Hopeville wasn’t always a ghost town—at least, not in the literal sense. Once, the air buzzed with the laughter of kids chasing cotton candy dreams through Hope Haven Amusement Park, their shrieks echoing off the rusted Ferris wheel and the creaking roller coasters. That was before the lights dimmed, before the gates locked, before the whispers started creeping from the shadows. Now, the park sits like a skeleton picked clean by time, its bones bleached under a gray Midwest sky. And at its heart, hunched like a vulture over a forgotten grave, stands The Haunted Haven. The locals don’t talk about it much. Not because they’re scared—though they should be—but because forgetting feels safer. They’ll tell you the ghost house was just a gimmick, a cheap thrill for tourists who didn’t know better. They’ll say Ethan Ward’s parents were fools to sink their lives into it, chasing some mad dream of turning screams into gold. And they’ll swear—cross their hearts—that the night the Wards vanished, it was just a coincidence. A storm. A power surge. Nothing more. But I’ve heard the static. It starts at midnight, when the world holds its breath. An old radio, caked in dust and regret, flickers to life in the back office of the Haven. No one’s touched it in years—not since the Wards disappeared, anyway—but the dial spins on its own, chasing a signal no sane station would broadcast. Through the hiss and crackle, a voice seeps out, low and deliberate, like it’s been waiting. “The Haven needs a keeper,” it says, each word dripping with something ancient, something hungry. “Will you answer?” Most wouldn’t. Most would run, or pray, or pretend they never heard it. But Ethan Ward isn’t most people. He’s got his father’s stubborn streak and his mother’s knack for staring into the dark without blinking. When he stepped into that crumbling relic of a ghost house, lugging nothing but a duffel bag and a chip on his shoulder, he didn’t know he was tuning into a frequency older than the town itself. He didn’t know the shadows had been waiting for him—or that they’d been waiting for someone, anyone, to claim the Haven’s curse. The static doesn’t lie, though. It promises secrets, the kind that claw their way out of locked rooms and broken mirrors. It promises thrills, the kind that draw fools from miles around to scream and laugh and run. And it promises answers—about the Wards, about the park, about the thing that hums beneath it all. But every promise comes with a catch, and this one’s written in the dark: once you listen, there’s no turning back. So here we are, at the edge of the Haven, where the air tastes like rust and the shadows don’t stay still. Ethan’s about to flip the switch, not knowing he’s already part of the broadcast. The radio’s awake now, and it’s calling. Maybe you’ll hear it too, if you’re brave enough to step inside. Welcome to The Haunted Haven. Tune in—if you dare.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.