Directly facing my porch was, and still is, an absolute eye-sore of a house. At 21, it still looks creepy at night- at 12 it was fucking terrifying. There was an old woman who partly lived there, visiting every few days. I've lived in my house now for around 15 years and the house is still in the exact same state as the day I moved in. Same rotted curtains, same pieces of loose plaster which had peeled off the exterior and fell to the floor, the same sickly green trim and the same wild patch of grass outside.
As a kid, my friends and I would literally play football in the street morning til night. We loved it, until someone kicked the ball into the garden no one wanted to enter. I did it once and, thus was the unofficial rules, had to retrieve the ball alone. I reluctantly walked to the peeling yellow-white gate and tried to carefully lift the squeaking latch. I kept my eyes firmly set on that horrible green door, looking for any movement. No lights were ever on now I think back... anyway, after opening the gate I stood still for a few seconds, friends watching in silence and suspense. The door remained still. I creeped forward and trod through the wild grass searching for the ball. As I bent down to collect it, I heard my mates running away. Shit. I froze for a second, not wanting to look up. But I had to. I looked at the door and in the deep inky blackness could just make out a sizeable strip of black with a dark, withered hand feeling round it like a huge grey spider. My eyes travelled further up where I could just make out the outline of a hooded face. The face was unrecognizable but I knew whatever or whoever it belonged to was focused on me. With that, I bolted out the garden with the ball in one arm and straight over to my house, where I seen my friends hiding behind the car, in the porch and behind the fence.
A proper haunted house if ever there was one and still unchanged to this day. I haven't seen her for a few years, maybe she died. Of course she wasn't this ghoul we all made her out to be, just an old woman pissed off with them kids kicking the ball into her garden again. Still, I'll never forget them days, they were absolutely amazing.
