Scary Stories From Readers

The Pumpkin

Marie Hendricks, a widow, had recently moved. The house had been on the market for nine months since the death of the widow Turner.

Marie, exploring the cellar, found a dirty plastic pumpkin. She brought it upstairs with the purpose of displaying it on the front porch. Halloween was just a few weeks away.
As she stood at the kitchen sink, starting to clean the pumpkin, she felt dizzy. She fell to the floor, dead before her body hit the worn linoleum.
When the police found her they shook their heads in disbelief.

“What are the odds of this happening again?” they asked each other. “Mrs. Turner died exactly the same way.”

“No use in this dirty pumpkin staying up here,” the policeman said as he pitched the pumpkin in the cellar. “The next people to buy this place might use it.”

The pumpkin rested against the damp cellar wall. Waiting.

Nellie Carson Gooden, Glasgow
Farmers Rural Electric Co-op

Ghost Guest

My aunt tells me the story of a ghost that stayed with her in her home many years ago.

She lived alone, yet sometimes when she’d come home from work, the pictures on the wall would be facing upside down or even turned toward the wall.

At Christmas, only half of her live Christmas tree caught on fire. The other half of the tree was completely uncharred, all the decorations completely untouched. It was as if someone put out the fire before it got out of hand.
My aunt would often find her shoes rearranged or her dishes stacked by size and shape in the cabinet.

One night, she awoke to a translucent figure standing solemnly at the foot of her bed. He didn’t speak or make any move toward her. He only stood silently, looking at her, and then he vanished and was not seen again.

Lisa Boling, Utica
Kenergy electric co-op

A Ghost Story

When I was a kid growing up in the biggest city in Kentucky, I loved spending summers in a small river town in the western part of the state. My grandfather owned many old homes that he rented out for income. My aunt lived in one of those homes that were built in the early 1900s. I always stayed with her when I visited because she had a son my age and we always played together.

One summer my aunt had her sons clearing bricks from an old sidewalk in the back yard. They discovered under the bricks a tombstone that was broken off about one-third of the way up. They learned after talking with my grandfather that it was the marker for one of our relatives, who were buried in a cemetery about 100 yards up the road. The name on the tombstone was Sarah and she had passed at the age of 6. The tombstone was laid up on the old well and left there for years.
One hot summer night in 1969 my cousin and I slipped out to climb on the bridge and catch pigeons for my cousin, who raised them. We got several and placed them in his pigeon coop, and slipped back in the house.

We crept back upstairs in the dark and crawled into his old iron bed. We whispered about our adventure and tried not to wake anyone with our laughter. When we saw light coming up the steps we got quiet. We thought we woke his mom. The light seemed to get brighter. We then saw the figure of a girl in the light and at first we thought it was his younger sister coming to bug us. When the little girl got closer we realized that it was not his sister–it was almost transparent and the light glowed around her. She walked to the edge of the bed with her hands folded together and she knelt down. She lowered her head as if she was about to say a bedtime prayer.

We were too frightened to scream and all we could do was stick our heads under the covers. Too scared to sleep or talk, we stayed like that the rest of the night. It was so hot we about suffocated.

When we could see that the sun was up we slipped our heads out and looked around. Everything seemed to be clear. We walked downstairs where my aunt was cooking. She looked at us and saw we were covered in sweat and asked what were we doing. We told her the story of our events of the night. She smiled and said, “Oh, that was just Sarah.”

Larry White

The Child’s Voice

As Sara and I sat on my bed at about one o’clock in the morning, an eerie feeling came over us. We tried to ignore it, but then we heard a small voice in the corner of my room. The voice was that of a child. It screamed, “Mommy! Mommy! Help me! Help me!”

Sara and I were horrified. We ran to the living room where my mother was sleeping on the couch. I woke her and asked if she had the television on. She answered, “No,” and went back to sleep.

Sara and I slowly made our way back to my bedroom. We went to the corner where the voice came from. In the corner, we found a small, plastic doll in a blue dress. We had never seen the doll before. We looked to see if the doll was a talking doll. It wasn’t.

Sara and I eventually fell asleep as the sun was coming up. In the morning, the doll was gone.

Tressie Tritt
Franklin, Ohio

The Experience

Late one night my brother and I decided we would stay up and watch a scary movie on TV. After the movie we headed to bed. Since I was older, he asked to sleep in my room so he wouldn’t be alone. We hadn’t been in bed for even half an hour when I felt what I thought was my brother rubbing my upper arm to wake me. With my eyes still shut I asked him what he wanted. I got no response, so I opened my eyes and nudged him. He rolled and grunted and went back into his sleep muttering, “Nothing.”

I looked up over his shoulder (he was lying on his side) and saw myself hovering next to my bed looking straight ahead. Suddenly I turned and (still hovering) looked straight at myself lying in the bed. I realized it was still me in the bed, and this person, or ghost, or whatever, looked just like me–almost an exact replica, but not quite. She was dressed like me, her hair was styled like mine, but she was floating and transparent. When she turned her face a little, I could see clearly that she was me, except her face was mangled! She smiled a wicked, evil-looking smile at me. I was panicking now. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. I reared back my fist and swung at her. My fist and arm went straight through her, entering at her shoulder and exiting at her waist, but she just kept smiling that evil smile.

Suddenly my voice came to me and I screamed for my mom as loud as possible. My parents came running into the room turning on the light. I was sitting up in bed crying uncontrollably.

My mom and dad listened to my story and said I must have had an “experience of some kind.” They actually believed me, and they sat up with me most of the rest of the night trying to calm me.

The next morning, the “experience” was pushed into the back of my mind. My mom, brother, and I went to Winchester. My mom was shopping for Sunday school supplies on Main Street. Leaving a store, we started down the steps to the road. I walked in the lead, looked both ways, and stepped into the street. My mom screamed and I felt something on my leg. It was the bumper of a blue car; behind the wheel was a very old man. He had come out of nowhere but somehow managed to come to a screeching halt before running me over. My mother ran to me, checking me despite my protest of being okay. I apologized to the old man and my mother. I said very little on the way home. I was in shock I guess. When we got home I realized what had happened to me the night before.

My “experience” had been my guardian angel warning me of the car, of the possibility of being run over, by showing her face, my face, mangled and twisted. My guardian angel saved me. I know this to be true. She was there that night in my room to save me. She was there in that car with that man, and she helped him stop the car before it was too late.

Crystal Jones, Paris
Clark Energy Cooperative

The Black Bubblegum

Once there was a little boy named Tom who was going trick-or-treating with his friends for the first time. His mother told him that he could visit any of the houses on the block except the one on the hill.

The boys visited all the houses and started back home. As they passed the house on the hill, Tom said he was going to visit it anyway.

When he reached the door, he knocked and said, “Trick-or-treat.” The man who answered the door dropped something in his bag and closed the door.

Tom looked inside the bag to find a piece of black bubblegum. He took it out and popped it in his mouth. It was the best gum he had ever tasted.

When bedtime came, the gum tasted even better than before. Tom took the gum from his mouth and stuck it to the bedpost as he climbed into bed.

Tom woke up soon after falling asleep to find the gum in his mouth. He took it out of his mouth and stuck it back on the bedpost. He woke soon after to find that he was chewing on the gum again. This time he took it out of his mouth and threw it into the trash can near his bed. Again Tom awoke with the gum in his mouth. This time he threw the gum in the can and placed it outside his bedroom door.

The next morning he woke to find the gum in his mouth again. When he ran to the kitchen to confess to his mother, he threw the gum away once again. As he sat at the table telling his mother what had happened, he looked down and saw the gum coming up the table leg toward him.
Tom’s mother grabbed a jar and slammed it down over the gum as it crawled onto the table. Tom’s father took it out back and buried it.

Years later Tom’s great-great-grandchildren were playing in the back yard when one of them found the jar that contained the gum. He opened it and…

Brenda Million, Annville
Jackson Energy Cooperative

Do you Believe in Ghosts?

Around midnight on June 5, 2002, I sat on my porch smoking. There were no lights on in my house but my neighbor had a yard light and I could dimly see my whole yard.

Three men came walking horses across my lawn. One was on foot leading his horse and two were mounted. The mounted men stopped their horses about 30 feet from my porch. The man on foot came to within 10 feet of the porch, stopped, and stared at me.
I said, “Howdy.”

While he stared at me I studied his appearance. He wasn’t a tall man, no more than 5’8″. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and the front brim was pulled low over his forehead so I could only see a stubbly chin. With the rest of his face in full shadow I couldn’t make out any of his features.

He wore a long-sleeved shirt of a light-colored cloth and baggy pants tucked into calf-high dirty riding boots. He had what seemed to be a holster on his right side.

After I spoke he half turned and glanced back at his two companions sitting silently on their mounts. It was then that I noticed his shirt was badly stained. At first I thought of mud but now I wonder if it was blood.

After a long pause he spoke and his voice seemed to have an echo, like speaking into a bucket. He said, “How goes the war, neighbor?”

When he spoke a chill ran up my back and I felt the muscles in my chest tighten with fear. I knew, beyond a doubt, that what I was seeing came from beyond the grave.

I managed to mutter, “Not good.” He leaned his head forward and slowly shook it from side to side. I could feel his sadness sweep over me like a giant tide.
After another long pause he looked up and said, “Have you any tobacco you can spare, neighbor?”
I looked at the cigarette in my hand. I had left the pack on my kitchen table just inside the door. “Yes,” I said.

I got up and covered the 10 or 12 feet to my cigarettes in seconds. The man and his horse were in clear sight as I stepped into the doorway. My right hand flipped the switch to the porch lights and as the lights came on the man and his horse vanished. It was so sudden that at first I just stared at the empty space before me. The two men on their horses were gone too.

Even though I wasn’t threatened in any way I find myself wanting to go to bed before midnight and I leave the porch light on all night now.

Bill Wilkins, Dunbar
Warren Rural Electric Cooperative

The Skeleton

Pat and Mike loved to dare each other.

One Friday night Pat dared Mike to stay in a local haunted house all night. Mike readily accepted, because he wasn’t afraid of man or beast, and didn’t believe in ghosts anyway.

He took a blanket into the house about dark, sat down on the floor, and leaned back against the wall, expecting to fall asleep quickly and wake up rested in the morning. But as he settled in, he heard a thumping sound in the attic. He suspected that Pat had slipped in before him and was trying to scare him.

A voice said, “Mike, here comes my right leg.”
“Let ‘er come!” replied Mike, without even raising an eyebrow.

Thump, a skeleton foot and leg slid through the ceiling and hit the floor in front of Mike. Mike wondered how Pat did that.

“Mike, here comes my left leg,” said the voice.
“Let ‘er come!” he said, his curiosity aroused.

Thump, the left foot and leg slid through the ceiling and fell right beside the other one. Two skeleton legs stood upright and weaving slightly.
“Here comes my body, Mike.”

Mike was getting a little nervous. He wasn’t so sure anymore that the voice belonged to Pat.

“Here come my arms.” The voice had a strange unearthly quality to it.

“Here comes my head, Mike,” and the skull came sliding through the ceiling, grinning at Mike as it attached itself to the neck bones.

“I’m all here, Mike,” said the eerie voice from the mouth of the skull.

Mike couldn’t stand it any longer and took off out the door, running as fast as he could down the dirt road, the skeleton running easily right behind him. After about a mile, Mike had a terrible pain in his side, and couldn’t catch his breath. He found a log on the side of the road and slumped down on it.

The skeleton trotted up and sat down beside him. “We had a good run, didn’t we Mike?” it asked.

“Yes, and by golly we’re going to have another one just as soon as I catch my breath!” said Mike.

Doug Howard, Owensboro
Kenergy Electric Co-op

Home Sweet Home

When I was a little girl, the door to the attic was in my bedroom–a scary thing for a girl to have in her bedroom. Ghosts liked to live in attics, so I figured my attic would be home sweet home to a ghost.

I first heard ghosts fooling around over my bedroom ceiling when I was about 6. Night after night I lay frozen in my bed, holding my breath, and listening to footsteps. All the while I expected a transparent apparition to float through the attic door. It finally drove me to my parents.

I went doubtfully to my mom for help, knowing she wouldn’t believe me. Fortunately, though, my mom being the spirit lover she is, believed me and gave me some advice. She told me that the ghosts were probably just my great-grandma and grandpa, who used to live in the house. Just to reassure me some more, she gave me a description of them and told me they wouldn’t hurt me. That reassured me. But I slept with a circle of stuffed animals around me (leopards, bears, and attack dogs) every night after that. Even though they were my relatives, they were still dead, after all.

I could hear the ghosts in the attic nearly every night. My mom finally decided I should see the attic and the real culprits behind the noises, so she talked me into taking a walk up the stairs. We hadn’t taken three steps when we discovered proof of the ghosts. A note! It was from “George” the ghost! He said that he was very nice and explained that he never wanted to scare me. He was very sorry and promised never to come into my room, but we could write notes back and forth and leave them on the steps for each other.

That made me feel better and I wrote him several letters, but he wasn’t very good at writing back. We lost touch and I forgot about George. I found out later that it was my dad who wrote the letters. A squirrel was making noise in the attic and the house settled and popped at night.

Robin Nevitt, Brandenburg
Meade County Rural Electric Cooperative