Another Ghost Story I like to Tell My Grandkids

THE TWO FOOLHARDY EXPLORERS

There once were two very brave explorers, named Bob and Tom, who looked for dangerous places and things to investigate. They had gone to India to hunt down giant man-eating tigers. They went to Africa to look for a mountain of gold in the middle of an impenetrable jungle that was full of spiders as big as dinner tables. They sailed over dark and distant oceans fishing for singing sharks and radioactive squid. Nothing scared them -- nothing at all.

One day they decided to go explore the Witch's Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. This cemetery is where the old New England people buried all the witches they had tortured and then burned to death. It was very gloomy, and even after three hundred years it still smelled like charred bones. Some people said that devils and ghouls liked to creep around the tombstones at night, looking for anyone unwary enough to be out there in the dark -- and they would grab them and eat them up, skin, bones, and boogers! No one went there after sunset. Not ever.

But then Bob and Tom went into the cemetery one night, with a big flashlight and a two-way walkie talkie set. They looked at all the gravestones and funeral statues, until they came to a slab in the ground that said "DON'T COME AFTER ME, OR I'LL COME AFTER YOU!" 

Well, this made them very curious, so they took a crowbar and lifted up the slab -- and underneath the slab was a set of stone stairs that led down, down into the blackness. The air that rose up from the stairs was cold and made their skin crawl. Bob decided he would go down the stairs to see what was at the bottom, and Tom would stay at the top. So he took his walkie talkie and went down, down into the darkness with the big flashlight. He kept talking to Tom on it.

"So far there's nothing down here but cobwebs and tree roots" he said to Tom.

Then he said: "That's funny, seems like those tree roots are acting like worms -- wiggling around and trying to grab on to me."

And then Bob started to moan and cry, and finally he said over the walkie talkie: "Tom, I think you better come down and get me -- there's a set of big red glowing eyes up ahead, and they keep blinking at me and getting closer!" 

Tom quickly got out the gun from his holster and was getting ready to go down the steps when a terrible gurgling scream came from the walkie talkie, and then silence.

"Bob! Bob!" cried Tom into the walkie talkie. "Are you all right down there? Should I still come down to get you?"

Bob waited a long time before he heard a reply -- and it was not the voice of his fellow explorer Bob. No, it was a deep, husky, and hungry sounding voice that said to him: "You don't need to come down for Bob anymore. He's gone. But I'm coming up to get YOU!"