I trailed the group as we headed up the long, marble staircase that would take us to the second floor. We were just around the corner to the second-floor hallway when the lights again went out and the world around us became pitch black!

The crowd began shouting out:

"Good Lord!"

"(Gasp)!"

"What happened?"

"Who is that? Who bumped me?"

"Eeeek!"

"Sally!"

"The light! WHERE IS THE LIGHT??"

"Aaaaah! What grabbed me???"

It was paniced chaos as I tried to feel my way through the group to the cabinet against the wall, and I heard Edmund hollar out, "MEL!"

"I'm trying!" I shouted back. I found the cabinet and pushed someone away from the doors.

"Who is that?" the yelled at me.

"Sorry- just for a moment!" I replied. I pulled out an old lantern from the closet and, using the candle matches from my pocket, lit it up. Two fingers of light filled the hallway and everyone in it breathed a sigh of releif.

Edmund said something clever at the front of the group as I returned to the back of it. A couple of people around me used the light of the lantern to light their candles, and then we were off again, roaming through the long, dank hallway.

"We should check the rooms," one of the gentlemen in the front suggests.

"We should split up," another says.

"We should not split up!" a woman replies. "This manor is too large for us to go roaming about alone!" I look at Edmund at the front of the crowd, rolling his eyes.

"Please just try and follow me," he replies. "And do keep calm!"

But just then, another scream pierces through hallway, ajoined this time by the loud sound of metallic chains being pulled across the floor!

"Oh God!" one woman shouts. "I think it is a ghost!" I stand wide-eyed against the wall, my hands shaking (and making the light from the latern throw shadows against the walls in such quick motion that one may think the room itself was shaking). Even I am scared now as to what is lurking inside our manor walls!