By Lorry Myers
The house sat just outside of Thompson, midway between Mexico and Centralia. It was the path to Grandma’s house and as a child, I’d watch out the car window for that abandoned mansion and know that we were halfway there or almost home.
Generations past, when the pillars were painted and the porch still attached, that house must have been glorious! Back then, there was no iron gate to lock you out and smoke rose out of the many chimneys to welcome you home. I wondered as we whizzed by, what happened behind those 
broken windows that left the house empty and full of secrets. I liked to imagine it back in its youth, alive with ladies in long dresses having tea on the lawn and ponies prancing up the tree-lined lane. I could almost see lace curtains, fluttering in the summer wind, and lovers sneaking off to the barn.
Years later, I drove that same highway with my own children on our way to their Grandma’s house. On one particular drive home, a fight broke out in the back seat just as our station wagon was passing that old house.
That’s when it started.
“Hey,” I shouted, trying to calm the chaos clamoring behind me, “did I tell you that house is haunted?” and just like that, the quarrel in the back seat stopped.
Who doesn’t love a ghost story?
Encouraged, I kept going, making up history about the house like I knew what I was talking about.
The children thought I did anyway.
After that, with every trip there and back, the haunted story grew. It was a tragic tale about a well-known Judge’s daughter and the handsome stable hand, doomed lovers who died trying to elope. Now, their ghosts haunt the house and walk the grounds searching through eternity for each other.
Oh, it was good!
Soon, my children had me repeating the ghost story at bunking parties and sleepovers with their cousins. With each passing of our car, and each telling of that haunted tale, the ghosts took on a new life. Eerily, the house seemed to cooperate, growing desperately into disrepair before of our watching eyes.
The story didn’t stop there.
I became pen pals with a class of third graders and penned the haunted story for them, one chapter at a time. I did a guest appearance and brought along old photographs I’d bought at flea markets so the made-up names in the story became hauntingly beautiful people. One Sunday, I pulled over and took photos of the house, the lens of my camera prying into its secrets. Reviewing the pictures, my wide-eyed pen pals were convinced they spied a ghostly image in the third story window.
Now, I was beginning to believe my own fiction.
For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard
