Spoiler for The Haunted House on Roanoke Island: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Oh, the killings really happened. Grandpa knew some of the men who got killed, and sometimes I listened to him tell it. The house on the island used to belong to one of Grandpa's army buddies, Niles. Niles wasn't the easiest guy to get along with, or so I heard, but something rattled him in his last few weeks. The last anyone heard of him was right before a big storm.
A few days after the storm, someone went to check on him, and they found footprints near broken window. The entire house had been ransacked, they said no piece of furniture was left intact. Niles was found first. He was lying in a hall with his chest hacked nearly in two, still clutching his rifle. They say he missed, but Grandpa says that Niles had been a crack-shot. Niles' wife was found in a bedroom. She was laying on the bed with her hands folded together, and her head lain on top of her hands. The closet door had been smashed open, and a knife had been left there.
The second murder came a few months later; one of Niles' business partners, Dwight, and his wife, returned home one night to see the door had been kicked in. They called the police, but when the police got there, they found house was ransacked and the couple laid out in the living room, alongside the baby sitter. The children were missing and the sitter, and Dwight's wife had been stabbed and decapitated. But Dwight was found bruised and split open from neck to groin. They never found his tongue.
That was when worry started to creep through the town. But the investigations ran cold for weeks. No one knew who would be next. In the end it was a reporter named Marshal who was the next victim. One night he called the police from the side of Orchard Road, he was panicked and managed a frantic cry for help before abandoning the call to run. They found his body an hour later, burning in a field, with his head next to it, his eyes gouged out.
The next killing came only a couple of days later; Winslow, an old friend of Niles and Grandpa, was working late at his book store. Neighbors heard shots fired, but when they got there they found a ransacked shop and Winslow's body, cleaved open. His shotgun was nearby, and Grandpa always said it was still smoking.
It was a few days later that the coroner matched some mud from Marshal's body to the island. The Sheriff and his men went back to search Niles' house. They found one of the boats was missing, and went in armed. There was fight there, and a fire got started. One of Grandpa's friends on the force swore they found a shrine in a little cave behind a cellar wall. The killer ran, but the cops were not about to let him escape, and laid down heavy fire. They fell into the mud, and stumbled into the water, and never came out. The coast guard searched for weeks before giving up. No one ever really lived in the old house again. Grandpa always waited until he thought I was asleep before telling the story, but he has told me the house on the island is cursed, and made me swear never to go in. And that's as much as I know about it.