Growing up, I think me and my buddies were in 8th grade, we lived along the Elkhorn river, there was an old, large farmhouse almost exactly a mile north of us. I am guessing the house was built in the 1880's, going by when our town/area kind of started up. Anyway, this house was also about a mile south of our old farm/house (which my parents built that house in the 1970's), where the river house we lived in at the time was a mile south - basically I had driven or been past that old house probably thousands of times. So this old, long abandoned (as long as I can remember so at least from around 1980 as that is about when I was old enough to remember or have that house as something worth pondering why it had been abaondoned so long). I think that house had been abandoned maybe 20 years or more before 1980ish, just a guess going off what my parents said about it when I asked them once in my youth.
So anyway, this house was known as "being haunted" - basically the story why this large old classic two story farm stead house had been sitting empty for decades. I mean, who really believes that kind of stuff honestly. It was summer time, and I had a 3 wheeler (yes, I am that old) that me and my buddies would ride around the country side. I mean, 3 kids on a 3 wheeler isn't exactly safe. One day (it was summer) one of my friends says, hey, lets go see what's up with that big old house a mile north. Sure, OK, sounds fun. There were 4 of us that day - somehow all 4 of us got on my ATV and we rumbled up to this old house, which had long just been in the middle of a corn field at that point. It was all boarded up - all doors, windows, everything boarded up. This was probably about 6 pm in the afternoon.
So we pull some old boards off and get in through the back door. We are kinda creeped out, it is dark in there with very little way light can get in. We didn't have flashlights, but there was enough light to walk around at least. We walk around the main floor. Nothing out of the ordinary, and actually the inside was in great shape. Good condition wood floors, kitchen and cabinets looked in good shape. Dusty but nothing that you'd think you'd find in a house abandoned and boarded up for decades. We walk in to the main living room, and there is this big old wood hutch type of thing - the only furniture in the house. It is still in great shape and probably worth some $ we think. As we were in the living room, and loud bang or boom comes from upstairs. Sounded like something like that big old oak hutch falling on wood floors on the 2nd level. Scared the poop out of us and was ran outside, got on the ATV and scooted back to my place.
After talking it over for a half hour or so, we get our courage up, and I grab a flashlight. I think one of my buddies got a baseball bat from our garage. We head back there, it is probably 7 pm at that point, probably June or July, so days are pretty long. We go inside, and not hearing anything decide to chance going up the stairs to the 2nd level. However, before we went inside, I walked around the outside of the house, just looking to see if any doors or windows weren't boarded up. One of the old basement windows was broken out, it was one of those small windows where you'd have a tough time crawling through it. I shine my flashlight down into the basement, and there is a pretty fresh dead deer just laying there. Seeing no way how the deer even could have gotten in, it was weird to us. So that got our jimmies rustled a little.
Back to being inside, and I am leading the way up the stairs to the 2nd level. About half way up, I see some kind of reddish light. We are pretty freaked out now. We make it to the top of the stairs, and there are four rooms, all with their doors closed. Kind of how old farm stead houses were built back in the early days. But under 1 of the doors was this pretty bright reddish light. It freaked us out for sure. About when all of us entered the main central area of the upstairs with 4 rooms with closed doors surrounding us, and one room having a freaky red light coming from under the door, we hear another loud boom like something big and wooden was slammed to the floor. We get the fuck out, and quickly. We ride the ATV back to my place, that night we were camping down on a sandbar by the river, as we did at least half the nights each summer growing up. About 2 in the morning, we hear sirens. We aren't but a 3rd of a mile from the bridge crossing the hwy. We watch a fire engine and police car speed over the bridge. Not knowing why at that point.
We get up the next morning, break camp and head to my parents house for breakfast, etc. Dad comes in and is talking to mom about the old house a mile up and how it burned down last night. We were like WTF? We didn't tell my parents we were in the house as it would have sounded like we may have had something to do with it.
We did get back on the ATV around noon once the fire dept and everyone was basically gone from the area. Just rode by, stopped on the road and looked for a bit. The whole damn thing was burned to the ground. To this day, we have no idea why, the fire dept never could find a reason. None of us smoked or anything like that, there is no way we set it on fire somehow. Combined with the weird shit we experienced there the evening before - it has always confounded us just WTF was going on there, and why after damn near a 100 years that house burned down that night.
Dunno if that counts as a ghost story, but it was certainly an odd coincidence it burned down in the middle of thie night after we just experienced some weird shit in there. Where the house sat has long been a corn field now, so maybe whoever owned the house decided to burn it down for extra acreage. I doubt that honestly, as farmers would just get someone with a Cat in there and bulldoze it. It never made any sense and makes for good rememberance stories every so often with me and my old buddies. Every time I drive by that place when I am back in NE, I always look over in that cornfield and wonder.