The shady old two story house that has been said to be haunted was on Gorden Street. I had first heard the news from a little girl when I wasn't even three. Back then I didn't even know what haunted meant. Now I know exactly what it means and there is no way you could get me to go within a one mile radius of that house. Supposedly the last person who lived in that house was old grandma Sally. She was a quiet old lady, but had the nicest soul in the world. She had lived alone with her thirteen cats for a while after her husband had died. It's been said that one day she forgot to feed her cats so the cats got hungry and angry and ate her. It's also been said that old grandma Sally's evil spirit haunts the house now.

Well it's the cold month of October now, and my friends and I really get into Halloween. When I say my friends and I, I mean Phil, Bob, Susan, Elizabeth, and Betty. We have been friends since first grade. We all have gone to the same school and been together every grade. Every Halloween we find the scariest, goriest masks we can find and go around scaring the daylights out of kids and gathering as much candy as we can. It's basically tradition now that after we get all the candy we can, we go back to my house and devour it. When we got back to my house we did exactly what we usually did, ate our candy. As we were shoving our mouths full of candy, Phil thought he had a good idea, 'We should go to old grandma Sally's house and look around.'

The first one to respond was Susan saying, 'There's no way are you going to get me in that house!'

'Hey, it might be fun, you won't know until you try it,' replied Bob.

'Lets just try it,' said Betty in a confident voice, 'I agree with Bob, the house might not even be haunted! That's just a rumor. I say we have a little fun this Halloween.'

Elizabeth and I were just sitting there listening to the kids' conversation. By the look on her face, I could tell she didn't really care what we did. After Bob and Betty had convinced Susan that it would be fun, we all got our parents permission and prepared for the trip. We changed out of our costumes and into our clothes. After we were all ready to go we decided we wouldn't spend more then one hour in the house, for Susan's sake that is, and when we got into the house that we would stick together and not be separated.

When we got there we examined the house. There were dead trees to the left and right surrounded by brown shriveled up plants that looked like they hadn't had water in years. To the right and left of the sidewalk there were little pine trees that weren't one foot tall but brown and wilting. It looked like one of the owners had tried to plant the trees and let them grow to a good size for looks. As we were walking up the cracked sidewalk we noticed that there were weeds in most of the cracks. When we got to the front porch the steps creaked under the weight of us and a bat exploded into flight out from under the long black gutter. To the right of the front door was a cracked window with dead mayflies on the windowsill. Betty knocked on the old, brown, decaying wooden door and it creaked open as if someone had left it open on purpose, knowing we were going to arrive (Snapshot).

'Okay, I'm already freaked out.' Susan said in a shaky voice.

'Just give it a chance!' Bob replied as he heard his echo.

I was the first one to walk into the house because no one else had volunteered partially because they were scared (I could tell from the looks on their faces). As I entered the house, I regretted this idea to explore the house. On the wall in front of me hung a mugshot of old grandma Sally with a cat on her shoulder. To the right of that was a old decaying, black, winding staircase leading to the second floor. To the left of the picture was the kitchen. This kitchen looked like any other kitchen you would find. It had a microwave, a dinner table, old wood cabinets, and a basic refrigerator (Snapshot). The black staircase reminded me of the one my family had when we lived in Montana. It got me thinking about my life when I was in Montana and made me think of all the happy things that had happened to me there (Snapshot).

'This looks a lot like my kitchen,' Phil murmured trying to keep his voice in control and not let anyone know he was scared.

'Same he-,' Elizabeth was saying before she was interrupted by a loud sound that sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

'EWWWWW!' screamed Susan. 'I'm out of here!'

'Oh no you aren't!' said Bob in a tough brisk voice, 'That could've just been the wind and wouldn't you feel silly leaving because you're afraid of wind?'

'Well . . . when you put it that way, yeah. Okay, I'll stay for a little more,' Susan whispered as if not wanting to wake anything up in the house.

'I say we investigate the upstairs area,' Phil had suggested.

'That would be a good idea,' I said, 'Lets go.'

As we climbed the stairs we realized that they must have been several years old by the creaking and the very little support. When we got upstairs we saw that to the right was the laundry room and a bathroom. In front of us, hanging on the dark brown wall, was a portrait of all of the cats that old grandma Sally must have had. To the right it looked like there was old grandma Sally's room with a full bathroom attached to it. Her room looked like she had just gotten out of the shower and had just put on her clothes on ready for a beautiful day. Across the hall must have been the cats' room. It was filled with food and water bowls. Scattered across the room were several different cat toys, large and small, hard and soft. Aligned neatly against the wall were all of the cat beds, some neater then others, arraigned alphabetically with the cats' names engraved on them.

"Dang, she really must have loved her cats," Betty said in a brisk voice.

"Lets go back downstairs and look around some more," I suggested. As we got back downstairs everyone went their separate directions to look around.

"Hey! Look over here!" Elizabeth said in excitement. "This house has a cellar!"

"Crrrreeeeeepppppyyyyy," Susan muttered. "Why can't we just leave right now?"

"Because," Phil said. "All of our candy is gone and we don't have anything better to do."

"Lets investigate the cellar." I said trying to shut them up. We were all for it except, of course, Susan.

"I'm not going down there! It's bad enough that I had to come in here in the first place! The cellar is always the creepiest part of the house! Have you even paid attention to any old horror movies?! The people always die when they go into the cellar!" Susan replied.

"Well then you can stay up here then." Elizabeth said, "But when you get scared don't come crying to us."

The cellar was pitch black as we walked down the concrete steps. We struggled to look for a light switch and Phil tripped over a lonesome brick. As you can tell Phil is a klutz.

"Where did that come fro-, you know what, never mind." Phil muttered.

"Hey! I found something!" Elizabeth said as the lights turned on. We all looked around and examined the cellar. We were surrounded by cement walls. The cellar looked as if one of the owners never had time to take care of it or do anything to it, just a junk room filled with a bunch of random stuff. There was a ton of ordinary house items, brooms, rakes, tables, old televisions, old movies, cat beds, everything you could think of that would be in an ordinary house.

"Okay I'm really starting to think that this is just a bunch of bologna," said Betty about to walk up the stairs. As soon as she got onto the first step something rattled from under the stairs and scurried out to someplace unknown.

"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!!!" yelled Bob as he ran up the stairs with everyone else following. While I was running it felt as if everything was slowed down. I could hear the echo of my black Nike's stomping on the gray concrete. I saw Phil in front of me wearing his blue sweatshirt. I looked to the right and saw the wooden railing that I was resting my hand on not even knowing. I dared not look back for I didn't know what I would see (Expanded moment). When we got to the top of the stairs panting, we saw Susan twiddling her thumbs and petting a cat.

"Hey guys! I found a cute little kitty that ran up from the cellar. I named him Sprinkles. Want to pet him?"

"Oh so we just sprinted up that flight of stairs because of a simple little cat. That's nice." Phil said sarcastically.

"I get it now," I said, "Everyone says that this house is haunted, but it's really the cats."

"So the cats are the ghost?" Elizabeth said chuckling, "You better not forget to feed them!" All the kids laughed.

"Lets get out of here," said Susan. As the kids walked home they reminisced about the 'haunted' house.

"I can't believe that it was just the cats that were there," Betty said to break the awkward silence. "I wonder how they survive on their own."

"We'll have to find that out another time." I said in sarcasm. All my friends went home after we had gotten back to my house. As I laid in my bed trying to get to sleep that night I was thinking about that house.

"Wow. All those rumors weren't true. All it was was a cat running around and living in the house. But at least we all had fun. I'd have to say this has been the best Halloween yet," I whispered to myself. "The best Halloween yet . . . . ."