A Woman Moves Into Her Childhood Home – What She Finds Terrifies Her

Updated: Jul 16, 2024By Audrey KyanovaEntertainment

This article originally appeared on Investing.com. It has been republished here with permission.

What Was That? ©zef art /shutterstock.com

Haunted houses are everywhere. You might even have one on your street.

Rumors, myths, legends…they all come from somewhere, and, sometimes, we end up becoming part of these terrifying tales. This is a story of haunting that spans generations, culminating in a woman and her son moving into her childhood home…and ending up with far more than they bargained for. This is a story about bravery and resilience, even in the face of an unknowable evil.

But, first, to understand what happened in the present, we need to understand the past.

October, 1817

The year was 1817, and farmer John Bell was about to do something he would regret for the rest of his life.

Standing outside his mansion in rural Tennessee, Bell took a deep breath of the hot, summer air. He looked at his girlfriend, Kate. Her beautiful red hair shone like copper in the dappled light of the sun, while her brown eyes watched him, concerned at why he wanted to talk so urgently.

October, 1817 © jstuij /Shutterstock.com

“Kate…” John began.

A Gleam

“I don’t love you anymore.”

There it was, the awful truth. It was over between John and Kate, two lovers who had met at a dance hosted at their town’s local fairground. The two made a striking couple, but John knew, deep down, that this relationship wasn’t going to work.

A Gleam ©Nataly Reinch /shutterstock.com

“John, why?” Kate’s voice sounded distressed, but John saw something else in her eyes, a soft little gleam that vanished as quickly as it appeared.

The Speech

John watched the glimmer, almost reptilian, flicker in Kate’s eyes before dissipating. His gut churned. He hoped he wouldn’t regret this.

John gave Kate his speech—how they weren’t right for each other, how there was friction with his family, how John was expected to marry someone of a higher social status. He thought Kate would protest, but he was surprised when she nodded slowly.

The Speech ©maradon 333 /shutterstock.com

“Alright, John,” she said, “That’s alright then.”

The News

A day later, John got the news.

A local courier ran to his house at four in the morning to tell him that Kate Batts was dead. John got dressed quickly and headed to the constabulary. It was as he’d feared.

The News ©Andy Medcalf /shutterstock.com

“No one blames you, Johnny,” the constable, John’s cousin, J.P. Richardson, said. “If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else.”

Guilt

Guilt plagued John Bell like a specter.

A few months passed, and he still felt a gnawing sense of responsibility for what happened to Kate. The thought of her standing atop the old well, looking down at it before making her final decision, woke him up every night.

Guilt ©Richard Peterson /shutterstock.com

But that wasn’t the only thing haunting John Bell. He had begun to feel something out in the woods, watching and waiting. He felt it as clear as his father had when he was fighting the tribes for his land.

They

“They would come out of the trees,” John’s father told him, “Painted, screaming…such an awful sound like you never heard.”

He often talked about Tennessee as though it were a mystical land, and he always drank while telling these tales, punctuating each sentence with a gulp. He looked at John once with his good eye, the one that hadn’t been hit by a flint arrow.

They ©Everett Collection /shutterstock.com

He told him that, when it was his time, he’d hear the screaming again.

One Day

One week after Kate’s death, John went on a hunt.

He stared at his reflection in the black-and-gold mirror in his house, noting that he’d lost weight. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he was a few days past a shave, stubble forming on his jawline. He was starting to get jowls now, too.

One Day ©Razoomanet /shutterstock.com

Hoisting his Deringer over his shoulder, John went out to the woods.

Into the Woods

As he approached the treeline, John squared his shoulders.

This is my land, he thought. The treeline imposed upon him, dark and intimidating, glaring down at him. There was something bad in this forest, but John Bell wasn’t a man to trifle with. He headed into the forest, unslinging his Deringer as he walked.

Into the Woods ©Valeriy Karpeev /shutterstock.com

It wasn’t long before he saw it.

Losing It

John let out an embarrassing scream before immediately chiding himself. It was a squash carved with a face, likely some All Hallow’s decoration that had been left in the woods by rowdy teenagers.

The squash leered at John as he laughed at his own jumpiness. You’re losing it, Johnny. He kept walking until he reached a clearing. There, he saw a buck.

Losing It ©Nataliia Maksymenko /shutterstock.com

His heart thumped with excitement as he raised his Deringer, narrowing in on the shot. This meat would feed him for weeks.

Go On Then

The deer looked straight at him.

It knew he was there, but it wasn’t about to run. John could barely describe the expression he saw on its face. There was a reptilian intelligence in its eyes, something ancient, something that had been in the woods—his woods—for a long, long time.

“Go on then,” a voice said behind him. “Kill it.”

It

John jumped a foot in the air, whipping around to see what had spoken to him. When he saw it, his mind felt as though it was crumbling. The voice came from a creature with the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit.

Its bloodshot eyes looked at him. The creature said, “Alright then, John, kill it, shoot it in its—”

It @Southern Gothic/Facebook

Bang. John fired at the creature, which scampered off with a horrible, bow-legged run. He then ran for his house, feeling, the whole time, as though something were on his heels.

Top Floor

When he burst through the treeline, he saw, in one of the windows upstairs, a dark figure.

It was pressed against the glass, banging its head against the window. Even from far away, John could hear the figure making noises like a snarling dog. He raised his rifle before realizing that that would be foolish.

He ran through the door to his home, heading straight for the top floor.

Nothing

He’d seen the figure in his bedroom, and he could hear it now as he ran up the stairs. It made many noises at once; first it was a snarling dog, then a grunting pig. He heard the repeated cracks as it assailed the window.

John thundered up the stairs, throwing the door to his room open.

There was nothing there.

The End

The window was cracked, but, otherwise, the room was undisturbed.

Heart thumping wildly, John Bell felt something behind him. Something angry, something hostile. The presence was hot on his back, eyes glaring at him. It hated him. Turning around would be a death sentence, but he was powerless to stop his own body.

The End ©Maroon Studio /shutterstock.com

The last thing he saw was a flash of copper.