A Kid's Spooky Tale

My 7th grade students have been all a-buzz with tales of a teacher
looking for ghosts in the gym. I'll tell that one tomorrow. I asked
one of the older kids if this teacher has been telling them the same
thing, but he said no.

However...this kid had his own tale of terror, which I would like
to steal from him (hey, he doesn't know I have a blog) and share
with you now. I will put myself in his place, so I may tell it in
first person. And now...The Blackwell Mansion:

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A bunch of us wanted to go to this haunted house in Blackwell.
A murder happened there, and everybody says it's on public
land, and people go there all the time. My mother said I couldn't
go. I told here there was no such thing as ghosts anyway. She
said that wasn't what she was worried about--at one "haunted
hospital," a crazy guy hid out and killed people who came in
looking for ghosts.

We told my mom we were going riding around in town. Then
we went to Blackwell. Some of the guys took their paintball
guns in case some maniac was there to kill us. Cause I figure
that if I'm trying to kill somebody and he shoots me with a
paintball gun, I'll run off and quit trying to kill him, cause it
hurts. About 8 of us went.

It was dark, and we had some trouble finding the house. We
had to park by the road, and walk down a trail. I was at the
back of the group. A rabbit jumped out and they jumped. I
picked up a big rock and chucked it over in the woods. They
screamed and ran past me. I said, "Hey guys! It was me! Stop!
I won't do it again." They came back.

We found the house and went in. We were there about an hour
and a half, taking pictures. Then we went to another little building.
We came out of there, and I was stepping over a fence when I
looked up and saw a man holding a shotgun in my face. I thought
I'm going to die! My buddy was right next to me. The guy saw him
and pointed the shotgun at him. I took off running as fast as I could
to the truck. We had left Youknowwho there because, well, he's
in a wheelchair you know, and we were afraid he'd get stuck. So
he says he'd been trying to text message us "GET OUT. GET OUT
NOW!" but we couldn't get service down there.

There was another guy with a pistol. They marched everyone up
to the truck and said, "What are you doing on our land? We called
the police, and you're waiting until they get here." We sat in the
back of the truck and almost cried. Some of us were praying. We
didn't want those guys to shoot us. We didn't know who to call for
bail. We couldn't call our parents. We saw the police lights, and
those guys threw their guns in their truck.

The police took all our IDs and wrote down the information. Then
he started to question us. "What are you boys doing here? Do y'all
believe in ghosts? Are you robbers? Have you been drinking? Do
you have any girls here?"

We told him no to everything. Then he said, "This looks mighty
suspicious. Eight guys all alone out here in the dark." I turned to
my friend and said, "Hey, I think that cop just called us gay." But
I said it so he couldn't hear me. The cop asked the guys if they
wanted to press charges, but they said no. They were afraid we
would tell about their guns, I guess. The shotgun guy said, "No.
I have all their information if I change my mind."

Now I'm kind of scared, because there's a crazy guy with a shotgun
who knows my name and address and social security number.
And you know the worst part of it? We were at the wrong house.
That was not the haunted house. We walked around in some guy's
house taking pictures for an hour and a half.

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I asked him why they didn't just admit that they were looking for ghosts,
and he said they thought they'd get in trouble. They had told the cop
they were on "public land" and he laughed and said, "Don't tell me that!"

He said he would check into the story the kids were telling about the
teacher ghosthunting. Maybe I will have more information to put with
that story tomorrow.