During a loud family gathering at my grandmother’s place, my two best friends and I decided to walk to my home a few blocks away. As we turned the corner onto my street, my friend Leo stopped. “Is your mom supposed to be home?” he asked. I told him no, she was at work. “That’s weird,” he said. “I just saw a woman with a long red coat standing on your porch, but she vanished when I looked again.”
We went inside and got some lemonade from the kitchen. We were all laughing when Leo suddenly pointed at the window. “There she is again, near the garden!” he cried out. But when we looked, there was no one there. We decided it was just the heat and went up to the attic to play games.
We had been talking for a while when we started to hear a soft, rhythmic creaking from the staircase, as if someone were slowly pacing up and down. My heart started to pound. I pulled a stack of old books about local legends and unexplained mysteries from my shelf, searching for an answer while we waited for the strange sound to stop.