Stalking Shadows (19 page)

Randy and I had no idea, nor did the museum, who all the occupants of the cabin were, over the years, and there’d been no paranormal activity reported, yet that seemed to make the adventure more exciting.

The cabin was so dark, we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. Even the dim light of the moon coming through the faded curtains did little to pierce the inky blackness that greeted us.

We turned on our UV flashlights, which emitted a soft purplish glow, and we could make out a bunk bed in the far corner of the small cabin and little else. We settled in on the floor and began an EVP session.

At first our questions were met with silence, but as we kept going, we could hear soft taps on the hand-hewn logs of the cabin. We knew there was nothing outside that could cause such noises, but the more we asked questions, the less of a response we got, so we moved on to another building.

We investigated throughout the night, and other than a few inexplicable noises, we didn’t receive anything else of note.

We concluded that most of the activity was in the mansion itself, and we plan on revisiting the mansion in the coming months.

As far as Black River Paranormal is concerned, this case is still open and is an ongoing investigation.

While we’re in touch with the museum personnel quite a bit during the year, they haven’t told us of any other paranormal activity occurring, but that’s not unusual. Generally, they save it up for when we are going there to do an investigation and lay it on us all at once—which works out just fine for us.

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Chapter 13

When Darkness Comes to Play

“It’s coming. Can you feel it?” I asked Randy, the founder of Black River Paranormal, who was standing beside me.

“I feel it.” Randy scanned the inky black basement of our client’s home with the video camera.

My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest, as I felt the dark energy come toward us with the power of a freight train.

“I just need it to get a little closer so I can be sure.” I took a couple of steps backward until I felt the cold cinder block wall of the basement pressed against my spine.

“Gotcha,” Randy whispered.

I shined the beam of my flashlight toward a small opening in the fieldstone wall opposite us. For a brief second, we saw the shadow of an entity peek at out at us before vanishing.

“Let’s get back upstairs. I’ve seen enough,” I said, working my way out of the tiny room toward the staircase that led out of the basement and to the light of day. Randy and I both collapsed on the grass when we reached the safety of the outdoors.

“Demonic?” Randy turned off his video camera and exhaled a sigh of resignation.

“Can’t say for sure, but it’s definitely a negative entity. Let’s go talk to the client.” I stood up and brushed the loose grass from my jeans.

Even before we pulled into the driveway of our client’s house, we both knew it would end up this way. Over the last couple years, Black River Paranormal had gained a reputation as being one of the only paranormal investigation teams in the area that would take on a case dealing with a dark entity. This was just another one to add to the ever-growing list.

Our client, Jennifer (not her real name), and her two teenage daughters lived in the mid-1800s house on a large tract of land out in the middle of nowhere. Jennifer contacted us because of an abundance of paranormal activity occurring in their home.

What sucked us in was the fact that her youngest daughter appeared to be the target of whatever dark entity had taken up residence in the basement.

There had been reports of people being pushed, scratched, and terrorized by this entity, and it was up to us to figure out how to get rid of it. In addition, the family reported seeing the apparition of a man in the barn, apparitions in Jennifer’s bedroom, and various apparitions roaming the property. Objects would be moved or thrown around the house, and the paranormal activity was escalating at an alarming rate.

During our various interviews with the client, we learned her ex-husband was deceased, and during his life had been prone to domestic violence. It was our theory that the domestic violence was the catalyst that may have drawn in a demonic entity, which then took up residence in the basement of the house. Not an unusual occurrence, but anytime a possible demonic entity is involved, it makes any situation that much more dangerous to the clients and to our team.

Alternatively, our client’s ex-husband could be the malevolent entity in the basement. Either way, our main goal was to protect the safety of our team and our client.

The only other option was that we were dealing with a particularly nasty poltergeist, or the activity was manifesting itself as a poltergeist, because there was a teenager in the house.

It’s been a long-standing theory in the paranormal community that oftentimes, if a teenager is present, poltergeist activity could occur. This is due to the fact that the teenager is going through many changes at this time in their life. Their hormones are raging and their emotions are running high. Because of all this energy swirling around the teenager, the teenager themselves could be attracting the activity, and not be aware of it at all.

We quickly dismissed this theory because of the EVPs we’d gotten, and the fact that some of the activity didn’t fit the pattern normally associated with a teenage-induced poltergeist.

Randy and I were at our client’s home that day to conduct a preliminary walk-through of the property, before bringing in the rest of the team for a full-scale investigation the following weekend.

The clients indicated they really didn’t mind the spirits being around the house, but the entity in the basement was too much for them to tolerate. Initially we felt that the violent activity, such as the scratching and pushing, could be attributed to the ex-husband. The energy I’d felt didn’t substantiate that theory, but we couldn’t as of yet rule out the possibility. The ex-husband had resided in the home, and there had been domestic violence present.

What really caught my attention was the feeling I got as I walked around the yard of the house. It felt as though something was pulling me toward the backyard of the home, which was comprised of acre upon acre of old, overgrown crop fields and treed areas, but I didn’t take the time to explore the area until we’d gathered the entire team the following weekend.

We arrived that weekend with the full team in tow, along with another paranormal investigation team we worked with on various cases.

We had plenty of daylight left, so the head of their team, Carrie, and I decided to walk around the vast landscape behind the house, while the teams were busy setting up the technical equipment—which could take a couple of hours.

We trudged through the tall grass and almost obscure trails for about an hour when we ran into the homeowner and one of her daughters, who were out walking the dog. My personal opinion is that she was keeping an eye on what we were doing, but I can’t say for sure.

“You know, there’s the foundation of an old building out here somewhere.” She took a long drag of her cigarette and blew smoke rings into the air.

“Really?” Carrie and I looked at each other.

“Yeah, one of the neighbors, who lived here forever, told us that back about twenty or thirty or so years ago, there used to be a satanic church on the property. I’ve only lived here for six years, so I wasn’t anywhere near this place at the time the cult was active,” Jennifer explained, not meeting our curious gazes.

“Which neighbor? Can we talk to them?” I asked.

“He passed away a few years ago,” Jennifer said. “The property has changed hands a lot since then.”

Carrie and I looked at each other knowingly. We’d heard rumors for years about a satanic cult that operated in this area back in the late 1960s through the late 1970s—perhaps even into the early 1980s.

While the existence of such a cult is pretty much common knowledge for anyone who lived in that area during the time the cult was active, it’s still very difficult to get anyone to talk about what happened back then, for fear of retribution by any cult members who may still be living in the area.

We’d looked for the church rumored to be the main hub of that activity off and on for years, but we had never found it. We were almost ready to chalk it up to urban legend, but too many people we’d talked to over the years had confirmed the existence of such a cult.

“Do you know where it is?” I asked.

“I honestly don’t remember, but I know it’s out here. From what I’ve heard, there was a fire out here before I bought the property and the church burned to the ground. All that remains is the stone foundation,” Jennifer told us. “Do you think that could have something to do with what is going on at my house?”

“It could,” Carrie admitted, not wanting to say much.

“We’re going to wander around a little more. We’ll meet you back at the house shortly,” I said and headed off into a clump of trees, with Carrie close on my heels.

“This could be way bigger than we thought,” Carrie mused as we wandered down a trail.

“Yeah, we’ve got to find that church. I think that could be what’s drawing all the activity to this place. But we’re running out of daylight, and we don’t want to be out here in the dark without any flashlights or other equipment,” I added.

Carrie nodded, and we both reluctantly turned around and headed back to the client’s house.

I cornered Randy by the cars, and out of the earshot of our client I told him what we’d discovered. Randy agreed with my theory that the negative energy from the old satanic church was only adding to our current problem, and that we didn’t have any choice but to move on and try to get rid of what was already here.

Both of us were pretty sure that in time, what we got rid of tonight would only rear its ugly head once again in the future, unless we found that church. However, with darkness falling, and the more immediate concerns of our client, we knew all hopes of finding the satanic church tonight was out of the question.

The members of both ghost hunting teams assembled inside the house and we all paired off, grabbed various pieces of equipment, and headed off in separate directions to investigate.

I took two team members and made a beeline for the barn. There’d been many reports of a male apparition there, along with a rather strange story.

According to reports, the previous owners hired a woman to paint a stallion on the barn while they were on vacation. Upon returning from their trip, there wasn’t a stallion painted on the barn, even though the painter had called them to tell them the job was complete.

They contacted the painter, who understandably was very confused as to what happened to the mural she’d painted. She then, in front of witnesses, repainted the stallion mural. The next morning, the mural had disappeared, and there were no signs that it had been painted over. If this story is true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, we still can’t explain what happened to the mural.

The barn itself was small, but adequate enough to hold a couple of horses and a small tack room. It’d fallen into a state of disrepair, and stood painted in faded, chipping, white paint, about a hundred feet from the house.

We opened the barn door and gingerly walked into the barn, testing every footstep to make sure the floor was secure, before proceeding into the interior of the barn.

Piles of old wood stood against the back wall, and an old workbench covered in dust and spiderwebs sat just inside the door, to the right. We scanned the room with our flashlights and noticed the entrance to the loft, right above the workbench. A flimsy excuse for a ladder leaned against the wall, granting access to the loft if we were brave enough to venture up the rickety ladder.

We positioned ourselves in a triangular pattern: I went to the far side of the barn; a team member went at an angle to me, on the left side of the barn; and the other team member stayed by the door. We began an EVP session, to see if any spirits wanted to communicate with us.

I could feel the presence of a male spirit as we worked, but I couldn’t pick up on exactly where he was and, other than a few shuffling sounds in the loft, we couldn’t make contact. We also couldn’t rule out that the noises we heard in the loft weren’t caused by an animal, such as a raccoon, or another one of the many critters known to inhabit the area.

As we walked out of the barn to head back into the house, I saw the spirit of a little girl standing with her hands folded in front of her, rocking back and forth pensively on her heels. She was wearing a cute little pink dress that fell mid-calf, with ruffles around the neck and wrists. She was dressed in a style from an era long forgotten. Her blond hair was braided on each side and lay over her shoulders.

Knowing I was the only one who could see her, I left the group and walked over to her.

“Well, hello. What’s your name?” I asked.

“Katherine. Are you here to help us?” she asked.

“Yes, honey. What do you need help with?” I knelt down so I was eye level with the little ghost.

“We want to leave, but the bad man won’t let us,” she said.

“Who’s here with you?” I looked around but didn’t see any other spirits.