Everyone was familiar with the house at 34 Maple Street.
It stood three stories high and was centred on a ten-acre farm. It was a very monumental and historic structure in my childhood neighbourhood, not only because of its size, but because it was suspected of being haunted. A married couple and their three young children bought the gigantic house in 1972. The man of the house was a strong, hard working farmer who earned most of the families’ income through the selling of crops at a local street market.
The woman of the house was an accomplished pianist, a soft-spoken wife, and a patient mother. She spent her days tending to the needs of her family and earned money through piano lessons that she taught to the children in the local town. It has been said that in 1976, on Halloween night, the husband savagely murdered his wife and three children with an axe and then ended his own life with a rifle. No one knows why he did this horrible act of violence, but some people in the town suspected witchcraft. After the corpses were recovered from the house and taken to the morgue, they mysteriously disappeared and were never found. Many families have moved into this home after the horrible incident in 1976 and they have complained of screaming and moaning throughout the house.
Each Halloween night they could hear a mystifying piano play within the walls of the huge house. One Halloween night many years ago, a few friends and I decided to take a visit up to 34 Maple Street to see just how true all of these rumours were. The night was cool and surprisingly quiet the usual cheer of children running around collecting candy treasures was no where to be heard. As we approached the massive house, the air around us seemed to stand still. There was a thick fog rising up from the ground, and we could smell the rotting leaves all around us.
We all stood there, looking at each other, wondering if we should go any further or not. Terrified was how I felt, but the curiosity surged through my body, and I knew I could not turn back now. We started to walk up the cracked and broken sidewalk. When we reached the house, the elongated steps were splitting apart, but we managed to safely jump our way to the front door. I opened the door, and we all slowly walked in and stood in the hallway. The house was very somber and quiet, and as I stood there, the hair raised on my arms and my palms started to sweat.
The air smelled stale, and the house was disturbingly silent. We could see furniture that was covered in white sheets, and dust had settled all over the house. We walked upstairs and through the long hallways, finding nothing that struck us as disturbed. The house appeared to be at peace and we felt that we were disturbing the dwellings peaceful slumber, so we decided to leave. As we walked out and down the long sidewalk, I looked back as if I wanted to say good bye to something or someone I would never see again.
It was at that moment that I looked up and saw a woman looking through a bedroom window. We stood there gazing at each other for what felt like an eternity; my eyes were frozen with fear. She then slowly let the curtain drape back to cover the window and she was gone. I could then hear a faint piano playing in the distance that became increasingly louder in my ears. As we finished our walk home, I asked everyone if they had seen her or if they had heard the music, but no one did. I knew at that point that a ghostly being inhabited the house.
Until this very day, the vision of a lady in the window has haunted my soul.