Old Haunt
by Elizabeth Averay
Everyone says the old church ruins are haunted. They are decrepit and yes very creepy to be around, but I know there are no ghosts. I grew up playing in the grounds. There are all sorts of animals and insects and a feeling of sorrow at the crumbled walls and broken stained glass but definitely no ghosts.
There are stories of long-gone monks wandering the grounds and working in the adjoining fields. These stories are so old that my great-grandparents told them to me as bedtime stories.
Walking past the church on my way home I hear chains clanking, kids playing is my guess – not worth my time to chase them off.
A week later, again going past the ruined church. This time there are lights of all colours strobing through the broken walls and what is left of the windows. This time I have to look, and see what the kids are up to. Climbing the remains of the brick fence, I make my way to the church’s open corner nearest to me and look in. There are no kids, just lights, but nothing from which the light can come. It’s just balls of light that start as the size of golf balls and swell to the size of a basketball, then burst in a shower of multicoloured powder that vanishes as it falls to the floor. I gasp in amazement and fear. The old church is haunted – all this time I was wrong!
The lights freeze – how? Did they heart me gasp? They are lights, not something with ears!
The light shapes morph into a humanish appearance and glide over to me. Now I’m frozen in place, unable to move. I feel bone-chilling cold on my back as I am shoved into the body of the church where lights and translucent human shapes push and pull me around like a rag doll. Then one of them lifts me off the ground and throws me out of the church and its grounds! I land in a broken heap on the roadside.
Never again will I enter that place, and as I pass out the ghosts have a final light show just for my eyes. They make words out of the lights. They say: this is our place, our old haunt. No one else can enter. You have been warned.
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