A Different Drummer: The house with the blue light

Here’s a spooky story my Uncle Ed told me one night around the campfire. He totally got me. My skin horripilated causing me to jump out of it. It’s a silly story, but I liked it so much I told it separately to each of my four nieces as soon as they were old enough to terrify. It works best with a young audience of one or two.
As a father and grandfather, I’ve told it to my kids and their kids. The fun part of the story is that you can make it up as you go along. It can be different every time, so you don’t have to remember it to be able to tell it.
A young boy (or girl) was present for his (her) grandfather’s (grandmother’s) last words. The ancient man lay propped up in bed in his children’s home. Billy was walking down the hall past his grandfather’s doorway when the old man called out to him. “Billy, come quick.”
Billy rushed to his grandfather’s side and took his hand. “What is it, grandpa?”
“It’s time,” said the old man. “I’m going now.”
Billy tried to pull away and fetch his parents and sister, but grandpa held him tight. He shook his withered, bald, toothless head. With his free hand, he beckoned Billy to lean in. He whispered this message into Billy’s ear.
“If you want to enjoy a happy life, do whatever you wish, wherever you wish, with whoever you wish, but under no circumstances should you go looking for, find, or enter the house with the blue light.”
Billy’s head jerked in consternation. “The…” He compressed his face. Grandpa’s clear loving eyes stayed focused on him, but the old man’s face was motionless. Hesitantly, Bill asked, “Ah, grandpa, what is the house with the blue light?” Grandpa’s face didn’t move, but his fingernails dug into Billy’s wrist. Then grandpa’s eyes twinkled. He exhaled long and low and was gone.
Billy notified the family and the funeral was well attended, but he didn’t mention their conversation. Yet, he couldn’t forget it. It haunted him, nagged him. For two years he kept it to himself. When visiting libraries and bookstores he resisted the urge to look up information on the house with the blue light.
He had girlfriends and best friends who never knew, and he was happy. Then Billy became old enough to hitchhike and rebel against our established norms, and he decided to go in search of this house with the blue light, defying his grandfather’s wishes. Billy just had to know what he should not know.
A long-haul truck driver picked up Billy outside of town. When asked where he was headed, Billy only said east (or west). They drove for hundreds of miles before Billy worked up the courage to ask the driver, “Excuse me, Sir, but do you know anything about the house with the blue light?”
The truck driver snapped his head around and snarled at Billy. “The house with the blue light!” He slammed on his brakes, skidded his 18-wheel truck into a jackknife. “How dare you!” He grabbed Billy by his hair and smacked him against the dashboard. He shook Billy like a dirty filter and tossed him out the window into the midnight bushes and drove off.
Billy walked 13 miles along an unknown highway until a county sheriff picked him up. He offered to take Billy into town and buy him breakfast. He offered Billy his silk handkerchief to dab the blood away. As they drove along the sheriff asked, “What’s the trouble, son?’
Relieved to hear a friendly voice, Billy told the story of hitchhiking and the driver and how Billy was looking for the house with the blue light. Brakes screeched. The sheriff yanked the Velcro from his mace canister and sprayed Billy square in the face. Then he Tasered him and sicced the German Shepard in the back seat on him, then tossed Billy in a ravine and drove away.
Billy ended up at a hobo camp along the railroad tracks. Six other hobos were sitting around a fire telling each other of their hardships. When it was Billy’s turn and he described the beatings from the truck driver and the sheriff, the other hobos murmured their deepest sympathies.
Then Billy said, “And all I wanted to know is what is the house with the blue light?”
The faces of the other hobos blanched. “The house with the blue light!” they screamed and as one they dove upon Billy and pummeled him until 9:45 p.m. They kicked and spit at him. Billy ran for his life.
[As the storyteller, you can add on as many encounters as you want. The story is intended to be long and drawn out, making your audience anxious for the ending. Here’s how it ends:]
Billy wanders aimlessly through the forest until he comes upon a cabin where an old woman is sitting on a stuck-stick chair out front. When she sees the boy stumbling, she takes him inside and revives him with food and sleep. At last, she asks Billy, “What is your quest?”
“I have come in search of the house with the blue light,” says Billy, no longer afraid.
“Oh, that,” says the old woman, and she tells him.
The story ends here, followed by a long silence from the story teller, until the hapless audience member(s) can’t resist asking, “Yes, but what is the house with the blue light?”
This is where the tricky storyteller jumps up and attacks the child growling and tickling and laughing. Happy Halloween.