I love creepy stories. Here's something that actually happened to me.
I graduated high school in the last half of the nineties. For our graduation celebration my friends and I wanted to do something special besides getting plastered. So we decided that we would check out a local famous house called Mudhouse Mansion. I personally didn't know much about the house's history, but I had heard it was supposedly haunted and had something to do with former slaves. We thought that was BS though since Ohio was in the north during the civil war. We had also heard that the current owner was pain about prosecuting people that went to the abandoned property. We'd even heard of her slashing people's tires so they couldn't drive off before the sheriff's officers got there.
Me and two of my friends were avid abandoned house "explorers". Basically when we found some old place that looked abandoned, we'd break in (we never broke windows or anything like that) and explore the place. Then we'd take something, like a small strip of peeling wallpaper, a piece of tile or a piece cut from the curtains. We usually tried to pick places that looked like they had been abandoned for decades. Sometimes the places were pretty bare looking, and sometimes they were furnished. One place had been used for storage or something because there were a lot of barrels with grain (maybe wheat) in them (we couldn't budge them) and boxes and laundry baskets full of baseball bats, gloves, bases, half flat basket and soccer balls, etc. At that place I took a wooden keepsake box out of the walk up attic that had old pins and a few pieces of costume jewelry, and my friends took a glove and a bat. That was the only time I really felt like I was doing something wrong, like I was breaking the law, because it was the only time i had taken something other than trash, but at the time i reasoned that no one had been there in years, so what was the harm. After that I started keeping my "souvenirs" in the box. None of that has anything to do with our trip to Mudhouse Mansion, but I wanted to give a little backstory because I know people will say I made up the story.
So we decide to go, 4 friends and I. More had said they wanted to go, but they either chickened out or had some other thing to do that night so the number went from about a dozen to five. It was fine by me since we were already risking some serious trouble if we got caught by the owner or sheriff's department. It was me, my two explorer friends Tommy and Don, Megan and Beth (names changed because it makes me feel better than giving their real names out on the internet). Beth was kind of a dark personality and not from our school but she was Don's friend and she was eager so we brought her, but I never could figure out why Megan wanted to go. She was pretty straight laced. Maybe one last wild thing before being bogged down by four more years of school.
So we pack some flashlights despite the fact that I expressed my fear of getting caught several times. We agreed to use them when we needed them but to try to keep the light covered when possible. We also took some disposable cameras....with flashes. I was certain we were gonna get caught. I thought for sure that if the owner was as vicious about people going there as I'd heard that they would certainly step up surveillance of the house during times like Halloween and Graduation when people might more likely visit.
I figured we'd go in, take some pictures, try to scare each other a bit, get unnerved and leave. That was kind of my schedule. So we drive out there, and try to find a place to pull off the road that wouldn't get us caught. But the only place was a slightly wooded spot nearly a quarter of a mile away (and I mean slightly. The area was nice houses and farms, there wasn't a lot of foliage). We agree to be pretty quiet. No one even closes their doors loud. We're all wearing dark clothes except for Don who has white socks on for some reason. I point it out and he pulls the bottom of his dark sweat down to try to cover them. And then we're off. Pretending I'm a ninja while simultaneously thinking about the mission impossible theme song we ran along the road a bit and then cut into the yard. It was hard to try to keep an eye out for any sign that we were being watched while also trying to make sure I could see the girls. Beth tripped and fell hard, but she swore she was ok to keep gong. The house itself looks so creepy. Even more so in the dead of night. For one thing it has this quality that makes you believe it's sinking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudhouse_Mansion
I kind of panicked when we reached the house because i had no idea how we were going to get in. The windows had boards nailed to them, and Tommy tried a few, and with my help yanking them, we got some off. Tommy and I went in first, then the girls, and then Don. I didn't get the feeling of a haunted house but it did feel creepy. For one thing, on the first floor there was water on part of the floor that caved in. I didn't know if there was a basement below or not, but with the water there we weren't going to look for one. Instead we went upstairs.
To be honest, I was feeling a little disappointed. Most of the places I had explored before had been pretty much untouched for years. But this place looked like Animal House. There was trash and beer cans and books and wet moldy blankets around. Either people had squatted here, or it was a big makeout spot. Or both. The furniture was ripped apart, either by animals or by idiots that just like to wreck things. We couldn't see much in the main room and I was very scared to use much light because there were large windows that would basically transmit our location to anyone watching. I was surprised to see that in spite of all the furniture being torn up, the bedrooms didn't look that bad.
At this point it was me, Megan and Don on the second floor and Beth and Tommy on the first floor. Beth was taking loads of pictures. As we started up to the third floor, Beth ran u to us and said that the water pooled on the first floor had gurgled and bubbled. I thought, "Here we go with the scaring each other part," but when Tommy came up soon after with a disturbed look on his face, I was kind of weirded out. We whispered in the dark for a while about what it might be and we decided that it had probably been because we were disturbing the floorboards as we walked on them and we shifted something. Tommy appeared to accept our answer and quickly perked back up, ready to explore some more. Beth didn't quite look like she bought it. Afterward she told us, "If you had heard it....if you had seen it, you wouldn't have believed that either."
We all went to the top floor which was just bedrooms. We started taking pictures and eventually worked our way back down to the second floor. Me and Tommy were using up the last of our film while Megan and Beth decided they wanted to wait and get some exterior shots to finish up their rolls. So at that point it was me and Tommy on the second floor and Don and the girls on the first floor working their way out. That's when it happened. I jumped when I heard the most bloodcurdling scream I've ever heard coming below us. It sounded like a man screaming in agony, like I imagine men scream when they get tortured with the wood shavings getting pushed under their fingernails, or worse. It was like a scream of mindless pain, as if there was no attempt to not scream or to muffle the sound. My first thought was that maybe Don had impaled himself on a large old nail or some other horrible accident.
We ran downstairs where we saw Don, Megan and Beth all wide eyed and pointing down. Not to the water but right beneath them. We scrambled to get out. Beth was first to the window, but before she was through it we heard the other thing. It's what it must have sounded like on the ground floor of the trade center towers as the building collapsed over them. I really thought the house was falling in on us. The noise was deafening, but I saw no debris and I wasn't hit by anything. We all finally got out of the house, Tommy maybe the bravest of us being the last. As we ran back to the road I looked back expecting....what? I dunno, maybe the house falling over or collapsing in on itself like in Poltergeist. But I didn't see anything. Not even a floating apparition glaring down watching us leave.
We got in the car and took off. For a couple minutes no one said anything. Once we saw the city limits sign all of a sudden we felt safe again and everyone started talking at once. Then and there we all admitted there was something wrong in that house. But a few weeks into the summer it was like people began to forget the terror of the night. Megan said that maybe the scream was an animal that we scared when we went into the house and it had tried to run away and got caught or impaled on something and was screaming in its efforts to get loose. Don thought that the whole thing was done to scare people away, maybe by the owner herself with speakers hidden in the rubble or by pranksters who apparently would have nothing better to do than rig up a very realistic sounding system to fool people that entered the house. Tommy even wanted to get a video camera and go back and check every inch of the place. If he ever did, I never knew about it. I lost touch with him when I went to college. Only Beth shared my sentiments about the house being very wrong and that people should not go in there. I've never seen abandoned properties the same way and I certainly never explored them again, though perhaps I may in the future, with several people along....in broad daylight...
There's a kicker to the story of sorts. When we first got to the house, Beth and Tommy both took a few exterior shots of the house before I whisper yelled telling them to wait till we were finished because we didn't want to flash to give us away till we were leaving. The thing is we had 6 disposable cameras. We had all kicked in a few bucks and each got one but Don who wasn't interested in taking pictures. When Beth and Megan ran out of their first camera they used the two spares. In our haste to depart we never did take more exterior shots of the house. Of all six cameras, none of the interior shots developed anything beyond a bright smudgey blur in the middle surrounded by a dark periphery. Of all those pictures, only the first few exterior shots had turned out. They showed nothing spooky, and I don't have them or I'd put them up for you. I can't explain why none of the other pictures turned out. It can't just be because they were in the house because I have seen interior pictures since then.
That scream and that night was easily the most terrifying thing I've ever been witness to. The fact that three of the people that were involved seem to downplay what we encountered simply baffles me. Maybe they really believe it, or maybe it's just their way of coping. Anyway, that's my tale. If you don't believe it, that's ok. I really don't have evidence so I can understand skepticism.
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