The old house stood alone and unnoticed. It was in fact, rather creepy looking...at least on a dark night.
Despite being only a short distance off a main road, no one had turned on this particular short driveway in years. Or at least that is how it looked. It was built many years earlier and updated several times since. Most of the time, the windows were completely dark. But sometimes, years after the house was last known to be occupied, people passing by claimed to see lights coming from it. It was assumed to be teenagers, vandals, or vagrants spending the night there. Gargoyles decorated the edges of the roof, jutting out angrily, glaring at passers by. The roof, steepled tall, tiled in elaborate patterns that conceal their age. Moss grew in cracks along the large stone walls, etching out of the house, oozing as if the lifeblood of the house itself was leeching into the outside world. A grey mist gently settled around the property regardless of time of year, almost like camouflage.
Behind the house, several smaller buildings were silhouetted in the moonlight. One was clearly a chapel or an elaborate mausoleum, as a small private cemetery was barely visible in the mist, its tombstones broken and neglected, generations of moving earth shifting the mounted stones to appear almost like jagged teeth, jutting out of the ground in rage. Derelict, choked by reaching vines, the shattered facade of a greenhouse scraped at the sky.
It did have an official owner of record. An old woman who lived out west, and had it listed with the local real estate office. But no one had been interested in even checking it out for years. Even when they did, the stories about it tended to scare them away. A troubled past, missing persons...The stories about the house were just as disturbing as the reality to the point few people knew the true story. Was it a grisly murder? An alleged witch? A black widow who decapitated her husband and kept his head in a hatbox?
Either way, it gave people the creeps; no one was willing to buy the property, or even live near it. Thus, it stood abandoned in the woods, it's only link to the outside world the single gravel road, so poorly maintained it felt as if the woods themselves were reclaiming the house itself, in a vain attempt to conceal the ancient estate from the world. Only the target of childish dares or the occasional thrillseeker looking to search for history of the mansion and it's estate ever visited on purpose, none ever coming away satisfied. In it's front yard, the elaborate ancient fountain, long since dry, ringed by the carriageway, littered with the abandoned material of guests past. Jackets, water bottles, cameras, all blown away with the wind that swept through the estate over time.
