The Day my Aunty Disappeared
By Bronagh Oakey, 5th Class

Once upon a time my dad, named Raymond Oakey, was going on a walk down a supposedly haunted lane with his brothers and sisters. Very strange things had apparently happened there, like the time a man got chased by a bull, and another person got stung by a swarm of wasps. The local rumours had said that when somebody walked down the lane they would never come back the same way, and more often than not would end up getting lost.

Let’s get back to the story. It was a dark lane with a run-down cobblestone road and a shadowy, muddy strip of grass down the middle of the path, covered by the trees above it. On the left there was a field with overgrown grass and a broken muddy electric fence, protecting a field which had once been the home to farm animals like cattle and bulls, but was now an abandoned field, no different from the next. On the right, there was an overgrown bush blocking the view.

It was the day before my dad’s birthday. My dad and his energetic siblings were walking down the lane. They were excited but Peter, my dad’s youngest brother, was really nervous. My dad heard a sudden, crashing thud, which had broken the silence of the frightened group, and quickly looked to the right to see Marion, his oldest sister, had tripped and fallen. They all hurriedly sprinted home as fast as they could and told my nan that Marion had fallen. My nan thought it was my dad’s idea to go up the lane, considering it was normally his decision whenever the family got up to any mischief.

So my nan thought it was my dad’s idea to go up the lane so she gave out to my dad. They ran in a panic back up the lane with my nan. They eventually got to where Marion tripped but to their surprise, Marion was not there. They ran down to the houses next to the lane and knocked on every house’s door. They eventually found her in one of the houses.

Let’s say they took the long way home and never returned there again, and in early 2004 the lane closed because so many people got hurt there.