One terrifying Halloween night, a young man who was dared by his friends, approached an old, dilapidated, abandoned house at the end of a deserted cul de sac. His friends dared him to stay for one night in this house that everybody feared. Haunted stories about this house have been going around and this young man, known for his courage and bravery, accepted the dare, saying, “I will stay for one night in that house and nothing wrong can happen to me.”
Reliable sources claimed that on nights, especially Halloween nights, when there was a full moon, they heard the sound of chains being pulled while blood curdling screams can be heard from the background. On other nights, an anguished moaning came from the windows, where, if one took a peek, the three dead former owners could be seen walking in their funeral attires, plotting their revenge against their killers.
That Halloween night, the brave young man clutching his father’s shotgun, cringed as he walked to the haunted house. He looked up and saw that indeed the moon was full. When he reached the house, he swung his sleeping bag and canteen through a broken window, climbed through the tree, and entered the house. Lighted by the full moonlight that seeped through the holes in the roof and ceiling, he found his way to one of the bedrooms after he walked through cobwebs, trash, broken furniture, and torn curtains. He laid out his sleeping bag next to the fireplace in the very spot where the former owners supposedly gasped their last terrified breath.
He heard so many sounds as he tried to close his eyes, lizards saying, “Tuk-cooo,” doors and windows opening and closing slowly, and making that eerie horrible sound. Even the rustling sound of the leaves on the trees around the house combine with the many nocturnal insects and birds to even heighten the uneasy feeling of freight and terror.
The young man consoled himself by thinking, “They are just sounds. They will not hurt me.” And then, a thunderstorm came. And with it, the flash of lightning and sparks of light in the room. And these are now creating some forms of moving shadowy figures in the room. He looked around and saw “someone” floating towards him, his hands ready to strangle him. He closed his eyes tight, and waited for the cold hands to touch his neck but... nothing touched him.
When he opened his eyes, there they were: two wide burning eyes were at his feet staring at h8im. As if someone left his head at his feet, facing him, and now, his eyes are focused at him. He thought, “Now, these are for real, there really is a monster in this house, and he is in this very room.” He looked again, and there they were. He closed his eyes and he looked again, and again, and again, hoping that the pair of eyes would disappear, but they just stayed there. They continued to stare at the terrified young man. Suddenly, he realized one thing. His father’s shotgun was beside him. He mustered all the courage he had, slid his right hand to the gun’s trigger and with his left hand propped himself up, and while sitting down, aimed at the pair of eyes. He shot and then screamed so loudly that the neighbours were awakened and thy all rushed to the haunted house.
They all went to the house where the young man’s screams has not stopped. What they saw baffled them. He had shot his toes.
When darkness is all around us, we cannot see clearly. We see things that are not even there. And we make the wrong decision and the wrong move.
Jesus Christ warned that we should not walk in darkness. He even called Himself “The Light” that will make our ways visible, clear, and therefore, correct.
As Christians, we should not walk in darkness. We have the light of the world in us and with us. We don’t need to see things that are not there. We don’t have to shoot our own toes.
