The Hissing House

I think at one time or another, everyone has lived in a neighborhood that was classically sleepy during long summer evenings. You know those types of peaceful days in which you seem to only hear the sound of the birds chirping and the breeze brushing across the treetops. Those kinds of days in which the sun breaks through the clouds just long enough to remind you that it's there. The clouds keep it nice and cool after the mid-day heat has died off. Maybe some children are playing in a yard down the street, maybe the ice cream man makes a slow drive through. We all pine for those kinds of days, looking back on them. I used to live on a street like that when I was younger. And I'm sure glad I don't anymore.

You see, while my neighborhood was much like the one described above, it also had it's own little secret. There was a house somewhere in the middle of the street that was once the place of a tragic accident. Or at least, what some say was an accident. A mother's two children both fell to their death down the stairs. Not on different days, but at the exact same time. The mother claimed that they had slipped and went down together, but some say that she push them. She moved away shortly after and eloped with her lover, free of the burdens of suburban motherhood. After awhile, everyone forgot about it and the shock that it initially caused the neighbors subsided. Things were back to normal, with one exception. Their old house started to hiss.

When I say “hiss” I don't exactly mean like a snake would. It's hard to explain really, but the house itself would start to make this strange wispy sound as you got closer to it. If you were walking down the sidewalk, you'd start to hear it before you even got in front of the house. And if you ever had the courage to walk up to the front porch, you'd have to cover your ears. Nobody who ever looked at the house ever ended up wanting to move it. The Realtors came up with all sorts of excuses as to what was making the sound, but they never convinced anyone to look past it long enough to buy the place.

​One night, some friends and I decided we were going to go to the house and see if we could peak inside the windows. There was all sorts of rumors flying around about how people had seen lights inside, and seen children in the windows. But people just did their best to ignore those sorts of stories. Teenagers, on the other hand, are generally pretty quick to try and investigate stories like that. So here I was, sneaking up to an increasingly loud house as it hissed it's displeasure towards me and my friends approaching it. We got about half way up the yard when the sound became all but unbearable. It's like it knew we were trying to mess around and wanted to keep us away. We all got pretty freaked out and bolted from the yard and away from the house. That's the last time I ever bothered going anywhere near it, and eventually I went to college and moved away for good. Last I heard, the house was still sitting empty and making a racket.  

---