Two Arkansas girls dare to enter a rumored haunted church on Halloween night. What do you think they’ll find?

I grew up in Arkansas, on the Louisiana border. My parents had a farm which was located quite a ways from town. During the school year, I would wake up before daylight so that my mother could drive me to the school, which was located in Louisiana. The trip to school took us by lush green soybean fields, cotton fields, and a few abandoned buildings. There was one building in particular that I was drawn to. Setting back from the road, in the middle of a field, was an old white church building with a bell tower. One morning, on our way to school, I asked my mom, “What church is that, and why doesn’t anybody go to service there anymore?” It looked like a haunted church.

My mom kind of chuckled and said, “That’s the haunted church.”

For the remainder of our drive, Mom told me about how a voodoo priestess named Luna Etienne had cursed the church. Luna’s daughter had been in love with a man named Pierre Baptiste, but Pierre was in love with another woman named, Isabelle. Pierre had proposed to Isabelle and they began planning their wedding at the church that I was so enamored with. On the day of the wedding, Luna crept into the haunted church and sat in the back pew. As the bride arrived at Pierre’s side, Luna rose to her feet and began cursing them in Creole. Before Luna could be removed from the church, Isabelle collapsed dead in front of the altar.

By the time we arrived at school, I knew what my best friend and I would be doing for Halloween. We were going to go into that church, and I was going to see what it looked like from the inside. My friend Kim and I hatched a brilliant plan. Her mom and my mom were volunteers at the school’s Halloween carnival. While our mothers were volunteering at the school fundraiser, we could cut through the fields behind the school and it wouldn’t take us that long to reach the haunted church.

Halloween night finally arrived. As the kids and parents started to pour in, Kim and I snuck out the back door of the gymnasium. As soon as we cleared the football field, we broke into a run. After fifteen minutes of running through fields we saw the church, but something looked different. Under the dark night sky, we saw lights flickering in the old church. I looked over at Kim, and she appeared frozen in place. After what seemed like an eternity she whispered:

“Something’s not right. We should go back.”

I thought about it for a minute. It would be safer to go back. We could return to the Halloween carnival, win one of those giant novelty toothbrushes at the duck pond or guess how many jelly beans were in the jar, but most importantly we could be in a safe place gorging ourselves on candy. For some unknown reason, I found myself saying, “No way. This was my idea, and I’m not going to have my night ruined by some older kids who are probably inside the haunted church, drinking their parents’ liquor. Let’s see who’s in there and let’s prank them.”

We crept silently to the back door of the church. It looked like that was the part of the church that had served as the reception hall. The door was ajar, so we made our way inside with as little noise as possible. From our position we could hear voices and see lights flickering. It looked as though hundreds of candles had been lit in the church. As we inched closer to the source of the light, Kim grabbed my arm. She leaned next to my ear and whispered, “Creole. They’re speaking creole.”

Before I could respond, an ear splitting scream silenced me. It was a scream that continued and grew in strength until it became a shriek. The entire haunted church began to shake, and some unknown force pushed me forward onto the church sanctuary. By the time my eyes adjusted to the bright candle light, I realized that the church was full of people. They were all dressed in fancy dresses and suits from the late 1880s. I looked down and saw a woman dressed in a wedding gown, lying dead at the bottom on the sanctuary steps. When I looked back up, I realized that the church guests’ faces were in various states of decay, and they were all standing looking angrily at me.

Just then, I felt a hand grab my upper arm and spin me around. It was Kim, and she was screamed, “Run!” We bolted and ran through the back of the church. The church bell had begun to ring and the sound was deafening. I looked back to see the ghoulish faces of the wedding attendees running after us, and they were getting closer. I felt a cold hand on my neck. The adrenaline coursing through my body helped me run even faster, and I was able to break the grasp of the corpse’s hand.

Kim and I cleared the haunted church and looked back. They were still chasing us, albeit more slowly than before, as far as we could tell they were zombies. We knew that we could outrun the ghoul squad, but a thick fog had settled over the fields. We kept running as we heard rustling behind us. All of the sudden we heard rustling in front of us too. We kept running. I was thinking that I didn’t have much stamina left when I hit something soft and white. I screamed, “The dead bride has me!”

In the next instant, I heard Kim say, “We made it! We actually made it!” I looked around and saw a kid in a ghost costume lying next to me. We were on the football field next to the school.

Kim helped me up, and then she helped the kid up, who I had pretty much flattened. I started laughing like a maniac while Kim and the kid stared at me. Maybe it was the adrenaline or maybe it was the irony of the situation. The kid that I clobbered was on our middle school football team, and he had just gotten sacked by a middle school girl on the football field. I pulled myself together and Kim and I walked into the gym, where the Halloween carnival was still in full swing. We both plopped down on the bleachers. We sat there the entire time in silence until the carnival was over.

On our way out to the parking lot, we scanned the entire perimeter looking for anything paranormal. Kim stayed over at my house that night. We both stayed awake the entire night, in case the zombies had followed us home. We never spoke of that night again. We both ended up moving away during our freshman year in high school. Her father got a better job offer in Lafayette and my dad accepted a job offer in North Carolina. I’ve been back home to visit, but I never drive by the haunted church. I’m not even sure if it’s still there. 

Truthfully, I don’t want to know.

-THE END-

Where Did This Story Come From?

From the Author: “Let me give you a little background on my story. I grew up in Taylor, Arkansas. My hometown is located about six miles from the Louisiana border. I actually did attend elementary school in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, and we drove by an old white haunted church on our weekly commute to my school. There is a ghost story in the area about a haunted church in Plain Dealing. According to legend, a bride dropped dead at the altar during her wedding. Her family held her funeral at the same church three days later, and she rose from her coffin in the middle of the funeral service. The local legend and the abandoned church gave me the idea for the story.”