After taking a few months off of blog writing, I offer this story in poetic form.
There’s a house on the hill in the town where I lived
All the kids knew the story, felt the fright it would give
As they walked past the gate on the way home from school
Don’t stand still and stare was the unspoken rule
If you walked by at night, you had better go fast
Or you risked being witness to the ghost of the past.
There’s a woman who glided the grounds in the night
In a flowing long gown, all gauzy and white
She wept with a sound carried along on the wind
She muttered about all the ways she had sinned
If you tarried a bit to catch a glimpse, or to listen
You just better hope not to hear sudden hissing
Or voices that come from the dark of the night
Shouting loud whispers from left and from right,
The voices of men who one night long ago
Searched for the woman, searched, high and searched low
At long last they found the young bride who had run
Who refused to be wed at the end of a gun
The groom was a man, with evil intent
And demanded the girl in lieu of the rent,
Her father, a man both drunk and poor
Couldn’t refuse the demand at his door
So he gave up his daughter to the man with the gun
Never believing that she would at once run
The mad groom ran fast, caught the girl in a flash
And carried her off, in a secret place her he stashed
The townsmen came searching the house on the hill
Praying to find unharmed the poor girl
But in spite of the thoroughness of the long search
At last they all gathered in the pews of the church
Where the townswomen sat, each of them praying
For the soul of the girl who in coffin now laying
Was then buried there in the churchyard outside
Where her sad father sat on the ground as he cried
“It is my bad fortune my daughter has died”.
Her restless soul walks o’er the grounds of the house
Where the evil man took her to make her his spouse
He killed her that night when him she deserted
Then left the town ‘fore they discovered the murder
So she roams ‘bout the grounds of the house where she died
The ghost of the hauntingly beautiful bride.
If you go to the town with the house on the hill,
Stay away from the place where the young bride was killed.
