Stalking Shadows (20 page)

“My mommy and daddy and my brother, Jacob—he’s three,” Katherine said.

“I see. What bad man won’t let you leave?” I asked.

“He lives down there,” Katherine pointed to the outside door to the basement.

“Yes, I know of this man. I’ll take care of it so you and your family can leave,” I promised. “Why is your whole family here?”

“We got the fever. My brother died, then my daddy, then me and Mommy.” Katherine wiped a phantom tear from her eye.

Her information told me that she lived on this property in the late 1880s or the early 1900s, as those were the times plagues of scarlet fever ravaged the population in the area.

“That was a long time ago,” I told her. “Why didn’t you all leave before the bad man came?”

“We did. But my brother and I came back here a lot so we could play in the fields. Mommy and Daddy came with us to keep an eye on us,” Katherine explained.

“I see. So when you came back the last time the bad man was here, and you couldn’t leave, right?” I asked.

“Exactly!” Katherine smiled. “You are going to help us, right?”

“Yes, I will. But you have to promise to stay hidden with your family until it’s time for you to go, okay?”

“Okay. We’ll stay in the barn. The bad man doesn’t come out there a lot.”

“Good girl. You run along now. See you later.” I smiled as the cute little spirit disappeared as she skipped over to the barn.

I rejoined the team in the house and told them about my encounter with Katherine. We all realized the stakes had just been raised—we had to get rid of the dark entity in the basement—not just for our client’s sake, but for the well-being of the family of ghosts that were being held here, against their will.

Pushing forward, Randy, the client, and I made our way upstairs to the client’s bedroom. She’d reported hearing laughter coming from the attic area that she was using as a closet, as well as seeing the ghost of her deceased brother-in-law, Michael.

She’d heard the ghost in the closet laugh a few times, but the presence of her brother-in-law was really disturbing her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted or why he was there.

Armed with this information, Randy began to video tape, while I walked around the room trying to get a sense of the energy. It didn’t take long to pick up on the ghost of Michael, because he came forward almost immediately.

He indicated telepathically that he was there to protect our client and her daughters from the entity in the basement. Michael went on to say that the entity in the basement was bad, and that it was responsible for the violent physical attacks on our client and her youngest daughter. While he didn’t believe the basement phantom was his brother, he wasn’t positive.

I asked him if the dark entity in the basement was a demon, and he responded that he didn’t know—he’d never seen it. He’d tried several times to make it leave, but he didn’t have any success, as the phantom in the basement was much more powerful than himself.

Michael also told me that he was now trapped here by the entity in the basement. He’d started out trying to make sure our client and her girls were safe in case the ghost of her deceased husband showed up, because he knew how violent his brother had been in life and was fearful of what harm his brother could cause in death. He never expected to run across something like what lived in the basement, but didn’t know if it was his brother or not—although he doubted it.

When asked about the ghost in the closet, which would laugh at his sister-in-law, he admitted that it was him and said he meant no harm; he was just trying to let her know he was here. He would hang out in the closet to give her some privacy.

After promising to help him, Randy and I went back downstairs to where we’d set up our command center. I paired off with a couple of our female investigators and decided to investigate the youngest daughter’s bedroom, where a lot of the activity seemed to take place.

When we first entered the bedroom, it was deathly quiet and almost devoid of energy. This caught our attention because the bedroom was on the first floor and with all the investigators running around the property, the bedroom should have been noisy. Yet it felt as if we just entered some kind of dark, empty abyss.

We shined our flashlights around the room, and I noticed some pill bottles on the vanity. Closer inspection revealed they were antidepressants. I left my teammates to investigate, and went out to the living room to ask our client about this. She confirmed that her daughter had been very depressed in the last year and was taking the medication; this was a valuable clue.

My research and my own experience has been that a depressed teenager who lives in the home where paranormal activity is occurring, could draw in negative entities.

The teenager is not doing this consciously of course, but the energy of a teenager, coupled with the fact that they are emitting negative energy in the form of depression, drug or alcohol abuse, etc., can feed some type of entities and invite them into the home.

Demons, poltergeists, and all other types of entities need energy to manifest or cause paranormal activity on Earth. Thus they will “feed” off of any energy source available—and what better source of energy than a teenager.

This could be what drew the entity in the basement to our client’s home, and explain why it seemed to focus its attention on the youngest daughter. At that moment, I became more determined than ever to make sure that whatever had taken up residence in their basement was gone before we left that night.

I rejoined my teammates in the bedroom. The energy felt different this time; the air felt charged with electricity, and my teammates were staring intently into the thermal camera.

“There’s a dark orb showing up on the thermal camera, but it’s not visible to the naked eye. It appears to be casually moving around the bed,” they told me.

I looked at the screen of the thermal camera and instantly saw the black orb in question. It wasn’t moving fast, just kind of hanging around.

“Let’s see if it’s intelligent.” I sat on the edge of the bed and held out my hand. “Watch the screen and tell me where it is about every three seconds.”

My teammates positioned the camera to where they could see me and the orb in the small screen.

“We know you’re here. We can see you in the device that one of our investigators is holding in her hand,” I told the orb. “Can you come into my hand?”

“It’s moving toward you. It’s at the end of the bed,” Katy, our investigator, told me.

“No one’s here to hurt you. Just come into my hand and make contact,” I said.

“It’s coming closer to you. It’s right over your hand, by about two feet,” Katy reported.

“Just a little bit more,” I urged.

“It’s lowering itself down to your hand,” Katy said. “It’s getting closer … closer … bingo!”

Just as Katy spoke, I felt something cold rest in my cupped hand.

“Thank you,” I told the orb. “Can you tell me who you are and why you’re here?”

As soon as I spoke I felt the coldness leave and the room become void of energy once again.

“It just vanished,” Katy said, turning slowly around and scanning the room with the thermal camera for any sign of the black orb. “I didn’t see it leave your hand and go anywhere, it just disappeared.”

“Apparently it didn’t want to engage,” I shrugged as I rose off the bed. “But at least we know it was an intelligent entity. If I had to guess, I’d say it was whatever is living in the basement.”

My teammates nodded in agreement, and we went to rejoin the team at the command center in the kitchen.

Randy approached me as I entered the kitchen area. “Let’s go talk outside,” he whispered.

I followed him outside. We walked out into the yard and settled ourselves on the picnic table.

“What’s going on?” I asked, twisting open a bottle of water and taking a long drink.

“Some of the investigators have reported seeing a dark shadow down in the basement. It seems to hang around the old fieldstone wall, where we saw it during our preliminary investigation. The investigators have also reported feeling that the energy down there is heavy and dark. One team said something growled at them while they were in the small room at the bottom of the basement stairs.”

“Yeah, I think it’s time to make whatever is down there leave,” I said. “Gather the team in the basement while I get what I need out of my car.” I went out to my Jeep and retrieved my ghost hunting kit. A few minutes later, I joined the team and the client in the basement.

The basement of our client’s house is only accessible from the outside of the house; it was probably used as a root cellar when the house was originally built. It’s divided into three spaces: a small room across from the stairs; a long room to the left of the stairs; and then another alcove off that room. The small room and the long room are divided by a very old fieldstone wall.

Our client told us there was a rumor that someone was buried in the fieldstone wall. While I doubted that, at this point nothing would surprise me, given the type of activity the client was experiencing.

“Okay, I want everyone to stand close together in this area,” I pointed to a large space just at the entrance to the alcove. “I’m going to put a circle of salt around you. This is to protect you from whatever negative entity is down here. No matter what happens, you cannot leave the circle. Understand?”

They all nodded in agreement and gathered together in the place I’d indicated. I retrieved a box of sea salt from my ghost hunting kit and began to enclose them in the circle. Sea salt is known in the paranormal world as a means of protection. It’s believed that no type of negative entity can cross a line of salt.

I use sea salt all the time when ghost hunting, because when I’m trying to get rid of a dark entity I need that entity to come to me and not to anyone else. Dark entities are unpredictable and can be extremely violent, especially when someone is trying to get rid of them. I make them come after me, because I don’t want to have to worry about anyone else present falling under attack. If the dark entity comes after me, I know how to handle it.

While I was doing that, Randy was turning on the ghost box to capture any EVPs during the ritual. A ghost box scans radio frequencies and it’s believed that a ghost, spirit, or other type of entity can manipulate the frequencies to form words. We’ve used it in the past, with great success.

When I finished with the circle of salt, I started to walk into the alcove. Just as I walked by the ghost box, it said, “You’re going to die.” There was an audible gasp from the people in the circle.

“Not tonight,” I responded, looking down at the ghost box.

I continued into the alcove and opened up my kit. I pulled out a lighter and a sage smudge stick and lit it—blowing out the flame, so there was only smoke. Then I grabbed my bottle of holy water. I poured some of the holy water onto the floor at the entrance of the alcove, hoping it would prevent the entity from escaping to another part of the house. As I did that, I asked God to protect all of those present from the dark entity that had invaded this space.

To tell the truth, I really wasn’t happy with the situation. I wasn’t sure if I was dealing with a malevolent human spirit or some type of inhuman entity, such as a demon. Plus, I was about to break my golden rule of ghost hunting: If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

However, I felt I didn’t have any other choice. There was too much riding on my getting rid of this being, not just for the safety of the family, but to allow the other spirits trapped here to move on and cross over to the other side.

Satisfied that everything was ready, I turned my attention to the dark entity. I could feel its energy building up in the corner of the alcove. The air felt dark and heavy, and in my mind’s eye I saw a dark creature or spirit—I wasn’t sure which, huddled up in the corner. I knew it was just sitting there waiting, sizing up its competition—or prey—depending on your point of view, I suppose. The tension and apprehension in the air was almost palpable.

With the smudge stick in hand, I began to walk around the area, to begin the purification and cleansing process. As I walked, I asked God to guide this wayward entity to where it belonged, and to clean the space of negative energy and replace it with His divine white light. After this, I turned my full attention to the entity.

“Okay. Here’s how it’s going to go,” I began. “Either you’re going to leave on your own or I’m going to force you out. The choice is yours.”

Just as I finished saying that, a strong wall of energy came rushing toward me, and before I could get out of the way, it hit me full force and pushed me against the cement wall.

One of the investigators happened to be taking photographs at the time and, upon review, we saw a gray mist slamming against me.

“I see you’ve made your choice,” I said glibly, as I recovered from the blow and walked back to the middle of the room.

I set the smudge stick on an upside-down pail on the floor in the corner of the alcove. It was right by where the entity retreated after attacking, so I figured the smudge stick might help keep it in its place, and not attack again.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a piece of paper with a powerful spiritual warfare prayer printed on it, and grabbed my bottle of holy water.