From SusieQ's Collection of Scary Halloween Stories

OLD MAN MURPHY'S HALLOWEEN TREAT FOR THE YOUNGIN'S...........

It is Halloween night, circa 1950, in Southern Illinois where outhouses are still commonplace. A band of teenage boys with highly questionable intentions are roving the countryside. Occasionally as they plod through the thickets, they start shoving each other till someone falls down. Then they burst into laughter that sounds like it comes from neither a boy nor a man but something in between.

As they approach old man Murphy's place, one of them blurts out "Hey, let's get Murphy's outhouse like we did last year." Everyone joins in a resounding "Shit damn, let's!" Their enthusiasm nearly peaks as they recall what they had done to Murphy's outhouse the year before. (What they had done the year before was to carefully lift the outhouse and move it back a few feet so that the hole was in front the outhouse. As the story goes, Old Man Murphy upon making his final trip to the outhouse that night before going to bed walked right into the hole.)

The boys move quietly and slowly onto Murphy's property and toward the back of the outhouse. It is a two seater which makes it all the more fun. With nearly every step they take, the fallen leaves crunch beneath their feet sending off a warning signal to anyone who might be listening. It can't be helped. But it stops the boys in their tracks for a spell and they don't proceed until they are fairly certain that nobody has heard them.

The crescent moon gives off little light and easily slips behind one of the wispy clouds in the sky making the night practically pitch dark at times. In the darkness, the outhouse is barely recognizable. The boys grope their way through the dark to the back of the outhouse and are nearly within reach of it when suddenly there is chaos. A chorus of desperate screeches and howls erupts that can be heard a mile away. Grabbing at the earth, the boys struggle to get back up onto dry land.

Old man Murphy is in the dimly lit parlor of his house. He is sitting comfortably in a platform rocker with his feet propped up on a footstool. He turns on the table lamp that is nearby. With a smirk on his face, he casually lights his pipe and gives it a few puffs. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he snaps open the newspaper that's been sitting in his lap for some time and proceeds to read it.

(This is based on a true story. My brother-in-law was one of those roving teenagers. Suspecting that the boys might be back again the following year to move his outhouse, old man Murphy (this wasn't his real name) decided to be the trickster this time. Knowing, if they showed up, that the boys would approach from the back of the outhouse in order to lift it, he moved the outhouse forward so that the boys would fall into the hole....which they did.)