On 23 August 2006, a teenager out looking for ghosts with friends was shot in the head and critically wounded near a house considered spooky by local teens, police said.

A man who lives in the house, Allen S. Davis, 40, was charged in the shooting and told reporters from jail that he was trying to drive off trespassers and didn’t intend to hurt the teen girls, whom he called juvenile delinquents.

He said he fired his rifle out his bedroom window Tuesday night after hearing voices outside the home, which is across the street from a cemetery and blocked from view by overgrown trees and shrubbery.

“I didn’t know what their weaponry was, what their intentions were,” he said. “In a situation like that, you assume the worst-case scenario if you’re going to protect your family from a possible home invasion and murder.”

The 17-year-old girl, Rachel Barezinsky, and two of her friends got out of their car parked near the home about 10 p.m. and took a few steps on the property, police Lt. Doug Francis said. They jumped back in when a girl in the car sounded the horn, and they heard what they thought were firecrackers as they drove away.