My friends and I almost got killed by a ghost

Posted by u/Punk_Master03 6 hours ago

This happened about two years ago.

I forget whose idea it was to break into the old, abandoned gas station on Highway 50. Probably Colby’s, that dick. We could’ve had another regular weekend playing video games if not for him. We talked about it during lunch period on Friday. One of my friends chickened out (though I guess she was the smart one), but the rest of us agreed to go.

The first weird thing happened when I was driving home from school. I used to pass the old gas station on my way home every day, but that day a beat-up van was parked in front of it. Nobody had a reason to stop there, since the place was obviously abandoned. The pumps were gone, and the building was boarded up and covered in graffiti.

I slowed down as I passed and saw a woman. I didn’t have time to see many details, just that she had dark hair and tattoos and was staring intently at the old building. I wondered if she’d run out of gas or had car troubles, but she didn’t wave me down for help. She didn’t even glance back as I drove by

I thought it was weird but figured she’d be gone by the time we showed up that night, and I was right. The gas station was empty again when we pulled up after dark. It was me and my friends Miguel, Colby, and Jada. I parked behind the building to make it harder for anyone driving by to see the car. Colby’s stepbrother had hooked us up with some six packs of beer, and it was easy to get inside the gas station because the lock was broken.

The building smelled awful. It was all musty, and there were rusty nails and broken stuff all over the floor. We pushed together some junk to sit on, opened the beers, and started telling ghost stories.

So everybody in my hometown knows the gas station shut down after the owner, Myron Buckley, was killed in a robbery like twenty or something years ago. I always heard the robbers shot him even after he emptied the register for them, but Colby said Myron refused to give them a cent, so the robbers doused him in gasoline and set him on fire. He also said a student who’d been a senior when we first started high school had gotten killed by Myron’s ghost, but Jada said that was bullshit and everyone knew that guy had OD’d.

We were halfway through the beers when I first saw something: a figure walking behind the empty shelves. I jumped off the bucket I was sitting on with a shout, freaking everybody out. I pointed at where I’d seen him, but nothing was there anymore. The gas station wasn’t big, and with four of us looking through the dirty, crumbling shelves, there wasn’t anywhere to hide. We even checked the bathrooms (which were disgusting).

We didn’t see any sign of another person, and they all made fun of me for getting scared by the ghost stories. I felt pretty embarrassed, but at the same time, I knew I’d seen something.

Colby and Jada went outside to “get some air,” and I didn’t want to watch them make out, so I stayed in the building with Miguel. I was still jumpy after seeing that figure and kept looking over my shoulder. Everything in the building felt wrong, like someone was watching us, but I told myself it was my imagination. About five minutes later, we heard Colby and Jada screaming.

Miguel and I stared at each other in shock for a second and then ran for the door. Jada burst inside before we reached it, shouting that she’d seen a ghost and we needed to get out of there. I panicked, but Miguel accused her and Colby of trying to prank us. I didn’t think he was right—not only because of the figure I’d seen but because Jada was shaking and almost crying. But before we could argue, the door slammed closed behind Jada.

She shrieked and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Miguel and I went to help, but we couldn’t get it open either. It didn’t make sense, because the lock had been 100% broken when we’d gotten there.

The door used to be glass, but that had broken, and it was covered with thick wooden planks. Jada pounded on them and screamed for help, while Miguel shouted at Colby to stop playing around and let us out. Jada shouted that Colby was gone. He’d run off into the desert. Miguel wasn’t buying it, but I did and kept pulling frantically on the door handle.

Then an awful smell like burnt, spoiled meat filled the room. We turned around, and suddenly there was smoke everywhere like something was on fire. And standing in the middle of it—I swear to God—was a ghost.

He almost looked like a zombie, except his flesh was charred instead of rotten. It was hard to see him clearly through all the smoke, but that was good, because what details I could make out were horrifying. And I know I wasn’t hallucinating because Jada and Miguel saw him too. His eyes burned orange as he stared at us.

His voice was weird, a low moan almost like howling wind, but I’ll never forget what he said.

“You’ll pay for what you did to me.”

I started screaming along with Jada, and Miguel fell on his ass. I thought that was it, and we were goners, but then the ghost just vanished.

We were too scared to move for a while in case he came back, but then we tried the door again. It still wouldn’t move, and smoke stayed in the room along with that awful stench. We ran to the backdoor, but it wouldn’t open either. I tried my cell phone, but service is always shitty in my hometown, and I didn’t have any bars.

Jada tried to get the windows open. I lost sight of her in the smoke but could still hear her. Miguel kept asking what we should do, but I didn’t know. I hadn’t believed in ghosts until then, so I was clueless. I hoped that maybe the ghost had left and we’d be able to get out, or maybe Colby would come back and help us.

I staggered through the smoke, coughing as I looked for a way out. I don’t know how to describe it, but there was like an aura in the building. The whole place felt unnatural and vicious. I kept tripping over the garbage on the floor and started losing hope we’d make it out of there.

Then the ghost appeared next to me literally out of nowhere. I tried to scream but gagged on the smell of burnt flesh. He grabbed me before I could run, and I remember blackened skin flaking off his desiccated hand. His touch burned me like I’d put my arm against a hot stove, and I screamed my head off.

Miguel’s a good friend because he chucked a broken bottle at the ghost’s head. But it went straight through him. The ghost let me go, but then Miguel went flying backward like he got hit by a car and smashed into one of the shelves. I heard Jada scream, and I backed away from the ghost as he turned his burning eyes on me.

I’ll never forget how I felt in that moment. My chest went tight, and I couldn’t breathe. The ghost raved about murder and revenge, and Jada kept screaming for help. But then I heard a banging sound louder than both of them. I thought it was the ghost doing something, but he turned to the door like he hadn’t expected it either.

The door shook as something pounded on it from the other side. The sound was so loud that it stirred up dust on the floor. Then the door broke, smashing against the floor, and a woman strode inside.

I recognized her as the person I’d seen at the gas station earlier that afternoon. She wore torn jeans and cowboy boots and looked at us all chill like she saw ghosts every day.

I don’t know how to describe what the ghost did next. He didn’t run at her, but he didn’t fly either. It was like his feet slid across the floor, and he was suddenly on her. She punched him—seriously, I’m not making this up. She punched a ghost. I don’t know how she hit him when that bottle Miguel threw didn’t, but maybe it had something to do with how her fist was on fire.

The ghost lost his shit. He screamed that we wouldn’t burn him again and he’d kill us for killing him. The smoke swirled around the room, and the temperature shot up like twenty degrees. The woman clenched her fists, and I thought she was going to fight him, but then she just… talked to him. She told him to look at us, and that we weren’t the people who’d killed him. She said the killers weren’t ever coming back, and he should move on, that people were waiting for him on the other side.

The whole time she was talking, the ghost kind of shrank in on himself. He moaned that it wasn’t fair and he shouldn’t have had to die, and the woman just agreed. For a second, the ghost didn’t look like a zombie anymore. I saw a man in old-fashioned clothes standing there. I’d always pictured Myron Buckley as some doddering older guy, but he looked young and anguished. It filled me with a strange, strong sadness.

Then the woman held out her hand and murmured something in a strange language. My ears popped, and the ghost vanished with a whoosh. The smoke dissipated, the temperature dropped, and everything went back to normal.

Later we picked up Colby where he was walking along the roadside about a mile away. (The dick had abandoned us.) Miguel had some cuts and bruises, and the skin on my arm was red and painful from where the ghost had burned me.

Ms. Romo—that’s the woman’s name—said we were hella lucky the night we’d broken in was the same night she’d come to exorcize the place. Apparently, a new owner had bought the gas station and hired her to get rid of the ghost before they renovated it. She’s like a professional exorcist and does stuff like that all the time.

Miguel, Jada, Colby and I never talk about that night. The gas station did get renovated, and sometimes I’ll stop at the pump on my way home. But nothing will ever get me to step inside that building again.