When I was a teenager in Maryland, my favorite Saturday activity during October was squirrel hunting, and there were lots of good hardwood stands around the county, full of squirrels. Well, this one Saturday, I was going to try a different patch of woods, where I had to go a few miles down a one-lane gravel road, and turn off it to pass under a small, one-lane railroad bridge. There I parked, and headed for the woods for a morning of hunting, when the squirrels are most active. By mid-day, the squirrels would become mostly inactive, so I ate a bite of lunch, and went exploring (a typical mid-day activity) . I was always (and still am) the type of guy that wants to see what’s over the next hill, or around the next bend, if I was on the river. Anyway, there was a power-line right -of-way going up this hill, so, never having gone up there before, that’s where I headed. After cresting the hill,, I saw, down on the other side, a stand of locust trees surrounding what looked like an old farmhouse. Curious, I walked down towards it and it became readily apparent that the house had been a long-time abandoned, possibly since the Great Depression. I walked around, and seeing no sign of recent activity, walked inn through a slightly ajar door. It was a two-story frame house with an L-shaped addition on the back, with an outside porch to access some of the rooms. I had seen many houses of similar designs in rural Maryland and Virginia.The house was mostly empty, with only a few tables and, as best I remember… This was 1961 or 1962… a few chairs. There were fireplaces in many of the rooms. On the second floor, in one of the front bedrooms, and inside a closet, was a narrow, rather steep stair-case leading up to the attic. I went up, and it was essentially empty., so I went back down, left the house and went back to hunting.
At school, the following week, I told two of my buddies about the spooky house I discovered, and, since Halloween was approaching, we thought it would be fun to take our girl-friends out to that house, to scare them a bit. So, we made up a story about this “Haunted” house, and that we should try to conjure the spirits. So, on Friday evening, the six of us went out there, walked over the hill and down to the house. I should add, that the house was very isolated, way back off the single lane gravel road, and there were no other houses anywhere near this house. We got out our flashlights and explored the house, completely. Thhen, I showed them the stairway to the attic. Once at the top of the stairs, I pulled out a candle, and said we should light the candle and turn off our flashlights. We all held hands and called on the spirit to come. Suddenly, we heard a loud THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of something BIG walking towards us from the rear of the attic. You’ve never seen six flashlights come on so fast!. The question asked was, “… what the hell was that?!… We shined the lights around the attic…NOTHING. Then, one of the guys said “… do you think someone followed us here, and is trying to spoof us?…” I said let’s go and check, so we looked out windows, looked through all of the rooms, but didn’t see nor hear anything… no sign of anyone else being, nor having just been there. The girls were getting pretty spooked by then, and us guys, being guys, tried hard to pretend that we weren’t scared at all, that it was probably nothing and that we should go back to the attic, which we did. So, we re-lit the candle, turned off our flashlights, held hands, and once again called out to the spirits, and again, suddenly, the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP happened, but this time, continuing from the spot where it had stopped the first time, and moving faster towards us than before! You’ve never seen six teenagers squeeze down a narrow, steep stairway as fast as we went… if we had wings, we’d have flown out of that house. ( I get goose-bumps as I am writing this, even though it happened ~65 years ago…). I never returned to that house. I don’t know what is worse: seeing something scary you don’t hear or hearing something scary you can’t see. That night, I think we all agreed, it was the latter.
