The Tales of Unearthly Encounters

The Manor

The profound silence devoured us. We were silently sipping our coffees. Through the window, I could see the vast meadow gleaming under the bright moonlight. The night was getting colder. I wrapped the blanket tightly around myself, and dragged the woolen cap a little down, covering my ears and forehead tightly.

Part of me felt anxious, excited, flushed adrenaline into my blood. However, nothing ever happened. I wondered why I felt excited each time.

Excited for what?

Excited for ghosts.

We were ghost hunters.

We were not like the flashy exorcists you often see on the TV, or in movies, or you read in the books. We didn‟t have any fancy equipment or anything. We didn‟t measure electromagnetic waves as they show. We simply waited, in some haunted house, till something appeared (which never had happened). We were just a bunch of high school boys with enough time on their hands.

We were sitting at a lonely manor house far from the edge of civilization. There were four of us. Charles, Peter, Jimmy and I.

This was a small manor located in the far countryside. And the most terrifying and discomforting fact was that there was no habitation nearby. Like this house had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knew when it was built. No dates, history or anything else was available. Some locals say that it had been here since the medieval era, but no accurate record could be traced. The government denies the very existence of it. However, there might be conflicts and disagreements about the origin of the house, but everyone was equally terrified of it.

Peter first brought the news of this manor house the previous week. He was pretty excited, constantly blabbering about it, like the local people had observed some unnatural activities. Like once a shepherd was going back home, after sunset. The evening was approaching and everything was getting darker, then on the horizon, he noticed the house from far away. But something was wrong. Each and every window was glimmering with light that evening. The shepherd knew the rumors surrounding the house. He simply started running, leaving his sheep behind - till he reached the nearest village.

Again, once in a blue moon, some shrieking screams could be heard from the house. They were filled with horror and agony. The screams were so loud that it could even reach the nearest villages.

Some time ago some gipsies were passing through the location. As they were totally unaware of the haunted manor, they had decided to stop there for a while. They set up tents across the field. Though the lone house made them curious, it didn‟t bother them much.

The incident happened at the dead of the night. One of them had stepped outside. After a few moments, he started screaming and kept screaming until everybody woke up. But even after that, he kept screaming. They found him rolling insanely on the ground and screaming. Whatever they tried, they couldn‟t stop his cry. They rushed him to the nearest village. Throughout the whole time, he kept screaming. His eyes rolled upwards, blood gushed out of his mouth. But he didn‟t stop screaming. Finally at the hospital, after three days, he stopped.

When his folks asked him about it later, nobody could get a word out of him. He kept his lips sewed. He just closed his eyes and shivered whenever one mentioned that cursed night.