The bog wasn’t happy that night, not that the Florida marsh was exactly hospitable in the first place. Three point turns of would-be visitors could be seen immortalized in the muddy roads leading to the swamp, the untraversable pathways consequence of a government which had long since forgotten about the area. These paths led to a nameless town full of nameless folks built on the marsh littered with nameless graves. Gold was a more popular substance than enamel in the local’s mouths, and a less than steady diet of bugs and carrion kept the residents at a constant state of emaciation. Not even the seagulls flew there anymore. 

The only thing the few dozen criminals and junkies who called the swamp a home had to look forward to in their lives was the gator hunt. At the end of each month every ne’er-do-well in the bog would grab their rusted knives, old guns, and as many chemicals as they could shove into their bodies and try to crawl their way to the top of the wetlands food chain. Cackles of excitement and hunger emanating from the decrepit place were mute to the rest of the world, with the settlement’s remoteness assuring nobody else had to endure their screams. As the sun set the hunters departed beginning the chase.

One of the gator hunters was a thirteen year old boy named Clorox. Clorox wasn’t the youngest hunter but he was by far the smallest, his obvious ribs and black eye evidence of lifelong malnutrition and bullying. He hoped futilely that killing a gator would earn him some respect in the community that had raised him. Clorox unfortunately was severely unequipped for the task at hand, and despite the compass his peers swore worked, he quickly found himself lost. As the vastness of the woodsy marsh he grew up in put just how insignificant he was into perspective, Clorox heard voices. He looked to his left and saw a hunting party skulking about and, fearing harassment, decided to stay hidden for the time being. Clorox’s decision quickly rewarded his ears with a scream and his face with a warm hunk of viscera. He began to feel nauseous as more wails filled his mind, and with a silent dry-heave he fainted.

When Clorox awoke, it was the brink of dawn. His daze quickly ended when he saw the harsh reality caked all over him, as well as the destruction that lay in front of him. What horrified him most wasn’t his half eaten neighbors, but the newly fallen trees that would lead him directly to his home.

I have never believed in ghosts in this world, and Halloween is just an opportunity to provide entertainment for children and teenagers.

But it’s still fun to go out and on Halloween and enjoy people’s fancy costumes. Girls in black dresses, girls in white dresses, boys in black dresses, boys in white dresses …… you can simply feel the diversity like never before.

I went to eight parties on Halloween Saturday this year, and I didn’t really fit into any of them. I just stood next to one and watched them while looking up at the stars in the sky. I tried to count whether there were more stars in the sky or more people at the party, and I came to the conclusion that I blinked more than both combined.

It was two o’clock and time to go back. I opened the door, started the car, and drove to Beall Ave, which I had passed more times than I had blinked, where the red light temporarily blocked my way at the intersection called Born-Bissman-Compton-Gault.

I rolled down my window to take one last look back at the Halloween party spectacle, but a man stood at the side of my car, about to stick up, blocking my view in its entirety.

He looked like both my 70-year-old professor and my 17-year-old freshman classmate, and his hair had the aesthetic appeal of both a conch and a light bulb. He couldn’t have been dressed more normally, but on a day like today, it was so out of the normal. “Can you give me a ride home, my legs aren’t so good,” he asked me, “it’s only a mile away.”

Rolling up the window and stepping on the accelerator was probably the best choice I could have made at that moment. But I couldn’t control myself anymore, and the only response I made was, “Yes, please get in.” This may be the power of the supernatural.

“You know that most famous cemetery in all of Wooster,” he said with a smile, “my home is there.”

What should I do? Is brake hard and get out of the car and scream for help? It’s no use, real ghosts can find you even if you run to the other side of the world. Please don’t ask why someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts would know so much about them, when you experience such moments, you will understand too.

I think that maybe honestly spilling your thoughts is the best solution.“I sincerely apologize for all the disrespect I have shown to ghosts in the past.” However, these were just words in my head, and when I tried to say them, the supernatural forces once again came into play and I only said“I’m sorry”.

“You’re driving slowly, but you certainly don’t have to apologize for that. I’m not in a hurry.” He said in a reassuring tone of voice.

Finally, we arrived, and although only two minutes had passed in reality, I had already thought about thousands of things that had happened in the past and might happen in the future. He opened the car door: “Thank you, young man, enjoy the holiday where you belong!”

Belong? What do you mean by a holiday that belongs to me? Had I now become a ghost? I observed my own body and found nothing different, but when I looked out the car door, I couldn’t see any figure. The man, no, the undefinable figure, had completely disappeared.

Escaping from here was of course the best option at the moment, but supernatural forces were acting on me for the third time, and I was ready for the final judgment when I heard the scream.

“Which asshole left the manhole cover open!”

“Brittany, Joey, Court, Emilie, Olivia, Madisyn, Natalie, Kate, Megan, Margot, Tiffany, and of course, founder Montana Holt decided to combine their alluring forces of great hair, mediocre dance, and over 100 million combined TikTok followers, to create their new business endeavor The Groove House”

The tabloids were buzzing. The 12 biggest names in Tiktok dancing had all decided to move in together, in order to increase their output of entrancing TikTok dances. The news editors of the Daily Mail, Seventeen Magazine, and Enews were all foaming at the mouth attempting to ascertain the latest information on the girl group. This was the biggest news they had printed in months. Ever since Montana Holt swore off dating when her Soundcloud rapper turned Lamborghini YouTuber boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend Tiffany (and then she in turn dropped a diss track, and revealed that she actually cheated on him first with his brother). But unfortunately, she and Tiffany talked it out on their podcast. There was no longer any ill will between them, and there had been no printable news since.

Reporter after reporter reached out to the twelve girls for comments, gossip, or any sort of information about the inner workings of the house, but again and again, they were shot down. A particularly pernicious journalist at the less prominent TeenNewsDaily was feeling like his job was on the chopping block. So in order to save it, he decided to get the scoop of the century. He took all his savings and bought hair plugs, 100,000 TikTok followers under the name Johhny Jones, and a bottle of fake tan. He was going undercover! After one week of successful social media influencing, he had a successful DM conversation with influencer Noah Hall, and he got an invite to the exclusive Boost housewarming party. He was in!

He put on his most Y2K outfit and set out ready to do some serious investigative work. Mr. Jones attempted to converse with the first of the girls, Olivia Fox, but his questions got him nowhere, every attempt at conversation was met with a feminine giggle. After Olivia walked off to go fix her mascara, the reporter looked around to try to thank Noah Hall for the invite, and see if he could wrangle any information out of him, but he was engaged in filming a dance battle with his girlfriend Joey May. Mr. Jones spun in a circle, his vision began to blur. He could no longer tell who was who! He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of hundreds of Tiktok audios replaying again and again. The last thing he saw before his mind went blank, was Montana Holt’s famously shiny blown-out hair inches from his face.

TeenNewsDaily never did publish their exposé on The Boost House. Although a newly hired reporter is working on an even more promising piece titled “The Mysterious Rise of Johhny Jones, Overnight Tiktok Sensation”