Blog: Haunted

It stood at the top of the street, sneering at our futile exploration attempts, laughing cruelly at games of chicken to see who could take the most steps towards it before fleeing. Its morose shadow daunted sparsely clouded skies, sobering otherwise fearless games of tag or Cops and Robbers. It was the core of a long list of unfulfilled dares — a small fluttering curtain always prepared to contradict a mother’s soothing, a distant hollow noise ever present to fuel a four-year-old’s imagination.

An abandoned white house used to stand at the top of the hill in the middle of my street. I swear to God, a vampire lived there.

Though reclusive when confronted by flashlight-wielding school children, he was social among his own kind — his closest acquaintances included a poorly groomed werewolf. His pets, naturally, were all venomous: a rattlesnake whose rattle the vampire had torn off when the sound annoyed him, a boa constrictor, and a few dozen red-eyed mice.

One of the most exciting days of my childhood was when we found evidence of this — a band-aid in the house’s front yard with the slightest amount of absorbed blood on it. You can’t deny that.

Despite this beast’s constant threat to the wellbeing of myself and all fellow first graders who walked home from school, I wasn’t terrified of an immediate vampire attack until after it was announced that the house would be demolished. An older boy from up the street said his dad was going to take him inside.

It didn’t matter if we were getting too old to be afraid of an empty family home or the occasional fluttering of a dusty curtain in the breeze. My brother and I waited for him in anguish. But, of course, he returned — safe and sound, to our surprise. (I still contend that he should have at least been turn into a werewolf for his brashness.)

The single most disappointing news of my life came that day — worse than any college rejection email. The house, he said, was empty other than collections of dust and piles of trash. In that moment, childhood wonderment, imagination, and curiosity flashed before my eyes, waved a final adieu, and, it seemed, died forever. He did, however, attest to the red-eyed mice being very much real.

In a roar of Bobcats and construction workers, West 51st Street’s very own haunted house was replaced with a young family’s attractive suburban home.

Our parents told us to leave the previously haunted land alone; our neighborhood gang’s adventures tamed. Explorations were replaced with tag, Bomber, kickball, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Runescape, television, and, finally, Facebook. Only once, in 2006, when out trick-or-treating, did I catch a glimpse inside what once used to be a vampire fiend’s lair. A little girl was descending a well-decorated staircase in a golden Belle dress as her mother handed out candy bars from a designer bowl. The vampire — our vampire — had been replaced by a Disney princess.

Adventures just aren’t what they used to be.