The Mystery of the Haunted House

by Leesa

There was an old house that was at the edge of town. Everyone said it was haunted. On Halloween, everyone dared each other to go into the house. At night people said they heard strange noises and saw the lights flicker on and off in the windows. My detective club decided to investigate this mystery. We picked Halloween night to go to the house. Halloween was tomorrow and our detective club was nervous. That night, I dreamed about what might be in the house. I have to admit that I was a little bit scared. We went to the haunted house. We entered through the door. My detective club decided to split up. There were six of us. We split up into groups of three. We were just getting started. The batteries in my flashlight went out. It was really dark. Just my luck. Suddenly the lights were flickering. We heard weird sounds. We were wondering where the noises were. The lights went out. We found a switch and turned on the lights. So far we had been at the house for about thirty minutes and only found two clues. I thought we would find more clues to solve the mystery of the haunted house. Our clues included strange noises like a moaning noise and a call for help. Another clue was that we saw the lights flicker on and off. Oh no, the lights just went off. There was total silence and total darkness. We heard footsteps. Boo!! Ahh!! The noises were coming from my friends. We were all together again. The other group had heard and seen the same things we did. Strange, uh? The lights came on again. We were all still there. This time we stayed together. The moaning noises came back. We found a cord. We followed it. It led into a room. Beside the cord we saw muddy footprints. We got to the end of the cord. There was a door. We opened the door. No one was there, but the cord and foot prints went right through the wall. So far our clues included sounds like moaning, footprints and a cord. There must have been a secret passage somewhere. There was a lever. We used it and opened the wall. Out came hundreds of bats. There was another door. Inside that door there was a kid with a tape recorder. He was the person who was doing all that stuff. It had been a joke the whole time. Later that night more kids came in and saw that they had only been afraid of a boy. All of us laughed. My friends told their parents. The boy got in trouble. We informed the people in town that the house wasn't haunted after all. Three weeks later someone moved into the house