READERS TALES
The House on Hopoca Road
(NOTE: This tale has
been updated with parts 2 and 3...)
January 2003
Carthage, MS
My friend S. and I had went to Wal-Mart in Carthage, MS earlier that day to get
a few things. While I was inside getting what I needed S. was waiting in the car
listening to music. When I came out I saw S. talking to T. and the foreign
exchange student J., from school. I got into the car
and we all talked for awhile, and we told T. and I got on the story of
entities, and T. stated that there were a few, old,
deserted houses here in Carthage that were haunted. She began to tell us that if
we meet her later that night, in town, that she would take us to them. We agreed
to meet her, and S. and I came home.
S. got to my house about 6:30 that night, and I finished getting dressed. We
went to pick up her boyfriend, TS., and headed to Carthage. We met up with T.
and filled the car up with gas. We all headed out of town a few miles, and
turned off onto Hopoca Road. We went down the road a few miles and suddenly T.
stopped, and said, "This is it." S. and I looked at each other and laughed. TS.
said, "T., there's nothing here." T. said, "Follow me... I just wanted you all
to park here, that way it will be easier to get out when we leave." S. said,
"Okay."
We began to follow T. up the road, and then up a short, cement-like driveway.
T. stopped abruptly, and said, "We have to jump over the gate." I hesitated for
a few minutes as I stared at the rot-iron gate. We didn't have any light to
guide us except a light, which kept going out. We made our way over the gate,
and followed T. up the driveway. The driveway went upwards over the hill, which
was very steep. We finally made our way up to the house, and we were all
mystified by it's beauty. It was an old house that looked like it was
built in the late 1800's.
S., TS., and I all made our way up to what looked like the front door. T. said
she forgot something, and went back to the car to get it. S., TS., and I
continued up to the front door, and noticed that it had a cage-like screening
over it that was bolted to the outside of the house. We all stood there and
stared for a few minutes in amazement at the inside of the house. What we
happened to be staring at was the "living room." It was beautifully
flourished with an antique table, chairs,
chandelier, two lamps (which
happened to be on), and an old, bookshelf along the far wall. I was overcome
with this dreaded feeling like someone was watching us. I looked at S. and said,
"Maybe someone actually lives here, and maybe there home." S. then said,
"There's only one way to find out," and she screamed out, "Is anyone home? We
need help. Our car went quit and won't start!" No one answered. There was dead
silence, and all of a sudden, classical music started playing really loud. The
sound of the music was so shrill, and it was very odd-sounding. It sounded like
a dramatic, interlude in a horror movie. TS. was freaked out by this and started
panicking. TS. started shaking and said, "Can we go now?" I looked at him and
said, "No! There's something in that house, and I don't think it's living." S.
looked at me and shook her head in agreement. I started making my way around the
left side of the house, and I made my way over a fence that enclosed the outside
sitting-area. S. and TS. followed behind me and did the same. S. then decided
that she wanted to get inside the house just to look around, and began to pull
on the screen door to her right. It wouldn't come open, and S. started snatching
the door really hard. It gave after a few moments, but the wooden door behind it
was locked. This door also lead into the "living room" by the bookshelf. I tried
the other door that was there, which appeared to go into a back bedroom. This
door, too, was locked.
We made our way back to the front of the house. S. stopped and took a picture
of the living room, through the cage-like screen on the front door, with her
digital camera. Then, we made our way around the other side of the house while
passing by another part of the house, where the walls were brick half-way up and
glass windows from the bricks to the roof. As we made our way on around, we
stopped suddenly because it sounded like someone threw a rubber ball against one
of the windows facing us. TS. started spazzing-out,
and I had a feeling of fear rush over me so fast it made my skin crawl. S.
seemed fearless, and walked up to the door by the window where we had just heard
the obscene noise. It was also locked. S. started to walk back over to where we
were standing then suddenly turned around. I walked up to her and looked at the
ground where she was staring. As I looked down, I saw a red pentagram painted
onto the walk-way we were standing on. S. said, "Do you see that?" and I
replied, "Yeah!"
S. and I decided we needed to get out of there, but first we wanted to get one
more picture of the room surrounded by the windows. I stood there as S. took the
picture, and screamed at what I saw in the mere second the camera's flash light
up the room. Standing in the room was a man, and the man was wearing an old,
smoker's vest. There was nothing but a reddish glow where his head was suppose
to be, and TS. said, "Oh my God! There's someone standing behind that tree!"
Suddenly there was a scream that was so shrill and terrifying, and it didn't
belong to S., TS., or myself. We took off running down the driveway we had come
up, and when we got to the gate we heard the scream again. S. and TS. jumped
over, and I started to jump over too. Something pulled me backwards, and pulled
me back down off then gate. I jumped up onto the fence again, and S. grabbed my
arm when she saw what was happening and pulled me over.
We all got back to the car, and saw T. standing there white as a ghost. We
asked her what was wrong and followed her eyes with
ours to see what she was staring at. There was something written in the road. S.
got into her car and turned on the lights so we could see what it was. S. got
back out and walked over to where T., TS., and I was standing. We all looked on
in disbelief, when we saw what was written on the ground. Written in what
appeared to be blood were the words, "I'm gonna get you all!" We all freaked out
and got into the car.
We made our way back to Carthage and stopped at a local pool hall to try and
collect our thoughts. S. described the force she saw pulling me off the gate. It
was the same thing I saw in the house when she took the picture. We made TS. go
out to the car and get the camera so we could see if our pictures took. We told
T. about all the things that went on after she came back to the car. She
believed us, and she told us that the same stuff happened to her the last time
she went to that house. S. looked astonished, and asked, "T., was that you
screaming?" T. said, "No! I also heard it, though." I was amazed at this,
because I knew then that it definitely wasn't any of
us. TS. brought the camera back inside, and S. searched for the pictures on the
camera. The only thing that showed up was pure blackness. It was like the house
didn't want anyone to see what it looked like, or someone didn't.
We took T. back to her car, and we started to make our way back home. S. told
TS. that it wasn't T. that yelled as he got out of the car at his house. We made
plans to go back there soon, while not realizing that what was screaming would
be revealed...
House on Hopoca Road Part: 2
A few days later, S. and I decided to try our luck back at the house we had went
to a few days before in Carthage, MS. This time we took T. and A. with us. As we
parked the car and got out, we made our way to the rot-iron fence that we came
to a few days before. We jumped over, and made our way up the long cement
driveway. We made our way back to the front door that was caged a few days
before. It remained cage. S. and I walked up to it, and leaned closer to see if
we could hear any music or any sign of life coming from inside. Dead silence.
Then, a woman's voice in a rather annoyed tone shouted, "THEY'RE BACK!"
immediately following this was a man's voice saying, "I know..." as if he was
assuring the woman that she was correct.
A. was completely terrified at this announcement and got the feeling that we
should leave... T. being the guy he is agreed with A.. S. and I were determined
to get into the house, or at least see who or what it was that was doing the
talking. We walked around the outside of the room that was surrounded by
windows, and began making our way to another part of the house. We made sure to
shine the flashlight in front of us to make sure we didn't fall into any
trap-holes or anything. We kept walking around the house to we made our way to
another door. It was pushed back further than the windows and outside paneling
that was on the sides. S. and I decided to look into the window to the left, but
at this moment we didn't shine any light into it... until we saw what appeared
to be the outline of a woman standing in front of something. S. shined the
flashlight inside, and we were right... it was a woman, leaning over the kitchen
sink. She had what appeared to be a cut and torn dress with blood stains on it.
She had long back hair, and was very skinny. S. and I continued to stare while
trying to figure out if what we were seeing was real. Suddenly the woman looks
at us, and we see the very rich blood dripping down the right side of her face
into the sink. It looked as though she had been shot or shot herself in the
right side of the head. There was a deep open wound there. While S. and I
continued to figure out if this was real, the woman slowly started walking
toward the window where we were standing and whispered, "I'm gonna get you!"
S. and I started screaming and took off running back to where T. and A. were.
Too scared to talk, we managed to stutter out, "R-u-nnnn!" T., A., S., and I
took off running back down the drive way, but stopped when T. said, "Someone is
standing behind that tree." S. shined the flashlight over there, and it was the
man that I had seen in the room filled with windows when S. tried to take the
picture a few days earlier. Not knowing where to run, we decided to run off
behind the house and try to go around and down the road to get back to the car.
We ran for what seemed like hours, but it only ended up being a few minutes,
until we were forced to stop. We had come to a lake, that was behind the house.
In the center of the lake, there was a tree with a boat beside it. Sitting under
the tree was what appeared to be a younger boy, maybe 16 or 17. Not knowing what
to do, we ran around the lake.
Finally we made it back to the road, and ran a little further till we reached
S.'s car. It began to shake. After a few moments, it quit. We didn't know what
to do, so we decided to get into the car anyways. It wouldn't start. S. tried
again, and this time it did start... but the radio came on blaring classical
music. The same music we had heard there a few days earlier. We left and went
back home only to find that the woman had not yet left us.
S. decided to stay the night with me, hoping that since we were together that
everything would be okay. We were dead wrong. About 2 a.m. we heard a car door
slam outside my house. Frozen in fear, S. and I laid there in my bed hoping that
it wasn't what we thought it was. S. told me to get up and shut my bedroom door.
I always kept it open though so I told her that if she wanted it shut to get up
and shut it herself. She wouldn't move, and I wasn't about to get up. We just
laid there, frozen in fear, waiting for the worst. A few moments later we heard
light footsteps coming down the hall. Following that was the woman who suddenly
appeared in my doorway, staring at us with angry eyes. She made her way slowly
to the foot of my bed, and stood there, still staring angrily. S. and I began to
pray and started crying from the fear of what might happen. Apparently pleased
at this the woman smiled and said, "Stay away and I will do the same." Then she
turned around and left.
S. and I never went back to the house after that night, and we do not plan on
it. We haven't seen the woman anymore since that night either. I guess she did
follow through with what she said since we did as we were told. Our friends have
been to this house to see if we were lying, and they've sworn never to go back
after going there once. We went to the local newspapers to see what happened at
that house and we did find some information. A satanic preacher, wife, and their
son lived there. The preacher/husband died and the wife had him cremated and his
ashes scattered around the house. The wife soon became an alcoholic along with
her son, one night the son went crazy and tried to kill his mother. She got away
from him and went into her bedroom and hung herself. The son then paddled out to
the center of the lake, where the tree is, in his boat, and hung himself from
the highest branch, but carved a pentagram into his forehead before he did this.
According to the pictures in the paper, the woman was skinny with long black
hair. The son was stated to be 17 years old. Fact or fiction? You decide.
House on Hopoca Road Part:
3
May 2003
Carthage, MS
Today we finally decided to go back, only this time we went in the day time.
Everything seemed normal around the house, but we decided to walk out to the
lake where we had seen the boy. We sat down at the edge of the lake waiting to
see if he would show himself again. We waited for about 30 minutes when finally
he appeared, but he acted as though he didn't know we were there. He was
carrying a rope and a knife. It looked as though he cut something into his
forehead with the knife. Then, he made a noose with the rope and through it over
the highest branch in the tree. He then climbed to the top of the tree, put the
rope around his neck, and jumped.
It was like he recreated what had happened the night he died. Then, we heard the
screaming that we heard the first night we ever went to the house. It was his
mother. Apparently she didn't kill herself before he killed himself, she killed
herself after she found her soon. She was
carrying a gun and we followed her out to the road where we had seen the words
written in blood the first time we went to the house, and the woman stood there
and shot herself. We didn't know what to do, or even what to say. We heard
people chanting back up at the house, and we decided to sneak back up there to
see what was going on.
We knelt down behind some trees that surrounded the driveway and looked up
towards the house. There were real people dressed in red and black robes
standing there. One was holding a pig that was dead... apparently from having
it's head chopped off. They all held pewter goblets and they chanted a few more
words and they all drank from the goblets.
S. and I knew what was going on. It was the
anniversary of these people's deaths and a satanic tribe were performing
a ritual there in their memory. We immediately left. Come to find out, satanic
tribes live in the woods surrounding the house. I'm never going back there
again, we could end up dead .... or worse.
-Katia
Boone.