"CURSED!! THE MANOR IS CURSED!!", screamed an old lady at the side of the road. It took me a while to realize she was screaming at me. Upon closer inspection, I found out the old lady was selling stuff like charms and other trinkets which she declares keeps away evil. Well, the charms themselves looked evil in my opinion.

Ignoring her rambling about the new manor I moved in, I scan her tiny roadside stall for something that might catch my eye, some gothic jewellery, ancient mirror. You often end up finding good stuff at the most unexpected places after all. But her rambling was still insistent, to the point it was making my ears itch now.

It was an open secret, the history of the manor I had now owned and was moving into. People died, strange activities, poltergeists, shadows moving along at night. It was "haunted", but was it? When I went to look into the manor to check for renovation sites along the property and the house itself, I experienced basically nothing, to the point the dealer with me was psyched. But he did want to sell the manor, and it was cheap, though the renovation wasn't, since the crew reported the same activities this old lady was rambling about.

I finally sigh and walk past the old lady's stall, a small keychain in hand. It was a waste of money, I thought, that kinda stuff doesn't exist, really. But the way I'd get stared at all weird by my neighbors, along with talks similar to what the old lady was going on about, it was starting to annoy me. It had seemed everyone other than I had experienced or saw something that had them thinking the manor was haunted.

The history of this manor was peculiar, in its place used to be a sacrificial altar for a cult about a 100 or so years ago, but the church blessed it, priests cleansed it. And yet there was all of this. Superstitions, that's all they were, I thought as I entered through the big steel gates of the fence built around the manor. Climbing the stairs to the porch, I saw the neighbors looking at me and whispering, and sighed. Motherfuckers.

As I entered, setting down the heavy bag of groceries, I make my way through the boxes lined up, barely set furniture. All my stuff was finally moved here yesterday, along with the work that was already previously done, all that was left was to unpack and set up minor stuff like my closet, or the game station in the living room, the projectors, bla bla. This was tiring. The only silver lining to all of this was how cheap this manor was, god bless.

As I did the mundane chores, I couldn't help but think back to the testaments of the renovation crew. Ugh, those guys were probably complaining for no reason, I thought as I opened up the cardboard boxes one at a time, setting up my stuff around the house as much as possible. By the end of it, only my closet remained empty, waiting for my clothes to be arranged into it. But I looked at the suitcase and sighed. Tomorrow, I thought, plopping down on the bed and falling asleep briefly.

Not long after, I was woken up to a dark room. The nightlight had died, and I couldn't move. As if my body was paralyzed. It took a while, but I registered it as a sleep paralysis episode. And just as I did, I saw a figure in the corner. I couldn't see it, it was blending in with the shadows in an eerie way, only his eyes, glowing a sinister red, were visible.

"Hello" a voice rung in my head, making me widen my eyes. What?