Excerpt:

11:33 p.m. November 1, 2009

You tell yourself, “it’s just a staircase.”
Apprehensive to take the first step, you stand for a moment, looking up to the open door. It’s not that far away. The glow of light at the top is surely within reach.
Take a step. Assure yourself that your fears are unfounded. Take the second step and laugh at yourself for being scared in the first place.
On the third step, you feel a knot in your stomach. It’s that twinge of fear. They feed off fear.
The fourth step makes you want to turn around, for you could swear that there’s somebody behind you, but you can’t. You’re nearly paralyzed with fear. Tell yourself you’re alone, that there’s nobody here with you, but it only makes you want to skip the fifth step, going straight to the sixth, which leads to the eighth.
By this time, you’re in full panic. It feels like somebody is chasing you up the stairs. You’re heart feels as if it could explode from your chest, and the hairs on your arms are standing straight up.
You could swear that whatever is chasing you is just at your heels, so you try skipping two steps. You need to get to the light, but whatever’s behind you doesn’t want you to get there. For a split second, it feels as if the stairs have given way beneath you.
You want to cry out, try to call out, but silence greets you. Darkness. Except for the glowing eyes behind you.
You don’t actually see the eyes, but you know they’re there. You can feel its hunger. You are the prey, so you start to pray in your head.
They prayer protects you. It enables you to make it to the light. By the time you make it to the top, you’re in a cold sweat.
Not being able to help but turn around, you see that there’s nothing behind you. You’re out of breath, hairs still standing on end, but there’s nothing chasing you. It’s just a staircase.
Every time you use the staircase, it’s the same experience. It’s easy enough to shrug it off as superstition, being scared, just crazy thoughts in your head, but your friends feel it, too. It’s one of those things where nobody says anything to each other, but it’s the same thing every time.
The first few steps are fine, take them as you would any other steps. After that, the panic starts to set in, and though nobody says anything to another, everyone starts walking a little faster up the steps until they are in a full gallop. Sometimes people shove each other aside, and it’s a race to reach the light.
Nobody says anything. It’s survival of the fittest. Whoever reaches the light first is safe, yet nobody knows why.
It’s not like any of the slow kids have ever been killed or sacrificed to the stairs. That’s just how it is; even the toughest cool kids race up the steps, even the fat ones, and if you ask them why they ran up the stairs, nobody really has an answer. Usually, nothing is said, it’s a sigh of relief just to reach the top, something that makes everyone smiles at their fellow survivors, but those who do admit why they ran always say the same thing: “it felt like something was chasing me.”
What that something is, nobody has yet to figure it out. There’s suggestions, like maybe it was one of the Indians from the French-Indian War, one of the soldiers from the War of 1812, but who really knows for sure. Most acknowledge it as some sort of ghost or spirit, but nobody knows why.
It could be just a staircase from the basement. Many people are scared of basements, so some could shrug it off as that. If it were a typical Michigan basement, that may be totally understandable, as those can be quite creepy, but this was a new house.
The basement was fully finished, brand new. How could you suggest that the house was haunted if it was brand new, just built? There’s an explanation.
The land that the house had been built on was part of an old farm. Your family bought the farm when you were young. You barely remember having your fourth birthday in the farm house, just after they bought it.
You and your brother were so excited to explore the house, as it had all sorts of hidden treasures to find. There were toys left behind, like in the old grainery, but the first time you opened the grainery doors, that’s when you saw bats for the first time. They flew out at you and your father, scaring you half to death, making you duck and cover your head; perhaps that experience put a little fear in your heart about the whole farm.
Perhaps there’s more to the story. The farm, being built in the 1800s, had servants, which was an odd thing, to have slaves in the north. Who knows what went on behind closed doors as far as that was concerned, what energy impressions were left on the property from that time alone.
The wars had already been mentioned. There was a creek that ran along the back property line of the house, and yet another creek across the road, creating the back property line of the neighbor’s houses. These waterways, back in the day, were relied upon heavily not only by natives but by local soldiers, the Michigan Militia who gathered up strength to defeat the enemies, those who fended off the red coats, and a marker only a block up the road mentioned that these were some of the main waterways used during the battle for River Raisin.
Back in the day, you were too young to know about wars and dying soldiers, let alone Native American spirits. You only knew that there was something scary, something that made you pull the covers up over your head. Somehow, if you were covered and you couldn’t see them, then they must not be able to see you, parrot mentality.
When you first moved into the old farmhouse, you had been told that the previous owner’s grandfather had died in the living room. You found it odd that there had been funeral showings in the same room where your couch sat, but you thought back in the day, people just did things differently. They didn’t have the technology we have today.
If you’d have known how far technology would come just in the span of your life, you’d probably not believe that they’d have such contraptions as cell phones or the internet as common as they do now. Those who lived before surely couldn’t fathom it. Things change with time, such as how birth cycles into death.
When you first moved into the farm, you probably would’ve never thought that the field where the horses ran would be the site of your new home, the one your parents would build. Out of six original acres, your parents would sell off a lot for your neighbors to build a house, they’d sell the house and the grainery, but they’d keep the barn and a couple acres to build their own house. The house would look like something out of a fairy tale with stone walls and a turret that made people call it the castle house.
Since the house was built on the same original farm ground, any ghosts from the farm, it’s conceivable, could perhaps travel to the new house. To those ghosts who knew the farm when it had a half dozen barns, the new house was simply in the location of an old barn that had been torn down long before your family took over ownership. You’re actually living on their land, not vice versa.
Maybe it’s not the old slaves or the dead grandfather. If it’s soldiers or dead Indians, they probably roam all the land along the creeks. Your house would not be off limits.
Some would say that just because a war happened, it doesn’t mean that the place is automatically haunted. It’s easy enough to buy into that, but you know about the dead bodies. You saw the pictures.
Your friend’s father was always into archeology, doing digs, while you were always into digging your friend, a boy you had a crush on since the first time you met him when you were eight years old. He came over to play with your brother and had a go-kart, something you thought was so cool. When you were small and smitten, you didn’t know about his father being into digging; it wasn’t until you were older that you actually heard the stories and saw the pictures.
His father had researched the War of 1812 and the Battle of River Raisin, and he figured out where bodies would have been buried along the river. Walking along the stream until he found an open field where nobody would care if he disturbed the dirt, he began to dig, looking for arrowheads and memorabilia. Though he had a clue there may be bodies buried, he did not expect to unearth an Indian clutching a peace pipe, but he did.
That’s the picture you saw, which had been taken less than a quarter mile from your house, the skeleton of an Indian – determined so by his jewelry – holding a peace pipe in his death grip. There were other pictures, too, other bodies and random bones, human bones. In the background, you could clearly see the school that’s kitty corner from the farmhouse and your new house, the school where you went from kindergarten to fourth grade.
There’s no denying the ground was likely bloodied before the farm was ever built. Who knows if the slaves in the north were treated badly like the old southern stories? The only thing that’s for sure is the stairs in the new house make you run, like something is chasing you.
12:36 a.m. November 2, 2009