This haunted house story is about a rotary phone that wasn’t connected to anything. It rang five times on our first Halloween in the house, and every time, the same old woman asked me the same question. I’d always rolled my eyes at scary Halloween ghost stories. Then I picked up the phone.
My husband Theo and I bought a brick house in Galena, Illinois, in the spring of 2021. Built in 1912. Big front porch, pocket doors, radiators that clank all winter. We got it for less than it was worth because it had been empty for almost three years and needed everything.
The house had a little phone nook in the front hall. You’ve seen them in old houses. An arched cubby built into the wall, about chest high, with a small shelf. The previous owners had left a phone in it. A heavy black rotary phone with a cloth cord.
The cord went into the wall, but the jack had been painted over decades ago. Theo checked. There was no line. There hadn’t been a landline in the house since at least the nineties, according to the inspector. We kept the phone because it looked good in the nook. That’s the only reason.
The neighbors were nice. An older man across the street named Vern Hostetler brought us a loaf of zucchini bread the first week. He told us that the woman who lived in our house before the last owners used to do Halloween bigger than anybody on the street.
“Mrs. Calloway,” he said. “Full-size candy bars. Cider on the porch. She’d sit out there in a blue coat till the last kid went home. Kids called it the Blue Coat House.”
He said she died in 1988. He said it like he still missed her.
The Phone in the Front Hall
On Halloween, Theo had to work a late shift at the hospital in Dubuque. I was home alone with two big bowls of candy and our dog, Pickle.
I’d decorated the porch. Pumpkins on the steps, a string of orange lights. Trick-or-treating on our street ran from five to eight. It was busy. I was up and down all night.
At 6:10, the phone in the hall rang.
Not my cell. The rotary phone. A real bell, loud and metal, the kind of ring you don’t hear anymore. Pickle started barking at it.
I stood in the hall and stared at it. It rang four times. Then I picked it up, because what else do you do. I think I expected static. I think I expected nothing.
A woman said, “Are the children coming?”
She sounded old. Warm. A little out of breath, like she’d hurried to the phone.
I said, “Who is this?”
She said it again, the same way. “Are the children coming?”
I said yes. I don’t know why. Then there was a click, and nothing. Not a dial tone. Just a dead, heavy quiet in the receiver.
I put it down and laughed at myself. My first thought was that the phone had some old wiring that picked up a radio station. That happens, right? Old phones picking up AM stations? I’d read that somewhere. I went back to the porch and handed out Snickers to three Spider-Men and decided I’d tell Theo about it later as a funny story.
Five Calls on Halloween Night
It rang again at 6:50.
“Are the children coming?”
Same voice. Same words. I said, “Yes, they’re here, they’re coming,” and the line clicked off.
At 7:30 it rang again. This time, before I could answer, I noticed something. The cold. The hallway was cold in a way the rest of the house wasn’t, like someone had left a window open right next to the phone nook. And it smelled like cider. Hot apple cider with cloves. I hadn’t made any.
I picked it up. “Are the children coming?”
I didn’t say anything. I just listened. She was breathing. She said it a second time, and her voice was smaller. Worried.
The fourth call was at 7:58, right before trick-or-treating ended. I let it ring. It rang twelve times. Pickle was pressed against the back of my legs, shaking. When it stopped, the house was so quiet I could hear the furnace kick on in the basement.
I turned off the porch light at eight like you’re supposed to. I took the bowls inside. I sat on the couch with Pickle and texted Theo that the old phone was ringing and I was a little freaked out. He texted back a laughing emoji and “haunted house story for the blog.” He was busy.
At 9:15, it rang one more time.
I answered it on the first ring. I wanted it to stop.
The woman said, “They’re not coming, are they?”
She didn’t sound worried anymore. She sounded tired. Before I could say anything, she said, “That’s all right. Then I’ll go out to them.”
And the line went dead.
A second later, I heard the front door open.
I hadn’t locked it yet. I remember that very clearly, because I’d meant to. I heard the old brass latch, and the hinge, and the cold came down the hall past me. Pickle bolted upstairs.
I didn’t move. I sat on the couch with my phone in my hand and listened to the porch boards creak, one at a time, all the way to the top of the steps. Then I heard the porch swing. The chains. Back and forth, slow.
I sat there for forty minutes. The porch swing went the whole time.
When Theo got home at ten, the front door was standing open and the porch was empty. The swing was still.
The Haunted House Story Vern Never Told Us
The next morning, Vern from across the street knocked on our door. He was holding a little paper bag.
He said a couple of his grandkids came by late the night before, after the porch lights went out. They’d been at a party and missed trick-or-treating. He said they told him they went to our house because the porch swing was moving and they thought somebody was still out there.
He said an old lady in a blue coat gave them each a candy bar.
He held out the bag. Inside were two wrappers. Full-size chocolate bars. The design on the wrappers was old. The kind of logo they haven’t printed since the eighties.
Vern didn’t look scared. He looked like he’d been crying a little.
“I told the kids she always did love Halloween,” he said.
We still have the phone. It’s never rung again. Not once, not on Halloween, not ever.
But every October 31st, I make a pot of cider with cloves. I set a cup on the porch rail next to the swing, and I don’t lock the front door until the last kid goes home.
For more ghosts that keep odd hours, read the haunted elevator story about a closed fourth floor, our haunted hotel stories post about a bed that kept getting made, or the retail horror stories from a Halloween pop-up store in Texas.
Do you have a haunted house story of your own?
Old houses keep things, and sometimes the things they keep are kind. If you’ve lived through a haunted house story, or you have creepy haunted house stories from your own neighborhood on Halloween night, share them in the comments below.
How scary was it?
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