HOUSE No.16 A, the big red house at the end of the street, was believed to have been a mental asylum in the past, while some believed it was not more than a haunted house. Ghostly stories, witches and all kinds of horror tales were attached to it, so people avoided going near the house. When I moved into my new apartment on the street, the first things my neighbours told me were the stories about this house.

I was transferred to London where my new employer had got me the accommodation, a cheap but new apartment. I was grateful to all the favours of my management. It was my first day in my apartment, I was enjoying the day while unpacking my stuff. There were laughter and cries of children playing in the street and also some slight traffic noise. Suddenly everything just stopped. I had a strange feeling. I looked outside the window and was shocked to see no one there. No children, no cars or bikes and no people in the street! As if I was the only living thing there. It was freaking unbelievable! But I thought maybe I was overreacting to my new surroundings so I ignored and started unpacking again.

After an hour I heard the same sounds of children and traffic. I looked out of the window and found that everything was normal, people, traffic, in fact the street was alive. Over the next few days, I noticed the sudden silence in the street for about an hour when everything just vanished from the scene and the street became dead. It was very weird. One day, I decided to walk around the town to get familiar with the people and the location.

When I was wearing my shoes to go out I noticed the same sudden silence so I peeked out from the window to see the street. It was deserted. I decided to find out what the matter was. I started walking in the silent empty street, observing the houses on both sides, all the houses looked alike expect for the one house at the end of the road — the big red notorious one!

It was a huge house painted red. Deserted and dirty, as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a thousand years. Just then I heard chanting and it was coming from the red house. Curiosity overtook me and I walked on slowly towards it.

As I got closer, I felt a chilling sensation overtake me. Upon reaching the house, I found the fence was above my height so it was difficult to see the entrance. I heard voices but couldn’t understand what was being said. Then I distinctly heard people shouting, “13, 13, 13...!”

The fence was too high to see over, but I tried to look through a gap in the planks to see what was going on inside. Something just poked me in the eye and I heard a giggle and “14, 14, 14...!”

Then someone opened the fence door, I was pulled in and was surprised to see a large crowd of people sitting there, all smiling and then they echoed “Surprise!”

Confused, I stared at them unsure if they were ghosts or real people. My neighbour was also there, he came forward and explained while trying to hide his smile, “It’s a trick we play on all new people in our neighbourhood. We tell horrifying tales about this house and then we go silent for one hour everyday to make sure the new person is sure that something really creepy is going on in the town. And within a week, the curious ones come and try to explore the house while we hide here to scare them. It’s just fun, it is our way of greeting the new ones in the town,” he said.

“But how can you be sure that people will come here?” I asked.

“Oh they do… people coming here are mostly curious, like you!” he said.

It didn’t make a lot of sense and I thought that people were rather wasting time hiding like that, what if a person wasn’t curious enough? But I was still glad that they weren’t ghosts. And so we all laughed and enjoyed the get-together.