The Haunted Family Bible

“Come and look at this,” my father said with a tone in his voice I recognized as meaning it was something interesting.

I walked over to our kitchen table curiously. He had a book. It was actually a huge book and leather-bound.

“It’s a bible,” explained my Dad.

It was a large and heavy, black, leather-bound bible. It looked quite old too.

“It belonged to neighbors of mine when I was a boy,” explained Dad leafing through some of the pages. “Here, look at this.”

The inside cover of this huge family bible was written in and once I got used to the old fashioned hand writing, I realised it was a four generation family tree. Did it mark the path through the family that this bible had taken?

As if answering my mental question, Dad told me that the Bible had been acquired in the 17th Century and passed down through several generations of the family. That family was now extinct. It had died out with the recent death of the old lady who had given Dad this bible for safe keeping.

I found this bible fascinating. It’s age, the smell of the paper, the strange typeface used, the binding and leather cover that was embossed in a strange design. It was a mysterious book in many respects.

We examined the book for quite a while and then my Father packed it in paper and took it up to the attic where it would stay at least for the time being. We thought nothing more of that bible.

In the days and weeks that followed, strange things began to happen in the house. It started with creaks and groans, unexplained bangs and crashes from the attic. “Just the heating and cooling of the rafters,” my Dad told us reassuringly. But things didn’t improve and if anything, steadily got worse.

Rest of this short story here.