We’ve all heard haunted house stories. They’re clichés now, chopped into horror films or watered down in R.L. Stine paperbacks. Families move in, doors creak, things go bump in the night.

My case was different. I knew the house was haunted from the very first night, because I met its ghost face to face.

He dragged me out of bed at midnight. I’d never felt such terror.

“Come on, come on! Get up!” he barked.

Moonlight pierced through the blinds and lit his ruined face. Burned, blistered, melted into something barely human.

“My God, who are you?” I shrieked.

“I’m Alex. This is my house. And now that you’ve moved in, there are rules you need to know about.”

He settled into the shadowed corner like he’d done this a thousand times, flicked a match, and lit a cigarette. I wanted to scold him—no smoking inside—but my tongue was paralyzed with fear.

“Rule number one,” he said through the smoke. “You tell no one about me. This is my house, and I intend to keep it that way. No ghost hunters, no cameras, no one sniffing around. Understood?”

I nodded.

“Good. Rule number two: we stay out of each other’s way. I sleep in the day, I roam at night. Easy enough, right?”

I nodded again.

“Now, the last rule.” He leaned forward, his charred face half-glimpsed in the moonlight. “You never ask about me. Not who I was, not what happened here, not why I look like this. Those answers are mine alone. Dig around, and there will be trouble.”

He drew slowly on the cigarette, exhaled, and fixed me with hollow eyes.

“Is that understood?”

**

Our arrangement held steady for a while. In fact, those first few months were almost peaceful. I never saw Alex during the day, and at night his presence was reduced to faint rustlings, the shuffle of footsteps, the occasional creak of a door. 

Nothing too extraordinary, considering I knew who was behind it. I almost convinced myself we could coexist.

But curiosity is a dangerous thing. It all unraveled when I started seeing Molly. After a few weeks of dating, I invited her over, foolishly forgetting about Alex. That mistake still haunts me.

We went to a movie, came back late, and sat talking in the living room. She was about to leave when the noise began. Deep, deliberate thuds rising from the basement.

Her eyes widened. “My God, what’s that?”

“Probably the water heater,” I lied, though my stomach tightened.

But the sounds grew louder. Boxes shifting, wood scraping against concrete. Molly insisted I check. Reluctantly, I went down.

And there he was: Alex, rearranging furniture in the half-dark like he owned the place, which, in his mind, he did.

“Keep it down,” I hissed. “I have company.”

He turned, eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. “Company?” His voice cracked into a furious echo. “That was never part of the deal. You never said you’d bring anyone here. This is my house.”

We argued, voices low but sharp, until I sensed something behind me. Molly had crept down the stairs, her face frozen in horror as she saw him.

Alex’s scorched features twisted into a grin. “So,” he said, “now she knows.”

Before I could react, he lunged, seizing Molly with a force beyond anything human. She screamed while I tried to pull her free, but it was like Alex had the strength of ten men.

And then it was over. Her cries fell silent. He dragged her deeper into the basement’s shadows, where earth was already loose and waiting. He buried her there, and when he was finished, he turned on me.

“You say nothing. Ever. Or you’ll join her.”

What choice did I have? When Molly’s family came looking, all signs pointed to me. She had been last seen at my house. The police didn’t need more than that. I was charged with first-degree murder.

And who would believe the truth? That a ghost killed her? No one in their right mind.

Now I sit in prison, with nothing but time to think. I’ve dug into the history of that house. Alex was real once, and violent even then. Dozens of deaths tied to the property, all forgotten, all blamed on the living.

Until the house is torn down, Alex will go on. He’ll keep killing. I’m just the latest scapegoat.

The End