This House is mine. Or was. I've seen many a family try to steal it from me. Each time they tear down the wallpaper, slap a new hideous coloured carpet over my beautiful floorboards, and rip my flowers out of their beds. They can rot in hell for all I care.

The first family that took my House from me was a middle aged couple. He had a beer belly and a short temper, and she was as miserable and as transparent as me. Empty nest syndrome. With no children to look after and a womb-less gut, she haunted the house as mournfully as I did. I almost pitied her, but she took an almost barbaric delight as she tore apart my decor, grinning evilly, the love I put into my home dripping from her fingertips like blood. Up came the tiles, up came the wallpaper, up came the pipes up up up as I sank down down down into the misery that I've come to call my afterlife.

They knew me by name. Got it from the estate agent. "Poor old Mrs Moyer" they would say. "Carried off in her sleep on Christmas Eve." Pah! I sat in my corner of the attic, and spat at them, my thoughts rattled around in my empty head. Once they found a box of my things. Keepsakes; birth certificates, wedding photos, funeral invitations. The husband even thumbed through my Post Office Savings books, greedy bastard. I left behind three pennies and nothing more. "Make your own money", I shouted as I rattled the plumbing. He didn't flinch.

They bought the House from my children, those filthy traitors. They couldn't wait to hand it over to the highest bidder after my poor husband died, useless as he was. I still see him from time to time, moping around in the attic with me. I catch a glimpse of his white face in a shadowy corner once in a while. Face like a hush puppy. Ugly.

Bitter? Me? Maybe...eighty years of living, a hundred years of dying.

This new family, the MacAdams family. With their irritatingly yappy little dog, their spoilt children, and their widescreen TVs. There are TVs all over the place, they've only spared the bathroom. The youngest child is sixteen. Old enough to be called a man in my time, but all he does is sit with his textbooks and wallow in the grief of living. His sister is older, I don't know by how much. She has a job, a car, a boyfriend. And no awareness of a respectable hemline. I've got my eye on that one.

I can see them now as I crouch on the stairs. The family doesn't even notice the spirits moving around them. We're all anxious. I can feel it in the air. They all think they're worried about their House but it's my House. Mine! My grandaddy had it built, my daddy finished it, and then some breathing bastards think they have some right to it.

I won't be sorry to see it go. Best thing for it now. It's been plagued by generations of bad blood flowing through it. It's ruined, my House. It's diseased. Best thing to do is to put it down. If I had the strength I'd do it myself, but that's not the way it's meant to be.

We can already taste the smoke hanging over our heads. Not long now, it promises. It feels like the calm before the storm and I'm just dying for it to get started.

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Author guidance for This story

Each chapter is a different ghost story of this one house. Eventually something will set the house on fire, and we'll see what happens to the current family.
Inspired by the tv show American Horror Story....rather heavily, to my shame.

updated Jan 30 by thatnola