The home town horror

By Ralph ward

The first house that we ever owned dad couldn't believe he'd bought it so cheap. The previous owner seemed so anxious to move that he told dad just to make him an offer. Dad did and the man took it. It wasn't much of a house, but it was ours; it had only three rooms and and it was almost a hundred years old at the time. There was a living room, a middle room, a back room that was used as a kitchen and an old back porch. The back porch had been converted into a bedroom but, at the time dad purchased the house, it was being used only as a storage room. Dad tore off the back porch and started digging a cellar where the porch had been. I was too young to help with the digging, but like all little boys, I had fun playing in the new dug dirt and so did my younger sister and brother.

Dad made us stop playing and took us in the house telling mom to keep us inside while he was digging. He didn't want to hit one of us in the head with the shovel is what he told mom. The truth was, he dug up the complete skeletal remains of a young woman with long brown hair still attached to her skull. Not knowing what to do with her, and not wanting any of us seeing the skeleton, he hid it. Dad figured she had to have been buried before the house was built. There would be no sense in calling the police for a hundred year old body and, if he did call the police, they would just hold him up from doing his remodeling. he could picture the police digging holes all around the house and maybe under it too.

after hiding the skeleton, he dug only a few more feet when he came across another woman's skeleton, this one had auburn, almost red hair still on her head. At that point, he figured that at one time the area must have been an old family burial place. Not really knowing what a body would look like after being buried a hundred years, he hid that one too. he finished digging the cellar without finding anymore skeletons. Right before the cement truck arrived, dad reburied the ones he'd found beneath what would be the floor of the cellar, entombing the bodies under four inches of concrete and, eventually, two new rooms.

He kept the secret about the bodies and told mom only after they, and some of us children, occasionally started seeing two ghostly girls and a young woman in the house. Years later, I spent a lot of time with mom before she died and she told me about the bodies. she also told me how she'd pleaded with dad to call the police so they could dig up the floor of the cellar and identify the bodies. dad already knew who the two under the floor were and the third spirit too. what we didn't know is that we only rarely saw the spirits. The two whose bodies dad had sealed under the cellar floor were getting their revenge on dad for not bringing their killer to justice by hiding their bodies forever. dad could hear them ask over and over, "why did you hide us? why didn't you tell?"

just a short time after i moved away from home, dad sold the house and moved to the neighboring town. i waited two years after mom died before i got up enough nerve to ask dad about the ghosts. he sat for a long time before he began telling me about the girls and the young woman. they had told him who they were and who buried them under the house. how he hoped he was dreaming when he first saw and heard the ghosts, but when we saw them too, he knew they were real. if he had reported finding the two bodies, it would have answered a lot of unanswered questions for a lot of people. a niece had come to live with the couple we'd bought the house from, then suddenly left to live with other relatives in another state. A schoolteacher, that rented a sleeping room from the couple, left with a man when the school year was over without telling her parents, brothers or sisters. she was never seen or heard from again. then, there was that little neighborhood girl that disappeared. if only he had put two and two together before removing the skeletons, but dad was in a hurry and his thoughts were on finishing the new additions.

dad had known the man and his wife for years; they were about the same age. the couple seemed to be well liked and respected in the town as well as at their church. you would think them to be nothing other than good christian people. the wife was a little timid. most who knew her thought she was that way because she came from another state after marrying her husband and just never felt that she fit in. she couldn't have children and that made her feel inadequate. after selling dad the house, the couple first moved back on the farm where the man was raised. shortly after dad started his remodeling, the couple moved out west somewhere, at least that was where everyone believed they'd moved. that is supposedly where they stayed for twenty years before the man moved back to the area after his wife died.

during the time they lived in the house, the man's sister, living in a town about 45 miles away, died, leaving behind a fourteen year old daughter. the man, being her only living relative, moved her into their home, fixing up the old back porch for her bedroom. to all those that knew them they seemed happy they'd finally gotten the daughter they could not have. that was short lived. in no time, the couple were telling people, when asked about the whereabouts of their niece, that she had gone to live with other relatives in another state. the uncle was being more than an uncle and the girl, having tired of constantly being bothered by him, threatened to expose him to their pastor. that is when he killed and buried her under the back porch.