As the auctioneer’s gavel came down, all eyes turned to her. Mandy smiled in delight. She won the auction! She was a homeowner! She had bought the house in a foreclosure auction, so she had never been inside. She had to buy it “sight unseen” or “as is” with the only information being the home inspection pictures and what she could see through the windows. But it was a sturdy old house, and she was confident she had made a great buy.

It seemed to take forever before she and her children could finally move into the home. But now, the U-Haul was finally empty, and all the furniture and boxes were inside. Mandy’s oldest, Ava, was pulling the things they would need for the night out of boxes.

“Here’s the toothbrushes,” she said, “and some towels. Mom, I’m so tired I may skip all that tonight. And where are the sheets for the beds?”

“I got them,” said Tommy, the youngest. He tossed a set to everyone and they went upstairs to make the beds. Tommy pulled the fitted sheet over his mattress, and felt an icy blast of air on his right arm. He looked around, but the cold was gone.

Ava finished her bed, and lay down, exhausted. She sat her laptop next to her and started listening to some music. She rolled over, and she thought she felt something shift. She sat up and felt the bed shake and heard the legs scraping on the hardwood floor. The bed was moving. She jumped up and ran to her mother’s room, screaming.

Ava ran to Mandy, but Mandy was standing so still that Ava drew up short, frightened. She saw Mandy was looking toward the closet, where something black was rippling around in there, moving Mandy’s clothes. “What’s going on?” Mandy asked and Ava started crying. They could hear Tommy scream and shout, and he ran into the room with his baseball bat.

“There’s a man in my room!” he cried. Mandy grabbed the bat and began swinging it at whatever was in her closet until the thing uttered a high pitched wail and the movement stopped.

“You stay here,” Mandy said and walked to Tommy’s room with the bat. The kids followed, too afraid to be left behind. Mandy saw a shadowy figure of a man in the room, he was in the corner and in the blink of an eye, he was in front of the door. It looked like he was laughing. Mandy swung the bat at him, but it passed right through him.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but we live here now. So you better get used to it. Why don’t you just go away?” she yelled, swinging the bat. The man just moved, appearing by the window, looking angry. Mandy was shaking.

The children were distraught, and crying, so Mandy took them downstairs, got her purse and keys and they left for a hotel. They all crowded together in the king bed, trying to make sense of what they had seen, without success, until they finally fell asleep.

They returned to the house the next morning, and Mandy burned sage in every room. “Kids, I hate to say this, but I have a 30 year mortgage on this place. We’re stuck here. I can try to sell, but with closing costs and realtor fees, I would come out in the red. I can’t afford that.”

“What can we do?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know,” Mandy answered.

“We can get a priest and he could do an exorcism,” said Tommy.

“Yeah, maybe that would work. Maybe we could ignore them?” At that, both kids shouted their protests. Mandy turned. “Hey, you, whoever you are,” Mandy called loudly into the house, “I’m stuck here. I can’t move out. Have you seen the housing prices now? It’s scarier than you, believe me. You gotta go!” she called. The house was quiet. Then they braced themselves for whatever would come next.

*my husband and I bought a house at an auction, and we literally couldn’t inspect it. You can see the outside, look in the windows, and, if you’re lucky, and we were, there were pictures from the home inspection. Thank goodness we didn’t encounter this!

Fandango’s Story Starter