Dares Go Last: A Halloween Dare Gone Awry--Gotcha!

Every region, every city, every neighborhood has its “haunted house”. But none has an edifice like the Grussen Place. The Grussen Place was built over a century ago in a swampy region across the Mississippi River miles from the nearest village. It was built on a land that was inhabited by an indigenous people that dwelt there ages before later Native Americans settled the region, a region they soon enough vacated, leaving it to its cryptic secrets. Dark rituals were held on that site, making it an unholy ground. Nobody knew about the evil that still hovered over that area until doctor Arthur Grussen, a reclusive physician who had a secret of his own he didn’t wish to share, built his opulent home there at the turn of the last century. Nobody ever found out exactly what had happened to the Grussens. Legend has it that one of the children disappeared on a Halloween, followed by the wife and another child. Eventually the house was left alone, abandoned on the accursed plot of ground where it withered and decayed for decades. As time and progress moved forward, civilization rediscovered the Grussen Place with a tragic death that occurred as a result of a Halloween dare nearly forty years ago. Now the legend of the Halloween dare is widely known in areas stretching all the way to the other side of the river and into New Orleans. Jip is a likeable thirteen year old kid whose biggest weakness is his determination to be accepted by his peers and Darren is a rather unlikable seventeen year old who tauntingly relates the legend and the dare to Jip. Being basically a sensible, and somewhat scary, kid, Jip scoffs at the invitation at first; but fears of his friends labeling him a coward, and other developments, eventually goad Jip into taking the most dangerous step of his life. He decides to take Darren up, with some rather interesting conditions and terms, on a dare to visit the Grussen Place, at an hour near midnight, on Halloween! It is a dare he will soon discover he should have never, ever taken! The full fury of the horror that lives on and around that land, and the legend itself, come to life, unfolding in this tale. By the end of this story many questions about what exactly happened at the Grussen Place so many years ago are finally answered, and many new ones are raised, —never to be answered. Go ahead and read on, but do it alone, at night, in a dark room, with the only source of light being barely enough illumination for reading the book. Go ahead! I dare you!

About the Author

Don Michael Shannon is a science and reading teacher at Ecole Classique School in Metairie, Louisiana, and the Academic Games coach for its many national championship teams. He enjoys writing and is best known among his students and Academic gamers for his many ghost tales he shares with them across a campfire at the national tournament. He also is the statistician for the school’s varsity basketball team and helps coach the baseball teams.

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