Many years ago I lived on a road located in an area that was more or less a backwoods where just about everyone lived on acreage. It was a nice place but was somewhat out of the way and wasn’t too near any main roads, meaning I had something of a long walk everyday to and from the bus stop, where I’d take the bus to the railway station and then on to school.
Anyway, one particular Friday evening I had stayed in the town centre after school, skateboarding and hanging out with friends and ended up catching the late bus home. As I walked towards my house - which was a good 30 minutes or so from the stop - the sun started sinking fast and I started to hurry a little as it could get kinda creepy out there in the evenings by yourself (especially when you are only 12). The road was gravel and for most of the journey there was forest on either side of the road with the occasional house here and there set some way back and generally hidden behind trees.
I’d been walking for around 10 minutes in the twilight and suddenly I come to a bend in the road where there’s this house that had for years given me the creeps in a major way. It wasn’t particularly old or ‘haunted’ looking but it was pretty unkempt with long grass and overgrown shrubs and in desperate need of a coat of paint. One evening I had heard strange chanting/singing coming from the house and had briefly seen candles moving past the windows. Something else I had observed was that I had never seen a car of any sort parked in the driveway ever since I had lived in the neighbourhood, which I thought was odd.
So I walk past the house and there’s no chanting and no singing and definitely no candles this time but I notice that there’s a guy with long grey hair and a dark raincoat just standing in the shadows by the side of the house and watching the road. He didn’t seem to notice me as I walked past even though I smiled nervously and waved in his direction - he just keeps staring at this spot in the road as if he was in a trance. I turned away and then a split second later turned back again and he was gone.
It doesn’t sound too unusual but at the time it filled me with a fear I couldn’t explain- similar to the goosebumps/hair on back of neck standing up but more intense and longer lasting. It’s definitely something I happen felt before and can’t remember feeling since.
Anyway, a few weeks later I’m walking back from the bus stop with another kid from the neighbourhood. It’s much lighter and I’m not alone this time so I’m feeling kind of invincible and I casually mention the house and that I had seen some creepy looking long haired guy staring at the road just beyond the line of trees that border the road.
He gives me a weird look like he’s going to be sick - tells me that the place is haunted and that the guy who lived there some years back was something of a nutter who stole animals from neighbouring properties and killed them for fun. He had apparently fallen asleep in the bath while intoxicated one evening and subsequently drowned. No one had lived in the place for years apparently. When the ambulance came to take the body away, they found pentagrams and shit drawn all over the walls and blood in the kitchen sink.
This kid then tells me that about a year previous, his grandparents were driving along the road in a severe rainstorm, when their car skidded off the road and got stuck in the mud. They sat there for a few minutes and were just about to attempt to pull out when some old guy with long grey hair and a dirty black coat taps on the side of the window and starts singing to himself. They freak out completely and pull out of the mud and drive off. Looking back to the spot there’s no one there.
Whn they make enquiries about it later, they’re told they probably saw the ghost of this guy as quite a few people in the neighbourhood have seen it.
Whether or not it really was a ghost I’ll never know - but it did scare the hell out of me and I wouldn’t walk down that road agin in the dark by myself for any amount of money.