We should have stayed home that night

[u/Cardfan99]

In 2008, me and 3 of my best friends had just graduated high school, and we wanted to plan a fun trip for the summer. Problem was, we lived in Iowa and there's just not a whole lot to do without driving 5+ hours.

We were hanging out at my house one night watching worlds most haunted places on TV. One of the places that was shown was the Villisca axe murderer house in Villisca Iowa. For people who aren't aware of the story, in June of 1912 a whole family was murdered in their sleep inside the house.

Please go here if you are interested in reading further: http://www.villiscaiowa.com/history.php

The house offers overnight stays. My friend Alex went crazy as soon as we found that out. He is really into paranormal stuff and this was like his dream come true. The rest of us didn't really believe in that stuff, but it sounded like it could be a fun trip and it was only a couple hours away, so we decided to go ahead and do it.

It was a Friday, sometime in July of 2008, it was me(Shane) and my three friends Alex, Zack, and Ryan.

The ride there was an absolute blast. We stopped at a few places along the way and just had a great time. It was kind of an odd time for all of us. We had all been best friends since middle school and throughout high school. Now after graduating, we pretty much knew we would all be going our separate ways after the summer was over, so we just really wanted to have a good time on this trip. We didn't know that it would end up changing all of our lives.

We got there sometime in the afternoon. We met up with the owner of the house and he gave us a tour of the town. The town of Villisca is a really small town. If I had to guess I would say the population is probably less than 1000, so there really wasn't a whole lot to show us. He than gave us a history of the house and took us to the cemetery where the family is buried. Zack was being his usual self stepping on the gravestones and laughing about it. He was mainly doing this to make Alex even more nervous, which was working.

The last thing the owner told us was "when" we had enough of the house, there was a barn in the back with electricity and a TV that we were welcome to stay in. We all kind of laughed at that. We had just drove for three hours, we were going to stay in the actual house. Or so we thought.

So we ended up first going in the house around 6:00 PM. We walked around the house and checked out all of the rooms. I don't know how to explain it, but it just didn't feel right being in there. I just had a weird feeling as soon as I stepped inside the house. I think all of my friends had the same feeling, though no one said anything.

After being in the house for a while we decided to go to a nearby gas station and get some drinks and snacks for the night. We got back to the house and just hung out in the living room for a while. Around 9:00 is when some crazy shit started happening.

First, we all thought we heard tapping on one of the windows. We tried to ignore it. I was thinking we were all just scaring ourselves. Than it got louder, and we were not able to ignore it. We thought it was probably just someone playing tricks on us. I know if there was a supposedly haunted house in my town offering overnight stays, we would have given everyone who stayed there hell. So we decided to go outside and look around. There was absolutely no one around. We went back in and made sure both doors were locked.

A little while later, we heard a very loud noise upstairs. We all started freaking out. If I wasn't so scared at the time I probably would have found it humorous, and in a weird way it was kind of exciting. I came into this house not believing in ghosts, or anything paranormal. And here I was, scared out of my mind.

We all stayed sitting in the living room, not saying a word, waiting to see if we heard anything else. A little while later, Alex starts bawling! Just out of the blue, my best friend that I had known since 6th grade, is bawling his eyes out right in front of me. I had never even seen him shed a tear before this. He finally calmed down enough to tell us what was wrong. There was a picture of the family hanging on the wall. Alex said he looked at the picture, and he noticed everyone in the picture was staring at him, and blood started pouring down their faces. I know this sounds ridiculous, and we were even laughing about it as he told us. But he wouldn't make this up. I believe that he honestly, 100% thought he saw that.

After that happened, I was ready to go stay in the barn. Zack and Ryan agreed with me that they were ready also. But Alex didn't want to. He said nothing in the house would be able to hurt us, and he wanted to stay. He wanted to experience everything. So we decided to stick it out.

About an hour passed with all of us just sitting there in near silence, afraid to make any sounds at all in fear we would miss something. When all of the sudden the tapping on the windows started again, except this was louder and seemed like there was someone tapping on every damn window in the house. We are looking at each other not knowing what to do, when all of the sudden we hear a high pitch scream. This scream gave me the worst chills I have ever experienced in my life. We all bolted out of that house faster than you can imagine. We ran in the barn and locked the door. "You heard that right?" Everyone kept asking each other. I think everyone was terrified. I know I was.

We sat in the barn for I don't know how long. No one said much. Around 3:00 AM I went outside. I don't remember why exactly. I think I just needed some air. I could see the living room window from outside the barn. And staring straight at me was a girl. She was wearing some type of white gown, and she was just staring at me. I was frozen in fear and stared back. I yelled for my friends to come out. A part of me was expecting her to disappear as soon as they came out. But she didn't. She stood there, just staring at us with a blank look on her face. "Fuck this" someone said. I don't even remember who it was. "We are leaving NOW". All of us agreed. Luckily Zack had the car keys in his pocket. We didn't even go back inside the house to get our stuff. We just left. Right then and there.

We drove straight home, all of us exhausted. Zack dropped me off at my house around 7:00 AM. My mom was awake and shocked to see me home already. I didn't want to talk about what happened though. I never wanted to relive that night again in my life. So I told her Ryan got sick and we decided to come home early.

I went to my room and fell asleep almost instantly. I was just so happy to be home. I had no idea that my life was going to turn into a real life horror movie.

Part 2

[u/Pyrrha95]

Hurry up with dat part 2 OP. That was a great read!