A Halloween Story by Unique Lighting and Home Décor — www.buttelighting.com

Prologue: The Hill That Hums

Between Butte and Melrose, there’s a stretch of land where the air itself feels wired. Locals call it the Divide’s quiet side — a place where cell signals die, compasses spin, and headlights seem to fade too soon.

At the top of that long, empty slope sits Lady Joshua’s Estate — a manor with bones older than Montana’s statehood. Its windows are tall and narrow, its roofline crooked, its walls blackened from a fire no one remembers.

No power lines reach it anymore.
And yet, every Halloween, a soft amber light burns in the upper east window.
Always the same hue. Always alive.

They say you can hear a faint hum in the air when you pass — not mechanical, but living.

Chapter One: The Ariksons Move West

The day Riley and Faye Arikson first saw Lady Joshua’s Estate, the weather was too perfect to feel real.

The sky over Butte was silver-blue, the kind that stretches forever. Dust rose in curls behind their truck as they turned off Highway 2 toward a dirt path swallowed by yellow grass.

Their realtor, Raydeen Keldenis, followed in a dented Subaru, smiling too much, talking too little.

“This place has been waiting for someone,” she said when they reached the hill.

Waiting — that was the word that stayed with Faye.

The manor stood alone, black and skeletal against the sky. Its porch sagged, its windows clouded by decades of breath. There was a scent — iron, rain, and something faintly electrical.

Inside, the air was thick. Every step creaked with dust and memory.

An old brass chandelier hung above the entryway, its arms twisted, its bulbs long dead.

Riley whistled. “Looks like it’s seen some storms.”

Raydeen’s voice softened. “The previous owner… Dianalogni Mining Company. Bought it back in the fifties as a guesthouse. Used it for something else, though. Wiring experiments. Power studies.”

“Power?” Faye asked.

Raydeen nodded, but didn’t elaborate.

When they stepped back into the cold daylight, Faye turned and saw her reflection in the window — warped, trembling, but faintly lit from within.

Chapter Two: Zacharia Jennis

He came two days after they signed the papers.

A tall man in a weathered coat, hair slicked like an old preacher’s, hands soft and scarred. The name stitched on his pocket read Zacharia Jennis.

His van bore no logo, just faded paint and a hand-written note on the side:
“Lighting Systems — Repair, Renewal, Reawakening.”

He said he’d been contracted through Dianalogni, though Riley hadn’t called anyone.

Faye led him through the manor. He didn’t ask questions, didn’t take notes. He just walked, touching the walls, his fingertips tracing the faint hairline cracks like he was listening through them.

“This house remembers,” he said.

Riley frowned. “Remembers what?”

Zacharia looked up toward the rafters. “How bright it used to be.”

By sundown, every room had been fitted with new fixtures — simple, elegant, too modern for their surroundings. Path lights now lined the dirt drive. Amber sconces glowed along the walls. The dead chandelier flickered to life like a creature inhaling for the first time in decades.

When he finished, Zacharia stood at the breaker box in the basement — though no one remembered showing him where it was.

He smiled faintly and said, “Once you turn it on, don’t turn it off again.”

Then he was gone.

They never saw his van leave.

Chapter Three: The Hum

For a week, the estate was perfect.

The lights responded to motion, voice, and even mood. The hallways felt less hollow. The air seemed cleaner.

But then the hum began.

It was faint at first — just a tremor in the walls after midnight, as if the house had a heartbeat.

Faye thought it was the wiring. Riley thought it was the wind.
But when they cut the main power, the sound didn’t stop.

It grew clearer.
Rhythmic. Intentional.

Like whispering through static.

That night, their daughter Annetta Josephine woke crying. Faye rushed in to find the nursery light already on, glowing pink and warm.

“I told her to stop singing,” Annetta whispered.

Faye froze. “Who?”

“The lady in the walls. She says it’s her house.”

Chapter Four: Kel Shawnson

He arrived at dusk — a stranger in a wool coat, eyes sharp as the mountain air.

“I’m Kel Shawnson,” he said. “Lighting designer. I worked with the Dianalogni team years ago. I heard your house is… active again.”

Riley let him in, though every instinct told him not to.

Kel carried blueprints wrapped in oilskin. When he unrolled them, the paper was brittle, marked with wiring schematics that spiraled inward like symbols — veins feeding a heart.

“This isn’t a lighting grid,” he said. “It’s containment.”

He traced a circle with his finger. “They believed light could be used to anchor energy. To make memory permanent. But once you teach something to hold light… it never forgets.”

Faye asked quietly, “What do we do?”

Kel didn’t answer.
He was staring up the staircase — where a light had just turned on by itself.

Chapter Five: The House Breathes

The next morning, the fog never lifted.

By noon, it had turned to mist so thick it swallowed the fields. Only the manor remained visible — black ribs against a white sky.

Inside, the house was warm. Too warm. Every light burned at half intensity, but the air shimmered with heat.

Faye stood by the window and realized there were shadows moving under the frost glass — slow, deliberate, like people pacing just behind it.

Riley went to the basement to shut off the system.

He didn’t return.

When Faye followed, she found the panel open — wires glowing like veins. The metal hummed beneath her fingertips.

In the center, carved into the steel, was a phrase scratched in by hand:
“THE LIGHT REMEMBERS.”

The bulbs overhead began to pulse, in rhythm with her breath.
And from the darkness of the hall, a voice whispered,

“You woke me too soon.”

Chapter Six: The Longest Night

October 31st.

The storm rolled in without warning — snow and static swallowing the Divide.

The road to Butte was gone. So was Melrose. Even the power lines disappeared into white.

Kel tried to leave, but the van wouldn’t start. Every time he turned the key, the porch lights flickered in response — like the house was laughing.

Inside, Annetta stood by the stairwell, her skin faintly lit from within.

“She says it’s better this way,” she whispered. “No more dark.”

The chandelier flared to life — every bulb white-hot, glass dripping like wax.

Kel shouted, “Riley! Faye! You need to—”

But the sound was gone.
The hum became a roar. The walls breathed. The lights twisted in color — red, gold, blue, violet — until the entire house was a storm of living light.

Then, silence.

When the snow cleared, Lady Joshua’s Estate was dark again.

Chapter Seven: The Glow Returns

The sheriff from Butte arrived three days later with a crew from Dianalogni. They found no trace of the Ariksons. The generator was intact, the power off.

But every fixture was hot to the touch.

And in the upstairs nursery, the lamp burned steady, pink and soft.

Kel Shawnson was gone. Only his notebook remained, its last page written in a hurried scrawl:

“The light is not artificial. It’s what the house remembers we took.”

That night, truckers passing between Butte and Melrose saw Lady Joshua’s Estate glowing on the hill — every window alive, as if the house itself were awake again.

And if you slowed your truck just enough, the hum came through the radio, faint but rhythmic — like someone breathing through static.

Epilogue: The Designer’s Secret

Months later, a new shop opened in downtown Butte. Its sign read:
Shawnson & Dianalogni — Bespoke Lighting Design.

Inside, a single lamp sat glowing on a pedestal.
No wires. No switch.

If you leaned close, you could hear it hum.
And if you looked long enough, you’d see three silhouettes reflected in the glass — a man, a woman, and a child.

All smiling.

A Note from Unique Lighting and Home Décor

Even the darkest spaces remember light.
This Halloween, when you step outside into the Montana night, take a moment before flipping the switch.

Because not every glow is made of electricity.
And some lights remember what we forget to fear.