“Mom, mom!” the little girl dressed up as a unicorn galloped over. “Mrs. Olsen said my unicorn costume is better than Timmy’s!”

“She said my Spider-man was just as good!”

“But my unicorn was better!”

“She did not!”

“Excuse me, Linda,” Marcia said, turning to the arguing “Kids, kids, you both look great.”

“Marcia?” Linda said. “Mrs. Olsen?”

Marcia raised an eyebrow. “You’re right. Did Jeff get married?”

“Not to my knowledge…”

“Mom! Can we go to Danny’s house?” Spiderman pleaded.

“Yeah, Mom, can we?” the Unicorn asked.

“Gotta go,” Marcia said to Linda. She looked behind her and saw Linda’s Pirate and Dinosaur about to visit the Olsen house. “Let me know what your kids find at Jeff’s house, will you?”

“You bet,” Linda said as Marcia hurried to keep up with the Unicorn and Spiderman.

“Okay, guys, slow down…”she called after them.

The Pirate beat the Dinosaur to the doorbell. Both waited anxiously in front of the door, the Dinosaur admiring the jack-o-lantern carved to look like a cat. The door started opening and the Dinosaur and Pirate said “Trick or treat!” in unison.

Jeff Olsen stood in the doorway and started to lean forward to drop candy into the outstretched bags.

“Now wait, Jeffrey! Let me see who we have here…” the older woman hurried to the doorway, crowding him out. “Oh, Dick, come see! I love your pirate hook,” she said.

“Arr!” the little boy replied.

“Oh, what kind of dinosaur are you?” The older man said as he put his glasses on and moved closer to his wife.

“Stego-shorus!” the other boy said, his missing tooth not helping his pronunciation.

“Did your mom make your stegosaurus?” the older woman said.

“Uh huh,” the boy said.

“These are Linda McNulty’s boys, mom. Well, Linda O’brien now.”

“Little Linda McNulty?”

“Well, I’ll be, Margie” Dick said.

Jeff dropped a piece of candy in each bag.

“Jeffrey!” his mother admonished. “Don’t be so stingy with the candy! Give them a couple pieces each!”

“Thank you!” both kids said in unison.

As Jeff closed the door his mom angled herself to get one last look at the kids.

* * *

“Marcia?”

“Hi Linda. Kids! Don’t get too far ahead!” back in the phone, “Sorry, Marcia. What’s up?”

“The boys just got back from Jeff’s”

“And?”

“They said there was a nice old woman and man aside from Jeff.”

“His parents?”

“Who died five years ago in that car accident?”

“Couldn’t be!”

“I know, right?”

* * *

“It’s getting late,” Jeff stood up at from the kitchen table. “I’m going to go blow out the pumpkin and turn off the porch light.”

“Do you really think so, Jeffery?” his mom implored. “There might be some late children still…”

Jeff looked to his dad who gave him a barely perceptible head shake. Jeff sat back down. “I’m so glad you both could make it this year. I’ve missed you so much.

“Oh, Jeffery, we’re so glad we could be here. You know how much your father and I loved Halloween!”

“I like the paint in the kitchen,” his dad said looking around. “You’re keeping the place up nicely,” he nodded.

“Thanks dad,” Jeff knew there was a lot more to the compliment than the paint color. “Do you think you will be able to come next year?”

His mom and dad exchanged looks, “Jeffery,” his mom said, “We didn’t know we’d be able to come tonight! It just sort of… happened.”

“Well… I’m not going to question it,” Jeff said. “Thank you for making this a great Halloween,” he smiled and was grateful for the distraction of the doorbell as a tear fell onto his cheek.

“See, Jeffery!” His mom got to her feet quickly and started for the door.

Jeff looked to his dad who chuckled with his eyes closed, and then both men started up to follow Jeff’s mom to see who was at the door.

Getting this in under the wire tonight. Thank you so much to everyone sending birthday wishes! I promise this year’s birthday ghost story will not make you cry like last year’s. Unless, of course, you cry at German chanting…

When anyone has a 21^st birthday coming up I offer very specific advice. Not what to drink and what not to drink. Not how much water to consume, not even whether to get drunk or not. My advice is this: “Choose your company wisely.”

I didn’t, and it’s haunted me for decades now.

My 21^st birthday was at college and Jim and Mike took me out to get hammered at the local dive bar. Jim and I had been roommates for the last two years and we’re tight. Mike, on the other hand… He recently moved into the house we rented on the west side at the recommendation of the guy who was moving out. He seemed nice enough, but in some ways, he was just… off. He didn’t like to socialize with us or, really, with anyone. That’s fine on the face of it – don’t get me wrong, we probably should have socialized less and did more homework (20/20 hindsight and all that), but you could hear chanting from behind his locked door. “Oh, it’s this Gregorian chant CD – I like to study to it.” But it wasn’t the CD. The chanting voice was Mike’s. There were a lot of other things you could chalk up on their own to just being young and eccentric – always wore black, always burned copious incense, satanic symbol tattoos (“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about – those are ancient Mesopotamian symbols!”) … All of it taken together, though…

Anyway, we were well in the process of getting hammered when Mike asked, “How many times have you had the happy birthday song sang to you today?”

I thought through my rapidly growing haze of alcohol and replied, “Umm, none. I didn’t really tell anyone it was my birthday. Y’all are really the only ones who know.” I spread my arms wide to encompass all the patrons at the bar “And everyone here, am I right? Happy Birthday to me!”

I looked back at Mike and his face had lost all color and his mouth hung agape. “Candles,” he sputtered insistently. “How many candles have you blown out?”

“None, Mike. None. I just told you, you guys are, like, the only ones who know.”

“And we love you for it, Andy,” Jim said with exaggerated affection, grabbing my head and kissing my forehead. I fell off my barstool laughing, while Jim broke into a wheezing guffaw.

Mike stared at us with panic in his eyes. “Presents?” he demanded.

“We’re all present!” I said from the floor, again, taking in everyone at the bar. “Thank you all for being present!”

“Did you get any?”

“No,” I waved him off. “This is present enough!” I climbed back up onto my barstool and Jim clapped me on the back so hard I nearly fell off again.

Then Mike began to sing, but it wasn’t melodic. It was more a tuneless chant…. Of the “Happy Birthday” song. “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, dear Andy. Happy Birthday to you.” Then he did it again, louder. “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Andy! Happy Birthday to you!” People were staring, but he started a third round of the chant, even louder, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!”

I slapped him. He was seriously killing my buzz. People legitimately cheered. Mike seemed to come to his senses a little.

“Bro,” Jim started, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said holding his half-drank mug of beer to his reddened cheek. “It’s just… no one has appeased your birthday ghost. I… I just can’t leave you open to that.”

Jim and I exchanged incredulous looks. “Mike?” he looked up at me, “What the fuck is a birthday ghost?”

He looked between us rapidly. “You don’t know?”

I gave him a sidelong gaze.

“You seriously don’t know?” Andy asked again.

“Bro, why don’t you tell us,” Jim suggested.

“The Germans call it ‘Geburtstagsgeist’…”

“Because of course the Germans…” Jim rolled his eyes.

“The Geburtstagsgeist, or birthday ghost,” Mike continued unabated, “comes into this realm the same moment you are born. It’s… it’s the Yang to your Yin… there’s birth and there’s….”

“Death,” I said, curious.

“Right. Balance. It’s been this way for every birth since… well, since we were humans. Birthday celebrations are about appeasing the birthday ghost.”

Jim held out a hand. “Uh, you lost me somewhere between ‘balance’ and ‘appeasement’.”

“It’s the German thing, right?” I stage whispered to Jim.

Oblivious to my comment, Mike picked up, “Take the birthday song. It is derived from an ancient chant designed to keep evil spirits at bay.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit on that, Mikey,” Jim said. “I happen to know the birthday song originated with Mildred and Patty Smith Hall’s ‘Good Morning To You’ in 1893 and was first codified as ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in a 1923 songbook.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” I asked.

Jim looked taken aback that I would question him. “Do you not know by now that I am a deep and vast compendium of useless information? And there’s a fucking lawsuit over the copyright. Pick up a fucking newspaper, you illiterate,” he swatted my shoulder.

“Ah,” Mike waggled his finger as if we’d just given him a jolt of adrenaline. “See, that’s the tune! Not the words! ‘Zum Geburtstag viel Glück! Zum Geburtstag viel Glück! Zum Geburtstag liebe Andy! Zum Geburtstag viel Glück!’” And he looked at us like that solved the argument.

“First ‘Sieg heil’ and I’m bolting for the door,” Jim said to me seriously.

“Don’t you get it?” Andy asked. “That’s the chant in German! It keeps your birthday ghost at bay. If you or anyone around you doesn’t sing the birthday song – in German, or English, or whatever – then you are open to your birthday ghost devouring your soul!”

“I’m going to have a hangover that will make me wish my soul were devoured,” I said, and Jim and I clinked beers.

“Okay, fine,” Mike conceded, “But what about cake and candles? You can’t deny that!”

“Dude, I really want cake now,” Jim said.

“Mike? What’s with cake and candles that we can’t deny?”

“I won’t deny cake with my belly!” Jim bellowed lifting his shirt.

“Guys come on! Burnt offering? Like, you’re setting something on fire as an offering to the spirit world. How much more obvious does this have to get? Imagine it were incense instead of candles…”

“That’d make the cake taste like shit, I imagine…”

“But think about it. It’s the same thing but more obviously spiritual. Originally, the ancient Germanic tribes did burn incense on top of unleavened bread as a burnt offering to the birthday ghost.”

“Well, that explains Kraftwerk,” Jim said.

“Jim,” I said earnestly, “I am in no way drunk enough for this shit…”

“And presents?” Mike continued, “Literal offerings to the birthday ghost.”

“Mike, next thing you’re going to tell me, the old birthday spankings thing is whacking the ghost out of you.”

“Ah! You’re getting it now!” he nodded excitedly.

“For your edification,” Jim said behind my ear, “I’m not whacking anything out of you.”

“Duly noted,” I nodded. “And I thank you for that.” We bumped fists. I downed the last of my beer and caught the bartender’s attention for another as Mike looked happier than I had ever seen him. “Mike,” I started. “Let’s say all of this is legit. Let’s say there are birthday ghosts assigned to every person and that we’ve developed these rituals to keep them from ‘devouring our souls,’ I think you said.”

“I did,” he nodded seriously.

“Okay… what exactly does that…. Look like? Because… I’m not buying it. What does it look like?”

“What does it look like?” Mike asked incredulously. “What does it look like?” He climbed off his stool and took a step backwards. “Look like?!” he yelled. “I’ll show you!” and a silver light began emanating from his eyes and his mouth dropped open and a high-pitched shriek came from his throat as silver light began pouring from his mouth, then ears, then nostrils, and the shriek became louder and drowned out all other sound in the bar. The light grew in intensity and Mike – or what used to be Mike – arched its back in an inhumanly bow as the shriek erupted into a roar that blotted out rational thought and the light encompassed everything and then with a clap that shook the foundation of the bar, the light and howl winked into nothing and silence. Mike was gone, but the scent of sulfur and brimstone hung heavy in the bar and the carpet looked to be singed. Everyone stared at the spot occupied moments ago by a living, breathing, albeit ranting, Mike.

“We have first and last and his deposit, right?” I asked Jim as I picked up the fresh beer off the bar.

“Oh yeah, yeah…” Jim assured.

But let me tell you, from that day forward I never hesitate to sing happy birthday to anyone. I weekly bake cupcakes and carry them with candles in my lunch just in case I encounter someone’s birthday. I have no less than three wrapped gifts in my trunk at all times. But I don’t spank anyone on their birthday, because that shit’s bananas.

While it’s true that 15 Hill House occupies the site of an ancient Native American burial ground, those same Native Americans exhumed their dead – an unheard-of practice at the time – and moved them elsewhere long before the white man came because they were tired of being pestered by evil spirits when they went to visit their dead relatives.
It’s also true that while the Hill Street that ends at the house does indeed crest a hill leading out of town, 15 Hill House is at the bottom of that hill. Appropriately, at a dead end. The 3-acre property itself inhabits a depression in the geography as if God realized his mistake and tried to squish the land out of existence with an enormous, divine thumb. It didn’t work – it’s still there. Though the trick of geology means that a pernicious low-lying fog hovers about the whole forsaken area from just before dusk until well after sun up.
No one even attempted to build on the land until the late nineteenth century when the steel magnate Levi Corman decided against the advice of everyone asked to build a Victorian-style house. Corman, a stout man whose stubbornness rivaled only his orneriness, seemed uniquely suited for the cursed land. No reliable count of how exactly how many people died during the construction of the place, but most estimates put the number in the high two-digits. The first dozen died as a bunch when sinking pylons for the foundation opened a methane fissure. The foreman heard and smelled the gas and wisely called for an immediate halt and evacuation. No one knows where the spark came from, but the resulting fireball could be seen from Dawsville, ten miles away. After that, the site and house seemed content in picking off workers one by one – the perfectly solid rafter suddenly gave way, the anchored stairwell broke free, and every few weeks someone simply went crazy and leapt off the highest point of the construction.
Eventually, the house was completed. Corman moved in immediately and sent for his family to join him. When they arrived his wife initially refused to go in. His youngest daughter struck up a conversation with an unseen playmate who tried several times to lead her into the well. Their oldest son, Levi Junior, was the only member of the family who expressed enthusiasm for the new place. Perhaps that’s why a few weeks later he killed the rest of the family in their sleep with an axe before leaping to his death from the widows walk.
For generations, the pattern had been set: family moves in, things go bump, unseen forces terrorize, then quiet… and then one family member massacres the rest. Twice the patriarch butchered his family – once with a rifle, once with an awl, believe it or not. Only one matriarch dispatched her clan – that was food poisoning. The children really did the heavy lifting in terms of killing: oldest sons mainly with blunt or sharp objects, a few sisters took lead in annihilating her kin, and once the baby of the family (barely five) managed to do the deed with a pair of pruning shears – kids do the darndest things!
By the early 1960’s it seemed humanity had finally cottoned on to the devious machinations of the place and it went vacant for fifty years. Sure, the odd urban explorers, hippie groups, homeless, and boy scout troops would seek to explore and find refuge in building which seemed to, on the whole, resist dereliction. The bodies would be found days or weeks later and the house seemed to delight in hiding obvious fatal injuries; the county coroner took to simply putting cause of death as “Corman House” or, eventually just “Haunted House” – everyone knew which one they meant.
About ten years ago the county tracked down the relatives of the last family that murdered each other in the house – the Whites – and sought permission to destroy the place. When informed they technically owned Haunted House, the Whites decided they should move in themselves, terrifying name be damned! After Mrs. White killed her family with a pair of darning scissors and made an unholy scrapbook out of their flesh, she deliberately set herself on fire (doing, it should be noted, no damage to the structure). The next closest relatives took the clue and more than happily signed the deed over to the county.
The plan was simple: set the Haunted House ablaze and let the volunteer fire department practice putting it out – but, you know, not too soon. The two firefighters assigned to set the house on fire somehow managed to inadvertently douse themselves in accelerant before setting themselves ablaze. As the paramedics attended to the burned firefighters, several in the gathering crowd swore they heard the house laughing. The fire department decided to improvise by putting together Molotov cocktails in order to hurl fire onto the house. The sun had grown low in the western sky as the bottles were launched in glowing arcs. Several of the incendiary devices broke against the outer walls and despite the gasoline in the bottles didn’t manage to ignite the wooden structure. One bottle broke an upper window and the crowd gasped as if now they really made the house mad. The fire sparkled through the windows and the fire chief gave the signal to fire up the pumps in anticipation of finally getting practice underway. One engine immediately died. The other revved uncontrollably until the motor exploded, casting shrapnel in all directions and sending four more firefighters to the hospital with ugly wounds. The burning was called off, the crowd dispersed, the dead engine towed away, the remaining firefighters limped back to the station. The Haunted House won again.
The County Executive, a man named Augie Lewis, grew up in the area near Haunted House. He’d had friends who had been killed in or around the place, so after the fire debacle when the community uproar reached a fever pitch he assured everyone it would be taken care of, but he approached the subject of the house with due respect; it wasn’t a decrepit structure to be demolished, it was a cunning, sentient, and obscenely dangerous foe that had to be out maneuvered. Brainstorming, he struck on two key things: first, though seemingly possessed of a wicked intelligence (emphasis on “possessed”), it couldn’t move out of its geographic depression – in the 150-year history of the property, no one ever accused Haunted House of stalking them across hill and dale.
Second, in the abstract this was not a problem without analogs. There are other structures so dangerous that all who enter are killed either instantly or very shortly after coming into contact, and the structures remain dangerous for thousands of years: Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. Fukushima. And how are the dangerous, unstable cores of these sites dealt with? They’re buried.
Augie Lewis would turn Haunted House and its entire depression into a hill.
The last week in October, the plan went into effect. Augie himself drove the massive earthmover down the hill towards Haunted House. As he approached, the second story twin dormer windows reflected the rising sun like angry red eyes ready for a battle. Perhaps lulled into a false sense of security or distracted by the enormous treaded diesel beast lumbering downhill towards it, the house took no action against the cement trucks arrayed behind the tree line. Perhaps Haunted House mistook the hoses for another firefighting action and creaked its foundations in anticipation of a repeat battle it would obviously win. Augie stopped the earthmover a hundred yards from the front door of Haunted House, climbed out onto the hood so he would be visible and raised arm and let it fall in signal. The hoses opened up not with water but with shotcrete, the grey liquid stone splattering against the black siding like caveman graffiti. From four directions, the shotcrete sprayed in, whitewashing the house before accumulating, turning the structure into a huge gothic statue.
Augie had crawled down off the earthmover, relinquishing the yellow diesel beast to its regular operator who signaled to the other tractors to start pushing earth in. Word came in that the convoy of trucks with fill dirt that stretched three miles was starting down Hill Road. The machines did not stop for lunch (though their operators rotated out in shifts). When the sun started to sink into the horizon, rows of hyper-white construction lights turned the site from night into day, shining down on the hardening sarcophagus over Haunted House. By noon of the second day, the first floor had been completely covered. Two days later, only the railing of the widows walk where so many had leapt from remained peaking out of the newly laid dirt. By the end of the week, what had been a depression holding an abandoned, malevolent building had become a gently rolling hill. The earth tamped into place, fertilizer and grass seed was sprayed atop the new landscape. By the spring the grass had grown thigh high, and volunteers came and planted dozens of shallow-root trees. An eagle scout candidate installed a frisbee golf “course” over the spacious open area, dedicating it to the boys in the troop that Haunted House had killed so many years before.
By summer, Augie presided over a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new county park. Holding an oversized pair of scissors, he spoke of the macabre history of the area, but focused mostly on the herculean effort involved in the hilling of Haunted House before cutting the ceremonial ribbon. Kids played on the newly-installed jungle gym, and a pick-up soccer game started on the now-established turf. Food trucks served from the on-site parking lot. Augie looked over the park trying to remember exactly where the Haunted House lay meters below the earth, encased in concrete. Maybe near the enclosed dog park? Was the widows walk beneath the horseshoe pits or the picnic area? He couldn’t remember now, and it didn’t matter.
Eventually, though, the dignitaries left – Augie among them. Then the food trucks drove away. The families took their kids home, and the last stragglers left the park under its now constant glow of LED street lights. No low-lying fog hung around the park. Instead of an ominous, pervasive silence, crickets chirped in the grass and bushes. An owl even hooted from one of the newly planted trees.
No one was around to feel the earth shift. No one saw the turf rend and split. No one heard the disembodied laugh emanate from the new chasm in the earth. At least not yet.