One Shot Wednesdays -The 'Haunted' Mansion (Patreon)

(thank you to Disney for the above graphic off their parks blog)

IT'S THE HAUNTED MANSION'S ANNIVERSARY IN DISNEYLAND AND THEY'RE ALL OUT THERE CELEBRATING 50 YEARS! while I'm stuck here far away lamenting it haha

Well  I can celebrate in my own (free) way by writing this one-shot about 'The Groundskeeper'! Hope you all enjoy!

For years he was The Groundskeeper for the mansion and for years nothing ‘supernatural’ ever happened.

Granted, the owners of the house over the years had come and gone with somewhat mysterious circumstances. The first: Mr. Gracey –referred to fondly as ‘Master Gracey’—died and left a note that there was to be no mourning at his request. Such was the request put onto his tombstone outside the mansion. 

The Groundskeeper had always wondered about the man’s age for Master Gracey had appeared in his fourties and yet all people who spoke about him posthumously made the man sound like he’d achieved a very old age. He’d only been around a couple short weeks after the new groundskeeper had been hired on and so the man couldn’t quite make up his mind about the late Mr. Gracey. The caretaker remembered a book his sister had read by Mr. Oscar Wilde about Dorian Grey –a man who never aged. Sometimes he entertained the idea that Mr. Gracey had been one such man. But that was ultimately preposterous. There was no such thing.

There was no clear owner of the mansion for some time after that. Yet, the staff kept getting paid and so asked no questions.

It was on a bright summer day when the caretaker was attending to some begonias in a small patch of garden outside the house that he saw the blonde woman descend from the carriage on the arm of another. The two were laughing and dressed in wedding clothes.

Miss Constance –as he came to be told to call her—was a young bride quite pleased with the match she’d made in her husband who was a little beyond her years.

But the marriage didn’t last long –at least not in the eyes of the lowly groundskeeper. There were only a couple years of happiness and then suddenly Miss Constance was in the black of mourning. No one ever figured out who was responsible for her husband’s death. It had to be murder –he was missing his head after all...

After that the woman soon remarried taking solace from her grief in the arms of another man who was all too happy to console her.

That man died too. Or so it was presumed. He just went missing some day. Miss Constance held out hope that he’d return but after over five years she was forced to admit herself widowed again.

She’d had a potential suitor in those years of ‘purgatory’ and in time the caretaker of the grounds saw that her heart was slowly being tended to by this man who only wanted her to be happy. Therefore it was no surprise when she wed the following spring there on the mansion grounds.

The ceremony however had been momentarily interrupted by another man who claimed that Miss Constance had pledged her heart to him! It seemed scandalous but besides the accuser no one else could confirm the wild accusations.

The bridegroom was dead within a month –presumably murdered by the angered heartbroken lover who chopped the head from the body. He went to jail and Miss Constance went away ‘for her health’.

When she returned a year later, she was again married.

She didn’t seem as happy on the arms of her next husband after that. But again perhaps that was just her staff member’s opinion as he saw the two walking along the promenade that had been installed the year before along the grounds. It seemed a marriage of convenience. And in fact the two barely spent time together at the mansion. They even took extended trips overseas but not with each other. His work kept him busy and Miss Constance’s wealth kept her occupied gallivanting in Europe.

But finally the two reunited at the mansion again and agreed to take a short trip together.  Her husband did not return from that trip. The Groundskeeper and many of the other staff were shocked to learn of his death.

How could one woman’s married life be filled with such tragedy? Five husbands already?

It appeared Miss Constance herself felt the same for she did not remarry after that. She bided her time between the mansion and going on holiday all the while wearing five strings of pearls proudly around her neck. It never occurred to the simple man that there was one for each husband she’d lost; one necklace gained with each loss over the years...

Of course over the years there had been many stories about the mansion itself too. Rumours swirl around scandal, after all...

The Groundskeeper never believed any of it; he was not a superstitious man. And besides that he’d never seen any evidence of these claims for himself.

Was there a hidden wing in the house that seemed to trap you without windows or doors? Some said this same room began to stretch on indefinitely. Others said it was another room that did that frightening trick. One person was adamant that in Master Gracey’s time a gentleman had been trapped in one such (or the one and the same) room. In order to get himself out he’d hung himself hoping to escape through death. Codswallop in the caretaker’s opinion for no one could confirm the name of the man who had died –not even anyone in town. Just the story of the superstitious then. Another set of stories whirled around regarding a family buried on the mansion grounds stating they’d all murdered one another in the pursuit of wealth. And yet none of the dates on the tombstones matched the stories. There was also a wild story mostly told around the local tavern about an actress; a soprano who had met her death along with three others in a tragic accident during a party on the grounds of the mansion. Someone (it wasn’t clear who) had been shot with a crossbow by another drunk party guest while another had fallen to death and so on and so on... The only consistent part of the story was that the dead still roamed around drinking, singing and laughing not realizing that they had died.

This for certain was absolute rubbish. For years upon years there had been no sign of any of these supposed ‘ghosts’ or ‘phantoms’ around the mansion!

Most days (or nights) The Groundskeeper ignored the stories with a shrug and instead just focused on doing his job of upkeep with the mansion property. If he made any patrols at night (which lately had become common due to young kids trying to prove the rumors true by illegally entering the property), he’d take his trusted hound with him. The dog made the intruders think twice about trying anything funny and having his pet with him reassured the caretaker that should anything be amiss the dog would pick up on it.

Never once had his hound bayed or barked or growled at anything that wasn’t immediately obvious.

Until last night.

There had been sounds of laughter out in the graveyard. Upon investigation, nothing had turned up. As he sought to make his way back, the groundskeeper heard screaming and screeching. The dog barked then backed up. The man steeled his nerves and went in the direction of the sounds which led him to the dilapidated busts that had long been a part of the property. There was nothing here, either. No matter where he looked the man could not find evidence on who or what had been making the noises heard on the property that night.

The man went back to his home just outside the mansion grounds with an uneasy feeling that night.

In the daylight, things appeared mostly normal. There seemed to be a couple of things out of place but then that could just have been the wind. The Groundskeeper did his work that day with a growing sense of relief. It had just been an uneasy night, that was all.

Right?

Wrong. That night it sounded as though hundreds of guests had suddenly flocked onto the mansion grounds. There were sounds of laughter, of music, of screaming, of crying, of any sort of imaginable sounds that people might make when gathered together in groups.

He set out, heart pounding, in the direction of the house and saw lights go on and then off, silhouettes passing through the house as though there were many guests inside, candles and lanterns passing through windowpanes with nondescript owners.

But it was the sounds of people out on the grounds that worried the man more. For the outside of the mansion was his responsibility and if people were treading all over it and destroying it, it was his liability. He would be accountable.

Only, his hound didn’t seem too keen on making the trip. It took coaxing at almost every step. The man himself seemed to grow even more anxious the further out he got armed with nothing but his lantern. In a final effort to give himself some confidence, justification and also advantage, The Groundskeeper took a shovel from the gardening shed. Armed with this he’d have something to deter whoever these rowdy hooligans were by means of a justified threat.

He could find no one on the grounds themselves which unnerved him greatly. It was as though the people were always several steps ahead of him and no matter what he called out they did not respond. Luckily the hound stuck faithfully to his side. Perhaps the dog too wanted his owner’s protection.

They made it to the gate of the graveyard. Shakily the man unlocked it and swung it open.

“Who is there?!” he cried out to the loud sounds he heard coming from within. He received only laughter as any clear response from amongst the other loud rowdy noises.

He tried to steel himself to go inside but just as he did, the clouds moved away from the moon casting pale moonlight across the grounds. And with that faint light, the man saw everything and everyone who were making all the noise.

Every single person and entity was completely everything that any folk of the nearby town could have invented. And every single thing that was not normally there during the daytime was entirely semi-transparent. The man could see through all of them. All of them. Apparitions; spectres; spooks; phantoms; ghosts.

It appeared that all of the stories, all of them, were true no matter how ‘tall-tale’d’ they’d seemed before tonight.

Though he couldn’t hear it clearly, some group of spectres by the house cried out in celebration as a huge cake with candles was blown out inside. “Happy Anniversary!” they sang, “Haaaaappy Anniversaaaaary!”

The ghosts in the graveyard seemed to know. They let out a cheer.

Scared out of his wits, The Groundskeeper passed out cold.

His hound whimpered and lay down beside him just as a young woman floated over and tapped the man with her ghostly hatchet. “Such a shame,” she cooed to another man in a large hat who beckoned over three more individuals carrying carpet bags, “I was hoping he’d enjoy the party with us...”