Old Widow Hanson lived
and died in this house.
Only before she was Old Widow Hanson, she was Theodora Birchington. She
lived on a farm near here. She didn't play with the other children and
always kept to herself. She talked to herself a lot, too. When she grew
up, she got married to Hans Hanson who was a salesman.
Theodora and Hans fought
a lot. 
The
neighbors could hear them screaming at each other all night long. I
don't know why she just didn't tell Hans to move out and then get a
divorce, but they didn't have any kids so I guess she wasn't in any
hurry. Then one time Hans tried to strangle her. That day she told
everybody, "He's never going to do that again."
The next day, Hans
disappeared. They found his body a few days later, only it was missing
the hands. They had been cut off just above the wrist. His body is
buried in the town cemetery. You can go see his grave, but his hands
aren't there.
Anyway, people knew that
Theodora had killed murdered him, but they couldn't prove it, so she was
never charged with murder.
Widow Hanson got older.
She had wild wavy hair and a weird look in her eyes. And, like I said,
she was really ugly. She was always talking to herself and screaming,
"Get away! Get away!"
Then one day, when she
was really old and ugly and after no one had seen her for weeks, the
sheriff went looking for her. The neighbors had smelled something
terrible, and I don't mean a skunk. The sheriff knocked the door down
and searched the entire house, except the attic. Then he and his deputy
opened the attic door. There was old Theodora, lying on her back at the
bottom of the stairs, with her neck broken.
The sheriff figured that
she'd slipped at the top of the stairs and fallen to her death. Then
they heard a strange sound. Drip
drip drip. Coming
from the top of the attic stairs.
Drip drip drip.
They climbed the stairs
and discovered a gruesome scene. There, lying on the floorboards, were
the bloody hands of her husband. He had been dead for years, you know.
The flesh was hanging off them and you could see the bones inside. The
fingernails were all broken off and the fingertips were oozing blood.
But the weird thing was the hands were covered with fresh blood--and it
wasn't Widow Hanson's. The blood was dripping down the stairs. Drip drip
drip. They followed the bloody trail to an old trunk where she must have
kept the hands locked up. Inside it they found deep scratching gouges
where the hands had clawed their way out of the trunk.
The sheriff didn't know
what to make of it, until he and the deputy turned Widow Hanson's body
on her side. There on the back of her white nightgown were the prints of
two bloody hands, prints that matched the hands of her husband. After
all these years, the ghostly hands of Hans Hanson had come back from the
dead to kill his widow.
People began to see her
ghost in the house, but the scariest thing happened when the next family
moved in. The husband was a truck driver. The first week they were there
he was away, hauling a load of tomatoes. One night near the end of the
week he called his wife to say he was coming home early and to wait up.
But she fell asleep in what used to be Widow Hanson's bedroom. In the
middle of the night she heard someone come into the room and she figured
it was her husband. Then she heard someone get into bed with her. She
was so sure it was her husband she didn't even open her eyes. She
reached over and their hands met. He squeezed hers as if to say,
"Goodnight." Then the woman fell back to sleep, holding her
husband's hand.
In the morning the phone
on the nightstand rang and woke the woman up. It was still dark, and the
bedroom curtains were closed.
"Hello?" she
said.
It was her husband. He
was calling to say that his truck had broken down and not to worry, he'd
be home soon. He hadn't wanted to call her in the middle of the night.
The woman's heart was
pounding as she hung up the phone. Who had crawled into bed with her?
And who had held her hand?
She jumped out of bed and
turned on the light. The room was empty--or at least it looked like it
was. Then she forced her eyes to look at the bed. It seemed empty, too.
So she caught her breath and decided that she had had the strangest
dream. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up to her neck.
She tried to go back to sleep, but she kept hearing a noise. A dripping
noise. At first she wondered if there was a leak in the roof--only it
hadn't been raining.
Drip drip drip.
The noise was getting
louder. It seemed as if it was coming from the other side of the bed. So
she reached over and felt some liquid. Some warm liquid. She turned to
look and pulled back the covers. There on the sheets next to her were
the bloody handprints of Hans Hanson. And his blood was drip drip
dripping on the floor.
Her husband found
her--still alive, but she was never the same. They sold the house as
soon as they could. That's why everybody calls it the Ghost House.
So two ghosts haunt your
house now. Widow Hanson stands at the attic window and looks out . . .
and just behind her are the creepy rotting hands of Hans Hanson waiting
to push her down the stairs.
