New Life. Old Demons: Part 3 of 3

 

What follows is the 3rd of 3 parts to the investigation post titled "New Life. Old Demons."  If this is your first time visiting my blog, then you've missed something pretty cool. You should go and find Part 1 of this paranormal investigation post. If you're here because you read Parts 1 and 2, and want to read more, then Awesome! Glad you made your way back to join us for the continuation!

The Results

I sat my little corner of the bedroom where my writing desk perpetually supports my laptop, a fake plant--the only type that will grow in the house due to a lack of sunlight--a gooseneck desk lamp, a cup of coffee, and one of those things that produces a cool mist from water mixed with a few drops of Vanilla, Caramel, and Spice scented oil. 

I still have yet to figure out how it does that. 

With over-the-ear headphones plugged in and Audacity open on the laptop before me, I loaded up the first of my audio files and began listening to our voices as we started the EVP session in the largest of Kyle's bedrooms.

I could hear my own voice--which I hate to hear on audio recordings. We had begun talking about the female presence I'd felt in the room. "We just want to know that you're here," I told her. 

Then, a faint sound unlike the white noise and our own voices, broke through. I stopped the playback, clicked on the audio just prior to the noise, and listened again. I had to listen a few times before I finally understood what was being said. 

It was a female voice. "I'm here."

My heart quickened in my chest, because at that moment my feelings about a female presence were validated. There was a female there, and perhaps others.

I selected the section of audio containing the voice and saved it as a separate file, then continued listening. 

Before long another soft voice, lower that a whisper, broke through the shhhhhh of the ambient noise in the room. This time it was a male voice. 

"Don't step on that," the man said. 

I thought about the digital voice recorder sitting on the floor in the center of the room. Was this what the man was referring to? Or was there something in his realm that only he and the spirit he was addressing could see?

Whenever I found a voice in our recordings, I often asked Jeff to listen to it without telling him what I had heard. He never could hear what I heard. To him, the noise that I could hear as a voice speaking always sounded like an ambient noise, some drone of a car engine in the distance or perhaps the noise of a refrigerator running through its cooling cycle. So, unless the voice was loud and clear enough for him to hear, we never considered it evidence. 

I listened to the rest of the audio file from the bedroom and then closed it out. 

Next was the file that we recorded when we were in the lower floor of the building. I expected to hear another voice from that recording, and was surprised when I didn't hear anything more than ambient noise and our voices.

The next file was contained a few interesting voices that came through the spirit box while we were in Kyle's apartment again. 

With the constant ch-ch-ch-ch of the spirit box and the questions we asked were choppy bits and pieces of sentences and phrases that came through from radio stations within broadcasting range. 

When Kyle began asking questions, the voices seemed to change. 

"Why did you push me down the stairs?" he asked.

Then, the male spoke again. "Ain't your property."

I clipped that section of audio and saved it, then continued. 

A few minutes later, Kyle asked, "Why did you scratch me?"

The response came from a female voice, far more audible than the female who had spoken previously during the EVP session. "I was protecting..."

There was no doubt that the spirits in the apartment felt territorial. They still considered it their home, and were probably angered by Kyle suddenly moving his belongings into the space. I wasn't entirely convinced that the female was the source of the scratches that Kyle had suffered, though. With this type of activity, it was important to remember that demons are liars. They will often pose as a spirit to try to convince people that they weren't demons at all, but something far less sinister. This was one of their methods of hiding, because by hiding, they could avoid being banished from the location.

A few days after listening to the audio, something occurred that solidified my feeling that this wasn't just an angry woman protecting someone. 

I received a text from Kyle that morning.

So...going to have to stay here and fight.

What happened? I responded.

Went to look at a room for rent and the guy renting it asked about where I'm living now. So, I started telling him about it. In the middle of telling the story his doorbell rang, he got confused, not expecting anyone. We went to go see who was there, nobody was there. Dude was freaked out. We both heard it bigger than shit. I know this thing likes pushing buttons...? He said I needed to go and he'd be in touch. 

That confirmed it. A normal human spirit won't follow someone to a different location. Demons do that. This one had been waiting outside when Kyle left the apartment that morning and had followed him to the rental home. It was the demon's way of saying, "Hey, I'm here. I can follow you anywhere."

I did begin to wonder, though, if this demon had been following Kyle for a long time. Demons, contrary to what many people believe, don't just hang out in empty buildings. Demons are predators. They need a host, someone whose energy they can feed off of. With the building having been abandoned for a few years prior to Kyle's boss purchasing and renovating it, it was unlikely that this demon had been sitting around staring at that atrocious, lime green wall in the kitchen the whole time. 

I want to find out more about your life, I told Kyle. I have a feeling that this thing may have been following you for a while. It could be using your move into this creepy, old building as an opportunity to show its presence. That way you will believe the building is haunted and not that you have a demonic attachment. 

What I had described to him was a common occurrence. Demons are sneaky and manipulative, but also extremely intelligent. They will enter a person's life and wait, sometimes for years, while learning about that person. They want to know your strengths and weaknesses. They want to find out the best way to break you down, to cause chaos and pain and suffrage in your life. And they always commence their assault in passive, almost undetectable way. Perhaps lights in your home begin to flicker when they haven't before. Perhaps it's just a string of bad luck. Problems keep occurring more and more frequently. "Why am I having such bad luck lately?" you may ask yourself. Then one day you decide to go to a haunted place or move into a new home and suddenly all hell breaks loose. You had to have brought something back with you from that place, an attachment. Right? No. It's the same old demon that has always been there. It has just found an opportunity to manifest in a way that has you blaming that haunted house.

Soon, the phone rang. Kyle's number appeared on the phone.

When I answered it, Kyle said, "What you said made me start to think. You could be right."

What followed was a story about a home in North Carolina where Kyle used to live with his ex-girlfriend. The ex-girlfriend's children were scared and insisted on sleeping huddled together in one bed each night. From the vantage point of the recliner in the living room, Kyle would see a dark figure passing from room to room at the far end of the bedroom hallway. 

Then, there was the other girlfriend. She had been a professional ballerina, he said, but she had been in a horrible car accident that left one of her legs shorter than the other. In effort to regain her ability to dance, the woman had made a deal with the devil. She offered her soul for the chance to dance again. 

Of course, Satan didn't appear to her and cause the shorter of her two legs to somehow lengthen. But that didn't matter. Making a pact with the devil, whether or not he held up his end of the deal, was an invitation to the forces of evil to make themselves at home in her life. Not long after telling Kyle about the deal with the devil, he was sitting in a chair watching his girlfriend. She sat on the living room floor, immersed in a craft. He used his cell phone to take a picture of her, but in that picture, the areas where her eyes should've been were black voids. 

Then, Kyle began telling me about all of the bad luck he had since the haunted apartment in North Carolina. He owned an oil company. Lost it all during that last major oil spill in the early 2000s, he said. He would save up some money and then something would happen that would wipe out his savings. He couldn't keep a relationship for long. He'd never had kids. 

One thing was clear: there had been something dark and menacing following Kyle for many years. If it wasn't stopped, then before long it might do something far worse that leave three deep scratches down his side. 

"You need to move into that apartment," I told him. "These spirits still think that apartment is theirs, and they won't quiet down until you show them that it's not."

The apartment was empty, devoid of all things Kyle. By filling that space with his belongings and thus, his energy, he would be asserting his dominance, his rightful ownership of the place. But this was just the beginning. There was more to be done to rid his life of the dark spirits inhabiting it. 

"Have you ever heard of a deliverance?" I asked him, and wasn't surprised when he hadn't. Many people, even devout Christians, had never heard of it. I did my best to explain what it was and how it was carried out. 

A deliverance relies on the full engagement of the victim, though. If that person fails to carry through with it, then he or she will not find the spiritual freedom that is available to him. I sent him the information he needed to start carrying out the deliverance, praying that he would have the motivation to follow through with it. 

A few weeks later, I heard from Kyle again. He had gone to the pound and gotten a dog, which I thought was a wonderful idea. Anything that added happiness to a home and made it more his would be a positive thing. The dog had started displaying some strange behavior. However, it wasn't clear whether the dog was reacting to some unseen force in the apartment or whether it was by nature a nervous dog. 

I haven't heard from Kyle again, but I plan on checking in on him from time to time to see how he is doing. 

These people, desperate for help, walk into my life. I throw my heart into helping them, and in the process, learn so much about them. I see them as my brothers and sisters, because all of us are God's children. I offer a way to help them, then all I can do is sit back and pray that he or she will accept the help and do what is necessary to ensure that it works. It's a heartbreaking mission sometimes. I love these people. I want to see them find the true happiness and peace that I found years ago. But, as Daddy always used to say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

NEW LIFE. OLD DEMONS: Part 2 of 3

This is Part 2. If this is your first time visiting my blog, then you've missed something pretty cool. You should go and find Part 1 of this paranormal investigation post. If you're here because you read Part 1 and want to read more, then Awesome! Glad you made your way back to join us for the continuation!

The Investigation

We began in Kyle's apartment, since this was the focal point of the activity he had been experiencing. An entry hallway greeted us when we walked in the door. The hallway ran to the back of the apartment and ended at a door to the larger of the two bedrooms. The door to the smaller bedroom led off to the left.

A living room at the right front corner of the apartment contained only a couple of large boxes of unassembled furniture. Moving toward the back of the building from the living room, we found a stacked washer and dryer to our right before entering the kitchen.

New, walnut finish laminate flooring had been laid throughout the apartment, and new inexpensive light fixtures had been installed. The kitchen had also been recently updated with a medium oak stained cabinetry and granite countertops.

There was something sad about an empty home or apartment. Perhaps it was the lack of personal items that made a place home. Or perhaps it was the feeling of emptiness itself. No one was there to love the place or to spend time and energy fixing it up. 

As I walked through the apartment, I kept my senses tuned in to the energy. Most of the apartment felt normal, but when we entered the larger bedroom, suddenly the energy changed. The air became heavy and thick. It felt as if someone strong was pressing on my chest and preventing me from taking a deep breath. My eyes wobbled slowly in their sockets, as if I was opening my eyes underwater and the world around my was fuzzy, out of focus. My heart became a bass drum, pounding out a rhythm that I could feel in my ear drums.

This was nothing unusual for me. I'd learned over the years of investigating that there were places like this. Sometimes it was an entire home, and the moment I crossed the threshold of the front door, the sensation arose. Other times, like this, the feeling arose only when I entered one room. I decided long ago that this was my body's reaction to spirit energy. What kind of spirit, I'm still not sure. What I do know is that the stronger the sensation, the stronger the spirit.

I tried to draw in a deep breath. "Oh, yeah. It's in here," I announced. 

Jeff and Kyle entered the room behind me, but I didn't turn my attention to them. I kept it focused on the room around me. 

Like the other parts of the apartment, this room was also empty. A small closet had been built into one corner, but lacked a door. A single window at the center of the wall to my left looked out over the landscape of corrugated metal buildings and parking lots cluttered with old vehicles. 

Standing at that window, looking out, I could feel eyes upon me. I knew it wasn't Jeff or Kyle staring at me. This was something else. When I turned to face them, I said, "There's definitely something in this room."

This was the first hot spot, the first location where we would set down the equipment to investigate. As if reading my mind, Jeff stepped to the center of the room and placed the digital voice recorder on the floor. "Let's try an EVP session, then."

"Okay," I responded, and moved the wall adjoining the kitchen. I stood with my back against it, waiting as Jeff stood against another wall. Kyle, who had been carrying his camcorder with him, stood outside the bedroom door and began taking photos and video. 

"I'm Jeff."

"And I'm Linda."

Our typical introductions were always followed by a short speech, usually given by Jeff, that was meant to not only tell potential spirits more about ourselves but to explain why we were there. We also made it a point to state that we had no intentions of harming them. It might not be possible to harm a spirit anyway, but if the spirit didn't know it was a spirit, then a simple statement like this could be enough to calm his or her nerves. 

What followed was a series of questions, not always in the same order, that were intended to draw basic information out of a potential spirit. We always asked his or her name, why it stayed there, if it was attached to the home, the land, or an object in the home. The questions were separated by an intentional silence of between 10 and 30 seconds. This would give a spirit plenty of time to answer the question before we asked another. There is nothing more annoying than hearing a disembodied voice while reviewing the audio files, but being unable to tell what it was saying because an investigator was speaking at the same time. 

Throughout the EVP session, the room remained somewhat heavy. I glanced around the shadowy room, illuminated only by dim light from the window and from the living room. If I were blind, I would have believed at that moment that there were more people in the room than just Jeff and I. "There's a female energy here," I told Jeff and Kyle. "Her bed was in that corner." I pointed to the corner farthest from the door, to the right of the window. 

"Someone used to come in here and abuse her." Neither Jeff nor Kyle responded, so we continued with our questions.

After about 10 minutes of asking questions and waiting for a response, we ended the session and went about reviewing the audio. Occasionally, when listening through the digital voice recorder, you can hear a disembodied voice. Other times, we have to wait until we can run the audio through analysis software on the computer. With the aid of noise cancelling, over-the-ear headphones and the software, quiet voices and whispers often appear. 

I listened carefully to the audio, with the digital voice recorder pressed up against my right ear, but after listening to the entire session, I hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary. I stopped the playback.

"Nothing," I told Jeff. 

"Well, should we try going downstairs?" he responded.

"Yep. Let's do it."

We stuffed our equipment into our pockets and made our way back out of the apartment and down the steps to the front door.

The double doors had been painted forest green. Each had multiple panes of rectangular glass, separated by mullions, in the upper half of the door. Pulling the door open, we stepped inside and found ourselves standing on a landing, with one staircase leading up on the right side and another leading down on the left. 

The steps were covered with12 inch square tiles that resembled white marble. We made our way down and found a long hallway leading away into the darkness. To the right was a doorway, and we walked through to find a kitchen on the left. A dim, fluorescent light fixture hung precariously from the center of the dingey, white ceiling. It seemed as if a good stomp on the floor upstairs might send it crashing to the white tile below. What drew my attention, though, were the walls. Someone thought it was a good idea to paint the kitchen walls with a shade of green a bit less vivid than lime. Holes in the sheetrock walls had been recently patched with white spackling compound. Red spray paint had been used to paint a crude daisy-like flower on one wall with a speech bubble emerging from it. The text within the speech bubble had been spackled over. 

Against the walls in the small kitchen stood stainless steel work tables, each dotted with various construction remnants. One held pieces of old wood trim, a can of paint, and a 90s style boom box. The tables and the items they held appeared to have been caught up in a spontaneous flour fight between contractors. White dust, no doubt resulting from sanding the white spackling compound that dotted the walls, covered the tables, their contents, and the floor around them. 

I moved through the kitchen, toward the back of the building, far enough to see that the kitchen ended at a griddle with a range hood caked with years of sticky, amber residue. At the opposite end of the kitchen, against the front wall of the building, was a small nook that could've held a dining room table at one time. Medium stained oak panels clad the walls. A chocolate brown-painted window, wider than it was tall and with multiple panes of glass, cut through the longest wall. The top of the window butted up against a sagging drop ceiling as if attempting to hold it up. At the center of the nook, the floor tiles had been scraped away, revealing a dark brownish-black spot on the concrete floor beneath it. 

At the sight of the large, dark spot, my overactive imagination began pouring through possible scenarios. I imagined people sitting around the dinner table, feasting on partially decomposed steak from a nearby grocery store dumpster, when a young man says something that angers another. The second young man lunges across the table and plants the blade of his dinner knife deep in the chest of the first, who falls out of his chair and onto the floor at the exact location of the dark spot. He bleeds out on the floor as the rest of the diners return to devouring their rotten steaks. 

Standing in the kitchen, staring into the dining nook, I looked to my left and found another doorway. This one led down a short hallway. On the left side of the hallway, a set of stairs covered in navy blue carpet led up to a ceiling, not unlike a staircase I'd seen in pictures of the Winchester House in San Francisco. "What the hell?" 

Kyle appeared beside me, looking up the staircase. He chuckled. "My boss said he is going to get one of those Halloween skeletons and set it up there, then wall-in the stairs."

The next people to renovate the building were certain to get a scare when they busted a hole in the wall, shined a flashlight through the hole and illuminated the skeleton lying inside. 

Sounded like a good idea to me, although closing off a perfectly good staircase seemed like a waste of space. At the very least, the area could've been used for storage. 

A few steps further down the hallway, and we entered a room filled with an energy that caused me to stop just a few steps past the doorway. The floor of the room, like the others, was covered with tile. The room was devoid of furniture. Light from surrounding buildings angled into the room through a few windows and formed clusters of golden rectangles upon the tile floor. 

"Whoa," I said, looking around the room.

"What?" 

I didn't turn to face Kyle, but continued to look around the room. "This isn't a good feeling in here." 

He didn't immediately respond, but looked around the room for a moment. Then, "The air is really heavy in here."

I nodded. "You definitely have something in here, too."

I took a few steps into the room, then made my way around the perimeter. The energy began to subside as I moved through the room, and I decided to check out the other downstairs rooms. I had yet to explore the rooms at the end of the hallway I'd encountered when I first walked down the steps from the front door. 

The hallway had chair rail molding with more wood paneling below it. More sagging acoustic tiles, some stained by old leaks, loomed over the hall. An exit sign, illuminated with red letters, hung by its electrical wire just outside the doorway to the kitchen. 

We met Jeff halfway down the hall. "Go down there," he said, in a tone that I knew meant he had sensed something at the end of the hall from where he had just come.

The hallway receded into shadows as it led to the back of the building. A small, empty room led off to the left, another to the right. The room that drew my attention, though, was a utility room at the end of the hall. It held a water heater, a washing machine, and a dryer. 

When I got to the threshold of the room, I stopped. Again, the energy was strong and dark here. In my mind rose the image of a young man hiding in the room. He would come to this room and use some sort of drug. 

"A young man would come here to hide. He would do drugs in here," I told Jeff and Kyle. "I don't like this room at all. It feels terrible."

There was a sense of chaos in the room, of dark impulses and frightening thoughts. The man who hid there was troubled, to say the least. 

"Let's try here," I told Jeff. We set our REM pod down just inside the door of the utility room, placed the digital voice recorder a few feet away from it, and backed out into the hallway.  

For a few minutes, we stood there asking questions, hoping to elicit a response through the REM Pod. As we stood there though, I began feeling as if there was a young man behind me, back toward the front of the building. I looked back and examined the space. I couldn't see anything but the illuminated kitchen doorway and the base of the steps leading down from the front door, but I knew he was there. He was on the top of the steps, squatted down so that he could see under the drop ceiling to the end of the hallway where we stood. He was keeping an eye on us.

I voiced my feelings to Jeff, who then began to watch the stairs for signs of movement. He snapped a few photos in that direction, and I did the same. As I clicked off a photo, Jeff said, "Whoa. Did you see that?"

"What?" I hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. 

"A small shadow just moved near the bottom of the kitchen door." He set off down the hallway and stopped at the kitchen doorway, pointing down to where light from the kitchen illuminated the hall floor. "Right here, something just moved, like a shadow. Take another picture." 

I snapped off a few more pictures, taking a moment to look at each one before taking the next. 

Nothing.

Jeff had began taking his own pictures of the room across the hall from the kitchen and of the kitchen itself. He took a few more of the shadowy stairs and the landing at the front door. Then, he turned to me. "Move around a bit. I wanna see if there's a way we could've caused the shadows to move."

I did as I was told. I swayed back and forth, took a few steps toward him then a few steps away. Nothing that I did could've created the movement that he saw. Whatever caused it had to have been either in the kitchen or in the hallway with us. 

We walked away scratching our heads. Up the steps to the front door, we turned 180 degrees to walk up the second flight to the upper floor. The condition of the upstairs rooms was much the same as on the lower floor. It appeared that renovations had begun here, as well, but hadn't gotten very far. 

We chose one small room that felt different than the others. Standing against one wall in the room, I began asking questions. The voice recorder and the REM Pod both sat at the center of the floor before me. Jeff and Kyle wandered through the hallway and the other rooms on the upper floor, leaving me alone to try and communicate with whatever might be there. 

There was a sense that perhaps a young man who was mentally handicapped might've resided in the room at one time. His childlike energy was still there. I could sense the love he had for his mother, as well. He had never known his father. 

I spoke as if there were a child in the room. I asked about his mother. I asked what games he liked to play, but the REM Pod never responded. My only hope was that the voice recorder had picked up a voice besides mine. I would wait until I could run the audio through my analysis software to determine if the young man's spirit was still there or if it was simply his energy that remained.

While standing outside, taking a short break, we tried to decide if there was something more we could do and if we did, where we would do it. We decided that we needed to try something more in Kyle's apartment. That was the section of the building that would be occupied first, and his safety was our priority. 

Since we hadn't taken the REM Pod or the spirit box into the apartment yet, we carried both back up the newly built steps to the apartment, and made our way back down the hall to the larger of the two bedrooms. I set the spirit box down in the center of the floor and set the voice recorder on the floor about halfway between the spirit box and me. 

This time the energy in the room wasn't quite as heavy. Still, I hoped that something remained there to communicated with us. As I asked questions, Kyle began to ask questions of his own. Jeff went to the corner to the left of the window, stood there for a moment, then moved to the corner to the right of the window for a moment before returning to the other corner. He moved back and forth between the two corners a few times before I asked him what he was doing.

"Seeing if the energy is different in each corner. It is. The energy in that corner is worse." He motioned to the corner to the right of the window. 

"That's because that's where her bed was," I told him. I could see her sitting on the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms curled around her legs as a man walked into the room and shut the door behind him.

I decided to try Jeff's experiment, and soon decided he was right. The energy in the corner to the left of the window felt almost normal. The other corner felt strange, like fear and pain had been so profound at one time that it morphed into some tangible creature that occupied that corner of the room.

I returned to my line of questioning, with Kyle chiming in every so often. Between questions, the building was silent. Then suddenly, Kyle began yelling like a drill sergeant. Jeff and I jumped and our hearts leapt into our throats. We couldn't understand what Kyle was saying, but it would've intimidated even the most strong minded. When the sudden shock of so much yelling subsided, Jeff and I exchanged a slight smile. Our investigations never lacked entertainment. 

Yelling was a good idea, despite our amusement. So far, we had spoken in soft tones, careful not to anger anyone. However, that hadn't seemed to garner any responses. It was time to try something different. 

Voices had been emanating from the spirit box steadily since we turned it on. We quickly noticed though, when Kyle yelled, the voices coming through the spirit box fell silent for a minute. 

We lingered in the apartment for a while longer, then decided it was time to pack up and go. We had a bit of driving to do before the night ended. As we said our good-byes, Kyle offered us money. We told him we couldn't take so much, and ended up leaving with only a fraction of what he offered. We told him that we intended on giving it to our church, and he was fine with that. To make up for the money we didn't take, he offered two small mason jars of a thick, red hot sauce he made and was trying to start marketing. That was something we couldn't turn down. 

It was one of the best sauces I've had. I slathered everything with it for the next few weeks until it was gone and plan on returning to purchase more in the near future.

Well folks, it's about time for me to end this and get on with life. Sitting here writing is a wonderful escape from reality, and with a hot cup of coffee beside me, I could sit here for another couple of hours with ease. But the responsibilities of life call to me. I hope that you'll come back next week to check out the last part of this investigation post, where I'll talk about the evidence we got from the investigation and our recommendations for what course of action we believed Kyle should take.

There are more interesting stories to come!

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NEW LIFE. OLD DEMONS: Part 1 of 3

As a developer attempts to bring new life to an old building formerly used as a home for the insane, it seems that old demons still remain.

"I don't want to be attacked by things I can't fight back against," he said in a slow, southern drawl. 

I had only been speaking to Kyle on my cell phone for about 10 minutes, but I already liked him. Perhaps it was the sense of automatic kinship that I felt for those who spoke with a deep, southern accent like my father did. It was "furry" instead of ferry, "lot bub" instead of light bulb. Or perhaps it was the ease with which he laughed and joked--another of my father's qualities.

"Well that's perfectly understandable," I responded, staring out the windshield of Jeff's Ford Bronco at the interstate pavement as it rushed toward us and slipped beneath the front end of the vehicle. Our headlights pulsed against the trunks of the pines, maples, and other trees that flanked the road. "You said it wasn't until you returned to the camper that you felt it, though?"

"Yeah, I'd been watching a movie when I went to get my laundry out of the apartment. So when I came back to the camper, I sat down on the sofa and started playing the movie again. That's when I felt the burning, like hell fire all the way down my side."

Kyle was the property manager for a two-story, colonial-style building that stood in a run-down, industrial area on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. His boss had recently purchased the building and was converting it to apartments upstairs and a leasable business on the lower floor. Even though renovations to the apartment Kyle would soon occupy were already complete, he had been reluctant to move in. The heaviness of the air in the apartment was only the secondary reason. The primary reason was the persistence of vandals who had come onto the property and broken in through ground-floor windows to gain access to the building. To protect the property, Kyle had pulled his camper up in front of the building and was staying in it while deciding whether or not he could handle the paranormal activity he had been experiencing. He still wandered up into the apartment to use the bathroom and to do his laundry though, and it was during one of these times that he had been attacked by an unseen entity. The attack resulted in 3 bloody, hairline scratches running from his right armpit all the way down to his hip. The shirt and leather coat he had on at the time were still intact and devoid of blood. 

"The man who owns the transmission shop across the street told me it used to be a home for crazy people," Kyle had said. "There was a woman that lived here who--excuse my language here--used to strip down naked and, well, hump the fire hydrants." 

Laughter burst out of me before I considered whether or not it was politically correct to do so. This happens more often than it probably should. I suppose the older I get, the less restrained I am in expressing myself. I was relieved when I heard him chuckle on the other end of the line. 

"What the hell?" I asked as my laughter subsided.

"Yeah. Well she used to walk down to the local dollar store and beg people for money. One of the people she was begging one day was a social worker with the county, who told her she was going to take her back home. When the social worker walked into the building, she found out the owner had been feeding the residents with food that he'd gotten from dumpster diving. There was no running water, no heat or A/C. And the owner of the transmission shop said they were pulling dead bodies out of there."

I gasped. "Holy shit. Are you serious? There were dead people in there?"

"Yep. They shut the place down." 

My mind immediately began pouring over all of the possible reasons why these people had died. Severe food poisoning? Exposure to frigid, winter temperatures? Physical abuse? Or perhaps something less predictable, like a drug overdose?

No matter the circumstances of their deaths, the idea of people living their final days in those conditions sent an icy shutter through me. We had to investigate, and fast. Kyle was trying to move into the apartment in the next week or two. He would either be residing with unsettled human spirits, or with a dark entity that had already revealed itself as a valid physical threat. It was imperative that we find out the nature of what Kyle would encounter before this spirit revealed just how dangerous it could be.

The Interview

The building stood only a few minutes from the Interstate 295 off-ramp, down a quiet highway lined with older buildings and warehouses. A few run-down, 40s-style homes sprang from the garden of corrugated metal, broken asphalt, and chain link fencing, stubbornly refusing to succumb to the environmental changes that time had thrust upon the area. 

"Turn right onto Birch Street," the GPS commanded. 

Jeff slowed the Bronco and did as he was told. The Bronco bucked and swayed as he crossed over railroad tracks that ran parallel to the highway. I hadn't noticed the tracks before, but made a mental note of their presence. Railroad tracks conducted energy, and tracks so close to the building we were investigating could've been lending to the paranormal activity.

Prior to an investigation, I always went to Google Maps to research the location. I wanted to get the lay of the land, to see if the building stood close to the street or down a long lane shrouded by trees in Google's satellite view. I also looked for nearby rivers, highways or interstates, airports, or other locations that could either be sources of energy or which could cause a noise disturbance during the investigation. Satisfied with my analysis of the satellite view, I would then go into Google Street View to get a look at the building from the front if possible. This type of research was normally assigned to the Environmental Specialist. David had taken on the role for a while, but since leaving the team to take a job in North Carolina, I had begun to fill the role. 

Having researched the location a few days before, I knew before Siri announced it that we had arrived at our destination. I pointed out at the street ahead. "Just beyond that clump of trees, on the righthand side." 

Jeff and I peered out the windshield in anticipation of the building's appearance and were somewhat startled when Siri spoke. "You have arrived." 

The Bronco turned to the right and emerged into a small, unlined parking lot dominated by Kyle's 32-foot camper. It stood parallel to the front of the building, mostly obscuring the first floor and a bit of the second. The two-story, brick building behind it, with shadowy windows on both floors, stretched to peek over the roof of the camper at us as we maneuvered past the end of the camper to fill an empty parking space. 

With the front of the building in full view before us now, I leaned down to gaze up through the windshield at it. "Creepy," I muttered, thinking back on the stories Kyle had told us about the place. 

The stories weren't the only reason why the building was a bit unsettling, though. The structure seemed out of place among the dilapidated homes, warehouses, and auto repair shops surrounding it. It stood about 50 feet off the road, snuggled into its cloak of pines and sweet gum trees as if attempting to hide from the world. A dim, golden glow from fixtures mounted to either side of the double front doors, and amber light that sliced its way through the cracks between the camper's window curtains, proved to be the only sources of illumination bold enough to fight off the army of shadows were encamped in the front lot.

I opened the passenger door and slid off the seat, stepping out and shutting the door behind me. My attention remained on the front of the building, switching from window to window. I expected to see a dark figure standing in one of them, staring back. But the only thing staring back was a blackness that seemed to press against the inside of the glass panes in an attempt to escape.

When Jeff and I met at the front of the Bronco with our paper coffee cups in hand, our attention was drawn away from the building by a sound to our left. The quiet click was followed by a creak, and the front door of the camper swung open. A surge of light rushed out to join the fight between light and shadows in the lot around us. 

If Kyle hadn't mentioned on the phone that he had served in the Marine Corps, I still would've known without a nanoparticle of doubt. Having grown up in a town where you could throw a stone and hit one branch of the military, I had developed the ability to identify whether someone was military or a veteran, and which branch he or she had served in.

Kyle wore the typical high-and-tight cut. His face was devoid of stubble and seemed to have been chiseled from stone. Each line etched into his granite face told a tale of strength, victory, courage, or of deep-seated pain he kept buried within. 

"You must be Kyle," I said, walking to meet him. I expected nothing less than the firm handshake I received as I greeted him. And even though his large, firm hand seemed to envelope mine, I returned the firm shake as my mother had always taught me to do. A weak hand was a sign of a weak mind. And when meeting a stranger for the first time, you never showed weakness--especially when meeting someone who appeared capable of snatching you up with one giant hand, squeezing you until your bones turned to dust, and sprinkling you over his eggs in the morning. 

When the initial greetings were over and when I was sure I wouldn't become a seasoning on this Marine's breakfast, Kyle led us into his camper where we sat and talked for a bit about the activity he had experienced in the apartment. A few steps led up to a concrete front porch that ran the width of the building. To the left were newly built wooden steps leading Kyle's apartment door on the far right end of the second floor. In the center of the first floor were the set of doors leading into the first floor. 

In addition to the overwhelming heaviness in the apartment and the scratches Kyle had incurred, there was also an instance where he had been descending the steps to the front porch and felt as if someone pushed him. Still, I wondered if this could be an angry human spirit. It's never good to jump to conclusions about the nature of a haunting until you've gathered evidence and given whatever it is a chance to speak. 

After sitting and discussing his experiences for 15 minutes or so, Kyle placed his hands on his knees and asked, "Well, should we get to it?" 

"Sure," Jeff responded and stood up from his chair. 

We followed Kyle out the camper door and down the shaky metal steps, which felt like they might give way under my weight. It was a reminder of my goal to start getting more exercise. 

The liftgate of the Bronco revealed a neatly stacked pile of toolboxes and bags. It wasn't the full arsenal this time, but certainly enough to get the job done. I stood to one side as Jeff pulled some of the equipment out of the bags, but my sight was drawn again to the front of the building and to its dark windows. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was standing just inside one of them, staring out at us. Glancing from window to window, I finally pinpointed the one from which I felt watched. To either side of the front doors was a large window, at least 4 feet wide and equally as tall. I would bet my life that something was standing in the one just to the left of the doors, watching us. Of course, these feelings that I get could simply be the product of an overactive imagination. After voicing these feelings enough times and then later finding some evidence to support their validity, I'd begun to feel that it wasn't a matter of imagination so much as the honing of my sixth sense. 

When Jeff handed me the digital voice recorder and one of my umpteen million flashlights, I tore my attention away from the window to receive them. As he shut the liftgate and we made our way up the front steps, though, I couldn't help but to take another look at the window. 

Who was it standing there watching us? I couldn't see anyone. I could only feel them. It felt like a male presence, but I could sense nothing else. Was it the angry presence that had scratched Kyle, standing there sizing us up and trying to decide what it could do to us? Or was it a lost spirit of someone who had died within the building on a frigid winter night after eating a half-rotten taco from the nearby Taco Bell? 

There was only one way to find out.

As twilight gives way to darkness, my eyes have grown weary and my fingers have begun to stiffen. It's time for a hot shower, an episode of Star Trek, and then bed. But if you liked reading the first part of this investigation series, be sure to return next week to read the second part, where we enter the building to discover what lurks inside.

The Foundations

People often ask how I got into investigating the paranormal. So perhaps this is where I should start this blog.

The answer is: It's in the blood.

That's it, summarized into a four-word sentence. So if you want to return to watching TV or working (like some of you should be doing), then you got your answer and can move along your merry way.

For those who like being bored out of their gourds by long, often unnecessarily detailed stories, here is a little something more to satisfy that masochistic desire...

As the youngest of two girls, I worshipped my father. And rightly so. He's a great man. "Now, I never went to college. But...." he will often say in his slow, southern drawl before revealing something that even the college-educated often do not comprehend. 

He was an extremely talented man, able to craft anything out of wood, to invent and engineer the most amazing things. He was a man of strict, Christian morals and values, despite being raised in a poor family with an alcoholic, brick-laying father with highly questionable morals. 

Daddy and I beside an ancestor's grave

As a young girl, I was like my father in so many ways. I was a tomboy, hanging out in my father's workshop, happy to be the son that he never had. I was raised around grease and sawdust, happy to be listening to the forlorn voice of Hank Williams, Sr., the depressing songs of Patsy Cline and the banjo-picking of Ricky Skaggs. I watched CHiPs and Nascar with Daddy because we loved to watch the wrecks. We went to the shooting range and became connoisseurs of barbecue sandwiches. He taught me to fly fish on the banks of the reservoir where my grandmother lived. 

Perhaps the most memorable thing about my father is when he took me along on his motorcycle rides--the kind where you get up at the crack of dawn, climb onto a Lazyboy recliner on two wheels, and spend the day cruising the back country roads without returning until dinnertime. We went in search of the heat of Summer, the sweet smell of Honeysuckle patches that we passed, long-forgotten graveyards, rolling green battlefields, and the broken and dilapidated, grey remnants of long-abandoned homes that were slowly being overtaken by nature.

We would marvel at some of these magnificent homes, and wonder why someone would ever abandon such a place. We would also wonder about what mysteries and secrets these homes would hold, and if spirits from their past still lingered inside, perhaps watching through broken windows as we passed. 

One of the many abandoned homes we encountered

When we weren't riding the motorcycle, my father kept the subject of the paranormal in my head by telling me stories of haunted places, U.F.O. sightings and abductions, and Bigfoot sightings that he'd read about. I would listen in wide-eyed wonder at the stories, and soon found that the paranormal was a fascination that would last well into my adulthood.

I wasn't your typical teenager. Instead of finding interest in things like friends, sports, social gatherings, or the latest TV shows, I was drawn to philosophy, theology, and researching subjects like the paranormal. I wanted to know the truth about life and about all of its mysteries. So, of course when a friend suggested that we go visit a place that was rumored to be haunted, I was eager to go along. 

Our outings gave me first-hand experience with spirits and other things that science could not explain. I can remember trekking through the woods on a bitterly-cold December night, hearing the crunching of footsteps in the fallen leaves beside me when no one was there to make them. I remember the red orb of light, hovering at about shoulder-height, that tried to conceal itself behind a tree while still getting a glimpse of us. And I remember an electric-blue flash of lightening inside the car, just in front of the rear-view mirror, as a friend and I drove past a Civil War battlefield cemetery. 

College brought more paranormal incidents. The girls on the hall in my dorm decided--for some ridiculous reason--to take an Ouija board to a nearby cemetery one night. When they returned, they brought something back with them that wasn't too nice. The brand-new dormitory had to be cleansed by a Catholic priest that Spring before any of us could rest at night. 

When I became a young adult, life dealt my a couple difficult hands, and I wasn't able to pursue the paranormal quite as much as I wanted to. However, in my late 30s, after a nasty separation from my ex, I decided to do something for myself. I sat down and Googled paranormal teams in my area. The first video that popped up was a YouTube video from Virginia Paranormal Investigations. And after watching the video, I decided that this is the team I wanted to join. I emailed them immediately and was lucky to soon be a part of the team. I haven't missed an investigation since, and am now living with the director, Jeff.

Jeff and I, investigating Fort Mifflin

It's been one hell of a ride, and this blog is about the experiences we have along the way. You never know what we are going to encounter next. So stay tuned...