The Richards House was a staple of my childhood. A rotting Victorian perched atop a hill in the rolling hills of southeastern Washington; every citizen in my little hometown under the age of 12 knew the place was haunted, even though there wasn’t a shred of confirmed evidence suggesting so.

Packs of kids used to gather together on Huffys to ride up the dirt road on the edge of town that led up to the place just to stare at it and dare each other to walk up and knock on the door or go inside. I personally never saw anyone go further than the porch, but many adolescents in Uniontown, Washington will tell you they knew a kid who went in there and came back with scratches on his arm or said he saw blood stains all over the floor. This kid is likely the kid who also told everyone that Mountain Dew lowers your sperm count.

I dismissed the Richards House as some sad dying structure built by some old farmer who probably built the thing for his thriving family before his luck ran out and he had to abandon the place and look for a new pot of gold somewhere else. According to my dad, that was the story and all the little snot-nosed punks around town should just stay away from the place. In my dad’s humble opinion, the house was only haunted by a foundation that could probably give out and kill a kid at any moment.

The Richards House was an afterthought between the ages of 12 and 25, but the old place drafted back into my frontal lobe on my 26th birthday.