Foggy Oak Scary Tales: The Spookiest Halloween Ever! 👻🕸️🏚️

Hi friends, for the month of October we’re doing "Foggy Oak Scary Tales" to celebrate Halloween! These kid-friendly spooky stories are sure to give you a shiver of delight. Our first Foggy Oak Scary Tale comes from my mother, Kathy Krendl, about the time she and her parents conspired to make a haunted house surprise for her older sister and her friends. It was…the Spookiest Halloween Ever!  

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Written, performed, and produced for you by Claire Krendl Gilbert. Thanks to my daughters for their assistance playing and singing the intro and outro!

©2024 Claire Krendl Gilbert. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Transcript

00:00:15

Hi friends for the month of October. We are doing foggy oak scary tales to celebrate Halloween. These kid friendly, spooky stories are sure to give you a shiver of delight.

00:00:30

Our first foggy oak scary tale comes from my mother, Kathy Krendl, about the time she and her parents conspired to make a haunted house surprise for her older sister and friends.

00:00:44

It was the spookiest Halloween ever.

00:00:50

A long time ago, on a beautiful October Saturday afternoon, my older sister and I went for a long bike ride in the country. I was 12 years old and she had just turned 15.

00:01:02

We hadn't planned really on such a long bike ride, but it was such a beautiful, wonderful fall afternoon that we just kept going and kind of lost track of.

00:01:10

Time we came upon an old deserted Rd. way out in the country, one we'd never explored before. Often the long grass and weeds. We saw an old railroad track that seemed to lead nowhere.

00:01:22

But it intrigued us. We wondered why the old railroad track was way out there, with no houses or towns. Nothing really close by.

00:01:31

It looked like a place that had then long forgotten, so we parked our bikes and began to follow the tracks. Where would they lead us? We wondered. It felt very mysterious.

00:01:41

We walked down the tracks overgrown with weeds and saplings, and before long came to an old house. Part of the roof was caved in and some of the boards on the front porch were missing. We decided to look around inside. It was clear no one had.

00:01:55

Lived there for.

00:01:56

A very long time and well, we were curious. Why would you abandon your home?

00:02:03

We went in and discovered all kinds of holes on the floors. In some places, broken windows, sagging ceilings and exposed boards behind the plaster that had fallen off. It was kind of creepy, but it was also mysterious and we tried to imagine how it might have been. Why had its family abandoned it? Had it been haunted?

00:02:22

Well, was it still haunted? Maybe suddenly we realized it was getting to be late afternoon and we needed to head home before it started to get dark.

00:02:31

We ran back to our bikes, but we couldn't stop talking about the house and how it seemed to invite us to come in. Though it was mysterious, it also felt like somehow we belonged there all the way home. We talked about the house and how it had made us feel as we explored it. It was curious and mysterious and spooky. Sure enough, suddenly Cindy announced that she had a great.

00:02:51

Idea. It would be the ideal location for her Halloween party that she and a friend had been planning. They had intended to host the Halloween party in our barn at home and decorate it like a haunted house, but now they could just invite their friends to a real haunted house.

00:03:07

It would be so cool if we could have it there, she said. I'm going to ask Mamma as soon as we get home. Do you think she might say yes, huh? I didn't think so. I sure didn't think so, but I didn't say anything.

00:03:18

I had to agree, however, that it would really be scary and I also thought it would be really funny to see all of her friends go running out of the house when they saw it was decorated with plastic skeletons hanging all around.

00:03:31

And spooky music playing in the background.

00:03:34

It sounded great, but I really couldn't imagine my parents allowing it a party out in the middle of nowhere. Oh, was my sister thinking?

00:03:42

But much to my surprise, when she proposed the idea to her mother's mom paused and then smiled. She knew the house we were talking about and the people who owned the property, she said she would talk with her father and see what he thought and if he said it was OK then we could ask the owners about staging.

00:03:58

The party there.

00:03:59

The next day, she told us that dad had said it would be OK. He would talk.

00:04:03

The owners and if they said we could stage the party there, we would have to take some precautions. Cindy and her friend would have to assume responsibility for putting lanterns on the front porch and next to all of those holes on the floor inside the House so that their friends wouldn't trip or stumble, and they needed to light the path all along the railroad.

00:04:21

That led to.

00:04:22

The house I knew something was going on because my father winked at me as she talked.

00:04:27

And laid down the rules.

00:04:29

Mom had some additional precautions, of course, and she said she and dad would have to chaperone the party with maybe a couple of other parents there as well as she was explaining all of this, I could have sworn that I saw a twinkle in her eye while my sister and her friend were busy planning activities and games for the party and figuring out how they could scare all of their friends.

00:04:50

I noticed that for some reason our parents also got very.

00:04:52

Busy, I finally asked my mother what is going on. Were they really going to let Cindy and bite her friends to what could turn out to be a very scary party? Indeed in an old and perhaps really haunted house?

00:05:06

Oh, she just smiled and said not to worry about it. It turned out that our parents had their own ideas about who really needed to be scared at the Halloween party. I couldn't wait to see the look in my sister's face when she saw what our parents had planned. She and her friend were the ones who were really in for the big surprise.

00:05:24

I had never seen our parents so excited. They got very busy indeed. They did everything secretly. So my sister didn't suspect anything. Our father gathered old chains that made scraping noises when you dragged them across the floor, and he found a scary old mask with blood red eyes that glowed in the dark when you shined a flashlight under your chin, it had long straggly.

00:05:45

Gray hair attached to it, along with the long Gray beard.

00:05:49

It freaked me out when he put it on to show it to me, even when it.

00:05:52

Was broad daylight. Meanwhile, our mother gathered some old pots and pans and big wooden spoons that made hollow sounds that echoed when you pounded on them. And of course, I used my tape player to record some really spooky sounding music that I could play from one of the back rooms. A haunted house had to have some, some some scary sound effects.

00:06:11

After all that night, my parents were eager to get there before dark so we could set everything up and be ready by the time my sister and her.

00:06:18

Friends arrived. There was a full moon, so you could see the house through the clouds as she walked down the railroad track. But it would be dark inside the old house except for those candles in the Jackal lanterns that we had planted.

00:06:31

All over the place.

00:06:33

After it got dark, we heard them coming down the tracks. They were talking and laughing and they weren't going to be scared of an old empty.

00:06:41

My sister and her friend were leading the way and planned to run into the house just ahead of everyone else covered themselves with the ghostly sheets that they had hidden, and then jump out to scare their friends as they entered. But I couldn't wait to see my sister surprise when she saw how we had transformed the house. It really did look like a really, really, really haunted house.

00:07:02

When she and her friend entered the house, everything looked different than they had expected. Where did all those Jackal entrances come from and why was there that creepy music playing? Then they started to hear more sounds and everything seemed to be getting louder and louder as they suddenly stood still in the middle of.

00:07:18

The room and then other sounds started scraping noises.

00:07:22

Like bodies tied up in chains being.

00:07:24

Dragged across a wooden floor.

00:07:26

As their friends entered, they saw that my sister and her friend were standing there frozen. They stood still with fright as the music kept getting louder. They could hear some one moaning that was me. I was saying ooh, ah, please help me and save me.

00:07:44

And that a man's face with painful looking bloody eyes and long, straggly hair suddenly lit up in the dark as the frightening music and moaning got louder and louder.

00:07:54

They all screamed at once and couldn't get out of the house fast enough. They started to run back down the railroad tracks to their cars.

00:08:01

I think at least one of her friends was so scared that she might even have wet her pants on the way out. We laughed and laughed as my parents turned up all the lights and called them all back to show them what had really scared them. They stared in amazement.

00:08:15

As our mother smiled and passed out popcorn balls, candied apples and warm apple cider, I bet my sister and her friends will never forget that night. It was my favorite Halloween ever.

00:08:28

Thanks to my mom for sharing her story with us this week. That was a spooky Halloween for sure. We'll have more foggy oaks scary tales on the way.

00:08:40

I hope you're enjoying this special fall treat, which is especially wonderful thanks to my sister-in-law, Lee Knight, who composed and performed the music for these stories.

00:08:52

Thank you so much, Lee.