Haunted—the word brings so much to mind: a vague uneasiness around the eyes of victims, animals returning again and again to a certain place.

Up in the hills behind Milpitas, on the way to Sunol or parts east, the roads all seem to look alike: winding, narrow, with sparse oaks and high weeds off to the side, the occasional farmhouse sitting just far enough back that it can barely be seen from the road.

Kids out there who like to go joy riding or seek out a quiet cul-de-sac to neck are frequently misled and have to double back when they realize the maze that is the backwoods.

Sometimes they pass a certain farmhouse—a beauty of a beast, painted white, paint peeling, windows vacant, sitting at the end of a straight-shot dirt drive about 200 yards off the road. Flat-fronted, with no porch, she is a two-story piece of architectural heresy, crossed between Victorian and Greco-Roman and neither agreeing well with the other. She sits in the middle of the dirt farm yard, a barn off behind to her right. She sits alone and waits.

One October night back in '75, a young man told his lover that he was bored, and after weeks of joking about the tales they had heard, he decided to spend the night at the empty place. He thought he would take the Fairlane on up, wander around and sleep on the floor, waiting to see if anything moved or lights came on or he heard anything funny—all the traditional stories kids told about the monolith. She protested, begged him not to go, but finally kissed him goodbye at 1 a.m. after he swore that he would be back by 4 in the morning, no matter what.

After dawn he charged into her house with a new shock of white in his hair and a tale to tell.

He had arrived and parked right in front of the house, letting himself in through the broken downstairs floor-length window. He walked around and took in the ratholes, the mildew, the sagging floors, the abandoned furnishings that were long past touchable. It was pitch dark—the moon had gone away—and seeing was almost impossible. He remembered the tales he had heard about the place. Some stories had it that a girl threw herself to her death there. Some said her father had killed her lover. In another story, a girl had cheated on her spouse and he killed both her and her lover.

There was an odd noise in the house—like crying, far away. He told himself it was a night dove. The slight movements he saw out of the corners of his eyes he attributed to vermin. His lighter ran out of fuel after 20 minutes, and he moved quietly in the dark. So did the noises. Doors closed above him. And below. And he walked in and out of cold spots.

Eventually he started to move out to the barn, leaving by the window he had entered through. That was when the moon appeared again and shone on the hood of the car parked below.

Below him? He was up on the second story, about to step out into nothingness. He had not climbed any stairs. He had never, of his own volition, left the safety of the ground floor.

He turned around, panicked, and spent another 20 minutes trying to find a way down in the dark while the crying turned to laughter. The shadows seemed much thicker. Eventually the stairs were under him and he fell down them, rolling to the far wall and throwing himself out into the yard. He dashed to the car and climbed in—but the engine would not turn over. The click of the ignition betrayed a dead battery. The laughter from the house got much louder then, and he started to cry. He stayed locked in the car, intermittently trying the key.

As the first rays of dawn came over the hill, the engine caught without incident, and he drove out of there without looking back. He did not stop until he came to a skid in front of his girl's house—my house.

Chris and I spent all winter learning about what he had seen and the next five years trying to forget. To this day, I am careful to never get lost on the way to Sunol or parts east, where the roads all look alike.

Deborah can be reached at dthollis@svcn.com.