Gamely, the five of us trooped upstairs. This place was buzzing, and we all felt a keen sense of anticipation.
The children’s bedroom was surprisingly large, made all the more so by the complete lack of furniture. It was carpeted, and the floor was comfortable enough to sit on. Jason, Linda, Randy, Robbin, and I each pulled up our own bit of floor and made ourselves comfortable. We placed a K-II, an Ovilus, and a digital voice recorder in the center of the room.
Then we killed the lights.
“Did anybody die in the house?” Linda asked.
MOMMY. UPSTAIRS. MOMMY. CLOSET. BEWARE. TRAGIC. DADDY. VERY. HORRIBLE. MOMMY. CHILDREN.
I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing: coincidental, much?
We were, quite frankly, amazed by the words that were coming through the Ovilus. If the story regarding the murder-suicide in the house were true, then the parallels were uncanny.
I was curious about the syntax, however, particularly TRAGIC. DADDY. VERY. HORRIBLE. MOMMY. One could potentially read it as “tragic daddy, very horrible mommy.” It really wasn’t clear either way. When I raised this concern, Linda asked, “Who’s the bad person here?”
DEMON.
Now, this is a contentious subject in the field of paranormal research, and much of it depends upon your personal worldview and belief system. At one end of the spectrum, you have those who believe in the existence of demonic entities as they are described in the various holy books and faith-based literature; at the other, there are those who contend that no such thing exists, and that a belief in the demonic belongs back in the Dark Ages. Personally, I’m reserving judgment. It is not inconceivable to me that there might be such things as inhuman entities, a form of life energy that has never inhabited a human body (or a physical body of any kind, if some of the reports are correct). Whatever you choose to label it is entirely down to the individual.
It was at this point that Linda, who had been relaxing in the prone position, suddenly gave a little cry of surprise. Sitting up, she asked for the lights to be turned on. When we did, we are all surprised to find that there was a large wet spot, soaking the hem of her shirt and the top of her jeans.
At first, we seriously wondered whether she had…uh, wet herself. But no, this was all on her right side, far too lateral to be explained by a bladder movement. Sweat, then? Except for the fact that sweat usually begins to accumulate in the folds of the skin. Linda had none there. I got down on my hands and knees, and began to painstakingly check the carpet – after all, we reasoned, perhaps the homeowner had recently had the carpets cleaned (we would find out later that he hadn’t) and they were still damp…
…except for the fact that nobody else had wet spots on them.
The seemingly random appearance of water is a common feature of poltergeist-type hauntings, and is well-documented in the psychic research literature. It also fascinated me that in a case where two drownings were supposedly involved, we had an inexplicable episode of water turning up without cause. Once again, my willingness to call this a coincidence was stretched beyond its breaking point.
Linda ducked into the bathroom along with her husband for a closer inspection. They found that her skin wasn’t wet at all…the water was confined to her clothing.
The night was wearing on, and the team headed downstairs for a break and to talk things over. We conducted further EVP and Ovilus sessions (I’ll be writing about those when this case is covered in my sequel to In Search of the Paranormal) and were rather excited when the sound of footsteps could be heard emanating from the basement.
It was still dark when we left in the early hours of the morning, and I felt that the investigation had raised more questions than answers. One night at the town house simply wouldn’t cut it.
Fortunately, as I write these words and prepare to post them to the blog, I am already thinking ahead to this evening. My team and I are gong back to the town home for round 2.
I wonder what level of activity we’ll see tonight…
