Hometown Ghost Stories contains serious and often distressing events and is not intended for all audiences.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Like all good ghost stories, Mayan starts in a small town, in this case, a nowhere little place in Connecticut where nothing exciting ever happened.

And yes, I know it's a bit cliche, but there was an old abandoned house on the outskirts of town

that all the kids were afraid of.

It sat at the end of a long, overgrown driveway, half hidden by trees.

It's windows black and hollow,

looking like empty eye sockets. No one ever saw anyone go in or out. It had been empty for as long as anyone could remember, and it had that look. You know the one, like it was just waiting for someone dumb enough

to go inside. That someone, or rather someone's, naturally, was me and my best two friends,

Chris and Danny. It was the summer of 1987. We were all 11 or 12, full of the kind of dumb bravado that only pre-teen boys have.

We dare each other a dozen times to go inside, but none of us ever had the guts.

Until one afternoon, when boredom got the better of us, we parked our bikes at the edge of the driveway,

hearts pounding as we walked up the path,

weeds brushing against our ankles. The front door was already cracked open. It felt like it had been

expecting us. Inside it was thick with dust, and there was a scent that I'll never forget. It just

smelled as if it had been around for a long time.

The floor creaked under our sneakers. Other than that, the silence was almost deafening.

We broke it by whispering and giggling nervously, poking around like we were in a horror movie.

There was old furniture covered in sheets

and a staircase with a banister that was broken.

In the kitchen, a rusted out fridge stood open.

It was empty, except for a single ancient glass bottle of coke.

...