‘Diary entry – House of the Full Moon Night
Date – 01/11/1946
In these last few years of my haunted adventures, I’ve earned a tittle called ‘The Ghost Catcher’. Ironically over the dozens of mysteries that I’ve solved, I failed to catch even a single ghost. Most of those times the ghosts were psychological imbalances in the people who were too obsessed with those stories… others were plain lies.’
This is what a young girl named Faye Griev is noting down in her journal. She is engaged in this activity while sitting alone under a tree, late in the night. Fortunately, the full moon in the sky is a loyal companion, enabling her to see in the dark.
At that moment this brave girl is on an open grassland of the Drandt state. The near-most civilized place, Fainar town, is at least 20 km away. Surrounding this open land is a patch of dense dark forest. Late in the night this places is freakishly silent. The wind is dead, no rustling of leaves, growling of wild animals or buzzing of insects can be heard. The silence is making this place very scary. To top that, this place is said to be haunted. Yet she is as calm a person can be.
Obviously the Ghost Catcher can’t get scared of ghosts. It will hurt her reputation. While she sits, engaged in writing, she is surrounded by a bunch of mechanical equipment. A clock, a wind checker, a compass and some other metallic devices that make no sense. There is also a dimly lit oil lamp kept five feet away from her. The lamp barely illuminates the area. Perhaps it is there to serve some other purpose. It is three hours past midnight and yet she is awake as an owl.
‘…Cranston family was one of the many innocent casualties of the deadly worldwide God War. It is said that this open land was once part of the dense forest. Which is why the bomber plane of the Allied Forces didn’t see a house in the woods when they dropped a warning bomb to scare away the approaching army of the evil Company…’
Continuing with her entry she keeps on checking the small clock, lying next to her, with her fingers. It is dark to clearly witness her appearance. But from what is visible Faye is a decent looking, fair, skinny woman. Her masculine haircut would mislead anyone into thinking that she is a guy. Further she wears a simple white shirt and brown trousers. Her slightly heavy voice doesn’t do much in her favor as well. Perhaps this is what she wants, to not let people know that she is a girl. She speaks as if talking to someone while noting down her thoughts.
‘…The house got vaporized in an instant erasing the four residents in it from existence. Since these souls didn’t get an opportunity to witness their passing, the house is believed to appear every full moon, exactly at 3:40 am at this spot, surrounding the tree…’
She gets up and starts checking her devices. While the self-proclaimed exorcists for many centuries used spells and potions to scare away ghosts, Faye being a woman of modern age has upgraded to mechanical and basic electrical gadgets.
She is not the first one to be hired for this job. Many ghost catchers were called to solve this case. But all of them disappeared after taking their advance money. Some locals claim that the haunted house swallowed those ghost catchers making them a part of the cursed land. Faye is skeptical about such nonsense.
This woman walks around the place to see any clues that would hint to the presence of a spirit. She is disappointed to find none.
“So the house appears for five long minutes and then explodes. It’s the house’s way to give the spirits an opportunity to accept their death and hence move on to the next life. Wow! so according to them the house is also a conscious being to make this happen. Wow!”
She says in a mocking tone. Using a tape she marks a specific point and sits there crossing her legs.
“Since I have engaged with this story several times in past couple of days, my mind is compromised. I must dampen the two main sense that fear corrupts first.”
She says that while stuffing cotton balls in her ears and then covers her eyes with a black cloth. Feeling the hands of the clock she realizes that it is time. Then taking a meditation pose she starts chanting the word,
“A…E…I…O…U…Aeiou.”
In this moment she is disconnected from all external visual stimulus. That’s why she does not witness the strange occurrence of an untimely local lunar eclipse. Suddenly the land goes dark and a translucent house shaped structure appears around the girl and the tree.
Faye has positioned herself in the most likely place the family would have been at this time in the night, i.e. their bedroom. All the four spirits, husband-wife and their two five-year-old daughters, are sound asleep but then Faye’s loud chanting wakes them up. They get scared to see a stranger in their house. What scares them even more is her ‘witch practice’.
What Faye is doing is intentional. Since she has been thinking about this story a lot, so it is possible that her mind will make her see ghosts that aren’t there or hear scary whispers that aren’t real. The only way she can truly learn if the ghost is real, is if the ghost push her out of place. Back then it is something people believed that ghosts were capable of, i.e. moving people, throwing them and cause physical harm. That’s why her chanting continues.
“Aeiou… aeiou…”
This scares the family. The wife holds her two children tight while the husband goes to find a weapon. He returns with an axe and starts attacking Faye. Every time he tries hitting her, his axe goes through Faye’s body. Finally, being frustrated, he throws the axe at her with full force. It too goes through her body and lands on the floor behind. The woman then gets up and starts shouting at Faye, trying to scare her away. Eventually all four surround Faye and shout at her to try getting her attention. Still Faye doesn’t react to any of it.
Suddenly her chants feel like they are getting louder. At one point the sound is unbearable to them. All four spirits cover their ears. Actually the sound these spirits are hearing is not of her voice but of the loud approaching bomber plane. The family rushes outside and looks up. The plane is very close to the house. These spirits still believe that they are living in the time period of the world war. In that moment the couple realizes the inevitability of the situation. Hugging each other, the family witnesses the whole scene as the plane deploys a bomb and it comes crashing straight on top of the house.
For a moment there the entire space is engulfed in a bright white light, that’s when all four spirits realize what is happening. Truth hits them hard when they realize that their spirit was trapped in this loop for many decades after their actual physical passing. Holding each others hands they walk to Faye. They smile and say to her,
“Thank you.”
All this time Faye is oblivious to the events happening around her. But for the first time these kind words reach her ears. She turns her head towards them. In a hurry she opened her blindfold but by then the house and its residents are gone, disappeared as if they were never there.
Faye is disappointed. She waits for the rest of the night for the house to manifest in front of her. But that doesn’t happen. Why would it? Watching the sky get brighter, she finally stands up. Disappointed yet again she starts packing her things. Once her backpack is ready she opens her journal for one last entry.
‘As expected this too turned out to be a fake haunting claim. Perhaps the residents of Fainar don’t want the government to cut down the forests which is why they cooked up this ghost story. I guess my journey continues. I’ll have to just keep on visiting new places looking for a true supernatural experience. Hopefully someday I will find one.’
TO BE CONTINUED
back to STORIES
First of all thank you for reading this post. What you read here is not my absolute belief set in stone. I am always open for discussion and future alterations to the post. Actually I consider these posts as a conversation starter. So if you have an opinion to share, please do comment down below.