How to Sell Your Haunted House

The four teenagers watched across the street as the woman pounded in the for-sale sign. Two of them stood unaware that their mouths had dropped open; one had dropped her hand and left her text message unsent. 

“She can’t have gone in there… there’s no way,” one of the boys muttered. 

“Wouldn’t she have to in order to sell it? I mean, don’t they usually tour people around?” the other replied. Almost as if in answer to his questions, the woman started putting up an ‘open house’ sign. 

“No way,” one of the girls muttered, lifting her phone up now to take some pictures. “She can’t really expect she’s going to get offers? No one is going to want to go in there…” 

The second girl giggled and hit her friend playfully on the shoulder. 

“I dare you all to show up to the open house. I dare you all to go in there.” The two boys stared at her incredulously. 

“No one is that crazy, Sophie.” The second boy scoffed as the first answered. 

“More than crazy, you’d have to be suicidal.” 

Sophie laughed again. She looked at her girlfriend, who had remained silent and watched her swallow hard. 

“Come on, Willow, don’t tell me you’re as much a pansy as these guys.” Willow glanced briefly at Sophie before turning back to the house. The woman had finished with her signs and was putting up fake, permanent balloons. 

“I don’t know…” Willow muttered barely above a whisper. 

“Come on, Sophie, you’re not really brave enough to go in there either,” one of the boys snarked. Sophie narrowed her eyes. 

“Wanna bet?” she shot back. “Let’s make a bet: anyone brave enough to walk through the house at the open house wins; anyone who doesn’t becomes a permanent loser. But you have to make it all the way through the house - all the rooms, even the attic.” 

“What do we get if we win?” one of the boys asked. Sophie smirked. 

“Total bragging rights. Plus you get to pick Friday night activities for a month.” 

The boys started to laugh and whisper together about the activities they wanted to participate in. Sophie rolled her eyes, knowing how bad it would suck if they won but not wanting to admit it to them. No need to encourage them further. Sophie glanced at Willow, who was still just staring, only now her gaze seemed to have moved to the upstairs window. 

“What about you, Willow? You in?” 

Willow said nothing for several moments before finally turning to look at her friend. Willow glanced over at the boys who gave her encouraging smiles before nodding. She glanced back up at the window to see it was empty now. She was certain it hadn’t been just a moment earlier. 

Willow watched with Liam and Caspian as Sophie marched confidently up to the woman who was finishing up. None of the three of them could hear what Sophie was saying, or the woman’s response, but the realtor looked pleased and pleasant enough. Sophie also seemed pleased with herself when she walked back. 

“What did you do?” Liam asked when she walked up to them again. Sophie took Willow’s arm and started to walk with her towards Caspian’s house. 

“I just told her my parents might be interested and asked when the open house was, when it started, and all that. She seemed excited. I guess she’s new to the area and everyone told her this listing would be impossible.” 

“This listing will be impossible,” Cas answered. “She has no real clients; no one who knows anything will be interested in this place.” 

“That’s not true. I’m sure there’s a reasonable amount of macabre psychos who’d be interested. People who get excited about death and shit.” 

“What did she say?” Willow asked, glancing at her friend as they walked up the steps to Caspian’s house. 

“It’s tomorrow from ten until five. People are welcome to come walk in as they choose. She’ll be here.” 

“That’s really close to sunset. Do you think she knows what happens in that place after dark?” Willow whispered. Sophie rolled her eyes. 

“Nothing, nothing happens after dark. It’s all just rumor and speculation.” 

“That’s a lot of missing people and deaths of owners for speculation,” Caspian scoffed. “Besides, I live down the street; I can tell you with some certainty that house is…weird. It’s like it’s alive.” 

“Oh please,” Sophia chuckled as she grabbed a Coke from the fridge in the garage. She threw herself down on the couch next to Liam. Liam kept his eyes forward and looked a little pale. Willow sat in the opposite chair, sipping her water. “Wow, you all are still freaked out. This is going to be an easy win.” 

…

It was half past noon when Sophia came knocking on the door. The following Friday there was a romcom convention, and she was already planning the route and food stops. She felt certain no one else would be willing to walk through the whole house. 

Mrs. Walker opened the door wide as if she hadn’t known there was a door here, and Sophie’s knock finally allowed her to see it.

“Hey, Mrs. Walker,” Sophie started cheerfully, already starting to walk into the house. 

“Good morning, dear. Test prep studying? Cas said you all had a history test?” Mrs. Walker closed the door behind Sophie and gestured towards the garage. Sophie chuckled lightly to herself. 

“Yup, history.” Sophie didn’t look back as she walked the familiar layout in the garage that had been turned into a ‘kids hangout room’. Willow and Liam were already there, sitting on the couch, whispering together. Cas was puttering around his art table. 

“I don’t know that this is such a good idea, Sophie,” Liam stated as soon as she walked into the room. Sophie made a show of rolling her eyes. 

“Come on. I agreed to go earlier, during full daylight, for your pansies. But… I guess if you don’t want to go, we can just give up now. I’ve got a full list of exciting things planned for this month…” Sophie teased. Cas and Liam exchanged an uncomfortable glance. 

“You said you only win if you want through that house. So even if we don’t go, you have to do it, or the bet is off,” Willow whispered. Sly smiles crept up on Liam and Cas. Sophia frowned. She was not scared of the house, but she didn’t relish the idea of walking through it alone. 

“Fine, you all come out and watch. I’ll go meet the realtor again and walk through the house.” Sophie started to head determinedly towards the door. 

“Wait, how will we know you walked through every room?” 

Sophie turned around with a mischievous smile and shrugged. 

“I guess you won’t. Not unless someone comes with me. Though I think if I’m brave enough to enter the house and you all stay out here,” she started with another shrug, “I’ve already won.” She put her hands on her hips and stared at her friends. Cas narrowed his eyes, and Liam grunted. Willow, however, just looked sad and defeated. “You can stay outside, Willow,” Sophie added softly. Willow shrugged. 

“Fine, Cas and I will go with you, make sure you follow through, and Willow will stay outside and watch us. She gets to decide, then, after we all come out, who really won.” 

“Deal.” Sophie reached out and shook Liam’s hand. Everyone nodded, and she started heading out the door again. This time everyone followed her. 

Sophie walked determinedly out the door and down the street. Her three friends trailed quickly after her. The signs and balloons were still in place as they had been. The realtor’s smiling face was looking down on them from the poster board, but the woman herself was not around. I bet she’s already inside. Sophie thought to herself, though a new twinge of fear filled her. She refused to let her friend see that. She turned on her heel and faced Willow. 

“We’ll be back. This shouldn’t take too long,” she stated as confidently as she could. Willow offered a weak smile that didn’t touch her eyes. Sophie turned and looked pointedly at Cas and Liam before walking into the house. 

She was surprised to find the inside looked almost normal. The walls were white; there were pink and blue seashells decorating the place, giving it an almost beachy feel. It seemed a bit out of place for Wichita, but Sophie still found herself drawn to it. She realized she had been expecting dark, gothic furniture with spiderwebs and blood dripping down the walls. Everything was light and open. 

“Welcome,” the realtor said, coming around the corner to greet them. Sophie yelped softly and clutched her heart. “Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I thought I heard someone come in, and I wanted to check.” The woman’s smile seemed strange somehow. More robotic and unnatural than it had been the day before. Her eyes seemed a bit too wide for her face now. Had she looked so peculiar yesterday? Sophie felt certain she hadn’t. “I thought you were bringing your parents?” 

“Oh, they are meeting us here. But my friends and I wanted to check out the rooms, if that’s okay?” Sophia lied. She could hear the break in her own voice and hoped that her friends hadn’t. 

“Yes, of course. Feel free to look around. I’ll be down in the kitchen.” Flashes of the new paper articles from the previous owners crossed Sophia’s mind. Hadn’t they both been found dead in the kitchen? One skewered with a fire poker and one burnt to death in an oven? She’d had nightmares for weeks about someone locking her in an oven. The newspapers had said murder-suicide, but she didn’t see how that was possible considering their deaths. She shuttered and refocused herself. She wouldn’t let her friends know she was scared; besides, she wasn’t alone, and it was the middle of the day. Nothing could get her then; she tried to convince herself. She forced herself to think of her romcom event and moved forward. 

All of the downstairs seemed plain. The walls were mostly bare with a fresh coat of paint. 

“How many coats of paint do you think they had to put on to cover up the blood and guts on the wall?” Cas whispered. Sophia rolled her eyes. 

“You can’t cover up blood with white, stupid. They had to wash everything off first, probably strip it down and then repaint it.” 

“I heard that at night, the blood comes back and drips down the walls,” Liam muttered. Sophia scoffed. They headed towards the back into a room labeled ‘the butler’s pantry’. 

“You know, for stripping down and remaking this house after so many deaths, they sure kept a lot of the original design,” Liam whispered. 

“That’s because the ghosts get angry when you try to change things,” Cas teased. He made an ‘ooooh’ noise as if ghosts were following them. The boys laughed together. 

“No one has lived here long enough to make any real changes, and this old-timey original look is what’s popular right now. I’m sure they didn’t want to change it and diminish its value.” The boys scoffed at her and continued to move silently through the house. 

Hesitantly, the children moved up the stairs, and a strange creak from inside the walls followed them. Sophie stopped and heard the realtor whispering in the kitchen. 

“Are you having any luck selling the house?” The voice sounded strange, distant, and a little gargled. 

“Obviously not! My only visitors are teenagers! You’ve created quite a reputation,” she snarled back. Sophia swallowed hard. Was the woman talking to … a ghost? It seemed like it. She picked up her pace up the stairs. The bedrooms were bigger than hers and had large open windows. She rather liked the look, but in this house she could only picture haunted, bloody faces through the glass at night. Sophia shuddered. She moved with her friends into the far back room, overlooking the backyard and hills beyond. 

“Isn’t this where that girl from the 70s stabbed a bunch of people, and it took them months to match all the body parts?” Liam asked. Sophia shot him a look. “I’m just asking.” 

“Yes, it was. But I’m pretty sure they said she was on PCP or something…” 

“I guess that’s easier to believe than ‘a bunch of ghosts possessed my friends and I was left no other choice except to kill them all. Only it didn’t get rid of the ghosts; they just laughed and made my friends into ghosts too.’” Cas teased. 

“Not all of us,” someone whispered. Cas turned around quickly and glanced at Sophie, but she was frozen to her spot. She shook her head. The voice had sounded hollow and a bit far away.

“Did you guys hear that?” Cas whispered. Liam nodded, and Sophie remained still. 

“I don’t think we’re alone anymore.” 

A strange laughter echoed in the hall, and the door to the room slammed shut. Sophie screamed, and the boys leapt from their spots. 

“Let’s forget it, Sophie. We’ll go to your stupid romcom; let’s just get out of here,” Liam begged. Sophie nodded, and they moved to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. The laughter was louder now, and it came from inside the room. Sophie spun on her heel but saw nothing in the room. 

“Was that window open before?” Cas asked, pointing at the curtain swaying in the breeze. Sophie looked at her friend and saw what looked like a wisp of smoke press against his ear before muttering ‘jump’. Cas shivered and screamed, batting back at his ear as if to swat a large fly. 

Liam moved to the door again, and this time it opened freely. He started to run without thinking, and it seemed he headed up the stairs towards the attic. 

“Liam, stop!” Sophia screamed, but it was too late. He ran through the door, and it slammed shut behind him. Sophie exchanged a terrified glance with Cas before they heard Liam’s bloodcurdling scream from beyond the door. Laughter echoed behind them now. 

“Run, little children. Unless you want to join your friend…” As the voice spoke, Sophie felt an icy shiver run along her spine. Something unknown within her beckoned her towards the attic, though she knew she ought to run out of the house. Next to her, silent tears streamed down Cas’s face.