Haunted

“What the hell is that?” Reiner asked as he looked out the car window to see an old haunted looking mansion.
“Don’t tell me that’s our new house, Auntie Karina.” His younger cousin, Gabi, groaned as she looked up from her phone for the first time since they left Shiganshina. Reiner’s father barked a laugh from the driver's seat.
“Of course not dear!” Karina said with a smile.
“We live closer to town. But I heard that there’s some kind of urban legend that involves that house.”
“What? Like ghosts?” Reiner scoffed
“Cool! At least this town isn’t totally boring.” Gabi said.
“Hate to break it to you cuz, but ghosts aren’t real!” Reiner said as he playfully ruffled Gabi’s hair.
“Hey now, Reiner. Spirits and Demons are real. Remember what the good book says.” Reiner’s father said.
“Seeing is believing.” Reiner shrugged.
After 45 minutes they finally made it to town. It looked like something from Supernatural. A diner, old looking buildings, and a church made up the tiny town. “Want us to drop you two off at the diner?” Karina asked. Gabi shrugged. “Anything to get out of this car!” Reiner said as he jumped out of his seat. After a 13 hour drive Reiner was willing to sell his soul to stretch his legs. The diner was straight out of the 50’s, complete with a waitress wearing a pink uniform dress and red pumps. Gabi took a single seat by the windows while Reiner sat at the counter. The few diner patrons had their eyes glued on Reiner and Gabi like they could sense they were outsiders. There were five guys and three girls about Reiner’s age sitting at the far end of the counter looking at what appeared to be old newspapers and a laptop and looked like they were stopped midway into a deep conversation. There was an emo guy with lots of piercings and bleached blonde hair and tattoos covering whatever skin was visible under a heavy leather jacket who was sporting a red lipstick kiss mark on his cheek probably from the waitress who looked no more than seventeen. She was pretty cute though. There was a couple sitting at another table. The guy looked like Avatar Aang, while the girl had a half eaten sandwich on her plate. And sitting at the table in front of Gabi, were two girls, one blonde and one brunette, sipping milkshakes. And across from Gabi were three kids that were about Gabi’s age doing homework. After a few minutes of silence, the group at the laptop went back to whatever conversation they were having and soon after the rest of the diner went back to normal. Reiner could hear the Waitress’ heels clicking on the linoleum and stopping behind him. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
Reiner was surprised to see that the hot waitress was actually a guy. But still he was pretty hot. “You must be new here.” The waitress/waiter said.
“Uh, Yeah. Pretty obvious, huh?”
The waiter smiled. “Kinda. It’s a small town.”
“I’m Eren!” The waiter said while gesturing to his name tag. “My brother owns the place.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Reiner.”
“Nice to meet you Reiner.” Eren said as he extended his hand. Reiner slowly shook it.
“Those girls by the door are Ymir and Historia.” Eren said while pointing to them. The blonde waved while the brunette just gave him a blank look.
“The couple at that table are Connie and Sasha.” The girl briefly tore herself away from her food to smile at Reiner while the Last Airbender did the same.
“The kids are Zofia, Udo, and Falco.”
The girl gave him a small smile, while the other boy just blinked at him. The boy with glasses peeped over his textbook but went right back to reading.
“The scary looking guy is my boyfriend, Levi.”
Eren said while blowing a kiss to the glaring blonde.
“And the ghost hunters in the corner are He-Man, Pakunoda, Wednesday Addams, Horse Face, Freckled Jesus, Boku No Piku, Pocky, and Marcel.”
“My name isn’t Horse Face!” One of the guys grumbled.
“How come you only got Marcel’s name right?” A guy that was probably He-Man due to the fact they had almost the exact same haircut. He could tell that the girl with blonde hair was Pakunoda as one of his guilty pleasures was rewatching HunterxHunter even though he knew damn well that Gon and Killua would separate again. And he could see that she was almost a spitting image of the Phantom Troupe member, including the death glare.
“Never mind, their real names are Armin, Annie, Mikasa, Jean, Marco, Pieck, Porco, and obviously Marcel.” Eren sighed.
“Wait did you say ghost hunters?” Reiner asked.
A manic glint went over He-Man’s eyes.
“You mean you don’t know about the murders?” The goth girl asked.
“No…”
“Oh are you in for a treat!” Eren said as he plopped down in the seat next to him.
Marco moved to the chair right next to Reiner and turned his laptop towards him.
“Meet the Hoover family!”
It was an old black and white picture of a family. Two adults, presumably the parents, and 12 kids.
Jesus Christ, why were families so big back then?
“They were very wealthy and one of the pillars of the community in 1887.”
They looked wealthy. The girls were in fancy dresses and all the boys were wearing suits. The room the picture was taken in looked like something from a palace.
“The family consisted of the parents, Henry and Mira, and the children in eldest to youngest order, Bertholdt, Audra, Jack, Leena, Ella, Sophie, Rowan, Victoria, Ben, Alexander, Lucie, and the youngest; Melody was only four.”
They looked like a happy family. Everyone was smiling and laughing. Reiner was dreading what he knew was probably coming.
“But one November morning, the eldest son, Bertholdt’s closest friend came over to see if he wanted to hang out and saw that the door was wide open.”
Oh god… Reiner thought
“When he walked inside… It wasn’t pretty.” Marco said with a solemn look on his face.
He looked pretty shaken up, like he had known them personally. A girl with her long black hair draped over her shoulders patted Marco on the back. She softly smiled at Reiner and walked towards him. “I’m Pieck.” When she stood up, Reiner could see a brace on her left leg where her skirt didn’t cover.
“It was a track accident.” Pieck said
Reiner didn’t realize he was starting until that very moment.
“O-oh, uh… Sorry.”
Well done, now I look like a total creep now. Reiner thought
“It’s fine. It was my fault anyways.” Pieck said
“I wanted to beat the Pock in jumping on our team and he told me not to jump so high but I didn’t listen and I landed wrong in my leg.”
“She’s lucky it wasn’t any worse.” The guy Reiner assumed was “Pock” said as he shook his head.
“Anyways back to the case.” Jean said.
“When the friend walked in he found the badly mutilated body of Bertholdt Hoover right in the foyer.”
“How bad?” Reiner asked.
“As in head caved in, nearly decapitated, bad.” Jean said
Yikes. Reiner would hate to be this guy.
“He would then find the bodies of the rest of the Hoover family all brutally murdered.” Jean said as he typed in a command on the computer and reached for a newspaper clipping. He handed Reiner photocopies of a newspaper. On the front page was a picture of the old house he saw with people surrounding it. Reiner could see parasols and families sitting on picnic blankets.
“Why are all those people there?” He asked.
“Because they were fascinated by it.” The brunette girl named Ymir said from her table.
“It was like Murder Disneyland.” Connie said
“Can you imagine a guy in 1887 sitting and wondering where he’s going to take his family for vacation and looks over at a newspaper that says “Entire Family Brutally Murdered in Home”
And a lightbulb just goes off in his head.” Jean said and then started talking in a Shane Madej accent “Janet! Pack up the kids! I know where we’re going for vacation! We’re going to a murder house!” Reiner couldn’t help but laugh.
“But seriously it was horrible. They would break into the house and steal stuff and make rubbings of the family’s gravestones.” Pieck said.
“Eventually it got so bad that Mira Hoover’s family exhumed the bodies and buried them on private property.” Porco said.
“Was anyone convicted?” Reiner asked.
“Nope. Didn’t even find the murder weapons.” Porco frowned.
“Weapons? As in plural?!”
“A butcher knife, an axe, a sledgehammer, Henry Hoover’s .45 caliber pistol, and a rope.” Marcel said.
“The cops back then thought that they were dealing with more than one murderer that knew their way around the house and that the family probably knew.” Jean said.
“Personally I think that’s just bullshit with there being more than one guy because it would be easy to take care of the kids and since they lived so far away from town, nobody would hear them scream.”
“And if it was just one guy coming home covered in blood, he could just say he went hunting and nobody would think much about it.” Levi said before he took a sip of what Reiner thought was tea. “A bit harder to cover up a whole group of guys coming home covered in blood.” Levi muttered.
“But what about the ghosts?” Reiner asked. Even though he didn’t believe in them, he was a bit curious. If any place would be haunted it would be the place where an entire family was brutally murdered.
“There have been sightings of Mira tending to her garden, lights on in the house, and children playing in the front yard.” Armin said.
“But people who’ve stayed the night say that they’ve seen Leena braiding Ella’s hair, Audra reading in the library, Jack chasing Alexander, Sophie, and Rowan down the stairs, Lucie in nursery, Ben sitting in the window seat, Victoria in her room, Henry working in his office, and Mira has only been seen outside in the garden.” Mikasa said with the excitement of Gabi talking about BTS or BLACKPINK.
“Tell him about Bertholdt and Melody!” Sasha said.
“But the best one yet, is when people see Melody, she’s always knocking on Bertholdt’s door, calling out for him to play with her. Melody was one of Bertholdt’s favorite siblings and they say that Bertholdt was wrapped around her finger and he loved her so much.” Mikasa said, her cross earrings swinging back and forth as she rambled on. “But the thing is, out of hundreds of sightings, not one of them has been of Bertholdt.”
“I’ve seen them.” Pieck said nonchalantly.
“No way!” A voice behind Reiner said. He turned around to see Gabi with her jaw dropped, sitting at the table with Zofia, Falco, and Udo, who had put his textbook down.
“Oh boy here we go again…” Jean groaned as he rolled his eyes. Pieck grabbed the computer and pulled up the picture of the family.
“When I first came here, I believed in ghosts and immediately spent my first night in town at the Hoover house.” Pieck said. “I knew how protective Mira Hoover is about her garden, so I decided to walk through it to get to the house. And then I saw her. Let me tell you, she was PISSED. She just started screaming at me about how sick she was about people walking through her garden all the time and killing the flowers and telling me I was worse than her kids, stuff like that.”
She had to be lying. Even if ghosts were real, he was pretty sure that they wouldn’t spend their afterlife guarding their gardens.
“After listening to her rant for five minutes she just turned around and disappeared. I went in through the back door because it was closest to the window seat where Ben usually is.” Pieck said while pointing to one of the boys in the picture. The kid deadass looked like Young Yuno from Black Clover. “But sadly I didn’t see him. I didn’t have any luck in the nursery, library, staircase, or office either. I tried using my spirit box to try and see who else was in the house but I got nothing.”
A spirit box is a device that goes through all radio channels in the area at high speed. It usually just sounds like static but if you can hear more than one word in a row, some people believe that spirits are trying to communicate with them. In all the Buzzfeed:Unsolved episodes Reiner’s watched that shows Shane and Ryan using the spirit box, Reiner tended to side with Shane in a majority of the episodes.
“But after walking around the house for a few hours, I decided to put my sleeping bag down in the living room and right when I was about to fall asleep-“ Pieck then pointed to a girl in the picture. “I saw Victoria standing under the living room arch. I’ve got evidence if you want to see it.” Pieck said as she scrolled through her phone.
“Evidence!” Jean snorted.
Mikasa shot him a dirty look. “Ignore him. He’s a nonbeliever.”
Pieck then turned her phone towards him as a video began to play. It was dark, and Reiner could hear the crickets chirping.
“Victoria?” Pieck said.
Reiner could see a shadow under the elaborate living room arch that looked similar to a little girl.
“Are you Victoria Hoover?”
And just like that the shadow was gone.
There were a number of things that could have been, all of them definitely not a dead little girl.
“I’ve seen some of them too.” Annie said.
“On our first date, Armin took me to spend the night at that house. I just thought he was an idiot for believing in ghosts.”
“An adorable idiot.” Armin chimed in before being flicked in the forehead by his girlfriend.
“Anyway, in the middle of the night, I felt someone braiding my hair. At first I just thought Armin was screwing with me but when I woke up I saw two little girls braiding my hair. I woke Armin up and they just disappeared. But my hair was still in braids.” Annie said.
“Liar. You started screaming bloody murder and you jumped into my sleeping bag.” Armin said with a smirk.
Annie glared at him. “Armin did manage to take a picture of the braids.” Annie showed Reiner a picture of two very neat French braids tied with ribbons. Was this enough to convince Reiner that ghosts are real?
Nope.
“What would happen if the crime is solved?” He heard Gabi ask from the front of the diner.
“Nothing I guess.” Zofia shrugged.
“Yeah what are they going to do? Put a skeleton in jail?” Jean scoffed.
“Wait. Isn’t there like a cemetery for murderers?” Connie asked.
“Kinda like a prison for the afterlife!” Ymir screeched.
“But it would bring closure for my family.” Marco said.
“You’re family?”
“Yeah, my dad’s Mira Hoover’s great-great-something nephew. Technically we own the house. My mom wants to renovate it and turn it into a museum.”
“I’m sure my father would agree to it! He’s the mayor!” Historia added.
“But do all of you guys seriously believe in ghosts?” Reiner asked.
Almost the entire diner said yes (even Levi) but Jean just shook his head. “There’s no way ghosts exist. Most of the sightings are just a little too specific.”
Finally.
Someone that understands…
“What about you?” Marco asked.
“No I don’t.”
There were a few looks of disappointment but Armin, Mikasa, Eren, and Pieck all had looks of excitement on their faces.
“You will if you spend the night!” Armin said.
“Well I pulled an all-nighter in that house and all I saw were some very alive rats.” Jean said.
“That’s because your negative aura scared them away.” Mikasa scowled.
“Fine, I'll tell you what.” Jean began. “If Reiner spends the night in the house and sees something that makes him a believer. I will scream ‘Ghosts are real’ from the rooftops.”
“Do it, Reiner!” Gabi shouted, while pumping her fist in the air.
Marcel and Porco were looking at him with hopeful smiles.
“If Reiner makes you a believer, you’re doing all of our laundry for six months.” Marco said.
“Deal.” Jean said as he and Marco shook hands.
Marco turned around and pointed around Reiner’s chest. “You’re doing it, right?”
“I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
There were cheers from the ghost hunter table.
“Where do you live, Reiner?” Eren asked.
Reiner didn’t know the address off the top of the head but had it saved on his phone. Reiner handed Eren his phone and showed him the address. “Oh! You live right next to Porco and Marcel!” Eren exclaimed. “And Annie lives a block away from you!”
“We can give you a ride tomorrow.” Porco offered.
“Sure. Just let me tell my mom not to expect me home tomorrow night.” Reiner said.
“Dress warm. It gets pretty chilly.” Pieck suggested.
Going to spend a night in a old murder house.
What’s the worst that could happen?
It’s not like Reiner was going to actually see anything.