The House on Weaver Hill

The house on Weaver Hill had been empty since the winter of 1983, when the Weaver family left in the middle of the night without so much as locking the door. Neighbors said the move had been sudden — a job out west, perhaps, or a sick relative. But the truth, like most truths in small towns, was far less tidy than the rumors.

Eleanor Vance was the first to notice the lights. She lived in the cottage at the foot of the hill, and on certain October evenings she would look up to see a warm, amber glow in the upstairs windows of the Weaver house. The first time, she assumed vandals. The second time, she called the sheriff. By the third time, she simply sat on her porch with a cup of tea and watched.

No one who entered the house ever found a source for the light. The wiring had been stripped decades ago. The floors were soft with rot, and the wallpaper hung in long, pale ribbons. Yet the glow persisted, moving from room to room as if someone were carrying a lantern through the halls.

Children in town dared one another to spend a night inside. Most made it to midnight before running back down the hill, white-faced and breathless, swearing they had heard footsteps on the stairs. Only one boy, Marcus Holt, claimed to have seen the source of the light. He said it was a woman in a gray dress, standing at the attic window, looking out toward the road as though she were still waiting for someone to come home.

Marcus never went back. Neither did anyone else, after his account spread through the school hallways like a chill. The house was boarded up the following spring, but the boards did not stop the lights. They still appear, every year, in the weeks leading up to Halloween — brief, patient, and terribly, terribly lonely.