A True Ghost Story

Welcome to the annual Complete PR Halloween Friday Flash.

This year, we bring you something different. Our boss, John, has written a little ghost story to help you get ready for a Halloween weekend. Enjoy!

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True

By John Boyanoski

Every community has a haunted house legend.

Your mind just flashed to the one from your childhood. That one edifice that went from bleak to folklore every Halloween. The one where everyone told a story, but none of them were true.

In North Scranton, our haunted house was the Eaglar House off West Market Street. There were a lot of abandoned houses in North Scranton, but this one stood out. We could have called it “faux Victorian,” but that term wasn’t in our thin vocabulary books at school, so we just called it scary. Maybe it was three twisting trees that loomed over the mounting leaves and dead grass of the lawn, their finger-like branches perched to snatch any child that dare to get too close. It could have been the faded and chipped paint that slandered past grandeur.  It could have been the porch that wrapped the front and left side that made it appear as if the house went on forever.

But the visuals were just the veneer of what made the Eaglar House, our neighborhood haunted house.  Or any neighborhood’s abandoned property presumably haunted. No, it was the stories told in hushed tones by adolescents that made them dark and foreboding. The overwrought tales from lurid imaginations spun slightly different with each passing year and each passing community.

As we walked home from school one late October long ago past the rusted cyclone fences and broken toys in yards, we seventh graders told those tales to each other. A guy murdered his family there, and their ghosts roamed the hallways and rooms. Devil worshippers held their blood-soaked rituals there until the cops arrested them. Witches met there on Halloween nights when the moon was full. All the usual nonsense, but we wanted to believe them. Maybe we did believe them.  I was about to let my thoughts be known when the unmistakable voice of Moe Prawdski came slashing through the chilly afternoon air behind us.

“That house is just old, morons. Nothing ever happened there.  None of it is true.”

Now, there are four things you should know about Moe Prawdski. First, his real name was Michael, but he got the nickname Moe because of an unfortunate first grade haircut that made him look like the Stooge of the same name. Second, it was in first grade that he was told he wouldn’t be going on to second grade with everyone else. Third, he was an eighth grader, which gave him a certain authority over measly seventh graders, but his aura was enhanced by being even a year older than the typical student in his class. Fourth, Moe Prawdski possessed a death glare that said more than any words ever could. It was more than an angered scowl. Moe Prawdski could cut (and would cut) anyone down with that death glare. No punches needed to be thrown. No insults volleyed across the schoolyard. Just that death glare. Eyes squinting so you couldn’t see anything beyond the irises, lips tight and filled with menace, his jaw set like a bulldog tethered too long to a leash, his nostrils flared, his shoulders back. Moe Prawdski glared and people listened.

Thus, with his that death glare acting as a proclamation, our talk of haunted houses on the day before Halloween ended promptly. Our group thinned out as the number of city blocks with mismatched sidewalks increased until just Moe and me were walking. Now, I had known Moe most of my life because we lived only a few houses from each other. Despite his death glare, he wasn’t really that bad of a guy.  I got the feeling he carried the same worries and dreams as any other kid in North Scranton. So, I dared to ask him a question that has been buzzing around my head since we saw the Eaglar house.

“How do you know nothing happened there? Everyone says it’s haunted.”

“Because nothing like that ever happens in North Scranton.”

I pondered this, for a second, and brought up the Freech and Keen murders – two junior high school students kidnapped, tortured and murdered two decades before our time.

“That was South Scranton.”

I then mentioned Gary White, who only a decade before had vanished down a collapsed mine shaft while working a four-story crane never to be seen alive again.

“Center City.”

Before I could come up with another tale of Scranton’s sordid past, Moe walked up the cracked cement front steps of his house, the painful screech of his battered storm door signifying the conversation was closed.

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The next day was Halloween. As seventh graders, none of us were going to dress up for Halloween because we all decided that was little kid stuff. And by we, I mean my friends declared it, and I followed along despite my enjoyment of free candy.  But what could we do to make this Halloween important?  We battered around the ideas of egging cars, throwing fake vomit at people and toilet papering houses, but none of them excited us. We needed something bigger since we were no longer kids.

We decided almost by impulse at lunch to head over to the Eaglar House and take a look around. Our plan came rapidly. We would all meet at our friend Ralph’s house under the guise of renting some horror films on VHS. We would then leave through his side door just before 10. Our hope was the streets would be void of parents who long since tucked their young children into bed. We all wore the darkest clothes we owned, and decided on no flashlights because their beams flickering in the night would draw unwarranted attention.

The closer our feet shuffled us to the house, the more our silence grew. We passed the derelict bars and pizza parlors that filled the air with the alternating aromas of melted cheese and menthols. As we rounded the final corner, a slight wind whistled around our ears. There was no turning back now.  If this house elicited the worst of our imaginations in the daylight, the night brought a new sense of dread unknown to our young minds. This house was larger and more decrepit than ever with just the faint streetlights off West Market Street shining down. With a couple of quick head nods, we decided that standing on the sidewalk facing the house was not in our best interest, and we cut through the yard toward the back of the house. The windows were uniformly covered in plywood, but that didn’t stop us from trying to look under and around them. Then it happened. My friend Brian whisper-yelled to us. He was crouched down holding up a small half window that led under the house. It was clear the plywood had rotted away, and our entry was now possible.

Who’s going in?  It was asked out loud and in our minds. Its presence hung in the air. No one was volunteering, but when Sean dared me, I knew I had to make the plunge. As they held up the window, I gingerly placed my hands inside. My senses fired messages to my brain that this was a crawlspace, and I could probably shimmy my way in without falling down or being able to stand. Doing my best impression of an old green army man, I soon had my upper body through the gap. Feeling ahead, I found some kind of wooden joist meant to hold up the house, but I found a new use for it as I pulled myself forward with a lunge. I was inside past my knees, when I felt hands on my ankles and feet. My friends were pushing me inside. My frantic kicks back at them only seemed to help their effort and soon I was completely inside the house’s crawlspace. Turning about as quickly and gracefully as an aircraft carrier at sea, I tried to crawl back to the entrance, a string of obscenities coming from inside me. The window was now down, and my friends were putting bricks against it to prevent my escape. I saw Sean’s face in one of the uncovered pains. He laughed, presented his middle finger and yelled Happy Halloween. I could hear the footsteps scurrying away and silence came like a thunderclap. 

I may have sobbed for a few seconds, but realized fear and self-loathing would not get me out of this house. Using the closest things I had to wits, I turned myself around again and started to probe deep into the dark spaces  that was the underneath of the Eaglar House. There had to be more windows. If I could find one, maybe I could get out.

I made my way along the wall, stopping every few seconds to wave my hand forward to make sure nothing was in my way. Visions of rats or worse leaped from my mind. Then I heard actual voices and some flashes of light. A mix of terror and hope ran through me. Had my friends come back? Or was something stirring in the house? I inched toward the little flickers of light coming through the floorboards. I realized I was heading toward the front of the house, and the lights were coming through the seams between the wooden planks of the porch. I paused to catch my breath when I heard it.

“Give me a knife. I want to carve something in the door.”

It was Moe. He was on the porch, and by the sounds of it, he was not alone. I couldn’t recognize the other voices, so it wasn’t my friends, but this group was in a good mood.

“We nailed those kids with eggs so good.”

“They won’t be messing around this late on Halloween anymore.”

I hoped that meant they had gotten my friends, but my elation was short lived because

I was stuck. My mind weighed the pros and cons of calling out for help or keeping quiet so they would leave. My head, and not my brain, made the decision for me. I smacked head off the porch somehow. The thud was loud enough to get the attention of the people on the porch. Their words tumbled out.

“What was that?”

“Probably rats.”

“Cut the crap.”

Realizing I had an audience, I thumped the joist again, this time with my hand. It rang louder.

“It’s below us.”

“It can’t be.”

“Will you shut up”

My brain formed a new idea. A near perfect one. An idea that not even Moe’s death glare could defeat. With all the energy I could pull from the pit of my stomach, I bellowed out in a deep voice that I believed sounded like a demon from a b-grade horror movie:

“MOOEEEEEE PRAAAAWDSKI”

A cavalcade of footsteps followed by terrified screams came next. My fear was replaced by a soft chuckle to myself. I had pulled off an epic prank on Moe and his friends. Yet, my chuckle was not truly satisfying because I realized quickly the greatest victory in my young life shared no audience save the stillness of the Eaglar place.

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It didn’t take long for me to find a window to pry open after that. I walked home covered in dirt and ash, but feeling pretty proud of myself. I didn’t return any calls from my friends that weekend. I wanted them to worry a little that something had happened to me, but that ended Monday when I got to school. They quickly apologized. They had planned to walk around the block and come get me, but they said Moe Prawdski and some high school kids pelted them with eggs and silly string.  They seemed genuinely contrite, so I accepted their offer. Plus, I was secretly happy that I knew it was them that Moe and his cronies had been talking about. I was about to relay my sweeping story, but something unexpected happened when we reached the second-floor wing where the junior high students sat waiting in their blue and white uniforms for the first bell.

Moe was telling everyone about what happened on Halloween.  The audience was rapt. No one challenged his tale because this was Moe Prawdski. It didn’t take long after that for every student sixth grade and up at the schools hugging the banks of the Lackawanna River to hear the tale of Moe Prawdski. He and his friends had heard a ghost call his name from underneath the old house off West Market Street. I decided to keep my part in the story to myself because something had finally happened in North Scranton.

Moe Prawdski had become a true story.