Haunted House of Highland Park

I recall a certain house from my childhood that was said to be haunted. The property appeared to have been abandoned for a long time and no one ever showed interest in buying the lot. For its part, the old gothic house squatted there like a dark, brooding, two-story monstrosity. Catty corner from Bradfield Elementary School, where I attended, it glared over the intersection of Mockingbird Lane and Douglas Avenue, in Highland Park, Texas.

Rumors passed on in whispered undertones spoke of the unsolved, ritualistic sacrifice of the lady of the house and her children many years before. Icy cold spots inside the house, the ghosts of the dead people, were said to be bad enough to freeze your blood! Another story had it that the last family to have moved in had in turn fled in the middle of the night, as if from the devil himself, not even coming back for the first of the belongings they had left!

Spooky stories to be sure, but I figured these things had just been made up by adults to scare kids from going anywhere near the place. Everyone in the area knew about it and as far as I know, no one ever even crossed shadows cast by the place. I never met anyone actually brave enough to venture into the haunting depths of the ominous abode, yet that never stopped us from daring each other to knock on the door, open it up, and cross the threshold.

Since I had to go by the dusty, cobwebbed draped house on the way to and from school, I always gave it a wide berth by passing on the opposite side of the street. Finally sure that all the talk was probably just silly old wives tales, on a cool fall afternoon in 1969 I decided to walk along the side of the long abandoned structure. The sprawling edifice was quite grand in its scope and decay, reminding me of the Addams Family show on TV.

Moreover, it was as if the weird house had been lifted right out of the blanched pages of an H. P. Lovecraft story, and plopped down right there on the corner! The smell of the autumn leaves filled my nose as I paused to stare at the weed choked yard, gone wild, overgrown and dead. Despite my bravado, it was tough dismissing an unsettling vibe that oozed from that place, which grew so uncomfortable that I quickly jogged on past.

Talk of ghosts, murder, blood, death, and diabolical goings on really peeked my boyish curiosity. Being the brave soul I am, or arguably foolhardy, a week after testing the waters, a Friday afternoon arrived and two school buddies and myself decided to check it out, once and for all. Ribbing each other about which of us had the most guts, it ended in a stalemate as the three of us set out, stopping at the 7-11 on the South East corner of the intersection for a Coke.

Taunting each other about who would be the first to go through with it, we three kings faced the towering building.
Side by side, we strode across the street toward the absolute embodiment of our fears of the unknown, each as unsure as the other, unwilling to show it. Withered trees shrouded the abandoned house like great tombstones around an open grave.

Making it to the front gate, a gust of wind blew through the trees, sending leaves tumbling through the air, swirling about our feet. Rusted metal of a decades old wrought iron gate gave off a painful sounding creak of protest as we pushed it open. Shrugging, good sense was overthrown by pride as we peered around then slowly crept up the weed choked entry of cracked cement, right up to the huge wooden front door of the vine wrapped, dilapidation.

Rapping my knuckles against the hard, thick, gnarled wooden door, one of my formerly stalwart companions made an almost instantaneous tactical withdrawal, fleeing the scene as fast as his feet would carry him, nevermore to return. A strange calm filled me, and though I admit to also feeling a little uneasy, I was determined to at last to do what we had planned. Hearing nary a sign of life, I tentatively grasped the tarnished, round metal knob of the front door and felt it turn in the nervously moist palm of my hand. It took a second for my brain to register that the door was unlocked as I began pushing it open...

Yawning wide open, it suddenly gave off the impression of the jaws of some foul, wild beast, straining wide and ready to devour us. Still seeing nobody, just to be safe, I again called out to see if anyone was actually within. Stillness and silence was the only thing that silently answered, making it clear to me and my last compatriot that no one was home.

Seeing a greenish pallor come over the face of my partner in crime, I knew he was ready to bolt and run. Swearing him to remain rooted to the spot where he stood on the front porch, he promised to wait as I alone proved there were no such things as ghosts. Sheer determination made me raise a foot and cross over into no man’s land.

Calling out again, as I made my way through the foyer, I saw diffuse light streaming in from the unshuttered, dirt caked window panes. Wispy spider webs along the grey walls and ceiling wafted in the slight breeze of the open door behind me. An old rotary phone, sat on a small wooden table, its phone line dangling uselessly, frayed wires telling me it had been forcibly yanked from the wall, surely at some remote age ago.

Looking straight ahead, a large staircase dominated the space before me, its ornately carved banister rising up to the unoccupied second floor. Peering around the right corner of the entryway, the room on the right side was adorned with grey, dust covered sheets that were strewn over an odd chair and what had to be a couch. The room to the immediate left was empty save some wadded up newspaper and some trash.

Quickly glancing back around, I nodded everything was okay to my worried looking school chum outside. There was no hiding how much it irritated me that he was too chicken to follow me. However, I was somewhat at least reassured by the moral support of his presence.

The squalid room to my immediate left led off into what had probably been a splendid dining room. Making my way into that adjoining area, an open door at the far end drew my uneasy attention. Moving to the door, I saw it led into a tiled kitchen.

At first it was hard for me to understand why the cleaned out kitchen gave me the creeps. I soon realized it was due to a strange reddish tint to light that came flooding in through the kitchen window. Standing in the doorway there, I saw that something red colored was smeared all over the glass window pane.

Step by step, I moved closer. I decided to quickly check out the fetid smelling kitchen, then leave. Drawing closer to the oddly red tinted source of light, I saw what looked like marks of insistent, red fingerprints had been the cause of the smudged red window. I shook my head, taking no pleasure in that fearful revelation, as I presently glanced down at the kitchen sink.

A sudden, inescapable realization hit me like a ton of bricks. At first I believed I was staring down at a couple of gallons of red paint that had been poured into both sides of the porcelain double sink. Yet, as I bent over for a closer inspection, the coppery odor of dried blood assailed my senses!

A cold chill of absolute, gut wrenching horror crept up my spine and I shook. The universe went into slow motion as a fathomless level of dread prompted the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. Terrified beyond tears or even an ability to scream, I felt certain that some gruesome, shattering experience was ready to fall on me like the axe of an insane executioner!

I felt like a small, trapped animal. The house was coiled around me, a viper poised to strike. My mind flashed with images of a mad dog killer lurking somewhere in the shadows nearby, a foot long butcher knife raised in his claw like hand. Tapping into some inner well of defiant survival, I forced myself to slowly turn.

Faced with the stone cold prospect of my own sudden death, life suddenly took on a degree of crystal clarity like no other event can illicit. My eyes screwed wide open, and I scanned the unwholesome place, wishing to at least face the grim reaper when he struck. Surprised at seeing no obvious sign of attack, I quietly tiptoed toward the front door, seemingly miles away.

Tales of the poor murdered children came flooding back to me as I heard what sounded like a footfall, then another, making the floor above my head creak alarmingly. Hearing what I took to be the footsteps of the murderous fiend stalking about upstairs, I did what anyone would have. I ran for the front door as fast as I could! But, that’s when things suddenly took on a detached, surreal, dream-like quality.

Instead of successfully dashing outside to my life and the safety of friends and family, a cold gust suddenly filled the foyer, sending a thick cloud of dust whirling and writhing eerily. Before I was able to cross half the distance, the front door suddenly slammed shut, seemingly of its own accord! Horrible seconds stretched into infinity, and I had a Blair Witch moment years before the movie was ever a glimmer of a notion.

Most of what followed can best be described as a missing time experience. Recollections of what I long believed took place had me yanking open the front door, jumping from the porch, and scrambling out of the weed infested yard. Yet, buried memories of something far more harrowing nagged at me for years, until I finally pieced together the truth from nightmares that haunted me into adulthood.

What I now most unwillingly accept is that after the door slammed shut, like the bleached white vault of an old tomb, something inexplicable came over me. Every fiber of my being cried out a silent “NO!” as I found myself turning on my heels and taking a step toward the upward stabbing stairway. My pounding heart sounded like the deafening beat of a drum as one foot after another carried me on as if I was a marionette... a puppet on the strings of some terrible evil that dwelt upstairs.

I was drawn up those old, decaying stairs, step by awful step. For a second I imagined something dancing in the air around me, just beyond the fringes of my ability to perceive, but powerful enough for goose bumps to cover me from head to toe. The bitter taste of salty fear filled my sick, dry mouth.

Finally making it up to the dimly lit landing of the second floor, though every cell rebelled against it, I found myself compelled on into the murky remains of what had once been a spacious master bedroom. A sheet less, stained mattress loomed up out of the shadows as my eyes focused in the dark room, the sole remaining thing left by previous tenants. With mind numbing surety, I sensed something wicked, a vile, unseen presence. It was coming, coming for me!

Misty, fleeting impressions of a formless thing swimming in the heady atmosphere merged into a shape darker than the most ebon night. Impossible as it sounds, a being coalesced beside the dank mattress of the forgotten bed! As this inky blackness took on solid form, I was stunned seeing the hourglass shape of a curvaceous woman, a woman where pitch black darkness resided where a face should have been!

I felt like I had been thrown into the lair of the hungriest of lionesses! Ashamed as boyish desires raced unbidden through my mind, I desperately wanted to get away, the severity to which it is impossible to word. I was like an insect caught in the flow of dripping amber, locked in an invisible prison, a victim turned to stone by Medusa’s gaze.

It was helpless for me to resist. The ghostly huntress woman glided slowly closer. I was wrapped in her spectral embrace, the horror of it sending reality reeling as a single, unspoken word banished all reason from my mind -

“Lover!”





I was engulfed, swallowed by a cold, insatiable blackness that held an overpowering smell of rich red roses. How long this went on, and what exactly followed, still scratches at the closed door of blessed forgetfulness. Suffice it to say, this trembling boy finally broke free, stumbled down the staircase, and made it out the front door. Like a train careening off its tracks, I recklessly fled across the untended front yard, pure terror flowing in my veins.

Illuminated by the tauntingly pale light of a full moon, I will never forget the old swing hanging from an ancient oak tree, swinging back and forth in the cold night air, like the noose of a hangman. In a state of unreasoning, palatable fear, I was sure if I looked close enough, I would see the hollow eyes of a ghostly child within its grasp, staring back at me.

The sinister voice of that feminine revenant mocked me, goading me to come back inside, and stay, stay with her forever! Evil laughter cackled in my head as I finally made it out the front gate, and fled down the sidewalk. I ran the whole way, never daring to look behind me, even after reaching the welcome protection my house.

* * * * * * * *

Until putting this down in type, I never told anyone under the sun what happened to me. How could I say anything about seeing all that blood? Feeling trapped within the guts of that dire abode? And worse.

No, I broke any number of laws going inside without permission, and owning up to it might have sent me to a place with bars on the windows, where you had to wear long sleeved, white shirts that tied in the back. Then again, who would believe the ravings of a kid? Stir in a wallop of bone chilling terror that the dark spirit of that carnal house would reach out and drag me back, if I provoked her, was a traumatic enough recipe to still my tongue for close to 40 years.

Those foolish enough to actually want to seek out that frightfully haunted estate should be advised that several years after my horrific experience, that bleak edifice of former habitation was utterly demolished. I cheered at the sight of bulldozers smashing that bygone monstrosity to bits, smiling as the sullen ground beneath it was turned over. I just hope the city planners were wise enough to salt the earth before huge slabs of concrete were poured over the spot where the foreboding house mockingly stood for all those years, turning the corner lot into a nice, flat parking lot.

Many years and more than a few miles now separate me from that blood spilt dwelling, formerly standing so near the bright lights of the Highland Park Village shopping center. However, the realities of what befell me there and then may never be fully recalled or sponged away. Perhaps it is indeed a blessing that I am unable to relate all the buried woes of that truly haunted house.


Lance M. Oliver
October 2006
orbhunterx@yahoo.com