, and she never said anything to anyone. It felt as if she were looking right at me. Actually, it kind of felt as if she were staring through me. I never figured out if she was real, or if she was a ghost. To this day, I am still convinced that she was in fact a ghost.

I have seen odd things inside the house as well, but the one image burned into my mind, is this rug. It looked like it might have once been a welcome mat. It was yellow in color, designed to look like the sun with rays shining out of it. That wasn't all though. When I looked at it, I noticed there was a red stain, which looked like a blood stain that wouldn't come out. A few of the times the old woman was outside, she was scrubbing the rug. It was draped over the railing of the porch for about two weeks. What disturbs me is that the rug didn't move, not even an inch during that time. It should have at least been disturbed a little by the wind and rain, but not at all. It remained exactly the same.

Two years later, on Halloween 2010, my friends and I were trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. I had already told my best friend the story of the shooting, and she suggested that we should ring the door bell. Being the chicken that I am, I told her it was a bad idea, but before I could say it, our other friend had already jumped the fence and knocked on the door.

It was already pitch black outside, and there were no other groups of people left on the streets. Just an eerie echo of silence, and the sound of our friend knocking on the door. She knocked three times, and soon after she knocked, someone knocked back. She turned around and told us to cut it out and stop messing around, but none of us had been the one knocking back. Then all of a sudden, the door flew open. We all screamed and ran towards my house. I remember looking back and seeing a flash of white as the door slammed shut again.

We got back, and were now inside my house. The only thing is, my house is also haunted. I discovered this a few years ago, after my grandma passed away. For a few weeks, everyday when I returned home from school, my stereo would be on. Most of the times, it was the same song that was on, which had been one of my favorites, until this happened to me. I would walk in to the house and the song "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie would be blasting through the speakers.

Not only did the stereo turn on only when I got home from school, but a few times when I was in the same room as the stereo. I know for sure it wasn't an alarm, because first of all, the stereo is not equipped with one, and second, it happened at different times. Every time it would happen, I would jump and scream, and usually leave my house for a while, since I was usually here by myself. After about a week of this happening, I decided to unplug the stereo in the morning before I left for school. Sure enough, I returned home to discover the stereo plugged in, and turned on. I have seen some weird things happen in my house, and in other places as well.

On Halloween 2010, when we had returned from our adventure, none of us talked about what had happened, not even up until today, although, I think we might have if we hadn't decided to mess with a Ouija board.

We were in the middle of talking with a spirit, but we realized it wasn't one of the nice ones. When we tried to stop communicating with it, the lights flickered off, the board went flying in the air, and crashed into the mirror in my dining room, shattering the mirror. We all looked at the mirror, shocked at what had just happened. We huddled against the opposite wall, watching with wide eyes. The board didn't fall away from the mirror right away. It stayed, as if it were glued to the mirror, maybe even like it was part of the mirror, as if it went into the mirror, into an alternate universe or something.

After a few seconds, the board fell to the floor, and the mirror fixed itself, and we gasped in shock as we looked in the mirror and saw what looked like zombie-ghost versions of ourselves. Then as soon as it had happened, everything was back to normal again. We all sat there, against the wall, in silence, but then I spoke up, asking if everyone wanted to watch scary movies and munch on some popcorn. We all agreed to that. As my friends set up the movie, I went into the kitchen to make the popcorn. As I was putting the popcorn in the microwave, a huge carving knife whizzed past my head and landed between two of my fingers of my hand that was resting on top of the counter. I screamed, and my best friend asked me from the other room if I was okay, and I said that it was nothing and that I was fine. I threw the popcorn in the microwave and waited for it to finish.

As I was bringing the popcorn in to the other room, the same knife, which I had left because I was scared to touch it, came flying at me, stabbing me in the back of the leg. I screamed out in fear and in pain, as I fell to the floor with the popcorn. At first, my best friend thought I was playing a joke on them, but then she realized that I wasn't kidding. It wasn't a terribly deep cut, but it still hurt a lot. We cleaned up the cut and put bandages over it, and decided it would be a good idea to stay the night at my best friends house instead. I threw together some clothes to bring, and we left my house and walked to the train station.

We took the long way around, since none of us had any interest of walking past the farmhouse. That was the first, and the last time, that I will ever use an Ouija board again. I also stayed at my best friends house for about a week, until my mom would be home, since I didn't want to stay there alone. When I returned, everything was normal. The only thing I have left from that night, are horrible memories, and a small scar on the back of my right calf.