- THE DEAD LETTER -
The Letter from beyond the grave
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In December 1923, the body of 67-year-old Mrs Heath lay in an open coffin in the front parlour of her home in Nevill Street, Southport. Wreaths of evergreens gemmed with roses lay in the hall, and upstairs in the bedroom, Moira, the forty-year-old daughter of the late Mrs Heath, was being comforted by her close lifelong friend Anthony. Moira was so beside herself with sorrow, she couldn't attend the funeral, so Anthony had told the mourners he would stay behind with the grief-stricken lady. When the hearse took the coffin away, Moira and Anthony stood at the bedroom window, watching it turn the corner, past the Coliseum Cinema, and into the depths of a fog, followed by the entourage of cars.
The house was empty, now that the mourners had left, and so Anthony and Moira sat before the blazing coals of a fire in the drawing room, each sipping a sherry as they reflected on the life and personality of the deceased woman. Moira told Anthony that if it hadn't been for her mother's constant interfering, she'd still be married to Douglas, and would have had children around her now to comfort her in her hour of need. Alas, Mrs Heath had put such a strain on her daughter's relationship with Douglas, he had divorced her fifteen years ago. Now she was left on the shelf, condemned to live alone for the rest of her life. Moira was wallowing in self-pity when Anthony suddenly said, 'Look, Moira, that's all water under the bridge now dear. You have to get on with what's left of your life and make an effort to build a future.' 'How can I with so many awful memories? Mother has ruined my life!' Moira started to sniffle. 'Look, I know this might sound a little bizarre, but, I was reading a book on psychology the other day, and the author mentioned this very interesting case -' Anthony was saying, when he was interrupted. 'Not now Anthony,' interposed Moira. 'Wait, please hear me out,' Anthony went on. 'A man blamed his mother for giving him some psychological complex which blighted his life. I think she dressed him in girl's clothes when he was a lad. Anyhow, the psychiatrist told the man to write a letter to his mother asking him why she had given him a complex with her bizarre antics - even though the man's mother was dead.' Moira seemed puzzled. 'You see, just the act of writing the letter had some sort of therapeutic value to the man, and his complex gradually disappeared.' Anthony explained. 'So, you are suggesting that I should write a letter to my mother?' Moira asked her friend. Anthony took some time to persuade his bereaved friend to write the letter, but in the end she succumbed, and that evening, she sat at her late mother's Davenport writing desk, pouring her heart out onto the paper. Anthony sealed the letter and 'posted' it inside the Davenport's drawer. He advised Moira to now forget about the letter and to accompany him on a winter break to Scotland. Moira took up the offer. At Guthrie Castle, a week later, Anthony produced a ring and on his bended knee, shocked Moira by proposing. He admitted he had loved her for so many years, and Moira accepted the proposal. The newly-engaged couple arrived back at the house on Nevill Street, and sometime later, Moira noticed an envelope on the Davenport writing desk in her mother's room. Inscribed upon it in a familiar script, were the words: 'To Moira'. Moira opened the letter, and almost fainted as she scanned the words. It was a reply to the letter she had written to her late mother. The handwriting was that of her mother's, and so was the acidic, scathing prose. The author of the letter said that Moira was a trollop, and that Anthony had taken advantage of her during a time of crisis so he could marry into her wealth. 'But not over my dead grave!' the letter ended. Then a faint chuckling sound was heard nearby. Moira ran screaming downstairs and fled to Anthony's house. At first, Moira's fiancé thought the letter from beyond the grave was a joke, but soon saw how deadly serious his fiancée was about the matter. Whenever Anthony visited the house on Nevill Street, supernatural incidents would occur. A glass was hurled at him by something invisible, and on one occasion, when he fell asleep embracing Moira on a sofa, he was awakened by ice-cold hands throttling him. Moira also saw fleeting glimpses of a woman in a long black dress at night in her bedroom, and could even detect the distinct perfume her mother was accustomed to wear. Shattered nerves got the better of Moira and Anthony, and they ended up moving to Birkdale. When the wedding finally took place, not only did a substitute ring had to be used because the wedding band vanished from the best man's pocket, but the interfering ghost of Mrs Heath even put in an appearance. This happened as the priest intoned part of the marriage service that asks: 'If any of you can show just cause why the couple may not lawfully be married, speak now; or else forever hold your peace.' A loud shriek that seemed to originate in the transept echoed throughout the church. Some of those gathered later said they briefly saw a woman in black, shaking her fist at the couple, seemingly in protest. Fearing repercussions from the interfering ghost, Moira and Anthony subsequently moved to Ormskirk, and were troubled no more. |
Saturday, 4 May 2013
- THE DEAD LETTER -
- THE LOVE OF A LONG-DEAD GIRL -
- THE LOVE OF A LONG-DEAD GIRL -
Lover from Another Time
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The following true tale is one of the strangest paranormal accounts on record. The boy in the story is now a successful businessman, so I can't give his full name, even though his surname was once recklessly published by a sensational tabloid magazine which mis-reported the incident in the 1990s. The weird episode related here occurred at Allentown, Pennsylvania in the autumn of 1995.
" 'kay." Ryan took hold of the card, and he folded it and threw it into a litter bin nearby, as the smiling couple walked on. Now all had been revealed to Ryan. Bethany was just a cruel, cold girl who had delighted in mocking his affection for her in front of him. Ryan felt no animosity towards Bethany and Todd, or any feelings of revenge. He was just thankful in a way that he had found her out. He knew in his broken heart that there was some girl out there who was right for him. He just had to cross her path, that's all.
Well, nothing much romantic happened in Allentown for most of that year. Then, in October, Ryan and his family moved to another part of the town. The new residence was a very old house which dated back to 1900. From the moment Ryan stepped inside the hall of this house, he felt there was something which he could only describe as 'magical' about it. As the weeks went by, Ryan and his family learned from neighbors that the dwelling was allegedly haunted - by a ghostly girl. No one knew the identity of the alleged ghost, or anything about the history of the house, except for an old woman named Eleanor, who was currently in hospital after falling at her home.
Ryan's father reassured his three children that all the talk about ghosts was ridiculous. He said he had once worked near a graveyard at a factory on nightshifts and had never once seen anything remotely supernatural.
But one evening one of Ryan's sisters said she could smell a sweet scent in her room, and had felt something brush past her which felt like a soft silky veil. Her father said it had been her imagination. Then Ryan's mother was cooking supper late one evening, waiting for her husband to return from work, when she heard the sounds of a piano playing. It was a well-known piano piece she hadn't heard for years called Fur Elise by Beethoven. But Ryan's Mom was so scared to investigate, she woke up her children and asked them if they could hear the music. They could, and they were a bit spooked too. But Ryan loved a challenge, and he took his flashlight and decided to investigate the source of the phantom music. He realised it was coming from upstairs, and so he ascended the staircase, then hesitated outside the attic door. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. He aimed the beam of the flashlight into the room and swept it about. There was just junk up there, and a large covered object. The music had suddenly stopped. The lightbulb was missing, but Ryan walked into the room anyway. He could hear the faint voices of his Mom and sisters calling him back. Ryan continued his investigation. He lifted the large canvas dust sheet off the object, and saw it was an old upright piano. A badly tuned one with several dead keys. That couldn't have been the source of the sweet music he had heard.
Ryan suddenly got the intense feeling he was being watched. It gave him goosebumps, so he backed out of the room, whistling to himself, and closed the door. He went down and told his Mom and sisters what he had found. Suddenly the front door flew open and they all screamed.
It was just Ryan's father, home from work. "What's up? Why are you all standing in the hall?" He laughed, and took off his coat.
His wife told him about the phantom piano player and of the discovery in the attic, but Ryan's Dad just shook his head, then with an uneasy expression, he said:"That's been mice in that old piano. I'm starving."
But that night, the first of the many visitations took place. Ryan was lying in the ink-black darkness of his bedroom, trying to get asleep, with the blankets almost over his head (to keep out the ghosts) when he noticed the smell of lavender. He just knew something was in his room. Then he heard a whisper."Ryan..."
Ryan's heart skipped a beat. "Go away." he said, his voice muffled as he buried his head in the blankets. The voice was not that of his sisters playing a prank, He didn't know this voice.
"Don't be scared of me, please. My name is Alice." said the voice in the darkness.
"Mom!" Ryan shouted. He closed his eyes tightly and threw himself out the bed. He clicked on the light and saw the room empty. But the smell was still lingering.
Moments later, a voice outside said: "Ryan?"
It was his sister. Ryan opened the door and told her about the eerie voice calling itself Alice, and the smell.
"You okay?" his sister was sympathetic to him. She knew there was something supernatural at large in the house.
"I dunno. Yeah, go back to bed." Ryan said, and his sister just nodded, then walked off. She yelled as she bumped into Ryan's other sister, who had come to see what the commotion was about.
As Ryan was closing his door, he saw his sister telling her older sister: "The ghost was in Ryan's room."
So Ryan slept with the light on. At 4 a.m. he woke up for some reason, then remembered the disembodied girlish voice. Then he felt something warm. He felt a hand holding his. A soft small hand clasping his outstretched hand which was dangling out the bed.
Ryan pulled his hand back and held it to his chest. He felt a hot flush in his face as his heart pounded. "Who's there?"
No reply came. Sleep gradually overtook him as the reassuring pale blue light of dawn crept through the curtains. He had the strangest dream. He met a beautiful, very old-fashioned girl named Alice. She was beautiful, and had an impish, mischievous face, and long plaided chestnut colored hair. The dream seemed to go on for hours and hours, and in the midst of this misty drama of Ryan's unconscious, there were glimpses of a strange house that stood where Ryan's house was. Stranger still, Ryan was besotted with Alice, and she loved him. He watched her playing the upright piano he had found in the attic. Then after playing, she said, "My picture is in this piano. When you wake up, go upstairs and you'll find it."
"When I wake up?" Ryan said, dumbfounded, "But I'm not asleep."
"Oh but you are." Alice told him, and as she kissed him, he awoke. His heart sank. The dream had been so real.
Later that day, at noon, Ryan remembered the dream girl's intriguing claim about her picture being in the piano. He went up into the attic, and with sunlight from the noonday sun blazing through the skylight window, he didn't feel in the least scared. He opened the top flap of the old piano and shone his flashlight into the inner workings of the instrument. There was something down there in the thick dust, next to the piano wires. Ryan reached down and strained his shoulder. He finally retrieved the object. It was an old framed photograph.
His heart jumped. The girl in that photograph was - Alice.
Ryan showed the photograph to his Mom and Dad and to his sisters, and told them about the dreams. Ryan's sceptical father said: "It's all coincidence. If you believe in your dreams you might as well spend your life asleep."
Old Eleanor, the neighbor who could throw some light on the history of the house, came out of hospital later that week, and was looked after by her niece. Ryan's mother took a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates round to the recuperating neighbor - and she also brought the photograph out the piano around too. Eleanor, who was such a sweet old lady, told Ryan's Mom: "That picture will be of Alice Hadley. My mother told me all about her. Alice died of fever in the 1880s. Her mother was very puritanical. Kept the girl from seeing boys and having friends. She used to play the piano. They took the piano out the house before it was demolished, then when they built the house you're in on the same spot, Alice's piano ended back there by a fluke. A man named Raymond Jones lived in your house around 1900, and he bought the piano from a store. My mother said it was the very piano Alice used to play. Mr Jones was just a magpie, and he never played that piano, he just had it put away in the attic."
Ryan's mom asked Eleanor if she had heard about the ghost that haunted the house and the smells. Eleanor replied, "Yes, and I swear before Almighty God, I saw Alice looking out the window one day in your home. I hope I'm not scaring you?"
"No, you're not. I am more intrigued." Ryan's mother replied with a smile.
Ryan underwent a peculiar change. He spent most of his days up in attic, and sometimes his parents would hear beautiful music, even though they both knew their son couldn't play a note. Ryan would chat at the dinner table of how beautiful and talented Alice was. He said one day when he died he'd marry her in heaven.
Ryan's father was becoming very concerned about his son's behaviour, and he contacted a local Catholic priest one morning on his way to work. The priest visited the family with a medium, which infuriated Ryan. "Mind your own business!" Ryan bawled at the priest. "Alice isn't some evil spirit! She's my girl!"
The priest said it was possible the boy was becoming "obsessed and possessed with Alice" and recommended a 'cleansing' of the house. Ryan's father consented to this enthusiastically.
One day, when Ryan returned from school, he found a strange silence in the house. His sisters never said a word as he came in, and his mother had a strange sad look in her eyes.
Ryan went up into the attic, but came down about fifteen minutes later. He told his Mom: "She's gone."
His mother hugged him as his sister's looked on with morose expressions.
"Alice has gone. I don't understand." Ryan pushed his mother away.
"The church sent these people..." his Mom started to say but trailed off and shook her head.
"What people?" Ryan recoiled.
"They cleansed the house." His Mom said.
One of sister's added: "Two psychics carried out a sort of exorcism and made Alice go into the light."
"And who let them in? You Mom?" Ryan asked with a disgusted look. Tears flowed down his cheeks,
His Mother nodded, "Your Father's idea. He was worried about you."
Ryan sobbed. "I loved her...I was in love with her. She was all I had and you did this."
He ran up to the attic and told his sisters who followed to leave him alone.
The ghost of Alice Hadley never did return. Ryan initially threatened he'd commit suicide so he could be with his lost love, but gradually got over the loss, and is now married to one of the living. He has named one of his children Alice, and strangely enough, that little girl wants to learn how to play the piano.
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- THE HELL HOUSE -
- THE HELL HOUSE -
Somewhere in the north west of England there is a terraced Victorian house which looks rather unremarkable, and some of you out there have probably passed it many times without giving it a second glance, but since the year 1900, this innocent-looking dwelling has been dubbed the 'Hell House' for reasons I will soon relate to you...
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In 1900, the master of the house , A Dr Edward Meade, died and left the house to his wayward 18-year-old nephew named Oliver Milton, who was known far and wide as a bounder and a hell raiser. Although he was still a teenager, Oliver had four illegitimate children in Liverpool, Preston, Chester and Northwich. It is recorded that in 1898, when Oliver was just sixteen, he acted as referee to a duel between two farmers at a field outside Cuddington, and was accused of putting a blank in the pistol of the farmer who died. It transpired that Oliver had received a substantial payment to tamper with the pistol, but by then he had returned to his hometown. Then, in 1899, Oliver decided to make a pact with the devil with a group of like-minded friends on Bidston Hill on the Wirral. Upon a sandstone outcrop by Bidston Observatory, Oliver and his companions summoned up Lucifer with a chant they had learned from an old man in Wales who had professed to be a black magician. The sandstone rock on Bidston was said to have been a traditional place for magical rites for over a thousand years, and there are still strange carvings on the rock of a cat-headed Moon goddess and a horse.
According to Oliver, the Devil materialised just after midnight as a man in black with a charming voice. He said that if the young men swore allegiance to him they would all have great careers, and he asked them to show allegiance by raising their arms to salute him with their open palms. This sounds like the black magic sign that Hitler adopted many years later as the Nazi salute.
The man in black then smiled and faded away.
Oliver said weird things then began to happen to him and his friends. They had tremendous runs of luck when gambling, and also became very popular with girls, but there were always reminders of their pact with Satan. One Welsh girl bore one of the boys an illegitimate girl, and when the midwife examined her, the baby had a birthmark on her back which looked exactly like a three-pronged fork. Another of the boys later left the gang and tried to settle down to marry a girl in Wrexham, but when he entered the church for the wedding ceremony, he became violently ill. The girl and the villagers became suspicious, and the priest pushed the teenager into the church and barred his way out, and the boy took a fit and rolled across the floor of the aisle, frothing at the mouth. He then got to his feet and pushed three strong men aside and fled from the church and left Wrexham and the broken-hearted girl who had been his bride-to-be.
Oliver had no intentions to marry, and finally settled in the house left to him by his Uncle Edward. The servants were kept on and Oliver begrudgingly paid them a meagre wage from the fortune his uncle had left him. The teenager gave specific instructions to the staff saying that no one must go into the cellar when he was down there or they would be instantly dismissed. Everyone agreed to this bizarre stipulation except a young maid named Polly, who was a renowned nosey parker. Her curiosity got the better of her one stormy night when Oliver took a lantern down to the cellar and locked himself in. Hearing a strange chant, Polly left her kitchen duties and sneaked down into the cellar and spied on Oliver through a slit in the cellar door. What she saw made her speechless with fear. Oliver was kneeling on the floor and chanting in a weird voice. Then suddenly a tall man in black with a pale childlike face appeared. The figure's eyes seemed to burn with a golden light. Oliver said to the apparition, "I've had it with you. I want no more from you. I reject you Lucifer! Your promises are always hollow and full of snags."
The man in black's face smiled and he said, "You swore allegiance and you're mine forever, mind body and soul."
"No!" shouted Oliver, and he got up off his knees and took a swipe at the man, but his arm went through him. This gave Polly the creeps, and she started to shake.
The stranger in the cellar suddenly said, "I've had enough of your turncoat ways. I'm taking you away tonight!" and the figure vanished, leaving a terrible stench behind. Polly stood on a creaking step as she tried to run up the stairs in the dark. Oliver heard her and unlocked the door. He chased after her and seized the frightened girl on the stairs.
He said, "Polly, did you see what went on down there?"
The girl nodded, and started to sob.
"Please help me Polly. He said he'll take me tonight." said Oliver.
"I can't." said Polly, and she ran upstairs and told the other servants. They were so afraid, they all resigned and left the house in a hurry. The local clergyman was told about Oliver's secret meetings with Satan, and he visited the house on the following morning with two other priests, intending to perform an exorcism. There was no answer at the house, so they got a policeman to gain entry by breaking the door open. Up in the bedroom, everyone could smell something burning. Then the policeman lifted the bedclothes, and there were the charred remains of Oliver Milton. The blackened remains were so small, they looked like a piece of burnt toast. The policeman noted that there was a black powder on the bed sheets and a single blackened foot at the bottom of the mattress, and yet the bedclothes or bed were not even singed. The pathologist surmised that Oliver Milton had been a victim of what is known as spontaneous human combustion, where the body heat of a person rises to such intensity, it is consumed by an intense fire. But Polly knew that wasn't the explanation; she told the police that Lucifer had paid a visit to one of his disciples and taken him from his bed, but the police just sneered at her story.
It is said that within the house where Oliver practised his black arts, terrible screams are still heard and sulphuric smells occasionally rise from the cellar. As recently as 1996, workmen at the house saw the word 'Mammon' being chalked on a wall in the house by an invisible hand. Mammon is mentioned in the Bible as the god of money and greed. One resident who lived in the house of horror with his family said that the foundations of the dwelling seemed to vibrate and give off a groaning sound whenever the bells of the local church rang out on Sundays. A couple from Manchester who lived at the Merseyside house in the late 1960s left the spooky dwelling because each morning when they awoke, they would find that their double bed had been rotated 180 degrees...
Sleep well tonight.
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- THE EVIL ASSAILANT -
- THE EVIL ASSAILANT -
Lecherous Satanist returned from his cellar grave
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The following chilling story is from the annals of the now-defunct Lancashire Spiritualists Society, which was based in Liverpool, England, until 1939.
Around midnight, Victoria still hadn't returned, so Margaret went to bed, where she continued to read her book by the light of a candle. She started to doze off, when she thought she heard a noise downstairs. Margaret got up and went to the landing, then shouted down the stairs, 'Is that you Victoria?'
No reply came, but Margaret saw the shadow of a figure flit across the bottom flight of steps and heard a faint chuckle. Margaret thought it was William, Victoria's fiancé, messing about with her sister. Margaret liked William. He made her laugh the way he fooled about, so she went downstairs, carrying the candle, expecting to see William staging some prank. Margaret reached the bottom flight of steps and saw the flickering flames of the coal fire, still burning in the grate. Margaret had forgotten to put the safety guard around the fire, and as she walked to the parlour, she noticed a figure standing in the shadows of the hall to her left. She turned, and saw a strange-looking man standing there. He wore a long curly white wig like the one worn by a judge, and a long embroided satin coat with large turned-up sleeves, just like the coats worn in the 18th century. Beneath this, the stranger wore a silvery waistcoat, and instead of trousers, he had on outdated breeches to his knees.
On the lower parts of his legs, the man wore white stockings and on his feet he sported square-toed shoes with shiny brass buckles on them. What really gave young Margaret the creeps was the intruder's face, which was plastered in white make-up. He looked at the terrified girl with an evil expression, then rushed towards her. Margaret dropped the candlestick and ran into the parlour. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it with her heart pounding. The intruder started to steadily force the door open, then backed up and charged at it, throwing Margaret across the room with the impact. The outdated-looking stranger then started to chase the terrified teenager around the table, and she was so traumatised, she found herself unable to scream. Her throat seemed weak with terror. The eerie man suddenly stopped chasing, and in a weird accent, he said 'Now my pretty one, stay still, for I must have you.' And he jumped onto the table with amazing agility, then leapt onto the girl. She fell to the floor by the fire, and he started to molest her. He tore at her dress and violently kissed and bit at her neck and breasts. The girl felt powerless, then suddenly saw the hot poker in the grate.
She grabbed it with her left hand, and pushed it into the attacker's face. He let out a scream, then clawed Margaret's face. The girl retaliated by clubbing him on the head with the poker. What's more, Margaret suddenly regained the power to shout out, and she let out a scream that sent her weird attacker running from the room. Margaret got to her feet and heard the attacker's footsteps running down the stairs to the cellar. The girl ran into the street in a dreadful state, and Victoria and William came running to her aid. Several neighbours also came out to see what all the screams were about.
Margaret screamed that the assailant had ran into the cellar, but when William went down to look he found the cellar empty. William and Victoria thought the tale of the 18th century attacker was a bit far-fetched, and virtually accused Margaret of having an overactive imagination. Because she was unable to explain the 'love-bites' on Margaret's neck and chest and the scratch-marks on her face, Victoria theorised that Margaret had been canoodling with some local boy who had fled upon hearing that the older sister would soon be home. But Margaret stuck by her story, and weeks later, Victoria and William also saw the outdated man in the powdered wig peering out of the parlour window one Sunday morning when the couple were returning from church. Around this time, the Webster girls learnt from their neighbours that the previous occupiers who had lived in their home had left after saying the house was haunted. The family who had lived in the Websters house had said that in the wee small hours, the sinister apparition of a old-fashioned-looking man often appeared in the bedroom of their daughter with a lecherous look.
In the winter of 1922, a water pipe burst in the Webster sisters' house, and workmen were called in. While these workmen were digging to get to the pipe - which ran under the cellar - they unearthed an unmarked red mahogany coffin. When this coffin was opened by the authorities, it revealed the skeleton of a man wearing a long white curly wig, and tattered early 18th century clothes. These clothes and the wig matched the same wig and clothes as those worn by the sinister intruder who had recently attacked Margaret Webster. Local historians later deduced that the skeleton was that of Richard Tilly, a notorious, but wealthy 18th century rake and Satan worshipper. Tilly was charged with sorcery, sacrilege, blackmail, rape, and even a ritual murder, but had bribed the magistrate and escaped sentencing by promising to live in obscurity. It was thought that the Satanist had been secretly buried on the site of the Webster sisters' house around the year 1730. In Tilly's coffin there was a crumbling book entitled Lucifer's Bible, and on the front page there was the sign of an upside down pentagram - the symbol of a Satanist. The text on the pages was too faded to read, but probably contained references to Satanism and black magical practices.
Understandably, the Webster sisters soon left the house and moved to North Wales. Tilly's coffin was not allowed to be buried in a Christian churchyard, and is thought to have been reburied near Bidston Hill.
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- THE GHOSTLY FUNERAL PROCESSION -
- THE GHOSTLY FUNERAL PROCESSION -
An old Irish tale of Victorian Liverpool related by Tom Slemen
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In March 1979, a strange spectacle was witnessed by many on the streets of Liverpool - a ghostly funeral procession from the Edwardian or Victorian eras. Around one in the afternoon, people enjoying window seats at Kirkland's Café on Hardman Street noticed a tall gaunt looking man in a long black coat walking up the road outside. He wore a tall top hat with long ribbons streaming from it in the cold March breeze. In his hand he held a staff with a black ribbon attached to it. About twenty feet behind the old fashioned jaywalking undertaker, or 'featherman' as they were called, there followed two large muscular dark horses, and they were pulling an elegant four-wheeled hearse. Large black feathery plumes bobbed from their head harnesses. The coffin in the hearse was barely visible because of the rose-wreaths and floral tributes that decked the carriage.
Three four-wheeled carriages formed the rest of the cortege, all horse drawn of course, presumably taking the mourners to the funeral service. The horses, carriages and undertaker in his suit of mourning sable, all seemed real enough, and bystanders assumed that someone was merely being sent off in style. Some said that the cortege had been seen earlier on Rodney Street, and that when it moved off it proceeded through a red light, almost causing a fatal crash. Well, it seems that the hearse-driver continued to show a total disregard for traffic lights as he steered his horses across the junction into Myrtle Street. A Mini screeched to a halt, and the driver wound down his window to vent a mouthful of swear-words to the featherman and the hearse-driver. He beeped his horn in a moment of thoughtlessness - but the horses of the cortege never responded.
Later that day, the horse-drawn mourners were seen going up Gorsey Lane, coming from the direction of the Ford Cemetery. Again the cortege caused mayhem with the traffic, but when the police turned up in the area, they could find no trace of the mourners. The featherman, the drivers and the bereaved alike had seemingly vanished into thin air. Police made enquiries at the cemetery but no old-fashioned hearse and carriages had even been seen in the vicinity. People in the neighbourhood of Ford had seen the very same ghostly funeral procession years before in the 1950s, and some thought the eerie vision preceded death and bad luck to those who beheld it. |
- THE GIRL WHO HATED MIRRORS -
- THE GIRL WHO HATED MIRRORS -
The following bizarre and creepy incident, which took place in Des Moines, Iowa, was investigated by a psychiatrist and a paranormal research group. As is usual in these cases, a satisfactory explanation was never arrived at.
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In May 1999, a 13-year-old girl named Phoebe was sent to see a psychiatrist because of a self-image neurosis. The teenager was evidently developing an aversion to mirrors because she thought she looked ugly. Phoebe would periodically break down in tears in her room because she saw herself as fat and spotty. Her best friend Rachel had tried on numerous occasions to tell her that there was nothing ugly about her and that her figure was stick-like, but Phoebe thought her friend was just trying to make her feel better.
'What did you see?' Davies asked, and he thought it sad that a girl as beautiful and intelligent as Phoebe should have this disorder.
'The glass in the mirror sort of quivered when I touched it. It felt like, like - ' Phoebe contorted her lips in disgust as she searchedin desperation for an adequately gross word in her vocabulary. Finally, she said: 'Like a slimy membrane.'
After a pause, Hiram Davies said, 'So you think the mirror is sort of possessed?' Phoebe glared at him, 'I know this sounds like some far-fetched X Files crap but I swear before God - that mirror is evil.'
'Okay Phoebe, let's think about this.' The psychiatrist tried to calm the girl down, and nodded reassuringly.
'Look, my mom had a breakdown after we got that mirror.' Phoebe said. 'Yes?' the psychiatrist was waiting to see how Phoebe could link the mirror to her mother's breakdown. 'She said she was getting real bad crow's feet and wrinkles all over her face. She started losing her confidence after we got that mirror. Now, in Dad's shaving mirror her face looked okay, but in the hall mirror she looked like a dog.' Phoebe scowled and pointed her index fingers at her eyes, 'Her eyes looked all puffy and red. 'I see,' Davies tapped the top of his pen against his lip. 'Well maybe I should see this mirror,' he suggested. 'Please do,' Phoebe said enthusiastically. She then told Davies how the mirror had eroded the confidence of the other family members: 'Dad started using a hair dye because he thought he was going grey - after looking in the hall mirror. Then he said his hairline was receding. He started wearing a baseball cap, and Dad looked a moron. Then my older brother Jake, he said his ears were growing outwards. Oh yes, and he also started shaving his eyebrows because he thought they were joining in the middle. But he looks okay, it's the mirror. Perhaps I should just smash it.' 'No, don't do that Phobe.' Davies smirked, then flipped through his personal diary. 'I will call over to your place on Friday, at let me see - four o'clock.' Mr Davies had a word with Phoebe's mother after the assessment interview and told her about the 'evil mirror'. Phoebe's mom was naturally concerned, but Davies assured her that girls and boys in their early teens often developed outlandish fixations and paranoid suspicions, but these psychological anomalies often vanished further on in adolescence. Davies added that he would look call at the house on Friday to look at the accursed mirror, just to make Phoebe face reality. It was worth a try. Friday afternoon came and Mr Davies called. Phoebe answered, but her parents were not yet home from work. Her brother Jake was upstairs surfing the net. 'This is the mirror.' Phoebe pointed to the ovoid of mercurial silver on the darker side of the hall. Davies said nothing. He simply walked over and pretended to inspect the looking glass. And he noticed something which unnerved him in the reflection. According to the reflected image, Davies had a lazy eye. His left eye was slightly pointing away at a noticeable angle. 'What's wrong?' Phoebe asked the psychiatrist after noting his concerned expression. Mr Davies said, 'Nothing.' He rolled his eyes about, closed them, then looked again. Yes, his left eye was not looking straight at the mirror, it was definitely out of synchronization with the other eyeball. 'Touch it.' Phoebe challenged the psychiatrist. 'It feels slimy.' Davies was surprised to feel a little reluctance in his arm as he slowly reached out to touch the crystal clear surface of the mirror. His fingers touched it, but it just felt like glass; cool and smooth. 'Does it feel slimy?' Phoebe asked, and waited tensely for an answer. 'No.' Davies intoned in a low serious voice, and continued to gaze at the mirror. He saw how obvious his wig looked. He realized how people must have laughed at him because of the toupe. It just looked like the hair of a young man placed on the head of a fifty-year-old. He was obviously fooling no one. Davies was left empty and small by the truthful mirror. 'Don't look Mr Davies!' Phoebe warned the psychiatrist. 'Huh?' Hiram Davies swung his head sideways at the young round worried face. 'It's affected you now hasn't it?' Phoebe said perceptively. 'It's strange. Not exactly flattering - ' Davies stammered. 'I told you. It's evil.' Phoebe said, and she suddenly took a deep breath, then ran upstairs. She returned with a baseball bat. 'Hey, don't - ' Mr Davies realized what the girl had in mind. He would have intervened but didn't want to risk being hit by the bat. Phoebe slammed the baseball bat into the mirror repeatedly, swing after swing. Silver shards flew everywhere like dangerous confetti, but luckily, neither Phoebe nor the psychiatrist were cut by the flying pieces. The last swing of the bat sent the frame of the looking glass crashing to the carpeted floor. Jake came running down the stairs after hearing the racket. He stopped halfway down the last flight and saw his sister wielding the bat. He looked at the psychiatrist and in a quite earnest voice he asked, 'Has she gone postal?' 'What's that?' Mr Davies gazed at the wooden backing of the mirror. On the wooden oval-shaped board that the silvered glass had been laid upon was a face. The face of a woman with a sinister smile. The face looked more photographic than a painted portrait, and as Phoebe and Mr Davies watched in frightened disbelief, the face rapidly faded. The psychiatrist picked up the smashed and splintered frame and took a close look. There was just a wood-grain pattern, and not a trace of the mysterious image. Phoebe's father, Robert, later told Mr Davies and members of a paranormal research group how he had brought the mirror into the house in September 1998. His brother - an interior decorator - had found the mirror in the attic of a house that was being renovated. He gave the mirror to Robert, because he knew his brother liked antiques. The owners of the renovated house knew nothing of the people who had lived there before them, and so, no light was ever thrown upon the mystery of the spooky mirror and the creepy face concealed behind it's looking glass. |
- ANNABELLE, THE HAUNTED DOLL -
- ANNABELLE, THE HAUNTED DOLL -
This is a terrifying case of a raggedy Ann doll named Annabelle. The case is from the 1970's and is highlighted in the book The Demonologist. This is one of the Warrens most asked about cases. The referral came from an Episcopal priest. A somber toned clergyman told Ed Warren of two young nurses who had communicated with what they thought to be a human spirit. One of the girls’ friends had been attacked physically, and the activity was still in progress, so Ed accepted the case. With that the priest gave Ed the phone number of the girls. Ed immediately called the number and upon reaching one of the girls, Ed verified the existence of the problem and told the young women that he and Lorraine were on their way.
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"It was a gift" Donna replied, "My mother gave it to me on my last birthday." "Is there some reason why she bought you a doll?" Ed wanted to know. "No. It was just something novel-a decoration" the young nurse answered. "Okay." Ed went on. "When did you first start noticing activity occur?" "About a year ago," replied Donna. "The doll started to move around the apartment by itself. I don’t mean it got up and walked around, or any such thing. I mean when we’d come home from work it would never be quite where we left it." "Explain that part to me a little more" Ed requested. "After I got the doll for my birthday," Donna explained, "I put it on my bed each morning after the bed was made. The arms would be off to its sides and its legs would be straight out-just like it’s sitting there now. But when we’d come home at night, the arms and legs would be positioned in different gestures. For instance, its legs would be crossed at the ankles, or its arms would be folded in its lap. After a week or so, this made us suspicious. So to test it, I purposely crossed its arms and legs in the morning to see if it really was moving. And sure enough, every night when we’d come back home, the arms and legs would be uncrossed and the thing would be sitting there in any of a dozen different postures." "Yeah, but it did more than that," Angie added. "The doll also changed rooms by itself. We came home one night and the Annabelle doll was sitting in a chair by the front door. It was kneeling! The funny thing about it was, when we tried to make the doll kneel, it’d just fall over. It couldn’t kneel. Other times we’d find it sitting on the sofa, although when we left the apartment in the morning it’d be in Donna’s room with the door closed!" "Anything else?" Lorraine asked. "Yes," said Donna. "It would leave us little notes and messages. The handwriting looked to be that of a small child." "What’d the note say?" questioned Ed. "It would say things that meant nothing to us," Donna answered.
Things would be written like HELP US or HELP LOU, but Lou wasn’t in any kind of jeopardy at the time. And who us was-we didn’t know. Still, the thing that was weird was that the notes would be written in pencil, but when we tried to find one, there was not one pencil in the apartment! And the paper it wrote on was parchment. I tore the apartment apart, looking for parchment paper, but again neither of us had any such thing.’’ " It sounds like someone had a key to your apartment and was playing a sick joke on you," Ed stated flatly. "That’s exactly what we thought," said Donna. "So we did little things like put marks on the windows and doors or arrange the rugs so that anyone who came in here would leave a trace that we could see. But never once did it turn out that there was a real outside intruder."
"While the doll was moving around, and we’d become suspicious of burglars, when something else screwy happened." Angie added next. "The Annabelle doll was sitting on Donna’s bed, as was usual. When we came home one night, there was blood on the back of its hand, and there were three drops of blood on its chest!" "God, that really scared us," Donna said frankly. "Did you notice any other kind of phenomena occur in the apartment?" Ed asked them. "One time around Christmas, we found a little chocolate boot on the stereo that none of us had bought. Presumably it came from Annabelle," said Angie. " When did you come to determine there was a spirit associated with the doll?" Lorraine questioned. "We knew something unusual was going on," Donna answered. "The doll did change rooms by itself. It did pose in different gestures, we all saw it, but wanted to know why? Was there maybe some plausible reason why the doll was moving? So Angie and I got in touch with a woman who’s a medium. That was about a month, or maybe six weeks after all this stuff started to happen. We learned that a little girl died on this property," Donna told the Warrens. "She was seven years old and her name was Annabelle Higgins. The Annabelle spirit said she played in the fields long ago before these apartments were built. They were happy times for her. She told us. Because everyone around here was grown-up, and only concerned with their jobs, there was no one she could relate to, except us. Annabelle felt that we would be able to understand her. That’s why she began moving the rag doll. All Annabelle wanted was to be loved, and so she asked if she could stay with us and move into the doll. What could we do? So we said yes." "Wait a minute here," Ed interjected. "What do you mean it wanted to move into the doll? Do you mean it proposed to possess it?" "Right, that was the understanding," Donna replied. "It seemed harmless enough. We’re nurses, you know, we see suffering every day. We had compassion. Anyway, we called the doll Annabelle from that time on." "Did you do anything different with the doll after you learned it was supposedly possessed by a little girl spirit named Annabelle?" asked Lorraine. "Not really," said Donna. "But of course it wasn’t just a doll any more. It was Annabelle. We couldn’t ignore that fact."
"All right, before you go any further, let’s back up a minute," Ed requested. "First you got the doll for you birthday. After a while the doll began to move – or at least change places enough for you to notice it. This made you curious, so you decided to have a séance, and a spirit came across that called itself Annabelle Higgins. This supposed little girl was seven years old and asked if it could come live with you by possessing the toy doll. You said yes, out of compassion. Then you renamed the doll Annabelle. Right?" "Right," said Donna and Angie. Have you seen the ghost of a little girl at any time in this apartment?" Ed asked. "No," both the girls answered. "You also said a chocolate item showed up here once," said Ed. "Has anything else strange ever happened that you couldn’t explain?" "One time a statue lifted up across the room," Donna recalled, "then it tumbled in the air and fell on the floor. None of us were near the statue-it was on the other side of the room. That incident frightened us totally." "Let me ask you something else." Ed went on. "Didn’t you think that maybe you shouldn’t have given the doll so much recognition?" It wasn’t a doll!" Donna corrected him. "It was the spirit of Annabelle we cared about!" "That’s right," said Angie. Ed added "I mean, before you knew anything about Annabelle?" "How were we to know anything?" Donna asked. "But looking back on it now, maybe we shouldn’t have given the doll so much credence. But really, we saw the thing as being no more than a harmless mascot. I t never hurt anything…at least until the other day." "Do you still think what’s moving the doll is the spirit of a little girl?" Lorraine queried. "What else could it be?" Angie said in reply. "It’s a damn voodoo doll, that’s what it is," Lou blurted out. "I told them about that thing a long time ago. The doll was just taking advantage of them…"
"Okay, Lou, I think it’s time you told your side of things, tell them about the dreams," coaxed Angie. "Well," Lou picked up, "The thing gives me bad dreams. Recurrent ones. But yet what I’m going to tell you is not a dream as far as I’m concerned, because I somehow saw this happen to me. The last time it happened I fell asleep at home, a really deep sleep. While I was lying there, I saw myself wake up. Something seemed wrong to me. I looked around the room, but nothing was out of place. But then when I looked down toward my feet, I saw the rag doll, Annabelle. It was slowly gliding up my body. It moved over my chest and stopped. Than it put its arms out. One arm touched one side of my neck, the other touched the other side like it was making an electrical connection. Then I saw myself being strangled. I might as well have been pushing on a wall, because it wouldn’t move. It was literally strangling me to death, I couldn’t help myself, no matter how hard I tried." "Yes, but the priest I spoke with said you’d been attacked?" Ed pressed him. "No," Lou asserted, "That happened here in this apartment when Angie and I were alone together. It was about ten or eleven o’clock at night, and we were reading over maps because I was going off on a trip the next day. Everything was quiet at the time. Suddenly, we both heard sounds in Donna’s room that made us think that someone had broken into the apartment. I quietly got up and tip-toed to the bedroom door, which was closed. I waited until the noises stopped, then I carefully opened the door and reached in and switched on the light. Nobody was in there! Except, the Annabelle doll was tossed on the floor in a corner. I went in alone and walked over to the thing to see if anything unusual had happened. But as I got close to the doll, I got the distinct impression that somebody was behind me. I swung around instantly and, well…."
"He won’t talk about that part," Angie said. "When Lou turned around there wasn’t anybody there, but he suddenly yelled and grabbed for his chest. He was doubled over, cut and bleeding when I got to him. Blood was all over his shirt. Lou was shaking and scared and we went back out into the living room. We then opened his shirt and there on his chest was what looked to be sort a of claw mark!"
"Can I see the mark?" Ed asked.
"It’s gone now," the young man told him. "I saw the cuts on his chest, too," Donna spoke up in support. "How many were there?" Ed asked. "Seven," said Angie. "Three were vertical, four were horizontal." "Did the cuts have any sensation?" Ed queried "All the cuts were hot, like they were burns," Lou told him. "Did you ever have cuts or wounds in the same area of your chest before this incident happened?" questioned Ed. "No," the young man replied. "Did you lose consciousness before or after the attack took place?" "No," again he replied. "How long did it take the wounds to heal?" Lorraine questioned. "They healed up almost immediately," said Lou. "They were half-gone the next day, and fully gone the day after." "Has anything else happened since that time?" asked Ed. "No," came the joint reply. "Who did you first contact after the incident occurred?" "I contacted an Episcopal priest named Father Hegan." Donna told Ed and Lorraine. "Why did you call him instead of a doctor?" Lorraine asked. "Do you think someone off the street would have believed where that claw mark on Lou’s chest came from?" Donna asked rhetorically. "Besides, we agreed the cuts weren’t half as important as how Lou got them. We wanted to know if this was going to happen again. Our problem was who to ask." "Was there some reason why you specifically called on Father Hegan?" Lorraine questioned. "Yes. We trust him," said Donna." He teaches nearby here, at a junior college, plus Angie and I both know him.
"What did you tell the priest?" asked Ed. "The whole story-about Annabelle and how it moved on its own, and especially about Lou’s cuts," Donna replied. "At first we were afraid he might not believe us, but that was no problem, he believed us all right. He said he’d never heard of such a thing happening these days. At the time we were all scared out of our wits, and I asked him what he thought had happened to us. He said he didn’t want to speculate, but he did feel it was a spiritual matter, possibly an important one, and that he was going to contact someone higher up in the Church, a Father Cooke." "That’s what he did," Ed told her. "Did the name Annabelle, or Annabelle Higgins mean anything to you in real life before this incident occurred?" "No," they replied. "Although we never saw anything in here, Lou said he felt a presence in the room before he got hurt… there is something in here," Angie stated firmly. "In fact, I can’t stand to be here. We have decided to get a new apartment. We’re moving out!" "I’m afraid that’s not going to help very much," Ed said dryly. "What do you mean?" Donna asked, astonished. "To put it in a nutshell, you inadvertently brought a spirit into this apartment-and into your lives. You’re not going to be able to walk away from it that easily."
After a long minute, Ed spoke again. "We’re going to help you, beginning right now. Today. First thing I’d like to do is call Father Cooke and have him come over here." Ed had no trouble getting hold of the Episcopal priest who had been waiting for his call. "All right," Ed said "when Father Cooke comes here, he’s going to have to perform a sort of blessing, an … exorcism of the premises. "I knew it!" Lou proclaimed. "I knew it would lead to this." "Yes, I think you did," Ed told him "but I’m not sure any of you know the reason why. To begin with, there is no Annabelle! There never was. You were duped. However, we are dealing with a spirit here. The teleportation of the doll while you were out of the apartment, the appearance of notes written on parchment, the manifestation of three symbolic drops of blood, plus the gestures the doll made are all meaningful. They tell me there was intent, which means there was an intelligence behind the activity. But ghosts, human spirits, plain and simply can’t bring on phenomena of this nature and intensity. They don’t have the power. Instead, what has happened is something inhuman has taken over here. Demonic." Ed told them. "Ordinarily people aren’t bothered by inhuman demonic spirits, unless they do something to bring the force into their lives. Your first mistake was to give the doll recognition, that is the reason why the spirit moved into the doll to, draw attention to itself. Once it had your attention, it exploited you, it simply brought you fear and even injury. Inhuman spirits, enjoy inflicting pain, it’s negative. Your next mistake was calling in a medium," Ed went on. "The demonic has to somehow get your permission to interfere in your life. Unfortunately, through your own free will, you gave it that permission.
"Then the doll is possessed?" questioned Donna. "No, the doll is not possessed. Spirits don’t possess things, spirits possess people," Ed informed her. "Instead, the spirits simply moved the doll around and gave it the illusion of being alive. Now, what happened to Lou earlier this week" Ed proceeded, "was bound to occur sooner or later. In fact, you all were in jeopardy of coming under possession by this spirit, this is what the thing was really after. But Lou didn’t believe in the charade, so he was an ongoing threat to the entity. There was bound to be a showdown. Had the spirit been given another week or two, you might have been killed." Ed calmly concluded. "There is only one entity involved, but its behavior is completely unpredictable." said Lorraine.
When Father Cooke arrived, the interview session ended in the kitchen, Ed was eager to have the house blessed, remove the doll, and return home. Once the preliminary greetings were out of the way, Ed told the priest, that in his judgment, the spirit responsible for the malicious activity was inhuman, and still in the apartment, and the only way it could be made to leave was through the power of the words written in the exorcism-blessing. "I’m not totally familiar with demonology," admitted Father Cooke. "how do you know such a spirit is behind the disturbance?" "Well, in this case, it wasn’t all that difficult to determine." Ed said frankly. "These spirits work in characteristic ways. What’s going on here is essentially the infestation stage of the phenomenon. A spirit, in this case an inhuman demonic spirit, began moving the doll around the apartment through teleportation and other means. Once it aroused the girls’ curiosity which was the spirit’s purpose in moving the doll-they made the predictable mistake of bringing a medium in here, who took matters a step further. She told them, in the trance state, that a little girl spirit named Annabelle was moving the doll. Communicating through the medium, the entity preyed on the girls’ emotional vulnerabilities, and during the séance managed to extract permission from them to go about its business. Insofar as demonic is a negative spirit, it then set about causing patently negative phenomena to occur; it aroused fear through the weird movements of that doll, it brought about the materialization of disturbing handwritten notes, it left a residue of blood on the doll, and ultimately it even struck the young man, Lou, on the chest leaving a bloody claw mark. Beyond the activity, Lorraine has also discerned that this inhuman spirit is with us now. Lorraine’s an excellent clairvoyant, and she’s never been wrong about the nature of a spirit that’s present. However, if you want to go a step further, we can challenge the entity right now with religious provocation?"
In this case, the recitation of the exorcism-blessing took the priest about five minutes to perform. The Episcopal blessing of the home is a wordy, seven page document that is distinctly positive in nature. Rather than specifically expelling evil entities from the dwelling, the emphasis is instead directed toward filling the home with the power of the positive and of God. There was no trouble or mishap during the procedure. When he was finished, the priest the blessed the individuals who were present, and after doing so, declared all was well. Lorraine also confirmed that the apartment and people were free from the spirit entity. Ed and Lorraine’s work was done, they then took their leave and started for home. At Donna’s request, and as a further precaution against the phenomena ever occurring in the home again, the Warrens took the big rag doll along with them. Placing Annabelle in the back seat of the car, Ed decided it was safer to avoid traveling on the interstate, in case the entity had not been separated from the rag doll. His hunch was correct. In no time at all, Ed and Lorraine felt themselves the object of vicious hatred. Then, at each dangerous curve in the road, their new car began to stall, causing the power steering and breaks to fail. Repeatedly the car verged on collision. Of course, it would have been easy to stop and throw the doll into the woods. But if the item didn’t simply "teleport" back to the girls’ apartment, at the least it would place anyone who found it in jeopardy.
The third time the car stalled along the road, Ed reached into his black bag, took out a vial, and threw a sprinkling of holy water on the rag doll, making the sin of the cross over it. The disturbance in the car stopped immediately, allowing the Warrens to reach home safely.
For the next few days, Ed sat the doll in a chair next to his desk. The doll levitated a number of times in the beginning, then it seemed to fall inert. During the ensuing weeks, however, it began showing up in various rooms of the house. When the Warrens were away and had the doll locked up in the outer office building, they would often return to find it sitting comfortably upstairs in Ed’s easy chair when they opened the main front door.
It also turned out that Annabelle came with a "friend", a black cat, who would occasionally materialize beside the doll. The cat would stalk once around the floor, taking particular notice of books and other objects in Ed’s office; then return to the doll’s side, and dematerialize from the head down.
It also became apparent that Annabelle hated clergymen. During the follow-up process of the case, it was necessary for the Warrens to consult the Episcopal priests associated with the incident in the young nurses’ apartment. Returning home alone one evening, Lorraine was terrified by loud, rolling growls that reverberated throughout the house. Later, when she was listening to the playback of the telephone answering machine, they were back to back calls from Father Hagen. Between his two calls was heard the incredible growling noises she’d heard earlier in the house. One day Father Jason Branford, Catholic exorcist, had been working with Ed and asked about the new addition to the office-Annabelle. Ed told Father Jason about the case and gave him the paperwork for his review. After hearing Ed’s account of want had happened, the priest picked up the rag doll and said "You’re just a rag doll, Annabelle. You can’t hurt anything." The priest then tossed the stuffed figure back on the chair. "That’s one thing you better not say again," Ed warned him with a laugh. Yet when Father Jason stopped to say goodbye to Lorraine an hour later, she pleaded that he be especially careful driving, and insisted that he call her just as soon as he arrived at the rectory. "I discerned tragedy for that young priest," says Lorraine, "but he had to go his way." A few hours later the telephone rang. "Lorraine" said Father Jason, "why did you tell me to be careful driving?" "Because," she told him, "I felt your car would go out of control, you would have an accident." "Well, you were right," he stated flatly. "The brake system failed. I was almost killed in a traffic accident. My car is a wreck."
Later in the year, at a large social gathering at the Warrens’ home, Lorraine and Father Jason went into the den to chat for a few moments. By a strange coincidence, Annabelle had moved into that room the day before. While speaking with Lorraine, the priest saw an ornamental wall decoration make a quick movement. Suddenly, the twenty-four inch long Boar’s tooth necklace above them exploded with percussive force. Hearing this stunning noise, the other guests immediately converged on the room, at which time someone in the crowd had the foresight to snap a photograph. When developed, the print appeared normal, except above the doll were two beacons of bright light, both pointing in the direction of Father Jason Bradford.
"On another occasion," Ed recounts, "I was in my office, working with a police detective on a case that concerned a witchcraft related murder in the area. As a cop he’s seen every kind of crime, he’s definitely not the sort of man who gets scared. While we were talking, Lorraine called me upstairs to take a long distance call. I told the detective he was free to look around my office, but to be careful and not touch any of the objects, because they’d come from cases where the demonic had been invoked. Well, I wasn’t away for five minutes when upstairs came this detective stark white. When I asked him what had happened, he refused to tell me," Ed remembers, breaking into a grin. "He just kept mumbling ‘The doll, the rag doll is real….’ He was talking about Annabelle of course. That little doll made a believer out of him! In fact, as I think back on it, any meetings I’ve had with the detective from that day on have always been in his office."
"Profane objects like the Annabelle doll have their own aura. When you touch them, your human aura mingles with theirs. This change attracts spirits, it’s almost like setting off a fire alarm. Therefore, for protection, I bless myself with holy water then ‘bless’ the rag doll with holy water in the sign of the cross. Like I say when we’re doing field work I’ve never met an atheist in a haunted house."
It’s difficult for people to accept the existence of something they’ve been conditioned not to believe in. Still, lack of knowledge allowed this negative spirit to wrangle it way into the lives of these three unwary young people. Many, nevertheless, contend that the notion of spirits is irrational or unfounded. They say the phenomenon is an illusion, or a hallucination, or it doesn’t exist at all. At best, the activity can be explained away by science. Or can it?
Source: http://www.warrens.net |
- MOTHMAN AND THE ENIGMA OF POINT PLEASANT -
- MOTHMAN AND THE ENIGMA OF POINT PLEASANT -
“Mothman”, as the strange creature came to be called, is perhaps one of the strangest creatures to ever grace the annals of weirdness in America. Even though this mysterious and unsolved case has nothing to do with ghosts, it would be remiss of me to not include it in a section of the website about the unexplained.
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The weird events connected to the Mothman began on November 12, 1966 near Clendenin, West Virginia. Five men were in the local cemetery that day, preparing a grave for a burial, when something that looked like a “brown human being” lifted off from some nearby trees and flew over their heads. The men were baffled. It did not appear to be a bird, but more like a man with wings. A few days later, more sightings would take place, electrifying the entire region.
Another sighting had more bizarre results. At about 10:30 on that same evening, Newell Partridge, a local building contractor who lived in Salem (about 90 miles from Point Pleasant), was watching television when the screen suddenly went dark. He stated that a weird pattern filled the screen and then he heard a loud, whining sounds from outside that raised in pitch and then ceased. “It sounded like a generator winding up” he later stated. Partridge’s dog, Bandit, began to howl out on the front porch and Newell went out to see what was going on.
When he walked outside, he saw Bandit facing the hay barn, about 150 yards from the house. Puzzled, Partridge turned a flashlight in that direction and spotted two red circles that looked like eyes or “bicycle reflectors”. They moving red orbs were certainly not animal’s eyes, he believed, and the sight of them frightened him. Bandit, an experienced hunting dog and protective of his territory, shot off across the yard in pursuit of the glowing eyes. Partridge called for him to stop, but the animal paid no attention. His owner turned and went back into the house for his gun, but then was too scared to go back outside again. He slept that night with his gun propped up next to the bed. The next morning, he realized that Bandit had disappeared. The dog had still not shown up two days later when Partridge read in the newspaper about the sightings in Point Pleasant that night.
One statement that he read in the newspaper chilled him to the bone. Roger Scarberry, one member of the group who spotted the strange “bird” at the TNT plant, said that as they entered the city limits of Point Pleasant, they saw the body of a large dog lying on the side of the road. A few minutes later, on the way back out of town, the dog was gone. They even stopped to look for the body, knowing they had passed it just a few minutes before. Newell Partridge immediately thought of Bandit, who was never seen again.
On November 16, a press conference was held in the county courthouse and the couples from the TNT plant sighting repeated their story. Deputy Halstead, who had known the couples all of their lives, took them very seriously. “They’ve never been in any trouble,” he told investigators and had no reason to doubt their stories. Many of the reporters who were present for the weird recounting felt the same way. The news of the strange sightings spread around the world. The press dubbed the odd flying creature “Mothman”, after a character from the popular Batman television series of the day.
The remote and abandoned TNT plant became the lair of the Mothman in the months ahead and it could not have picked a better place to hide in. The area was made up of several hundred acres of woods and large concrete domes where high explosives were stored during World War II. A network of tunnels honeycombed the area and made it possible for the creature to move about without being seen. In addition to the manmade labyrinth, the area was also comprised of the McClintic Wildlife Station, a heavily forested animal preserve filled with woods, artificial ponds and steep ridges and hills. Much of the property was almost inaccessible and without a doubt, Mothman could have hid for weeks or months and remained totally unseen. The only people who ever wandered there were hunters and fishermen and the local teenagers, who used the rutted dirt roads of the preserve as “lover’s lanes”.
Very few homes could be found in the region, but one dwelling belonged to the Ralph Thomas family. One November 16, they spotted a “funny red light” in the sky that moved and hovered above the TNT plant. “It wasn’t an airplane”, Mrs. Marcella Bennett (a friend of the Thomas family) said, “but we couldn’t figure out what it was.” Mrs. Bennett drove to the Thomas house a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby. Suddenly, a figure stirred near the automobile. “It seemed as though it had been lying down,” she later recalled. “It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing. Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.”
Mrs. Bennett was so horrified that she dropped her little girl! She quickly recovered, picked up her child and ran to the house. The family locked everyone inside but hysteria gripped them as the creature shuffled onto the porch and peered into the windows. The police were summoned, but the Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.
Mrs. Bennett would not recover from the incident for months and was in fact so distraught that she sought medical attention to deal with her anxieties. She was tormented by frightening dreams and later told investigators that she believed the creature had visited her own home too. She said that she could often hear a keening sounds (like a woman screaming) near her isolated home on the edge of Point Pleasant.
Many would come to believe that the sightings of Mothman, as well as UFO sightings and encounters with “men in black” in the area, were all related. For nearly a year, strange happenings continued in the area. Researchers, investigators and “monster hunters” descended on the area but none so famous as author John Keel, who has written extensively about Mothman and other unexplained anomalies. He has written for many years about UFO’s but dismisses the standard “extraterrestrial” theories of the mainstream UFO movement. For this reason, he has been a controversial figure for decades. According to Keel, man has had a long history of interaction with the supernatural. He believes that the intervention of mysterious strangers in the lives of historic personages like Thomas Jefferson and Malcolm X provides evidence of the continuing presence of the “gods of old”. The manifestation of these elder gods comes in the form of UFO’s and aliens, monsters, demons, angels and even ghosts. He has remained a colorful character to many and yet remains respected in the field for his research and fascinating writings.
Keel became the major chronicler of the Mothman case and wrote that at least 100 people personally witnessed the creature between November 1966 and November 1967. According to their reports, the creature stood between five and seven feet tall, was wider than a man and shuffled on human-like legs. Its eyes were set near the top of the shoulders and had bat-like wings that glided, rather than flapped, when it flew. Strangely though, it was able to ascend straight up “like a helicopter”. Witnesses also described its murky skin as being either gray or brown and it emitted a humming sound when it flew. The Mothman was apparently incapable of speech and gave off a screeching sound. Mrs. Bennett stated that it sounded like a “woman screaming”.
John Keel arrived in Point Pleasant in December 1966 and immediately began collecting reports of Mothman sightings and even UFO reports from before the creature was seen. He also compiled evidence that suggested a problem with televisions and phones that began in the fall of 1966. Lights had been seen in the skies, particularly around the TNT plant, and cars that passed along the nearby road sometimes stalled without explanation. He and his fellow researchers also uncovered a number of short-lived poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area. Locked doors opened and closed by themselves, strange thumps were heard inside and outside of homes and often, inexplicable voices were heard. The James Lilley family, who lived just south of the TNT plant, were so bothered by the bizarre events that they finally sold their home and moved to another neighborhood. Keel was convinced that the intense period of activity was all connected.
And stranger things still took place..... A reporter named Mary Hyre, who was the Point Pleasant correspondent for the Athens, Ohio newspaper the Messenger,also wrote extensively about the local sightings. In fact, after one very active weekend, she was deluged with over 500 phone calls from people who saw strange lights in the skies. One night in January 1967, she was working late in her office in the county courthouse and a man walked in the door. He was very short and had strange eyes that were covered with thick glasses. He also had long, black hair that was cut squarely “like a bowl haircut”. Hyre said that he spoke in a low, halting voice and he asked for directions to Welsh, West Virginia. She thought that he had some sort of speech impediment and for some reason, he terrified her. “He kept getting closer and closer to me, “ she said, “ and his funny eyes were staring at me almost hypnotically.”
Alarmed, she summoned the newspaper’s circulation manager to her office and together, they spoke to the strange little man. She said that at one point in the discussion, she answered the telephone when it rang and she noticed the little man pick up a pen from her desk. He looked at it in amazement, “as if he had never seen a pen before.” Then, he grabbed the pen, laughed loudly and ran out of the building.
Several weeks later, Hyre was crossing the street near her office and saw the same man on the street. He appeared to be startled when he realized that she was watching him, turned away quickly and ran for a large black car that suddenly came around the corner. The little man climbed in and it quickly drove away.
By this time, most of the sightings had come to an end and Mothman had faded away into the strange “twilight zone” from which he had come... but the story of Point Pleasant had not yet ended. At around 5:00 in the evening on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio suddenly collapsed while filled with rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the dark waters of the Ohio River and 46 people were killed. Two of those were never found and the other 44 are buried together in the town cemetery of Gallipolis, Ohio.
On that same tragic night, the James Lilley family (who still lived near the TNT plant at that time) counted more than 12 eerie lights that flashed above their home and vanished into the forest.
The collapse of the Silver Bridge made headlines all over the country and Mary Hyre went days without sleep as reporters and television crews from everywhere descended on the town. The local citizens were stunned with horror and disbelief and the tragedy is still being felt today.
During Christmas week, a short, dark-skinned man entered the office of Mary Hyre. He was dressed in a black suit, with a black tie, and she said that he looked vaguely Oriental. He had high cheekbones, narrow eyes and an unidentified accent. He was not interested in the bridge disaster, she said, but wanted to know about local UFO sightings. Hyre was too busy to talk with him and she handed her a file of related press clipping instead. He was not interested in them and insisted on speaking with her. She finally dismissed him from her office.
That same night, an identically described man visited the homes of several witnesses in the area who had reported seeing the lights in the sky. He made all of them very uneasy and uncomfortable and while he claimed to be a reporter from Cambridge, Ohio, he inadvertently admitted that he did not know where Columbus, Ohio was even though the two towns are just a few miles apart.
So who was Mothman and what was behind the strange events in Point Pleasant?
Whatever the creature may have been, it seems clear that Mothman was no hoax. There were simply too many credible witnesses who saw “something”. It was suggested at the time that the creature may have been a sandhill crane, which while they are not native to the area, could have migrated south from Canada. That was one explanation anyway, although it was one that was rejected by Mothman witnesses, who stated that what they saw looked nothing like a crane.
But there could have been a logical explanation for some of the sightings. Even John Keel (who believed the creature was genuine) suspected that a few of the cases involved people who were spooked by recent reports and saw owls flying along deserted roads at night. Even so, Mothman remains hard to easily dismiss. The case is filled with an impressive number of multiple-witness sightings by individuals that were deemed reliable, even by law enforcement officials.
But if Mothman was real... and he truly was some unidentified creature that cannot be explained, what was behind the UFO sightings, the poltergeist reports, the strange lights, sounds, the “men in black” and most horrifying, the collapse of the Silver Bridge?
John Keel believes that Point Pleasant was a “window” area, a place that was marked by long periods of strange sightings, monster reports and the coming and going of unusual persons. He states that it may be wrong to blame the collapse of the bridge on the local UFO sightings, but the intense activity in the area at the time does suggest some sort of connection. Others have pointed to another supernatural link to the strange happenings, blaming the events on the legendary Cornstalk Curse that was placed on Point Pleasant in the 1770's. (Click Here to Discover the details about the Cornstalk Curse)
And if such things can happen in West Virginia, then why not elsewhere in the country? Can these “window” areas explain other phantom attackers, mysterious creatures, mad gassers and more that have been reported all over America? Perhaps they can, but to consider this, we have to consider an even more chilling question... where will the next “window” area be? It might be of benefit to study your local sightings and weird events a little more carefully in the future!
Source: Ghosts of the prairie
© Copyright 2004 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved. |
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