An Authorized Excerpt
Aunt Bev told me she
had come across the deal of a lifetime and that I couldn’t
afford to pass up the opportunity. She managed to strike an
incredible bargain for me with the owners of an old
antebellum mansion, which was near her home in Albany,
Georgia. The owners were willing to rent the place to me
for a reasonable monthly fee. I wouldn’t have to sign a
lease, or agree to live there for a minimum amount of time.
I could rent the place for as long, or as little time as I
pleased. The only possible drawback was a clause in the
rental contract, which stated that they could sell the house
to an interested buyer at any time.
“Everything you’re
saying sounds too good to be true. So, what’s the catch?
What are you not telling me? Will the roof be falling down
around me, or the stairs collapsing under my feet? Why
should these owners be willing to rent to me for next to
nothing?”
There was a long
pause on her end of the line. When she finally found her
voice, its tone was hesitant.
“The owners seem to
think they have a white elephant on their hands. The home
is lovely. It’s not in disrepair at all. It’s just that
they haven’t been able to find a buyer for the place, and
the renters don’t stick around very long.”
“And why is it the
renters don’t stay around for long, Aunt Bev?”
“Well, my dear,” she
said, a little note of excitement creeping into her tone,
“the house has a ghost, or a spirit, or whatever you want to
call it. It’s haunted, Gwen! Isn’t it exciting?”
I laughed into the
phone, scoffing at the nonsense she had just uttered. “You
know I don’t believe all that nonsense about haunted
houses.”
It was her turn to
laugh then, as she announced with conviction in her voice,
“I know for a fact this house has a spirit. Something
resides there, something otherworldly, something from the
spirit world. I know because I have been in the house
several times lately, along with the owners. Gwen, I’m
telling you there is something there, or perhaps I should
say someone.”
“Bev, how can you be
sure you aren’t imagining things? Perhaps the setting is
just right and your imagination is getting the better of
you.”
“It’s not my
imagination. And it’s not just me. The owners feel it too,
and so did the renters. Why do you think they never stayed
around? For one thing, a strange coldness permeates the
room sometimes. It seems to come suddenly out of nowhere.
You will start to notice a chill in the air. The curtains
billow as if stirred by a breeze when there are no open
windows. You feel a bone-chilling cold that makes your hair
stand on end, and it gives you goose bumps. The coldness
vanishes as quickly as it came, and then everything feels
normal again.”
“This all sounds so
traditional to me. How many times have we heard about
haunted houses having a strange sense of cold in every
room? I’ve heard it all before. Tell me something more.
This is not enough to convince me that anything out of the
ordinary resides in that house. If that’s all you have to
tell me…”
“That’s not all, Gwen. There are the messages written on
the mirrors…”
