An important family story or story some one told you - Essay Example

The Haunted House Fear is a powerful force, what we tell ourselves often becomes reality. As a child our family lived in anormal, middle class suburb, had painfully normal parents who lived a stereotypical life. Dad worked from nine to five, mom worked part time at the fabric store during the hours us kids were in school. In this boring but stable environment were “the woods,” a place where nobody was allowed to go. Maybe it was because it was just out of shouting distance or was just dense, dark and spooky enough our parents were a little afraid of it too.

Nobody disobeyed this rule not even the neighborhood tough guy. He picked on everyone but he wasn’t so tough the woods didn’t scare him, at least a little. The woods were where suburbia and our world as we knew it ended, about two blocks from our street. Sometimes we would venture to the edge peering into the thick brush wondering how far it went, maybe to the ocean about 1000 miles away, we didn’t know. The few times we got close were when the trees were bare in the cold months. When the trees and brush was full with leaves you couldn’t see more than a few yards.

The woods were that thick and that scary. When I asked my parents about the woods they answered with whatever they thought would satisfy my curiosity, in other words shut me up, but didn’t seem to know anything about what was in or beyond the thick treed darkness. It was dark, even in broad daylight. The woods were the perfect setting for nightmares and most kids must have had the same dreams because nobody would dare walk into the darkness. It was rumored that an old abandoned house was somewhere in the woods.

This story was told by the much older kids who said they had been in it but nobody believed them. It wasn’t possible because nobody went into the woods, absolutely nobody. The house became an obsession with me and my friends, where was it, who lived there and what secrets was it hiding? We thought a murder likely happened there or at least somebody died in that house. Maybe there body is still there. Maybe the murderer still lives there, safe because nobody, not even the police would dare go.

Yes, it was that frightening to a group of young kids whose imagination was fully engaged. Imagination was a large part of our lives at the time. We imagined being soldiers, sports stars, pop stars, or whatever. Imagining horrible secrets lurked in the house in the woods came easy for us. We became almost certain the house was haunted. It had to be because the woods certainly were haunted. One summer two older kids decided to go find the house. We knew because they announced it to everyone. Along with the two older kids, me and my brother, who was a year older decided to go with them the next day.

That night neither him nor I ate much for dinner and didn’t say much to anyone. We knew we had to go because we told everyone we were going but were having second, third and fourth thoughts. We didn’t sleep much that night knowing it was probably out last night alive. The minutes seemed like hours. The next day came. Mom and dad were at work. We were playing outside hoping the two older kids forgot or were as scared as we were. No such luck. While the whole neighborhood was out they came to get us.

Off we went into the darkness. As it turned out the woods weren’t so scary and no house was in sight, what a relief. Then it appeared, an old falling down house that had to be a hundred years old. We followed the other two into the house. We were trembling trying hard to hold back tears. The experience was horrifying. It wasn’t long before we figured out nothing was there besides an old house. The woods weren’t scary after all. We emerged from the woods with no story to tell but we learned something and that was to face our fears, it’s not likely to be as bad as what we build up in our minds.

We still had a fear, or maybe respect enough of mom and dad because we never told them what we did. To this day it’s a secret me and my brother both kept without making a pact or swearing each other to secrecy. I guess it’s what they call a family secret. Maybe it’s because we didn’t want to admit we were so scared in the first place, not even to ourselves.