These very strange and frightening sounds and sights were really scaring me, and I figured it was just me, like only I was seeing these things. Since, I felt that, and I knew these things were not supposed to be there, I had a question in my mind, “should I tell my parents?” They might just dismiss everything like they do with my brother, and I am not supposed to see these things. Then I started to doubt whether what I was seeing and hearing really there. One morning before our first day at a new school, my mother called us down for breakfast, and the feeling wasn’t as it normally was. My brother would be happily teasing my sister, while my sweet sister would whine about it, and my mom was originally occupied with her thoughts of the day’s household duties, and non-tolerant to my sibling’s bickering. As I came down, I was so frightened, that I was skittish. As I got to the table and slowly sat down, my mother who had been turned away, quickly jumped, as did my siblings. She sighed in relief, and said, “You scared me” She turned back around grabbed a bowl and a spoon for my cereal, and turned again to cook my father’s breakfast. As I sat there both of my siblings were slumped in their chairs, with their arms tucked away under the table, and full bowls of cereal. Not to mention jumpy, just as I was too. Mother then told my brother to get my father so he could eat his breakfast, and he had a look of dread on his face and asked my little sister if she would go with him. My sister shook her head as if she were trying to shake something off, and clutched her stuffed bunny. It was then that I realized, maybe I’m not the only one who has been terrorized by this thing. I bravely said I would go with him, because I was curious to see my father’s behavior, and because I wanted my brother to feel safe. As I walked up the stairs, I had thought to myself, “I was so wrapped up in my own fears to notice my entire family’s reaction to this home” When we saw my father he hadn’t been affected at all, and figured our odd behavior was anxiety due to school, and his “normal” behavior, was surprisingly calming. When we got to the kitchen I saw that it helped the entire family ease back into being back to normal. When I got to school, I got the usual initiation for new students, like the usual bullies, and teasing about my style of clothes by the popular girl at school. I’m not one to fit in, or want to, it’s so clichè. So, I sat alone, after being a wise crack to them. Then, as a result, I befriended a girl, and her brother who liked the fact that I stood up to the popular girl. The ironic thing about it on how we were befriended, it was clichè as well! When the day was through, They both offered to walk me home. I was okay with it, I didn’t want to be at home alone. When they asked me where I lived, I told them. The look on their faces, was if they had seen a ghost. The girl who was outspoken immediately said, “you know what they said happened there right?” I didn’t know if I wanted to hear it, and lightly shook my head “no”. The girl asked me, “do you WANT to know?” I played it off, and said, “can’t be as bad as what I went through today!” As I started to laugh, they did too. The boy said, “we don’t know for a fact if it’s true. It’s just a story our town has, every town has one, and your house is the one we use for ours”. The friends both laugh, and I am really quiet. I stop both of them, and ask them, “If I tell you something, can you keep it to yourselves?” The girl said “sure!”. I told them about what was happening, and what I would hear and see. The both seemed sympathetic, and the girl insisted on telling me the legend of my house. We sat somewhere to talk about it. We had all agreed to stop in to a diner their mother and father owned. The girl began to order for me and herself, and as we sat there eating and drinking the boy began to tell the story. The story goes that a witch who once lived there had an affair with a man who worked in her husband’s company. I figured that the witch they talked about was my dad’s boss’s, sister in law. Her husband had employed her lover, of many years, so long that it was said that the witch may have been bought from her parents by her husband, and she was with him before then. She had lost contact with this love and her heart had blackened, that she lost all faith in god and turned to magic, and the dark arts. She not only hexed her husband to go crazy so that she could have him put away, but she made sure she never had any of his children. When the witch was aware of her love being employed by her husband (which was by chance) she met with him secretly, and often made love to him, so when she had children she lied to her husband telling him they were his. She met with her lover secretly and her husband never knew, until one day, her husband came across the lover at work, as he passed, he got a scent caught in his nose, and turned to him and asked how long he had been sleeping around with his wife, and he then deceived him by saying to him that she had told him, and that he was the joke they shared. He then started to laugh. Her lover stormed out of work and went straight to her, she denied anything, and seduced him, and they started to make love. Her husband followed him to see if he would go to his house to meet with his wife, and he was there. He circled his home and finally busted in. Her lover jolted and she ran behind, grabbed him and yelled, “No! Don’t leave!” They both stops, she turns and smiles, “it’s about time he knows the truth!” She starts to tell him that she has been in love with her lover and only her lover, that he has been the father of ALL HER children, and that she was going to leave him. He started laughing manically and told her to keep the house that he was leaving. The lover thought it was odd that he just left her everything like he was crazed. She knew that her hex to mae him crazy had a lot to do with it but never told him. That night as she lay asleep in her bed with her lover, she was finally happy, and slept through everything that was starting to happen that night. Her husband had come back and hacked with the firewood cutting axe all three of her little children. The reason for her waking up was because she heard clattering in the living room, she tried to wake her lover up, and noticed the bed was wet with warm fluid, pulled over the sheets and saw him murdered. She ran to the living room screaming in anger. Her husband still in his business suit but splattered with the blood of her family smiling with a crazed look. She screams out asking why he would kill her husband. In a calm but mocking voice he says, “the children were never mine!” And in a distorted voice her says, “why don’t you use your magic and bring them all back?” She runs to the children’s room. The sight of her massacred children drops her to the floor as she screams, “nooooo!” By the time she realizes only one is missing she runs from the room only to fin her husband trying to escape up the chimney, she sees him trying to make his way through the chimney and as he falls the chimney is narrow enough to catch him, only to break his leg, and find himself stuck. She starts to light firewood, so it will kill him, and she’s yelling at him to tell her where the third child is. She hears a voice coming through the chimney, and it’s the third child. It’s said that the witch heard the child say, “wake up daddy! We’re on fire!” And that she could hear the child scream as it died. The only thing she could do was scream out to the neighbors, and no one helped. She was mean to people so they thought she was lying, and probably got what she deserved. No one thought those innocent children had died like they did. She ran all the way to the sheriff’s office, to get help. Before she did, she cursed them, and those relatives of her husband. She also cursed the house, That anyone would live there would feel the fear her family felt that day. People say that the spirits Of her family were not allowed to rest because she made a spell to keep them around, that the spirits tried to take revenge for it against her, and tried to kill her. When I asked my friends why they thought that, they said it was because when they finally pulled her out to put her in the mental institution, because she had gone crazy always repeating, “I’m sorry, no more magic! No more magic!” Then she would recite the apostle’s creed prayer followed by the Our father prayer. She touch one of the EMT’S arms and said to him, “don’t go in there! I tried to undo it, but I couldn’t! Nothing will stop it!” Years later the old woman died, but she swore the house had to have been corrupted by the devil himself, and she awoke it with her magic, and her spells. I was horrified! I couldn’t go home, I was frozen, the only thing I knew to do was cry. How was I going to fight something like this? About that time the lights in the diner flickered. My friends parents looked scared, but then continued about their business. My friends then said to me, “whatever you do, don’t tell our parents where you live”. I was worried, and they told me not tell anyone where you live unless I had to. Then they told me that people around town, were terrified of the bad luck that seemed to follow the people who lived there. When I asked my new friends why they weren’t afraid of the bad luck themselves, they said they felt it was just old people being superstitious. From my experience, there was no such bad luck, except for anyone who enter the house. I tried to stay the night as much as I could at my friend’s house, but I often worried about my younger siblings.