Haunted House: My Sister's Ghost

I've discovered there are sites out there devoted to posting "dark" themed art. So I decided to join a challenge on Art on the Dark Side, where the current theme is Haunted Houses. Cool!! When I was a kid, there were a couple of "haunted" houses within walking distance of the home where I grew up in Turtle Creek, PA. Mind you, I lived on a street that was a dirt road until I was about 10 years old. So spooky old houses, inhabited and otherwise, were not an uncommon sight. Boy, was Halloween fun in my neighborhood! I had an imagination even then, and when the moon was being driven by whippy clouds coursing across the dark sky, and the wind rattled the dry leaves still on the skeletal trees, I was out on my little broom. Any bit of weedy field became the blasted moors, any bare tree was inhabited by (possibly evil) pagan spirits, and beings of the night were out and about and up to god knew what tricks! I was ready for them.

One of the "haunted" houses, I later learned, was used by a homeless man called Gandy. I never saw him, but I would occasionally invade the premises, heart beating wildly and eyes darting ceaselessly, to give myself a thrill. What I found, was candle stubs. I don't know where the old man got all those candles, but I took a few to burn in one of my own haunts in the surrounding woods. I was forever finding "treasures" like these, bits of cast off stuff, shiny metal, an old empty wallet, a small brass flower pot. I was an avid pack-rat even then, and built myself little nests in the woods to hide my treasures that I wasn't allowed to cart into the house.

I don't actually have a sister (I'm an only child). That being the case, it's easy to pretend I had one who died. So here she is, flamboyantly haunting a house I (probably) never lived in.