Prompt #13

"Who told you it was haunted? Write about the first memory that comes to mind when you heard the words 'haunted house.'"

When I was in junior high, my older sister was sent to live with my grandparents for a year. I was sharing a room with my younger sister at the time. My mom told me I could use my older sisters room while she was gone.

So a couple days before she left, my sister took me into her room. There was a full length mirror on the closet door. She instructued me to look into it. She asked if I could see the dead people that lived in there. Well that was enough to make me not what to sleep in that room ever.

I didn't and within a few weeks our step grandmother was residing in that room.

When we were very little my dad took us to the Winchester Mystery House. My older sister and I - who were fans of Gothic and horror novels - found the place to be endlessly fascinating. But our little sister had a different experience. In the room made up of teeny tiny trap doors - she completely flipped out (similar to how she freaked o Disneys Haunted Mansion). She started crying and carrying on. My dad had to carry her. MY big sis and I wanted to go everywhere and see everything. We thought Mrs. Winchester was brilliant the way she created stairs to nowhere - doors that opened into walls. She had to keep building.

I didn't feel it was haunted.

The theatre I worked at for almosta decade, on the other hand, was haunted. Top hat man would watch the shows. Tales of ghosts abounded. What pissed me off were the folks that used the ghosts as an excuse for forgetting a prop or their lines or anything that was really their responsibility. But the ghosts were there. One day I walked on stage and saw the masses sitting in the audience. I said nothing to the actors. I turned around to face upstage and the three actors came out to work. They all gasped simultaneously. could it be the light playing tricks on us, sure. But it was cooler to think that a couple ghosts liked to hang out with us at rehearsal.