My friends and I, typical 12-year-old kids, are the adventurous, rebellious, and fearless ones in our families. We are always making up excuses such as, “We have a group project due tomorrow,” so we can hang out, and not do chores at home. During the days we typically spend our time in the woods attempting to find abandoned buildings and interesting adventures worth our while. Although at night, we tend to stay inside telling scary stories that can sometimes result in nightmares.  Sometimes on the weekends we switch things up and sneak out of the house late at night to wander the woods. We always hear stories at school about kids seeing lights at night outside their bedroom windows, but they are too scared to say anything to their parents about it in fear that their parents will not believe them.

This all changed on one October night at 11:30 p.m. We all were over at Jack’s house and decided to sneak out after everyone else had gone to bed. We spotted a glow in the woods out of the window. At that point we bundled up in layers of coats and pants so that we would not freeze ourselves to death. We then packed food, flashlights, and batteries for the trip– just in case something would happen causing our outing to be longer than planned. We crept around the house like mice; trying not to make a sound that would wake anyone up. We opened the door ever so carefully, closed it behind us, and were off on our adventure.

We know this area of land like the back of our hands, but something seemed different at night. It felt like it took hours to reach the woods, although in reality it was only a quarter mile from Jack’s house. As we approached the start of the woods, we all had to stop for a minute to catch our breaths. Soon after, we were on our way again tracking the light that we had spotted earlier. Slowly but surely we were getting closer to the light, but we were all getting terribly tired of walking, so we decided to find out what the light was and then run over to the bus stop on the highway to catch a ride back home. As we got closer to the light the more we were able to depict what the mysterious thing was. It was the strangest thing that I had ever seen. It was a pumpkin. It was in the middle of the woods just giving off radiant light. We all were debating who should take the top of it off to see what was inside and its inner mechanics. Unfortunately, the majority vote chose me. I’ve never been so scared in my life, but naturally I did not want any of them to know that. So I walk over, place my hand on the lid, close my eyes, open it…

…and I snap awake in my bed from the dream.