Twenty years is a long time to live with an awful secret. And it's worse when it's a secret you can't share with anyone else -- not only because you're afraid of how they will judge you, but because they'll probably think you're insane. I know if someone else experienced what I did when I was fourteen and told me, I'd think they were nuts...if I hadn't experienced it myself, that is.
I never told anyone, not the police, not my family, not the families of Dylan and Greg and Zack and Terry, not even the therapist I see regularly to deal with the lingering guilt and trauma. I think she suspects I'm holding back, that I know more than I'm letting on, and she prods me, encouraging me to get it out. She tells me it would be beneficial to come clean and put it out in the open. But I just can't. No human being in their right mind would believe such a story.
But I want to get it out there somehow, to someone. I want to unload the burden I've been carrying all these years. That's why I'm post it here, anonymously, on Reddit NoSleep. I want to tell others the truth about what happened to me and my friends on Halloween 2003. I don't care what you think of me after you read it, judge me or call me crazy all you want, I just want an impersonal audience to know the truth, and give me their opinion. I think that would make me feel better.
Me and my best friends Dylan and Greg were in Eighth Grade that fall. We had been friends since we were seven. Middle school is that awkward transitional stage between grade school and high school, where you start to shift away from being a kid and start to mature towards adulthood. Even though we would be starting high school in just another year, in many ways we were closer to twelve-year-olds rather than teenagers in terms of maturity. I'm telling you that so you have some understanding of why we did what we did that night.
Terry was the new kid in school, a shy, geeky kid who, even by middle-school standards was pretty awkward. He was desperate to fit in, to make friends and be accepted by his peers. I guess that's why we took advantage of him.
Please, try to understand, we didn't consider ourselves to be bullies. We never intended for anyone to get hurt. We just wanted to scare him, that's all. We weren't intentionally trying to be cruel; it was just supposed to be a dumb prank. We were stupid kids, and stupid kids do stupid things.
It was mostly Dylan's idea, but me and Greg went along with it. In hindsight, I wish to God we hadn't, but how the fuck were we supposed to know? How could anyone know that what we did that night was going to result in so much horror and bloodshed?
Dylan told Terry that if he wanted to hang out with us, he had to pass an "initiation" first. To become part of our group, first he had to spend a night in the old McGruder House...alone. And it being late October and Halloween fast approaching, that was the perfect night for Terry to take the dare.
The "old McGruder House" in question was an abandoned old wreck that stood at the edge of a cornfield on the outskirts of town. A rotting, decrepit two-story house that had been deserted for as long as anyone could remember. We didn't even know who the original owner had been; "McGruder" was just a name Dylan made up for dramatic effect. The three of us had explored the house before, and even though its outward appearance was admittedly pretty creepy (peeling paint, broken windows, sagging roof) inside, it was truthfully rather nondescript and unthreatening. Just empty rooms with tattered wallpaper and dusty old furniture.
I could tell Terry was apprehensive (maybe even a bit scared) but he swallowed his reservations and accepted Dylan's challenge. He just wanted to make friends that badly. That's one of the things that haunts me the most.
October 31 was a chilly, windy night when the four of us -- me, Dylan, Greg and Terry -- rode our bikes out to the old house. We had met at Greg's house, telling our parents we were spending the night to watch horror movies (Greg's parents both worked nights and wouldn't notice we weren't there).
When we arrived at the abandoned house, we dismounted our bikes and just stood for a few moments, staring. None of us had ever been out here at night, and it looked ten times creepier than it did during the day. The decayed facade almost resembled a face; the dark windows empty eye sockets, the front doorway a gaping black mouth.
A cold autumn breeze rustled through the bare trees that surrounded the house, rattling their skeletal branches. I shivered and pulled up the zipper on my jacket. I glanced at Terry and saw him gulp nervously as he took in the sight. He was trembling slightly, and not just from the breeze. He was scared. We hadn't even entered yet, and the poor kid already looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. I felt a flash of guilt because I knew what Dylan had planned.
Dylan took off the backpack he had brought along, rummaged inside, and brought out three flashlights and a battery-powered lantern. He kept the latter for himself and passed out the former to me, Greg and Terry. Without a word, he gestured for us to follow him, then started towards the house.
I exchanged a slightly uneasy glance with Greg (I think he was also feeling bad, knowing what we had in store for Terry) then we went after Dylan, Terry trailing hesitantly behind us.
Dylan stepped through the doorway -- the front door itself was long gone, either removed from its hinges ages ago or simply rotted away with the passage of time -- and disappeared from view, but we could see the glow of his lantern inside.
Me and Greg paused for a second just outside the doorway, Terry behind us. We exchanged another nervous look, then passed through the threshold, into the abandoned house.
Dylan was standing in the middle of what had once been the living room, waiting for us, lantern in hand. Me, Greg and Terry looked around the place, shining our flashlights around. There was a huge stone fireplace in the room, some old, splintered chairs, and the remains of what had probably once been a sofa or a couch but was now only a heap of crumbling termite-eaten wood and rotted, mildewed upholstery. Apart from a thick coating of dust and a heap of dried leaves that had blown in through the front door, the living room was empty.
Dylan sat down on the floor and motioned for us to do the same. We did, sitting in a semicircle like kids at a campfire gathered to hear a ghost story...which was exactly what happened next.
Dylan proceeded to tell us the lurid, blood-curdling "history" of the house and its prior residents, the "McGruders."
According to Dylan, back in the 1950s the house had been owned by a widowed old man named McGruder, who lived there with his adult daughter. McGruder was a recluse who was seldom seen, only coming into town once a month to buy supplies. He was rumored to be an evil man who cruelly mistreated his daughter, who he never allowed to leave the house. Because he never attended church, there were even rumors he was a devil worshipper and practiced Satanic rites. Several young children disappeared from the town. They suspected McGruder was somehow responsible, but with no evidence they couldn't arrest him.
After a while, people noticed that McGruder hadn't made his regular once-a-month trip to the general store to stock up on groceries. In fact, no one in town had seen McGruder is well over a month. A group of townspeople went to his house to investigate. There they made a gruesome discovery. Old Man McGruder and his daughter were both dead; their bodies torn to pieces and scattered throughout the house. The Sheriff later said it looked like they had been torn apart by wild animals. Their bodies were covered with claw marks...and they had been partially eaten.
Supposedly, when they went down into the basement, they had found a pentagram drawn on the floor with blood, old witchcraft books...and a pile of charred bones belonging to the missing children.
They never solved the murders, but the town suspected that McGruder must have been performing a Satanic ritual and somehow something had gone wrong. Perhaps he had summoned a demon that had killed him and his daughter.
The house stood empty for more than five years, but then a new family moved into town and bought it because it was so cheap. The townspeople tried to warn them about the house and its horrifying past, but they just laughed them off. They were from the city and they didn't believe in "stupid superstitions." They had scored a great deal on the place and they weren't going to be scared off by a bunch of "ignorant hicks." A month passed uneventfully...but then the family just disappeared. They weren't murdered; there were no bodies, they were just...gone. Vanished without a trace. No signs of foul play. All their possessions were still in the house and their car was still parked outside. It was as if they had just disappeared off the face of the earth.
After that, no one would dare live in the house. It just stood vacant for decades, slowly falling into ruin.
I need to stress that Dylan's whole story was total bullshit. Everything he told us was pulled straight from his ass, made up specifically for Terry's benefit, and it had the desired effect. As Dylan told his story, Terry's eyes got wider and wider with fearful wonder and dread. He bought it hook, line and sinker. Poor guy was just too trusting. Me and Greg both knew Dylan's story was fake, but we played along, pretending to be equally freaked out.
Dylan fell silent, a grim, thoughtful look on his face. He glanced at his watch and announced that it was twenty minutes till midnight. He handed Terry his lantern and told him he had to remain inside the house until dawn.
By himself.
The three of us would be waiting outside to make sure he didn't try to cheat and sneak away. If he lasted until seven A.M. he could consider himself to be part of the group.
We stood up, wished him good luck, then left the house, one by one. I was the last to leave. I looked back at Terry just once. He stood there, trembling, scared shitless but with a look of almost pitiful determination on his face. I remember him like that, frightened but resolved to prove his bravery to us, because it was the last time I ever saw him alive.
I joined Dylan and Greg outside and we returned to where we had parked our bikes. As soon as we were far enough away, Dylan and Greg's grave expressions broke and they both began to snicker.
Dylan fished around in his jacket pocket and removed a small battery-powered receiver. It belonged to a baby monitor Dylan had bought at the local mall a couple days back. The transmitter was hidden inside the old house.
You see, what we had neglected to tell Terry was that we had managed to rope Greg's older brother Zack, who was sixteen, into dressing up in a pretty impressive demon costume, complete with a realistic latex mask, and hiding in one of the abandoned house's upstairs rooms an hour before we had shown up. he was waiting up there now.
In exactly twenty minutes, at midnight., Zack was going to start making some scary noises; subtle at first, shuffling footsteps and creaking floorboards. If Terry was brave enough to go up and investigate, Zack would jump out and ambush him there. If he wasn't, then in another ten minutes, at twelve-ten, Zack was going to move up to making terrifying groaning sounds and demonic growls. There he was going to gradually descend the stairs to confront Terry in the living room.
We would hear Terry's horrified reaction over the receiver...just before he fled the house in a panic, probably screaming at the top of his lungs as he did so.
Yeah, it was a mean prank, but we were just teenagers. And to make it up to Terry, we had agreed we would let him be friends with us afterwards...if he was still interested, that was.
We waited there, listening to the receiver as the minutes slowly crept by. We could hear slight shuffling sounds, probably Terry moving around in the living room. Maybe he was pacing to kill time, waiting for dawn to come. Then he started humming what I think was an Avril Lavigne song. This caused Dylan and Greg to snicker again.
I looked at my watch. Eleven fifty-five. Five more minutes.
We listened.
Suddenly we heard Terry's voice through the receiver's speaker. "Hello?" he said uncertainly, "is someone there?"
Dylan quickly raised his finger to his lips and motioned for silence. This was it. We listened intently.
"Hello?" Terry said again nervously, "is someone down there?"
At this I saw Dylan frown slightly, confused. Is someone down there? The noises were supposed to be coming from upstairs, where Zack was hiding. But Terry was apparently reacting to something he was hearing in the basement.
"Hello?' Terry said a third time. His voice was fainter, as if he had moved further away from the hidden transmitter, to see what was making whatever sound he was hearing.
We listened, waiting for what came next. Silence for about a minute. Then we heard a piercing scream, coming simultaneously from the receiver in Dylan's hand and the house itself. A high, warbling cry of absolute terror. It cut off abruptly. For several seconds there was total silence. Then all three of us flinched as a hideous roar emanated from the receiver -- a nerve-shattering, bestial bellow of pure, unearthly rage. It was a sound that froze the blood in my veins, primal and completely inhuman.
The receiver fell silent. The three of us looked at each other, shuddering, our eyes wide with shock. We turned to face the house. We stood there silently, waiting for Terry to appear in the doorway. He didn't. Minutes passed, but there was no sign of him, or of Greg's brother Zack.
We called out their names, but there was no answer. Dread seized my heart with a cold, clutching hand. Dread, and fear.
Dylan was close to panicking. He wanted us to get the hell out right then and there, to get back on our bikes and ride home as fast as we could, but Greg angrily refused to leave. Terry might be hurt. Maybe there was a wild animal in there that had attacked him. And besides, his brother was still in there too. We had to help them.
Greg was right, too. We couldn't just leave them in there. With a great deal of reluctance, the three of us headed back to the house. We reasoned that maybe Terry had somehow found out we were setting him up for a prank. Maybe he had turned the tables and was trying to prank us in return. I'm not sure if any of us believe that, though.
We entered the living room and aimed our flashlights around, calling out Terry and Zack's names. There was no sign of them. We listened, but there was nothing but silence. But I did notice something.
The house...smelled different. When we had been in there earlier it had been the unpleasant -- but not unusual -- musty, dusty odor you'd associate with long-abandoned homes; a combination of dry rot, mildew, mold and the dank smell of decaying wood. Those smells were still there, but now they'd been overlayed with an entirely different smell. Something that was hard to describe. The rank, feral odor, organic and savage, of something alive. It was like something you'd smell in a zoo. The smell of a predator's den.
And the air felt different, too. It felt heavier, and oppressive.
There was something here that didn't belong here.
I had never been more terrified in my life as I was right then. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me to retreat, to flee. I might have done so in another few seconds, but then Dylan called out: "Hey, what's that?"
Me and Greg looked over. He was staring through the kitchen doorway, shining his light at something on the floor. We joined him and saw what the beam of his flashlight was focused upon. On the cracked, grimy, ancient linoleum was the lantern Dylan had given to Terry. It was lying on its side, smashed to pieces.
A few feet beyond it, at the other end of the kitchen, stood a black, gaping square of blackness. A doorway. A doorway leading to the basement.
I think all three of us were getting ready to bolt, when a voice spoke from the darkness beyond the basement door.
"Please. Please help me."
It was Terry's voice. Pleading in a weak, painful groan.
"Please help me. I'm hurt and I can't see. It's dark down here."
"Terry?" Dylan stammered, "what happened to you, man?"
"There was a monster. It attacked me. I fell down the stairs. I think I broke my leg. Please, guys, help me."
In spite of my horror and dismay, I felt a small measure of relief. I began to understand what must have happened. Zack had surprised Terry in his costume and Terry had panicked and gone the wrong way trying to flee from the house. He had run into the kitchen instead of going out the front door and fallen down the basement stairs. Zack must have panicked himself when he realized what had happened and had slipped out through the rear of the house.
"Shit," Dylan whispered to me and Greg, "we're in trouble." Then he called down to Terry: "Okay, hang on, man, we're coming down to get you!"
Dylan pointed his flashlight down into the basement and began to descend the stairs, Greg right behind him.
I started to follow them...but then I spotted something. An old refrigerator stood beside the basement door. The refrigerator door was slightly ajar...and something was leaking out of it, dripping steadily into a growing red puddle on the floor.
Feeling suddenly very cold, my heart beginning to beat faster, I stepped closer, aiming my light on the red puddle below the refrigerator.
Distantly, I heard Dylan's voice from down below. They must have reached the bottom of the basement stairs. "Where the hell is he?"
Seemingly in slow motion, I reached out a numb hand and grasped the refrigerator's handle, pulling the door all the way open.
"Terry!" Greg's voice called out from the basement, "where are you?"
Terry's mutilated, blood-splattered corpse was crammed grotesquely inside the refrigerator. His glazed eyes seemed to stare dully at me, accusingly.
"Terry?" Dylan called out doubtfully.
I lunged at the basement door, shouting down at my friends: "DYLAN, GREG! GET OUT! GET OUT OF THERE NOW! IT'S NOT TERRY! IT--"
Before I could finish, I heard three piercing screams in quick succession -- the first two short, the third longer. The first scream might have been of shock, the second was probably of terror, but the third, protracted scream was unquestionably one of agony.
Dylan.
Dylan's dying, agonized scream died to silence, but Greg quickly picked up the chorus, screaming my name, screaming for help.
Standing in the basement doorway, at the top of the stairs, too scared to go to his aid, I shone my light down in the direction of Greg's screaming voice. I saw my friend backed up in the corner, trapped, his eyes bulging and wild with horror, facing...something...that was approaching him.
I only glimpsed it, but that one brief glimpse was enough. More than enough. Enough to imprint itself like a brand upon my scarred psyche, to haunt me in untold nightmares to come for the rest of my life.
It wasn't human. I don't think it ever had been. It was tall and slumped and horribly out of proportion, its head about three feet above its torso, perched on a thin, elongated neck, like a giraffe's. It's long, spindly arms extended at least six feet from its shoulders. Its skeletal hands were tipped with long, bloody claws. It appeared to be naked, and its skin was a hideous mottled gray, like the skin of a corpse. It had its back to me, so at least I didn't see its face...which I am eternally grateful for. If I had, I don't know if I would have kept my sanity.
As the thing moved in for the kill, Greg, cornered, looked up, locking eyes with me. "Help me!" he shrieked.
But I didn't. Instead, I ran, like a coward, abandoning him to his fate. I ran, out of that house, back to my bike, and peddled away as fast as I could. Greg's dying scream chased after me...until it abruptly stopped.
Weeping, I rode back to Greg's house.
I called 911. The police came. They went to investigate the house. Greg's older brother Zack was found dead in one of the bedrooms upstairs, his head torn off his shoulders. Terry was still in the refrigerator where I had discovered him. What was left of Dylan and Greg's bodies were scattered throughout the basement; they had been ripped apart.
The cops questioned me, of course, demanding to know what we had been doing there in the first place. I finally admitted to the prank we had staged on poor Terry...but didn't tell them about the creature I had seen in the basement; as traumatized as I was, I knew they wouldn't believe me. I simply told them someone else had been in the house, a squatter maybe, some deranged psychopath who had attacked me and my friends, with me being the only one to escape. I told them it was dark and I hadn't gotten a good look at the assailant. They were suspicious of my story; they must have sensed that I was holding something back. It crossed my mind that they might even suspect I had killed them myself, but no one ever accused me outright. There wasn't a drop of blood on me, and I was obviously distressed and shaken over what had happened.
The investigation lasted for weeks. Forensic teams scoured the house for any physical evidence, but never found anything useful, and the murders were never solved.
Not long after, my parents moved me away to a new town for a fresh start. I went on with my life, trying to move past what happened that terrible Halloween night when I was fourteen, but I never got over the horror and the guilt. For the rest of my teens, into my early twenties, I went through a very difficult, self-destructive phase. I dropped out of school shortly after the start of my sophomore year in high school, got mixed up in drugs and alcohol, got arrested more than once, got kicked out by my parents, was homeless for a while, and finally went into rehab and got straightened out. I'm married now, with two children and a semi-decent job in a warehouse.
Things are going pretty well for me right now. But I still dwell upon what happened that night. Everything Dylan told Terry was fake. There was no old man named McGruder, no devil worshipping or child sacrifices or demons or murders. It was all made up. It makes me wonder. I think about the power of suggestion. The placebo effect. The story Dylan told wasn't real, but I could tell Terry believed it. Maybe belief was the key. Maybe Terry was so frightened by what he heard, he somehow unwillingly, unconsciously willed it all into reality. They say faith can move mountains. Maybe that's true, but maybe it also means fear can give nightmares flesh. Maybe all the monsters we were all scared of when we were kids were more real than we thought they were.
I've been thinking about that a lot more lately. Especially after what I heard on the news a few days ago.
You see, that old, abandoned house isn't there anymore. About ten years ago a developer bought up all that land and built an apartment complex there. The police are investigating a brutal mass murder. The residents of the three lower units were all killed during the night; massacred. They have no leads. The police can't even figure out how the killer gained entry; all three apartments were locked from the inside.
I think whatever horror we accidentally conjured that Halloween night twenty years ago is still there.
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