This story begins when I was a child, probably about 7 years old. My mom & aunts threw a huge Halloween party for all the kids in the family, I think there were 16 of us at the time, ranging in age from probably 5 to 13. It was awesome but the coolest part came about the time it just got really dark. We took a hayride to a cemetery a few miles down the road from my aunt & uncles where the party was being held. My mom told us about some of the people buried there & how some of them were not resting in peace. Typical urban legend stuff. When we got there the adults said they wanted to show us the grave of an old man whose ghost was seeking revenge for his wrongful death. We were all scared & excited, creeping through the cemetery in the dark towards the largest tombstone. When we were about halfway there my dad & uncles popped up from behind the graves wearing scary masks. The kids all screamed & ran for the wagon while the "ghosts" & moms all laughed. For years the adults retold this story laughing over the details of our panicked faces & terrified attempts to get away.
When I was a teenager my sister & two of my cousins decided to get our moms back for this prank. Our parents got together once a month to play cards, so that October we made sure we were around for card night. We waited until our fathers went for a "beer run," which inevitably meant an hour or two at the bar. We told our moms about a legend we had heard about a sad ghost that could be seen weeping at her husbands grave when the moonlight hit it (we had made this story up) & convinced them to take us to see it. My cousin secretly called his best friend who had agreed to go there in a mask & hide to scare them. The prank worked perfectly & our mothers nearly peed themselves. We all laughed raucously as we went back to our car.
When we got to it the car would not start. We laughed some more about the ghost sabotaging it & decided to walk to where my cousins friend had hidden his car, we would send our dads to get the car later. But, of course his car would not start either. We started to feel a little weird about this since neither car had had problems recently. But what could we do. This was before everyone had cell phones so we started walking towards the closest house which was about a mile or two away. Though none of us knew them well, we knew the family name of the people who lived there.
As we walked up their long driveway we started to worry because there were no cars parked by the house & it looked pretty dark inside. We knocked anyway but got no answer. We were about to leave, not having nearly as much fun thinking we would have to walk the long distance to the next house when we heard voices coming from the back of the house. We went to the backyard looking for the people we heard but it was pretty dark & nobody was around. We yelled "hello" a few times & identified ourselves but got no answer.
The backyard had a fair amount of trees & suddenly large branches started falling. This scared us since there was no apparent cause. In just a few seconds at least a dozen branches bigger than your arm fell from the 5 or 6 trees closest to us. We all ran for it. When we were around the end of the driveway my cousin screamed & pointed towards the house. It looked like several pairs of red eyes were peering around the house at us. We ran straight back to our car & tried it again, it started no problem. We did not stop at my cousin's friend's car we went right back to the house. Later that night my uncle & dad & cousin took his friend back & got his car, which also started on the first try. When they drove past the house it looked completely normal & there was a car in the driveway.
We have never been sure if the people there saw us mucking about in the graveyard & decided to prank the pranksters or if it was something else. If it was a prank they put it together awfully fast & never laughingly confessed. We felt too foolish to ask.
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