A crowd gathered at the 2nd floor window overlooking 312 Birch Street, watching as the pleasant suburban couple that resided there dragged a screaming child into their obnoxiously red minivan and speed away. “They’ll send movers to retrieve the belongings, the owners always do.” Bartholomew Edwards thought as he watched the car veer around the street corner. In the same solemn silence that they arrived in, the crowd dispersed to their respective corners of the Victorian home. Bartholomew effortlessly glided across the floor and through the thin wall, returning to the room he once called home, coming to rest in the rocking chair he spent so many nights watching over his sick child. 

“Ironic, isn’t it? I was a man of medicine and yet I couldn’t even save myself from the common cold.” He stated, as a woman in a flowing yellow dress took her place across from him. “Oh hush your whining Barty, we all died here, you don’t see me moping about do you?” Linda Mossman spun in place, the light of the dying sun catching her mop of hazel hair, seeing her was one of the few pleasures Bartholomew derived from his miserable afterlife. For the last hundred and twenty years, since his death in 1897, Edwards had haunted this old residence, and as he was bitter in life, so he was in death, making it his eternal mission to have peace in his home, dedicating his time to driving anyone who bought 312 Birch Street out in horror. As the years passed, more and more people passed away here, some in more peaceful ways than others, adding to his macabre collection of misfits. There was Mark Thompson, died in 1947, returned from the European front only to take his life two years later. Jennifer Shapiro met her end in 2003, at the deranged hands of notorious serial killer Steven Buchanan, who, in a twist of fate, died in a shootout with police a month later in the same room, making for some awkward hallway conversations. The light of his afterlife, Linda, and her twin Ethel passed away in 1930, smallpox claiming the pair the day before Ethel’s wedding. Each of the residents had a story, and Bartholomew heard them all upon their arrival. He’d proceed to explain their purpose now that they could not leave the property, to drive out any and all mortals, by any means necessary, save for killing them, he was a doctor after all, not a monster, and if the past served any indication, the new owners would be moved in within a week. “What the fuck is up you degenerates, our new house is right outside of campus, and now’s the time to show the university what it means to be a PhiDelt.” Kyle “Shooter” O’Neill raised his solo cup to a crowd of cheering young men inside a dilapidated Winnebago, “Now, since we just got off of probation, there’s gonna be some changes, number one,” Silence engulfed the RV, “Don’t get caught hazing the pledges. Wombat, that means no making them sing Christmas carols to the dean in singlets, it’s September for fucks sake. That’s all, rage it up this year boys!” He sat down, watching as beer foam sprayed across the cabin while his brothers of Phi Tau Delta threw each other across it in drunken camaraderie. They’d been removed from campus several years ago due to a particular new member education incident, but with the reinstitution of their charter and the purchase of a new house for an oddly low price, the fraternity had made its triumphant return to the school, much to the joy of all looking for a night they wouldn’t remember. The RV, driven by John ““We Shouldn’t Have Bid You”” Taylor, turned the corner of Birch Street, bringing their new home into view, incoherent yelling erupting from the cabin as the brothers realized just how big the mansion was. “Bro, we are gonna throw down here, I’m blacking every weekend and that’s a damn promise.” Grant “Pinball” Kimball exclaimed, spilling beer all over the guy next to him, “The goals’ to get your date to bed, not have her tuck you in cause you’re limper than a pool noodle.” Phillip “What’s a Toilet?” Briar jeered, the two laughed and toasted, downing the remaining beer.