The Rusty Swinging Gate at Raven Lane

At exactly midnight on March 8, 1966, the heavy iron gate at 23 Raven Lane swung open, screeching against the stones, though no one stood near it. That gate-twisted with rust and crowned with the same chipped brass address plate-had been chained shut since the house was abandoned two winters before. Yet neighbors on Raven Lane reported the chill, metallic shriek echoing clear down the block every March, always the same night, always just past midnight. On that first night, Mrs. Edson across the road saw light flickering behind the gate, as if someone carried a lantern toward the empty house, but the light never left a shadow. The police came, found the gate gaping open, chain snapped, no tracks in the mud, and the lock lying three yards away, still closed. For years the city tried to weld the gate, but every spring the weld seams were broken, as if forced from the inside. It was only in 1981, after the sixth broken lock and the final attempt to seal it, that someone finally found a charred leather shoe tangled in the fence at dawn, child-sized and untouched by ash.