Tag: Horror stories

Happy Halloween-The Final Fare Cafe’

My arms were full of food which I balanced against the wall as I opened the cooler door and reached in groping for the light switch on the wall inside. As my hand finally made purchase of the switch, someone else’s hand clamped tightly over my wrist preventing me from turning the light on. Stunned I shrieked briefly, dropping my load, before standing there wide-eyed, and still, unable to move and unsure if I should. As far as I knew, I was alone, all of the other staff in the restaurant had gone home, so I had no idea who to expect. After a few seconds I finally gathered my wits, or perhaps lost them, and hollered, “Who’s in there? Let go of me and show yourself.”

There was no answer, but the hand suddenly released me and I yanked my arm back and slammed the cooler door. I knew there was a safety latch inside, and whoever was in there could still get out. Grabbing a rolling-pin off a rack near the door, I waited. Nothing happened, not even a sound. My hands shook, and my wrist still felt the imprint of icy fingers as I braved the door again. I grabbed the latch and yanked the door wide backing away quickly. No one came out. I eased closer and peered into the darkness, seeing nothing.

“It’s ok, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said still brandishing my rolling-pin, and slowly reaching around to the switch. This time I flipped it on and as light flooded the cooler, I looked around, seeing absolutely no one, only racks full of food.

I braced the door open and began picking up and moving my supplies into the cooler, keeping a watchful eye. As I turned to leave and reached for the switch, it clicked off, on its own. A coincidence I told myself as I hurried out and shut the door.

I knew no one had walked past me while I loaded supplies into the cooler, but I searched the restaurant looking for the intruder.

The place always took on an eerie silence when it was empty after dark, which I had grown used to, and usually welcomed it after a long busy day. I was always here late preparing things for the breakfast crowd.

The restaurant was a renovated underground basement, beneath an old rock building full of little rooms which had been renovated and filled with stores designed to delight any shopper. Noises like pops, creaks, and whines from the old wood, rock, and metal reacting to temperature changes and wind whistling through old cracks and crevices were normal. In the late hours, the building had a life of its own, with a full chorus of sounds.

I had listened to the old building speak to the night in its usual way as I worked. Sometimes this seemed like being an eaves dropper on a private conversation. This particular evening while I worked, this conversation had seemed even more animated as though some sort of real excitement were being discussed. The wind howled outside, branches scraped against windows, the tin awning above the outside entrance popped and complained as the temperature cooled, and the wood stairs creaked as though they still bore the footfalls of the day. My small noises as I put away cooking pans and shoved boxes seemed loud in the absence of other human noises, but the building seemed as though it were trying to be heard over me tonight. I had become lost in my own thoughts.
If I had been truly present in nature’s conversation on this evening, I would have realized sooner, that the building had gone from highly animated to quiet. It had ceased its conversation, as though in hushed stillness we both waited to see what I would find.

It came in the form of blackness, as every light in the restaurant went out. I moved toward the light switch by the back door where shallow light filtered down the outside stairwell from a street light a few yards away. Just as I reached for it, the light nearest me came on, followed by each light across the restaurant, one by one.

I turned to walk back into the kitchen, watching the lights resume burning; there on the floor in my path set one of the very frying pans I had previously put away. I picked it up glancing around as I did, “Ok, who is here?” I laughed nervously, “Come on, show yourself!”

As the last lights came on, I saw him walk toward me dressed in an old style, gray pen stripe suit and a black top hat. Just for a fleeting second he was there, and then he was gone.

There was the sudden loud crashing of several pots onto the tile floor in the kitchen. I turned in time to see the last of them fall from their shelf as though someone had swept them off from one side to the other. I saw no one there to have caused their descent. I rather cautiously began picking them up and replacing them on the shelf. As I placed the last one back in its spot, another one fell, just missing my head. I tried putting it away several times and each time it clattered past me to the floor.

“Alright, so you don’t want that one up there. How about we just leave it on the stove?” I asked setting it on the nearest burner. As I looked up, I was startled to see him standing next to me. He reached and moved the pan from the front burner to the back, and then took two steps away and disappeared.

I stood still, waiting. Then five minutes after his disappearance, the building resumed it former chatter.

I finished my work looking over my shoulder all evening and then went home. The next day the pan I had left on the stove, had been put away again.

“Thank you to whoever put the pan away that pan I left it on the stove last night,” I said.

“There wasn’t a pan on the stove when we came in,” was the unanimous response.

One of the other cooks stopped and gave me an earnest look, “You met him, didn’t you?”

“Met who?” I asked, not sure I wanted to share the previous evening’ events.

“Dr. Fritz, our resident ghost,” he answered.

I said nothing.

During that day, the good doctor, took a special interest in me. He moved my cup and hid my spatula. Sometimes he would even lay the utensil I was searching for by my side for me to find. I even saw him walk by a few times, as did other staff and even some patrons.

That evening I found myself alone again. I was cleaning the stove which still had hot food on it when he appeared in a rage and threw the pot and its contents at me, and I barely had time to dodge the mass of it. I tried to ignore this and just clean it up, when he shoved another thankfully empty pot off the shelf above onto my head.

As I stood up from cleaning his mess, I realized there were several other ghosts walking the premises. Each wore white gowns that tied shut in the back and they appeared to be searching for someone or something. He was watching them too, looking distraught. Occasionally it seemed they spoke to one another in passing; mumbled voices I could hear, but not understand.

As I worked, they all disappeared again, and it was only him and me. He sat with his head in his hands at a corner table, ignoring me, which I welcomed. I finished my work and left that night.

He greeted me and some of my staff early that next morning with a glass bowl crashing at our feet as we entered the door. Several of the other ghosts were with him. He moved from one to the next to the next as though observing them. At least it was a slow day, but I noticed that these other ghosts, appeared to be patients still dressed in hospital gowns, perhaps whom the good Dr. lost some many decades past, and they seemed to account for his mood.

Some of the patrons observed theses ghosts walking right through tables as though nothing was there. Others would lie down on the tables as though sleeping and simply disappear. None of our regular customers seemed anything but intrigued by all this, leading me to believe I was the last to know of our paranormal friends. The dishes crashing in the kitchen, only mildly startled any of our customers.

I was sure they thought we were really having a bad day back there, and I supposed we were. A bad mood day for the ghost doctor resulted in our subsequent hardships. Before the evening was over I had to get stitches from the cut a large chef’s knife had left across my arm when it sailed through the air at me. Luckily the last of our customers had left just before this happened. Perhaps a courtesy he afforded us.

I have found that the customers come here because they are fascinated with eating where the dead still walk the rooms.
Why do we all still work here? Why not find another job you might ask? The question is, why leave? The good doctor is temperamental, but he hasn’t lost a patient in 100 years, which makes us relatively safe, except minor mishaps of his moods. And the ones he lost are still walk the floors of a century old renovated hospital morgue, known as The Final Fare Café.

Happy Halloween all! Hope you have a fun and safe night!

 

Day 175-Hook Arms’ House- a Pre-Halloween Treat

Well with Halloween being tomorrow, I thought I might share one of my ghost stories with you. I wrote this one some years ago, based on a story that was passed around by high school students when I was just a young child. A place on an old country road dubbed Hook Arms house due to these rumors actually existed, but has long since been torn down.

This story was published once on Yahoo Contributor when I was writing for them, before they closed down the site, so there is some chance you may have seen it before. If you are from my small town,  you have probably heard the original rumors before, but now here’s the whole story. Hope you enjoy a good spook story. Happy All Hallows Eve Eve. I will have another original ghost story for you for tomorrow.

 

Hook Arm’s House

In the 1970’s, a series of unfortunate events, hurled a small Hill Country, rural town, into a ghost story, never forgotten.

Because of the trouble that ensued at the time this story broke, I am not allowed to tell you exactly what road, what town, or even any real names that are in any way connected to this tale. It has taken more than 30 years, to restore the peace around this area, which can only be kept by keeping thrill seekers away. He is now, just a forgotten legend, and for everyone’s safety, that is best. But, I haven’t forgotten, thus, I share his tale.

He returned from the war, with a hook in the place of his left arm, and adopted the name, Hook Arm, whether he wanted it or not. He lived alone in a meager two room shack that stood 100 yards off the county road just outside of town at the end of a short country lane, lined with trees. A grove of trees stood behind the shack as well, and one large and very old tree stood just to the left of it, giving shade to the small abode.

Hook stayed mostly to himself, haunted by the memories of war, and the family he had lost. In the beginning he did nothing to warrant the fear people had for him and his hook, but then one summer, quite by mistake, that all changed.

A family with a little girl, about seven, moved into the cabin in the field, across the county road. Neighbors immediately warned the family to stay away from the man who lived in the nearby shack. They told terrifying stories of Hook Arm, though he had never harmed anyone.

The girl often rode her bike down the county road. She would waive to Hook Arm tending his garden, and he would wave back. One day, she fell from her bike, around the curve just out of sight of her house, but still close enough for Hook to see her from his garden. He went to her. Her legs were scraped, she was crying, and could not ride her bike like she was. He carried her back to her house, walking her bike alongside him. Her parents were afraid, and thanked him, but quickly sent him away, warning the girl to stay away from him.

In spite of her parents’ warnings, the little girl was not afraid, and would ride down to his house to visit him, bringing him biscuits and things she snuck from her mother’s table. They became fast friends. He would often tell her stories of the little girl that he had lost.

One day the little girl arrived at his house, with a basket of muffins, and found that he was not home. Wanting to leave the muffins anyway, she left her bike leaning against the big tree at the side of the shack, and tried to find a way in. She wandered around the back of the shack and fell into an old, shallow hand dug well, when she stepped through its rotten plywood cover. That evening a storm came and the well quickly filled with water.

It was after dark and raining when Hook Arm returned and he did not see her bike leaning against the tree.

The little girl’s parents became alarmed when she did not return home before dark. They enlisted the neighbors to search the road for her, but did not find her or her bike.

From his kitchen window, in a flash of lightning, Hook Arm saw the bike leaning on the tree. He went out into the storm with a flash light, looking for his little friend. In the back yard, he found a piece of her torn dress on the collapsed plywood well cover. Shining the light into the well, he could barely see her face beneath the water. He knew she was gone. He laid in the mud, and stretched out his arms, barely able to reach her and drag her to the surface.

When he laid her down, he saw that there was a large gash in her head, and her leg was broken. He knew then that she had been knocked unconscious and drowned. He picked her up and carried her all the way back to the road. He wailed so loudly that his anguished screams were heard by the search party out looking for the girl. When they saw Hook Arm carrying her, they attacked him, assuming the worst. He tried to explain that he had found her and was too late to save her, but their fear turned to instant blame, and the neighbors became an angry mob. They chased Hook Arm back to his house, where he tried to barricade himself in, but they broke in and beat him until he could no longer fight back. Then they hung him from the large tree in his yard, left him to die, and set fire to his shack.

The storm became tremendously vicious that evening. When morning broke, his body was gone from the tree, never to be found, though the noose still hangs there, and his house though scorched and blackened still stands.

According to legend, he bargained with the Devil, who set him free, and allowed him to seek revenge on mankind for hating him. Many mysterious deaths occurred, including one by one each of the neighbors who helped to hang him.

The story made headlines, causing countless groups of fun seekers to travel to Hook Arm’s House to see where this happened, as well as to see if they could glimpse him roaming the grounds. Often an old, soaking wet, disheveled man, with a hook arm, and a bent neck, twisted from hanging is seen walking the dirt road leading down to his shack.

Almost all who return tell stories of running for their lives from a wet, dirty man with a hook arm but even more have gone, and never returned.

Occasionally, the missing thrill seekers are found brutally beaten and hanging from the tree by the house, while others appear to be drowned in the old well. The trees on his land are scarred with slashes from his hook, left behind from when he exacted his revenge on his attackers. But for each new person he catches, a new slash appears on one of his trees, and to date, there are many.

Often Hook Arm is seen tending his garden next to be blackened house. It grows beautifully ever year. He waves at passers-by; be sure to wave back, but don’t ever stop!