Places to avoid
It took me a long time to realize that growing up in a haunted house was unusual.
My father’s first wife died about two years before I was born. Died in the house of what I’m told was a very painful cancer. Although she was a doctor, she refused to get it treated and it killed her.
Her mother also died in the house about the same time of a very similar condition.
A year after, my father married my mother. My brother can I came along in the next few years.
My mother made a concerted effort to erase her predecessor. No photos were allowed. All of her belongings were boxed and placed in various places around the house.
Those were the places none of us ever went.
One of them was the closet of an upstairs bedroom that eventually became mine. That happened when my brother simply refused to sleep in it any more.
I never liked that room and was outright afraid of the closet. I refused to even keep any clothes in it.
If forced I wouldn’t wear anything from it until it had sat somewhere else for at least a day or two.
Other closets in the house were not bad. Some I actually ended up making secret hiding places.
But, that one… I wouldn’t even sit or sleep with my back to it. It needed to be watched.
Downstairs was better. You never felt alone there either, but it wasn’t a feeling that someone was going to attack you if your back was turned.
Both floors had footsteps that didn’t match to people. Shadows when no one was in the light. Reflections of tall women with long dark hair that were not there when you looked where the reflection came from.
Generally, if you avoided the concentrations it was OK.
There was a similar thing in the woods behind the house.
There was a stream that ran out of the property. It came from a couple of pools in the woods.
All of the kids that live in the area played along that stream. We sailed boats in it. We looked for frogs in it. We built bridges over it. (It was maybe a foot across at its largest…)
But, those pools where it came from? You didn’t go near them.
You didn’t float things on them. You didn’t touch the water. You didn’t throw things in it.
Even when I was a kid, there was no point of that stream that was deeper than my knee. Most was only up to my ankle.
Both pools were up against big rocks. Neither one was more than ten feet across.
I have no idea how deep those pools were. They were just dark black holes as deep as any light would go.
We used to stay they were bottomless.
Probably not true. But, I certainly never saw a bottom.
One of them was always clear. Leaves didn’t seem to float on it. Bugs never seemed to land on its surface. Always clear and black.
The other one we called “the trap” as it was almost always covered with leaves. You wouldn’t know it was there at all as it looked just like the rest of the forest floor. Unless you stepped in it and found yourself falling into it.
Markers we put up around it didn’t seem to stay there. I never removed anyone’s and they would tell me they hadn’t taken mine.
I haven’t been back to that house since my father died 18 years ago.
And, even then I didn’t go out into the woods. Or, upstairs to where that closet was.
Even now I don’t think you could convince me to throw a rock into those pools.
But, I probably could be convinced to look in the closet.
Ghosts are a lot easier to deal with than fey…