The Mansion By The Lake. nosleep

My name is Paul Zaretti. My grandfather, Angelo Zaretti, was a urinwealthy brass merchant in the Michigan/Wisconsin/Illinois area during the 30s and 40s. In 1948, my grandmother died and he must have been about sixty-two years old at the time. He decided not to stay in the house he shared with his wife after her death and decided to look for a house where he could retire properly and go fishing every day. He had heard that a large house was available for sale in northern Wisconsin, right on the side of a lake. He drove up to view it and was extremely impressed. The agent informed him that it was being sold by the widow of a distinguished man named Lamont, who had worked for the President in Washington. Sadly, he had passed away and his widow wanted the property sold as soon as possible. Boy, my Pappa could not stop talking about how beautiful that place was. All those lovely rooms, the decorative stones that had been inlaid into the chimneys and the huge terrace. And he loved the view of the lake from the big windows out the front. After moving in, he had to have a lot of electrical work done on the old mansion, as it dated from 1916 and was not really equipped for running things like refrigerators and clothes dryers. Some rooms had no outlets at all, so you can imagine the work needed was extensive and costly, to get 'modern' electrical conveniences put in. An electrician was hired from a nearby town to do the work. He was always running into problems with things not working as they should and Pappa must have called him back to the house dozens of times, because the lights would turn on by themselves, outlets would burn out, appliances would stop working and then start working again before they could be fixed. I mention these things because it was the electrician who would soon witness a mysterious event - one that he would never forget. About eighteen months later, Pappa called the electrician out to the house because the lights on the wall in the dining room would suddenly go very dim and begin to flicker. So the guy came and set up his little stepladder and took out the bulbs to test everything. He found nothing amiss, so he put it back together. He was just about to climb down off his ladder, when he heard a huge crash in the area of the staircase. There was a yelp and the sickening sound of limbs beating against timber. The workman ran to the bottom of the staircase, to see poor Mr. Zaretti's twisted body spredeagled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. His bones were protruding from his skin and he was wimpering in agony. He looked at the workman, a look of horror on his face, "The spectre. It threw me down", he croaked. An ambulance was immediately called. Police arrived alongside the ambulance. They wanted to investigate. Of course fingers were pointed at the electrician but he would never have called an ambulance. had he been callous enough to hurl an old man down the stairs. My Pappa passed away on the way to the hospital and the electrician was arrested but soon released - the pathologist declared that Mr. Zaretti had died by falling down the stairs by accident. However, he did state that he wondered how a man could 'fall' at such a speed as to shatter his own body like that. My father was notified and after the funeral, he rushed to the old mansion to check it out. What my father told me, I will not forget. He said that as soon as he approached the front door of the house, he felt unwelcome. He felt like several people were staring at him from within the house, and as he entered, the feeling became intense. He said it was the most oppressive, hostile atmosphere he could ever imagine - like the place was seething with hatred for him. Nobody was there, so it was hard for me to relate to what he was saying. We don't feel hated by something we can't see. But he insisted that he wanted nothing more than to get out of there. The lights came on in the entrance hall and began to flicker. The front door opened by itself and the curtains blew about wildly. He collected his father's personal effects, his clothes, photographs etc., and ran from the house. He left the furniture there and had the house put up for sale. I heard that it was hit by lightning in 1988 and burned down. I wish I had gone there just once, but something tells me I am better off never having laid eyes on the old mansion by the lake.

Submitted June 05, 2015 at 01:51PM by 2OTTOCYCLE http://ift.tt/1ARnrBg nosleep