Please enjoy the Halloween Spooky Story / 2016 ...

That House Next Door

That house next door was rather strange. Very. In the category of strange, this place had lots of it. A lot of strange. And, did I mention? It was next door!

For starters, you never saw anyone come or go from that house. The lights would go on at night ... most nights. The mail would collect on the porch in a huge pile, and every now and then it would mysteriously disappear. The lawn. Well, not exactly a lawn. Just a huge dense growth of Pitcher Plants and Venus Fly Traps. You know, those plants that feed on the insects they lure and capture. Lots of flesh eating plants. 

The back yard was demarked by a lattice fence of twigs bound together by long scraps of yarn. Colored yarn. Lots of colors. Actually, visually very nice to look at. But, if you got up close you could see a dense spider web in each square opening of that fence. With its own sentinel spider. Lots of spiders.

Obviously, there's more than a little something going on there that has to do with ... bugs. Lots of bugs.

Isn't there something in the lore about how witches use various insects in their spell potions? But, should the neighbors be worried? Nothing ever happens around that house. Rumors around town have been circulating for years. Wild imaginings.

Stories. Like ... Of little boys and girls disappearing on Halloween night Trick-or-Treating in the vicinity. Nothing ever proved. But still. There are stories. Lots of stories.

Anyhow, here's just one of the many stories that swirl around that house in that town. Like I said, there's lots of stories.

One autumnal moonlit night a stranger arrives by train and skulks into town. 

His name, Professor Drobkin. A medical doctor by training. A PhD in the rare science of Insectavora Associativa Halucanetica Confabulatorious Insistentatum Disorder; I.A.H.C.I.D. That acronym when pronounced quickly sounds like a crone sneezing. What, you ask, is I.A.H.C.I.D.? It's complicated. But, just to give a sense of it and get on with the story, it's about how come witches have such ugly noses. Who knew? And, you could rightly ask, who cares. One Professor Doctor Drobkin. That's who.

Here's the origin story ...

Dr. Drobkin had gotten his undergraduate degree, his medical degree, and his PhD in this very town. After that he was practicing as a research doctor at the highest level in New York.

The story tells how he wrote a significant article and had been invited to deliver his findings at a conference, which by coincidence was in his hometown. (This town.) He is called to the dais. The room is full of distinguished personages; the men wearing tuxedos, the women properly attired for such an august event. Dr. Drobkin approaches the dais and puts his papers on the lectern. As he’s about to give his talk, suddenly the papers all slide down to the floor. He bends over to pick them up, and as he does his tuckus is against the microphone. And at the very wrong moment, he lets one ride. It reverberates around the room, magnified by the microphone. 

F-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-T-T!!!

Somehow he regains his composure and delivers the paper. No sooner is he done but he grabs everything up and makes a quick exit through a rear door, totally embarrassed. And, vowing never to come back to the town again. 

Many years pass, his mother is on in years and he has to go back to town to care for her. He does so under the name Dr. Cohen. He makes a reservation at the local Hyatt under that name and gets there under cover of darkness. As he checks into the hotel, a bright eyed and bushy tailed room clerk says, “Good evening Dr. Cohen, welcome. Have you ever been to our town before?”

The doctor says, “Yes, as a matter of fact, young man, I grew up here and I got my education here; got my undergraduate, my doctorate, and my medical degrees at the university; and I moved away.”

The young man asks, “So why haven’t you been here for so long?”

“Well, a number of years ago a very embarrassing thing happened here, and I just didn’t feel I could come back and face the people in the town.”

The young man says, “Doctor, far be it for me, a young stripling, to advise a distinguished older gentleman such as you. But, if I can give you anything from my experience even in my own young life, things that I thought were embarrassing and people noticed, I later found out that nobody even knew that they happened. And I’m sure that’s probably true about the thing you think is so embarrassing.”

The doctor says, “No, I doubt that anyone has forgotten what happened.”

The young man says, “Well, was it a long time ago?”

“Yes, it was a very long time ago.”

 “Was it before the Drobkin fart? Or, after?”

True story. So you should know THAT house is where Mother Drobkin is living. From what was revealed earlier about that strange place, you should glean the moral of this story:

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree.