Though warm and golden with dry grass in the day, the hills were always dark and frightening by night. The eerie loneliness was magnified by the occasional howl of a dingo, echoing throughout the desolate landscape. Shadows from clouds across the moon darkened the grey-seeming hills, turning it into a scene from a child’s worst nightmare.

It was a favourite place for dares. Teenagers, full of bravado, pitched small tents and waited out the terrifying night of strange noises from the many unknown creatures that skulked in the darkness. Shrill laughter and shrieks of fear often punctuated the silence as the teenagers’ imaginations invented serial killers and huge, feral beasts which prowled nearby, waiting to strike at the unwary. The rasping of canvas on metal was an axe murderer sharpening his machete. The whimper of a stray dog was the bloodthirsty moan of a hungry monster.

Urban tales collected about the place, perhaps intended to keep the unwary away. Parents told their children of the ghost who haunted the rotting foundations of a nearby homestead. Fanciful stories of murders, strange noises and mysterious deaths were imagined, passed down and embroidered upon by those who heard them.

The only real danger about the hill was the fact that, somewhere beneath it, there was an old, abandoned mine shaft. This featured predominantly in the myths of odd disappearances; foolish people would go on midnight strolls to the hills, only to stumble and fall through a weakness in the shaft lid into the black depths of the shaft, never to be seen again.

People rarely ventured there by night, afraid of what might happen. Afraid that one of the many horrible and disturbing tales was actually true, and that if they put a foot wrong they could expect a gruesome burial beneath the rough grass on the hill. Desperate to avoid the same fate as fictional characters.

Eventually, people stopped going there altogether. The once beautiful hills became overgrown and neglected, simply because of an old mineshaft, and an age old human fear of the dark and unknown.

I wrote this as a Lit assignment. It's a bit different to my usual style, but my teacher liked it. *looks proud*

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