Free Spanking Stories - Spanko.net

The Spanking Ghost

Part one - Hearing the Story


"It's back here." Katie Brookfield said, leading her friends through the 'designated green space'. She had always thought of it as a wooden area, but lately she had heard that the city planning folks were calling it a 'designated green space' because of zoning bylaws.

"Are you sure?" Linda Davenport asked dubiously.

"Of course I am." Katie answered. "I grew up around here."

"If you say so." Gwen Bellows said, giving the bushes a suspicious look.

"You never went camping?" Rose Holmes asked.

"I've never so much as been in the woods." Gwen answered primly. "It's dirty and yucky and I don't like it."

"Then be happy that we won't be here long." Siobhan Williams said mischievously. "Otherwise you'd need to learn what leaves you don't wipe with."

"Wipe?" Gwen asked.

"You see any bathrooms?" Siobhan asked with a grin. "Because I don't, so if you have to pee then you have to..."

"That's it!" Gwen snapped. "I'm leaving."

"Don't be that way." Siobhan giggled. "I'll tell you which leaves are poison oak."

"Stop it." Katie chided. "We won't be here long. God! It only takes maybe 15 minutes to walk through here. You can hold it that long."

"Okay." Gwen pouted.

Leading the others down the familiar path, Katie had to wonder at the mix of the group. There was blonde Linda, redhead Gwen, brunette Rose, and dirty blonde Siobhan (whose roots needed touching up). It was almost as if they had decided to pick friends based on hair colour, going for the widest variety. Of course they hadn't and if they had then Siobhan's shifting hair would have ruined that scheme.

Then she rounded some bushes and was at 'the camp'. Not a real camp, it was just a clear area with some stones that were nice for sitting on and a bit of lean-to under the bows of one of the larger trees. The area was often used by kids to build play forts, but someone from the city would pull down anything that looked like it might last a week. The lean-to was ignored, mostly because it didn't appear on aerial views, but that was the limit of their patience.

There were no kids there now, only her older Cousin Greg. He was sitting on of the larger stones with a cooler one side of him, a bottle of Jim Beam on the other, and a large glass before him. Seeing him there, Katie had to bite back a frown. Greg was on the wrong side of 25, getting closer to the big 30, and that was far too to old be drinking in the woods.

"There you are." Katie said, forcing herself to smile. "I thought I'd find you out here."

Greg Brookfield looked up from his drink and frowned.

"If you thought I'd be here then why did you come?" Greg challenged. "No offence, but like the song says, 'when I'm drinking alone I prefer to be by myself'."

"Don't you have to?" Rose asked.

"Huh?"

"Be by yourself. To drink alone." Rose clarified.

"Not really." Greg snorted. "You can have two or three people, all drinking alone. The trick is you don't talk. You drink, that's it. No interaction. You, your thoughts, and the booze. Do that and you can be drinking alone in the middle of a party."

"Um, anyway, I kind of need to ask you something." Katie said.

"Then get to the fucking point. Christ, if I wanted company I'd be drinking in O'Malley's bar. Fewer bugs for one thing. So how do I get rid of you?" Greg asked.

Katie blushed, her irritation showing on her face.

But not in her voice.

"I was trying tell my friends the story of the old haunted house, you know, the Hinrich place, but I can't remember it all." Katie explained. "You used to tell it good and..."

"And Halloween is coming and you want a ghost story. At your age." Greg snorted. "Well, if it will get rid of you. None of you are kids so technically I won't be lying."

"Lying?" Gwen asked.

Greg nodded.

"I had to promise never to tell the story again. We all did - we being the older ones who were passing it along. Christ, it must be close to a decade since I told it, but I still remember it."

"Wait, I'm confused." Katie said. "Who made you stop."

"One of the aunts. Clara Townsend. She went around to everyone who told the story and made them promise not to tell it to kids. Said it was too scary and even if it wasn't it wasn't appropriate. Maybe it was okay to tell way back when, but, what did she say? Today's 'new paradigm' and 're-envisioned social consciousness' meant that no one should tell it to kids."

"Why?" Linda asked. "Is it racist or something? Because I won't listen to racist stuff."

"Nope." Greg said, finishing of his drink. "The main reason is it made her son Henry - Katie, you remember Henry Townsend don't you? Well it made her son Henry pee his pants. Of course that was in a dark room on a stormy night and the teller was trying to scare him."

Greg opened his cooler and extracted a beer. After pouring it into his glass (carefully avoiding a head) he measured out some Jim Bean and added that.

"All the kids were scared, but only Henry peed himself and everyone teased him and that really pissed off his mom." Greg informed them. "Speaking of racism, that ounce and half I just added used to be called a jigger. As in a jigger of gin. But it sounds too much like another word so they stopped using it. True story."

"Really?" Linda asked in disbelief.

"Really." Greg confirmed. "You can look it up. It's cross my heart true, just like the story I'm about to tell. So pull up a rock and take a seat and I'll tell you the story. And after that you'll leave me the fuck alone with my thoughts. Deal?"

"Deal." Katie said.

The others nodded and started to form a circle around Greg.

"Can I get a beer?" Siobhan asked.

"Nope, I only have enough for me." Greg told her. "Now sit your butt down and I'll tell you the tale."

Greg took another drink then dropped his voice, going for a mysterious tone.

"And it's true, the story I'm about to tell. You can look it up if you care to. Now no one knows the truth of everything so if I don't know something to be the gospel truth I'll use the words 'and they say', which will be true because I'm just telling you what they say."

"Are you saying there's a real ghost?" Rose snorted.

"Nay, nay young lass."

"Young lass?" Rose sputtered.

Greg shrugged and took another drink.

"I'm getting into the feel of the story." Greg explained. "Telling it the same way it was told to me so long along. Aye, Cousin Jerry 'tis the one who told me and he could tell thee, um, tell thou, um, okay, so I can't do the thee's and thou's, but I'll try for the rest."

"Just give us the facts." Siobhan urged.

"The facts? Okay, here are the facts." Greg said, then he dropped his tone again. "A long time ago there lived a man named Alfred Hinrich. Now Alfred Hinrich came from Germany, but he came when he was 5 so when he grew up he didn't have an accent or anything. The Hinrich family had money, enough that he didn't have to work, but he did. He went into education and ended up a principal at Woolgreen High. That school got torn down back in the 60s but if you want you can find a picture of it in the main branch of the library. It's on the second floor."

"So the school was real?" Rose asked.

"It's all real, real and true, and it's going to stay that way for a while." Greg said, then he wet his whistle. "Now the main facts of the story happened in 1942. There was a war on, a big one, that they called World War Two."

"We know about that." Katie snapped. "Get on with it."

"That was the year." Greg said in a hushed voice, ignoring his cousin. "Now leading up to that point Alfred had done a lot of normal things. He'd married a wife, a girl named Mary, and she'd died giving birth to their first child, who was named Rudolf. As I said, there was a war on and Rudolf joined the army. So did the entire graduating class of 1942. All the boys at least."

"Couldn't they get into college?" Gwen asked.

"All of them?" Siobhan snorted. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It was that kind of war." Greg explained, breaking character slightly to explain. "If you didn't join up you got drafted."

"The draft isn't fair." Linda declared.

"Yeah, that's why I wanted to tell you about WWII before I start this story." Greg said. "But it's true, you joined up or were drafted. You can look it up."

"It's true." Rose agreed. "I saw something on the history channel about it."

"And it was the sort of war that killed people. Lots of people. Thousands could die in a day. And one of those people was Rudolf, Alfred Hinrich's son. Ah, but it wasn't just Rudolf that died. The same week his plane got shot down there was this troop ship sank. It went to the bottom of the sea and with it went the entire graduating class of 1942. All of them died."

"That's sad." Linda commented.

"Some say that's what broke him." Greg continued. "Losing his son was bad enough, but all those boys he had taught, who he had encouraged to sign up, all of them dead with the same week. Alfred Hinrich couldn't handle it. He cracked. Not raving mad, no, but that might have been better than what happened to him."

"Now back then they didn't have grief counsellors. People were dying daily in that war and everyone just tried to deal. The problem is, Alfred Hinrich couldn't deal. Somehow he thought that all those boys died because of a lack of discipline. That they must have panicked. That if they had just held it together they would have been able to reach the lifeboats and made it out okay. Maybe not all of them, but that some of them might have made it out. Now back then they had the paddle in school, even here." Greg paused, looking to his audience. "Anyone going to interrupt? Say that it wasn't so?"

"That was practically the dark ages." Siobhan said with a shrug.

"Katie already explained some of that part." Rose added.

Greg nodded, then dropped back into storytelling mood.

"Now back then they were lax about things like paddling, but people started to notice that Alfred Hinrich was paddling way more than normal. And it wasn't just his students. There was this one time, when he walking through the playground next to an elementary school and this little girl did something that caught his eye. Well he grabbed her, yanked up her dress, pulled down her panties so hard they tore, then spanked her bare bottom right then and there! In front of everyone. He spanked her bum hard and long until it was dark red."

"That's when he was arrest?" Linda guessed.

"No, not quite." Greg answered. "See, back then they were really into authority and Alfred Hinrich was an authority."

"Really?" Rose snorted.

"Really." Greg confirmed. "If he had just spanked her over her dress then no one would have said much. The problem was they were really uptight about little boys seeing little girls without their clothes and lots of boys saw that little girl's bum."

"They probably saw more than that." Siobhan mused. "My boyfriend, he once showed me this spanking video, and when the girl kicked you could see everything she had. Then Walter asked if I might like to try it and I told him that the only way would be for me to spank him and ...."

"And we should get back to the story." Katie urged, knowing where Siobhan's tale would end up. That like every other Walter story she told, Siobhan's story would be long, pointless, and end with them screwing like rabbits.

"That wasn't the only off school spanking he did but that was the one that caught everyone's attention." Greg said, continuing as if Siobhan hadn't spoken. "The high school's policy was that only boys got paddled, and with half the boys in that school having bruises on their butt most of the off school spanking he did was of girls. And it wasn't just kids he was spanking! Once, he walked up behind this woman with three kids who was bending over for something and he gave her bum three good smacks. He tore into her about how it undignified it was to bend that way and how she should have squatted and what kind of example was she being to her kids?"

"Was he arrested then?" Linda asked.

"No, he wasn't. See, he was authority and back then people respected authority, but it got more people talking. Talking so much that there was a hearing called for Monday, November 1st, 1942. Everyone thought that he'd be forced to take a 'vacation' until he felt better. That while he was an authority and they were giving him slack over his son's death, that he had gone too far. Alas, it was not to be." Greg's voice then shifted into a conspiratorial tone. "For if November 1st was a Monday then Halloween was a Sunday. Back then they took Sunday seriously, that whole 'keep the Sabbath holy' thing almost had the weight of law. And on this particular Sunday Alfred Hinrich looked out of his window and saw girl staggering in a disgraceful way. She was dressed like a tramp, smoking, and she had bottle in a bag. And all that on a Sunday afternoon!"

"Who hasn't been there?" Gwen joked.

"Saturday's better for drinking." Linda commented. "You have time to get over the hangover."

"Worse, he recognised her." Greg continued. "She was Ethel Randel and she had been one of his students until she dropped out that September. So he went out and made her follow him back inside his house. That house. The house that still stands to this day!"

"Why did she go with him?" Linda asked. "Why didn't she scream for a cop? Give me one reason, just one reason she didn't call for a cop or I'm calling bullshit right now."

"Let's see. Public drunkenness, underaged drinking, and did I mention that she was staggering drunk?" Greg offered. "That's three reasons she wouldn't get the cops involved. Satisfied?"

"Um, I guess." Linda muttered.

"So he bullies her into house then he bullies her into taking off her dress and her slip and her girdle." Greg continued.

"I don't like where this going." Rose stated. "Not if kids get told this story."

"And he did all that just so he could take his belt to her bare bum." Greg continued.

"That's a bit better." Rose acknowledged. "Not much but a bit."

"So she's bending over the arm of his couch, begging him not to do it and telling him that he'll get in trouble, but he already has that hearing tomorrow so he doesn't care. He brings down the strap once!"

Greg smacked his right fist into the palm of his left hand, making a smacking sound.

"Twice!" Greg said, producing another smack. "Three times!"

Greg paused after making a third smacking sound.

"Then a fourth?" Katie prompted.

"No, then nothing. Ethel Randel looked over her shoulder and saw him standing there all pale and white with a ghastly expression on his face. Then he dropped to the floor. He didn't stumble, he just dropped bonelessly to floor. Well she stayed bent there for a couple of seconds, then she went over to him and when she checked he wasn't breathing. She got dressed and called the police. Yes, Alfred Hinrich found away to avoid that hearing, but not the grave."

"He died?" Gwen asked.

"He died." Greg confirmed. "They couldn't say if it was a heart attack or stroke but he died. For real and for true."

"When do we get to the scary stuff?" Siobhan asked.

"Soon." Greg told her. "But back to Alfred Hinrich - his son and heir was dead, his wife was long dead, and there was a lot of money involved. He had pictures and artwork that were worth a fortune. He also had relatives in Germany and we were at war with Germany. In short, he had a tangled estate and enough money that lawyers would fight over it. And fight and fight as his wife's relatives tried for it. Then the war ended and more people started to fight over it, but a lot of people had died and records had been destroyed and there wasn't a clear heir."

"Meanwhile, there was this house. With no one knowing who would owe it and us still at war with the German, the lawyers decided that they couldn't let it sit empty, not when it could be earning income for the estate. They moved all the valuable stuff out and tried to rent it - with the rent going to the estate to help pay all the legal bills. The thing is..." Greg's voice dropped again. "The thing is, strange things happened. The first tenants, they say that their kids started to wake complaining about dreaming that they had just been spanked. Dreams are dreams and almost harmless, but they say when those woke up they had marks on their bottom. Spanking marks, or so they say."

"Ah, we're getting to 'they say' stuff." Rose nodded.

"I don't believe a word of any of this." Linda commented. "I don't think any Al Herich every lived."

"Then came that night, that awful night, in lonesome October." Greg continued. "When it stopped being dreams. They say it was on a night like this in October, 1943, the father was out when the mother heard something awful. Screams and smacks and more screaming! They say she ran to where they were, but couldn't get there. They say it was like she was in a dream, she moving slowly and doors didn't open and the stairs seemed to be stretching out in front of her. But she ran on! They say she finally reached that upstairs room when the children were. They say she yanked open the door and saw an awful sight! That her son was facing the corner, sobbing they say with a red bottom, while her daughter... " Greg's voice took on a serious tone. "While her daughter was over the lap a man who was spanking her! And not just any man - they say it was Alfred Hinrich, returned from the dead to give this spanking. They say the woman screamed at the sight of Alfred Hinrich and the moment she did he vanished, causing her daughter to fall through where his knees had been to hit the floor hard. They say the mother went to comfort the children and when the father returned that's how he found them - upstairs in that little room with children crying, both with red bottoms, with the girl's right eye blackened, and the mother hysterical."

"Right." Linda snorted. "I bet children's services believed that one."

"There wasn't any children's services back then." Greg told her. "Back then no one cared if you hit your kid, just as long as you didn't put it in the hospital. No, if the mother had wanted to spank her kids black and blue and sock one of them in the face then she would have just done that. No need to invent a story."

"They say that family fled that night and never returned to the house." Greg continued. "Not even after a bunch of priests and ministers and preachers had been brought into to lay the dead to rest. But they say that none of them could move him on for he had died with a job half done and needed to somehow complete that final spanking before he could rest. That while he searched for Ethel Randel he spanked any that he saw that he felt deserved it. They say that lawyers tried to rent it out again, but the second family fled as well. As did a third. They say this went on long enough that no one would rent it, not even for a dollar a month."

"So, if what they say is right, the lawyers hired a caretaker, one who wouldn't live there but would look after the house, as a temporary measure. A temporary measure that continues to this day." Greg continued. "But that's not all. They say that people have snuck in, sometimes tramps or hippies or homeless people or just kids trying to prove the legend wrong. They say that no matter who does it, that sometime during the night, the ghost of Alfred Hinrich rises again. They say that even if you don't see, you'll be sitting there and out of nowhere -"

Greg's hand shot out, smacking his cousin on her left hip. Katie let out a little yelp as he did.

"- SMACK! " Greg timed the word together with the deed. "And the ghost of Alfred Hinrich will have claimed another victim."

His audience sat there stunned, shocked by his actions.

"Of course it works better in a dark room." Greg said, his voice returning to normal. After taking another drink he added: "Where the kids can hear a smack and shriek and no one will own up to yelling."

"Yeah, I can see that." Rose nodded. "Is that why that Henry kid wet himself? Because he was smacked?"

"No, he wasn't smacked, but the kid that was smacked scream that the ghost had got her and that scared him." Greg answered. "At least that's what I heard. And if the kids aren't scared by then, well there's more you tell."

"Like?" Katie prompted.

"Like how you have to swear them to secrecy to tell them how these kids you know didn't believe the curse and went there last year - or maybe a couple of years ago - and how none of them will say what happened but every one of them left with a red bottom." Greg told her. "Or if you don't worry about them thinking you chickened out, you say that you were one and got scared and left early and as you left you heard the ghost claiming one of the others. Or, if you really want to scare them, say that you were one of the ones who went and while you've pissed off your parents before you've never been spanked so hard in your life. Not that you're saying that the ghost spanked you, but you've never been spanked like that before. I think that Henry got that full treatment and all that talk about real life spankings is what pissed his mother off. You know how anti-spanking Aunt Clara is. Maybe that's what made him pee his pants, knowing that spankings still happened in real life? Who knows? Anyway, that's the story, now fuckoff and leave me to drink alone."

The girls exchanged looks and started to get up.

"Out of curiosity, is there a story behind this drinking alone bit?" Linda asked.

"Yeah, but it isn't good as the haunted house one." Greg said, mixing himself another drink. "Way back when I knew a girl named Betty. We grew up together, we were each others first real dates, and later we were each others firsts. Final year of high school, we went to Harvest slash Halloween Dance and we both got drunk. Really drunk, and some asshole decided to drive her home."

"And she ended up with him and not you?" Linda suggested.

Katie just winced. She knew this story far better than she knew the haunted house one.

"Nope."

"She got knocked up and you couldn't forgive her?" Gwen suggested.

"Nope. That asshole, he was too drunk to get it up." Greg said, taking another drink. "And he was too drunk to drive. Asshole's car drifted off to the right and hit a streetlight. Asshole, he walked away unscratched while the streetlight went through Betty's head."

"And that's why I drink alone!" Greg roared, waving his hand towards them. "Your faces. The expressions on them. I don't want pity, I just want to have a few drinks and remember old times. And no, I don't need a bit of female company to help me get over it. Betty might have been my first but she wasn't my last. Katie can tell you about a few of my ex's. And I don't do it every year, but this year I happened to run into asshole. He went through college, got a degree, and is living the good life making maybe six or seven figures. I'd tell you his name but then he'd sue me for liable. See, there was a legal foul up with his alcohol reading so he only had to pay a ticket for going 70 in a 30 zone. Must be nice to have an important family. So if you would just excuse me, it's time to start drinking alone again."


Later, as they left the wooded area, the group was torn.

"It's a good story, but we can't use it." Rose declared. "We need something better for that stupid anthropology course. Why did we ever take it?"

"Because urban legends sounded fun and it looked like an easy course." Siobhan answered.

"It's a good story!" Katie protested.

"Maybe, but how can we write it up?" Gwen said. "The whole thing was so made up."

"Maybe if some of the facts were true then maybe we could use it." Linda mused. "But they aren't. I mean, a guy going around spanking kids and not getting arrested? Who's going to believe that?"

"And a little girl with a black eye and children's services not caring?" Linda snorted. "Not likely."

"Maybe if I could find a few facts..." Katie suggested.

"You do that." Siobhan answered. "And when you can't we move on to something else."


Part two - Research


Katie stood on the second floor of the main library, looking at the picture of Woolgreen High.

"Well that part is real." Katie muttered, then she went over to the reference desk.

Katie started to explain what she was looking for and the middle-aged librarian started laughing.

"That old ghost story." Kathleen Carpenter laughed. "We used to get high school students in every year, researching it, and the younger ones asking round about questions about it, but I think you're the first one to ask in the last five, maybe ten years."

"Really? Other people have asked?"

"Really." Kathleen Carpenter told her. "Since then, well, maybe we just have different things to be scared of. Anyway, I can give you the standard research list."

"Um..."

"Don't worry, it's on the computer." Kathleen Carpenter assured her. "It takes nothing to print off a copy."

"Couldn't you just give me..."

"There's nothing to give." Kathleen Carpenter answered. "Other than the resources. We used to have something to pass out to the younger kids but we cleaned the vertical files a few years ago and I'm sure we tossed it then. No, I can get you started, but you'll have to put the pieces together yourself."

"Um, all right."


Soon Kathleen Carpenter was leading Katie to the microfilm readers.

"We were going to get these all old newspapers digitised and put them on the web, but then funding was cut and that didn't happen." Kathleen Carpenter explained. "If it had then you could just type in a few key words and find everything you want but it didn't so you can't. I'll set you up on reader with a printer; just feed coins in there and you'll be able to print off whatever's on the screen. Now this control is forward, do this for fast forward, reverse is like this. This one is to zoom in and out. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it."

"Um, sure." Katie said.

She was going over the printout when Kathleen Carpenter returned with boxes of microfilm.

"The reel goes here, like this." Kathleen Carpenter demonstrated. "When you're done with one you just rewind it back on its spool and start on the next one."

Kathleen Carpenter stayed with Katie for a few minutes, until Katie was familiar with the controls, then left her. As she did, Kathleen Carpenter couldn't help remembering past Octobers. Back when she had started at the library there had been countless kids trying to look up facts on the "Spanking Ghost". She, like the other librarians, sometimes teased them about spankings. Occasionally she had wanted to do more than tease, especially when one of them wandered out of the Children's Department and bent pages, broke spines, or otherwise damaged books.

Of course she hadn't. Kathleen Carpenter liked her job too much to toss it away. The most she had ever done was turn a blind eye when a parent (or babysitter, older siblings, or other escort) handled things. She had occasionally heard stories about how some librarians had once handled young patrons, but those stories (like the one of the Spanking Ghost) were of a fast receding time. Stories of long ago eras could be entertaining but they had little to do with today's world.


Katie tracked down another reference to Principal Hinrich in the back issue of the paper and printed it. Clearly it was a historical fact the man had existed - or at least a Alfred Hinrich had existed. She had many pages to go before she could tie him to the story.

Zipping ahead to the next article on the list, Katie paused to read some old comics. They were old, corny, but she giggled. After exhausting that microfilm, Katie took stock. She had a fluff piece about the Hinrichs buying the Victorian mini-mansion, Rudolf Hinrich's birth notice, Mary Adams Hinrich's death notice, and several articles about how Alfred Hinrich had worked his way up to principal of Woolgreen High. She could print more articles about that or she could skip ahead a few years.

'I'm not spending my whole life doing this.' Katie decided, and skipped over several suggested entries to print one that noted that local boy Rudolf Hinrich had been accepted into the Army Air Corps. After printing that one, she switched to the first reel of 1942.

'This is going to be depressing.' Katie thought. 'I'm going to read a rah, rah, rah report on a bunch of boys enlisting and I know that they are all going to die.'

The printout had the dates she needed, but Katie found herself slowing down to read more comic pages. They were old, but they did cheer her up.

A few times she stopped a page or two too soon and encountered the Dear Dorothy Dix advice column. Most of the times she quickly advanced, but one column caught her eye. Two sisters, 15 and 16, were writing in with their problem. Their mother had remarried and their new stepfather was talking about reintroducing spanking into the household, delivered in a way that wouldn't damage dresses, slips, or any clothing. There was a family meeting scheduled soon and both girls feared that their stepfather would be using it to declare the start of this new regime, perhaps giving them a taste of his belt at the meeting! Katie expected the answer to focus on a call to the police, but it didn't. To her amazement it talked about contacting female relatives or a clergyman because it would be "very unseemly" for a new stepfather to begin to discipline them that way at their age. That if he couldn't be swayed to suggest either that their mother handle things or that they be allowed to wear at least minimal clothing when the belt was used. As Katie read the reply it was clear that the woman was expressing her disagreement with the situation and yet not being able to suggest any real solution. That was when Katie realised that the crazy stories of random spankings being given might have been true.

After printing that page (she knew that people would have to see it to believe it!), Katie moved on. Soon she had printed out the pages that cheered the complete enlistment of the graduating class. Skipping over articles that supplied updates on the progress of the enlisted class, Katie rewound that microfilm and went to 1942 - part 2.

The loss of Rudolf Hinrich's plane made front-page news. Soon after that there was practically an entire issue of the paper devoted to the sinking of the troopship. Katie dutifully printed off the highlights, then she had to search. The next article wasn't a full page one but a half-hidden one announcing that there would be a hearing to determine Alfred Hinrich's future at Woolgreen High. Couched in innuendo were the facts that while understandably suffering from grief, Principal Hinrich's behaviour off of school grounds had been erratic while his actions at school "may have been unnecessarily strict". After that came an article on his death, one citing Ethel Randel as reporting it to the police. After printing off several tributes to the man (many of which stated they weren't going to touch on his 'recent difficulties') Katie printed off a "in the courts" page that described how Ethel Randel would be spending six months at the home for wayward girls after being charged with disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and delinquent behaviour on October 31st. A mid November paper had an article that revealed the problem with the Hinrich estate, which Katie printed.

Then it was time to switch to another reel and print off the humorous and unbelieving articles about the 'haunting'. The few times it was reported the reporter seemed to think that it much be the child's guilty conscious coming through or a family attempting to somehow cash in on the ghost story.

The stories didn't stop with the 40s. At a couple points in the 50s and 60s there were articles about caretakers dealing with young miscreants who tried to spend Halloween in the "haunted house". One had a quote of:

"Maybe they didn't see no ghost, but my belt came off so maybe they got what they came for. Or, if their folks complain, maybe they did see that darn ghost cause if someone complains it wasn't me that tanned them."

With the reporter adding that the caretaker's wife had been present to deal with any tomboys who might have braved the place.

After those articles, the next ones were depressing mundane. Sometime in the 70s the Hinrich Foundation had been established to care for the house and manage the estate. Another article, one in the 90s that decried "out of control and unending litigation", cited the Hinrich Foundation as proof that the legal system was a mess. It spelled out that the heirs of the heirs of the possible heirs of Alfred Hinrich were still fighting over the proceeds of the foundation.


Even with the provided list it took Katie a few hours to document the legend of the Spanking Ghost. Enough time that she felt that she should call a formal meeting to go over the results. She even called Greg, in case he wanted a copy of her research

The others were suitably impressed (especially since Katie neglected to mention the librarian's help), except for Linda who felt that her effort spent looking up the word 'jigger' ("It's there and it's a really a drink measurement") was of equal importance.

Greg looked at the printed microfilms in amusement.

"The storyteller always says that you can look it up, but I think that you're the first one who ever did." Greg commented. "Well, since you've printed this off you've earned what I brought in my bag."

"Booze?" Linda suggested.

"No." Greg said sharply. "I might have the occasional drinking binge when thinking about a friend's death, but I'm not a drunk. No, this is actually on topic. I ran into Jerry and mentioned you were researching the old story and he decided to pass along part two."

"Part two?" Rose asked.

"It goes with the 'spent the night in the house' part of the story." Greg said, producing a cardboard box from his sports bag. "This was the stuff used to convince them that it was real."

The box was filled with old photocopies.

"What sort of font is that?" Siobhan sniffed.

"I think it's something from a dot matrix printer." Greg said with a shrug. "A lot of it dates from the mid 80s, when a movie called Ghostbusters came out. After seeing that some kids developed long, detailed plans to bust the ghost at the haunted house."

"Detailed?" Linda snorted, glancing at one of them.

"For kids they were detailed." Greg answered. "Anything more than 'we go there and um do something' is A-list planning for someone that age."

Most of the papers were the same. Lists of supplies (sleeping bags, PJs, pillows, flashlights, etc), plans on how to get inside the house (most of them focused on a rear window that the caretaker sometime opened), and what do when they got there.

"I've looked them over and most them seem to be trying tempt the ghost out of hiding." Greg commented. "They talk about bringing spanking implements, ones that have been used on you or thought might get used on you, and then splitting up at around midnight to search for the ghost. Some of the plains include stuffing things down your pants so your butt will have protection. Some talk about ouija boards to contact the ghost and others talk about trying to use flashlights like proton beams. The sneaky ones involve setting up one kid to get attract the ghost's attention then snapping pictures of the ghost as he spanks the decoy."

"Were any of these ever acted on?" Katie asked dubiously.

"You mean did anyone ever try to break into that place?" Greg asked. "Probably. I can remember stories about how a couple of kids barely avoided criminal records from trying that. Did some of those kids end up with sore tails? Who knows? But if they did then I'd put that done to outraged parents over some kind of spook."

"It was the 80s." Linda nodded, ignoring the more recent plans. Ever since seeing that old advice column she was convinced that anything involving spanking could have happen 'in the old days'.

"This is kind of disturbing." Rose noted. "Those kids working out what they'd be spanked with. Or what they wanted to be spanked with."

"Kids are kids." Greg shrugged. "What else can you say?"

"I guess." Rose agreed.

"Anyway, maybe it will help you for your project."

"Wait!" Gwen said. "Some of these have 'after action' reports. Listing what was used and how it felt and how red their butts were afterward."

"Again, they were put together to scare kids." Greg reminded them. "The idea was for a 'see what they got? Are you going to risk it too?' moment after the story."

"Why do all the plans say to use codenames?" Katie asked.

"The kids were told it was to hide the evidence, so if someone found the plan no one who know who actually did what, but that wasn't the real reason. If you used real names the mark could go to those people and ask if it really happened." Greg explained. "For example, if an old plan said that Jerry brought a hairbrush and got twenty smacks from it you might go up to Jerry and ask if it was true. Then Jerry either says that it's fake or 'admits' that he did a little B&E and got spanked by a ghost. Either way it sucks to be Jerry. Speaking of Jerry, when he pulled the con on me he got us all to come up with codenames and work out our plan to get in and what we'd bring. He had us really convinced it was real, then he'd say 'oops, you're too young to do it this year' or 'oops, another group already has plans to do it this year' and leave us thinking that we came this close to being ghostbusters. That or getting our tails whacked by a ghost."

"That's sick." Rose said.

"That's part of being scared silly when you're a kid." Greg countered. "Anyway, it stopped when someone's mom freaked out over it. One more family tradition busted."

"Wait, did the kid pee himself when the story was told, or when they talked about 'a friend of a friend' having been there, or during the post-story planning session? Maybe it was trying to pick something to spank him with that scared him?" Siobhan asked.

Greg just shrugged.

"I wasn't there then and it's a bit late to ask now. I mean, I can't just pick up and phone and say 'Hey, Henry, remember that time years ago when someone scared you so much that you peed your pants'. For all I know he's forgotten all about it. But maybe it was the talk about spanking more than him peeing himself that pissed off his mother, who knows?"

"Thanks for the box." Katie said. "The printouts I made prove that the Hinrichs actually lived there and these plans prove that the story was told. This should make a great project."

"Why are all these photocopies?" Gwen asked, sorting through the pile. "What happened to the originals?"

Greg shrugged.

"Back then you photocopied stuff you wanted to pass around. Today you'd just print off copies or set up a website, but back then it was photocopy or hand copy."

Which wasn't a lie. It just didn't answer the question.

"Well, if you're interested, we could give you a copy of our assignment." Katie offered. "That way you can see what a professor thinks about it."

"Sure, I'd like to see that." Greg nodded.

When he left, Greg took a copy of his cousin's printouts, planning to add them to the collection at Jerry's place.


Part 3 - Complications followed by a Decision


The girls listened with slack jaws as their professor explained the difference between "urban legend" and "family or local legend" - which he reminded them had been covered in the textbook in one of the assigned chapters. They shot Katie dirty looks when it was pointed out that their 'research' had failed to turn up any of the seven folklore collections that included the story or any of the five different graduate thesis that covered it. As for their "artefact" collection, it was missing a key component that other researchers had uncovered - polaroids that recorded the evidence of the "ghost's actions". They didn't even have a single "and this is the brush/strap/belt/whatever that I found there" item, which was usually a key part of any telling of the complete story.

In short, he raked them over the coals before giving them a list of standard urban legends to research and telling them to pick one.

"Why did we waste so much time on a dead end?" Rose hissed as they left the classroom.

"How could you do this to us?" Gwen demanded softly.

"What did he mean by polariods?" Linda asked quietly.

"How was I to know?" Katie asked defensively. "It's a legend, I heard it in a city, that makes it urban, doesn't it?"

"Apparently not." Siobhan chided. "So the vanishing hitchhiker? That's a ghost story."

"He probably didn't give us the whole list." Rose said angrily. "He just gave us the 'they're a bunch of slackers' list. I'm going online and getting the entire list. All of it! And we're going to do something challenging so he won't think we're a bunch of slackers."

"I'm sorry." Katie said softly.

"Sorry doesn't get us good grades." Rose snapped.


The crisis might have broken up the group or at the very least seen Katie excluded from it. It might have, if it hadn't been overshadowed by something much more dramatic.


"I hate him." Siobhan muttered drunkenly, then she ate another spoonful of chocolate ice cream. "I will he would die. I want him to die!"

"He's a fucking bastard." Rose agreed, opening another bottle of wine.

"A fucking lying bastard." Gwen echoed.

"You're too good for him." Katie added.

"Ducking right I am!" Siobhan slurred. "And when he called me... I had to go to the clinic! I have to take this pills. Pills? Where are the..."

"They're on the counter." Linda told her.

"And I wasn't the one. The only one. Five!" Siobhan said, holding up fingers. "Five of us. All cause he was a fucking lying cheating whatever."

Katie nodded, refilling Siobhan's glass.

There were nights for wine and chocolate. Most times they weren't school nights, but when rat like Vincent West texts a friend 'Jst went 2 clinic. CLAP! Go 2" and then that friend gets an official (as in recorded somewhere) text explaining how the friend had been named as an social contact of an infected person and likely had a social disease and should go to the clinic, then you made exceptions. Especially if the friend thought she was an exclusive relationship and four other girls (and one guy!) had been named as 'social contacts'. Especially if the friend had been thinking about maybe moving in with the asshole and maybe even having kids with him someday.

Those were the nights when a true friend blew off tomorrow's classes and drank with her friend. Drank and ate chocolate as if booze and chocolate didn't have any calories. Classes, diets, none of that mattered when a friend was hurting.

But the world didn't stand still. Deadlines still came and went. Assignments didn't get pushed back just because a friend had a broken heart.


"We are so doomed."

"And it's all my fault." Siobhan sobbed.

"It's not." Katie assured her.

"We could ask for an extension." Linda suggested.

"Fuck that." Rose said. "That's an automatic ten percent off. No, we can do this. We can salvage this."

"This is all my fault." Siobhan moaned. "Mine and that asshole Vincent's. Mostly Vincent's. How could he?"

"There's a way around it." Gwen said. "At least there might be. I think."

"What? What way?" Rose demanded. "I've been searching through the web and I didn't see anything."

"It's not a posted way. Maybe it's not even an official way, but it's maybe a way." Gwen said cryptically.

"Look, we don't have time for cryptic. Spill it!" Rose demanded. The thought of what a missed assignment would do to her grade points was filling her mind.

"Katie isn't the only one with relatives." Gwen revealed. "My cousin's husband's brother's wife's nephew..."

"Your what?" Linda asked. "Is this the start to one of those urban legends?"

"Is this where someone's his own grandpa?" Siobhan asked.

"No. Okay, I'll go slowly. My cousin's husband has a brother."

"Making him her brother-in-law." Katie supplied.

"Who is married and his wife has a nephew." Gwen continued.

"So your cousin's brother-in-law's nephew." Katie supplied.

"Yeah, him. Well he's a Fellow here."

"Of course he's a fellow, he's a guy." Katie said.

"And probably a lying rat." Siobhan commented.

"Fellow as in he works here or something." Gwen clarified. "In the anthropology department."

"And he can fix our grades?" Linda asked.

"No, but he might be able to give us an alternative assignment. Maybe."

"Maybe? Might?" Rose challenged.

"Have you got a better idea?" Gwen countered.

"Does he even exist?" Siobhan asked. "He sounds like an urban legend."

"It wouldn't hurt to check." Katie said. "And if he doesn't exist then bulletin board by the class always has those offers of bonus mark for helping another professor with his project."

"But you're only allowed so many bonus marks." Rose countered. "No more than ten and I want to tact them onto my grade. If we use them for this assignment we won't be able to make up for wrong answers on the exam. No, the brother's cousin's uncle thing sounds best."

"If he exists." Siobhan teased.


Dr. Carlos Richardson, the cousin's brother-in-law's nephew, did exist. He was a forty something balding man with a tiny office in a dingy building, one that the anthropology department shared with sociology, psychology, and a few other -ologies. It marked him as near the bottom of the university's hierarchy, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"Of course I do something." Dr. Richardson said. "An entry level course like that? No one really cares about that. Anything you did to help me with my research would count as something and instead of giving you bonus marks I could get your professor to swap them for an overdue assignment. The problem is, it would have to be something."

"Um, something like what?" Siobhan asked, wondering if she should maybe be showing a bit more leg.

"My area of study, well, you could call it rituals and shamanism. Less pure shamanism than an exploration of our common search for hidden meaning and desire for ritual. It builds off the Golden Bough and -" Dr. Richardson paused to glance at their faces. "And none of you have ever heard of the Golden Bough before? You've never heard of the study of myth and ritual. Okay, let's try this again. I study rituals and their place in our world as we consciously and subconsciously embrace legend and myth."

"We were working on a legend." Rose supplied. "That's what slowed us down. Only it was a local legend, not an urban legend."

"Well you could start there." Dr. Richardson suggested.

"I don't think so." Linda said tartly. "I looked up those studies. Those polariods were pictures of pink or red bums. Not the entire bum, just a cheek or the top of one, but still. We don't want anything to do with Al Herich or his ghost."

"It's Alfred Hinrich." Katie corrected.

"Are you sure it's not Herich?" Linda asked.

"It's what about what now?" Dr. Richardson asked.

Between the five of them the story of the spanking ghost poured out.

"See? That bit after reciting the legend. A ritual!" Dr. Richardson said. "You could do something with that."

"Something shaman like?" Gwen said doubtfully.

"Something." Dr. Richardson said. "Take it and work it out. Put something down on paper. Maybe even try a summoning or something. Work up a paper and I'll accept it as an assignment."

They asked, inquired, queried, and pressed but Dr. Richardson wouldn't get more specific.

"You're not children and this isn't high school." Dr. Richardson told them. "Use your heads. That's part of the assignment. Or ask your prof for an extension."


"So what do we do?" Rose asked.

"We have to do something." Gwen said.

"And this is all my fault." Siobhan added.

"He's into shamans, right?" Linda suggested. "So we do the ghost stuff and shamans."

"You mean salvia?" Siobhan suggested. "Because I know someone who can get it. And it's legal."

"Drugs?" Katie asked.

"Legal shaman drugs." Siobhan countered.

"We need to get a good grade." Rose interjected. "We really need it."

"So what, we break into the haunted house, get high, and write a report?" Katie asked.

"No, we'd have to do the whole ritual." Gwen said. "Draw up a plan, pick codenames, the whole bit."

"It's stupid." Linda said.

"That assignment is worth twenty percent of our mark." Rose reminded her. "Twenty percent! We blow it and we are so fucked."

"And it's all my fault." Siobhan said.

"This is stupid." Linda repeated.

Linda was right, it stupid, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The night before Halloween they scouted the house and drew up their plan, all of them using codenames. The 'excuse' part of the plan was ignored; all of them could spend the night out without the need of "I'm staying at a friend's place" type lies.

As far as four of them were concerned, the best part was that they had an excuse not to go to any parties. Siobhan was too depressed to go partying and her friends would have felt like traitors to go without her. At least for another week or so, then it would be Siobhan's problem if she wasn't over Vincent by then.


Part four - Setting the Scene

"The window's going to be locked." Katie said.

"Careful with that flashlight." Siobhan warned. "You don't want everyone to see us."

"Well excuse me, but I've never broken into a house before." Gwen snapped.

"Neither have I." Siobhan countered. "But when I was at camp we sometimes used to sneak out after dark and have fun."

"Were you ever caught?" Linda asked in a worried voice.

"A couple of times, but this is no big deal. It's just a prank on Halloween."

"Yeah, just a Halloween prank." Katie agreed, trying to sound calm and hoping that they would be going home soon.


Disaster struck when they reached the Hinrich house - the window was unlocked! Unlocked and easy to open. Easy to crawl through. They no longer had an excuse to call it quits.

"This place is a maze." Rose said, flashing her light down another corridor. "And all the rooms are so small! It must be the servant's quarters."

"Why is the power off?" Gwen asked. "Haven't they paid their bills?"

"It's probably off at the box." Katie said sagely, revealing the entire extent of her knowledge of electrical systems. "The caretaker must turn it off when he leaves."

"We couldn't use lights anyway." Linda said. "We're breaking and entering, remember?"

"So what now?" Siobhan asked.

"We follow the plan." Katie said nervously. "We find an upstairs room with no windows, at least none facing the street, and make camp."

"That's the plan?" Siobhan asked.

"Didn't you read it?" Linda asked nervously.

"You were there when we worked on it." Rose said.

"Um, sure." Siobhan nodded. "I just forgot some of the details."


They found a set of stairs and inched their way up it. Poking around they found a large room on the second floor where the windows were covered with thick blinds to keep the sun out. Peaking around the blinds they saw that the windows overlooked the backyard rather than the street. What little furniture was there was pushed to the wall. Best of all it was only two doors down from a bathroom, one with running water.

"This is as good as it will get." Katie decided. "I guess."

"Are you sure the toilet works?" Gwen asked nervously.

"I'm sure, and I brought a roll of paper." Linda answered.

"See? No leaves for you." Siobhan teased.

"Not funny." Gwen muttered.

Katie nodded glumly. The lack of running water might have spelled the end to this trip.

"You brought TP? Well I brought this." Katie said, extracting an electric camping lamp from her bag. "Let there be light."

Light filled the room, the lamp overpowering their meagre flashlights.

"I brought wine." Linda said.

"And I brought munchies." Gwen said.

"And I, um, fuck it." Siobhan said, digging into her bag. "Pete was Vincent's friend, not mine, and he claimed he was out of salvia. But he had these."

Siobhan dug out a baggie.

"What are those?" Katie asked.

"Shrooms." Siobhan answered. "At least I think they are. Pete said they were but he didn't sound too sure."

"Are they legal?" Rose asked.

"Um, probably?" Gwen suggested.

"We're in too far to worry about that now." Linda pointed out.

"Let me check." Gwen said, reaching for her phone. "If they're illegal then we won't do them."

"But your cousin's husband whatever is into shaman stuff. Shrooms are shaman stuff, right?" Linda said.

"Huh? No signal? How can... Everywhere in the city there's signal!" Rose exclaimed. "We aren't in the middle of the wood or halfway down the highway."

"What?" Katie asked, reaching for her phone.

They all checked and none of them were getting a signal. Not even a single bar.

"This is weird." Rose declared.

"The haunted house is a dead zone." Gwen giggled.

"We must be between towers." Siobhan suggested.

"But you've got a different service provider." Rose pointed out.

"But they all use the same towers." Siobhan countered.

"Do we do the shrooms?" Linda asked.

"We don't know that they're illegal." Gwen pointed out. "And if we leave to check then we could get caught when we sneak back in."

"Well..." Rose said, hedging.

"Maybe after some wine?" Siobhan suggested.

"That was the plan." Katie reminded them. "We snack, tell ghost stories, maybe have a little wine, then around midnight we smoke the salvia and go off looking for the ghost."

"Good, we have a plan." Siobhan grinned.

"And we don't have to decide about the shrooms until later." Linda said, then turned to Rose. "Is that good enough for you?"

"I guess." Rose said sourly.

"Well, if we're staying we should unpack." Katie suggested, hoping that someone would say they weren't staying.


No one did. Instead they unrolled sleeping bags, positioned pillows, and made a 'camp' around the lamp. Treats were produced and pooled along with plastic glasses while the boxes of wine (one red, one white) were opened.

"This is ridiculous." Rose said, playing with her phone. "No voice, no data, no updates, nothing! It's like we're on a desert island or something."

"You weren't going to send updates, were you?" Katie asked worriedly. "Because 'breaking into a haunted house' doesn't make a good update."

"Of course." Rose said, rolling her eyes. "My status is set 'Away at party!', but I wanted to see what other people were doing."

"Mine's 'you think this outfit has a place for a phone?' with a picture of me in that black number." Siobhan said. "I hope Vincent sees it and chokes."

"Speaking of clothes, are we going to go all out?" Linda asked. "You know, do every part of the ritual plan?"

"He said he was big on ritual." Gwen noted.

"What part are you talking about?" Katie asked, getting out her copy of the plan.

"The 'change for bed' part." Linda clarified. "I went out and bought PJs just for tonight."

"Um, I guess we could change." Rose changed.

"Why not?" Katie echoed. "It's not like it matters much. If someone catches us it won't matter what we're wearing."

"Hey, this is your family's ritual." Siobhan pointed out. "Breaking in here every year."

"No, planning to break in is the ritual." Katie corrected. "No one actually broke in."

"So this is a first." Linda said.

"That might increase our marks." Rose noted. "Going ahead when the others didn't."

"It's following the ritual that counts." Linda decided.

"But we wrote the ritual." Katie pointed out.

"But it's based on the old stuff, so it should work, right?" Gwen asked.

"Work how?" Katie asked.

"Work to get us our marks." Gwen answered.

"Let's start with ghost stories." Siobhan suggested. "Did anyone bring any?"

"I was going to download one." Rose said.

"I've got one on my phone." Linda offered. "I can go first."

Wine was poured, snacks munched on, and stories told. Listening to them, Katie didn't think any of them really measured up to the spanking ghost one. What was a severed head (which had to be fake) compared to a spanking (which could be too real)?

After the first round of ghost stories, Linda hit the bathroom and returned in her new silk PJs with the tags still on them. After Rose left to change, Siobhan said: "This is crazy. We're all girls here."

With that she stripped down to her undies, reached into her bag and took out an oversized jersey. She slid it on as Rose returned to the room. Gwen and Katie exchanged glances and Katie reached for her clothes. Katie changed into a nightgown, stripping down to bra and panties and sliding it on. As she reached under it to remove her panties she could replace them with the matching ones she saw that Gwen wasn't nearly as modest - the girl had stripped down to nothing before putting her PJs on. The only concession that Gwen had made to modesty was to turn away from the group when she changed.

When Rose returned in her babydolls she didn't seem surprised that everyone else had changed. She just refreshed her glass of wine and started with a ghost story that she only vaguely remembered. It wasn't the best telling and everyone was relieved when it was Linda's turn to read another story from her phone.


Katie thought that it felt weird to camping out in the middle of a room. Camping in the woods was one thing, but Katie hadn't done anything like this since grade school sleepovers.

That thought stirred old memories, a few that connected with the spanking ghost. Not that any of those mothers had spanked, at least not visiting guests. Although in one case it was 'not visiting guests who weren't relatives'. Not that it had been a hard spanking, only maybe 2 or 4 smacks to get the girl's attention, but it had been scary when it happened. None of the other girls knew if the mother had flipped out and was going to start spanking other non-daughters. Katie could still remember that feeling in the pit of her stomach when those smacks had landed. A few other times a host girl had gone too far and a mother had gone nuclear on her backside, but that sort of thing had always happened on the other side of a door. That, and Katie had never thought that her own bum was on the line. Except that time Genny's cousin had been smacked and Katie thought that she (or any of the other girls) might be next. That had been scarier than practically any Halloween had ever been.

'Those are crappy thoughts to think about now.' Katie decided, and mentally switched gears.

The wine helped with the gear switch. Especially when she gulped it.


The stories continued until Linda's phone went off.

"Great! Reception!" Rose cried, reaching for her phone.

"No, I set the alarm on my phone." Linda said. "The plan calls for us to tell the story then do the other bit."

"Are you sure it's not a call?" Rose said. "Fuck, still no bars."

"Then she's sure it's not a call." Siobhan teased.

"Oh shut up." Rose snarled.

"Who's telling the story?" Gwen asked.

"Well it's Katie's legend so..."

"Okay, I'll tell it." Katie said. "Let me just fix the light."

"Fix?" Rose asked.

Katie leaned over the lamp and switched to 'low'.

"There's a low setting?" Gwen asked.

"You should have done it sooner." Linda scolded. "It would have made the other stories more authentic. That would have helped with the ritual."

"But everyone else was reading." Katie said. "I'm going to try to do this one from memory."

And she did. And in her own humble opinion she did a much better job that her Cousin Greg had done. And when got to the smack, her wrist snacked out and connected with Gwen's flank at just the right time. All the girls shrieked then, bringing a broad grin to Katie's face.

"That was mean!" Gwen said, rubbing at her flank. "Why did you pick me?"

"Well I had to smack someone." Katie said. "Why did you sit there if you didn't want to be smacked?"

"Because my sleeping bag is here." Gwen said.

"Okay, the next step." Linda said, reaching for her copy of the plan.

"Well we already did up the plan." Siobhan said. "Isn't that the next step?"

"It's the next for the story." Linda reminded her. "Not for the campout. The next step is the instruments."

"Huh?"

"We take out the stuff we brought and explain why we brought them." Gwen reminded her. "Okay, I'll start."

Gwen rustled through her bag and brought out an old wooden ruler, one with a metal straight running down one side.

"This is a memory of my childhood." Gwen said in a scary voice. "Years ago my second grade teacher had one just like this. When she was angry she used to bring it crashing down on her desk. She slammed it hard and we'd all jump. And sometimes she'd mention that rulers had another use. She never actually said that it was used to spank but she hinted and you know how sometimes you have to give broad hints to kids? Of course it was nothing we could ever tell our parents about but she used to that some of our bottoms could use a good rulering. And the few times she gave birthday spankings, gave them because the kid and the parent wanted it, she made a point of saying that the ruler was too serious to use for a play spanking. She just gave pats with her hand. Well when it was my birthday I went to her privately and asked for the ruler. She said that she couldn't do that, that there were boys in the class and to use the ruler the right way it would mean that all the boys would see my bum. Then she said that she couldn't even give me a birthday spanking because my parents hadn't signed some form. When I protested she said not to worry, that if I was her little girl I'd know all about that ruler. All about it."

Four girls looked at her with wide eyes.

"Is that true?" Rose asked.

"Well..." Gwen started to giggle impishly. "This is a night for stories, isn't it?"

"Is that true?" Linda demanded. "Any of it?"

"Well I went to the second grade." Gwen giggled. "And my teacher did slam a ruler on her desk. It used to make all us kids jump. You know how easily kids that age scare. But she never threatened anyone and I can't remember her ever giving anyone a birthday spanking. But it's true enough for tonight and I spent hours looking for this so there."

"You had me." Siobhan laughed. "You really had me."

"You've raised the bar." Rose agreed.

"So who's next?" Gwen asked.

"Okay, I'll go." Rose answered. "Let me get it."

Rose rummaged through her bag and produced a spatula.

"Observe." Rose said, trying for a spooky voice. "Some would say that this is an ordinary kitchen aid. Just a regular cooking implement. Yet this, my fine fellows..."

"I'm not a fellow." Gwen pointed out.

"Yet this my fellows, is an implement of terror. It the right hands it's capable of striking horror into anyone." Rose continued. "And I've seen it in one of those hands and felt that terror."

"I'm still not a fellow." Gwen pointed out.

"Look, I rehearsed this, so shut up." Rose snapped. Then she switched to her spooky voice. "Once long, long time ago, I was spending a few weeks visiting one of my cousins. One day my cousin went to spend the day with her cousin, no relation to me, and her aunt, well that woman knew how to spank. The three of us, well it doesn't matter what we did. It involved chocolate and lots of soda pop, soda pop with lots of caffeine. We were bouncing off the walls. Anyway, my cousin's aunt went wild with a spatula. First she smack her own daughter's bottom red then she went wild on my cousin. Then she looked and me and 'you're lucky you're not my niece' while waving the spatula around. The spatula that I had just seen smack two girls until their bottoms were right red - Bright! I meant bright red."

The girls exchanged glances as Rose stumbled over her story.

"Did any of that ever happen?" Linda challenged.

"Um, well, I did see the woman give her daughter a whack with the spatula and my cousin had to dodge a swat and she said that she would have swatted me too if I was her niece." Rose admitted. "But it was a swat, not a spanking."

"She still shouldn't have done that." Linda muttered.

Rose just nodded.

"Well that's my story." Rose said. "Next?"

Silence filled the room.

"I'll go next." Katie volunteered.

She searched through her bag until she found what she was looking for - it was hiding under the clothes that she had worn into the haunted house.

"This looks like a normal, every day souvenir paddle." Katie started.

"I already did the 'it looks normal' bit." Rose said.

"Shut it." Katie said, sticking her tongue out. Then she switched back to her spooky voice. "An ordinary looking souvenir paddle. The kind that you used to be able to buy at countless souvenir stands. Of course this one didn't come from one of those places. I don't think they even sell them any more. I had to hunt and hunt for that one, but it kind of looks like the one I saw. There's a different design on it, but the shape's the same and that's what matters."

"Like you, my story involves family. It was one of those long summer days and the family was having an outing. Dozens of kids, half a dozen people driving. We were supposed to be a convoy but of course everyone's bladder was different so we were taking all kinds of unscheduled stops. One of those stops was at a rest stop that had a convenience store attached to it. Our car was ahead of the pack so we had to kill time while the rest of cars caught up to us. I say cars, but mostly they were mini-vans - all of them jammed packed with kids that I vaguely knew and I was kind of related to. You know, typical summer stuff."

The four girls nodded. They had found memories of those wild, carefree days of childhood when the biggest issue was which cousin sat next to you in the car.

"We had time to kill and there was nothing to do. There was a couple of old video games that ate our money but there was a carful of us and only so many could play at once. And is there anything more boring than watching older cousins play video games? So there I was, wondering the store, looking at every single item to pass the time. That was how I stumbled over the paddles. They were on a high shelf, maybe so kids couldn't play with them, but I was bored and I found them. They had things like the town's name brunt into them, but they also had some cutesy saying. I can't remember them all but they all implied spanking. I think one was 'Parental Roadside Assistance' and another was the classic 'cute little deer with the bear behind'."

"Anyway, I was killing time around them when a woman came in, dragging a girl about my age. And I mean dragging, you know how some mothers do that."

The four girls nodded in agreement.

"So she sees the paddles says something like 'I knew we'd find something useful' and, now I kid you not, used one to give her kid a swat on the seat. Right there in the store. I was the only one who saw it but maybe others could have heard it. And no one reacted. So the woman was saying something about taking this out to the car. So I kind of followed as the woman dragged her daughter to the cash and actually bought the paddle. And the woman behind the cash just joked with her! She actually joked that they sold more of those paddles to outraged parents than to tourists. Like what was happening was some kind of joke!"

"The woman at the cash must have been a redneck." Linda concluded.

"Well I waited for a while then I snuck out of the store and started to wander the parking lot. And I kid you not, as I was passing this mini-van I heard that woman using the paddle. Actually using it on her daughter! Smacking her with that paddle, that paddle I had just saw her buy." Katie continued. "And it seemed like she was spanking forever. But she didn't. The sounds stopped and I saw the woman's outline as she moved up two rows of seats and got in the driver's seat. Then she drove away."

"Only the two of them in a mini-van? What a waste of gas." Linda observed.

"After she drove off I went back to the store. Almost of their own accord my feet led me to the place where they sold the paddles. I was standing there, looking at them, when two of my aunts found me. When they said my name I almost jumped out of my skin. They were scolding me, saying that they had looked everywhere for me and that I should have stayed with the others." Katie paused, then her voice dropped low. "That was when they saw what I had been looking. Once of them joked that maybe they should buy me one, that maybe a paddle would get through to me. The other one said something funny then got serious, saying that my mom hadn't said that they had permission to spank by hand let alone with a paddle. Then she named another cousin, a girl maybe two years older than me, who they did have permission to spank. I must have shivered or gone pale because both of them started assuring me that I wasn't in for a paddling and that they had been joking about the other girl, but they hadn't been. Joking that is."

"The rest of the day, I think it was cookout at a park or something, and there were so many kids around that I couldn't get moody. I tried but someone saw me moping and drafted me into a game of softball where there was something like 15 kids on the field and designated pitcher who made sure all the kids got to hit the ball. So I got distracted and might have forgotten all about that paddle except..." Katie allowed her voice to trail off there. "Except for the ride home. Somehow I ended up getting dropped off last, which was odd because I'd never been dropped off last. Every other car ride, that summer or other summers, I'd never been last but this time I was. And the woman driving me, she was one of the aunts who saw me standing by they paddles."

"Now I was exhausted, almost falling asleep in the car when she pulled into this little park that was maybe four blocks from where I used to live. When she stopped the car that aunt told me that she had a present for me, that she had left while the games were going on and bought me something. Then she popped the glove box and, you guessed it, she had one of those little paddles. She said that I had looked at it so much that she had to buy it for me." Katie paused for effect. "Then she said that this was the first time that she'd ever given a girl a paddle when she didn't christen it first. That she normally took down the girl's pants and gave her five good whacks with the paddle before she gave it to her. That while the car was too small that there was a park bench right over there and we could do it right there - if I wanted to."

Katie felt that the girls were hanging off her every word.

"Of course I said no but she just laughed and said that no girl likes showing her bare bum in public. Then she got out of the car and got me out of the car and led me over to the bench. She unbuttoned my shorts, put me over her lap, pulled down my panties, then started talking. She said something about that now the bare bum stuff was taken care of and was I sure I didn't want to christen the paddle? Something about what would be the harm since my bum was already showing. Of course I told her no, but she didn't let me up. She just held me there and said that since my mom hadn't given her permission to spank me that it had to be my choice but didn't I feel guilty about worrying them? About disappearing at the rest stop when almost anything could have happened to? And wouldn't I feel better after a bit of a paddling to clear the air?"

"When I told her no a second time, that was when she pulled up my panties and let me off her lap. She got me dressed again and we drove off. When I got home she insisted that I take the paddle and hoped that my parents got lots of use out of it - or that I kept it as a keepsake from that day. I never told my parents about it, well they saw it and I said that someone had bought them for most of us kids and they just laughed it off. I started to tell myself that my aunt had just been joking, playing a prank on me and if I had said yes then it would have been like a birthday spanking. After that the paddle stopped meaning much to me and a couple of years later it got tossed out. But sometimes, like on a night like this, I wonder." Katie concluded.

"Was any of that real?" Linda asked.

"Well we did have family gatherings where there were carloads of kids being ferried around and some stores did sell those paddles back then, but other than that?" Katie asked. "I was going for a story, a good story, and reality rarely makes a good story. So who's next?"

Linda and Siobhan exclaimed looks, then Linda dug into her bag and produced an old leather belt.

"Um, so this one time, when I didn't want to put my seatbelt on, someone, um, my uncle? He told me to belt up before he took a belt to me - no, he said to belt up before she belted me."

"Really?" Rose asked.

"Fuck no." Linda replied. "I spent so long hunting for something at that thrift store that I didn't have time to make a story. The guy I bought it from said that they had gotten it from this storage unit that got auctioned off so maybe it's old enough that someone used to take it to some real kid's backside."

"That's how you should have gone." Gwen advised. "Something about how there was this infamous spanker that your folks talked about in awe because he used to take his belt to random kids. How you heard that his storage locker was put up for sale and you tracked down who bought the stuff in it, tracked it down to a thrift store and then you bought the infamous belt he used to spank kids on."

"Well I didn't have time to make up a story." Linda humped. "And that's my story. Next."

All eyes turned to Siobhan.

"Since the dawn of time the most common way to spank was with the palm of your hand. A palm like this one." Siobhan said, raising her right hand in an indian salute. "A palm that turns pink, and sometimes red, as it pounds down again and again on a backside."

The four girls looked at her.

"A palm?" Rose asked.

"You didn't bring anything?" Katie asked.

"I found a belt; couldn't you do that?" Linda asked.

"So I forgot to read the plan." Siobhan shrugged. "So shoot me. No, better yet, shoot Vincent. If it wasn't for him..."

"He's not the one who didn't read the plan." Gwen pointed out.

"Okay, okay, I'll add something. When I was young one of my friends, her mother was always patting backside. Not smacking them." Siobhan added hurriedly. "Just patting them. Like if was telling you to go somewhere she'd pat you on the backside to get you moving and when she hugged you she gave you love taps. That sort of thing. Well, one time when she having a birthday party for my friend's brother and all the kids kept insisting on love tap. None of them got more than two or three pats at a time and there were a couple of dozen kids there, mostly boys, so none of them got patted more than once every two or three minutes, so none of them suffered, but the mother's hand started going pink. It was reddish by the end of the day and as the mothers were picking up the kids a couple of them commented on it. And when they commented, they all referenced spankings. One even said she hoped that my friend's mother hadn't worn out her hand on her son's backside! Can you believe that? And she said that if the woman had to tell her and that he'd get more at home. Can you believe that! She thought that her son had been spanked at a party and if it had happen then she was going to spank him again at home."

"Who was she?" Linda asked, considering making a belated call to children's services.

"I don't know." Siobhan admitted. "I didn't really don't. I didn't know that girl's brother that well and I didn't know any of his friends. But I heard what that woman said - she saw my friend's mom with a red hand and thought it got that way from spanking. And that's my only real spanking memory. Well, maybe spanking type memory, since there wasn't a spanking, but it's real when your stories weren't so there."

"Well..." Gwen said slowly.

"She should have read the plan." Linda groused.

"But it was a good story." Katie said, forgivingly.

"And it sounded almost true." Rose added.

"Well it was." Siobhan commented. "What's next?"

"Let me double check." Linda said, getting out her copy of the plan. "Okay, this is the point where we're supposed to smoke the salvia but we don't have any. Rose, are you okay with shrooms?"

"Well, um, I guess. It's not like we know for sure that it's illegal, right?" Rose acquiesced.

"It's not like we know for sure that they are shrooms." Linda added. "They don't look like... Not that I've ever done them, but I saw some friends with them once and that didn't look like them."

"Maybe it's a different kind?" Katie suggested. "Or maybe they had the fake stuff."

"Maybe." Linda said, looking at the baggie.

"How much do we take?" Gwen asked.

"Um, an equal share?" Siobhan suggested. "I said it was for five so there should be enough."

"They don't all look alike." Linda pointed out.

"Maybe there are different kinds in the bag?" Katie suggested.

"Or maybe Vincent's friend ripped you off?" Rose suggested. "Maybe he bought those at the grocery store. Maybe he was going to put them on a pizza but sold them you instead."

Siobhan opened the baggie and divided the mushrooms into five equal parts. The girls were hesitance but after Linda tried a piece they all started to eat.

"This tastes like shit." Rose declared, making a face.

"You know what shit tastes like?" Siobhan teased.

"Then wash it down with wine." Gwen suggested.

Katie made a face of her own - the shrooms tasted horrible! Soon all the girls were filling and refilling their glasses to wash the foul fungus down.

"Yeck!" Rose said as she finished hers. "Anyone feel anything?"

"Maybe, but it could be the wine." Katie said.

"I think that they take a while to kick in." Linda suggested.

"Now what?" Siobhan asked.

Linda's phone went off again, prompting Rose to reach for hers.

"Don't bother." Linda said, listening to her Alice Cooper ringtone. "That's my alarm again. It's five minutes to midnight - time to hunt for the ghost."


Part five - Summoning the Ghost with Shroom (or Feed your head and your tail will follow).

A shiver went through the group as they listened to Alice crooning 'Welcome to my Nightmare'.

"Hunt how?" Siobhan asked.

Linda held up the plan and pointed to some words.

"We take our instruments and our flashlights, split up, and look for the ghost." Linda told her. "Just like the plan says."

"Yeah, and don't forget your palm." Rose teased. "You might need it sometime later."

"Quit it Rose." Siobhan said. "No one likes a teaser."

"Does anyone feel anything now?" Katie asked.

"It's only been a couple of minutes." Linda pointed out. "Haven't you tried stuff like this before?"

"Look, weed and pills and stuff all takes different times to kick in." Katie said, trying not to sound defensive as she failed to answer the question. "I just wanted know if this is real or not."

"It's real." Rose said.

"Whoo, how strong was that wine?" Gwen asked as she stood up. "I don't think it's the shrooms but I can barely walk."

Linda picked up the boxes of wine.

"They're almost empty." Linda said accusingly (ignoring how she had drunk her share). "That's almost a bottle each."

"Maybe more." Gwen said. "Let me work the numbers. There's how much in a bottle? How much in a box?"

"Crap!" Katie said, weaving to her feet. "Maybe we don't need the shrooms."

"Too late." Linda said. "We already had them. Remember?"

"Remember? I can't stop tasting it." Katie said, miming a gag.

"Who's going where?" Siobhan asked. "Is that in the plan?"

"Not really." Linda told her. "But we better work out where we're going."

"Um, I'm going back to the servant quarters." Rose said, claiming a part that she knew was at the back of the house.

"There's living room downstairs." Katie said. "I'm going to check that out. It might even be the room he died in."

"I'm going the third floor." Linda said.

"The attic is the place to go." Gwen said. "Attics, ghosts, they just go together."

"I guess that leaves this floor for me." Siobhan said.

"Is it kicking in yet?" Gwen asked, almost swaying on her feet. "Or is this just the wine?"

"Maybe the wine?" Linda suggested.

"Shrooms." Gwen giggled. "God, I feel like such a hippie. Maybe we should ask Alice about the ghost?"

"Alice who?" Rose asked.

"It's from a song." Gwen answered. "One about chewing down shrooms or dropping acid. Something like that."

"I think I've heard that one." Katie said. "Something about mushrooms and hookahs?"

"That's the one." Gwen nodded. "And caterpillars. That was in there to."

"Well I'm going to tempt the ghost but I don't have an instrument." Siobhan declared.

Siobham reached under her jersey, hooking her panties with both thumbs and drawing them down to her feet. Then she stepped out of them.

"There." Siobhan declared, waving her panties over her head. "If a bare bum doesn't attract a spanking ghost then nothing will."

"That's not the ritual." Linda pointed out.

"No? Well there have been more bare bums mixed with spankings than paddles or belts or rulers or spatulas." Siobhan declared. "And none of you can tell me that there haven't."

The other four shrugged.

"My PJs are staying up." Rose declared. "Unless I need to pee. Hey, can I take the TP with me?"

"No, it's staying in the bathroom." Linda decided. "We don't know if the other ones work and this way we all know where the TP is."

"We should have brought more." Katie declared.

"Be happy I remember to bring it." Linda told her.


Part 6 - Rose

Rose went through the back stairs, carrying the spatula with her.

'This is silly.' Rose thought. 'When are the shrooms going to kick in?'

Weaving her way through the narrow hallways and peering into tiny rooms, Rose's mind drifted back to the story she had told. She had laughed over the details of her story but the laughter hadn't all been real. When they asked about whether it was true she had technically told the true but she had hadn't told it all. She had skipped over what she hadn't seen but heard - that spatula going to town on her cousin's cousin backside. That sound and Rose's cousin just looking at her feet and not saying anything while the kid howled. Not answering any Rose's questions about whether the crazy lady might spank them next. Then Rose's aunt had pulled up and the two of them run outside to meet her. She had never been so grateful to see her aunt in all her life; if the two of them hadn't left then Rose was more than half convinced that she would have felt that spatula on her own bottom. Maybe even her bare bottom.

'But that never happened.' Rose told herself. 'And I never met that crazy lady again or saw that spatula.'

Which was true, and maybe she had never been in any real danger but it had been the scariest day in her young life.


Prowling the tiny hallways Rose entered a few of the rooms, flashing her light around.

'I wonder if there were ever spankings given here.' Rose mused in one of the small bedrooms. 'Some people say that servants used to get spanked. Maybe there was a maid who got spanked here?'

The door crashed shut behind her. Rose turned to look but someone pushed her down, grabbing at her flashlight as she fell half across the narrow bed that dominated the room. Grabbed it and switched it off, leaving Rose in near total darkness. She could see the glowing button of her discarded flashlight and some weird greenish glow by the door but there wasn't enough light to focus on anything.

"Thou darest temp the spirit of Alfred Hinrich! Thou darest!"

The roaring voice wasn't asking a question.

"What the fuck?" Rose demanded, trying to rise. "Is this real? Have the shrooms..."

Then the hands were grabbing at her again. Lifting and twisting her. One hand was pulling at her babydolls' bottoms while the other forced her down over a pair of legs.

"HELP!" Rose screamed. "Someone help!"

"'Tis no help for the likes of ye!" Came the thundering voice. "Thou art at the mercy of Alfred Hinrich, risen once more to bring justice into this land."

Rose tried to twist away but it was no use; her babydolls' top was soon wretched up over the small of her back. She couldn't see - except for some stars after her head collided violently with the edge of the bed. Her attacker, whether ghost or mortal, had her bare legs scissors between his own.

Then hope arose.

"This isn't real!" Rose proclaimed. "Bad trip! Bad trip! I'm surrounded by rose petals as I lie a summer meadow."

For a moment Rose thought it was working. The figure holding her was pausing, almost as if he was stretching and reaching for something.

Then pain exploded on her right bottom cheek. Something cold and metallic had struck it. Cold, hard, with odd slits in it, slits that caught and trapped the impacted skin.

"WHAT?" Rose screamed, her hopes that this was a hallucination fading fast.

Then it came again, on her other cheek. And again, this time spanning her cheeks. After the fourth blow fell, one that landed partly on her right thigh, it suddenly clicked in for her. It was the spatula! After all these years she was finally feeling the smacks of the spatula on her bare backside!

"NO!" Rose screeched, trying in vain to escape her captor.

"Scream all thou wishes. 'Tis no escape for ye now. None!"

"No! Let me go!" Rose hollowed. "I'm not some kid - I'm a grown woman! You can't spank a grown woman!"

Her efforts had little effect. Without slowing the rain of splats that impacted her backside, her captor said: "Act like a naughty child and be treated like a naughty little girl. Ye need this spanking more than most."

Rose tried to kick.

Splat

Rose tried to squirm.

SPLAT

Rose tried to buck.

Splat

Rose switched tactics and lay there unresisting.

SPLAT

Slowly it dawned on Rose that nothing she tried made any differences. The arm rose, the arm fell and with came the spatula and that awful splat as it impacted. As it did her flesh was squeezed in its slats, slats that trapped and pinched her most tender areas. It didn't matter whether this was a ghost or a man or the shrooms kicking in - there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was trapped in a dark room and there was a weird hum filling her ears and...

And something that Siobhan said came back to her. About watching that porno and seeing everything. From the way she was positioned, with her legs wedged between his, Rose knew that her spanker had an unobstructed view of everything she had. If he could see. So far the dark hadn't seemed a handicap for her attacker but maybe it was.

"That's it!" The spanker said as the spatula came down with another hard splat. "Soon ye backside with match the flame of ye head. Soon we be seeing which can get redder."

With the spatula splatting down again and again, landing everywhere from the small of her back to where her tights emerged from between his legs, Rose thought she knew the answer to that question - that her throbbing backside had to be redder, much redder, than her hair.

Then, as if by some miracle, the smacks ceased. The vice trapping her legs released, freeing her to drop to the floor.

Rose lay there on the floor, curled into a little ball and crying, as the weird humming sound stopped. Something cold touched her lower leg, something that was put into her Babydolls' bottom and left against her leg,


Part 7 - Katie


Katie wandered the front of the house, looking for the living room. It wasn't easy, not with the need to avoid flashing her light against the front windows, but eventually she found it.

"That must be the couch right there." Katie concluded. "That's where Ethel was forced to bend as the crazy teacher strapped her."

Looking at it, Katie couldn't help wondering how much of the story was real. Had that guy really spanked all those kids? The paddling was a given, based on that article that said that even by 40s standards he was being too strict, but had Ethel really been strapped?

Swaying drunkenly, Katie went over to the couch. Stumbling, she found herself sprayed over the couch's end. Giggling, Katie shifted herself until she was leaning over the end of the couch, just like that long ago drunken girl had been.

"I wonder if there was any truth to that story." Katie asked herself. "Any truth at all?"

She thought that there might be. After all, there had been a bit of truth to her story. More than she had admitted to. She had actually seen and heard that outraged mother buying a paddle and then giving it to her daughter in the mini-van, only the mini-van hadn't been empty. There had been a couple of other kids in it, but they were crouched down so much that Katie couldn't tell if they were boys or girls.

The stuff about that drive home - that had been invented, but a couple of weeks after that someone had picked up those souvenir paddles for all the kids. A couple of the adults had joked about it, saying things like "finally a useful souvenir", but at least one of the parents hadn't been joking. One of those had been Katie's Aunt Kim.

Brenda Brookfield was a few years older than Katie and Katie had thought that the girl was just so way cool, but that was before Aunt Kim had taken her daughter in hand that day. Katie would never forget the sight of that souvenir paddle crashing down the wet bottom of Brenda's bathing suit as Kim spanked her eldest daughter with that little paddle. To see her big cousin being reduced to a blubbery little girl by the same paddle that Katie had blithely passed on to her parents. The way her cousin's bottom had jiggled and the red that showed on Brenda's thighs, all of that was forever fixed in Katie's mind.

Not that her own paddle had ever been used or Katie had felt any of the other paddles bought that day, but that didn't mean that she hadn't collected a few swats growing up. Unlike Linda, Katie had never thought that spankings were a relic of a bygone era. She couldn't remember getting any major ones, nothing like the butt busting that Brenda had gotten the day by the lake, but there had been a few times she had gotten a sore bottom.

Now she was in a haunted house, laying over the arm of an infamous couch, and giggling. She was mostly drunk, waiting for shrooms to kick in, with a paddle lay by one hand and a flashlight near the other.

"Got to put it together." Katie muttered. "And wait for the shrooms."

She reached for the flashlight but somehow it rolled away from her hand. Then the light went out.

"What?" Katie muttered.

Her eyes trying to adjust to the lack of the light. There was a spot of green light somewhere behind her but not enough to see by. Reaching, Katie tried to find the paddle but failed.

"Is someone here there no here?" Katie slurred.

Then a hand was lifting the hem of her nightgown. Katie tried to rise, but a strong hand was fixed on her back, pushing her down. A voice hissed out:

"Little minx needs a paddling."

"Um, who are you? Linda, cut this out!" Katie insisted. "Hey, not my undies! Is that you Rose?"

"Ye came to summon a ghost. 'Tis it any wonder that it worked?"

"Vincent? Is that you? Siobhan is upstairs." Katie said, drunkenness warring with confusion.

Pop!

A wave of shock spread through Katie, one that started at her bottom and travelled upwards.

Pop POP pop.

"What the fuck? Is that the paddle?" Katie demanded, trying to rise.

Between the wine (and maybe the shrooms), her position, the hand on her back, and the darkness, Katie stayed where she was - bare bum and over the end of the couch as a ghost paddled her bum. Or maybe it was shrooms.

"Can you OOOH pinch me?" Kate gasped. "I AHHHHHH I want to see if I'm dreaming."

The paddling paused for a moment. Then Katie felt the paddle being set down on her back. Fingers reached in to touch her thigh, her upper thigh. Her upper, inner thigh. Then the fingers pinched her, pinched her hard.

"Ouch! Not so hard!" Katie protested. "I didn't want you to pinch me there."

The paddle left her back and moments later it was crashing down on her bottom. Bottom and occasionally her thighs.

"Ow! Owie ow owie! Stop!" Katie demanded.

Her only answer was more smacks. That, and an odd humming sound - one that hovered at the edge of her audio range.

The spanking was unending. It was merciless. A stray thought passed through her mind: finally, after all these years, she knew what Brenda had gone through. All without Aunt Kim ever laying a finger on her.

"Stop! Please! Stop!" Katie bagged.

The little paddle came close to cracking before it finished its job. Made primarily as a souvenir it wasn't really designed to deliver bum busting paddlings. It held together, but barely.

Katie didn't really register it until later, but there was a coldest next to one of her ankles. It was there, in her panties, that she would eventually find her flashlight.


Part 8 - Gwen

Gwen bit back a curse. She was cross with herself over forgetting what else you found in attics. There might be ghosts there, but that was a big might. Dust, on the other hand, was a certainty where attics were concerned. Attics and dust always went together. Dust bunnies, dust rabbits, dust everywhere. That and cramped spaces. Rooms crowded with rejected furniture with barely a narrow pathway leading through them.

'I wish I didn't have to be careful with the light.' Gwen mused.

She had to keep her light mostly on the floor. She was sure that she already accidentally flashed a window that only had faded drapes, not blinds. One accident might be overlooked but she couldn't risk another one, even if that meant her flashlight only illuminated a small circle by her feet. She was sure that she was missing all sorts of things, that the boxes and old furniture was worth examining, but she couldn't risk flashing her light around.

"I bet they weren't real shrooms." Gwen muttered. "Otherwise they would have kicked in by now."

It was frustrating, not being able to examine any of the history in this attic. She was sure it told a story, probably a better story than the one she had shared with the other girls.

Yes, her second grade teacher, Mrs. Landon, used to smash a ruler on her desk, but the woman had rarely mentioned using it on a backside. Talk wasn't the problem. There had been one time, on Gwen's birthday, that the ruler had swatted down on Gwen's seat. Mrs. Landon had asked Gwen to stay for few minutes at recess then had gotten her to bend over and pick up something, and whack! Gwen had been shocked and on the verge of tears until Mrs. Landon convinced her that it was just a birthday prank. A fake smack, like a birthday spanking. Before the end of recess Gwen told her teacher that she was okay with and that she thought it was fun, but looking back Gwen couldn't help wonder at the sort of woman who would smack a student with a ruler. Even as a joke.

It was only after that day that Gwen really noticed how much Mrs. Landon smacked the desk or otherwise used the ruler. And the looks that Mrs. Landon sometimes shot students. Not that there were any signs that Mrs. Landon spanked or was pro-spanking, but that one good swat was the most that had ever landed on her backside.

Gwen swayed slightly but blamed it on the wine rather than the so-called shrooms, then someone grabbed her. Taken by surprise her flashlight was quickly wrestled away.

"Who are you?!?! Let me go!" Gwen screamed.

She fought, kicking and swinging her arms drunkenly as she was hauled towards a Victorian settee. Her flashlight, now extinguished, rolled on the floor and the only light she had came from chinks in the drapes (that let bare slivers of starlight in) and from a minor green glow that came from somewhere to her right.

Or rather than the direction of her feet as Gwen didn't stay upright. Before she knew what was happening the bottoms of her PJs were down and she face down over a lap. A man's lap. Suddenly Gwen wished that she had panties on under her PJs. Then it struck her that maybe panties wouldn't matter, that the man who took down her PJs would have taken them down too.

"Who are you! What's HAPPINING!" Rose screamed.

"Ye thought to summon me forth? Ye dared to summon the spectre of Alfred Hinrich? Ye drunken slanten, this is a long overdue judgement."

"What? Let me go!" Rose insisted, losing the fight. Her left arm was pinned beneath her while iron fingers secured her right one, twisting it almost painfully well above the small of her back.

THWACK!

"NO!!!!" Gwen screamed.

Unlike the others, Gwen had no illusions about what was happening. This felt the same, practically identical, to the time that Mrs. Landon had smacked her with the ruler. Only this wasn't over her clothes but impacted on her bare buns!

"Ye brought the ruler to be used and well used 'tis will be."

"No!" Gwen whined.

But she stopped fighting it. Whether it was a man or a ghost or a really freaked out trip no longer mattered. Rose knew she was trapped and that she wasn't getting away. That she was held, entirely at the mercy of her spanker.

Her spanker who brought the ruler down again, hard! And again and again. Some times he focused on one cheek, sometimes the other, some blows landed across both cheeks while other times the ruler kissed her thighs. As the rain of blows mounted and the pain built, Gwen voiced her surrender.

"I'm sorry. I'll be good." Gwen wailed. "Please! I'll be good. Don't AHHH don't oohh spank me!"

His only response was to spank harder.

Gwen squealed each time the metal straight edge bit into her upper thighs. She knew that the metal strip must be leaving angry red lines all over her bottom but those thigh smacks stung in a way that nothing else did. Even when the metal stripe (and the heavy wooden ruler it was attached to) crashed down on her sit spot it didn't make her squeal like those thigh smacks did.

"Please!" Gwen sobbed. "Sorry!"

But the ghost (if that was what it was) didn't answer. All she heard was the steady rain of smacks (and her answering cries) and an odd hum in the background.

When the spanker was finished with her, Gwen was left curled up in the foetal position. She didn't notice the cold touch of her metal flashlight as it touched her leg. If she had she might have wondered what sort of ghost would leave the flashlight in her PJ bottoms where she could easily find it.


Part 9 - Linda

Linda poked her head into another bedroom, then headed for the wardrobe. She had found things in some of the other rooms, things left when the tenants had moved out, and while the wine had left her woozy she could feel any action from the shrooms yet. Not yet and at this rate maybe not ever.

'Vincent's asshole friend must have ripped Siobhan off.' Linda concluded.

The she opened the wardrobe and had to wonder about that. There were no clothes inside but there was a collection of belts. Maybe twenty of more, all old leather and all looking well worn. One really caught her eye - it had a buckle but no holes had been punched into it.

"Now that would have been a belt to bring." Linda muttered. "Old and unpunched, it wasn't used to hold up pants."

Maybe it hadn't been used at all but a part of Linda wanted to think that it had been used on countless bottoms.

"Back in the bad old days." Linda muttered drunkenly. "Back before people were sane."

Unlike Rose, Katie, and Gwen, Linda lacked any real memories associated with spanking. She had seen a belt in an old illustration of "the little old lady who lived in a shoe" and was crashed down backside to illustrate the "she beat them all soundly" line, so she had brought it to tonight's gathering. Her other choice had been a hairbrush, but she hadn't been able to find a good wooden one and plastic just didn't seem to fit the mood. She had found a wooden bath brush at the thrift store but it hadn't seemed quite right. Bath brushes implied baths and Linda didn't want to think about nude kids getting smacked. It was bad enough that some old illustrations (or cartoon) showed kids getting it on the bare bottom without envisioning them completely bare.

The slam of the room's only door shattered Linda's reverie. She twisted towards the sound but wine had dimmed her reflects. Someone or something was already rushing towards her! Linda caught only the briefest glimpse of it before it was on her, wrenching her flashlight from her hand before she could get a good look at who or what it was. Then it was hauling towards the bed.

"Foolish mortal. I am the ghost of Alfred Hinrich! Ye picked the wrong night to tempt me!"

"You're just the shrooms kicking in." Linda answered with a giggle, pressing her body towards him. "And it's Al Herich, not Hinrich."

"Silly drunken girl child! I know my own name and 'tis Alfred Hinrich; father of Rudolf, husband Mary, and seeker of Ethel."

As her PJs were yanked down, Linda felt one of the labels tear.

"Fuck! You tore a label! Does that mean I have to really pay for them? Or did they really rip or do I just think it ripped so maybe I can still return them?" Linda asked her hallucination.

"Stealing is wrong."

With that Linda's belt came crashing down on her own backside.

"Hell no!" Linda protested. "That didn't happen."

She belatedly attempted to twist off the lap, but to no avail. Perhaps as a result of her struggles the next time the doubled over belt came down it licked at her inner thigh.

"BAD TRIP!" Linda screamed. "That fucking hurt! Bad IEEOOOH! No! No AHHH! Bring back the beLLLLLLTTS! Bring those BACKKKK!"

Linda's struggled left her legs pinned between those of her spanker, just as Rose's had been. Unlike Rose, Linda didn't worry about what her spanking might be seeing. After seeing all those belts (including that unpunched one) Linda was sure that the shrooms had kicked in and that this had to be a very bad trip. Never having been in this position before she assumed that what she was feeling was an exaggerated mental experience that was far worse than any actual spanking could ever be.

Most of the smacks were landing on Linda's backside, but the belt seemed to have a will of its own. Every third or fourth smack seemed to land off target, striking thigh rather than bottom. Worse, a belt was not a ruler; where the ruler stayed straight the belt curved and twisted, curling around her legs. Most than one her inner thigh, her very upper inner thigh, felt the traumatic kiss of the belt.

"Stop!" Linda pleaded. "Bad trip! STOPPPP!"

But it didn't stop. It kept coming. Coming and coming. Linda broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. She was sure that this was like the time she had tried acid and 'froze to death' in the middle of the summer - something conjured entirely by her mind and much worse that the reality could ever possibly be. She was sure that no real spanking could ever hurt this way. That in real life no belt would ever snake around her legs like this hallucinatory belt did. That if things like happened in real life then spanking would have been banned even in the dark ages.

When the belt finally stopped coming down, Linda was sobbing like a baby. Not a well spanked little girl but a tiny baby. Her spanker rolled her off his lap, leaving her on the bed. She never noticed when her flashlight was put down the right leg of Linda's silk PJs. Then the door opened and closed, not that Linda noticed. Nor did she notice the missing green glow or the absence of the green glow.


Part 10 - Siobhan

After a curious examination of some of the rooms Siobhan returned to the little camp. She keep the lamp turned low, found and opened another box of wine, and waited for the shrooms to kick in.

And waited.

A couple of times she thought they were kicking in, at least a bit. She thought she heard things. Maybe the howling of ghosts? First those noses came from below her but then they seemed to come from above her, but it was only sounds. Not sights, not the feelings of a ghost walking through her, no visions, nothing.

"I got ripped off." Siobhan said with a frown.

Nature called and Siobhan left to use the bathroom. While sitting on the throne

she felt that

legs

her legs

were there.

Legs.

There.

Her legs

were there. Just there. Open to pee but her legs were there in a way that they hadn't been there before.

"Maybe I didn't get ripped off." Siobhan muttered, running her fingers up and down the front of her legs.

Wiping felt weird. Odd. Strange. Siobhan was half tempted to break her earliest taboo, to wipe from back to front. Tempted, but old lessons die the hardest and that was one of the oldest. Siobhan could remember, or thought that she maybe remembered, getting a swat on her bum for wiping the wrong way. A swat or a pinch, it was confusing, maybe multiple memories were merging in her mind or maybe none of that had ever happened. Siobhan tried to struggle through her memories but she couldn't make sense of them. The memories were old or just a hallucination.

In the end she wipe the right way.

Siobhan staggered from the toilet, hugging the wall until she found the door. Part of her wanted to wash up but Siobhan didn't want to risk using the sink. She wasn't sure that it would support her weight and she knew that she would have to hug to keep from falling.

Opening the bathroom door, Siobhan saw the faint glow of light from the electric lamp, but from the side, strangely, she saw a bit of green glow coming through a doorway.

"Sounds, legs, and green." Siobhan giggled.

Then a hand was on her arm. A strong hand, squeezing her arm. Turning to her attacker, Siobhan's eyes hadn't adjusted from the lamp's light before she was pulled towards the green glow.

Siobhan staggered, fallen to her knees. Only the strong hand on her arm kept her from doing a face plant. That hand was lifting, pulling at her, dragging her into the room with the vague green glow in it.

"Why green?" Siobhan giggled drunkenly. "Why not blue? Soothing blue. Want blue, not green."

There was no answer, only the insistent hands dragging her towards an armless chair.

"Want blue." Siobhan pouted, trying to focus her thoughts to make the glow turn blue.

"I am the revenant of Alfred..."

"Oh, fuck you." Siobhan interrupted. "I said I want blue."

"Ye'll be getting red." Was the answer. "A red backside. Ye hast earned it twice over. Once by..."

"Oh bite me." Siobhan said, barely conscious of the fact that she was positioned over a lap. The hem of her nightgown was closer to her shoulders than to her thighs, but that didn't matter. Even if the shrooms weren't kicking in there was the wine, that lovely wine, flowing through her, and a big part of Siobhan's mind thought that balling someone now would be great way to get back on Vincent.

Then a palm came crashing down on her right bottom cheek.

"Hey!" Siobhan protested. "I said no!"

The palm came down on her left cheek.

"No unless I spank you first!" Siobhan said indignantly.

The palm down across the middle of her bum.

"Um, then I get to spank you next!" Siobhan told her spanker.

"I art the ghost of Alfred Hinrich." Came the reply (and another smack). "I spank all; none spank me."

"Hey, my name's not Ethel!" Siobhan protested. "You got the wrong girl!"

The answer was another spank. Then another. Then another. Siobhan was too wasted to really struggle, but even with her basically lying there was a number thigh spanks, some of which landed mid thigh or lower. A few of which touched her inner thigh.

"Stop it!" Siobhan sobbed. "Me spank you first! Um, and OOOOGGGHHH I'm on these pills so we can't AHHH! Stop!"

But he didn't. The spanker might just have been using his hand but he made sure that she had a very rosy bottom.

When he was done, he rolled her gently onto the floor. Siobhan's jersey was partially covering her head, most of it being above her shoulders and leaving her body exposed. There was no flashlight to leave with her, but when the door was left open a steady stream of light came from the lamp in the room where the girls had camped out.


Part 11 - Crawling Towards the Light


Rose was the first one to return to the second floor. Rubbing at the seat of her babydolls, she couldn't help but look over her shoulders in an attempt to see if anything showed. If the spanking was even real. Between the wine and maybe the effects of the shrooms Rose wasn't sure if the pain in her backside was real. She stopped at the bathroom long enough to splash some water on her face, removing any lingering snot - and regretted that the bathroom lacked a mirror.

Then she went to the room where they were camping out, rubbing her face dry on her sleeping bag. Looking through Linda's stuff, she found another box of wine and opened it. She filled a water bottle and started to drink it. Worried that something might show she snuggled into her sleeping bag.

Katie struggled up the stairs a short while later, her nightgown pulled low to cover any marks she might be sporting. After cleaning her face she struggling into the room.

"I found a new box of wine." Rose said, lifting it.

"Okay, I'll finish this one off." Katie said, snagging one of the boxes. Lifting it to her lips, she drank straight from the tap. Taking the box with her, Katie went into her sleeping bag, lying in it with her backside up. She had to wonder if there was a reason that Rose was in the same position.

Gwen was the next one to strangling back, also pausing to clean her face. She claimed her share of wine and was secretly thankful that her PJs covered any possible marks. Then came Linda, the labels off her PJs. Another water bottle was filled with wine as she sought the safety of her bag.

"We have to write this up, don't we?" Linda asked. "For the assignment?"

"Um..." Katie muttered.

"We can do the first part together but um, we could do the exploration separately?" Rose suggested.

"Um, ssuure." Gwen agreed, slurring slightly. "Carlos said that um ssshamanananish is a personal thing so we do personal reports on that."

Then Siobhan staggered back into the room, her jersey having fallen back down as she walked. Skipping the bathroom, she flopped down on her sleeping bag then and grabbed some wine.

"God, these shrooms are playing hell with my sinuses." Siobhan said. "But wow, did they kick in."

The four other girls traded looks.

"Um, yeah, I think that some weird things happened that couldn't have happened." Rose stated.

"Shrrooommss." Katie agreed.

Siobhan flopped her head on her pillow and started to snooze slightly. Wine was passed around a bit as the other girls slowly drifted off.


RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL

Katie jerked up in her sleeping bag as music blared.

RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL

The smell of sour wine assaulted her nose as the blare assaulted ears.

RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL RAISE A LITTLE HELL

"Someone stop that sound." Rose whimpered.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU GOT, WHY DON'T YOU CHANGE IT?

Linda reached her phone and turned off the music.

"Shit! We gotta go." Linda declared. "Hey, get your sorry asses out of bed! We got to go!"

"Huh?" Katie asked.

"My alarm!" Linda screamed. "We got to go! We got to go! My alarm is set for... SHIT! If we don't go now someone will caught us."

"Catch." Rose corrected sleepily.

"Caught, catch, we got to go." Linda insisted, verging on hysterics. "Or we get arrested. The police! We got to go!"

Under Linda's urging the girls got dressed. Katie put some slacks on under her nightgown, shrugged the gown off and slide on a T-shirt. Linda and Gwen slid clothes on over their PJs. Rose put a skirt on over her babydolls and left it at that. Siobhan put some clothes on under her jersey and said:

"So I'm dressed. Nowss what?" Siobhan slurred.

"We get our shit, get out the window, and get the fuck out of here." Linda said. "That's the plan. Remember the plan?"

"Shit, I'm too fucked up to drive." Rose said. "Um, did I drive here? How did we get here?"

"We walk if we have to." Katie declared.

"We stagger." Siobhan giggled.

"God, we're still shit faced." Gwen declared, noticing it for the first time,


The five of them staggered down the stairs and out of the window. Half a block from the house, Katie checked her phone.

"Hey, I got a signal." Katie said, almost screaming.

"Shrussh!" Gwen cautioned.

"One bare? Bar?" Rose guessed.

"No, it's full." Katie said joyfully.

Katie hit the speed dial for a cab company. Twenty minutes later they were crowding into a cab after storing their bags in the trunk.

"A long, hard night?" The cabby asked.

"God yes." Katie said, trying to find a comfortable way to sit. "Too hard. Too much everything. Got to get to bed."

"So where to?"

There was a crowd of voices, but the girls finally settled on Siobhan's dorm room.


About twenty minutes later they were crashed on the floor on Siobhan's dorm room, never noticing that they had each paid the cab driver $20 each for the short drive. The cabby put most of it down as a good tip and went on to pick up the next late night partier who was straggling home.

In the room, the five of them were resting in a drunken torpor. On waking that afternoon they were still mostly drunk, but clean enough to struggle home to their own beds. None of them thought to check their backsides until they woke again.


November 2nd came and the five hung over girls struggled to Carlos Richardson.

"A night in the haunted house? Really." Doctor Richardson laughed. "Then you write it up and I'll treat it as an assignment."

"Um, we tried the shaman stuff too." Gwen told distantly connected Fellow. "But we couldn't get salvia and, um, are shrooms legal in this state?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." Doctor Richardson assured her. "No one who reads my research cares about that. Actually, if I include your reports in my next round of articles you might end up with offers to help with other things."

"What other things?" Rose asked, wondering if this was way to get better marks.

"Oh, nothing major." Doctor Richardson said blithely. "Maybe chanting naked in a sweat lodge for twelve hours as someone tries to reach enlightenment. That sort of thing."

The five girls exchanged bleary looks.

"We'll have to get back to you." Gwen said.

"Um, yeah, maybe." Katie nodded.

"But maybe not for a while." Siobhan added.

The other girls nodded along with her.

Carlos Richardson sighed wishfully but nodded his acceptance.

"That's fine, but get those papers done within a week."


Part 12 - Aftermath

Katie hated to lie, but the truth just won't do. She wished she could duck this conversation, but he knew too much about things and she didn't want him speculating.

Luckily, talking on the phone easier than meeting his eyes.

"Hi, Greg? I've got some bad news." Katie said. "I know I said I'd get you a copy of that assignment, but things have changed. We had to do it for another professor, someone called a Fellow, and he needs to kept all the copies so he can write it for a journal."

"You're still working on that?" Greg asked, trying for disbelief. "Okay, I'll let you skate on that, but it will cost you."

"It will?" Katie asked. "What?"

"You didn't promise Aunt Clara anything and you know the story as well as anyone now." Greg pointed out. "You even have the box of evidence. The price, for all of that help I gave you, is to pass the story on to the next generation. Give the kids a thrill and scare that they'll remember."

"Um, sure, I can do that." Katie nodded. "So are we talking next week or..."

"Next week?" Greg laughed. "Halloween's over. No, we're talking next year. Maybe you start in September, maybe early October, but by Halloween they should shaking in their pants."

"Um, sure." Katie echoed. "I can do that."

"Great! I'll make a note to call you around Labour Day and work things out." Greg told her.

It was all Katie could do not to sigh with relief. A year would give her a chance to put things in perspective. A chance to mentally organise things. If she told the story now she might mention something about actually getting a sore bottom but give her a year and Katie knew that she could get her shit together and tell it as a scary legend.

"Sure, I can do that. No problem!"

"That's great, but I got to go." Greg said. "I've got a work call coming and bills need to be paid. Bye! Say hi to your mom for me."

Hanging up on his cousin, Greg couldn't help smiling. It was great that this family tradition wasn't going to die off after all. Checking the incoming call, Greg sighed. It was his least favourite customer. One that wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Hey, Chuck! How's it going? No, no can do. Sure we carry them but you need the paperwork to buy one and you don't have the paperwork. No, you listen. If I sold you a cell jammer without the right paperwork I'd going to jail with you and that ain't happening. What? Of course we can get those. Listen, we can sell you light amplifying goggles that are so sensitive that a glow stick will light an entire room. Noise suppression? Of course we carry white noise machines. We wouldn't be in business otherwise. No, those are only called bugs if you put them outside your house - in your own home they're called audio security devices and we've got tons of them. No Chuck, no! I can't bundle all that up in one package and hide the jammer it. Why? Because the computer would beep when it saw the jammer and then I'd have to get a lawyer. No! They're only legal if you have the paperwork and you don't have the paperwork. No! I can't make exceptions. I don't have that kind of power. Look Chuck, if don't stop calling I'll have to report you to the authorities."

Hanging up on Chuck, Greg wondered how long Siobhan's antibiotics would run. The girl was cute, adventurous, and in some way reminded him of Betty. Still, it was good to know that a family tradition would continue.

Goodgulf