Fun Campfire Ghost Stories by John Bradshaw Page B

total
sense and so he did.
     
     
    *****
     
     

Chapter 23 - Poor Rufus
     

     
    R ufus lived in a dirt
floor shack on the outskirts of town. He never had a job and never
wanted one. He was the town derelict. He had dropped out of school
in the sixth grade, had lost most of his teeth, his cloths were
always dirty and he was always on the lookout for an easy
dollar.
    One day, a developer came to town who wanted
to buy the old Duncan Mansion. The mansion had been vacant for
sometime and people said it was haunted. The town council did not
want to approve the sale if the house was truly haunted. So the
developer proposed that if someone from town stayed in the old
mansion all night long than that would prove that the mansion was
not haunted and he would then be able to buy the old place. The
town council agreed to this plan.
    The developer posted flyers and ran an ad in
the town paper offering five hundred dollars to anyone who would
stay overnight in the old Duncan Mansion. Rufus was the only person
to apply for the job. He did not believe the house was haunted, but
he did believe that this was an easy way to make five hundred
dollars and he wanted it.
    On Saturday afternoon the town council, Rufus
and the developer meet outside the old mansion. Rufus had his old
double barrel shotgun with him. The developer asked Rufus if he had
the shotgun for protection. Rufus said, “Naw…I brought this here
shotgun in case anybody tries to cheat me out of my five hundred
dollars.”
    About nightfall Rufus headed inside the old
house. He looked around at the dusty cobwebs, rats scampering
across the floor and broken furniture and thought, this was almost
like home just a little nicer. This was going to be the easiest
money he ever made.
    Rufus climbed the creaky stairs and found a
bedroom where he planned to spend the night. He put his shotgun
down next to the bed and shook the sheets on the bed to get all the
bugs and extra dust off. He took his boots off and slid under the
covers. He blew out the candle that lit the room and laid there for
a few minutes counting that easy money one dollar at a time in his
head. He got up to about three hundred and forty eight when he
finally fell asleep.
    It was about two in the morning when a noise
woke Rufus up. He heard a creaking in the old house and the sound
of something rustling on the floor. Rufus yelled out, “Nobody is
going to cheat me out of my five hundred dollars!”
    The moonlight barely lit the room through the
cracks in the boarded up windows. Suddenly, Rufus heard another
creeek and a rustling sound down at the end of his bed. He slowly
looked down to the foot of the bed and there, staring at him, was a
set of white ghostly eyes. Rufus was startled, but then remembered
the shotgun at the side of his bed. He slowly reached to the side
of the bed while the ghostly eyes seemed to follow his movement. He
grabbed the gun and pointed it at the white ghostly eyes still
staring at him from the foot of the bed. As he pulled the hammer
back he said, “You ain’t going to cheat me out of my five hundred
dollars.” He pulled the trigger and boom the gun went off.
    The council members and the developer, along
with some other town folks, heard the noise and rushed into the old
mansion to see if Rufus needed help.
    Later that night, Rufus was in a hospital bed
complaining about his being cheated out of the five hundred
dollars. A lady, passing in the corridor outside, asked the nurse
what had happened to the poor man. The nurse answered, “He will be
fine. He just blew is two big toes clean off with his own
shotgun.”
     
     
    *****
     
     

Chapter 24 - The Nicren
     

     
    T here is a parallel
dimension that is like ours, but also different. This dimension is
called Htrae (which is earth in reverse). Htrae has a lot of real
creatures that we consider in our dimension to be imaginary. Every
once and a while, usually in an isolated spot like this, the two
dimensions of Earth and Htrae