Slithering House

My dad died when I was young, so for a long time, it was just me and Mom. We stayed with her aunt for a week one summer. Aunt Zilphy had a good-sized house far back in the hollow. It began as a single-room shotgun shack. As she and Uncle Zeke had kids, they built more rooms onto the structure. By the time I was little, it was nearly three stories tall.

Aunt Zilphy’s house was haunted, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Everyone knew it. All of the old, respectable houses back then had old, respectable ghosts. No one thought much about it. It was just a part of life.

We didn’t think much about it when my mom’s cousin warned her. No one fears the supernatural when everyone deals with it. It’s like a leaky roof or bad plumbing. In the Appalachians, you often have normal house issues, and then the abnormal issues.

The first day we were there, nothing much happened. By then, Uncle Zeke had been dead a couple of years. All their children were grown and had families of their own.

We began to notice what sounded like whispering every now and again. It sounded like something slid across the floor. Sometimes you could feel a phantom rope or string fall from the ceiling onto your shoulders. We brushed the nothing aside and went on. If you sat down, the sensation might fall across your legs or arms.

Around the third day there, something bit me in the shower.

Well, I thought it bit me.

There wasn’t anything there.

We continued to feel bites from something unseen, but there were never actually any wounds or injuries.

My mom said the ropes kept falling on her bed that night. We eventually complained to one another at breakfast. Aunt Zilphy overheard Mom and corrected her.

It wasn’t ropes or strings we’d been feeling.

It was phantom snakes.

She said the single-room shack they first moved into was old and had a dark history. Ezra McMurray and Jonas Falin were in love with Dotia Woods. Dotia eventually chose Jonas. Ezra was unusually agreeable to the matter, and they thought it was just a good sign. He offered them a small tract of land and said the knoll would be a perfect spot for a home. Ezra built the original house and gave it to the couple as a wedding present.

The community was impressed with his generosity.

The admiration was short-lived.

Ezra had built the small house, intentionally, over a large den of copperhead snakes. The next morning, locals visited to offer further congratulations and found the couple dead. Hundreds of snakes had come through the floorboards while the couple slept. They died from the snakebites.

Ezra was convicted of their murder and sent to prison. The families of the couple got together and burned all the snakes in the den under the house.

Since then, the phantom snakes had plagued everyone who lived there.

She said they normally didn’t bite, but that didn’t make us feel any better.

We went home as soon as we packed our bags.

Aunt Zilphy died later on, and now no one lives in the slithering house.