My parents say it is just my imagination. My sister says that I am just plain crazy. But I do not agree with either conclusion. Instead, I believe the abandoned house next door is haunted.

It all really began about a year ago when my parents thought I was old enough to stay home alone. Although, before they would left, they practically chanted off a list of all the things I should and should not do. One being, “Please don’t burn down the house, honey!”

At first, the quiet seemed empowering to me, like the prize I won after all these years they did not give me this delicacy. But as the sun slowly set down, ready for a good night’s sleep, noises started to creep into my mind. When I heard the first noise, I jumped at first but then sank back into the couch, reassuring myself that I was scaring myself and it had probably just been my imagination.

As I sat there watching TV, I glanced out the window, I do not know if it was out of habit or if I heard another noise. But as I looked out, I noticed movement. I crept over to the window and, sure enough, the curtains next door were swaying back and forth, back and forth, as if someone had been looking out but then abruptly left. My breathing quickened. That house was abandoned, there’s no way that I saw that, or is there? I thought about all those scary movies I usually watched with my dad. Yes, it was possible, something similar had occurred in a movie I had seen.

I sat at that window until my parents returned, but nothing else happened. As my parents walked in and asked me how my night was. I explained what I had seen to them but they just patted my head and told me to stop watching those scary movies. I vowed that I would find out what was creeping around in that abandoned house next door

Periodically I will glance out the window to see if the trespasser had returned, but I saw nothing. Until, one night, my parents decided to go out to dinner for their anniversary. They chanted off the list of rules before they ran out with a quick “Good-bye” and “We love you!” but that was just distant voices in my mind as I locked up and turned to that window.

“I’m ready for you, whoever you are!” I laughed, as if my mystery trespasser could actually hear my words. After hours sitting in front of the window with my eyes boring down on the abandoned house, I gave up. “It’s no use!” I yelled.

Later, as I was making a TV dinner, I turned around abruptly to answer the ringing phone.

“Hello?” I questioned the voice on the other end.

But there was no other voice. All I could hear was deep breathing. Man, pranksters are getting worse and worse at this! But as I settled into a chair, some movement caught my eye. There, in the window of the abandoned house, was a man. He was staring at me. In one hand he held a phone, in the other, a gun. Right when I was about to make a dash to the window to close it, I heard a voice.

“You know too much—“

Before he could finish, the phone was out of my hand, and disconnected as it hit the floor. The blood from my head wound was pouring out onto my mother’s new carpet. As I closed my eyes to fall asleep for the last time, I saw the man standing over me, dousing me in gasoline.