“What would you expect a person’s life to be like if they grew up there? That house is spooky.”  People in the neighborhood said it. Friends of the family echoed it when they visited or we met them at church. Eventually we began to believe there was something about the house as well.

     The house I grew up in has haunted my family throughout my life. Goblins and monsters didn’t live there; the evil that happened in that house was worse, because it was not imagined and its influence endured. For more than a hundred and ten years the house, as if it were alive, seemed to cast spells on its residents or cause havoc in their lives. My family, it seems, got the worst of it. After we moved the house was torn down, but not before it made its indelible mark on my family.

* * *

     My older brother by one year, Jerry, and I came home from school one day --- I had attended elementary school for less than a month and was happy to be out of the house. We found our dad, a hero to all six of us kids, sitting in a chair in the hallway just inside the entrance to the house. We were shocked to see tears in his eyes. Looking back on it now it seems even Pop could not escape the dirty games this house played on our family.

    Pop pulled me up on one knee; Jerry sat on the other.

   “Your mom is gone,” he whispered just loud enough for us to hear but not loud enough that his voice would crack. His heart may have been broken but he didn’t dare inflict any more pain than necessary on ours.

    Mom had run away…from …the house….and left him and us behind.

to be continued.....