2021 Spooky Humans of FHC

"I think I was probably in fifth or sixth grade, 10 or 11 years old, because my girlfriend and I got to go trick-or-treating by ourselves around our neighborhood—we thought we were big-time. [As we were trick-or-treating,] we passed by some stupid boys in our grade and one of them was dressed as Freddy Krueger and he had really long nail things. I didn't even realize until I got home that he must'...

"I have a ghost named Stephanie. She lives near the side of my house, and I see her in the window sometimes. She has spoken to me before; she said, 'Hi, Lauren, it's me' in a very feminine voice. She sat on my face once, and I screamed 'Get off!" and I felt her leave, which was kind of weird. My cat sees her all the time and is scared to be in that general area where [Stephanie] likes to hang out....

"My house back, in Jordan, used to be roach-infested, so, one time, it was around 4 a.m., and we have these sirens for prayers. So, at 4 a.m., there's this siren for the morning prayer. I hear something rustle in my trash bag next to me. I get up, and I'm like, 'Iman, something's moving.' She gets a broomstick, she pokes at it, and then a roach comes out. And I was screaming and jumped into my sister's...

"I never wore costumes until I had to teach young, young children. And one year, I remember I dressed up as a disco ball and that was a lot of fun. [It] was one of those inflatable costumes, and then I used a lot of shimmery duct tape to make it look like a disco ball—I think I wore a beret. I remember going down the hallway in the parade and kids punching me. It was not very fun. And then I though...

"About five or six years ago, when I was trick-or-treating with my sister and my dad, I got severely frightened by something. We were at the house two doors down from my own, so we knew the owners pretty well. They always had the best Halloween decorations, such as covering their whole lawn in gravestones and skeletons, they had smoke machines and lights—the whole shebang. That year, on their por...

"My first experience with any kind of paranormal activity— I was kind of a skeptic about ghosts in general—but my wife and I live near the cemetery over by Pine Ridge. This was many years ago, but for a while, I kept on waking up and seeing shadowy figures either standing in my doorway or in my bedroom, and it was freaking me out. I thought, 'Okay, sometimes you have weird dreams. No big deal.'...

“[At New Salem,] you got money for your fundraising group [by working], and at the time, I was on the dance team, so for every night that you worked, every person would get [around] $100 or something like that. My group would come together, and we would all get into the trailer of costumes, which is a huge semi-truck, and you had to find a costume and put your makeup on, and sometimes there would...

"About a week ago, my parents weren't home, and I was getting ready for school. It was probably around 6:30 a.m. No one was home. All the doors were locked. All my pets weren't home either; they were with my parents. So I was the only one in the house. The night before, I was watching a horror movie, so I was already kind of freaked out. It might've been me just being paranoid, but I was doing my eyeliner,...

“I have this thing where I feel like there are, not ghosts, but shadows in my house. Whenever I'm home alone and stuff, I always think that somebody is walking past me or walking past a door and walking up to me. I see them out of the corner of my eye. So I turn my head really fast to be like ‘Oh hey.’ Then, nobody’s even there; that happens in my mom's house. But at my dad's house, I always...

"When we were younger, [my dad] just found it funny to [scare people.] And then, [my siblings and I] decided to join in. He would set up stuff to scare other people, and we would all dress up. He usually wore a screaming mask and a long, black robe. He would sit in a chair and not move until trick-or-treaters got close, and then he'd chase them. For example, I chased [senior] Emma Zawacki all the way to [junior] Katie Romijn's house one time....

“On Halloween of my freshman year, I got invited to go to [senior] Hunter Robinson’s house for a party. I don’t know if it was just me being a naive freshman, or if I just didn’t get the memo, but I thought it’d be a great idea to wear a costume to this party, and that’s exactly what I did. I thought it’d be hilarious if I dressed up as a Hooters waitress. I don’t really know why I wen...

"A couple of weeks back, around one [or] two months ago, the fellas and I went on an expedition to a supposedly 'haunted' spot up in Rockford. I think the area was called Friske's Creek, and basically, there was a story that back in the 1800s, a farmer named Mr. Friske killed around 20 kids and threw their dead bodies in the river up there. According to stories, if you go there at midnight, you can...

“I was around ten years old. I was trick-or-treating around Lowell with my brothers, and we were just going around houses getting candy when we started seeing these teenage guys, and ten-year-old me was just like, 'Okay, whatever, they're just following and going the same pattern as us.' [The teenagers] kept following us for a good twenty minutes, and I was like 'Okay, this is fine.' Then, it started...

"It was about a year ago when my family went on a trip to New Mexico. It was a family outing; we went to this really big church that a lot of people visit. We were sitting there, and these murals that looked like they were painted-on-fabric were above us, and it was very still with no windows and no wind, and we were sitting there, and I made a joke about how this place is haunted, but it did actually...

"I think three years ago, [my family and I] noticed [this house]. This man is so passionate about his home and getting it decorated for Halloween. He talks to everybody that goes by—they have bonfires at night when they're going by—and every year he adds something new. So this year, he added three huge skeletons, a hearse, and he has a boat—like a pirate ship—with skulls and skeletons and things...