The House that dripped blood

The house sat alone on a hillside, as those types of homes typically do. No one had lived in it for years and the grass and brush were growing up around it. Jaeden was only 9 years old when "it" happened and 8 years later she still remembered it pretty well. She recalled seeing the police and ambulance crews surrounding the house and the flashing lights that were blinding. All the neighbors had walked blocks to where the situation occurred and had stood talking about it. Apparently, a woman named Debra Jackson had been shot and killed in her upstairs bedroom. The rumor was she owed a drug dealer a lot of money and he killed her to make a point. Whatever the cause she had been shot in that house and they say died instantly.

Life happens and people die, especially in areas that are considered to be high crime. What happened after Debra Jackson passed away, however, was anything by normal. Almost immediately the tales began spreading throughout the city of paranormal activity in the house. People began saying that those who moved in, moved out quickly because her blood dripped through the floor into the room below. Everyone began calling the home the bloody house and for a while, it sat empty. After a few years, someone purchased and remodeled it, turning it into a rooming house. Jaeden wondered if those who moved in knew the story behind the house that dripped blood.

This house was about two blocks from where Jaeden lived so she passed by often. To her, it looked like simply an old dilapidated home. It had been sitting vacant now for the past 2 years because no one would remain in it. Jaeden's friends said they knew people who had lived in the house and they all said blood would drip from one upstairs bedroom to the floor below. Jaeden dismissed this as simply made up, from the imaginations of those who believed in such things. She, herself believed in nothing she could not see. As she stood there that afternoon, an idea began taking place in her mind.

Jaeden decided that she would visit the old house one night herself and disprove all the rumors. She was a headstrong 16 year old and rarely listened to anyone, even her parents. She wondered if she could get anyone else to go with her, but knew that none of her friends would. Jaden decided that this particular night would be as good as any, so she made her plans. Just after dark, she got her cell phone and tiptoed out the back door of her house. Her mom and dad were watching a movie in the living room and her little brother was playing with toys in the den. She knew they would assume she was upstairs and that she had at least an hour before anyone would be looking for her.

Jaeden walked out the backdoor into the cool fall night and headed down the road that would lead her to the house that allegedly dripped blood. She found herself standing in the same spot where she had been just a few hours earlier, only now she began doubting herself. In the throws of twilight, the house seemed ominous and she thought perhaps she should turn and go home. Her mom had always told her that the first response to a situation is almost always the one you go with. Her grandma Macie had always said that you should not bother the spirits if they were not bothering you.

She quickly shrugged off that bit of wisdom and slowly made her way up the grassy hillside. The house was made of bricks that looked as if they might be centuries old. The steps were cement but had chips and cracks. Jaeden took a deep breath, then stepped up onto the front porch. She hesitated a moment and almost made the sign of a cross, but she did not believe in that either. She pushed the door and found that it was open so she walked inside. There was a couch in what must have been a living room so she went over and sat upon it.

There was no light except that of her cell phone and she did not want to run down the battery. As she pondered what to do her eyes fell upon some candles and cigarette lighters on the floor. Jaeden supposed that perhaps some homeless people had been using the house for shelter. As it became darker, she lit one of the candles, placed it in a nearby Mason jar and sat and waited. Her friends said they heard that blood always dripped from the room above the largest room downstairs and that's where she was. Everyone said that it happened around 8:30 PM at the time that Debra Jackson was murdered.

Jaeden believed there were people who had been hiding upstairs pouring fake blood to trick those, who were foolish enough to believe in such fairy tales. She looked at her phone and it was 8:24. She only had a few more moments to debunk this lie and get back to her house. At precisely 8:30, an eerie feeling came over Jaeden and she wanted to run, yet was frozen and unable to move. The house seemed to get darker and she fumbled with the light on her phone. Suddenly, the candle she had lit and set in the jar on the floor went out. There had been no wind so this actually spooked her

Above her head, she began to hear the sound of something dripping. Drip, drip, drop over and over. She fumbled to focus her camera and looked up. As she snapped a few images and the phone light hit the ceiling she saw that a streak of red was growing above her. Almost immediately something wet hit her face and continued to drop on her. Jaeden screamed and began running for her life. She bumped into things she could not make out in the dark, and as she neared the door, hit her head hard, and fell.

The disappearance of Jaeden Blackburn was not a mystery for long. Her worried family got their answer just two days later. As the news spread several came forward to say that they had seen her staring at the old house on the afternoon of the night she disappeared. Before this, she was considered as a runaway although her parents said this made no sense to them. The police decided it would not hurt to check the old house and when they did, the mystery was solved. They found Jaeden lying in a large pool of congealed blood, near the living room door.

Strangely there was no sign of blood anywhere else in the house, not the ceiling or the room above. Jaeden, however, looked as though she suffered a mortal wound and had bled out. The autopsy indicated that she did not lose any blood and the reason for her death was inconclusive. It was suggested that she had obviously hit her head on the door as she tried to escape and slipped on the bloody floor and fell. It was never determined as a fact whether or not she died of fright, from the bump on her head, or when she hit the floor. The police dismissed the rumors of the dripping blood because of the Jackson murder that had taken place in the house, although they had no other explanation.

After Jaeden's freak accident the house was torn down, so that no one else would suffer a similar fate. Even so, the rumors persist to this day. There is even a new urban legend going around. There is no longer a house that drips blood but, some now have a new narrative. They say that if you walk by that hill around 8:30 at night you will hear an otherworldly scream. Others say they have seen what looks like a teen girl walking as though she is lost across the spot where the house used to be. A few individuals have even gone so far as to say the apparition looks like Jaden Blackwell. It is believed that Jaeden's spirit is still trying to find her way out, even though the house is no longer there.

Stevie Wonder's hit song "Very Superstitious," tells us:

When you believe in things

That you don't understand,

Then you suffer,

Superstition aint the way

Everybody scream!

Perhaps in the case of the Jaeden Blackwell's of the world it would be said better as the following.

When you don't believe in things that you don't understand, the you suffer.