Halloween Ghost Story Contest -- 2004
Middle School Winners

First Place

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Our first place Middle School winner is Dylan Tillas, a student at the Belmonte Middle School in Saugus.

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Fear on the Farm

by
Dylan Tillas

It happened sixty-seven years ago today, but still I remember it like it was yesterday. No matter how many years go by I don’t think I will ever forget it. Besides, it happened back in my homeland… Romania. This would have been one of the scariest ghost stories ever told, only it wasn’t a story, it was real.

I was much younger when it happened. The date was October 24,1937, right before World War II started. I was only ten years old back on my family’s farm in Romania. We had heard stories about strange animals in the woods but everyone was too smart (or scared) to believe in them.

My schedule was just like most ten year-olds at that time: get up, eat breakfast, work in the fields, eat dinner, spend time with the family, and go to bed. I woke up at about 5:30 in the morning. It was still dark out, but that’s when I always had to get up. I was the first one up in my family so I had to take our three dogs for their walk. They were sleeping by the fireplace that still had some burning ashes from the night before. I brought them out to the pastures where the cows grazed but the cattle weren’t anywhere to be seen. I thought that they must still be in the stables. I let the dogs loose and they ran around our huge farm for a half hour. By the time they came back and we went back inside, everyone was up.

Along with our big farm we had a big family to work on it. There was only one girl in the family and that was Mother. There are seven boys in the family including Father and me. My oldest brother, Damian, had moved out of the house two years earlier but everyone else still lived here. We all had breakfast and headed out to the fields. By then it was light out but there was a low fog resting on the farm.

On the edge of our farm was a huge forest, almost twice as big as the farm, that no one ever went into because trees block every ray of sunlight and it becomes pitch black after fifty feet.

My first job every morning was to get all the cows out of the pasture and into the stable to be milked. But when I got to the pastures, the cows were still not there. So I thought something may have happened or maybe they were already in the stable. I went to the stable, but they weren’t there either. Now I knew something was wrong. I went to look for Father and I found him tending to the plants on the other side of the barn. I told him about the cows hoping that he had an answer, but he was as anxious as I was. We went back to the stable, and they still weren’t there. Father went to look for my brothers. About a minute after he left, I heard a noise in the forest and then realized a gap in the fence. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go in, but it sounded like it came from not to far in the forest. I went in and walked on for about a minute as everything around me became darker and darker. Then I came to a clearing in the trees that I never knew existed and that was where I saw it for the first time.

In the clearing the fog was worse then ever but I could see a dark figure. To my horror, one of the cows was lying dead at its feet. I started walking closer but as I did I stepped on a twig and it made a loud snap. I stood frozen in horror as the beast’s head suddenly looked at me. All I could see was its eyes. The sight of the eyes will stay in my head forever. They were menacingly bright green. It started walking towards me when I realized that the thing was no where near being human, it bared huge, sharp teeth at me and it was walking on all four legs. Then I did the first thing that popped into my head, run. Once I started running, it started galloping after me. I tried to get it away from it so I ran wherever I could but I got lost in the dark trees.

The forest finally thinned out but the beast was catching up. It seemed as fast as a horse. When I got out of the forest I could see my house but it was about a half mile away and I had to cross a stream, which would slow me down. I started running as fast as I could. I looked back and saw the beast for the first time in clear sunlight. It looked like a huge, black dog with razor sharp teeth. It was catching up to me just when I had to go up a hill. About fifty yards ahead of me was the fence on the edge of our farm. I climbed over it and took off. I looked back hoping that it would stop at the fence but it just jumped over it like it was nothing. He was so close to me now that I could hear his growl and feel its hot breath. I didn’t want to look back but I did. I saw those awful green eyes and the teeth and I knew then I wouldn’t make it.

Ahead was the stream and I knew that there was no hope. It was a cool October day and when I hit the water I forgot everything else. All I thought about was how cold the water felt. It felt like hundreds of burning metal rods piercing my skin. It seemed like it took forever to get out of the water. But when I did I looked back and the beast had stopped just before the stream. I stopped and watched. It started walking back towards the forest. I ran back to the house and found Mother and I told her about the beast. She had known that the cattle were missing but she came up with her own reason why. She said that the cows must have broken the fence and were chased by a coyote or some animal like that.

I have never seen anything like it since and I hope I never will. A couple of years later we moved to America but we never lived on a farm again. I will never forget that day. I still have nightmares about it and I am over seventy years old. Sure I’ve been to the old farm since then.  It’s been abandoned since we moved out. But no matter how many times I visit, I will never go back into that forest.

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