The House at the End of the Street: The Halloween Ghost

It was a cold, misty Halloween night. Emma, dressed as a witch, and Lucas, wearing vampire fangs, had already filled half their bags with sweets when they noticed the old house at the end of the street. Its shutters were always closed, its garden swallowed by thorny weeds, and nobody in the neighbourhood could remember seeing anyone live there.

That evening, however, a trembling light glowed behind the sitting-room window. The children hesitated, then crossed the rusty gate. The porch boards groaned beneath their feet. When Lucas knocked, the front door slowly opened on its own.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and burnt candles. A trail of tiny orange lights led toward a staircase. At the top stood the pale silhouette of a child in an old-fashioned costume. He did not speak. He simply lifted one hand and pointed toward a locked bedroom.

Emma found a key beneath a cracked jack-o’-lantern. Behind the door they discovered a small room frozen in time: wooden toys, a faded photograph and a basket of sweets that looked untouched for decades. The ghost appeared beside the photograph, and they finally understood that he had once lived in the house and had never been able to finish his last Halloween.

Emma placed one of her sweets in the old basket. Lucas did the same. The room warmed, the candle flames rose, and the boy smiled for the first time. A whisper filled the house: “Thank you.” Then every light went out at once.

The children ran all the way home. The next morning the abandoned house looked empty again, but two old-fashioned sweets lay at the bottom of their bags. From that year on, Emma and Lucas always left one piece of candy on the porch at the end of the street — just in case the Halloween ghost was still passing by.