Things That Go Bump in the Night

Things That Go Bump in the Night...Mike's Story

Theres an old Cornish Prayer that goes something like this:  “ From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, may the good Lord protect us.”  My Mother always used to recite that to me just before bedtime, when she knew that I was afraid of her turning the lights in my bedroom off.  For some reason those words tickled the snot out of me, and I would laugh and giggle as  the words would strike some unknown funny bone deep inside my belly.  It was some kind of magical prayer, and it always seemed to work miracles at driving my darkest fears away.  You see, I had a small problem--a problem that all kids that were afraid of the dark had.  I had an infestation of evil closet monsters.   

What?  You laugh at my closet monsters?  Oh, they were so real!  Their activities would begin every night just after my mother would come into my room--tucking me snugly into bed and then switching off the light.  I would lie awake watching in horror as their beady little eyes oogled me, seemingly assessing whether I was large enough to make a tasty sandwich out of, or if I would cook up better in a stew pot with some carrots and potatoes.  Ahhh...those were the days.  It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of my closet monsters.  Things were so much simpler back then.

My little closet buddies became a fascination of mine.  I needed to know more about them!  The library was a place of wonder for me back then, and I knew that all of the answers I sought could be found within those walls.  I was right.  The first book I ever checked out of a public library was “Where the Wild Things Are”, by Maurice Sendak.  THOSE creatures were my closet monsters!  I seem to remember that the first time I read the book (Ok, I was only 4 years old...I just looked at the pictures) it gave me nightmares, but then later on as I repeatedly re-read that book I seemed to become less and less afraid of both the illustrations and, the things lurking behind the closed doors in my bedroom.  I had seen them in the light and I now knew them.  They had become powerless over me. 

As I look back on it, I may very well owe my childhood night-terrors a boon of some kind.  Perhaps it was they who brought me onto this current path of seeking the unknown, because once I had finished conquering their hold over me it was time to move on to bigger and better things.  I never looked back.  It was a natural progression for me to move from books on fictional  monsters to non-fiction books about dinosaurs, and then from dinosaurs to the Loch Ness Monster, and then into books of the unexplained and UFO's!  There were always tales of ghosts and spirit encounters in those books about the unexplained and I would spend hours reading them, enjoying the scare and the adrenaline rush I would get from a particularly frightening story.

It’s probably a good thing that I read all of those books and stories as a child.  They probably laid a foundation for me to build upon.  I had my first REAL paranormal experience when I was very young, around the age of ten.  My father was in the military and we were stationed in Ramstein, Germany.  Growing up and going to school there in Germany was great fun.  Many times when we should have been in the classroom learning our reading and writing, we were actually out on a field trip exploring the wonders of Europe.  I remember taking trips to vineyards, a cruise down the Rhine River, and a trip to Hoeneken Lake (a local German town close our base housing).  Once we visited the Cathedral where Martin Luther's crypt is located, and we got to go down into the basement of the church to pay our respects.  I also remember a particularly fascinating trip to Switzerland where some really interesting things happened.

THE SHADOW

On the outside, this place looked like any other ordinary ski lodge-type structure that you would find in any quaint  little European village, but exterior looks can be deceiving.  The inside was something completely different--something straight out of "Gone with the Wind".  Reminiscent of the old plantation houses of the deep south back in the Civil War days, our "lodge" boasted a giant fireplace ala "Citizen Kane" and a long swooping fan staircase with marble steps--complete with an ornate, hand carved, nude sculpture Newell post.  The entryway was lofted, and from the front door you could see the upstairs doorways and hallways beyond the ornate spindles and railings of an ancient wooden guardrail.  All of the floors were dark wood.  All of railings were dark wood.  Even the marble steps and stone flooring tiles were dark mottled tones and altogether the place evoked a forbidding, Gothic-Victorian atmosphere.  In retrospect, it was magnificent. 

I was only ten years old at the time, and it was my first time away from home without my parents.  The elementary school that I was attending at that time, Kaiserslautern Elementary School (K-Town for short), had offered this one week ski trip to all fifth graders, and to a very select few 4th graders.  I was lucky enough to be one of the 4th graders accepted on this week long trip to Switzerland, where we would learn to ski and perhaps even get to play around on the base of the Matterhorn--a mountain that we had all heard of before as it was once a pretty good roller-coaster at Disneyland in California! 

We went there to learn to ski, but as it turned out, I wasn't very good at it.  I wound up spending an awful lot of time alone in the chalet's common room, sitting by the fireplace and pondering my inability to learn how to "snowplow" and contemplating my episodes of nearly flying off of the ledges and cliffs of the area mountainsides.  It was a good thing that I had mastered the fine art of falling down on my very first day there, or I wouldn't be here typing this recollection today.  There were too many close calls that easily could have ended my life. 

Altogether there were about 16 of us kids on this field trip--eight boys and eight girls.  We were separated into dormitories at different ends of a long hallway that ran the length of the entire second floor of the house.  Looking back on it today, I seem to remember there being 2 rooms for the boys, each with 4 beds and the same for the girls whose bedrooms were lucky enough to be located right next to the only set of bathrooms on the entire second floor.  The boys dormitories were viewable from the downstairs entryway, which meant that these were the rooms that were exposed to the open aired, loft type hallway that I first noticed upon entering the house.  This is NOT a good place to put a boy that's afraid of heights--which I was and had been since I was a wee thing.  Girls were soooooo lucky...not only did they get to have the bathrooms right next to their bedrooms, but they also didn't have the extra added worry of stumbling out of dorm room door while running to the bathroom at night, and finding themselves tripping over their stocking feet and flying over the guard rail!  I was a strange kid.  I really DID worry about those kinds of things.

Most times the evenings were great fun.  We spent a lot of time telling ghost stories--the stupid kind--and  getting into pillow fights.  Dinnertime's were always a new adventure, and our hosts always fed us very well.  It was in Switzerland that I was introduced to such Epicurean delights as blood oranges and real Swiss yogurt.  Also, I cannot neglect to mention that the Swiss make the most unforgettable chocolate you'll ever eat in your entire life.  Switzerland is a little fat boys dream come true!!!  After dinner, someone was always invited to "Sing for their Supper", which was always most entertaining.  Those who couldn't sing could do anything they wanted--tell jokes, read poems, anything at all.  For me, these were the best times of the day; the only times that I felt like I was part of the gang.

The late nights were terrible.  I couldn't sleep.  I was scared.  I was a total wreck because I KNEW that all of the kids were laughing and making jokes about me not being able to ski.  I spent a lot of time in the bathroom due to a rather embarrassing nervous condition known commonly today as "stress".  This condition usually struck me at night around midnight to two in the morning, waking me from a dead sleep and keeping me pinned in said facilities for at least a half an hour at a stretch.  Sometimes you could catch me as late as 4 am wandering the halls coming back from the bathroom--eyes staring down at the floor, embarrassed because I couldn't handle learning to ski and because--in all honesty--because I was homesick.  It was on one of these little late night trips when I first noticed that things in our little ski lodge weren't quite right.  Something strange was happening in this house, and I was the only one awake late enough in the night to even notice it.

The first time I encountered it, was on about the third night of our trip.  I was returning from one of my little trips to the facilities when I heard footsteps echoing up from the staircase.  I was immediately defensive, assuming that someone was coming to give me a good talking to about roaming the halls at this late hour of the night.  I remember checking the stairs as I passed the staircase on my way back to my room--just a quick glance down to the middle of the staircase, and saw no one there.  Thinking that I had dodged a bullet, I dashed past the stairs and found my way back to the dorm and my bed, grateful to have not gotten into any trouble.  I was alright after getting back into bed, and slept for the rest of the night peacefully.

I found myself in a similar situation the following night as I once again encountered the footsteps, only this time it was as I was heading toward the bathroom.  In this particular instance my situation was rather urgent, so there was no stopping me and I took the rest of the hallway at a mad dash to avoid any confrontations.  Once I had made it to my little nocturnal hideaway, I had the chance to listen and try to figure out who else was up and roaming the halls with me at that ridiculous hour of the night.  The footsteps continued, not seeming to get any closer OR any farther away.   

After completing the business at hand, I once again began my trek back to my room.  The footsteps had still not come any closer than they were when I originally left my room!  This struck me as strange, and I decided to do a little further investigating.  I crept down the hallway until I reached the stairs, being very careful to make as little noise as possible.  When I reached the stairs, I craned my neck as far as I could to see if I could see anyone.  No one was there.  Good!  I took the first few steps down, certain that I would be able to see who was up at this hour.  The footsteps were louder than before.  Were they pacing down there?  What in the heck was going on?  The footsteps were so loud--I knew that who ever it was just had to be close to me, but even as I crept to the middle of the staircase I knew that I wouldn't find anyone.  It was pitch dark down there, and no one would be pacing around downstairs in the dark this late at night now, would they? 

Just as soon as I hit the middle of the staircase, the footsteps stopped. 

That was the first time that I'd ever felt that feeling.  You know the feeling--the one where you feel the hackles on the back of your neck stand up, and that cold shiver runs down the length of your spine.  You all know that feeling--everyone gets it--especially in times of danger.  It's almost like that shiver you got when you were a kid--the one your Mother told you meant that "someone had stepped on your grave."  The footsteps stopping and the complete and total thickness of the ensuing silence sent my senses into hyper drive.  I dashed--I RAN--back up the stairs and down the hall to the safety of my dormitory and my bed, praying to God that no one had seen me.  Sleep eluded me that night for some strange reason.  I laid in my bed tossing and turning and waiting for the proverbial “other shoe” to drop.  It never did...at least not that night.

The next morning at breakfast I finally broke down and asked one of our instructors if anyone had been awake downstairs at that time of the night.  She told me that she didn’t know of anyone, but that she would be happy to ask around.  Then of course she wanted to know why I asked, and so like an idiot, in front of everyone at the breakfast table, I told her the truth.  The result was as expected--a hearty laugh and the anticipated comments of having bad dreams.  She did agree to ask around though, but I was pretty sure she agreed to do this just to humor me. 

If I had been hoping that the other children at the table had been too busy talking amongst themselves while this exchange with my teacher happened, I was sorely disappointed.  Much to my chagrin, it seemed that every kid in the lodge had been listening with rapt attention.  Unexpectedly though, within a matter of minutes my social standing in the hierarchy of children skyrocketed from “stupid little fat kid that can’t ski” to instant celebrity.  It seemed that everyone was really excited about what was happening in the lodge and eager to learn more about whom the mysterious footsteps belonged to.  I know I must have told the tale ten times that day, and every time it seemed to get more and more exciting.  It scared some of the girls, but others were really interested.  Those that weren’t so scared decided that it would be really cool to come to our dorm room that night after lights out and have a seance--to try to attempt contact with whatever was roaming the halls at night.  The guys that shared the room with me didn’t have any problem with that since I had, after all, provided an excuse for girls to join us in our bedroom after lights out!  I was so enjoying my newfound popularity!

Girls seem to pack the darndest things in their suitcases.  The last thing I would have thought of packing in my suitcase for a week-long trip to Switzerland would have been candles and matches, but somehow these girls showed up after lights out with just those items in hand.  In no time at all we were all sitting on the floor in a circle, arms extended and holding hands, the flame of the candle dancing merrily away in the center of the rug.  None of us really knew what we were doing.  I’d never even heard of a seance before that afternoon, but one of the girls claimed that she had seen them done on TV, and that it was easy.  We sat there in the middle of the room for what seemed to be hours (mostly likely only about 30 minutes), concentrating as hard as we could on bringing forth the spirit that walked the hallways.  Nothing happened.  It was a total fiasco.  Not only did nothing happen but the candle kept going out while we were concentrating, and everyone knew that the candle HAD to stay lit at all times during a seance or the spirits wouldn’t come!  The girls left our room disappointed that night, not just because we didn’t contact the spirit, but also because we weren’t intelligent enough to stow any snacks or drinks away in our room anywhere.

On a side note here, I look back on that situation and marvel at my naivety.  The candle kept blowing out, and we didn’t even give that a second thought.  I still wonder if we were, in fact, doing something right with the seance and actually managed to summon something.  I guess it really doesn’t matter in the long run though, as we weren’t around long enough to have to deal with the consequences of our actions.  We were only going to be there for one more night and then we would be back on the bus for the long trip back to Germany.

Wouldn’t you know that I slept through that entire night after the seance?  I never even woke up having to go to the bathroom.  If there were more footsteps, I missed them.  If anyone else woke up and heard them, I never knew about it. 

My popularity was very short lived, and the next day I was back to being “the kid who can’t ski”.  Everyone was really hyped, because this trip today was our big event--the Matterhorn.  We were actually going to be skiing at the base of the Matterhorn!  (Well, WE thought it was the Matterhorn.  It sure looked like it, anyway.)  It was all very exciting, even if I couldn’t do it right.  I still had a lot of fun throwing snowballs and whatnot while the other kids were doing their ski thing.  I actually did put my ski’s on for a little while to give it another try, just so I could say that I skied the Matterhorn.  The view just isn’t as good when you are lying on your side or face down with a mouthful of snow though, so I gave it up again after only a few tries. 

I hadn’t given the strange events at the lodge even a passing thought that day, but two in the morning came pretty quick after lights out that night, and I once again found myself in the situation of an emergency bathroom run.  At first, everything was quiet and I was relieved that I could do this in relative peace for a change.  Coming back from the bathroom however was a different story altogether!  I should have just stayed in there and slept the night away. 

Once again the footsteps started as I got to the stairs, just as they had on the first night when I encountered them.  Once again my curiosity got the best of me and I started down the steps to see who it was down there.  I really wanted to know what was going on, and this was going to be my last night to find out!  Once again I reached the middle of the stairs, and once again the footsteps stopped.  This time, I did NOT dash back up the stairs though.  I continued to go down them, ever so reluctantly, one single step at a time.

Whatever it was didn’t find my curiosity amusing in the least.  This time I think I offended it.  The footsteps started up again as I neared the base of the staircase, and this time they were louder and faster than ever before!  I tore up the stairs and back into my room, trying to be as quiet as I could but with as much haste as I could muster.  Flinging myself back into my bed, I covered my head up with the blankets in an attempt to hide from whatever it was that was coming for me.  I could still hear the tappings of feet on the floor from inside our dorm this time, which was something new.  That could only mean that whatever it was had finally come close to the door, which was something that it hadn’t ever done before.  Finally, when the rappings had reached their loudest point (my god, was it wearing clogs?), they stopped.  The silence was deafening.

That was about the time that I decided to brave the dark and stick my head out from under the covers.  After all, the footsteps had stopped, so the whole thing was probably over for the night.  The room was dark, but the moon reflecting off of the snow outside and shining through the window, and I could see clearly.  That was when that feeling--that warning sensation--happened again.  The hackles on the back of my neck stood up, and my eyes headed over to the doorway.  Something was going on, and it didn’t look good!  The big brass doorknob on the door was turning back and forth...back and forth....  The deafening silence remained intact as the normally squeaky, rusty tumblers of the doorknob continued to move with nary a sound.  I really wanted to yell, to do something, anything at all to wake someone else up...someone who could perhaps protect me or even to just be scared with me.  For some reason though, that wasn’t possible.  I remained paralyzed under my blankets as the door very slowly began to open.

A black figure glided into the room.  When I say a black figure, I mean a black figure...not just someone I couldn’t see because it was dark in the room, but something that was made out of a flowing, transparent, black cloth-like substance in the shape of a human body.  When I say it glided, I mean it moved with a flowing grace that isn’t associated with the human body... Not even the most graceful or talented of Russian ballerina’s can move in this fashion.   It was dressed in costume or period clothing of some sort--it’s most noticeable feature being a huge hat that was strangely familiar, but nonetheless unrecognizable.   Almost quaker-like this hat seemed, with a very wide brim--even wider than the figures shoulders--but it differed from that in having a long flowing veil that trailed down the front of the hat, covering the face and continuing nearly to where it‘s chest should have been.  It was almost like a marriage between a quakers hat and a womans veiled mourning or funerary hat. 

The figure didn’t cast a shadow.  I remember noticing that, because the room was fairly bright from the moonglow and if it were solid it should have cast some sort of shadow. In fact,  it seemed to be made of shadow!  I watched in horror as it moved around the room, eventually stopping at one of the beds and seeming to touch the face of one of the boys sleeping there.  It continued on to the next bed in the same fashion, and then on to the next.  Eventually I reached a point where I KNEW that I had to close my eyes and pretend to be asleep, because if it checked me and found me awake, that was going to be all she wrote!  It took every little bit of determination that I had, but I managed to do it.  I closed my eyes to that horror that I had summoned to our sleeping quarters, and let it do it’s own thing. 

I opened them a while later...had I fallen asleep?  The room was quiet and empty.  No shadow men were sitting by my bed waiting for me to awaken so that they could devour my soul.  All of the other boys appeared to be sleeping peacefully, and nothing was out of place.  Apparently it was over, and I had come out of it unscathed.  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, closed my eyes again, and finally fell asleep in earnest. 

I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t closed my eyes?  Would the shadow man have come to me?  Did he come to me and then leave me alone thinking that I had gone to sleep?  If I hadn’t been “asleep”, what sorts of things would I have experienced had he looked me in the eyes, or touched me?  Could he have shown me something new or something marvelous, or would I have some sort of mental breakdown and a lifetime of misery being shifted from sanitarium to sanitarium?

We left the next day to head back home.  I never told anyone about the events of that night, as I knew that I would be laughed off of the bus and quite possibly even out of the playground when we finally returned to our normal school days back in K-Town.  I’ve never forgotten a single incident that happened during that trip though, even after all of these years. 

Movie Review: House of the Devil

You know, it's been an awful long time since I've seen a movie that struck me so hard that I felt the need to write a movie review, but tonight I watched the movie "House of the Devil" and it has moved me to the point where I just HAVE to say something.

When I saw this movie sitting on the shelf at Blockbuster I thought "Oh wow! I have to see this!" as it's theme is pretty much right up my alley: Demons and Satanic cults. A big plus was the review on the cover from USA Today, which said "Unbearably Suspenseful!" which I thought was a pretty good sign. I snatched it up.

Little did I realize that the phrase "unbearably suspenseful" literally meant "unbearably suspenseful". I waited for almost 75 minutes for the film to actually do something. It was little more than creepy music set to the theme of a college age girl wandering around a fabulous Victorian Mansion.

Such promise, such a serious disappointment.  Don't waste your time on this stinker.

Rethinking the Notorious "ORB" Controversy

Greetings all!

I know that I've been using this blog for all sorts of strange writings in the past not related to "Ghost Hunting" but today I'm going to go back on subject.  I want to talk about Orbs.

For those of you who aren't in the know, theoretically, orbs are balls of spirit energy that can be captured on film or in photographs. Think of it this way...a white ghost that has been crumpled up and shaped into a ball.  In previous decades orbs were given credence as evidence of paranormal activity.  In more recent times, however, Orbs have become rampant due to an anomaly that makes them easy to recreate using a digital camera with a flash.

If you were to through you're digital photo albums, I'll guarantee that somewhere you'll find a photo with a strange ball of light somewhere in your collection of photos.  For many it looks like a living cell, or perhaps a human egg.  In reality, the orbs that you've captured are most likely particles of dust reflecting off of the light from your flash to create that shape on the finished image.  There are other things that cause these to present themselves on finished photographs too, like moisture in the air, and even insects can appear as balls of light in motion.  A good article on the controversy and supposed truths regarding orbs can be located here:

Due to the difficulty in determining a photographed orbs true nature, they have all but been given the boot as any sort of proof of paranormal activity.  There are two exceptions to this rule however...

1. When the circle of light appears to be giving off it's own light in the photograph.  The way to determine this is to see if it is casting shadows off of nearby objects.
2. Actually seeing the orb in real time, and taking the photo of it on purpose, announcing it as you take the photo.

Additionally, a real orb will most of the time be moving, and will most likely show up with a trail of light following it, like a comet.  Ghost's don't like to be photographed for some reason (based on experience) and they will usually be trying to escape being around humans.

There may be other ways, but those are the two main ways that I'm aware of after a decade of paranormal investigations.  The only way that an orb can be given credence as paranormal evidence in this day and age is for at least one of the two criteria listed above to have been met.

Changing subjects here really quick, I'd like to explore some things that have come up on the paranormal show "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel Channel.  

Zach and company have encountered what they consider to be several severly haunted locations, and all of the cast members profess to have been affected or effected by spirit energy on several of their broadcasts.  In some of these shows, they've shown examples of  "orbs" that have been in the vicinty of the team member that was currently being attacked or contacted by a spirit.  In many of these instances the orbs have even landed on the team members right before the activity has begun, or leaves the team member right after the team member recovers.

I've look at these scenes closely, with a trained eye, and the skeptic in me recognizes these orbs as being either dust orbs, or in some instances as insects.  Yet, if what the investigators are claiming is happening is real, then what am I to think?  My logical mind tells me that the current fad of these Paranormal TV shows is nothing but hooey.  Anyone who has ever been on a ghost hunt knows that it takes hours and hours...even days to get any sort of real paranormal activity if one gets any at all, much less evidence captured on camera!  Personally, I've investigated some of the biggies (Lemp Mansion in St Louis, and I've spent the night in the Villisca Axe Murder House) and even the most active of these well known haunts really don't demonstrate a lot of activity.  So this almost HAS to be showmanship happening in these shows, correct?  But then, I don't truly believe that it's ALL showmanship.  There has to have been a least a couple of real discoveries there in all that footage.  And given that some of the things that they present as evidence are real,  lets give these folks the benefit of the doubt for a minute.  What IF the orbs that they film ARE connected with the paranormal attacks that this team experiences?

Perhaps we've written off the orb a bit too soon.  Lets all have another look at this phenomenon as investigators and see if we can find links between our experiences and these dust orb looking things.  Lets put the orbs in context with what we are experiencing at the time, and base our findings on THAT rather than just dismissing these orbs out of hand.  

Just a .02 from me...a ghost hunter.

It's been a month now, and no word from my Mother...

I know that this is going to sound crazy, but I'm feeling a little weird right now because my Mom, who passed away on May 17th, has not been in touch with me since her death.

She knew I was a ghost hunter for almost a decade, and I had asked her that if there were any way possible to do so, that if she could try to contact me after she passed away, if she would do so.  At the time, she told me she would.  Whether or not she remembered that at the time of her passing, I do not know.

This isn't the first time that this has happened to me though.  When my significant other, Alan, passed away in 2006, I had asked him to do the same.  One night about six months after his death, I had a dream in which he came to me and told me that he was at peace, and that everything was alright.  The dream disturbed me so much because I could tell that he truly WAS at peace.  It seemed that nothing phased him.   Alan had always been a fiery and fiesty individual with a fervent zest for life.  That wasn't the person that came to see me in that dream though.  That person was so very calm, collected, and full of love that it just didn't seem right, even though I knew it was.  I still harbour so much guilt about his death and the things that lead up to it though that I have a hard time believing that my Alan would be that calm about it!

Still, since my injury in 2006 and my subsequent growing dependency on pain killers, I feel I may have lost some of my sensitivity to these kinds of things.  I still watch, hopeful, but nonetheless see very little these days.

One Night on Vegas Drive...

.I have a ghost story to tell...It's a real one, and it's a Looooooooong one, so grab your cigs if ya smoke, and get something to drink. It's gonna be a novel.

Anyone who knows me should know that I like weird stuff.  Some of my more strange fascinations are ghosts, hauntings, exorcism and demonology, and other general occult stuff.  I can read tarot cards with pretty decent accuracy, and fancy myself an amateur herbalist when I have the mindset.  These things became interests after I experienced a series of odd recurring incidents that culminated into a violent and rather scary situation while living in an apartment in Las Vegas, NV.  More or less, I guess you would say that it's a ghost story...at least that's what I believe.

I was about nineteen at the time, and I was living with my best friend, Ida, in her rather bland but homey apartment on the East side of town on a street called Vegas Drive.  I had been living with her for about a month and had settled in quite nicely.  I remember it being April when I moved in.  The strange things started happening about two months later, just as the Memorial Day weekend was starting.  We had some friends that lived two doors down from us...I'll call them "E" and "D" to protect their anonymity (I've always wanted to say that...LOL!), and they had invited us down to their apartment on Sunday night for dinner and a little holiday weekend type get together thingy.  I remember that "D", the lady of the house, was often lonely, as "E" worked a lot.  She always liked to entertain if she could.  Now you have the necessary background, and here's the rest of the story.

It was a Thursday night when an odd tapping sound started up inside the house.  I remember that Ida and I were sitting on the couch watching Madonna roll around on the floor as VH-1 introduced her newest video "Lucky Star".  We both heard it, the tapping, and that first day we more or less just laughed it off as bad pipes...the place was a dive after all, and we figured that it was just something that might be finally going bad.  That night we didn't give it any further thought and we didn't really even notice when it stopped.  We went to bed in our respective bedrooms, and all was forgotten.  The next day, Friday, we left for work, and having both just taken showers we laughed about the pipes behaving themselves that morning.  There was no longer any tapping.

We arrived home after work around 5 pm that night and all was fine.  We did our usual routine of dinner and sitting down to watch TV and videos.  At about 7pm, the tapping started up again...this time, it was just a bit louder than it had been the night before--almost loud enough to distract us, but considering we were drinking our Friday night away together it wasn't too hard to tune out.  In fact, we kind of got used to it as it droned on for at least an hour of continuous "tap...tap...tap...tap.    I don't remember the exact time now, but I do remember that we about crawled out of our skins when the tapping finally stopped abruptly with what sounded like a much louder "Bang!"--it sounded like someone had slapped the wall.  There was a feeling of discomfort in the room when tapping ended that way, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  It was the first time in my life that I'd ever felt that shiver of eerieness take me.  We laughed about it uneasily, and that was the first time that we pondered it being ghostly and strange. Little did we know just how strange things would get, and how fast they would get that way.

Saturday morning, same routine.  Showers and off to work with us.  We were still pretty young, and still had to work on Saturdays and Sundays if needed.  Ida always dropped me off at work when she could, but I usually found my own ride home.  We got home at about the same time too, usually within fifteen minutes of each other.  That particular Saturday night we had a surprise when we got home.  There was an ambulance sitting in the parking lot by our stairway, and "D" was being taken to the hospital.  We were able to talk to her as they took her off.  Her foot had been cut pretty bad, and she was bleeding pretty good.  I felt bad that no one had been there to take her to the hospital other than by ambulance, and that she had needed to spend that extra money to get help.  My first question to her was of course, "What happened?"  She wouldn't tell us right then, but said she would tell us all about it when she got home.  About then, the ambulance took her off and we headed on up to the apartment.

The blasted tapping was already going on the moment we entered the apartment.  Again, it was louder.  Not thunderously loud or anything, but just about like the sound of a pen tapping on the wall...constantly.  This third day I remember that it was getting on my nerves and at one point I got mad enough to slap the wall to see if it would stop.  To my surprise it did--but only momentarily, as if something had stopped long enough to listen to it, and then the tapping resumed again.  Another uneasy laugh toward Ida, "Maybe we should start tapping and slapping it back?"  Right when I said that, the tapping stopped, and the phone rang.  Weird. 

"D" had returned from the hospital and with only a couple of stitches in her foot.  We were worried that something much worse would come of the cut, so it was kind of a relief.  Once again we asked what happened, and she told us that she wanted us to come over--she would show us.  We left immediately, but not without first noticing the return of the incessant "tap...tap...tap" as we closed the door behind us.

"E" and "D"s apartment was so close that we were there within a matter of seconds.  What we saw in the poor girl wasn't what we had expected at all.  She answered her door with a 32 oz tumbler of Southern Comfort on ice in her hands, and told us to sit down.  She hesitated frequently as she told us her story of the days events, which started with a series of what she thought were prank phone calls.  Every time she answered the phone, all she would hear was "tap...tap...tap...".  She had tried talking on the phone to who was calling, but to no avail--just "tap...tap...tap..." (please note...this was in 1984, and there was no such thing as *69 back then.)  It seems that right before the accident she was hanging up the phone from the last prank call she had received, when the butcher knife that was on the counter "flew off of the counter and stabbed her in the foot".  She had just been using it to cut up stuff for salad for her and "E"s dinner that night.   Both Ida and I looked at the counter, and the butcher knife, which was a heavy one with a sturdy wooden handle.  There was a lip on the formica counter top, which should have prevented the butcher knife from doing exactly what she claimed that it had done.  I remember the phone ringing in the apartment, and "D" moaning, visibly shaken before finally picking it up.  It was "E", who claimed that he had been trying to call her all day.  He never got through to her though, as all he could hear when the phone picked up on her end was this "tap...tap...tap" sound.  We left her alone to explain her very rough day to her husband, and headed back to the apartment again, where thankfully the tapping had stopped.  But not for long...

Sunday morning it woke us up.  It was louder than ever, and you could hear it all over the apartment.  I slapped at the walls several times that morning to try to make it stop, but I would only get a moments silence before it would start up again.  At about ten o'clock, very loud pounding began on the door to the next door apartment and there was someone outside screaming for "YOU SON OF A BITCH" to "LET HIM THE F*CK IN!"  Peeking out the window, I saw that it was "E".  He was out there bellowing that he knew "YOU TWO ARE IN THERE AND YOU BETTER LET ME IN!"  The apartment was vacant, and had been for months.  I'd never seen such a look of rage on "E"s face before, and quite frankly it scared the hell out of me.  He could stand out there and pound all he wanted to, I was going to try to stay the hell out of the way! 

Surreal is the only word that can explain what happened next, it was such an unreal blur of horrifying events.  Ida and I went and hid in the kitchen out of view of the windows and the door, trying to figure out what to do.   I remember the tapping becoming faster and faster, and getting louder and louder while this bizarre scene was unfolding right outside of our apartment door.  The tapping got faster and faster again--almost like a snare drum--a "tatatatatatatatatatat" on the wall of our apartment, increasing in intensity as "E" continued his tirade, howling and wailing on the door of the vacant apartment next door.  The whole scene crescendoed after what seemed an eternity, with a tremendous "SMACK!!" on OUR front door. 

Then, nothing but silence--on odd, final feeling silence that once again made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  The tapping had stopped--at the exact same moment of the impact on the door.

We took "D" back to the hospital about an hour later, after receiving a phone call from her tell us that "E" had beaten her up pretty bad.  She told us that she had been sound asleep when he sat bolt upright, waking her, and demanding "WHERE THE F*CK IS HE?"  and "I KNOW YOUR SLEEPING WITH HIM YOU SLUT"! before proceeding to beat the hell out of her.  When we asked her where "E" was at that time, she told us that he was back upstairs in bed.  "D" stayed at the hospital. 

Early in the afternoon, "E" knocked on our door wondering where "D" was.  Standing at the door wringing his scabbed over and bruised hands, he looked like a very confused, whipped puppy.  He claims that he didn't remember a thing, and wanted to see her right away.  He didn't understand why she was in the hospital, and he didn't understand what happened to his hands or face either, which had been scratched.  They broke up that day, and we never saw "E" again.  We saw "D" briefly as she started moving her stuff out of the apartment about a week later.  By then, we had a story to tell her.

After the strange incidents of that afternoon, Ida and I decided to give a call to the apartment manager, just to tell him what all was going on.  He was a strange, older man who we never actually saw very much.  We told him about what had happened, and he kind of laughed it off.  Three days later he brought us a ten-year-old newspaper clipping from the "Las Vegas Review Journal" newspaper, which told us a nasty tale of a married couple who used to live in "E" and "D"s apartment, and how the man who had lived there at the time had beaten and stabbed his wife in their own bed, leaving the apartment with a gun and going down the way to the apartment next to mine and Ida's place, breaking into that apartment and killing the guy in there, and then finally shooting himself in the head at the doorstep of our apartment.  The speculation was that the wife was having an affair with the guy in the apartment next to ours, and the husband found out about it and decided on getting some kind of justice.  It was a very tragic story, and as Ida read it out loud to me I once again felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  All the pieces fit together.  

We never did have any more tappings.  "E" and "D" never did get back together, and I moved out of that apartment complex the following December to persue a new love interest.  I've never since viewed a ghostly historical reinactment the likes of that one, and I never hope to again.  

Bringing Entities Home.

I don't know why I've decided to share this.  Many of you who will read it will decide that I'm some sort of nutcase, or a freak.  I guess it's to get it off of my mind and to perhaps get some feedback on what actually happened that lead me to the situation.  Perhaps its just because I want to tell a ghost story of my own.  Whatever the reason, there is a lesson to be learned in the story.  I'm telling you only MY part of the story here.  There are many other people involved in this though, each person with their own version and/or experiences to tell.

Before we left Iowa and after the split up of Diepart, the paranormal group that I had been a part of for many many years, Dana and I had the opportunity to investigate a small ranch outside of Carbon, Iowa.  The woman lived there alone.  She had moved there originally with her two children, and all three of them complained of activity in the house.  She had called us because of a bunch of strange happenings that resulted in the death of several of her animals.  Due to legal reasons I am unable to discuss the actual investigation, however, what happened to me at my own home after the investigation is MY story and I will discuss that here.

Having been what I call an "Armchair" demonologist, myself and another demonologist decided to try to do something that we knew probably wouldn't work.  We decided to attempt to exorcise the house where this woman lived.  We used verses from the Bible that are most generally used in exorcism's of human beings.  For at least two hours we prayed and commanded the entity in this home to leave.  At the end of the session, the house seemed lighter.  Little did I know what was to happen next.

I remember it being a very long drive home, and I remember being more exhausted than I usually am after an investigation.  Of course, this wasn't just a simple investigation, but a sort of attempt at a cleansing, which was new to me.  Because of that, I didn't worry about the severity of the exhaustion, or the quiet sense of anxiety that had settled over myself.  That night when I went to bed I had a startling dream.  It was a dream of the scariest face that I'd ever seen in my life, and it shocked me awake.  I began to wonder at that time what could have caused this, and if I had been followed home.  Correction:  I suddenly KNEW that I had been followed home.  The face has faded in my mind now after so much time having past, but I still remember the fear that it put in me, and how the face originally lingered in my mind for weeks and weeks after the dream.

I began to feel as though I were being watched all the time.  Out of the corners of my eye I would catch things moving.  I would see what I thought were spiders, or bugs climbing up the walls nearly all the time.  Everything that could go wrong in my life went wrong.  Problems started at work.  Hell, my dog even came down with a case heartworms.

All the time this was happening I would continue to have dreams at night, horrible, graphic, and intense.  I had dreams of standing at the bottom of a well full of blood and human body parts, picking up entrails and stuffing them into my mouth, as if eating them.  I screamed in rage and fury as I did this, not in disgust, as I would have if it had really been happening to me.  It was as if I were a different person living in some sort of unimagined hell.  I had dreams like this for weeks and months that would start out as really pleasant experiences and would turn into the most horrible of night terrors.  It came to a point where I was afraid to go to sleep at night.  One day I decided to start keeping a dream journal, and I still have it, somewhere.  I had decided that if I was going to be haunted at night, I was going to keep a log of these dreams and turn them around into a creative outlet...to start writing stories and novels about the horrors that I had been witnessing.  After having made that decision, the dreams ceased significantly, almost as if my subconscious had decided that it wasn't going to have any part of me becoming a successful author!

I did tell people what was happening to me.  I asked people to pray for me. It was embarrassing, and difficult to do, but it didn't matter how many folks I asked for help.  All that they would do is shake their heads and look at me like I had lost my mind.

The dreams continued off and on until we finally decided to make the move down here to Texas.  Even the last night in the house I remember having a dream.  Then, one day while we were driving down south, in my minds eye I saw something waving goodbye to me.  I knew that whatever had been going on, that it was over, and ever since that time I've been able to sleep fitfully at night.  Once in a while I get a nightmare, but it seems more normal...induced by indigestion, or something else.

Now you are asking:  What was the point?  What was the lesson in all of this?

Well, it's pretty simple.  Remember to say your prayers when you do this kind of work... these "paranormal investigations".  There are things out there, have no doubt, and you can attract them to yourself by your words and actions.  If you forget to take precautions, you could wind up bringing something home with you.  I was lucky that I didn't have children.  If we hadn't been careful, I could have even lost my dog.  I used to tell people that I loved nightmares.  I loved the excitement and the adrenaline rush of waking up from something that scared the hell out of me.  I don't do that anymore.

Be careful out there.

Peace.

Why do people burn haunted things?

Last night I watched a couple of episodes of "Dead Files" on the Travel Channel.  In one of the episodes the duo were investigating a prison in New Mexico.  The had been contacted by an actress who had done a short film or something there in the past and had found a hat in the prison and for some reason had taken it home to her children.  Since the time she brought it home, she's been having problems with paranormal activity of the most negative kind in her home.  When she realized that it could very well have been the hat that had started the activity, she decided to burn it in her fireplace.

My question:  Why do people think that burning things is the answer to solving paranormal problems?  Do they think that fire is just so purifying that it will solve all of their problems with the nether worlds?  If so they are sadly mistaken!  I mean really folks, think about your actions for a minute...

You've inadvertently brought an unwanted entity into your home by taking in an artifact that you may think is cool.  The entity is now roaming in your home.  It's connected to the artifact, but it's not living in the artifact!! I had a friend who brought an unwanted entity home via a leather Harley-Davidson Jacket during the first decade of the new millenium.  They burned the jacket because they were being terrorized, yet the haunting continued to the point where the girl committed suicide.  She did this because the entity convinced her that ending it all was the right thing to do...and she told me that straight to my face.  She took a bottle of Tylenol. her death was very slow and caused by cessation of liver function.

This actress on "Dead Files" last night did the same thing.  She burned the hat she found, but her haunting continues and grows.  She's now sick all the time, fears for her childrens safety, and could be dying.

When you burn a haunted artifact, you are in essence FREEING the entity from it's ties to the artifact, thus giving it more freedom to roam and grow.  It can even become more powerful after losing it's tether to the artifact.  It's really a simple thought process...so why don't people put two and two together?

I've heard stories of people doing the same thing with Ouija Boards.  They use the board, which opens a portal to another world...be it heaven, hell, another dimension...whatever.  When you burn the board, your destroying the passageway that was created by it, and whatever you brought through that is answering your questions is now trapped in our world with no way to return to where it came from.  If you've somehow managed to bring through a powerful demon, then you've created one helluva problem for yourself!

My final word on this:  If you encounter an artifact that you think is haunted or you have a friend who is experiencing something like this, I encourage you to contact an experienced reputable paranormal group or some sort of medium and ask them how it is best to take care of this problem..  There are usually no simple answers for taking care of something like this.  One thing that I can assure you of though....burning it is NOT EVER the way to go.

Peace.