This reminds me of an actual abandoned house I saw years ago when I used to tour. It was in east Ohio near West Virginia and PA with a satellite dish in front of it. Seemed so weird, so I have written and rewritten this story several times. More than a tad late for Halloween this year!-KWC

     “Hey, look Helen, the Direct TV guys are back again.”
    “You’d think they’d learn.”
    Their house was on a windy rural road headed out of Ohio into southern Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The wind blew through the open windows shredding the already shredded yellow curtains that kept no light out. They obviously hadn’t been changed in 40 years. The siding was shabby, dirty and obviously hadn’t been painted in 50 years, what little paint was left was peeling off.
    The grass hadn’t been mowed so long a one-story house would be barely visible. As it was only two stories of the three-story home could be seen.
    Around the corner came the Direct TV van. Hans and George were chatting. Hans was an elderly gentleman who had wanted to retire long ago. He walked with a slight limp. George was just out of college and kept trying to impress Hans with all he’d learned at his technical school.
    “There it is,” Hans said. “Deadbeats haven’t paid their bill for a long time. Orders are to remove the dish.”
    “But it’s a new dish.”
    “Yeah, we got a call that they needed an upgrade. Rebecca hadn’t checked their record and what happened? New dish. Luckily bookkeeping caught it.”     Hans and George pulled into the overgrown drive and as they started to get their tools out George said, “You’d think they’d just cut off service.” Hans said, “Thing is they did long ago but somehow it keeps reconnecting.”
    A strong wind blew the shabby curtains out.
    “Did you hear that?”
    “What was it?”
    “Sounds like the TV is on, better knock. It’s policy, and we can tell the home office who they are, what they look like. After all they’re stealing service.”
    George and Hans trudged up to the back door, since the front door was boarded over. The back door flapped back and forth with the wind.
    “Hello? Anyone there?”
    “Did you hear that?” Hans said. “I see no one in there.”
    “Did that voice just say…”
    “I think it just said…
    The wind blew so hard the door almost knocked both down and two unearthly voices yelled, “GET OUT OF HERE… NOW!!!”
    They ran, jumped in the van and the van sped down the country highway so fast it almost tipped over around the corner. Yet both would swear they heard ghostly laughter for many miles after that.

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Ken Carman
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