Featured Contributor ~ Fiction
Paul is a freelance writer and author, with numerous titles, both fiction and nonfiction, published in a variety of genres. Paul released a dark fantasy anthology as well as a horror novella in 2022. He is an active HWA member.
Paul studied filmmaking/screenwriting at Columbia College – Hollywood. He earned an A.S. from Mount Ida College and a B.A. in English from the University of Rhode Island. He lives in Lincoln, Rhode Island with his family.
THE MAN WHO COLLECTED HAUNTED HOUSES
In a remote part of western Pennsylvania, in the foothills of
the Appalachian Mountains, is the world’s most haunted house. It
has more than a thousand rooms and there is a ghost in every one of
them. The man who owned this monstrous and otherworldly domicile
was a highly acclaimed home builder, who constructed the most
unusual and unique homes all around the world.
The man had an adoring wife who he loved more than anything.
They had no children, but they had each other, and that’s all
that either one of them needed.
Then came a snowy winter morning, while the man was away
building a summer cottage for an English nobleman in Cornwall,
his wife suffered a horrible fate. Anticipating the arrival of
her husband the following day, she got up early to make his
favorite meal. She was filled with such excitement that she
misjudged the first riser at the top of the stairs and stumbled,
falling headlong to the landing below. When the man came home
the following day, he found her dead, her neck broken.
The man was so grief-struck, he was inconsolable.
Upon realizing that she was preparing to cook his favorite
meal when she fell, he blamed himself for the accident, and
because of the profound anguish the man felt for causing her
tragic death, her spirit became trapped inside the house,
where she was doomed to lurk forever. At night, the man could
hear her tormented moans echoing from one end of the house to the
other. This persisted for months, until one day the man couldn’t
bear his wife’s suffering any further and he was determined to
do something to try to alleviate her terminal agony.
He thought about it long and hard, and then it occurred
to him. In life, his wife was a friendly and gregarious person.
There was nothing she enjoyed more than the company of others,
conversing, and interacting with strangers and intimate friends
alike. He knew what he needed to do, and a smile came to his face
for the first time since the accident. If his wife was able to
share eternity with others like her, she wouldn’t be lonely.
With an overriding sense of purpose and undeterred resolve,
the man set out to expand the house to accommodate a thousand
spirits. He sought the most renowned paranormal investigators
who helped him purchase residences from all around the country
that were known to be occupied by spirits. He was surprised
by the abundance of haunted houses in existence, and although many
of them had violent and sad histories that predicated hauntings
by cursed spirits, the man chose only those which were haunted
by amenable ghosts. That way his wife’s spirit could
interact with gentle souls, like her own, who were suffering
a similar torment.
The man began with the purchase of an Alaskan orphanage
that had been damaged in the Great 1964 Earthquake. The man’s
wife loved children, and he knew she’d have lots of fun with them.
The man often heard the spirits of the children who died there
roaming the halls and giggling as they played. He then obtained
an old adobe home in Arizona where, in the late 1800s, more than
twenty people died. His wife would enjoy all that company.
The man bought hundreds of dwellings and portions of
hundreds more that were occupied by spirits. The difficult
part was transporting them from their original locations
and then merging them together, creating a massive prefab ghost
house. The man was very wealthy, but he spent every
last bit of his fortune on this project.
His biggest worry was that some of the ghosts trapped
inside might escape before arriving at their final destination.
He needn’t have worried, because the spirits remained confined
between the walls where they had died, as attested by many
spooked carpenters who built this abode for the dead.
It slowly came together, one piece at a time. People
came from all over to witness the construction of the unusual
house, but as it continued to expand, they lost interest.
It took nearly all of the man’s remaining years to
complete, and by the time it was done, he was too tired and broke
to add any more rooms to the house. After a thousand rooms had been
added, he paused and looked proudly at what he had accomplished. He
knew it was a great success because over the years the tormented
wailing of his wife slowly diminished, until finally he could hear
them no more. As tears of joy welled up in his eyes for being able
to relieve her eternal suffering, he laid down on the bed that he
once shared with his wife, closed his eyes, and died
with a peaceful smile on his face.
The following day, the man’s body was found by a carpenter,
who swore he heard the sorrowful moans of the man, whose tragic
life condemned his spirit to the same house where his wife’s
spirit resides with the thousands of other disembodied souls. However,
because of the number of rooms and endless maze of corridors, the
man’s spirit is unable to find his beloved wife. Today, a visitor
who listens carefully will hear the man’s plaintive cries of
loneliness and sorrow as he wanders through the enormous house
looking for her.