Tales from the Dorkside Episode II: McNally's Monsters "

Growing up in rural north-western Pennsylvania in the mid 80’s could be pretty boring sometimes. We didn’t have a shopping mall, a skater park, or even a video arcade. The older kids would usually get busted for drinking behind the school building or for smoking pot. The younger kids would pull pranks, soap cars, egg house, or toilet paper trees. Just kids goofing off to chase away boredom. And nobody got hurt.

We all knew each other, and our parents knew all the kids too. You’d do something and get caught, you could be sure that somebody already called your parents before you even got home. Jobs were going away, so a lot of people were moving away too. And nobody was buying houses there especially old run down ruins. Some of these houses had been standing empty for as long as I could remember. One such house stood just down the road from where I lived, but this one was special, this one they said was HAUNTED.

For years I walked past that house on my way to the bus stop, and every time I had that sinking feeling of dread. It was as if something evil sat just behind the window pane staring out at me. Occasionally, you would hear creaks and moans coming from the old house, which would cause me to pick up my pace – or flat-out run.

On my thirteenth birthday, I had a couple friends over to celebrate with me. We were a ragtag bunch of misfits and “delinquents”. After our mandatory fun round of “pin the tail on the donkey”, boredom started to rear it’s ugly head again.

This is when Jonny had the great idea that we should do a little exploring – starting with the old McNally house. I tried to warn them about all of the spooking noises and about how I thought old lady McNally’s ghost was still in there. How I'd thought I'd seen someone in the upstairs window.
But this only encouraged my friends even more.

So the five of us, Jonny, Tommy, Matt & Mark, and I set down that dark dirt road to the "haunted McNally house". Jonny always like to envision himself as our fearless leader. Tommy was the goofball. As for the twins, well, let me just say... They always put out every fire that they started. As for myself, well, I've always been that awkward dork with a good heart.

Building up our courage we went to the front door. Strangely it was locked,  but Tommy found that the back door window was broken, so he let us all in.

That house had that old musty smell to it. There were a few holes in the floor where you could peek into the basement, so we had to be careful where we stepped. Jonny was adamant about finding old lady McNally's ghost and headed upstairs. I kept an eye on the twins, as they had found some old working fire extinguishers and were looking for something to burn. Suddenly we heard crashing coming from the kitchen! Tommy was on the kitchen table with a stack of plates. As soon as he saw us he starting throwing the plates at us, at the walls, screaming "Gremlins! Gremlins!"

Something was odd about this, these weren't old dusty, dirty plates. And that's when I really started getting scared. We made a big mistake! And at that moment, we heard Jonny yelling "Guys! there's a car pulling up to the house!"  Little did we know that the house had been purchased by some guys from Pittsburgh to be used as a hunting cabin. Through the window we saw them getting out of the car.  The men must have heard us, because they had their shotguns ready. So out the back door and into the woods we went. I honestly don't even know if they chased us, but it didn't matter. We kept running until we were at one of the neighbors barns where we hid until nightfall.

To this day, when I meet up with my old friends, if we get drunk enough the conversation goes back to that day when we decided to face McNally's ghost, only to realize that the only monsters there were us.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".  

Be sure to recommend, if you did.

Thank you