Haunted Horror's

Portrait Ghost Encounters!

AKA "I couldn't think of a better title"

The room Twilight entered was unlike any other room, it was a small room with bookcases that held books that were coated in thick layers of dust. In between the bookcases was a lit fireplace that covered the room in a dull orange glow and made the room considerable warmer than the others. In one corner of the room Twilight spotted a desk in one of the corners with an open book on it and several books, each of their covers faded, stacked up on one side of the desk. Twilight walked up to the desk to inspect the open book, though she found it's faded, yellow pages were blank, though she could detect traces of a spell on it, and took it to study it later.

Suddenly the silence in the room was broken by a creak coming from somewhere behind Twilight, causing her heart to stop for a moment in fear. Slowly she turned around to find an empty rocking chair slowly moving back and forth, Twilight having reassured herself that it was probably just the air coming in from when she opened the door and when the rocking chair stopped moving, turned back to the desk and gazed at the stack of books and levitated a green one over and looked at it. The book was bound in green leather with golden words on one side, though they were faded and illegible - suddenly another creak broke the silence of the room causing Twilight to go back into defensive mode and instantly turn around, ready to fight. Nothing was there, nothing except for the rocking chair moving back and forth, though sightly faster than before.

In the distance Twilight could hear a low howling noise that seems to come from in the hallway, so Twilight cautiously moved to the door and put her ear to it. It was definitely coming from the hallway. Slowly, she turned the door knob with her magic until she was met with a satisfying *click* and opened the door, causing it to creak, and poked her head out into the cold, dark hallway. Everything seemed to be as normal as everything else was in the mansion. Cold, dark, and lifeless. Twilight started to think about what could have caused that noise but she soon found out what it was, the door that lead back into the entrance hall burst open, pieces of paper and large amounts of dust pouring in, all unlocked doors being blown open due to the strange, powerful gust of air and eventually the air slammed into Twilight causing her to fall onto her back.

When Twilight got back up she noticed that the door was now closed and the room she was in was in total darkness and the floor was littered with paper and books that had been blown off because of the strong wind. What Twilight failed to notice was an eerie blue mist coming from the rocking chair, by the time she noticed, the entire floor was covered in the mist, a blue light enveloped the rocking chair, dull at first but slowly became brighter and brighter until Twilight had to shield her eyes with one of her hooves.

The bright light slowly dulled and eventually Twilight was able to remove her hoof and was able to see another ghost which was currently sat in the rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth and reading a book. Though this ghost was unlike any of the other ghosts Twilight had encountered so far, it looked to be a ghost of a stallion who wore an old cap and vest, thankfully Rarity wasn't here to see this or else she would have fainted at the sight of the fashion disas- "My friends!" Twilight  suddenly realised that she had told her friends to meet up at the mansion, and she was sure it was well past 9PM and they were nowhere to be found "M-maybe they couldn't get into the mansion a-and they gave up and are now sleeping in their homes." Twilight almost reassured herself when a scream echo'd throughout the mansion that sounded like Rarity which caused her pupils to shrink to pinpricks and caused the blood in her veins to turn cold.

Twilight rushed to the door but soon found out that the door had locked itself, trapping her in a room with the strange ghost which appeared to be more interested in reading his book than fighting. Twilight had no time to formulate a plan, she had to get out of this room and save her friends from untold horrors that lurked in the mansion. Twilight faced the ghost that was still sitting in the rocking chair and shined her flash light at him only to find that he dissipated before the light could hit him and reappeared when she took the light off of the rocking chair.

Before Twilight could do anything else, a book slammed into her side causing her to momentarily lose balance but managed to regain balance quick enough to stop her from falling and then turned to the book cases to see several books had appeared on the shelves and were violently shaking, until one launched itself at her, Twilight ducked and narrowly avoided being hit. Suddenly Twilight heard a yawn coming from the ghost in the rocking chair and turned around to face the ghost who was stretching his hooves and shined the flash light at him once more. 'Ding'. Twilight instantly levitated the nozzle of the X-Haunter over and pushed the button causing it to trap the ghost in it's suction, though this ghost was much more powerful than the other ghosts and before Twilight knew it she had been dragged along the floor and slammed, head first, into a bookcase causing her to let go of the nozzle and let the ghost escape.

Twilight slowly got up, her vision slightly blurred causing her to almost walk into the desk before her vision fully cleared and she was able to see the ghost once again sitting on the rocking chair and reading a book as if nothing ever happened. Due to the blow to her head she was barely able to register the bookshelves shaking and narrowly avoided getting hit by a copy of Starswirl The Bearded's teleportation theories, though due to the books trajectory it ended up hitting the ghost in the head, dazing him. Now was her probably only chance to capture this ghost *click* the ghost ended up once more caught in the X-Haunters suction, the blow to his head weakening him enough that Twilight was barely able to hold her ground, the helpless ghost's frantic movements to escape becoming slower and more fatigued as it got closer and closer to the nozzle of the the X-Haunter. Several moments passed that felt like hours to Twilight as she put all of her strength into capturing the ghost, her eyes closed as she concentrated until the tug from the ghost disappeared. Twilight opened her eyes and saw that the room was now fully light, the bookshelves instantly ceased their shaking and the warm slowly returned to the room.

A glint of gold from the corner of Twilight's eye caught her attention, she slowly walked, her hooves shaking from the adrenaline slowly fading from her body, to the rocking chair and pulled out a small key, but before she headed back out into the dark hallway, Twilight decided to rest for a few moments to catch her breath. Eventually Twilight made her way back into the hallway and looked at the key once more to find a 3 engraved on it and decided to search for the room it belonged to.

After a few moments Twilight was able to find the right room, right at the very back of the hallway and unlocked the door to reveal a large bedroom that had a large fancy bed with two small tables at either side and a desk with a dressing mirror on top. Right next to the mirror were large curtains that were closed, a few slivers of moonlight shining through a few gaps, deciding to light the room up more to make searching for the next key easier, Twilight opened the curtains causing a large draft to blow into the room due to part of the window being shattered. It was only then Twilight knew she wasn't alone, as she caught a glimpse of a female ghost with a tan coat and a blond mane sit up from the stool at the dressing mirror, walk up to the curtains and close them, then went back to brushing her mane.

Twilight's first reaction was to take out the flash light and shine it at the ghost, but again she found it ineffective and turned it off to save the battery. Suddenly an idea struck her, the answer to capturing the ghost was right in front of her eyes and within a second Twilight drew back the curtains thanks to her limited magic. The wind coming from the broken window irritated the ghost causing it to get up once again to close the curtain but before it could Twilight switched the flash light on and stunned the ghost, then she pointed the nozzle at the ghost and switched it on, the ghost now no longer stunned, began franticly flying around the room. Unlike the other ghost this one was marginally weaker, but still had more than enough strength to cause Twilight to be pulled all over the room, thankfully though she managed to not collide with the bed, but her luck ran out when she slammed into the dresser.

Unlike last time this ghost didn't return to what it was doing before, instead it charged right at her, missing her by an inch. Twilight quickly got back up again just to be slammed into by the ghost and land on the bed, the ghost just about to charge again when suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the room bright enough to stun the ghost. Twilight took advantage of this and used to X-Haunter, the ghost much weaker from the fight couldn't escape and ended up inside the machine.

The lights in the room flickered, then turned on, showing some details in the room that couldn't be seen in the darkness, a smashed, empty picture frame lay in a corner of the room with a few shards of glass laying around it, an old key taped to the dresser mirror and a few bloodstains on the carpet. upon closer inspection it turned out to be Twilight's as she just now noticed a small gash on her side from when the ghost charged at her. "I'll need to find some bandages to cover it up"  Twilight said to herself.

Using her magic Twilight took the key and levitated it into her saddle bag and once again entered the darkness of the hallway. "It can't get any worse than this, can it?" Twilight randomly thought.

...How wrong she was.

[Author note: Hopefully will get another chapter out sooner than this, so have a terrible cliffhanger.]