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I had to write a story for French and this is the English version. I need to know if it is actually worth reviving. I am aware of the phrasing of some of the sentences, since I had to translate it to French and the language is very formal. I will clean it up later; I just need to know if it is even worth my time.

It's also part of a power point, which looks better and transitions better with illustrations.



There has always been a question as to whether or not ghosts exist, however there has recently been series of events which has proven so. People have always claimed to see spirits, demons and that of the divine; however none of it could really be proven.



It was late that night as a silver car pulled into the drive way, it glistened in the moonlight. The shrubs along the driveway were clearly neglected and had taken a life of their own. The car rolled over the gravel path, and past an elegant fountain. The fountain was large with glistening white marble statues. She continued up the driveway, and a house began to rise from the horizon. It was a massive structure. The car stopped and the driver cut the engine, a pair of smooth hands rested on the steering wheel. They were flawless and soft; they slowly dropped from the wheel and pulled the key from the ignition. Her blue eyes were closed, and her brown hair looked black in the light. She opened the door and stepped out of the car. A chill ran down her spine as she looked up at the house. She closed the car door, the sound echoed in the empty air.

There was something odd about the house, she turned around instinctively, she looked down the driveway but saw nothing. She swore she felt a pair of eyes run down her. She peered into the darkness and noted that nothing moved. The stillness and the silence was what concerned her. Even out in the country side there was sound, and movement. Here it was dead, not even the wind whistled. She continued to the house, the sound of gravel under her feet as she approached a massive pair of doors. She slipped the key into the lock, to her surprise the lock turned easily, and to her satisfaction she heard the click of the pins in the lock. She pulled open the door and felt a rush of cold stale air greet her. Slowly but surly she entered the house, it was even larger than she had anticipated.

The foyer had a high ceiling with a chandelier looming above covered in dust and cobwebs. The floor was covered in dust and the furniture had been draped with sheets to prevent dust from settling on them. The young woman reached into her coat and pulled a flashlight she had stuffed in her pocket prior to getting out of the car. The flashlight flickered to life and only provided a steady, constant ray of light into the darkness. She looked around to see that there was a fresco looming above her and moldings around the room. Her foot steps echoed as she cross the marble floor, in the center of the room was a pair of stair cases, their banisters were covered in dust but she realized that at one point they were a highly polished mahogany. The sound of her heart pounded in her ears and her breathing became unsteady. There was something about this house, something that told her to run and to stay. The very sound of her cell phone made her jump out of her skin. In moments she was answering the call, “Hey Sam,” said the voice on the other end, “how’s your evening so far?” Samantha smiled as she responded, “Well I’m not dead yet, why do you ask Albert?” There was a pause on the other end and she knew he had taken a wager at her expense. “How long did you estimate that I would last?” Samantha asked. There was both and air of humor and disgust in her voice. Albert hesitated and she knew she would desperately want to kill him. Albert sighed and responded, “A day, before you say it the others bet you wouldn’t even last through the night.” Samantha was agitated by his comment and was quick to reply, her tone was hostile and cold, “Well if you were here I bet you wouldn’t last a minute as well as those so called friends of yours.” Albert was instantly quiet as he processed what she had just said. “Good night Sam,” he muttered before hanging up. Apparently she had hit home, which made her grin with delight.

She continued to the stair case and remembered what the elderly couple who owned the house said to her that afternoon in her study. “These spirits aren’t the nicest, they will attempt to kill you. I have nearly died my self a couple times. I don’t care how you do it just get them out,” said Mr. Bêtise, “my wife and I can no longer handle the stress.” He was a tall and frail man, his skin was pail and he had clearly lived a rough life. His voice was like sand paper, it was harsh and unforgiving. It was bright and warm in the study, “Mr. and Mrs. Bêtise,” she began, “this is what I do. I do excursuses with some of the most violent spirits known. I have done close to seven hundred world wide and have studied under Father Lucas Trevant in Rome, and numerous other forms of exorcisms.” She paused and placed her hand on a book sitting on her desk. “I have studied abroad for years, yes I am young, however I have been trained by some of the most reputable people in the world.” She noted the look of distress in their eyes and said sweetly after a moment of silence, “Why did you come to me?” There was an eerie silence as she rounded to the front of her desk. She leaned on it and crossed her arms, the elderly woman looked up and responded, “You are considered one of the best in your field, and you come highly recommended.” Samantha closed her eyes and nodded absent mindedly, “I am aware,” she said. There was something else she had to hear before going to the client’s home. Mr. Bêtise sighed and said, “We have no one left to turn to.” Samantha smiled coyly and said, “That is why I am here.”

She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down the hallway. The furniture was covered in dust, and she could see the cobwebs hanging like silk from the ceiling. She began to walk toward the other end of the landing and made her way down the hallway. She heard the floor boards’ squeak, as foot steps resonated behind her behind her, and she felt someone breathing down her back. Samantha pivoted to face the source of the noise. She looked nervously down the hall only to discover that there was no one there. Her pulse quickened and she could hear it in her ears. She drew a deep breath and thought, just breathe Samantha, you have been in houses three times more active than this. She continued down the hall with flashlight in hand, it’s steady beam being the only source of light. She slowly forced a door open and looked into the room, it was a bed room at one point.

She slowly entered the room, there was a small bed and a large vanity mirror, the dresser was covered with a sheet, and she noticed a strange lump in the chair. Samantha walked over to the chair and grabbed the sheet. She was about to pull it off when she heard the distinct ring of a child’s laughter. She looked up and looked over her shoulder. Standing in the doorway was a little girl, her hair was woven into pigtails, and she swayed in a long white nightgown with a green ribbon around the waist. Samantha faced the girl, she was quiet and noticed the girl had pale skin and bloodshot eyes. The girl giggled and pointed at Samantha, she continued to shift and looked at her. Samantha stooped to the girl’s level and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” The little girl grinned and said, “This is my house I live here.” The little girl’s voice was barley above a whisper. Samantha remembered the notes the couple had given her and it mentioned nothing about a young girl.
Samantha approached the girl and said, “No you don’t” The little girl scowled and looked at Samantha her bloodshot eyes rolled over her.

“Yes I do! I live here this is my home!” she screamed. Samantha drew closer to the ghost, “Mother,” she howled, “There is a stranger in my room!” Samantha drew closer to the girl and said, “Take the light into your soul and allow it to fill you, let your spirit float. You are free from your bonds to this world.” The little girl walked over the threshold and screamed, her voice shook the room, “This is our house! Get Out!” Samantha continued the chant and watched the girl, her eyes widened and her pale skin had black lines from where the arteries had been in her face.

The glass in the windows vibrated and the glass in the mirror suddenly cracked and fell to the floor. Samantha had balled her self up to protect her spine. When she got off the floor, she looked in the door way and notice that the girl was gone. Samantha looked around the room and noticed the glass on the floor. Samantha walked over and grabbed the sheet from the chair; she slowly picked up the shards of glass.
She was carful to avoid the sharp edges; she stared at her reflection which stared back at her. Her nimble fingers tucked the glass into the white sheet and she tied a knot in the sheet so that none of the shards would fall out. Samantha rose from the floor and looked at the chair in the corner where she had taken the sheet from. Sitting in the chair was a doll in a black dress she had long brown hair and looked as though she were sleeping. She held the doll in her hands and noticed the craftsmanship which had gone into the doll.

Samantha placed the doll back in the chair and whispered, “I was not informed that I would be dealing with a child, this makes things so much more difficult.” She was about to leave when something odd caught her eye, the window was not only locked but there was a barrier of white powder in front of it. She placed her finger in the powder and felt it’s coarseness between her fingers. It was cubic and granular, “Salt?” she mused. She was confused as she opened the curtains of the other windows in the room; each of them had a line of salt in front of them. Her eyes widened as she looked under the bed, on the floor was chalk, she pushed the bed aside to find a drawing under it. It covered the entire area under it. It had an sever rings of drawings, and a massive eye in the middle. The first ring was surrounded in bizarre symbols; she recognized them but was unable to place them. The second ring consisted of the Western Zodiacs, each of them was detailed. The inner most ring was the four elements, earth, air, fire, water.

Samantha whispered, “What on earth happened here?” as she took pictures using her camera. She slid the bed back in place and left picked up the sheet with the glass wrapped in it. She went down the stairs and took the glass out to the garbage can. She opened the car door and pulled her lap top case before returning inside. She walked placed her bag on the sofa and walked down to the basement, she wandered down the stairs, and located the Circuit Breaker. She heard a splash as she walked across the basement to the Breaker. She flipped the switch and the house lit up. She looked down at her feet and noticed the water on the floor and remembered the Bêtises had said there were springs under the house. She turned off her flash light and ran back up the stairs. “I was given one night to get them out,” said Samantha as she went into the living room.

“One night to evict a number of ghosts,” she said as she sat down. Her nimble fingers opened the bag and she removed her laptop. She turned it on and immediately started to think about what could have happened to case magic to be introduced into the house. The laptop came to life and she slipped on her glasses, she immediately turned her phone into a hot spot and began flickering through the pages, she skimmed them and opened her browser. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed the date of the house’s construction into the archive online data base. She doubted that she would find much on the house but the encounter with the little girl was enough to make her wonder. She typed in Rochester, New York murders. She waited as the computer compiled results, in moments the results were on her screen.

She scrolled down and saw a disturbing title, The Red Serpent Murders; she knew little of the case. She opened the link and was immediately guided to the FBI website. The file was large and consisted of many elements, it hade everything from accounts of the scene and images to the interviews with the perpetrator. Samantha had no idea what she was looking for until she stumbled across and image of a little girl in a white night gown, with her eyes closed, her pigtails laying on the bed, and the girl in an eternal slumber. It was the same little girl she had seen in the hall way. The article read, “On March 14, 1953 a vicious murder of the Jacobs occurred. The killer had snuck into the house late one evening and went up the stairs. He killed the entire family, including the pet, and each of them was more gruesome than the last excluding the young girl. The father was killed with a slash to the tracheae however he was tortured prior to this.

The mother was shot in the chest after being raped. She was the dressed in a black gown and placed on the bed. Her husband was dressed in his tuxedo and placed next to her, he had been cleaned up and looked as though her were going to the gala. Their son was found on his bed but was drenched; the autopsy report stated that the boy had died of asphyxiation. He had been drowned in the bathtub after the Coroner had discovered water in the boy’s lungs. The little girl was saved for last; she was all ready ill and had been running a high fever for approximately three hours. The killer took his knife and slit her wrists after administering a sedative. The girl was rendered helpless, as the killer began dragged the knife across her skin. Once he had finished his merriment, he cleaned the girl, put her in a fresh nightgown and placed her in bed.” Samantha drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Horrible things had occurred in this house she continued to read, “The cat was found in the yard with a puncture in its lungs. It was an orange cat which was rather round. The murderer was caught as he tried to kill a family in Chicago. He committed suicide before the trial.” Samantha understood this but it did not explain the attempted protection charms in the room. She opened another file on her laptop and made a startling discovery, the symbols in the outermost ring were not even truly Western, they were older much older. The strange symbols belonged to the gypsies. It wasn’t a warding charm at all; it was a curse and a very dangerous one. “Who would put a curse on the house?” she asked. Her voice hung in the air as she attempted to rationalize what she had seen in the room. The drawing on the floor was similar to the curses gypsies put on those who were suspected of murder. This specific emblem was to call upon the dead to haunt the living. It curses both the living and dead to an eternal haunt. As she learned more about the symbols she ended up having more questions than answers. She continued to ponder her thoughts and slowly began to drift to sleep.

Chapter II

She was in the house and it had just been cleaned, the help was gone but their work did not go unnoticed. Every inch of the house was polished and dusted. Not a single item was out of place. Samantha continued up the stairs, she was no longer in her jeans and sweater, but was draped in an elegant dress. Her hand slid up the banister as she moved up the stairs. The father was in his study, he was working hard, glass of brandy sat on a coaster on the desk and his pen scratched feverously across the pages. The mother was in her night gown and had tucked herself in her dressing robe for warmth. She sat beside her daughter’s bed and pressed her hand against her daughter’s brow. The girl was sweating and was clearly very ill. A young boy sprinted past Samantha into the little girl’s room. It was different then it was currently, her dolls were uncovered and the furniture was clean. It was bright and warm in the room compared to its current state. Suddenly there was a commotion, the man arrived, and he knocked the mother and father unconscious and bound the children. Samantha watched in horror as the monster committed his acts. His face was covered with a hideous Kabuki mask, and he wore gloves. He turned to her and she saw the face of the serpent, his hands warped around her throat and she attempted to break free. She fought his grasp only for him to tighten it. Her vision tunneled and she felt her body go limp. She began to slip into the darkness, away from her body. In moments her eyes flickered open and she sat up on the coach.

Her breathing was labored and she was covered in perspiration. Her eyes darted about the room and she said, “It was a dream, just a dream.” It was a horrible idea to fall asleep in the house, she knew better. More often then not a spirit would try to kill the person performing the exorcism in their sleep. She looked at her wrist watch and notice that it was officially midnight. A clock chimed loudly in the center hall, and she noticed something in the corner of her eye, an orange cat. She looked at the cat and walked over to it. It’s fur was a fiery orange and it’s eyes were an unmistakable green. She walked up to the cat only for it to run to the stairs. Once it reached the stairs it stopped and looked at her. “I must be insane to follow you,” she said. She went back into the room and pulled her books and stole. She slipped the stole on and followed the cat up the stairs. It did not move like a typical cat, it floated with was both disturbing and intriguing. She followed it to the wing she had never been in. She slowly opened the door and went to the last window in the hall. She looked out the window into the night. Bellow was a horrific sight; thousands of spirits were lined up outside the house. They glowed eerily in the night, Samantha’s jaw dropped. This house had bigger problems than she had first believed.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed the client’s number; she held the phone to her ear and said, “I am afraid that I will need more time than I had first estimated.” She looked over the number of ghosts in the yard, “How much time?” asked Mr. Bêtise. Samantha took an estimate and said, “Approximately one more night.” There was a muffled conversation in the background but it sounded as though they were debating. “All right, one more night,” said Mr. Bêtise before he hung up. Samantha smiled and slipped the phone into her pocket. She walked into the living room and said, “Before I do anything I have to figure out why there are so many spirits here. There must be one factor that is holding them here.” She pondered the results; slowly she worked to figure it out. She paused and looked up from the butcher’s pad that she had been scratching ideas on and mathematical equations combining string theory and physics. The few that could follow her work would say that she was searching for an answer that could not occur anyway.

She paused and looked up from the page, she got on her feet after realizing it wasn’t the house, it was the location. The water under the house kept them in limbo. She couldn’t plug up the springs but she could break the bond to the house. The charm was not to seal them in, the exact opposite it was supposed to allow them to escape, but the salt on the windows did not make sense. Salt on the windows would seal the spirits in and prevent them from escaping. Who put salt on the windows? she thought. It was nearly dawn and she had been up all night attempting to figure out how to evict the ghosts. Samantha walked into the kitchen and notice how it was a mess and very unsanitary.

She left the house and walked into the town to get breakfast. She picked up a cup of coffee and a pastry. Once she got back se realized that she needed to go and do some more research. She went back to her office and began to look through her books. The salt on the windows couldn’t simply be swept away she had to break the magic that had been used to keep it in place. She sat at her desk for hours and flickered through her notes on exercises and other useful information. She shifted through the pages and held her head over the desk; she froze and noticed a footnote she had made. It read, “See page 333 in the book Father Lucas gave you.”

She turned and pondered the shelves as she looked for the small black volume. She pulled the volume from the shelf and opened it to page 333. It was titled, “Breaking the Barriers & Bonds,” she looked at the article, it had been written by Lucas himself. His penmanship was so distinctive; his black ink dominated the parchment. “In order to break the barrier, the salt must be swept away around midnight under a new moon, and sage must be burned in the room as you do so. Remember that as soon as you sweep the salt away you allow spirits both inside and outside to move. Be cautious it can be dangerous removing this barrier; it may be keeping something at bay that you didn’t know about. To break bonds to a place, cleanse each room and in the front of the house blow two blasts of a shofar, then continue with traditional technique,” it read.

Samantha marked the page and went into her ivory box in her desk. Sitting in it was a bag of sage and a swinging incense burner. She smiled and places it in her bag; she grabbed her brushes from Africa to sweep away the salt and her shofar. The elegant ram’s head was tucked away into it’s velvet bag and she carried it with her to the car.

“Tonight this will end once and for all,” she said as she got in her car and drove back to the house. It was nearly nine in the evening; she had spent a majority of her time researching. She placed the stole over her shoulders and wrapped her wrist in her rosary. She carried her bag and Shofar with her into the house and sat in the parlor. She looked at her calendar and was happy to see that it was a new moon that night.



It was half past eleven and the house was wide awake, footsteps echoed through the halls and figures were wandering through the house. At one point she swore that an elderly man had walked down the stairs and gone for a walk. She sat on the couch and there was a loud crash, at this point every mirror in the house was broken which was a dangerous thing. Mirror could force a spirit to stay at bay but they also served as doorways between the worlds. She walked around the lower level and began to sweep the salt off of the window sills. With each sweep of the African brushes the salt feel into a dish she had grabbed from the kitchen.

She lit the match and began to burn the loose sage in the swinging burner. She walked into each corner and began to mumble various prayers. She did this for each room on the ground floor, except the foyer. She went up the stair and the sage followed her, she continued to swing the burner and completed the rooms upstairs. With each swing and prayer she muttered, white light filled the room and forced the spirits out. She was able to complete this before midnight, the clock chimed and Samantha went into the foyer.

She pulled her Shofar from the bag and stood in the middle of the foyer. She supported it with both hands and blew into it. The sound filled the house, it was a deep sound which caused a rush of cold air. She blew into the horn once again until the spirits were standing in the foyer with her. They disliked the horn, however they came.

She stood before them and said, “You should not be here, you must leave this is no longer your home, and for some of you it never was. Out with you.” There was a moment of silence until the whole house shook with a booming voice, “They can not leave.” Samantha had only heard of incidents like this in all the excursuses she had preformed never before had she experienced this. A massive black hooded figure appeared in front of her. It was much taller than any human being, and was draped in black robes. “You do not have the power to evict them, they are mine,” it said. Samantha stared at the figure, “You must let them go.” The figure turned to her, she could not see it’s face but saw it’s blood red lips. “You don’t have the power to evict them, you are pathetic the only reason you are here is to prove yourself to Father Lucas. You still believe that you must prove yourself,” it said. Samantha felt the sting of his words however she knew otherwise. “I know I can defeat you,” she said. Her voice was strong, “I sense doubt, and you are just like me you know. Come and join me, I know you would be welcome in my world,” he said.

Samantha responded in moments, “I am nothing like you,” she paused and began to recite a Hebrew prayer. The ghosts screamed, and wind picked up in the house. She continued to recite the prayer and the house shook as items began to fly in the air. Books flew from the shelves and the shards of glass from the mirrors flew in the mess. She stood there with her Shofar in her hands and moved to the next part of the prayer. She was nicked by a piece of glass and felt it slice into her skin, she continued to recite her voice growing in volume and strength. She felt the power in her words as she stood in the eye of the storm. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “The light will free you and allow your bonds to be broken, by the power of god and the light of heaven. You are free.”

She felt as though the air was being pushed out of her lungs and she became dizzy, the black figure still stood before her. The figure burst and she fell to the floor, the world a blur as she hit the floor of the foyer. The world went white as her head hit the floor of the foyer, and spirits left the house once and for all.