Midnight has passed, and in the stillness of these hours, the hauntings are never silent.

This is Real Ghost Stories Online.

After midnight.

They moved into the house when he was seven, a small tracked home that looked like every other place on the block. There was nothing about it

that stood out, nothing that felt old or out of place. And for the first few weeks, everything

settled the way it should have. The routines formed quickly, the rooms filled in, and whatever

sense of unfamiliarity had been there at the beginning didn't last long.

The first strange thing didn't happen to him. It happened to his father. His mother and younger

sister had gone out to pick up groceries and his father had stayed home to get some yard work

done. He remembered sitting in the living room with his homework spread out in front of him,

the television off, the house quiet

and the way it usually was when no one else was moving through it.

There hadn't been any noise from the back of the house, nothing to suggest anything out of the

ordinary.

Then there was pounding at the front door, not a knock, pounding.

He got up and went to answer it, expecting to see someone from the neighborhood,

or maybe his mother coming back earlier than expected. Instead, his father was standing there,

tense and irritated, already talking before the door was fully open. He was convinced the

back door had been locked from the inside. The chain pulled across in a way that couldn't

happen on its own. Didn't make sense. The door that led from the laundry, the chain pulled across in a way that couldn't happen on its own.

Didn't make sense.

The door that led from the laundry room to the backyard had a chain lock that had to be set manually.

...