Haunted Horse Barn - Part I

Well, the day was just like any other on the ranch. Feed the live stock, water the horses, and clean the barn. God, I hate to clean the barn. My cousins hate it also. And seeing how I was the smallest and the youngest, I got talked into sweeping out the stalls and putting down some new straw. My cousins said that they would do the rest of the barn later.

As I was sweeping and sneezing from all the dust, my uncle showed up and wanted to know where the boys were and why they were not cleaning the barn. So I told him our deal, and that Steve, Bill, and Andy would clean up the rest after I got done with the stalls. Uncle Fay just turned around and stormed off. I went on with my sweeping. Now, I'm sure some of you know how dirty a barn can be. And it seemed that we were all always playing in the barn...in the stalls, in the hay loft, in the tack room, and in the grain room.

Sometimes it can get pretty spooky in the barn, you know, creaks and moans, rustling in the stalls, weird noies in the loft. Things just seem to happen there. But at night you could not get me to go near the place for anything.

Well, after cleaning the stalls and putting things away, I thought that I was done. So I tried to turn out the light, which was too high for me to reach. I crawled up on a grain barrel and leaned in towards the wall when all of a sudden the lid on the barrel slipped to one side and down I went. Man! My boots filled up with grain, my pockets filled up with grain, and all the dust from the grain got in my nose. I must have sneezed a hundred times. The whole time I was trying to get out of this 50 gallon barrel.

I finally got out and managed to get the bigest part of the grain out of my pockets and emptied my boots back into the barrel. All of a sudden Uncle Fay was there in the doorway. I must have looked quite the site. He started to chuckle, then started to really laugh. He told me to head for the house and get ready for dinner and that he would close up the barn and turn off the light.

So, away I went towards the house.

My aunt wasn't home at the time. She was at my great grandparents house in town, but would be back later to fix supper. So I went into the dinning room and picked up a bunch of comic books. Course, I wasn't quite old enough to read yet, but I could look at the pictures and make out what the story was about. Pretty soon my cousins came in and we all just sat around and read comics. Uncle Fay came in and sat at the kitchen table, lit up a smoke, and started to read the paper.

The phone rang and Fay answered it. He got a funny look on his face, and said that he would meet them outside. As he hung up, Steve wanted to know who had called. Uncle Fay said that it was the sheriff. He walked towards the door. We, of course, followed him. As we sat outside waiting, we could hear sirens in the distance. Pretty soon the sheriff pulled up in his car.

Come back tomorrow to hear the rest of this story.