The Lantern’s Last Light

In the autumn of 2016, my cousin Mira and I decided to spend the evening before Halloween exploring the abandoned Grimaldi family plot, tucked away at the end of Mossy Creek Road. The cemetery had been forgotten for decades, overgrown with brambles and choked with ivy, and the local kids whispered that the Grimaldis had been a reclusive bunch, with a dark history of accidents and madness. We thought it would be a lark, a spooky adventure to get us in the holiday spirit, so we packed a thermos of hot cider, our phones, and a cheap digital camera. We arrived just as the sun dipped below the treeline, casting long, twisted shadows across the crooked headstones.

The gate was rusted and half off its hinges, and we slipped through with a nervous giggle. The cemetery was worse than we expected: stones were toppled like dominoes, some shattered, and the few that remained upright were so weathered that the names were illegible. A thick layer of fallen leaves covered the ground, muffling our footsteps, and the air smelled of wet earth and decay. We set down our stuff near a large, moss-covered monument in the center, and Mira pulled out the camera. ‘Let’s see if we can catch a ghost,’ she said with a grin, but her voice wavered slightly. I laughed to lighten the mood, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.

We walked among the graves, reading the faint inscriptions and pretending to hear whispers. I even did a silly impression of a ghost moaning, which sent us both into fits of laughter. Mira snapped photos of me posing dramatically next to a fallen angel statue, and I took a video of her pretending to be pushed by an unseen force. We reviewed the images on the camera’s screen, finding nothing but our own grinning faces. Disappointed but still in high spirits, we decided to head back to the car, but the path we’d taken seemed to have vanished. The trees pressed closer, and the familiar landmarks we’d noted—a broken headstone shaped like a cross, a lone pine tree—were nowhere to be seen.

We walked for what felt like an hour, but the cemetery seemed to stretch on forever. The moon was new, and the only light came from our phone screens, which were dying one by one. Mira’s phone went dark first, then mine. We were plunged into almost total darkness, and panic began to set in. That’s when we saw it: a faint, flickering light bobbing among the trees, like an old-fashioned lantern. We called out, thinking it might be another lost hiker, but there was no response. The light moved closer, and we could see the silhouette of a figure holding it aloft, but its features were shrouded in shadow. It seemed to be heading toward the heart of the cemetery, and without thinking, we followed, hoping it would lead us to the road.

The figure moved with an unnatural gait, as if it were gliding a few inches above the ground, and it never turned to acknowledge us. It led us to a part of the cemetery we hadn’t seen before, where a single, ornate tomb stood, its door slightly ajar. The lantern light vanished as the figure disappeared into the tomb, and we were left alone in the dark. Mira grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. ‘We should go back,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t find our way,’ I replied, my voice trembling. ‘Let’s just check inside. Maybe there’s a phone or something.’ I pushed the heavy stone door open, and a cold draft rushed out, carrying the stench of rotting meat.

We stepped inside, and the door slammed shut behind us, plunging us into absolute blackness. I fumbled for my lighter, a small comfort I’d brought for the cider, and flicked it on. The flame revealed a small, circular chamber lined with stone shelves, each holding a decaying coffin. Some had partially rotted away, revealing tattered shrouds and glimpses of bones. The air was suffocating, and I could hear Mira’s rapid breathing. Then we heard a sound, a low, guttural moan that seemed to come from the walls themselves. The lantern light flickered back to life, hovering in the center of the room, and the figure reappeared, but now its face was visible: it was a withered, skeletal visage with empty eye sockets that seemed to stare into our souls. It raised a bony hand, and the coffins began to creak open, their lids sliding aside with a grinding noise.

We screamed and backed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The corpses, or what remained of them, began to rise, their movements jerky and unnatural. They shuffled toward us, reaching out with clawed fingers. I grabbed Mira’s hand and yanked her through a gap between the shelves, scrambling for any exit. We found a crack in the wall, barely wide enough to squeeze through, and we tore at the stone, scraping our hands raw. Just as the grotesque figures closed in, we tumbled through the opening and fell onto damp soil. We were outside, in a thicket of brambles, with the tomb behind us. The moaning faded, and we stumbled through the underbrush until we reached a dirt road, which we followed until we saw the distant glow of streetlights.

We never spoke of that night to anyone, and we moved away from that town not long after. But to this day, I carry a small lantern in my car, always ready to light the way. And every time I see a flickering flame, I feel a chill run down my spine, because I know that somewhere, in that forgotten cemetery, the lantern’s last light still burns, waiting for the next lost soul to follow it home.