The Haunted House

"… Plenty of ghosts around. I bet that no one will dare to enter the haunted house," drawled the school bully, George. "Especially you, a girl." He looked at me in the eye. I felt my temper begin to flare. I immediately took up the challenge.        George and his gang of bullies produced a piece of paper that stated: "You, Evelyn, and your gang are to remain in the house for two hours AND take a picture of a ghost. If you fail, you have to give fifty dollars to George. If you succeed, George will give you fifty dollars." I accepted the dare. George and I agreed on the date, Friday the thirteenth, which was that very day, after dinner.        My gang consisted of Rene, Kathy, Ron, Fred and I. That evening, we met at my house and walked to the haunted house. When we reached the house, George and his lackeys were already there. He was holding a camera. "Here you go!" I held the camera he had given me.        I took the first step into the house. The four followed me as we nervously explored the house. The house was thought to be haunted because of white things fluttering around and weird noises being seen and heard. Suddenly, Kathy stopped. "Where’s Fred?" she asked. I was puzzled too. We looked for him frantically. "Oooooo …" A wail was heard. Something whizzed past us. We looked at one another, frightened. We began to walk towards where the sound was coming from-upstairs. We climbed up the stairs, our hearts pumping for all they were worth.        On the topmost floor, a door was slightly open. A skeleton hung from the ceiling. I crept forward and opened the door with a creak. To my surprise, I saw a man at a desk, writing furiously, with Fred at his side. "Fred!" We chorused. "Oh, hi gang!" Fred answered uncertainly. Fred introduced us to the man, who turned out to be an amateur writer of ghost stories.        "So you found me after all!" the man said. Sam pointed to a television screen. "I saw you at the entrance, so I switched on my ‘ghost and noise’ machines. "He pointed at the machine as he said so. It turned out that he had stayed in the house as he wanted inspiration for his books. He did not want anyone to disturb him while he worked. So he bought these machines.        "I’m sorry I frightened you." "Yeah, you really frightened us almost to death." Rene chimed. Kathy nudged Rene with her elbow. We stayed for more than three hours, learning and helping Sam with his newest book – about him and us! It was entitled: "The Ghost in the Haunted House." We had a lot of fun!        When we finally went home, I wrote a composition about our adventure, and submitted it to a competition. Sadly, we forgot to take the picture that we were supposed to. But I came in second in the writing competition! The prize was one hundred dollars. We paid twenty-five dollars to George as we completed half of the dare, and blew the rest of the money on ice-cream at Swenson’s.

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Written by Edwin Chua Pri 6/1, 2002 Zhangde PS