House 173 Shorts
This Was No Apple Tree
Sometimes House 173 decorates itself.
We were just finishing up the 2026 front porch update when, one evening in late August, I noticed something I don't remember ever seeing before.
Well, technically, there was a Macintosh apple tree in the front yard.
The porch faces west, and as the evening sun dropped behind the tree, its branches and leaves threw enormous shadows across the blinds. They stretched and twisted from one window to the next, moving slowly as the sun went down.
And being a lifelong fan of the old Universal monster movies, I knew exactly what I was looking at.
This was no apple tree.
This was the sort of shadow you'd see crawling across the wall just before somebody in a 1930s movie made the very poor decision to investigate a strange noise.
I stood there watching it for a while.
We've had that apple tree for more than twenty-five years. We've lived with these porch windows for years. Yet somehow I'd never noticed the little horror picture they make together on late-summer evenings.
No projector. No special effects.
Just an old house, an old apple tree, and the setting sun.
House 173 provides the monsters.
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
