Ghost stories, part 4
In honor of Halloween, I bring you a whole slew of ghost stories.
My friend, let's call her Kiran, belongs to a pretty strict family, rife with rivalry with their relatives who live in India. Many years ago, before Kiran's birth, there was a huge argument between the family, which led to one of the relatives (who was believed to dabble in black magic) putting a curse onto Kiran's immediate family. The curse was that the whole family should be destroyed in some way or another.
From that day, a ghost of a young boy came to the family and actually tried to kill them all. First he attacked the mother and killed her first baby, he then attempted to kill the father by causing a severe heart attack (twice) and then during the birth of Kiran, he attempted to kill the mother and Kiran, but he failed. The ghost vanished for a short period of time.
Soon they discovered strange things happening in the house, a room in the house where the father suffered a heart attack suddenly became a mass of paranormal activity. For instance, blood or some sort of blood-like fluid would seep up through the floorboards and the ghost of a boy could be seen in the house trying to lead the children away. Eventually they had this ghost exorcised and they moved house, thinking it was all over, but it got much, much worse.
Coming up to the present day, there has been what Kiran describes as a "demon" following the family, Kiran in particular. I suspected it followed her because she is the child that SHOULD'VE been murdered, and she lived. The demon watches over her every night at her window... it is a pure vortex of evil and blackness. I didn't believe her at first when she told me, but then when I realised how pretty damn scared she was by this thing haunting her, I decided to try and help.
Since I had recently been "practising" Astral Projection / induced lucid dreaming, I thought that I could perhaps find out what this demon was. I was pretty ill at the time and because of my inability to sleep, I found it much easier to project or enter a state of lucidity. Somehow I entered a state of concentration, purely by accident, where I could "see" outside of Kiran's house, and I attempted to call the demon out to me instead to see if this whole thing was real.
Then the most terrifying thing I have EVER witnessed happened. I saw a shadow move across the top of my window. It startled me at first, but then the shadow approached right next to my window, and I could see its exact form. For some reason, it couldn't get into my house... Kiran also said it couldn't get into her house either. But, God, it tried... all the windows began rattling, there was tapping on the glass and horrific noises. I was pretty scared for my parents rather than my own personal safety. So taking advantage of the situation, I decided to see if I could contact this demon type shadow.
I found out that it was a spirit of a teenage boy, perhaps around 16 or so, utterly consumed in hate. He was looking for his mother or just a companion: maybe he thought killing someone would give him companionship, who knows. Because I know that it's a good idea not to hold burdens against otherworldly creatures I gave it a wish that it would find what it was looking for and that it should be taken away so that he could learn not to hate. The scary thing is the demon left Kiran... for about a week. The day before it returned, I had the worst dream I've probably ever had, it went like this:
I was in Kiran's house and she was making me look at something out of the window. I looked, and I saw a horrendous black shadow moving along the sky, it's weird because I never feel emotions in dreams, but this time it felt real and I was VERY scared. It's hard to describe what the demon looked like.. if you imagine the blackest black, and a silk-like substance with such graceful movement making it hard to believe it's made of pure hate, then you're close. Perhaps the closest thing I can think of is Madonna's dress in the Frozen video.. crappy comparison, but hey, it's the best I can do. I managed to see the demon up close and it was pretty gruesome, a grey mangled figure of a boy, black veins writhing over him and feeding on him, and he was reaching out for help, which was pretty sad.
There was a message in the dream which was a form the demon conveyed to me: it was the form of the grim reaper. I woke up and phoned Kiran urgently as I felt I had to tell her what the message in the dream was for her own safety, and she told me she'd had a tarot reading the day before, and the grim reaper card kept coming up.
So the demon came back on that night... it's practically been there ever since... we just think it's going to remain there with her until she lives her life out and there's no escaping it really. But I admire her a lot for being able to cope with it, the only thing is that I'm really really self-conscious about the damn thing following me about now, but I guess it was my own fault for trying to help.
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1910, Latvia:
A family of 5 girls had their first group picture taken since the death of their eldest sister who had passed earlier that year after a lost bout with influenza.
The dead sister was in her twenties, and was said to have been a very powerful witch; local tale stated that she had turned the freshly made milk of an unliked farmer sour and writhing with maggots and had the power to bring flocks of birds from the sky.
On her deathbed, she told the second-eldest sister, Margaret, a secret and made her swear to not tell another soul. Margaret failed to keep the secret and uttered it to her nearest younger sister. Shortly thereafter, Margaret was struck down by disease which rendered her deaf, dumb, blind, and bedridden. She died soon after, but not before the photograph was developed: it depicted a woman's head whispering into Margaret's ear, and the woman was clearly the first deceased of the girls. The third-oldest sister who the secret was second-handedly told to never mentioned what was said to her to another person, keeping the secret a mystery to this day.
Several years ago I attempted to scan the photograph that was handed down to my mother. For some reason, the scanner refused to work with that photograph. I tried it with others and it worked successfully. One last time, I attempted to scan it, but the scanner simply stopped working outright. I handed the photo back to my mother, and it was never found again... even after searching all of our photo albums, books, and drawers.
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My only "experience" with a ghost (I don't even know if it was one) was a few months ago. I was asleep in my bed, and having some kind of a dream. Well, out of nowhere in the dream I started shaking. It was like someone had taken me by the shoulders and just shook me. I woke up rather quickly only to find myself still shaking. When I opened my eyes, I could have sworn I saw a figure right next to my bed. It was weird though, because I couldn't see a distinct face or anything, but I knew something was there. Then suddenly I saw it move and lean forward, and it sort of went through me. It was like someone leaning over to kiss me, but instead of doing that, they just went into my body. At that moment I got an incredibly sick feeling in my stomach and my whole body got cold. And that was it. I didn't see / feel anything else.
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I was having a sleepover with a few friends at a friend's house. This was an old farmhouse built in the 1800's. Let's start by talking about the house. At the time, I knew nothing about it. It was built by a poor farmer and his family. They were obviously retarded, because New England has shitty farmland. They had small crops, a well, and pretty much schooled and provided for themselves. Well, they lived an isolated peaceful life, until, one day, the mother snapped. She took a cooking knife, and stabbed her husband in his sleep. She drowned the children, and hid them out back. The husband woke up that morning to find that he had been stabbed, and he was fucking pissed. He engaged in a death struggle with his wife, and beat her to death with his bare hands. He died a few minutes later. Well, we were joshing around, and then the kid whose house we were at looked at the clock and said "Hey, everybody, quiet down!" We asked why, and he said "Something really cool is about to happen!"
A few minutes later, at 1:26 AM, the lights shuttered, and went dim. The house seemed to groan, and the room seemed warped. We heard whispers, quiet at first, and then it happened. The entire family appeared, fucked up as shit. Not transparent, but with a bluish tint. Then the house, them, I don't know, let out a quiet scream. I half cried, one kid screamed, and no one slept. I never went back there for anything. Ever.
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A few years ago, I had a freakazoid girlfriend who was right into anything mystical: ESP, séances, Tarot cards, aura reading, crystals, you name it. I went along with it all because it was fascinating and the sex was nutz, baby.
We moved into this really old apartment building (three story, turn-of-the-century job that must have been the height of luxury back then because there were nine rooms with moulded plaster ceilings, oak floors and so on). There were also a lot of weird things that would happen from time to time. Skip ahead a bit... Things started to get really bizarre about two months after we'd moved in. Something didn't want us there, it seemed.
We both worked at the same place and got home at the same time, every day. One evening, we came home to find every dish in the cupboard smashed. They were still in their six-high stacks, just broken into large pieces, every last one. Nothing else was damaged. For the next three or four weeks, there'd be something else destroyed practically every day. One week I remember clearly went like this:
Monday: Every picture in the living room had fallen to the floor, but
in all the other rooms everything was still up on the walls.
Tuesday: We get home at 6 P.M., and all four of our cats are missing. We search every inch of the place - no cats, no open windows or doors for them to escape by. The girlfriend's freaking big time. I go down the hall banging on neighbors' doors and asking if anyone removed the cats or something - no one heard a thing all day. At 9 P.M., all four cats come tearing out of the laundry room behind the kitchen with their tails bottled (poufy) and they streak into the bedroom and hide under our bed. The laundry room contains all of: a washer, a dryer, and a table for folding clothes. No cupboards, holes, furniture of any kind, and just the one door in and out.
Wednesday: For the heck of it, we invite this guy Paul over who's supposed to be this major psychic dude and he starts doing these rituals involving bowls of salt, candles, and other claptrap. He's about ten minutes into this routine of his, kneeling in front of one of these bowls of salt and mumbling stuff. At one point, he stretches out his hand, palm forward in one of those "halt" gestures and says: "My, you're a big one, aren't you?" Then there's this small cracking sound, and he screams and grabs his arm. He's in a lot of pain and you could see he wasn't faking it, so I take him to the Emergency a few blocks away. X-rays show he has a broken collarbone. He never came back, and we didn't blame him.
Thursday: A very weird day and hard to explain. In the bedroom, there were two mirrors that met in a corner, set above a vanity and dresser that also joined in the corner. This produced a multiple-angled reflection which I suppose was great for ladies wanting to be able to see the sides of their heads while getting made up.
For no reason I can remember, I took some acrylic paints and drew a geometric design onto the glass - part of the pattern on one mirror and part on the other, each in different colors. It looked pretty cool up close because the colors would blend and the geometries would create new shapes. Even as I was doing it, I was asking myself "why am I doing this?", but I didn't stop until the pattern was just right.
Girlfriend walks into the room and screams her fucking head off. I run over to the doorway where she's standing with both hands covering her mouth, trembling. I ask her what the heck's wrong and she points over my shoulder to the corner-mirror. I turn around and I'm looking into a human face about four feet high that's just hanging in the air and looking like a bad acid trip, it's all colors. It's the pattern I painted, that had just looked cool and geometric up close, but that now looked like some really pissed-off old man. I just about shit. I scrubbed it off real quick while trying not to look at it except out of the corner of my eye. All night I keep thinking I can still see it, so we camp out in the living room. Cats spend the whole night prowling around the bedroom making mewing noises and scratching at the mirror. Fuck this.
Friday: We began packing our belongings into any boxes and bags we could get ahold of. The whole time we're packing, things would fall off of shelves or out of cupboards like someone was impatient to see us go and was helping clear stuff out. Girlfriend was crying the whole time, and I was damned close, myself.
Saturday: Friend comes over with truck and helps load everything. After the last few things get thrown on top of the pile and the truck's ready to go, Girlfriend remembers she left a book on a windowsill in one of the small bedrooms we used as a study. No way I’m going back in there, so I say forget it, we can get another copy. She's insisting, so it's "okay, I'll just be a sec." I get no further than two steps into the front door of the building than something knocks my sunglasses off my face. I duck and crouch, snarling and fists up, ready to rumble. There's fuck-all there. Nothing had fallen over or onto me; no dangling wires, brooms, nothing. I picked up the glasses, backed out slowly, then ran to the truck and jumped in screaming at my buddy to get the hell out of there. We got.
I've only been back to see the place twice since then, and for some reason was not at all surprised to see the windows of our apartment covered with plywood, although the rest of the building is still occupied. There was some scorching around the frames, so I guess there'd been a fire at some point... but no one seems to be in a hurry to fix the place.
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Up until I was 10 (1971), I lived on a farm about 7 miles outside of Sparta, Wisconsin. I am the oldest of 6. Every year, we would close off the upstairs towards the end of December or beginning of January to save on the cost of heating. My parents decided that this year they would close the upstairs on December 31st. I am lying in my bed on the night of the 30th, and am not really all that tired. I look at the end of the bed, and I see a man in a Civil War-style overcoat and beside him are 2 very large dogs that resemble Dobermans. The dogs looked fierce, bearing their teeth and straining at the leashes. They didn't make any sound, however. The guy looked me right in the eyes with a concerned look on his face. He then smiled and nodded, and when I blinked, he and the dogs were gone. The following day, the upstairs was locked up, and me and my three brothers were supposed to sleep on a mattress on the floor of the dining room for the rest of the winter.
I remember the evening of the 31st like it was yesterday. We sat and watched Tarzan and the Valley of Gold and during the movie, we heard the sounds of cars outside, and then the sounds of barking dogs and people yelling at each other. We live at the end of a mile-long driveway, and when we looked outside, there was nothing there. We were a little freaked out, but we finally settled down and went to bed. I was sleeping pretty soundly when I was awakened by the feeling of a dog licking my face. I opened my eyes, and there was no dog, but the kitchen that was in the direction of my feet was totally engulfed in flames. I quickly woke everyone and we escaped the house.
My uncle drove out and put the fire out before the fire department even showed up. When they showed up, they doused the place pretty good to make sure it didn't start up again. Well, the next morning, when my mom and dad went to survey the damage, the house was totally burned. It had started up again in the night and was completely destroyed.
Many years later, we woke up one morning in our new house to find all the doors locked and windows latched. My family didn't lock doors to the house. In fact, the keys to the doors were in a drawer in the kitchen and hadn't been taken out of the drawer since we moved in. There was some news on the radio about some vagrant or crazy person doing some bad things in houses in our neighborhood. This could be the second time this ghost protected us.
To this day, when I visit my parents, I can hear the sounds of dogs breathing as if they were sleeping on the floor close by. My sisters tell similar stories about hearing dogs and having beds move as if a large dog was crawling under it to rest.
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I worked for 3 years at The Oregon Caves National Monument. The lodge there was built in 1939, and apparently had a ghost. The year after it was built, a newlywed couple stayed there. The wife (Elizabeth) then caught her new husband getting freaky with one of the maids. She promptly went to the top floor and threw herself out the window. Ta-daa!! Ghost time!
Most of the employees knew about the ghost legend, but we normally didn't tell the guests. However, we would always get weird reports from the guests about various haunting occurrences. One of the most amusing occurrences was when a furious woman came from upstairs, walked up to the front desk attendant and said, "Why didn't you people tell me this damn place was haunted!? My husband is upstairs playing cards with some ghost woman, and he doesn't seem to mind, but it is really freaking me out!" Elizabeth also liked to do things like turn on water faucets. One of my fellow cave guides evidently saw a faucet knob turn on all of its own accord. Elizabeth also liked the kitchen. During the winter when nobody but maybe 2 or 3 people stayed on the monument, we would hear sounds of cooking going on when nobody was down there.
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I've never seen anything, but I had weird things happen at my old house. The most vivid one I remember was when I was sitting in bed, all doors and windows close, no air conditioning running or anything. I had an empty binder sitting on my desk with a novel resting where the binder opened (at the bottom of the slope). Somehow, the novel slid up the slope of the binder and fell off the desk. When I looked over thinking "WTF?", the shade covering the window behind me flew open with a loud crash.
When I was around 12 years old, my grandfather died. Now he was really into tools and building things and had a workshop in a small room off his garage. He also built his basement into a rec room with a pool table and a bar and such. Me, my two brothers and my three cousins (oldest was my cousin who was around 14 and I was second oldest) were playing pool and cards and just hanging out there with my parents who were upstairs having coffee or something. Well, a banging sound came from the garage. We wanted to see where the sound was coming from (it was loud), so we opened the door that led into the garage. In the back where the door to my grandfather's workshop is, it was OPEN and the LIGHT was on and we heard the banging like a hammer and nails.
Now, since my grandfather died, no one ever went in there and the only people in the house was us and my parents and grandmother and my aunt. In order for any of them to get into that room they would have had to go through the rec room. So all of us KNEW what it was and we all started screaming and ran up the basement stairs to the "adults." They said we were crazy and went down there with us. When we got back down there, their light was off, the door was closed, and there was no banging. There is no way whatsoever to explain this to this day.
The second thing, however, is really fucked up. I was alone in my room, my uncle was in the room next door, and both my grandparents were outside tending to their garden of fruits and vegetables (it was on the outskirts of the city.) This was all right around noon. I stood up to grab something, and I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I immediately swung around, gasping, and saw no one. This got me scared as fuck, and I just sat on the bed thinking what the fuck happened. Around five or six hours later, my grandmother came home. I asked where my grandfather was, and she said that he'll be back soon. She seemed upset. Later in the day I found out that while my grandparents were out gardening, my grandfather had suffered a heat stroke, and passed away. He was taken to the hospital, but he was already dead. The time that he died was around noon.
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My father passed away almost a year and a half ago, rather suddenly. I was lucky enough to be with him in the hospital when he died, but a couple of family friends who couldn't make it there told my family and me this story later on in the evening.
Jack and Judy are divorced, but still live in the same house, and we're still friends with both of them. So we told them right away when Dad had his stroke, and they intended to come to the hospital to be with us on the afternoon he died. Judy came straight from work, and got there just after we all had left, only to be informed that Dad had already died. So she left, stopped by her house to talk to Jack, and came to our place.
One of the very first things she asked was, "What time did your father die?" I told her, "About two o'clock," and she got this funny look on her face. She said that Jack had been sitting in his living room, from which he can out see the kitchen window. He'd fallen asleep, and woke up, looked at the time on the kitchen clock, and then, through the kitchen window, saw my dad outside. He sort of smiled and waved. Jack was totally confused, since he knew perfectly well that Dad was in the ICU twenty miles away. Jack looked away to check the time again, looked back, and Dad was gone. Of course, this happened right about the time Dad died, no more than half an hour later.
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First time was after a close friend of someone's had been killed in an auto accident. Her family lived in some secluded area in the nearby hills (her parents raise great Danes, which are too loud to be raised in town), and she occupied a separate apartment that was built over their multi-car garage. For weeks after the accident, she'd see thing at night like dark circles moving over the ground, or glimpses of a person exiting the doors to her room, and then disappear. At first she thought she was probably hallucinating because of her grief, and that the person she'd see was the friend that had died. Later, when it had happened many times over the weeks, she realized the person she was seeing was someone unfamiliar, dressed in old-fashioned clothes that she'd never picture the friend wearing.
It got better over time (and as she began to get over the death), but still she decided to move out as soon as she could. On the day she left, her mother told her than the original house that stood on the property had burned to the ground in the 20's or 30's, killing most of the family that lived there. They were buried on the property and the house was built over their graves, which reside in what is now the new basement. Her parents thought it was better if she didn't know when she was living there, as she might "freak out" about it. Fuckin' A, no kidding.
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My stepfather died of a heart attack on a Sunday morning a couple years ago. The paramedics arrived, and took him up to the hospital where her was pronounced dead. This was about six in the morning. My mother and I drove back home after that, and I screwed up my courage to call my girlfriend and tell her what happened. I called, she answered on the first ring (never happens), and before I had said anything, she asked me if something happened to my stepfather.
I told her what happened, and then she told me she had had a very vivid dream that she was walking on a beach and his voice had told her, as if it was coming from another world, "Don't worry, there is a heaven." And then she bolted awake. That was at 6:30. That was both the single most comforting and terrifying moment of my life. And hers.
Now, my girlfriend ain't no faery-worshipping candle burning spellcasting Wiccan priestess or no shit, in fact she's got quite some contempt for that "spiritual shit," and this stuff doesn't happen to her much, but these things have happened.
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I was reading everybody's accounts of ghosty stuff, and I remembered what happened to my cousin Luke and I a day or two after our grandmother's death. We were sitting on the floor in my bedroom, talking and basically wondering what the hell we were going to do without Grandma.
You know that feeling you get when you hug someone you care about? I got that feeling all of a sudden, accompanied by an almost warm sensation around my back and upper arms, like someone was embracing me from behind. I didn't say anything because I thought I was imagining it, but a moment or two later, Luke asked me, "Did you feel something just hug you?"
We were both a little weirded out by it, but agreed that it must have been Grandma letting us know she was there for us. (Awww.)
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The Briefing:
The home of Jack and Janet Smurl in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, was the scene of a horrific and terrifying haunting from 1985 to 1987. The case received wide attention in the media. Although the house went through three exorcisms and investigations by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demon refused to leave. The hauntings were chronicled in a book and portrayed in a movie both named The Haunted.
The Story:
The house involved is a duplex, built in 1896 on a quiet street in a middle class neighborhood. After hurricane Agnes flooded much of northeastern Pennsylvania in 1972, the Smurl family was forced to leave their home in Wilkes-Barre. Jack’s parents, John and Mary Smurl, bought the house in West Pittston in 1973 for $18,000. They lived in the right half and Jack, Janet and their first two daughters, Dawn and Heather, moved into the left half. The Smurls spent much time and money redecorating and remodeling, doing much of the work themselves.
The Smurls say they are a close, loving family. Both Jack and Janet grew up in the area, meeting in 1967 and marrying in 1968. Jack served in the Navy, becoming a neuropsychiatric technician. Both Smurls were raised in Catholic homes and had strong religious beliefs. They enjoyed living with Jack's parents and had no trouble sharing the duplex with them. The first 18 months on Chase St. were happy ones...
But strange things began to occur after that. In January 1974, a strange stain appeared on a new carpet, Jack's television set burst into flames, and water pipes leaked even after repeated re-soldering. The new sink and bathtub in the remodeled bathroom were found severely scratched, as if a wild animal had clawed at them. Freshly painted woodwork in the bathroom also showed similar scratches. In 1975, their oldest daughter Dawn repeatedly saw people "floating" around her bedroom.
By 1987, the Smurls realized their house was in some way... spooked. The toilets flushed without anyone using them, footsteps would be continuously heard on the stairs, drawers would open and close on their own accord, radios would blare although they were unplugged, and empty rocking chairs would mysteriously rock and creak as if someone were actually sitting in them. As time went on, they began to smell sour and vile smells throughout the house, and on several occasions, Jack felt the touch of an unseen hand caress him. By now, there were two more Smurls, twins Shannon and Carin, and the family was growing frustrated and fatigued by the increasing phenomena.
In 1985, what had started as annoying disturbances became frightening experiences. The house now often became ice cold. John and Mary heard loud, abusive, and obscene language coming from Jack and Janet's side of the house, although Jack and Janet were not even arguing. In February 1985, Janet heard her name being called while in the basement doing laundry. After searching for the unseen caller, she realized she had been alone the entire time.
Two days later, icy cold again was felt in the house... but this time a black, human shaped form with no facial features appeared to Janet in the kitchen. It de-materialized through the wall and appeared to Mary on the opposite side of the house. From that point on, the haunting activity increased in both frequency and magnitude. A large ceiling fan crashed down inches from Shannon, nearly killing her, on the night her now 13-year-old sister Heather was to be confirmed into the Catholic religion. As activity increased, Jack and Janet had occasionally levitated. Janet was violently pulled off her bed after making love to her husband while he lay paralyzed, gagging from a foul odor. The family's German shepherd, Simon, was repeatedly picked up and thrown. Terrible rapping and scratching noises were continuously heard in the walls. One night while sleeping, Shannon was tossed out of bed and down the stairs. Even neighbors were not spared; several heard screams and strange noises coming from the house when the Smurls were not even home. Most of the neighbors were sympathetic as the Smurls vowed to fight.
In January 1986, Janet heard about Ed and Lorraine Warren, psychical researchers and demonologists from Monroe, Connecticut. Although skeptical, she had nowhere else to turn, so she called the Warrens. The Warrens arrived shortly thereafter, accompanied by Rosemary Frueh, a registered nurse and psychic. They began the investigation by quizzing the Smurls carefully about their religious beliefs, the happiness of their family life, whether they had ever practiced Satanism, occultism, used a ouija board, or in any way invited the supernatural into their home. Then the Warrens and Frueh walked through the house, identifying the bedroom closet as the crossover point between the two sides of the duplex. The team said they detected the presence of four evil spirits. Three were minor, but the fourth was a demon.
Without any evidence of family dysfunction, occult invitation or tragedy, the Warrens could only surmise that the demon must have been dormant, probably for decades, and had arisen to draw on the emotional energy generated by the girls' entrance to puberty. The Warrens tried twice to provoke the demon to expose itself by playing tapes of religious music and confronting it with prayer. The demon reacted by violently shaking a mirror and dresser drawers, and yet another instance by spelling out "You filthy bastard, get out of this house." Only Holy Water and prayer seemed to stop the manifestations.
The situation began to turn more serious as Jack was raped by a scaly succubus posing as an old woman with a young body. Her eyes were red and her gums were green. Ed Warren was choked and then began to suffer from terrible flu-like symptoms. An incubus sexually assaulted Janet, and pig noises (a sign of serious demonic infestation) could be heard in the walls.
The Smurls said they tried several times to obtain support and action from the church. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton said it would consult with experts, but official involvement would be unlikely. At one point in time, Janet thought she was getting help from a priest named Father O'Leary but discovered no such priest existed. The Warrens brought in Father (now Bishop) McKenna, a traditionalist priest who refused to abide by the changes in ritual mandated by the Second Vatican Council. He said mass in Latin and had performed more than 50 exorcisms for the Warrens. He conducted the ancient rite which did nothing but infuriate the demon.
The haunting continued. Daughter Carin fell seriously ill from a strange fever and nearly died, and Dawn was almost raped by the evil presence. Janet and Mary had slash marks and bites on their arms... everyone was depressed. Ed Warren explained they were in the second demonic stage, oppression, which follows infestation and is followed by possession and death.
Bishop McKenna performed a second exorcism in late spring, but to no avail. The demon even accompanied the family on camping trips in the Poconos and harassed Jack at work. The family now knew they could not move to another house because the demon would just follow them. After repeated refusals by the church to help, the Smurls decided to appear on television. Remaining anonymous behind a screen, they were interviewed by Richard Bey on a local Philadelphia show called People are Talking. The demon retaliated. It levitated Janet and then hurled her against the wall. It later appeared to Jack as a monstrous creature resembling a pig on two legs. A human hand came up through the mattress and grabbed Janet by the back of the neck. And again, Jack was raped.
In August 1986, the Smurls felt the risk of ridicule did not outweigh the need to tell their story to a wider audience, and granted an interview to the Wilkes-Barre Sunday Independent newspaper. Almost immediately, their home became a tourist attraction for the press, curious onlookers, and skeptics who wished to investigate. Some skeptics, who included some of the Smurls' neighbors, said they believed the family was concocting the story to profit from book and movie contracts.
The Smurls contacted an medium, Mary Alice Rinkman, who examined the house and corroborated the Warrens' findings of 4 spirits. She identified one as an old woman named Abigail and another as a dark, mustachioed man named Patrick who had murdered his wife and her lover and had then been hung by a mob. She could not identify the third, but the fourth was a powerful demon.
Press coverage finally pushed the Scranton diocese into action and they offered to take over the investigation. The Warrens had also planned a mass exorcism with several priests. Prayer groups came to the house to give comfort. Bishop McKenna came a third time to exorcise the house and this time the ritual seemed to work, as there were no disturbances for about 3 months.
Shortly before Christmas 1986, Jack again saw the black form, beckoning him to the third stage of possession. He clutched his rosary and prayed, hoping this was simply an isolated incident. It was not... the banging again started, as well as the putrid smells and violent acts of aggression.
Frustrated, tired, and hopeless, the Smurls moved to another town, shortly before the release of a book concerning their ordeal, The Haunted, went to press. The church performed a fourth exorcism in 1988, which finally seemed to have given them peace. A movie version of The Haunted was released in 1991.
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My Grandfather owns a little antique store that I would visit every weekend. Every Friday, he got new things, and none of the items this time were particularly interesting except for one: a small mildewed cardboard box with red star emblem on the cover. Inside, there was a round board covered in letters and numbers spiraling out in a circle - one to one hundred, A to Z - with a stylized gypsy sketch leaning over a crystal ball. There was also a silver chain with 3 small orbs attached on the end. My Grandpa explained that it was the oldest Ouija board he had ever seen and told me I could take it home as an early gift (my birthday was Saturday). I had never used one before, and was honestly pretty excited to go home and try it. What a mistake.
For maximum kitsch (I really had no faith in the board working), I went into my kitchen and got a candle and some matches. I dimmed the lights to about half brightness, lit the candle, and set up the board. You were instructed to orient the board in such a way that you held the chain directly above the crystal ball in the sketch with your elbow resting on the table. I did this and watched for about 5 seconds as the orbs swung lazily back and forth over the Gypsy while I tried to think of a question. Suddenly they split directions and stopped, each of them, over 3 numbers - 8-31-81 - my birthdate.
My hand started shaking along with the chain, but the orbs never moved. I dropped the chain and blew out the candle while I ran to turn the lights on. I quickly put the board away, slid it under my couch, and started watching TV in an attempt to settle down. Soon afterward, I began to feel tired. I opened the door and whistled for my dog to come inside. I woke up in the same way many of you have described. Suddenly I was awake, there was no grogginess or lack of clarity, and the room was freezing. My dog Snatch sleeps on top of my bed at my feet every night, and I sat straight up to see that he was gone. I heard a whimper to my left and saw the dog's eyes open wide reflecting the moonlight. He was backing away from me slowly and looking straight ahead. At this point, I heard a soft rasping noise like pained breathing coming from my left side. I tried to turn my head to see what it was but before I could I felt something icy press hard against my face so it couldn't rotate. I heard a voice whisper, "Not yet," and then the feeling left my cheek. I heard footsteps slowly moving across my room toward the door and heard the click as my bedroom light was turned on.
Standing in the doorway was a figure around 6'5" wearing a blue sweatshirt with a very large hood that completely obscured the face. He had on a pair of well-worn Levis and large bare feet. He motioned for me to come and I followed behind him at about 10 feet as he led me into the living room. The figure turned on the light and pointed at the table, specifically he pointed at the Ouija board that was once again completely set up. "Sit," he said. The orbs levitated and went back to the same position they were in before I dropped the chain: 8-31-81. This time, however, I was not even holding the chain which stood straight up on end like it was tied from the ceiling. The figure turned away from me and faced the television, which immediately turned on. I heard sirens and screams and watched in amazement as the picture of a spinning Ferris wheel slowly came into focus on the screen. The sirens and screams grew louder and louder until they reached a deafening crescendo; then all at once the TV turned off, the orbs fell with a crack against the glass table, and the figure walked slowly towards the front door. The door never opened, and he disappeared into the darkness.
Sweat was pouring off me and it took me a full ten minutes to get up and call my friend, babbling nonsensically so he would come over. I told him everything and we burned as much of the board as we could and drove it to a dumpster in the next town. Now, ever since we were fifteen, my friend and I had always gone to the same place to celebrate our birthdays and my 20th birthday bash that was coming up the following day was no exception. We went to this large amusement park about an hour away. We didn't go that year after I related this experience: that day, two children were shot to death by a homeless man as they waited in line to ride the Ferris wheel. To this day, the only person I have told this story to is my friend who came over that night a little over 8 months ago. I'm hesitant to analyze exactly what it was that happened, but if any of you have any questions or insights let me know. It feels really good to talk about it now, even though when I started this post, I was scared as hell.
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I can't believe I forgot about this one. Well, about a year and a half after my grandfather died, my grandmother got a strange call one evening. The people who called my grandmother said they had a message on their answering machine and a phone number and the person on the answering machine said to call her [my grandmother]. They wanted to know why they should call her, and why this person who called them asked them to call her. My grandmother thought at first this was a horrible prank, and had no idea why someone would call them and tell them to call her. So she invited them over to her house and told them to bring the tape. Also note that these people did not know my grandfather or my grandmother AT ALL. They had no connection to my grandparents at all. So they went over there and brought the tape and played it for my grandmother. IT WAS MY GRANDFATHER'S VOICE. My grandmother was freaking out because the people swore that the message had only been left on the machine a couple days before. They freaked out too, took the tape and left, and said they wanted nothing to do with any of it because it was some freaky shit.
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Around where I live, there is an abandoned asylum for children. It's all locked up tight now, but we found a way in. Armed to the teeth with flashlights, cameras, and digital tape recorders... we ventured into an area that from the looks of it was where they had school. The windows were high, there were chains on the floor by some rotting wood (we assumed were the desks). We agreed before hand that we wouldn't fuck around (there were 4 of us) and try to scare each other. One of my friends tripped on a chain and grabbed at the teacher's rotting desk, ripping a good portion off as he fell. All of us fell silent. No one moved for about 30 seconds, then I walked towards my friends (I was looking into the hallway). A sound of something crashing resounded through the halls and into the classroom while I was walking. The sound was so loud that I had to put my hands to my ears. One of my friends ran by me followed by the others to see what happened, and I followed soon after. I dropped my flashlight when I put my hands over my ears, so I had to follow the constant moving light of my friends. When I arrived, I almost slammed into a friend. There in the hall was an old refrigerator, still smoking, that fell through what looked like the teachers' lounge wall. We left soon after that, freaked out.
When we arrived at my house, we checked the footage we got. Nothing of interest until we checked the audio recorder. After the crash, we heard a voice muttering unknown words for about 10 seconds, then a whistling sound...
We went back a few nights later, but the cops were there... apparently the night before, the security guys that make the rounds every 3 hours (we timed them when we were scoping it) found a body crushed under a refrigerator... It was a mid 20's male who they ID'ed as someone who was held at that hospital until it was shut down. We never found out where the body and the refrigerator was since they increased security after that, and did not let press into the building. But I swear there was no body when we saw the fridge..
My friend, let's call her Kiran, belongs to a pretty strict family, rife with rivalry with their relatives who live in India. Many years ago, before Kiran's birth, there was a huge argument between the family, which led to one of the relatives (who was believed to dabble in black magic) putting a curse onto Kiran's immediate family. The curse was that the whole family should be destroyed in some way or another.
From that day, a ghost of a young boy came to the family and actually tried to kill them all. First he attacked the mother and killed her first baby, he then attempted to kill the father by causing a severe heart attack (twice) and then during the birth of Kiran, he attempted to kill the mother and Kiran, but he failed. The ghost vanished for a short period of time.
Soon they discovered strange things happening in the house, a room in the house where the father suffered a heart attack suddenly became a mass of paranormal activity. For instance, blood or some sort of blood-like fluid would seep up through the floorboards and the ghost of a boy could be seen in the house trying to lead the children away. Eventually they had this ghost exorcised and they moved house, thinking it was all over, but it got much, much worse.
Coming up to the present day, there has been what Kiran describes as a "demon" following the family, Kiran in particular. I suspected it followed her because she is the child that SHOULD'VE been murdered, and she lived. The demon watches over her every night at her window... it is a pure vortex of evil and blackness. I didn't believe her at first when she told me, but then when I realised how pretty damn scared she was by this thing haunting her, I decided to try and help.
Since I had recently been "practising" Astral Projection / induced lucid dreaming, I thought that I could perhaps find out what this demon was. I was pretty ill at the time and because of my inability to sleep, I found it much easier to project or enter a state of lucidity. Somehow I entered a state of concentration, purely by accident, where I could "see" outside of Kiran's house, and I attempted to call the demon out to me instead to see if this whole thing was real.
Then the most terrifying thing I have EVER witnessed happened. I saw a shadow move across the top of my window. It startled me at first, but then the shadow approached right next to my window, and I could see its exact form. For some reason, it couldn't get into my house... Kiran also said it couldn't get into her house either. But, God, it tried... all the windows began rattling, there was tapping on the glass and horrific noises. I was pretty scared for my parents rather than my own personal safety. So taking advantage of the situation, I decided to see if I could contact this demon type shadow.
I found out that it was a spirit of a teenage boy, perhaps around 16 or so, utterly consumed in hate. He was looking for his mother or just a companion: maybe he thought killing someone would give him companionship, who knows. Because I know that it's a good idea not to hold burdens against otherworldly creatures I gave it a wish that it would find what it was looking for and that it should be taken away so that he could learn not to hate. The scary thing is the demon left Kiran... for about a week. The day before it returned, I had the worst dream I've probably ever had, it went like this:
I was in Kiran's house and she was making me look at something out of the window. I looked, and I saw a horrendous black shadow moving along the sky, it's weird because I never feel emotions in dreams, but this time it felt real and I was VERY scared. It's hard to describe what the demon looked like.. if you imagine the blackest black, and a silk-like substance with such graceful movement making it hard to believe it's made of pure hate, then you're close. Perhaps the closest thing I can think of is Madonna's dress in the Frozen video.. crappy comparison, but hey, it's the best I can do. I managed to see the demon up close and it was pretty gruesome, a grey mangled figure of a boy, black veins writhing over him and feeding on him, and he was reaching out for help, which was pretty sad.
There was a message in the dream which was a form the demon conveyed to me: it was the form of the grim reaper. I woke up and phoned Kiran urgently as I felt I had to tell her what the message in the dream was for her own safety, and she told me she'd had a tarot reading the day before, and the grim reaper card kept coming up.
So the demon came back on that night... it's practically been there ever since... we just think it's going to remain there with her until she lives her life out and there's no escaping it really. But I admire her a lot for being able to cope with it, the only thing is that I'm really really self-conscious about the damn thing following me about now, but I guess it was my own fault for trying to help.
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1910, Latvia:
A family of 5 girls had their first group picture taken since the death of their eldest sister who had passed earlier that year after a lost bout with influenza.
The dead sister was in her twenties, and was said to have been a very powerful witch; local tale stated that she had turned the freshly made milk of an unliked farmer sour and writhing with maggots and had the power to bring flocks of birds from the sky.
On her deathbed, she told the second-eldest sister, Margaret, a secret and made her swear to not tell another soul. Margaret failed to keep the secret and uttered it to her nearest younger sister. Shortly thereafter, Margaret was struck down by disease which rendered her deaf, dumb, blind, and bedridden. She died soon after, but not before the photograph was developed: it depicted a woman's head whispering into Margaret's ear, and the woman was clearly the first deceased of the girls. The third-oldest sister who the secret was second-handedly told to never mentioned what was said to her to another person, keeping the secret a mystery to this day.
Several years ago I attempted to scan the photograph that was handed down to my mother. For some reason, the scanner refused to work with that photograph. I tried it with others and it worked successfully. One last time, I attempted to scan it, but the scanner simply stopped working outright. I handed the photo back to my mother, and it was never found again... even after searching all of our photo albums, books, and drawers.
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My only "experience" with a ghost (I don't even know if it was one) was a few months ago. I was asleep in my bed, and having some kind of a dream. Well, out of nowhere in the dream I started shaking. It was like someone had taken me by the shoulders and just shook me. I woke up rather quickly only to find myself still shaking. When I opened my eyes, I could have sworn I saw a figure right next to my bed. It was weird though, because I couldn't see a distinct face or anything, but I knew something was there. Then suddenly I saw it move and lean forward, and it sort of went through me. It was like someone leaning over to kiss me, but instead of doing that, they just went into my body. At that moment I got an incredibly sick feeling in my stomach and my whole body got cold. And that was it. I didn't see / feel anything else.
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I was having a sleepover with a few friends at a friend's house. This was an old farmhouse built in the 1800's. Let's start by talking about the house. At the time, I knew nothing about it. It was built by a poor farmer and his family. They were obviously retarded, because New England has shitty farmland. They had small crops, a well, and pretty much schooled and provided for themselves. Well, they lived an isolated peaceful life, until, one day, the mother snapped. She took a cooking knife, and stabbed her husband in his sleep. She drowned the children, and hid them out back. The husband woke up that morning to find that he had been stabbed, and he was fucking pissed. He engaged in a death struggle with his wife, and beat her to death with his bare hands. He died a few minutes later. Well, we were joshing around, and then the kid whose house we were at looked at the clock and said "Hey, everybody, quiet down!" We asked why, and he said "Something really cool is about to happen!"
A few minutes later, at 1:26 AM, the lights shuttered, and went dim. The house seemed to groan, and the room seemed warped. We heard whispers, quiet at first, and then it happened. The entire family appeared, fucked up as shit. Not transparent, but with a bluish tint. Then the house, them, I don't know, let out a quiet scream. I half cried, one kid screamed, and no one slept. I never went back there for anything. Ever.
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A few years ago, I had a freakazoid girlfriend who was right into anything mystical: ESP, séances, Tarot cards, aura reading, crystals, you name it. I went along with it all because it was fascinating and the sex was nutz, baby.
We moved into this really old apartment building (three story, turn-of-the-century job that must have been the height of luxury back then because there were nine rooms with moulded plaster ceilings, oak floors and so on). There were also a lot of weird things that would happen from time to time. Skip ahead a bit... Things started to get really bizarre about two months after we'd moved in. Something didn't want us there, it seemed.
We both worked at the same place and got home at the same time, every day. One evening, we came home to find every dish in the cupboard smashed. They were still in their six-high stacks, just broken into large pieces, every last one. Nothing else was damaged. For the next three or four weeks, there'd be something else destroyed practically every day. One week I remember clearly went like this:
Monday: Every picture in the living room had fallen to the floor, but
in all the other rooms everything was still up on the walls.
Tuesday: We get home at 6 P.M., and all four of our cats are missing. We search every inch of the place - no cats, no open windows or doors for them to escape by. The girlfriend's freaking big time. I go down the hall banging on neighbors' doors and asking if anyone removed the cats or something - no one heard a thing all day. At 9 P.M., all four cats come tearing out of the laundry room behind the kitchen with their tails bottled (poufy) and they streak into the bedroom and hide under our bed. The laundry room contains all of: a washer, a dryer, and a table for folding clothes. No cupboards, holes, furniture of any kind, and just the one door in and out.
Wednesday: For the heck of it, we invite this guy Paul over who's supposed to be this major psychic dude and he starts doing these rituals involving bowls of salt, candles, and other claptrap. He's about ten minutes into this routine of his, kneeling in front of one of these bowls of salt and mumbling stuff. At one point, he stretches out his hand, palm forward in one of those "halt" gestures and says: "My, you're a big one, aren't you?" Then there's this small cracking sound, and he screams and grabs his arm. He's in a lot of pain and you could see he wasn't faking it, so I take him to the Emergency a few blocks away. X-rays show he has a broken collarbone. He never came back, and we didn't blame him.
Thursday: A very weird day and hard to explain. In the bedroom, there were two mirrors that met in a corner, set above a vanity and dresser that also joined in the corner. This produced a multiple-angled reflection which I suppose was great for ladies wanting to be able to see the sides of their heads while getting made up.
For no reason I can remember, I took some acrylic paints and drew a geometric design onto the glass - part of the pattern on one mirror and part on the other, each in different colors. It looked pretty cool up close because the colors would blend and the geometries would create new shapes. Even as I was doing it, I was asking myself "why am I doing this?", but I didn't stop until the pattern was just right.
Girlfriend walks into the room and screams her fucking head off. I run over to the doorway where she's standing with both hands covering her mouth, trembling. I ask her what the heck's wrong and she points over my shoulder to the corner-mirror. I turn around and I'm looking into a human face about four feet high that's just hanging in the air and looking like a bad acid trip, it's all colors. It's the pattern I painted, that had just looked cool and geometric up close, but that now looked like some really pissed-off old man. I just about shit. I scrubbed it off real quick while trying not to look at it except out of the corner of my eye. All night I keep thinking I can still see it, so we camp out in the living room. Cats spend the whole night prowling around the bedroom making mewing noises and scratching at the mirror. Fuck this.
Friday: We began packing our belongings into any boxes and bags we could get ahold of. The whole time we're packing, things would fall off of shelves or out of cupboards like someone was impatient to see us go and was helping clear stuff out. Girlfriend was crying the whole time, and I was damned close, myself.
Saturday: Friend comes over with truck and helps load everything. After the last few things get thrown on top of the pile and the truck's ready to go, Girlfriend remembers she left a book on a windowsill in one of the small bedrooms we used as a study. No way I’m going back in there, so I say forget it, we can get another copy. She's insisting, so it's "okay, I'll just be a sec." I get no further than two steps into the front door of the building than something knocks my sunglasses off my face. I duck and crouch, snarling and fists up, ready to rumble. There's fuck-all there. Nothing had fallen over or onto me; no dangling wires, brooms, nothing. I picked up the glasses, backed out slowly, then ran to the truck and jumped in screaming at my buddy to get the hell out of there. We got.
I've only been back to see the place twice since then, and for some reason was not at all surprised to see the windows of our apartment covered with plywood, although the rest of the building is still occupied. There was some scorching around the frames, so I guess there'd been a fire at some point... but no one seems to be in a hurry to fix the place.
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Up until I was 10 (1971), I lived on a farm about 7 miles outside of Sparta, Wisconsin. I am the oldest of 6. Every year, we would close off the upstairs towards the end of December or beginning of January to save on the cost of heating. My parents decided that this year they would close the upstairs on December 31st. I am lying in my bed on the night of the 30th, and am not really all that tired. I look at the end of the bed, and I see a man in a Civil War-style overcoat and beside him are 2 very large dogs that resemble Dobermans. The dogs looked fierce, bearing their teeth and straining at the leashes. They didn't make any sound, however. The guy looked me right in the eyes with a concerned look on his face. He then smiled and nodded, and when I blinked, he and the dogs were gone. The following day, the upstairs was locked up, and me and my three brothers were supposed to sleep on a mattress on the floor of the dining room for the rest of the winter.
I remember the evening of the 31st like it was yesterday. We sat and watched Tarzan and the Valley of Gold and during the movie, we heard the sounds of cars outside, and then the sounds of barking dogs and people yelling at each other. We live at the end of a mile-long driveway, and when we looked outside, there was nothing there. We were a little freaked out, but we finally settled down and went to bed. I was sleeping pretty soundly when I was awakened by the feeling of a dog licking my face. I opened my eyes, and there was no dog, but the kitchen that was in the direction of my feet was totally engulfed in flames. I quickly woke everyone and we escaped the house.
My uncle drove out and put the fire out before the fire department even showed up. When they showed up, they doused the place pretty good to make sure it didn't start up again. Well, the next morning, when my mom and dad went to survey the damage, the house was totally burned. It had started up again in the night and was completely destroyed.
Many years later, we woke up one morning in our new house to find all the doors locked and windows latched. My family didn't lock doors to the house. In fact, the keys to the doors were in a drawer in the kitchen and hadn't been taken out of the drawer since we moved in. There was some news on the radio about some vagrant or crazy person doing some bad things in houses in our neighborhood. This could be the second time this ghost protected us.
To this day, when I visit my parents, I can hear the sounds of dogs breathing as if they were sleeping on the floor close by. My sisters tell similar stories about hearing dogs and having beds move as if a large dog was crawling under it to rest.
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I worked for 3 years at The Oregon Caves National Monument. The lodge there was built in 1939, and apparently had a ghost. The year after it was built, a newlywed couple stayed there. The wife (Elizabeth) then caught her new husband getting freaky with one of the maids. She promptly went to the top floor and threw herself out the window. Ta-daa!! Ghost time!
Most of the employees knew about the ghost legend, but we normally didn't tell the guests. However, we would always get weird reports from the guests about various haunting occurrences. One of the most amusing occurrences was when a furious woman came from upstairs, walked up to the front desk attendant and said, "Why didn't you people tell me this damn place was haunted!? My husband is upstairs playing cards with some ghost woman, and he doesn't seem to mind, but it is really freaking me out!" Elizabeth also liked to do things like turn on water faucets. One of my fellow cave guides evidently saw a faucet knob turn on all of its own accord. Elizabeth also liked the kitchen. During the winter when nobody but maybe 2 or 3 people stayed on the monument, we would hear sounds of cooking going on when nobody was down there.
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I've never seen anything, but I had weird things happen at my old house. The most vivid one I remember was when I was sitting in bed, all doors and windows close, no air conditioning running or anything. I had an empty binder sitting on my desk with a novel resting where the binder opened (at the bottom of the slope). Somehow, the novel slid up the slope of the binder and fell off the desk. When I looked over thinking "WTF?", the shade covering the window behind me flew open with a loud crash.
When I was around 12 years old, my grandfather died. Now he was really into tools and building things and had a workshop in a small room off his garage. He also built his basement into a rec room with a pool table and a bar and such. Me, my two brothers and my three cousins (oldest was my cousin who was around 14 and I was second oldest) were playing pool and cards and just hanging out there with my parents who were upstairs having coffee or something. Well, a banging sound came from the garage. We wanted to see where the sound was coming from (it was loud), so we opened the door that led into the garage. In the back where the door to my grandfather's workshop is, it was OPEN and the LIGHT was on and we heard the banging like a hammer and nails.
Now, since my grandfather died, no one ever went in there and the only people in the house was us and my parents and grandmother and my aunt. In order for any of them to get into that room they would have had to go through the rec room. So all of us KNEW what it was and we all started screaming and ran up the basement stairs to the "adults." They said we were crazy and went down there with us. When we got back down there, their light was off, the door was closed, and there was no banging. There is no way whatsoever to explain this to this day.
The second thing, however, is really fucked up. I was alone in my room, my uncle was in the room next door, and both my grandparents were outside tending to their garden of fruits and vegetables (it was on the outskirts of the city.) This was all right around noon. I stood up to grab something, and I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I immediately swung around, gasping, and saw no one. This got me scared as fuck, and I just sat on the bed thinking what the fuck happened. Around five or six hours later, my grandmother came home. I asked where my grandfather was, and she said that he'll be back soon. She seemed upset. Later in the day I found out that while my grandparents were out gardening, my grandfather had suffered a heat stroke, and passed away. He was taken to the hospital, but he was already dead. The time that he died was around noon.
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My father passed away almost a year and a half ago, rather suddenly. I was lucky enough to be with him in the hospital when he died, but a couple of family friends who couldn't make it there told my family and me this story later on in the evening.
Jack and Judy are divorced, but still live in the same house, and we're still friends with both of them. So we told them right away when Dad had his stroke, and they intended to come to the hospital to be with us on the afternoon he died. Judy came straight from work, and got there just after we all had left, only to be informed that Dad had already died. So she left, stopped by her house to talk to Jack, and came to our place.
One of the very first things she asked was, "What time did your father die?" I told her, "About two o'clock," and she got this funny look on her face. She said that Jack had been sitting in his living room, from which he can out see the kitchen window. He'd fallen asleep, and woke up, looked at the time on the kitchen clock, and then, through the kitchen window, saw my dad outside. He sort of smiled and waved. Jack was totally confused, since he knew perfectly well that Dad was in the ICU twenty miles away. Jack looked away to check the time again, looked back, and Dad was gone. Of course, this happened right about the time Dad died, no more than half an hour later.
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First time was after a close friend of someone's had been killed in an auto accident. Her family lived in some secluded area in the nearby hills (her parents raise great Danes, which are too loud to be raised in town), and she occupied a separate apartment that was built over their multi-car garage. For weeks after the accident, she'd see thing at night like dark circles moving over the ground, or glimpses of a person exiting the doors to her room, and then disappear. At first she thought she was probably hallucinating because of her grief, and that the person she'd see was the friend that had died. Later, when it had happened many times over the weeks, she realized the person she was seeing was someone unfamiliar, dressed in old-fashioned clothes that she'd never picture the friend wearing.
It got better over time (and as she began to get over the death), but still she decided to move out as soon as she could. On the day she left, her mother told her than the original house that stood on the property had burned to the ground in the 20's or 30's, killing most of the family that lived there. They were buried on the property and the house was built over their graves, which reside in what is now the new basement. Her parents thought it was better if she didn't know when she was living there, as she might "freak out" about it. Fuckin' A, no kidding.
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My stepfather died of a heart attack on a Sunday morning a couple years ago. The paramedics arrived, and took him up to the hospital where her was pronounced dead. This was about six in the morning. My mother and I drove back home after that, and I screwed up my courage to call my girlfriend and tell her what happened. I called, she answered on the first ring (never happens), and before I had said anything, she asked me if something happened to my stepfather.
I told her what happened, and then she told me she had had a very vivid dream that she was walking on a beach and his voice had told her, as if it was coming from another world, "Don't worry, there is a heaven." And then she bolted awake. That was at 6:30. That was both the single most comforting and terrifying moment of my life. And hers.
Now, my girlfriend ain't no faery-worshipping candle burning spellcasting Wiccan priestess or no shit, in fact she's got quite some contempt for that "spiritual shit," and this stuff doesn't happen to her much, but these things have happened.
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I was reading everybody's accounts of ghosty stuff, and I remembered what happened to my cousin Luke and I a day or two after our grandmother's death. We were sitting on the floor in my bedroom, talking and basically wondering what the hell we were going to do without Grandma.
You know that feeling you get when you hug someone you care about? I got that feeling all of a sudden, accompanied by an almost warm sensation around my back and upper arms, like someone was embracing me from behind. I didn't say anything because I thought I was imagining it, but a moment or two later, Luke asked me, "Did you feel something just hug you?"
We were both a little weirded out by it, but agreed that it must have been Grandma letting us know she was there for us. (Awww.)
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The Briefing:
The home of Jack and Janet Smurl in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, was the scene of a horrific and terrifying haunting from 1985 to 1987. The case received wide attention in the media. Although the house went through three exorcisms and investigations by demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demon refused to leave. The hauntings were chronicled in a book and portrayed in a movie both named The Haunted.
The Story:
The house involved is a duplex, built in 1896 on a quiet street in a middle class neighborhood. After hurricane Agnes flooded much of northeastern Pennsylvania in 1972, the Smurl family was forced to leave their home in Wilkes-Barre. Jack’s parents, John and Mary Smurl, bought the house in West Pittston in 1973 for $18,000. They lived in the right half and Jack, Janet and their first two daughters, Dawn and Heather, moved into the left half. The Smurls spent much time and money redecorating and remodeling, doing much of the work themselves.
The Smurls say they are a close, loving family. Both Jack and Janet grew up in the area, meeting in 1967 and marrying in 1968. Jack served in the Navy, becoming a neuropsychiatric technician. Both Smurls were raised in Catholic homes and had strong religious beliefs. They enjoyed living with Jack's parents and had no trouble sharing the duplex with them. The first 18 months on Chase St. were happy ones...
But strange things began to occur after that. In January 1974, a strange stain appeared on a new carpet, Jack's television set burst into flames, and water pipes leaked even after repeated re-soldering. The new sink and bathtub in the remodeled bathroom were found severely scratched, as if a wild animal had clawed at them. Freshly painted woodwork in the bathroom also showed similar scratches. In 1975, their oldest daughter Dawn repeatedly saw people "floating" around her bedroom.
By 1987, the Smurls realized their house was in some way... spooked. The toilets flushed without anyone using them, footsteps would be continuously heard on the stairs, drawers would open and close on their own accord, radios would blare although they were unplugged, and empty rocking chairs would mysteriously rock and creak as if someone were actually sitting in them. As time went on, they began to smell sour and vile smells throughout the house, and on several occasions, Jack felt the touch of an unseen hand caress him. By now, there were two more Smurls, twins Shannon and Carin, and the family was growing frustrated and fatigued by the increasing phenomena.
In 1985, what had started as annoying disturbances became frightening experiences. The house now often became ice cold. John and Mary heard loud, abusive, and obscene language coming from Jack and Janet's side of the house, although Jack and Janet were not even arguing. In February 1985, Janet heard her name being called while in the basement doing laundry. After searching for the unseen caller, she realized she had been alone the entire time.
Two days later, icy cold again was felt in the house... but this time a black, human shaped form with no facial features appeared to Janet in the kitchen. It de-materialized through the wall and appeared to Mary on the opposite side of the house. From that point on, the haunting activity increased in both frequency and magnitude. A large ceiling fan crashed down inches from Shannon, nearly killing her, on the night her now 13-year-old sister Heather was to be confirmed into the Catholic religion. As activity increased, Jack and Janet had occasionally levitated. Janet was violently pulled off her bed after making love to her husband while he lay paralyzed, gagging from a foul odor. The family's German shepherd, Simon, was repeatedly picked up and thrown. Terrible rapping and scratching noises were continuously heard in the walls. One night while sleeping, Shannon was tossed out of bed and down the stairs. Even neighbors were not spared; several heard screams and strange noises coming from the house when the Smurls were not even home. Most of the neighbors were sympathetic as the Smurls vowed to fight.
In January 1986, Janet heard about Ed and Lorraine Warren, psychical researchers and demonologists from Monroe, Connecticut. Although skeptical, she had nowhere else to turn, so she called the Warrens. The Warrens arrived shortly thereafter, accompanied by Rosemary Frueh, a registered nurse and psychic. They began the investigation by quizzing the Smurls carefully about their religious beliefs, the happiness of their family life, whether they had ever practiced Satanism, occultism, used a ouija board, or in any way invited the supernatural into their home. Then the Warrens and Frueh walked through the house, identifying the bedroom closet as the crossover point between the two sides of the duplex. The team said they detected the presence of four evil spirits. Three were minor, but the fourth was a demon.
Without any evidence of family dysfunction, occult invitation or tragedy, the Warrens could only surmise that the demon must have been dormant, probably for decades, and had arisen to draw on the emotional energy generated by the girls' entrance to puberty. The Warrens tried twice to provoke the demon to expose itself by playing tapes of religious music and confronting it with prayer. The demon reacted by violently shaking a mirror and dresser drawers, and yet another instance by spelling out "You filthy bastard, get out of this house." Only Holy Water and prayer seemed to stop the manifestations.
The situation began to turn more serious as Jack was raped by a scaly succubus posing as an old woman with a young body. Her eyes were red and her gums were green. Ed Warren was choked and then began to suffer from terrible flu-like symptoms. An incubus sexually assaulted Janet, and pig noises (a sign of serious demonic infestation) could be heard in the walls.
The Smurls said they tried several times to obtain support and action from the church. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton said it would consult with experts, but official involvement would be unlikely. At one point in time, Janet thought she was getting help from a priest named Father O'Leary but discovered no such priest existed. The Warrens brought in Father (now Bishop) McKenna, a traditionalist priest who refused to abide by the changes in ritual mandated by the Second Vatican Council. He said mass in Latin and had performed more than 50 exorcisms for the Warrens. He conducted the ancient rite which did nothing but infuriate the demon.
The haunting continued. Daughter Carin fell seriously ill from a strange fever and nearly died, and Dawn was almost raped by the evil presence. Janet and Mary had slash marks and bites on their arms... everyone was depressed. Ed Warren explained they were in the second demonic stage, oppression, which follows infestation and is followed by possession and death.
Bishop McKenna performed a second exorcism in late spring, but to no avail. The demon even accompanied the family on camping trips in the Poconos and harassed Jack at work. The family now knew they could not move to another house because the demon would just follow them. After repeated refusals by the church to help, the Smurls decided to appear on television. Remaining anonymous behind a screen, they were interviewed by Richard Bey on a local Philadelphia show called People are Talking. The demon retaliated. It levitated Janet and then hurled her against the wall. It later appeared to Jack as a monstrous creature resembling a pig on two legs. A human hand came up through the mattress and grabbed Janet by the back of the neck. And again, Jack was raped.
In August 1986, the Smurls felt the risk of ridicule did not outweigh the need to tell their story to a wider audience, and granted an interview to the Wilkes-Barre Sunday Independent newspaper. Almost immediately, their home became a tourist attraction for the press, curious onlookers, and skeptics who wished to investigate. Some skeptics, who included some of the Smurls' neighbors, said they believed the family was concocting the story to profit from book and movie contracts.
The Smurls contacted an medium, Mary Alice Rinkman, who examined the house and corroborated the Warrens' findings of 4 spirits. She identified one as an old woman named Abigail and another as a dark, mustachioed man named Patrick who had murdered his wife and her lover and had then been hung by a mob. She could not identify the third, but the fourth was a powerful demon.
Press coverage finally pushed the Scranton diocese into action and they offered to take over the investigation. The Warrens had also planned a mass exorcism with several priests. Prayer groups came to the house to give comfort. Bishop McKenna came a third time to exorcise the house and this time the ritual seemed to work, as there were no disturbances for about 3 months.
Shortly before Christmas 1986, Jack again saw the black form, beckoning him to the third stage of possession. He clutched his rosary and prayed, hoping this was simply an isolated incident. It was not... the banging again started, as well as the putrid smells and violent acts of aggression.
Frustrated, tired, and hopeless, the Smurls moved to another town, shortly before the release of a book concerning their ordeal, The Haunted, went to press. The church performed a fourth exorcism in 1988, which finally seemed to have given them peace. A movie version of The Haunted was released in 1991.
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My Grandfather owns a little antique store that I would visit every weekend. Every Friday, he got new things, and none of the items this time were particularly interesting except for one: a small mildewed cardboard box with red star emblem on the cover. Inside, there was a round board covered in letters and numbers spiraling out in a circle - one to one hundred, A to Z - with a stylized gypsy sketch leaning over a crystal ball. There was also a silver chain with 3 small orbs attached on the end. My Grandpa explained that it was the oldest Ouija board he had ever seen and told me I could take it home as an early gift (my birthday was Saturday). I had never used one before, and was honestly pretty excited to go home and try it. What a mistake.
For maximum kitsch (I really had no faith in the board working), I went into my kitchen and got a candle and some matches. I dimmed the lights to about half brightness, lit the candle, and set up the board. You were instructed to orient the board in such a way that you held the chain directly above the crystal ball in the sketch with your elbow resting on the table. I did this and watched for about 5 seconds as the orbs swung lazily back and forth over the Gypsy while I tried to think of a question. Suddenly they split directions and stopped, each of them, over 3 numbers - 8-31-81 - my birthdate.
My hand started shaking along with the chain, but the orbs never moved. I dropped the chain and blew out the candle while I ran to turn the lights on. I quickly put the board away, slid it under my couch, and started watching TV in an attempt to settle down. Soon afterward, I began to feel tired. I opened the door and whistled for my dog to come inside. I woke up in the same way many of you have described. Suddenly I was awake, there was no grogginess or lack of clarity, and the room was freezing. My dog Snatch sleeps on top of my bed at my feet every night, and I sat straight up to see that he was gone. I heard a whimper to my left and saw the dog's eyes open wide reflecting the moonlight. He was backing away from me slowly and looking straight ahead. At this point, I heard a soft rasping noise like pained breathing coming from my left side. I tried to turn my head to see what it was but before I could I felt something icy press hard against my face so it couldn't rotate. I heard a voice whisper, "Not yet," and then the feeling left my cheek. I heard footsteps slowly moving across my room toward the door and heard the click as my bedroom light was turned on.
Standing in the doorway was a figure around 6'5" wearing a blue sweatshirt with a very large hood that completely obscured the face. He had on a pair of well-worn Levis and large bare feet. He motioned for me to come and I followed behind him at about 10 feet as he led me into the living room. The figure turned on the light and pointed at the table, specifically he pointed at the Ouija board that was once again completely set up. "Sit," he said. The orbs levitated and went back to the same position they were in before I dropped the chain: 8-31-81. This time, however, I was not even holding the chain which stood straight up on end like it was tied from the ceiling. The figure turned away from me and faced the television, which immediately turned on. I heard sirens and screams and watched in amazement as the picture of a spinning Ferris wheel slowly came into focus on the screen. The sirens and screams grew louder and louder until they reached a deafening crescendo; then all at once the TV turned off, the orbs fell with a crack against the glass table, and the figure walked slowly towards the front door. The door never opened, and he disappeared into the darkness.
Sweat was pouring off me and it took me a full ten minutes to get up and call my friend, babbling nonsensically so he would come over. I told him everything and we burned as much of the board as we could and drove it to a dumpster in the next town. Now, ever since we were fifteen, my friend and I had always gone to the same place to celebrate our birthdays and my 20th birthday bash that was coming up the following day was no exception. We went to this large amusement park about an hour away. We didn't go that year after I related this experience: that day, two children were shot to death by a homeless man as they waited in line to ride the Ferris wheel. To this day, the only person I have told this story to is my friend who came over that night a little over 8 months ago. I'm hesitant to analyze exactly what it was that happened, but if any of you have any questions or insights let me know. It feels really good to talk about it now, even though when I started this post, I was scared as hell.
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I can't believe I forgot about this one. Well, about a year and a half after my grandfather died, my grandmother got a strange call one evening. The people who called my grandmother said they had a message on their answering machine and a phone number and the person on the answering machine said to call her [my grandmother]. They wanted to know why they should call her, and why this person who called them asked them to call her. My grandmother thought at first this was a horrible prank, and had no idea why someone would call them and tell them to call her. So she invited them over to her house and told them to bring the tape. Also note that these people did not know my grandfather or my grandmother AT ALL. They had no connection to my grandparents at all. So they went over there and brought the tape and played it for my grandmother. IT WAS MY GRANDFATHER'S VOICE. My grandmother was freaking out because the people swore that the message had only been left on the machine a couple days before. They freaked out too, took the tape and left, and said they wanted nothing to do with any of it because it was some freaky shit.
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Around where I live, there is an abandoned asylum for children. It's all locked up tight now, but we found a way in. Armed to the teeth with flashlights, cameras, and digital tape recorders... we ventured into an area that from the looks of it was where they had school. The windows were high, there were chains on the floor by some rotting wood (we assumed were the desks). We agreed before hand that we wouldn't fuck around (there were 4 of us) and try to scare each other. One of my friends tripped on a chain and grabbed at the teacher's rotting desk, ripping a good portion off as he fell. All of us fell silent. No one moved for about 30 seconds, then I walked towards my friends (I was looking into the hallway). A sound of something crashing resounded through the halls and into the classroom while I was walking. The sound was so loud that I had to put my hands to my ears. One of my friends ran by me followed by the others to see what happened, and I followed soon after. I dropped my flashlight when I put my hands over my ears, so I had to follow the constant moving light of my friends. When I arrived, I almost slammed into a friend. There in the hall was an old refrigerator, still smoking, that fell through what looked like the teachers' lounge wall. We left soon after that, freaked out.
When we arrived at my house, we checked the footage we got. Nothing of interest until we checked the audio recorder. After the crash, we heard a voice muttering unknown words for about 10 seconds, then a whistling sound...
We went back a few nights later, but the cops were there... apparently the night before, the security guys that make the rounds every 3 hours (we timed them when we were scoping it) found a body crushed under a refrigerator... It was a mid 20's male who they ID'ed as someone who was held at that hospital until it was shut down. We never found out where the body and the refrigerator was since they increased security after that, and did not let press into the building. But I swear there was no body when we saw the fridge..
Labels: alice, corey, death, dreams, family, ghost stories, halloween, india, laundry, margaret, mary, maxed-out tags limit, parents, paul, restarts, sleep, something awful, twins, videos, weird stuff
posted by Flami at 8:06:00 PM
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