Our Haunted Lives

True Life Ghost Encounters

By

Jeff Belanger

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments....................................................................iiIntroduction...........................................................................ivChapter 1: Haunted Homes.......................................................1Chapter 2: Ghosts We Know....................................................87Chapter 3: Ghosts on the Job................................................146Chapter 4: Haunted Hotels and Inns.......................................179Chapter 5: Near-Death Experience.........................................201Chapter 6: While You Were Sleeping.......................................211Chapter 7: Ghost Hunting.....................................................231Chapter 8: Ghosts Out and About...........................................260Afterword............................................................................277About the Author.................................................................278Other Books by Jeff Belanger.................................................279Back Cover Material..............................................................281Index.................................................................................283

For my sister,Susan,

who is always good at talking to people.

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Acknowledgments

This book simply would not exist without the peoplewho agreed to be interviewed for it. To those whoshared their very personal and profound experiences,I thank you for the trust you placed in me. And Ithank you for standing up and furthering the discus-sion of the supernatural.

I’d like to thank author Studs Terkel for the inspirationon how to document people’s life experiences andhow to present them in book form. Terkel is a masterof drawing out the story from the people he inter-views, and I’m a big fan of his work.

Thank you to the all of the people who helped menetwork with and contact witnesses of ghostlyphenomena, especially Stephen Wagner from Paranormal.About.com

New Page Books has been very supportive of my work,and I appreciate the continued faith they have in me.Thank you to my editor, Christopher Carolei, forsharing the vision of how this book should cometogether, and thanks Michael Pye, Laurie Kelly-Pye,and Linda Rienecker for all that you do.

To my wife, Megan, who puts up with all of theoddities that come with having a job like mine. Herpride in me and her support of my writing continually

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pushes me to work harder and do better. (I guessafter all of these years, I’m still trying to impressher.)

And thank you to the Ghostvillagers of the world. Thepeople who have visited and contributed to myWebsite, www.ghostvillage.com, have always inspiredme. I appreciate their support and the globalcommunity they have created.

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Introduction

When I started writing about ghosts and the supernat-ural, I began with some of the most famous hauntedplaces. The Tower of London, the White House, ArcherAvenue in Chicago, and Gettysburg were all certainlyhigh on my “supernatural radar.” I was intrigued bythe history, stirred by the legends, but completelygripped by the first-hand accounts I heard from themany witnesses of supernatural events at theserenowned haunts.

Through the years, I’ve spoken with many hundredsof people who have shared their very personal andprofound spiritual experiences with me—from encoun-ters with strange cold spots, unexplained knocks,disembodied voices, even detailed conversations withrelatives who have passed on. I have heard convictionin the voices that told me about their brush with theother side, and I’ve seen the wonder that returns tothe witness’s eyes as they recount the incredibleevents they’ve experienced.

For centuries, ghost experiences were told and retoldby oral tradition. Even today—in a world that chroni-cles almost every event no matter how mundane viaphotograph, video, audio, and/or written word—detailsof ghostly encounters are still spread mainly by word-of-mouth. But that trend is changing. Today, beliefin the existence of ghostly phenomena is on the rise,

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and some people are willing to come forward andshare their own stories on television programs, radiocall-in shows, and Internet sites. These people arequickly finding they aren’t alone.

Our Haunted Lives is all about the experience, thatlife-altering event that proves—at least to the wit-ness—that there is indeed life beyond death. This isa collection of my very spirited conversations withpeople who have experienced ghosts. Some of theencounters are frightening, some are touching, andsome are simply quirky—it seems the other side alsohas a sense of humor.

These accounts are presented in the words of theeyewitnesses. Every effort was made to preserve thenature, nuances, and dialogue of each interview, be-cause I want you to know these people. Understandthat no one was placed on the hot seat with a lonespotlight shining on them. These are conversations.

You’ll notice that some of the grammar may not beperfect. We ask that you forgive both the author andeditor, but this is how people talk. It doesn’t makethem ignorant or even uneducated; we simply don’tspeak the way we write. If you were going to an im-portant job interview, you would likely wear your bestbusiness attire, you’d sit with your back straight, andyou’d carefully answer each question in an articulatemanner. Though this is putting on your best face and

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placing your best foot forward, is it the real you?No, it’s the polished and careful you. The real youis that person on the couch in sweatpants on a rainySaturday morning. And if we could stay with thecouch analogy for just a minute longer, now imaginehow that person in sweats speaks. Imagine you hada friend come over—the kind of friend you knowwell enough that you don’t have to change out ofyour sweatpants for. Your dialogue with that personwould be relaxed. Some English snobs may say“lazy,” but I would call it “intimate.” And thoughWilliam Strunk and E.B. White might have cringedwhile reading an exact transcript of two friendstalking, the reality is that the language works.Information and meaning are shared and under-stood, and the content is genuine. There’s beautyin that.

Writing on the supernatural often falls victim tosensationalism. One objective with Our HauntedLives was to deliver each witness’s account with asfew distractions as possible and spotlight these realpeople who experienced something profound. Thisis what happened, in their own words, just as theywould tell it to a close friend. I tried to make theinterviews as informal as possible. I wanted peoplecomfortable—in their sweatpants, if you will. Mygoal in presenting each interview was simply to stayout of the way of their experiences and to not judgeor even comment on what was being said. After all,

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I wasn’t there. I can’t prove nor disprove somethingI didn’t personally witness.

One thing I’ve noticed throughout the years, andespecially while working on this book, is that it is acathartic release for witnesses when they discusstheir experiences. “The truth will set you free,” asthe Bible says in John 8:32. I could hear more thanone sigh of relief as people began to tell theirstories. There was laughter at times, sometimesfrom the sheer discomfort of saying something thatmay be construed as strange or impossible. In othercases, the laughter and smiles were genuine inreflecting on an event or period in one’s life.Sometimes there were tears. Not only were theseexperiences personal, but they often involved thedeath of a loved one—an incident that was some-times relived in relaying a series of events.

A perfectly valid question to ask is, “How do I knowthese people are telling the truth?” A good ques-tion—and a question with a fuzzy answer at best.What is truth? That’s a question philosophers havebeen trying to answer for centuries. In one regard,truth is relative. Speak to any devoutly religiousperson about what truth is, and he or she will likelyquote from one of his or her religious texts. He orshe may believe the text and its teachings to betruth. But is it universal truth? No, because thereare a great many belief systems on our tiny planet,

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and so far, none of them has been able to capture100 percent of the marketshare of believers. One truthdoesn’t speak to all people.

Do you trust your own senses? Most of us do. Andthe people interviewed in this book do as well. Someused to say, “I won’t believe it unless I see it,” andsee it they did. There was truth and conviction in theretelling.

One aspect of the ghost experience that has captivat-ed me more than any other is that they cross all geo-graphic boundaries. They’re in religious texts andhistory books, and there’s a term for “ghost” in everylanguage. Ghosts are a sign of something else beingout there beyond our traditional understanding of theworld. They force us to question our own mortalityand to explore our own deeper understanding ofspirituality.

You’ll notice that some of the people being interviewedhad their experiences many decades ago. You mayask if their memory can be trusted. You may be sur-prised at the great detail in which these witnessesrecall their ghost encounters. Do you remember whatyou got for a present on your fifth birthday? Probablynot. But do you remember your child being born? Thedeath of a loved one? Your wedding day? These areprofound events, and they’ve been burned into yourlong-term memory. The ghost encounter is no differ-

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ent. Whether 5 years or 50 years have gone by, theexperience is still vivid.

As people shared their stories with me, I tried to askthe questions you might have asked regarding thedetails of the event, and how it may have changedor touched their lives. You’re invited to sit in on theseconversations.

In the pages that follow, I’d like you to meet somegood people. Some are young, some are much older.They’re your sisters, your brothers, your neighbors,and your friends. In many ways, they’re us, too.

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Chapter 1

Haunted Homes

Image 1.1

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Our home is our castle, the place we (hopefully) feelthe safest, and it’s where we can be ourselves. Afterliving in a house, apartment, or dormitory for evena short period of time, we quickly get used to thevarious noises the building makes, the neighborswho come and go at various hours, or the way theheater makes the wall tick, tick, tick. We also knowthe way the rooms in our homes feel. So whensomething strange is going on, many times thehomeowner or tenant is the person who notices first.Because we get acclimated to a building, if some-thing is off, even by a little bit, we can sense it.

Haunted homes are often frightening because peopleare dealing with an intruder—sometimes an intruderwho can’t be seen, or in more profound hauntingcases, it’s an intruder who can be seen, but one whocan’t be touched, let alone handcuffed.

There’s a myriad of reasons why a ghost or spiritmay stick around a home. Perhaps the ghost issimply a psychic impression left in the building—onethat some people are able to tune in to. Anothertheory is that the spirit may not realize they aredead, and so they simply hang around where theywere most comfortable. On the darker side of thesupernatural, some speculate that houses or peoplemight be plagued with demons or other evil forcesthat are trying to torment and drive them away. Nomatter the cause, when someone is dealing with a

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haunting in his or her home, it can be both frustrat-ing and frightening.

George Lutz Amityville, New YorkAutumn 1975On Wednesday, November 14, 1974, around 3a.m.,23-year-old Ronald “Butch” DeFeo, Jr., sat awake inhis bedroom at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, NewYork. DeFeo, wrought with emotional and drugproblems, sat seething as his mother, father, twobrothers, and two sisters all lay sleeping in theirbeds in the silence of that cold autumn night. Butchreached for a .35-caliber Marlin rifle he kept hidden,and he walked out of his room toward the bedroomwhere his parents were sleeping. He slipped in,aimed the rifle at his father first, and fired twice.Next he shot his mother twice, leaving both parentsin pools of blood. Over the next several minutes, hesystematically executed every member of his family,sealing his name in the halls of infamy.

One might ask, “Who would ever want to live in ahouse where such an atrocity happened?” It’s aneasy question to ask when you’re not currently tryingto buy a house, but what if you needed a home foryour family, you’ve already looked at dozens ofhouses, and you find a wonderful home for a signifi-cantly undervalued price? What if it’s been a year

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since the brutal murder, and you and your familyagree that “houses don’t have memories”?

The Amityville house is one of the most famoushaunting cases in the world. Ronald DeFeo’s brutal-ity captivated Americans for a brief moment, butmass murderers are soon forgotten as anothertwisted monster comes along, ups the ante, andmakes us all forget about the last one. But wedidn’t forget the house. 112 Ocean Avenue stillcaptivates us—but not so much because of whatRonald DeFeo did there, but because of the super-natural, and by some accounts, demonic eventsthat George Lutz and his family went through for28 days after they moved in.

George and Kathy Lutz were married in July of1975. Both had been married before, and Kathyhad children from her previous marriage. Theydecided to sell both of their houses and combinehouseholds. Kathy’s house sold first, so the Lutzesall packed into George’s Long Island home untilthey could find something suitable for all of them.What George Lutz experienced in the autumn of1975 has profoundly affected the rest of his life.

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How long did it take to find a newhome after you and Kathy movedin together?We looked at about 50 homes over the monthsthat we decided to combine the households. Wehad actually gone to contract on another homeabout a month before we found the Amityvillehouse. That one was on the water, it was in Linden-hurst, and it had a boathouse. It was smaller thanthis house, it needed repairs that the sellers werenot willing to negotiate with—the boathouse neededdredging to get the boat in, the roof needed replac-ing, and that fell through. When that fell apart wejust kept looking. We found the Amityville house,if I recall correctly, from an ad in the paper. Wefound a Realtor and she said, “Look, I want toshow you this house—this is how the other half ofAmityville looks”—because we were looking every-where we could. I had a boat and I had dockagefees, and when you added that into the mortgageswe had on both houses, it gave us an idea of howmuch we were spending then. We felt that we couldcombine the homes, get something on the water,and have our own boathouse and not spend allthat time traveling back and forth to theboathouse.

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So the Realtor showed us the house. When sheshowed it to us she said before we went, she said,“I don’t know if I should tell you now or afteryou’ve seen the house, but this was the house thatthe DeFeo murders took place in.” We kind oflooked at each other like, “I’m not sure what you’retalking about.” And then she reminded us aboutRonald DeFeo having killed his whole family. Thathad been in the newspapers about a year before.If I recall correctly, this was sometime maybe lateAugust or September, some place in there. We sawthe house and as soon as Kathy walked in she juststarted smiling. This was the best one that she hadseen so far in terms of what she liked and what wewere looking for. As I remember now, it was abright sunny day, we had the kids with us, wewalked through it, and we all really fell in love withit.

We went home and talked about it for days. Wetalked about the price, how this could possiblywork, what kind of mortgage we would need, whatkind of payments we were looking at, the taxes,insurance costs—all of the different things you dowhen you decide to buy a house. And we spent alot of time with the children individually andtogether talking about whether they would want tolive in that house.

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Did the children have any concernsat all?In the first movie that was done about this, JamesBrolin says something to the effect of, “houses don’thave memories.” And I think that’s the way wethought, without a doubt. It never occurred to usthat it would be uninhabitable. We had concern forthe kids—there’s going to be some notoriety aboutthis, and we were concerned about them. You don’tjust force your kids to move into a place like this,that isn’t how we did things. But they had noreservations, they had no problems and we wentback at least two more times. We drove around thetown a little bit, around the neighborhood, and wespent more time looking through the house. Even-tually we made an offer.

I don’t remember the specifics because it’s been along time, but I’m pretty sure they were lookingfor $90,000 and we offered $80,000 and they tookit. One way to describe this is that the house wasprobably worth somewhere around $110,000. Theyhadn’t been able to sell it since they had put it upfor sale about a year earlier and the estate waswilling to bargain about it. So we made an offer of$80,000 and we went and got a mortgage from thefirst bank we went to, and the mortgage was$60,000. We had more than enough cash to closeon the difference—from the two sales of our houses.

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We packed up our stuff and the moving date was set.

We closed on the house the day of the move. Myhouse was sold and we had no place to go other thanthere—everything was in trucks, and on trailers, andin vans and we had friends helping us move. We wentinto the title company and we met our lawyer andtheir lawyer there, and we do up all of the docu-ments. We got down to the house and we find wedidn’t have the key. So we had to go find the realtorand get a key. Other than that, the only other thingthat went wrong that comes to mind is that when Itold a friend of mine who I built motorcycles with androde with what house we were buying, he absolutelyinsisted I get the house blessed. He was such a goodfriend and I had never seen him do this kind of thingor say this kind of thing before. So I complied.

Did you have someone specific inmind to bless the house?I asked Kathy about it because I wasn’t Catholic. Sheexplained to me that you get a priest to come outand he blesses the house for you. I said, “Okay, ifthat’s what Jimmy wants, that’s what we’ll do.”

A year and a half before, I had been married, andthat ended up in a divorce and then in annulmentproceedings. I was invited down to the diocesanoffices in Rockville Center to meet with an official of

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the diocese. His name was Father Ralph Pecoraro.“Father Ray” we called him. He spent time with meto explain the process—I was a Methodist, so thiswas new and foreign to me at the time. We struckup a friendship, and from time to time we would talk,which was really strange for me. I was a biker, Iwasn’t a Catholic, but something about this guy madehim different than most people you meet. He wasmore than just special; he was worth spending timewith. He would take my calls and I would take his.It wasn’t like there was a lot of this, but we stayedin touch. I called him because he was the only priestI could think of. I called him and said, “Would youcome out and bless the house? We bought this house,and Kathy would like this done, and it’s beensuggested that we do this.” He said, “Sure, I’d beglad to.”

I had no idea he was not a parish priest, I had noidea that he was an ecclesiastical judge for thetribunal there, that he had an STL [Licentiate inSacred Theology] degree, which is the equivalent ofa law degree, that he spoke so many languages, orany number of other things about him. He was justsomebody that I liked. I asked him and he said,“Sure, I’d be glad to,” and he showed up shortly afterwe got the key and were in the process of movingin. I waved, he waved, and he went on in the houseand went about blessing it.

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When he was done, I tried to pay him and he wouldn’ttake money. He said, “You don’t charge for this, andyou don’t charge friends for this.” I thought that wasa very kind thing to say, and then he said, “You know,I felt something really strange in that one upstairsbedroom,” and he described the bedroom. And wesaid that’s what we were going to use as a sewingroom, we’re not going to use it as a bedroom. Hesaid, “That’s good, as long as no one sleeps in there,that’s fine.” And that’s all he said and he left.

So that was move-in day, and that’s the priestleaving.

Were there any problems that firstnight?I couldn’t get warm, but that was probably fromworking so much outside. As we unloaded stuff, I tookthe cardboard boxes and put them in the fireplaceand burned them. And I made an intense enough firethat I blew out the fireproof glass. They were prettysurprised when I finally got another piece for it. Whatwas really interesting was that I had to go way outto the other end of Long Island to get a piece of thisglass specifically cut. It wasn’t like you go down tothe hardware store and get one of these. And theysaid, “How did you ever do this?” I said it was apretty intense fire, but I never thought this wouldhappen. It actually blew out and shattered.

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At what point do you start to noticethat something doesn’t seem right inthe house?There were a few things when you look back. Therewere so many different things that when I look backat it, and when I try to describe it, what happens foryou is that you start to question your own thoughts,you question what’s going on, and you don’t have theanswers.

We found there were cold spots. There was one inthe stairway, there was one in the basement, andthere was one out in the boathouse. We would walkthrough the house and they would be there. The onein the boathouse was pretty solid, you’d turn aroundand there it was. The one in the basement, as I recall,wasn’t always there. There would be times when youwere looking for it and it wouldn’t be there. As timegoes on, you start to wonder what these things are,where is this draft coming from? You start to noticethat there is a deadness of sound. You would walkinto the living room and you would walk out to thefront porch, which was a sunroom all enclosed, itfaced the street, and you would see cars go past butyou wouldn’t hear them. And that was pretty weird.

You know how sometimes when there’s been a lot ofyelling in the room, the resonance changes—you know,

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how your voice sounds? The living room alwayssounded that way. It was, like, dead. But you don’tnotice that right away. It just sticks with you after awhile.

I’d be lying in bed and I’d hear the front door slamshut. It’s an unmistakable sound in that house. Youabsolutely knew that was the front door. I’d godownstairs and the dog would be asleep at the doorand nothing would be disturbed, it would still belocked. So you start questioning yourself that way.

Were other people in the familyhearing the door, too?I don’t think so when I think back about it. Therewere a number of times I would think a clock radioor something went off downstairs. I heard what I canonly term as a marching band tuning up, and at onetime it had sounded like they had rolled up the carpetthere were so many footsteps down there. So muchnoise. And you go running downstairs to see what itis or what caused this, and you get to the landinghalfway down and there’s nothing, and the dog wouldbe asleep. And he was a young black lab and they’rehyper—they just don’t sleep through stuff, they wakeup.

At different times I can still remember looking at himsaying, “Some watchdog you’re turning out to be.”

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[Laughs.] His name was Harry. And Harry lived for anumber of years out in California and eventually inArizona. He was a really cool dog.

So was this thing kind of singling youout in the house?No, because one of the things that happens with thisstuff is that you think it’s all about you. You think it’sall going on just for you, and Kathy and I had sucha good relationship that we were able to openlydiscuss stuff without worrying what the other wouldthink. That’s one of those things ... when you findthat you keep it if you can. So we would try tocommunicate some of this stuff. I think that was areally good part of survival for this and for gettingout of there eventually.

Kathy turned into an old woman there. She would feelsomeone come up behind her and embrace her. Shewould smell this perfume that was, forgive theexpression, “old lady” perfume. She would feelembraced, and it would be comforting. And she wouldexplain that, and that’s chilling. That’s not somethingthat she had ever gone through before. When sheturned into an old woman, she didn’t just age a little,she aged a lot. She turned into someone completelydifferent physically than I had ever thought waspossible. Her mother saw this, and years later wewere asked if we would do lie detector tests, and that

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was certainly one of the questions we wanted cov-ered and had put on the test. This happened evenafter we moved out of the house, this also happenedat her mom’s house.

And this was all in the span of just afew weeks?Yes.

Was there indeed a hidden room inthe basement?I was at work, and Kathy called me and said thatshe had just found this room, it was painted red,and behind the bookcase. She was working in thebasement and was putting things away in the livingroom, and she went to see if this bookcase wasmovable. I guess she had gone to put things on itand it had moved and behind it was this—I don’tknow how to describe it other than as a room. It’sa space—you had to crouch down to get in there.This was under the stairs in the basement and itwas all painted red. It was hidden behind thisbookcase. It was never shown to us when we sawthe house.

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Was the bookcase there from theDeFeos?As far as we know. It was there when we took pos-session of the house—forgive that expression. Soshe called me about this and eventually we managedto find the house plans—the as-builts for the house.The district attorney still had them, and we wentand got them and this place, this area, this room,did not show up there.

How big of a space are we talking?Could you get inside?Oh yes, you could fit two very friendly people maybe,sitting down. The fact that it was painted red, thefact that it had odors coming out of it—and the odorsweren’t always there. And there was no pipe accessfor sewers or anything like that. We took Harry downthere and he just wouldn’t go in, he backed away.It’s the only time I can recall him ever coweringfrom something. That was just one of those discov-eries—one of those things in the first few weeks aftermoving in.

Our daughter, Missy, you’d walk past her room andshe would be talking, and singing, and playing inher room and happy as anything. She’d walk out ofthe room and stop singing. She’d go back in the

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room and start singing again. She asked her momat one point, “Do angels talk?” Another time shestarted talking about this angel like it was a friendof hers, and it had a name—its name was Jody.

How old was Missy at the time?I want to say 4 years old. She was at an agewhere she could converse. When they hit 4, it’sreally cool because they can talk with you andcommunicate.

At what point do things start gettingbad?This is not bad; this is just a series of events.This isn’t what you call “bad.” So much of mymemory goes back to after we left the house andwhat we discovered after leaving and talking.Forgive my way of putting this, but one of thethings we always thought about it after we leftwas that the house didn’t want to let you leave.Things like going someplace, getting out of there,me going to work, things like that. One of thethings that Kathy had done was join a local highschool class to learn how to reupholster. We hadbought the DeFeo’s dining room set—it was betterthan anything we had—and Kathy had wanted toreupholster the chairs. She had signed up for this

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class, paid for it, gone out and bought the fabric,then never went to a single class.

I think you can guess from us having a roomcalled the sewing room what kind of stuff sheliked doing. We had a bedspread that Kathy hadmade from remnants of velvet, and she put thispattern together and it was on the bed. There’sa picture of that as we left the house. Years latersomeone came to us and said, “You know whatthat pattern is?” We said we had no idea; it’s justthe way it worked out from the pieces she had.They said, “Well, it’s a harlequin pattern usedduring Lent mostly in the New Orleans area.” It’sto ward off evil during Lent, supposedly.

And it was random chance thatthat’s how the pattern cametogether?It’s a strange thing for somebody to say to you.It’s just one of those things you put on the listto remember if you can.

I very rarely went to work after a while. I wouldphone it in, so to speak. I’d go in to make surethe payroll got done, or go in for only a couplehours. It wasn’t the 60-hour weeks I used towork.

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Did you experience a depression, oryou just didn’t want to leave thehouse?I got very sick and lost a lot of weight there. Partof it was I just didn’t want to leave the house. Kathydescribed it later as: “the house was charming.” Wewould invite people over instead of going to seethem. Friends. There came a point when we invitedpeople over to see whether we were crazy or not.Because when they sat in the kitchen and they couldhear the steps of people walking around upstairsafter the kids had been put to bed, and we all wentupstairs to see that there was no way it was thekids. When they confirmed that for you, you almostwant to break down and say out loud, “I’m not crazy.They hear it too.”

That is such an emotional moment when someoneelse confirms for you that what you’re hearing is notjust you hearing it. It’s not your imagination. Thisis not a play on something going on in your ownmind. One of the things that occurred to us after weleft too was the thoughts that would come. You knewthat these thoughts were not your own. This is nothow you ever thought about things, or other people,or events. These are not nice things; this is not nicestuff to talk about.

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Were they violent thoughts?I’m going to leave it at the way I said it. And youwould know this, and you would start questioningwhat the hell is going on with me that I would eventhink this.

So this was a way you’ve never feltbefore?We’re not talking about feelings, we’re not talkingabout thoughts. We’re talking about thinking a par-ticular thing that is just not part of your own nature,your own makeup as you know yourself to be. Thiswas not normal. This would happen, and when itwould happen, you’d start to wonder. Forget aboutif you want to call it sanity. So much of that dissi-pated and went away after leaving. Not immediately,but it certainly did diminish. One of the things thatwe learned that works for that is humor. You haveto find something to think about that is positive andfunny for that to lose some of its power.

It’s not like just thinking nice things, it comes easierwith time, but it’s such a hard thing to describe, andyet it was a direct result of living there. From thosekinds of things you start to get a feel of what mighthave gone on before we were there. You start to getan idea of what kinds of influences may have causedwhat went on there before.

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A friend of ours came over with a friend of hers.She was my tenant, and she invited a guy thatshe knew had lived in a haunted house. And hecame over and told us what he had learned to do,and that was to go through the house and blessit. In other words, say the Lord’s Prayer in eachroom, open a window, and command whatever wasthere to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. Youget done, you go around and close the windows,and the house would be cleansed. I said to myself,you know we’ve already had this place blessed,but if this is going to work, okay. So we did that.

We did it twice. The first time we did it, Danny,our oldest boy’s hands got caught in the windowwith pressure being put down on his hands. Andthey blew up. His hands got really large andswollen, he was screaming. It took quite a bit ofpressure to get the window off of his hands. Youcould never explain how it happened because it’snot the kind of window to just slam up and down.We had sent the kids around to close the windowsand lock them. We get our coats on to go to thehospital, we’re at the door to leave, and Dannystops crying. We look at his hands and they’refine.

We did it again. We heard this chorus of voicessaying, “Will you stop?” One memory of it is, “Willyou please stop?”, another memory of it is, “Will

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you stop?” Either way, when that happened, yougot the sense that this is not going to work.

At what point do you seek outsidehelp?The second time we did that. That night wasworse. It was reported years later that there wasno storm outside, but for the five of us in thehouse there certainly was. I was laying in bed andeveryone was asleep, and Kathy lifts up off thebed and starts to slide away from the bed, awayfrom me. I feel something get in the bed with us.I’m unable to move, I hear the kids’ beds continu-ally slamming up and down on the floor and beingdragged. We heard these pigeons on the air condi-tioner top overhead from the master bath, andthey’re fluttering all night long, keeping me awake,and yet there are no pigeons there the nextmorning—or any nest or anything like that. Thelights flickered. We brought the dog up to stayright by the bedroom. We tied him right to thedoorknob and he’s up and going in circles andthrowing up all night.

The boys came down in the morning absolutelyfrightened. They were unable to get down to meand I was unable to get up to them. Missy camein and just asked, “What was that all about?” Theboys asked, “What was that all about.” Kathy had

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no memory of much of it. That day we spent tryingto get a hold of Father Ray, and he said all the rightwords.

We didn’t get up to leave that morning, you need tounderstand that. This was our house, we lived there.We didn’t know what was going on, but he said theright words. He said something to the effect of,“Look, you guys obviously need some sleep. Is theresome place you can go just for the night?” And Kathysaid her mom’s house. He said, “That’s perfect, whydon’t you just go there and get some sleep and we’lltalk some more.” How he said it were just the rightwords to get us out. And her mom was wonderful,she said, “Absolutely, come on over.”

When we left, we didn’t know we weren’t comingback. We didn’t know that what we were leaving be-hind we would never see again.

We had one hell of a ride getting to her mom’shouse. We had all kinds of problems. We both levitat-ed there. The first night we were there, the dog wastied to the piano and he dragged it across the room.The kids fought in their sleep for weeks and theyfought the memories and the nightmares from livingthere. I’m leaving so much out ... the point of all ofthis is we knew that one night wasn’t going to do it,and we needed to know what was going on and howto fix this. We also felt very strongly that whatever

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had gone on before we were there, Ronald DeFeoneeded psychological help. There was no doubt inour minds that he was influenced by what was inthat house, and that meant that the conviction forthe six murders, and being declared sane, thatshouldn’t be allowed. We should try to do somethingabout that. So through friends of ours, they contactedhis attorney and we met with him to talk about that.

What did he say?He told us a number of strange stories about thehousekeeper for the DeFeo family, and different evi-dence that had taken place over the years that hehad heard about. He brought back a criminologist—aguy that was supposedly a criminologist—he turnedout to be a writer named Paul Hoffman, who eventu-ally wrote an article about us in Good Housekeepingmagazine, of course without our permission. We metwith him three, maybe four times, and he sent overa contract that was about 40 pages. He wanted usto give his corporation the house—donate it; swearthat everything that we said was the truth, take lie-detector tests from whoever he chose, and if wefailed the tests, we forfeited the house and rights toour own story. He offered us a percentage of whatev-er he managed to make into a movie or a book, andin there was also a payment percentage of proceedsto go to Ronald DeFeo.

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I guess you don’t need a lawyer tohelp you with that decision.No. A friend of ours was a representative fortextbooks, and he looked at this and said, “I’ll getyou someone,” and he immediately got a hold ofsomeone at Prentice-Hall and set up a meeting andwe went to that. And the fellow at Prentice-Hall whobecame our editor recommended this writer by thename of Jay Anson, and that’s how that came about.

Why tell your story? Why go public?I like that question. And the reason I like it isbecause it’s days like the last few months [referringto the April 2005 release of MGM’s new version ofthe movie, The Amityville Horror] have held thatbring back the memories of why we did that, andthey bring them back so strongly that the convictionhas to stay for it to be valid now as well. In Marchof ’76, I think it was March 6th, a news crew, anumber of psychics, Ed and Lorraine Warren [para-normal investigators], Mary Downey [psychic], aphotographer, representatives from what we thoughtwas Duke University’s psychical research center,came at different times during the day, and most ofthem stayed overnight in the house. They did a fullinvestigation and a number of séances, or at leastone, while they were there. The consensus of opinionfrom the experts was that whatever it is there never

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walked the face of the earth in human form. Thatthey could not clean the house, they could not fixit. If the house was to be fixed, it would require anAnglican or Roman Catholic priest to come and sayMass there. He would not be a normal priest; hewould have to be one that was reserved for suchthings, I would guess mostly sequestered. He wouldhave to fast before he went in, and in no uncertainterms, his life would be put in jeopardy by trying tocast out what was there.

The other part of the summation that usually getsleft out of any explanation about it is that it wasn’tlimited to just this one entity, but there were otherforms of activity that were caused by other forms ofenergy. I heard it put one time that this was like asupermarket of these kinds of entities, or phenome-na, if you will. And your own personal sensitivitymight be the trigger that makes you aware of someof this, someone else with a different makeup orpsychological makeup, or nature, or whatever mightnot experience anything there. The house foundcertain people interesting and others not. It likedbeing fed by people, it liked having people comeover there to choose from and play with. There werepeople involved with trying to help us from a distancethat were affected by this. The only people that weknow of that still live in the same place that theydid then is the Warrens. No one else.

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So why go public with your story?Oh yeah, thanks. Yeah, let’s stick to the point. Noneof us went back with them when they went to thehouse. We weren’t going to interfere and we weren’tgoing to tell them what happened—we wanted themto tell us. So they went in really cold, so cold that itwas annoying in many ways to Ed [Warren], becauseI just wouldn’t talk about it with them and neitherwould Kathy. It was only after they were there, it wasonly after they had done this, that we told them whathappened.

Ed wasn’t necessarily enthusiastic about the otherswho were also investigating, but he didn’t fight meabout it. I just wanted more documentation, not justtheirs. It wasn’t a question of not trusting them; Ijust wanted this fixed. We were going to move backin there. All our stuff is there—this is our house. Myboats and motorcycles, everything is there.

We spoke with the Warrens at length, and we startedto learn some of what they had spent so many yearsdoing, and the effects that this has on families, andwhy people don’t talk about it because you holdyourself up for ridicule. Most of the time thedocumentation of the history, for example, is lost asare the people willing to stand up on their own thatwere involved in some manner and say, “This is whathappened to me there.”

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We felt at that point that we have a choice. And youneed to understand that DeFeo’s attorney had [publi-cized] us. He had called a press conference, he toldus that our children would be bothered by thenewspapers at their new schools and from theirgrandmother’s house if we didn’t agree to do thispress conference. Never did we realize that he madeall this up and newspapers don’t do that kind of thing.He had done this for his own purposes, he had goneand appeared at the house on camera, he called anews crew there, and he had agreed that he wouldnever do that.

We knew we couldn’t move back in the house, andwe also knew we couldn’t ask a priest to come andput his life on the line for a piece of property, and weknew that the newspapers had it and weren’t goingto let go of it. So we had a choice. We decided it’sour story, this is what happened, we’re either goingto stand up and say it happened or we’re going to tryand become anonymous someplace else, but in anycase we were leaving New York and were going to dothis. We’re going to sell my business, we’re going toleave everything that’s there and deal with that later,and we’re moving out-of-state. It was a choice tomake. I can’t say it was the wisest choice, and I can’tsay that if I had known all of the controversy, all ofthe accusations, all of the legal problems ... there’sbeen something like at least 13 lawsuits about this,and all of them involve one thing or another, and that

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is the right to tell even one single day of our own

story ourselves. If I had known all of the different

things that would’ve gone on after, I don’t know

that we would’ve done this.

I can’t blame anyone that goes through this kind of

thing to never speak of it again.

When did things start to calm downafter leaving the house? Is there apoint where you kind of felt life wasgetting normal again?

Yeah, this morning when I was moving furniture.

[Laughs.]

Today was the day, huh?

[Laughs.] There is no day that comes to mind. One

of the ways we described it was like it had a half-

life, and as time went on, it would be less and less.

Less intrusive. One of the things you’re really afraid

of doing is blaming everything that goes wrong in

your life on the house forever. You can’t do that.

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When did you know you and yourfamily would be okay?We get on a plane, we give the car, and the keys,and the title—we give it to the guy that helped usunload the bags. We said, “Here, we ain’t comin’back. You can have it.” We get on the plane withthe dog, we have a few suitcases, and we land inSan Diego, Mother’s Day, 1976. We’re going to startover. I’ve got my business sold to the first guy thatcomes in, looks at it, and makes an offer. I sold itfor maybe 10 to 20 percent of what it was reallyworth, but I was going. Either way, I was closingthe doors and leaving. We get out of the plane,we’re in the airport, the kids are walking Harry overacross to us while we’re waiting for the rental carto show up. It’s really early morning, it’s like six inthe morning or so, and the dog is walking sidewaysbecause he had to be drugged to get on the plane.And Kathy and I are just laughing. The sun is out,the grass is green, it’s so gorgeous, the birds aresinging, and the kids are walking this half-drunkdog across the walkway, and we were just laughingthat we were able to do this. That we got this far.

That’s the beginning of getting away.

George Lutz passed away suddenly on the after-noon of May 8, 2006—just a few weeks beforethis book went to print. This was one of the last

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major interviews Lutz gave about his experiencesin Amityville.

Aimee Wagner Framingham,Massachusetts November 2004Horace Mann Hall is a three-story brick dormitorybuilding named after the founder of Framingham StateCollege. Inside Mann Hall’s lobby/common room, I satdown with Aimee Wagner, a 22-year-old senior fromEast Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Framingham Statehas a few ghostly legends attached to it, some ofwhich Aimee has experienced personally.

When did you first hear about theghosts here?When we came for orientation, a lot of people whodo orientation with the new students tell the storyabout it. This school used to teach teachers, and itwas primarily women up until the 1970s, which iswhen they first started allowing men in. For a longtime, the buildings were Horace Mann, Peirce, whichis the dorm right next door, and Crocker Hall is thebuilding right here [points to a building a short dis-tance away], which form this little triangle.

Peirce was actually built over the remains of anotherbuilding that had burned down. Connecting these three

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buildings are tunnels. They had the tunnels so thewomen wouldn’t have to go outside in the inclementweather. You can still walk in them ... you can ifyou’re sneaky. The tunnels were closed off becausesupposedly there was a fire down there because offaulty wiring or something—I’m not exactly surewhat—and a girl died. She was one of the youngwomen who came here. No one that I’ve ever knownhas ever called her by any name, but that’s the storythat goes around campus.

What ghostly activity do people claimto experience?I’ve heard people say they feel like someone else isin the room in various rooms here [Mann Hall] andin Peirce. People have had things misplaced—notanything really big. Not a lot of people talk about itbecause if you tell your friends, they’re kind of like,“Yeah, okay, whatever.”

Supposedly, a few years ago there was an R.A. [resi-dent assistant] that moved in during the summer acouple weeks before the students came back, and shewas checking out all the rooms. I’m pretty sure thishappened on the third floor of Peirce. She had themirrors up against the wall outside of the rooms, andshe was the only one in the building that night. Whenshe woke up in the morning and came outside, all ofthe mirrors had been turned around to face the other

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way. And she could verify that she was the onlyperson in the building at the time. The mirrors werefacing the wall originally and when she looked thenext morning, the mirrors were facing out.

I used to live over in the third floor of Peirce. It wasa strange place to be—it was oppressive at times.Not necessarily like something was going to comeand get you, but there was definitely somebody elsethere, though you couldn’t see them. Sometimeswhen you woke up at night it would be a little creepy.The single rooms over there aren’t very big. The waymy room was set up was basically like a closet—itwas almost the size of a walk-in closet. The roomwas kind of long and narrow and had a high ceiling.I would wake up or come into the room at differenttimes, and it got to the point where I would checkunder my bed or check behind the clothes in mycloset. It was very weird. I would come into the roomand feel like someone was already in the room. Ijust felt distinctively that there was somebody elsethere and it was definitely a female. I didn’t feel likethey were angry or had evil intent or anything likethat.

Did you discuss your feelings withany of your neighbors in the hall?I didn’t talk about it too much again because it’s kindof an odd thing to bring up—did you feel something

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weird in your room last night? Because I know I did.[Laughs.]

The strangest thing that ever happened to me per-sonally happened one morning after I just woke up.It was a typical day, I think it was November, andright across from my old room was the bathroom.So I went into the bathroom and I was washing myface and everything, and I looked up and I saw therewas a red hand print on my arm—the mark was al-most to the point of bruising. I had a short-sleevedshirt on, so I could see everything. And I thoughtmaybe I had slept like this [she places her hand onher upper arm], or slept on my side and held it andit made an imprint. But I knew it couldn’t have beenan imprint from my blanket or my clothes becauseyou could see each finger pad; it was very, verydistinct.

So I put my own hand over it to see if it was mine,and the fingers were much longer than mine. Andalso you can see that I have a crooked middle finger[she holds up her hand to show her middle finger iscrooked at the tip], and the finger that was on myarm wasn’t crooked so it couldn’t have been mine.It’s a pretty weird story, and I’ve only told a coupleof people.

I went back to my room where I had a disposablecamera, and I tried to take a picture of it, but the

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picture came out blurry because it was just thecheap disposable. I tried to show people, I said,“Look at this.” Some people believed me and otherpeople thought I was crazy. The hand print wasgone by that night.

The night this happened I had slept through thenight just fine—there wasn’t anything strange goingon. I actually called my mom. I said, “Mom, I wokeup and this happened.”

What did your mother say?She believed me. She thought it was really weirdand said this place is definitely haunted—but shethought it was kind of a strange building anyway.

Linda Dix Toledo, Ohio Summer of1997Linda Dix is a 51-year-old certified mental healthnurse. She believes her house in Toledo has beenhaunted for quite some time. The house was builtin 1907 on land where an old farmhouse once stood.When one person witnesses a supernatural event,the impact is profound. When multiple people wit-ness the same event and can verify that each sawthe same thing, the impression is compounded. Inthe summer of 1997, Linda, her husband, J.R., andgrandson, Jacob, witnessed an invisible playmate.

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Why do you think your house ishaunted?Because we’ve always had strange things happenhere, and we’ve heard strange noises. We even putflour down on the floor to see if we could catchfootprints, and we got footprints one time in theflour.

Were they barefoot prints or werethey shoes?They were shoes, little tiny shoes. I had children atthe time who were 12 and 16, and these did not fittheir shoes. We kept hearing footsteps in the nightand stuff. My husband and I thought it was our kidsdoing it, so we put this stuff down on the floorthinking we could catch them, and what we got werelittle tiny footprints of about maybe a 7- or 8-yearold.

We thought it was our kids. You know, you have a16-year-old son who likes to stay out at night—andwe thought that’s what the racket was going up anddown the stairs with him sneaking out. Or maybethat our daughter at 12 was sneaking out.

Guests stay over at the house, and we have to warnthem that sometimes our spirits like to make their

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presence known, so don’t get freaked out becauseyou may have the sensation of someone jumpingon your bed and nobody is there. Or the coversbeing pulled off, or articles of clothing being hid,and when you tell them. “Okay, put them back.”The things miraculously reappear back where youthought you left them in the first place. We’vewatched cups go flying off the top of the refriger-ator; we’ve had several people over when thathappened. The cups ended up on the other sideof the room and you say, “Okay, we know thatyou’re here.”

Ever since our grandson Jacob was about 18months old, he would point and say, “The boy.”And he would point to the ceiling, or anywhere,which I thought was strange at the time. He’dpoint at the light on the ceiling and say, “Theboy.” So we thought it was just imagination orwhat have you.

What happened in the summer of1997?Jacob was about four then. We brought him backsome toys from Gettysburg—a set of Civil Warplastic army men. He has gone with us a lot oftimes to Gettysburg—that’s one of his favoriteplaces too, but we had just got that for him. He

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set this out on the coffee table and would play alot. And we always heard him talking to things.

A lot of weird things happened here, but that onewas kind of unique because we thought he had animaginary friend like a lot of children do, but thenwe actually saw the pieces moving—you know,soldiers were falling down and different things likethat. My husband and I were watching TV, andJacob sat at one end of the coffee table and heappeared to be talking to someone at the otherend of the table. At first we thought maybe he’shitting the table, and that’s doing it.

So we watched a little bit closer. But his bodywouldn’t be touching the table, and the thingswould still move. He moved his toy and a pieceon the other side of the table would move. It’slike there’s something else going on here. Andthen we asked him, “Who are you playing with?”And he said, “The boy,” and of course my husbandand I couldn’t see the boy. And we asked, “Whatboy?” And he took a deep breath and kind ofshrugged his shoulders, kind of hung his head,and turned around, he points and goes, “That onethere.” Like, why can’t you see what’s in front ofyou? He just couldn’t believe that Grandma andGrandpa couldn’t see this little boy playing withhim.

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This would continue. He’d always be playing withJimmy—that’s what Jacob said his name was.

Can Jacob still see Jimmy?Jacob is going to be 12 next week, and he can’treally see Jimmy like he used to. He remembersplaying with Jimmy, he remembers the boy, he re-members doing things with him, but what he doesn’tunderstand is why he can’t see him like he used to.I think it’s because he’s gotten older. I think as weget older, I think we tend not to be able to seespirits because we’re told they don’t exist. His filtersare in the way now, but he does remember playingwith him and talking with him.

Tim Beauchamp Grove, OklahomaDecember 1982Tim Beauchamp was helping his mother at her horsefarm when we spoke. We talked about baseball,horses, and ghosts. Tim’s father was JimBeauchamp, a major-league baseball player whosecareer spanned from 1963 to 1973. Beauchampplayed for the St. Louis Cardinals, the New YorkMets, and the Houston Astros, among other teams.Tim was born on opening day of the new Astrodome,and he says with pride that his father was the firstto hit a homerun in the new arena, though it was

38

a few days before opening day, so he’s not sure ifit’s in the record books or not.

Today, Tim is 40 years old and works in technology,but he’s been around farms and horses his entirelife. When he was in high school, his parents di-vorced, remarried, and moved away. Young Timwanted to finish high school in Grove with hisfriends, so he moved in with his grandparents attheir farmhouse—a home where he experiencedseveral peculiar happenings, but one supernaturalevent he remembers in great detail.

What was the farmhouse like?It was the old family farm. My dad had been raisedthere, and it had been in the family for quite sometime. The house had burned down when my fatherwas young—his brother and sister were all in schoolat the time. It burned down around the time of theDepression. Money was pretty scarce. My grandfa-ther was an attorney and he made pretty decentmoney, but back then in the Depression everybodywas struggling, so they had to live in the garageuntil they rebuilt the house on the old foundation.

The rebuilt house was a much more solid structuremade out of brick. They kept adding on to the houseas times got better, and it became sort of a ramblingranch house.

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Do you know when the originalhouse was built?No, I don’t. That’s all real vague to me. As far asthe house being built on the foundation and all that,I received that information from my Grandpa, andI really haven’t researched or questioned it thatmuch. I just took his word for it. But I do remembermy dad telling me how hard it was to live in thegarage while they were rebuilding the house.

What happened when you livedthere?First of all, I don’t consider myself a medium, butI am one who has experienced more than my fairshare of the paranormal. I do believe there arepeople who are mediums, and I think there mighteven be some on my mom’s side of the family. Ihave had several ghost experiences and I’m one ofthose people that feel. I do think that I’m on thecusp of being a medium.

I believe everyone has a range of human senses,but there are some of us whose sensory experiencesare a little bit outside that range. And I think someanimals experience those ranges that most peopledo not see. And I think a lot of times you’ll havedogs or something like that that will experience the

40

same thing that some mediums might experience.I do feel I’m one of those people, especially regard-ing spirits and stuff. I have always felt like therewas something—some kind of weight or some kindof sadness surrounding that property. Some timeswere worse than others, and sometimes I feel likemaybe a spirit is stronger at certain times thanothers. I hadn’t really broached the subject withmy grandparents; I was kind of embarrassed aboutit. I mean, how do you talk about it? And therewere some physical things about the house, too. Istill remember it to this day—how certain spots inthe house would just be ice cold. You could passthrough it, it was really weird. I got the sense thatI was being watched a lot, and I also heard foot-steps. My bedroom was right next to the basementthat had remained from the old house, and some-times I could hear what I thought were footstepscoming up from the basement. It was really bizarre.

In 1982 I was in high school. I was watching TVand we were experiencing a snowstorm. It was ex-tremely cold, and I started hearing this really bizarrenoise. It sounded like a mewling sound—an animalor something. It sounded like an injured calf. Inthis area of Oklahoma, my mom has cattle and stuff,so that’s not something that you wouldn’t hear. Butat the same time, I’ve never heard a calf make thatkind of noise.

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Would a calf ever be so close to thehouse that you could hear it inside?No. It sounded very close. It sounded like it wasright outside the window. The hair on the back ofmy neck went up. I kind of sensed that the noisewas spiritual—my senses were just like, “Uh-oh... this is not right.” I didn’t want to go outside.I was scared to death. My grandparents wereasleep, and I hated waking them up because mygrandfather was really gruff. I was like, “Okay,I’m not going to wake them up, but I’ve got tofind out what this is or I’ll never get to sleeptonight.” So I walked outside and started lookingaround and the snow was coming down. It wasn’tquite a white-out or anything like that, it was justslowly snowing. I was scanning the horizon, andI heard the sound again and realized it was aboveme.

I just froze. I slowly looked up and there was aglowing ball of light in the tree. And it seemedlike the noise was coming directly from that light.It made a mewling sound. I’ll try to make thenoise, it was like: [he makes a noise that soundslike a cross between a young bleating sheep anda whining cat]. Like that, sort of. As it made thesound, the light would grow brighter and then itwould dim. I didn’t know what to do. [Laughs.] Itwas like one of those dreams where you’re so

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scared you can’t talk or move. That’s how I felt.Frozen in place for a while. And it was so cold,and that didn’t help things either.

How far away from the light wereyou?Not far. I was at the base of the tree, and it wasabout 20 feet from me. It was like in the tree, butnot on the tree. It was hovering over a branch.So I shuffled back into the house, and this time Ididn’t care how mad my grandfather got, I waswaking his ass up. [Laughs.] I am not going toexperience this by myself.

What time was it?It was about 11:30 or midnight. I went in and Icould barely speak. I was so scared, my voice wasquivering. I was like, “Grranndpaaa....” [Laughs.]And he woke up and said “What ... what ... what?”Again, he was really a gruff kinda guy. He was asmall guy, but he was real gruff. He said, “What’sthe problem?” And I said, “There’s a noise out-side.” And he said, “What do you mean there’s anoise?” I said, “Well, there’s a noise and there’ssomething in the tree.” And he said, “Well, whatdoes it sound like?” And I mimicked the noise,and when I did that he turned pale and turnedaway.

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He was not the kind of guy that would cry or any-thing like that, but he got teary-eyed and I couldtell he was really upset. I asked him what waswrong and he said, “My little brother was born inthe original farmhouse.” He said his brother wasborn with a hare-lip and he had a cleft palate. Hecouldn’t nurse and he died as a baby. Back then,there was nothing they could do for him. MyGrandpa said I made the exact noise that hisbrother made. He wanted to know where the soundwas coming from, so I went out and pointed up inthe tree and he said that would’ve been where thenursery was.

Did you know your Grandpa had abrother?I had never heard that story. I didn’t know anythingabout my great uncle who had died. No one everreally talked about it—it was kind of a secret orsomething. After this happened, I mentioned it acouple of times and then I started hearing moreand more about it. My mother told me that the babywas buried with my great-grand-mother when shedied. They put her tombstone right next to the ba-by’s. They’re buried about a mile or two away fromthe house in a cemetery.

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Is the farmhouse still in your family?My grandmother passed away, and then my grand-father sold it—I think it was back in the late 80swhen he sold it. I’m not sure who owns it now. Weused to be out there and were surrounded by pas-tures, but now the town of Grove has sort of movedout that way. They built a high school baseball fieldright across from the house called Jim BeauchampField, which is named after my dad.

What do you make of your encounterthat night?I could see my great uncle’s spirit saying, “Look,here I am. The family won’t even acknowledge me,”you know, that kind of thing. It was kind of sadwhen I realized there’s this great uncle I’d neverheard about. He was almost forgotten because hedied as a baby.

Kim Strain Sitka, Alaska 1983Kim Strain was born in picturesque southeast Alaskain a town called Wrangell. Her father worked as asafety consultant, so he traveled often and occasion-ally the family needed to relocate. When Kim was11 years old, she and her family moved to Sitka,Alaska, another coastal town where they moved intotheir first house. The family was thrilled to have

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their own place, but according to Kim, they weren’talone in that house. Today she is a 38-year-old momand certified nurse’s assistant in Anchorage, Alaska.

What was the house in Sitka like?It was our first house. It was a mill house—my fatherworked for the mill; he was a safety inspector there.The mill built these houses for all of the salariedworkers, and that’s what it was. It was just a three-bedroom, ranch style, and the house next to it lookedjust like it. I mean they were all exactly alike. Butours was a little different in that it had an add-on tothe property so it was bigger. The property had a lotof mounds, and it was really very distorted. Theproperty we were on was really weird compared toeverybody else’s—they were on flat property and wewere on a hill.

When you moved in, did you get anystrange sense of the place? Did youfeel uncomfortable?No, I didn’t, actually. We were so excited when wefirst moved in because it was our first house—we’dalways lived in apartments, and we knew that thiswas going to be for us. My sister and I were just ex-cited about who got which room ... no, I didn’t haveany strange feelings about the place. It probably took

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a few months of living there before I started havingdifferent sensations in the house that made me un-comfortable.

What kind of sensations?I started having a feeling like I could hear somebodytalking, but I couldn’t actually tell where it was comingfrom. It sounded like somebody would be talking inanother room, almost like a radio was on but it wason really low. I’d look around for where this radio wasplaying from, but it would never be there. The talkingactually sounded like that, like a program was playing,not like somebody was talking at me, but like I waslistening to some program or something. It was verystrange.

My dad went away for this trip, and I got to sleep inhis bedroom that night because he had the waterbedand my sister and I used to always fight over that,but I got the waterbed. He also had a TV in that room,and I was really excited about that. I remember sittingon the bed, leaning against the headboard, and I waseating popcorn.

I was watching the TV and I heard what sounded likesomething rustling behind the door to the bedroom.The bedroom door was open and it was against thewall—it sounded like something was behind there, likean animal. We had cats and dogs, so I thought maybe

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that’s what the sound was, so I looked, and stoppedchewing. I stopped to listen and look over there, butthere was nothing back there, so I continued to watchmy program and all of a sudden ... even thinkingabout this just makes the hair stand up on my arms;talking about it even now ... I heard this voice in myear. It said, “Excuse me, Kim.” I know it’s a weirdthing to say ... I don’t know why those were thewords, but that’s what it said. It sounded like it wasmeant for me; it sounded like it was right in my ear,like somebody leaned right into my ear and spoke it.

Literally, I was paralyzed with fear. I could not move,my mouth went dry, and my heart started pound-ing—you know, that whole fight-or-flight syndrome.I just panicked. I didn’t know what to do.

It was just a second later that it happenedagain—those same words. And that time I flew offthat bed and raced into the living room—popcorn wentflying, and I just stood there completely horrified. Imean I couldn’t even ... I was so scared ... I was soscared. My mom was out there, and I told my momabout it. She said I was overreacting, of course. ButI know what I heard, and I know it was in there. Andwhen I think about what happened, at the momentthat it happened, I could not hear any other soundsin the room. Almost like all of the other sounds in thearea were gone and I was like in a ... it’s very hardto explain. It’s like all of the sounds got sucked out

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of the room. That moment just stands out as beingso intense. And everything in that room just seemedto be gone. Do you understand what I’m trying tosay? That’s what happened. Anyway, I refused to goback that night. Of course I went back later, but Iwould not even go back in there to turn the TV off oranything. My mom went in there and did that for meand cleaned up the popcorn and stuff. I did go on tohave a couple other experiences in that house but notas intense as that.

What else happened?It was around the same time; I’m going to say it wasmaybe even the same year or the next year, but itwas after this first event. I was walking home, and itwas just starting to get dark out. I come along thiscurve, and at this curve I can look up and see myhouse clearly from the road, and I could see thekitchen. If the kitchen light was on, I could usuallysee movement in the house and know who was home,or if my sister was in there or whatever. I’m walkingalong and I look up, and there’s my mom standing inthe window, and she’s looking out at me. And thelook on my mom’s face—I’m going to call it my mom,because that’s what it looked like to me—was like mymom, but an evil form or something. It was a veryangry face, full of hatred, and it was looking right atme like it knew I was coming, like she knew I wasthere. But there’s no way she could’ve known I was

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there. She was looking right at me, and I rememberbeing horrified because she was so angry looking,and my mom doesn’t look like this; she’s just a reallynice person. I thought I had done something reallyterrible or something; I couldn’t think about what itwas that would make her look like that.

So I came rushing closer to the house, looking at mymom the whole time. The face stayed that way, itseemed to turn as I walked, watching me the wholeway. I came rushing into the house because I wantedto know what I had done, what was wrong. I comebarging through the house and the lights were all on,which was normal for my family, but there wasnobody in the house. I was calling for my mother, Ithought she may have gone into the back room, butthere was nobody home at all. I was so sure that mymom was standing there looking at me out thatwindow that at that moment I became afraid becauseI knew that I’d seen something strange in thewindow.

What did you do next?I called my mom. I called all around and found outthat my parents were at some kind of work party orsomething. Anyway, I contacted my mom and wascrying and asked for her to come home—and ofcourse they wouldn’t—and I ended up waiting outsidefor my family to come home.

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Do you have any idea why this washappening there?Honestly, I don’t. I have no idea. I thought about itlater. I can’t imagine if it was maybe something thatwas in the house before us. The houses were built inthe late 40s. And I don’t know this for sure, this isall hearsay, but the people who lived there before ushad a lot of problems. The kids were in and out ofjail, that kind of thing. So there were some issueswith the people in the house, like a lot of anger andstuff like that. I don’t know if those things staybehind, I have no idea.

What did your mom say when youtold her about seeing her figure in thewindow?My mom truly believes that she is a psychic and thatI happen to be able to see that kind of stuff, too.She doesn’t know if it was a ghost or anything, butshe thinks I can pick up vibrations.

Have you ever heard of adoppelganger?Yes I have. It’s the other form of the other person,or the other self. I never even thought of that. Later,

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when I talked to some people about this, someonetold me that maybe I felt guilty about something, Itried to think about what I felt guilty about, but Icouldn’t think of anything. But I was a teenager, soit could’ve been a lot of things. [Laughs.] Maybe I feltguilty and it was my fears reflecting themselves onthe window. I don’t believe that. At the time it justdidn’t seem like that. I truly think that I sawsomething in that house.

How have things been for you sinceyou moved out of the house?I have never had an experience like that again. I’vehad feelings before, but never anything like that.

Has anyone else in your familyexperienced anything there?My sister has experienced things in that house, andmy children have experienced things in that house,but only a couple of them. And I have six kids.[Laughs.] Two of them have had experiences in thehouse. That home is still in our family and we rent itout. When I moved back to Sitka, I ended up livingin the home almost five more years as an adult.

In that same room that it I heard the voice, mydaughter, she’s 14 now, used to refuse to sleep in

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that room because she believed that there was anowl—something she called an owl—living in the closetthere. She said the owl used to stare at her from thecloset, and this went on for like three years.

One time I sent my son back to the house when wewere all at the park, which was near the house. I senthim to get something for a picnic or something, I can’tremember, but he went to the house and the doorswere locked, so he went around to go in through hiswindow. He climbed halfway through the window, andhe said he heard ... and he swears to this day ... thathe heard people talking about him coming throughthe window in the house. He said he heard a bunchof people saying, “He’s coming through the window,what are we going to do?” He came flying back tothat park—he didn’t come back with what I sent himfor—he refused to complete his entry into the house.That’s the only experience he ever had.

Janie Le’Kay Birmingham, EnglandJune to September 2003Janie Le’Kay and her three children moved into ahouse in Birmingham, England, in June 2003 andsigned on for a six-month lease. But the house didn’tfeel quite right to her. In some hauntings, it’s thelittle things that add up over time. Perhaps a coldspot, some knocks, but sometimes things build. Janie,who was 29 years old at the time, and especially her

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young daughter, experienced many of these littlepeculiarities. But it was her mother who saw some-thing more in the house while babysitting one evening.Janie moved out two months early from the end ofher lease and lost the rent—something she didn’t minddoing, because it meant getting away from the house.

When did you start feeling thatsomething wasn’t right with yourhome?In May of 2003 we moved in. About a week intomoving in, I just started to feel a little bit uneasyabout the house. You know when you move to aproperty, or you’re in the property, and you get afeeling about it? And it’s either a really nice, warm,happy feeling, or it’s a just not-quite-settled feeling?I just felt like it wasn’t going to be my house.

When did you start to experiencesomething?My little girl, Fay, who was probably about 2 1/2 atthe time, she was very unsettled in that house fromabout the first week that we moved in. She was notsleeping through the night at all. She was waking upcrying all of the time. I had two other boys at thetime, and they were very unsettled in there, too. Theyjust weren’t sleeping very well.

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How old were the boys?The boys ... one was about 3 1/2 and the other wasabout 4 1/2. They’re very young children and I’ve gotall three of them in one room. The house was set sotheir bedroom was adjacent to mine, with the stairsbetween and no other rooms upstairs, just a staircasegoing up and a room at either side of the staircase.From that first week, we started to notice that it [thehouse] didn’t have a nice feeling to it.

I started noticing things. The bathroom is actuallydownstairs in that house, so if I went down to thebathroom during the night, there was sort of a worriedfeeling. I was running through the kitchen into thebathroom and then quickly running back through thekitchen and upstairs to bed. I had a sort of the edgyfeeling. This is ongoing.

My little girl was waking up going, “Someone ispinching my feet, mom! Someone is pinching my feetwaking me up.” She would wake up and start cryingand shouting, “It’s pinching, it’s pinching!” I’d go inand say, “It’s not pinching, sweetheart, your toes arecold, or you’ve just got a cramp in your foot.” Thiswas constant. She’d wake up during the night, likeevery other hour. She’d wake up and it was just reallyshattering and horrendous.

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How did the boys sleep?The boys slept a little better than that, though theydid get woken up quite a lot in that particular house.This just went on and on. I wasn’t actually there verylong because we were unsettled in there; we wantedto move out.

Fay had it the worst. I used to go and settle her. I’dprobably get her a drink and take her down to thetoilet, and get her back into bed. Every time I wouldgo through to the room, I started thinking, “Oh God,was that something on the stairs?” [Laughs.] Becausethe stairs were very dark between the two rooms,and there was a wall on each side of the stairs, sothey were enclosed with a door at the bottom. Weused to shut the bottom door which led into thekitchen, so those stairs were very, very dark as youwere going between the rooms, and sometimes I feltI could see something at the bottom of the stairs. I’dsay, “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be silly. It’s the middleof the night, you’re tired, you’re half-asleep walkingthrough to the bedroom. You probably just caughtwhatever in the corner of your eye.” But it was reallybothering me.

I noticed that a few times I’d walk past the stairs andI kind of thought, “Oh, I saw something there.” Orthe door at the bottom of the stairs would be open,and it’s usually closed—’cause it has a little latch on

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it and I would latch it because I wanted us to belocked up, do you know what I mean? So I’d unlockthat bottom door and then run to the kitchen and lockit again on the way up. And sometimes the door wouldactually be open, which puzzled me. This was goingon and on.

I had a six-month lease on the house. This was sortof ongoing for the first few months. Then one eveningmy mother was babysitting the children overnight,and me and my partner had gone to a wedding. I saidto Mom, “Fay’s going to be waking up most of theevening, but you just have to run upstairs to her.”And my mom said, “I’ll sleep on the couch and watchtelly. I’ll stay awake and listen out for her.”

My mom is as straightlaced as they get—she wouldnever tell lies. She kept getting woken up by Fay.“Nanny, it’s pinching my toes, pinching my toes.” Mymom would go in and comfort her, get her a drink,and settle her back off to sleep. Fay was reallyunsettled that night. It got to the point where mymom said, “I’m not going to keep running up anddown the stairs to go and see Fay.” So she went andlaid on our bed, which was in the other room adjacent.So at least then she just had to go between therooms.

My mom had sort of dozed off in the bedroom andsuddenly, apparently she heard this really loud

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rumbling coming up the stairs. She was like, “Whatthe hell is that?” She said it sounded like peoplerunning up the stairs. If it had been me, I would havethought it was my little boys who had gone runningup and down the stairs.

Mom wondered what it was and she rubbed her eyes,and at the bottom of the bed there were threepeople—it was two men and a lady. My mom wasabsolutely panic-stricken. The first thing she said was,“What do you want?” And they said, “We’ve come formy glass bowl.”

She said, “This is my daughter’s house and mydaughter is not here. You have to come back anothertime.” It was the first thing she thought of saying. Itwasn’t like, “Call the police, there’s people in thehouse.” She said they just kind of stood there. Shesaid they looked solid, they didn’t look wispy oranything. The first thing she thought was to tell themthey’ve got to come back, this isn’t her house, and,“You’re going to wake the children.”

She said they didn’t argue, but just sort of turnedaround and glided out of the room. There was nosound to them going back down the stairs. And shesat there utterly terrified, crying by now because shewas so panicked. She knew that it wasn’t somethingnatural because there was no noise; they just kind ofdrifted out of the bedroom. She said at first she

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thought it was like a dream, because they were sosolid. She thought there were actually people there.But she said there’s no way it was a dream becauseshe’d stayed awake and sat on the bed sort ofshaking.

She managed to pluck up the courage to go down thestairs and check the house out. She went down thestairs, and she phoned my dad and he came roundimmediately. I think he stayed with her the rest ofthe night, if I recall.

She’s just so straightlaced; it’s the last thing she’dever come out with. And she didn’t actually tell meabout this until the day I was moving out. Thishappened to her about a month or two before wemoved out. My partner already had a house, and hewould stay with me regularly at my house with thechildren. I then decided to move out of the house andinto his house because his lodgers had moved out.On the morning that we started shifting the stuff out,mom said to me, “Right, you’re not staying in thishouse overnight again, are you?” And I said, “No.”And she said, “And you’re definitely not going to bein here on your own at night or really anytime?” AndI said, “No. Why?”

I’d arranged to move out before my lease had finishedbecause I didn’t want to stay there any longer. I didn’tfeel nice there. So I said to my mom, “We’re definitely

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moving out today.” We had the vans, collected allof the stuff, so she knew I wasn’t staying there.And then she told me what had happened. And Iwas horrified. I said, “Oh my God, you let me stayin this house?” She said, “I didn’t want to tell youbefore because I knew you’d have to sleep thereand you wouldn’t be happy about sleeping hereknowing that something like that had happened.”

What really spooked us, and my mom didn’t actuallyknow about this, but when we moved into thehouse, it was completely empty. It wasn’t furnished.The only thing that was in the house was a big,old, glass bowl which was on the side of thekitchen. And my mom didn’t know that. And thatis what this woman had asked for. These visitorshad come to collect it. And when I told her that,that of course made her blood run cold. Becauseshe was trying to convince herself it was a dream.And it wasn’t.

Did you leave the bowl when youmoved out?Oh God, yeah. [Laughs.] We used it for fruit andstuff like that, but it was always kept carefully awayfrom the children’s reach. I always made sure thatthe bowl had been kept nicely. And when we left,I gave it a clean and I put it exactly where it hadbeen.

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I spoke to the landlord as I was moving out. Hesaid, “How come you’re moving out early?” And Itold him I never felt really settled in the house, andI said, “Has anyone ever mentioned anythingstrange about the house?” And he said, “No.” AndI said, “That bowl that was in the kitchen....” Hesaid, “Yeah?” I said, “Is that yours? Did you buy itwhen you bought the house?” And he said, “No,that bowl’s always been in there. It was the previ-ous owner’s.”

I said, “Do you mind if I ask some more questions?”And he said, “Nooo, why?” And I said, “Well, wehad some really strange experiences in this house.Just little things, nothing major. It’s just that mylittle girl was very unsettled in the house. And I’dsee the occasional thing out of the corner of myeye.” I asked who lived in the house before, andhe said it was an elderly lady and her two grown-up sons—which were the people that my mom hadseen. Now the sons, as far as we know, were stillalive. They’d moved far away from the area aftertheir mother had died. They sold the house to thelandlord, and they moved out. So it was those threepeople from his description of the sons—they werethe people that my mom had seen with this ladywho had come back to get this glass bowl.

There’s not really much sense as far as the pinchingof toes. We don’t know what was going on there,

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but that stopped as soon as we moved out. Faynever woke up again at night; they all sleptthrough lovely. I always felt that children are moreopen to things.

I was so thankful my mom hadn’t told me aboutthis before, because I couldn’t have spent anothernight there.

Sharon Moritz Chicago, Illinois 1966Once in a while, people encounter a specter thatthey recognize. Though the ghost doesn’t resembleanyone they knew in life, nevertheless, the figureis known. The Angel of Death is often depicted asa dark figure in a black cloak, and that’s exactlywhat Sharon Moritz saw in the home she was liv-ing in back in 1966. Sharon instantly feared theworst for her infant daughter. Today, the 57-year-old factory worker lives in Lindenhurst, Illinois,but she has never forgotten the haunted houseshe lived in nor the dark figure she saw there.

What was your life like back in1966?I was married and I had a baby. She was born inApril of ’66, and at the time we were living withmy in-laws because we had had a fire in ourapartment. We had to have a place to live right

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away, so we were living there for a few months.So much stuff has gone on in that house it’s justincredible.

What kinds of things?I guess there were a lot of tragedies that hap-pened at that house. My sister-in-law, she wasabout 16 at the time, her boyfriend came in andshot and killed himself in the basement. And thenwhen I had gotten divorced, maybe around 1968,later on my husband was bipolar and he murderedhis father in the kitchen.

When they first moved into the house, in this onebedroom there was a rotten smell. They couldn’tget rid of it. They tore the wallpaper down, theyredid the floors, they redid everything, and theyjust couldn’t get rid of this rotten stink—like adead body, you know that kind of smell? And thenmy husband’s aunt, she also lived there withthem, she was very in-tune to parapsychologyand this type of stuff. They had a priest come ina couple of times and bless the room, but thatdidn’t work. She had some kind of mixture of in-cense or something like that that she started toburn, and then eventually the smell went away,but it was there for very long time. That was allbefore 1966.

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Did you get a creepy feeling living inthat house?Oh my God ... it was horrible. [Laughs.] I neverwanted to be upstairs alone. When we first gotmarried, I was very young and I got pregnant, youknow, so you have no money. We just lived therefor a couple of months, and I was terrified to stayupstairs by myself. There was an attic, and in thefront of the house was a bedroom, and in the backof the house was a bedroom. We were in the backbedroom.

My husband would go to work in the morning, andI would take the two dogs upstairs with me. Duringone particular incident, I was laying in bed and allof a sudden something grabbed my hair from be-hind—because the bed wasn’t up against the wall ...and the light, you know the hanging light? It startedspinning and spinning and spinning.

I was just frozen. I was so scared, and you knowhow you open your mouth and nothing comes out?And my mother-in-law, she was downstairs and shesaid that she got a funny feeling, she thoughtsomething was wrong so she came to the bottom ofthe stairs and started calling me. She wanted tomake sure I was okay, and then everything stopped.So I flew downstairs, and from then on I wouldn’tgo upstairs alone unless I had the dogs with me.

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We didn’t stay in the house much longer, and we gotour own apartment. Everywhere in that house it wascreepy. You’d be downstairs in the evening watchingTV and you’d hear somebody walking around upthere. We go up there to see who it was, and nobodywas there.

What event stood out the mostthere?This particular incident, my husband had gone towork and the baby was upstairs. We were in thefront bedroom this time and she was asleep in hercrib. I left the bedroom door open and the attic dooropen so I would hear her, and I just laid on thecouch after my husband had left.

Were you in the attic?No. From the dining room there was a door thatopened—that’s what we called the attic door, andthen you go up the staircase and you’re in the attic.To your left was the back bedroom, and you had towalk through the attic and then there was the otherbedroom. So we had two open doors so I could hearher.

It was, like, five or six o’clock in the morning. Myfather-in-law, he was a fireman, so he was gone for24 hours at a time. So I was just laying there on the

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couch and I fell asleep and something woke meup. I didn’t know what it was, but it startled meand I opened my eyes. I looked and I saw thishooded figure, this person in this robe with a hoodup, walking through the dining room and thenaround the dining room table to the open door,and it disappeared. It went in there and then itstarted up the stairs.

I was like, “Oh my God.” I jumped up and Istarted running. Right off the dining room was mymother-in-law’s bedroom and I yelled into there,“Mamma, get up quick!” I don’t know exactly whatit was, but I wanted her to get up. I ran up thestairs and into the bedroom and the baby was justlaying there ... her eyes were rolling in her headand she was limp.

So I grabbed her and I ran downstairs to mymother-in-law and said, “Look, look! Help me, helpme, something’s wrong.” She’s trying to revivethe baby and everything and she told me run tothe store, which was just a few doors down onthe corner, she says run down there and get a7UP. So I ran to the store, got a 7UP, ran back,and she’s getting the 7UP into the baby.

In the meantime she had called a taxi and wewere taking the baby to a doctor. I don’t remem-ber if she called ahead or what ... I don’t remem-

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ber exactly, but by the time we got to the doctor,the baby was fine. Absolutely fine. The doctor said,“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with her.” Thedoctor was like, well, you guys are nuts.

What do you think the dark figurewas?I don’t know if this thing was going to get her, orif it was warning me. I don’t really know what thewhole story behind it could’ve been.

It’s been a long time since thishappened. Do you have anythoughts now?Sometimes I think that it was like the Angel ofDeath. But I think if it was him, why would hewake me? Why would I see this happening? Orsomething else woke me letting me know that Ihave to save my daughter. It could’ve beensomething else that woke me to see this and thenI ran up there and got her in time. The figurewasn’t glowing or anything; it was a dark hoodedfigure. It wasn’t a good thing, I don’t think. I’mthinking maybe that’s what it was—he came toget my daughter.

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Once you ran up the stairs, did yousee it again?No, there was nothing up there. Nothing up there atall.

Is your daughter okay today?Yeah, she’s fine today. I figure she was probably 7,maybe 8 months old at the time so she doesn’tremember any of it.

Did anything else peculiar happenaround the baby in that house?There was another incident when my husband wasworking nights. I would wake up because you know,the baby would wake up crying because she wants abottle or whatever ... you know how they do that.She would start crying, and I would lay in bed andthink, Oh God, I’m so tired. I don’t want to get up,maybe she’ll go back to sleep. One night I heardsomebody come in from the attic, and I thoughtmaybe it was my mother-in-law, but there was nobodythere. But the footsteps kept coming and it would goover by the crib, and the baby shut up and went backto sleep.

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I told my husband, “This is what’s happening, I wantto get out of here, there’s too much going on in thishouse. I’ve gotta get out of here.” He’d say, “Ahh,you’re just dreaming,” or whatever. So one night hewas there and I told him, “When this happens, I’mgoing to wake you up so you can experiencethis”—because it started happening on a nightly basis.The baby woke up, she started crying, and I stayedthere and waited and then I heard it. So I startedwaking my husband up. I said, “Come on, come on,wake up, here it comes....”

So now the two of us are underneath the covers. Iknew whatever it was wasn’t going to harm her; itwas comforting her. So this particular night that Iwoke him up to experience this, the door opened andthe footsteps walked over to the baby and they werethere for awhile, and she went to sleep, and thefootsteps left. I had never heard them leave before.The footsteps left and the door closed. And he says,“That’s it, we’re outta here.”

After moving out, did you everexperience anything like that again?No, not at that level. I’ll never forget it. My aunt, sheswears that what happened to my ex-husband ...killing his father in that house ... something from thehouse did that to him, to make him. My aunt is dead

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now, but she swore up and down that that’s what itwas. It took over him, something in the house.

Morris Sabanski Toronto, Ontario,Canada Late 1950s to mid-1970sMorris Sabanski is a man of science. He has threedegrees: two in chemistry, and one in engineering.The 55-year-old has lectured at the university level,and he was a management consultant before retiring.He now lives in Australia, where he enjoys feedingthe wild king parrots and kookaburras that come tohis deck for food.

Morris has a unique perspective on ghosts, or “spooks”as he calls them. He grew up in a very active hauntedhome in Toronto where years of unexplained experi-ences made him question some of the science he waslearning as he got older. His questions led to morequestions, as they often do, and he’s intrigued bysome of the theories that quantum physics may offerin explaining some supernatural phenomena.

It’s the kind of thing that can’t be dismissed thateasily. There are people who walk around saying, “Isaw a shining light and it was really my deadgrandmother waving to me,” or, “I had this funnyfeeling....” All of those kinds of stories, whether ornot the person who experienced them really did is notthe issue, but whatever they experienced can quite

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often be explained as relatively conventionalphenomena. That kind of stuff we had all the timeback in Toronto. So many of these things are prettymuch ho-hum. I’ve had so much experience with thesethings over my lifetime, I effectively grew up withthis stuff.

Can we start in your house in Torontoback in the 1970s?The house we grew up in was a pretty conventionalhouse—a pretty normal, cookie-cutter kind of housebuilt in the normal track of the type of houses thatsprung up during the 50s or thereabouts. The housewas perfectly nondescript, one of maybe 50 or 60houses in this one little enclave. We moved into thehouse in the late 1950s or thereabouts—I’m kind ofvague on dates, but the generality of what I’m goingto tell you is reasonably accurate. The house had abasement, a ground floor, and an upper story. Theupper story contained three bedrooms and a bath-room, the ground floor contained a rather large livingroom and the kitchen towards the back of the house,and also to one side of the house was access to thebasement. With the basement you go downstairs andthat encompasses the entire perimeter of the house.The house faced the street, there was a garden tothe front of the house, and there was a long graveldriveway that came up from the road alongside of thegarden up to the side of the house.

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If you’ve never been to Toronto, about eight monthsof the year it’s bloody cold. You’ve got snow on theground probably six months of the year. So forprobably three or four months of the year, thedriveway was clear, the gravel was loose, and itserved the function that if anybody walked up thedriveway, you could hear them. We used it as akind of warning system. We’d hear somebodywalking up the driveway, would look out the win-dow, and sure enough, most of the time, it wassomebody walking up the driveway come to visit.But some of the time we’d look out the window andthere’d be nobody there. After a while, we came torealize that this noise is giving us some indicationof spooks as well.

Very soon after we moved in, we started to experi-ence the phenomenon of the doors opening andclosing by themselves, which at first we thoughtwas the house settling or whatever, despite the factthat the house had been there for a long time. Wesaid, Ah, it’s the house settling, wind, you know,all the usual conventional explanations, except forthe fact that the doors would lock. They wouldlock—as in the latch would catch—to the extent thatyou had to turn the knob in order to open the door.But nevertheless, the doors would open and close,the lights would go on and off, and there werefootsteps going up and down the stairs and walkingaround the top floor, particularly around the bed-

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room area and the landing area at the top of thestairs. All these kinds of things started shortly afterwe moved in, and after a period of time it becameevident to us that these were common occurrencesand we more or less got used to them.

We had one bathroom on the second floor. As afamily, we had a mother, a father, and five kids.[There were] four sisters and me—I was in themiddle. So we all got up around the same timewhen we had to go to school, or to work, or what-ever the case. As you would expect, it was like asorority house; there was a big rush for the bath-room. Well, quite often it was the case that we’reall standing outside the bathroom twiddling ourthumbs, and there’s somebody in there. Okay, thedoor’s locked, we can hear water splashing aroundinside, we can hear movement inside, all the kindsof things and noises associated with doing one’smorning thing in there. The trouble is we lookedaround, there’s Mom, there’s Dad, there’s five kidsstanding around outside the door. And we’d say,“Well, who the hell is in the bathroom?” This wouldgo on probably five, 10 minutes, the noises wouldstop, the bathroom door would open by itself, andthere’s nobody there. But there’s water splashedaround the sink, there’s water on the floor, thetowels are wet, all this kind of stuff. So after a whilewe got to realize that, okay, we’ve got spook num-ber one living in here.

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And using the bathroom.Yeah. We also quickly drew the association with thelights coming on, the footsteps, all that kind ofstuff. We figured out we’ve got a spook living inhere, and these are the manifestations of this per-son, he/she, or whatever. So that was number one.

Some years later, we discovered that this spooknumber one was an old man who lived there, andhe obviously hadn’t figured out the fact that he wasdead and was supposed to be doing something else.So he was continuing with his conventional life.

The number two spook was the one that we consid-ered to be bloody dangerous. We figured out thathe was probably an ex-Jesuit priest because of hisbehavior, because of the historical location thehouse was built on, and because of the way we sawhim when he appeared.

I talked to a guy who was a member of a localhistorical society some years after I had left home,and I said, “What’s the history of the area?” Onething led to another, and he told me that some-where in the area of this housing tract, some 100sof years before, there had been a Jesuit mission.This Jesuit mission had been ultimately attacked bythe local Indians who figured they’d had enough ofthese bloody Jesuits. They’d gone in there and

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slaughtered them all and burned down the mission.It was never rebuilt, so nobody knows exactly whatthe location of this was. But by process of deduc-tion, since it’s the only area that you can make anysubstantial structure is where this housing tract is,the general assumption is that this is where themission was built.

Okay, this has relevance with this second, danger-ous spook. We had family pets, we had dogs andcats. The dog was a German Shepherd—this wasat the time when really imaginative people namedher “Doggie.” Her usual practice was at night whenwe all went to bed or were going to bed, she’d comeup to the second story and she would sleep in thecorridor adjacent to the bedrooms halfway betweenthe landing for the steps and the front of the house.It was quite frequent where she’d be fast asleep,then all of a sudden she’d wake up, she’d stand inthe middle of the room, she’d have the hair on herback standing straight up, you know, the hackleswere up, her teeth were bared, and she can seesomething that we can’t see. She’s growling andbarking and making a general ruckus, and we wouldstand there and we couldn’t see anything, wecouldn’t feel anything, but it was quite obvious thatshe was responding to something. This would goon sometimes for a minute or two and she’d settledown and go back to sleep. So that brought our

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attention to the fact that there was something elsegoing on here.

Now in addition to that, we start to develop a ratherinteresting thing. My sisters in particular had this thingwhere they’d sometimes arrive home and absolutelyrefuse to go into the house. They’d be terrified to goin the front door. It could be 40 below zero andthey’re sitting on the front steps. There’s obviouslysomething there. There was something about thehouse that they were just absolutely terrified to goinside. I would come home from wherever I’d be andI’d see them sitting there freezing on the front steps,and I’d say, “Oh, okay, so the spook’s back again.”Then I go and check the door. It didn’t bother me atall, so we go inside and whatever was there was goneand we’d go about our normal business. But thatparticular aspect influenced my sisters a lot more thanit did me. There was only one occasion in my life whenI experienced anything similar.

After I had grown up and moved out of the house,every so often my mother would go out of town forweeks on end and I’d look after the house. On thisone particular occasion that I went over there, I thinkit was a Friday night and I figured I was going to stayfor the weekend because the house needed somemaintenance. So I arrived and I figured I’ve got togo down to the basement to get some equipment,some tools and things, and I’ll get started working,

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right? So I go to the basement, I open the basementdoor, I’m about to go to the basement and I say,“Shit, there’s no bloody way I’m gonna go downthere.” I was absolutely terrified. I’ve spent 8 yearsin the service and I’ve had a rather interesting life,and there’s really very little that scares me. But thisabsolutely and totally terrified me. There was no wayI was going to go into the basement.

So I backed out, closed the basement door, and wentaway. A couple of hours later I figure, well, you know,let’s try this again. Despite that it scared the crap outof me, I’m going to check this out again. I open thebasement door and there was nothing. I turn on thelight, nothing. Went down the stairs, nothing. Iwandered around the basement, I checked it all out,didn’t see anything, didn’t feel anything, I picked upthe tools and things I needed, went up and wentabout my business. That feeling is what my sistersused to feel quite regularly when they’d wait by thefront door. That’s the first time that I personallyexperienced it, and I’ll tell you, it scared the livingcrap out of me.

The reason we finally came to the conclusion that thiswas a Jesuit was because my sisters frequently saidthey woke up in the middle of the night, and theycould see somebody standing at the foot of the bedand they described it. I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine.”You know, I was kind of skeptical about this, but

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given everything else that happened I said, “Okay,it’s possible, but I personally haven’t seen it.”

On one occasion, I stayed over at my mother’s placebecause she was gone. I slept in the master bedroomupstairs, which I think was most convenient at thetime. So here I was lying in bed fast asleep and Ifeel something pulling on my foot. You know how youare when you’re fast asleep—you feel something, youkind of don’t really wake up, you kind of go into ahalf-awakened state? So that happened, I go into thishalf-awakened state, something’s pulling my foot,and I’m saying, “Ahhh ... go away, I’m trying tosleep.” I’m trying to sleep, but eventually it keepspersisting. It persists, it persists, and I finally wakeup.

Now, on the left-hand side of the room is a largepicture window which is open to the street, and I leftthe curtains open so the room was quite well-lit fromthe street lighting. So this thing is pulling my footand pulling my foot, and finally I come to fullconsciousness. I wake up, I open my eyes, and I’mlying flat on my back staring at the ceiling. I sit upand right at the end of my bed I see this personstanding there. Standing at the end of the bed is aguy wearing a hat, a big broad-brimmed hat andwhat’s evidently a cape dropping down from theshoulders in kind of an A-shape. And all I can see isthe silhouette—I can’t see any features, I can’t see

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anything at all. I can see this black form standingthere—absolutely jet black, so there’s no doubt at allthat it’s there.

So I wake up and look at this ... whatever it is, andit presumably is looking back at me. I don’t sayanything and it doesn’t say anything. I’m sitting therein bed perfectly wide awake, there’s no doubt at allthat I’m awake, and I’m looking at this entity, orwhatever it is, and after a couple of minutes it startsto fade. I can start seeing through it. It fades, itbecomes transparent, and finally it just kind of fadesaway and disappears. Over a period of a couple ofminutes that happens.

That confirmed what my sisters had claimed that theyhad seen in the past. I spoke to them after thisincident—none of us were living at home then, butwe eventually got together and talked about it—and,yup, I described what they’d seen. We came to theconclusion, given the form that we could see and thedress, and given the history, this was the spook of adead Jesuit. I’m making presumptions here, but wecame to that conclusion.

So we concluded that the house was haunted by twoentities; one is this old guy who’s just going abouthis business, and the other was this Jesuit. It turnedout that this Jesuit was a lot more than just anuisance—he was bloody dangerous.

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Do you think he could have hurtsomeone?He could and did. We came to know when this partic-ular entity or whatever it was was around because ofthe way the dog reacted. We drew the conclusion thatwhen the dog had her hackles up and would suddenlyjump up and run to the door and demand to be letout, it was time to be careful. We decided it was timeto be careful because there was one occasion whenthis entity was around and it pushed my sister downthe stairs.

She was hurt. She was standing at the top of thestairs, and she was just about to walk down whenshe was pushed from behind. It wasn’t just one ofthose gentle little nudges; it was a very solid pushand she went flying through the air and she landedon the bottom stair. You can imagine a normalstaircase; the vertical drop is about, what, 10 feet?The horizontal is probably about the same, so sheflew through the air, landed on the bottom stair, andbroke her arm and had various other cuts and bruisesand all the things you would expect from that kind offall.

There’s no doubt at all that she was pushed and itwasn’t just an accidental little nudge, it was adeliberate push. Given that we knew that the entitywas around at the time and that our dog demanded

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to go outside a couple of minutes before, we figured,okay, this guy’s here, it’s time to be really careful.This entity was just plain bloody evil. We learned tobe careful with this guy, and when we knew that hewas around, we would behave ourselves accordingly.If we were near the staircase, we made sure that weheld onto the handrail. We didn’t hang around at thelanding and those kind of things. So we adjusted ourlives accordingly which is probably a pretty smartthing because once you’ve been pushed down thestairs, you tend to remember that.

How often was phenomena occurring?It was pretty much a daily occurrence. Somethingwould happen, doors open and close, lights would goon and off, taps would turn on and off, electricalappliances would go on and off, and that kind of thing.That was pretty normal, we just took that as back-ground noise, but the incident with footsteps in therug was something that can’t be dismissed.

What happened with the footsteps inthe rug?Let me start at the beginning. This was one of thoseoccasions when my mother was away and I waslooking after the house. So on the way home, I figuredI’d drop in there and just look the place over and seeif anything needed to be done. It was late at night,

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probably around 9:30 or 10 o’clock that I arrived. Iwent inside, I checked the house, everything lookedperfectly fine, no problems, so I figured, well, it’s kindof late, I might as well watch the news, and I satdown in the living room. The room was a largerectangular room; it’s probably twice as long as it iswide. So I sit down in the armchair in front of the TVset. I turn on the TV and start watching the news,and I’m now facing more or less towards the front ofthe house and about 10 feet away is this folding door.I’m watching TV, and the news comes on, and I hearthe door rattle.

The rug on the floor is an elderly rug. It’s been theresince we lived in the house. It started out as adeep-pile rug, and over the years, with all of thetraffic, people walking back and forth, and all that,as the rug has aged and the nap gets crushed down.So the nap is now crushed down pretty solidly. Thefolding door, in order for it to open, it has to bepulled, and it has to slide over this rug. Because ofthe thickness of the rug, despite the fact it’s beentripped down with many years of use, there’s still afair bit of nap there and it’s still hard to pull thesliding door over it. You can open and close it, but itrequires some force.

So here I am sitting in the chair watching TV. To theleft is the folding door which is closed, and I hear thefolding door rattle. I look over, it’s no big deal, I

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figured it was a bit of a breeze—I really don’t thinkmuch of it. I go back to watching TV. A couple ofminutes later I hear a rattle again, and this time Ilook and I’m sitting there watching the door openitself, go up against the wall, stay open for about 10seconds, and then close again.

This requires a considerable amount of force to open.It’s not something that house movement or a breezeor whatever is going to cause to happen. It’s just notgoing to happen by itself, so something has causedthis and obviously there’s nobody standing there. Butsomething has applied considerable force to this doorto open and close it. I’m pretty impressed by this.Okay, this is a new one. It’s something that you can’texplain, you can’t explain it with the house settling,you can’t explain it by a breeze blowing through thehouse, you can’t explain it by an earthquake, oranything like that.

A couple of weeks later, my mother has come backand I get a phone call from her. She says, “Come onover here and take a look at this.” I said, “Now what’shappened?” She said, “No, no, no ... come on over,come on over.” I said, “Okay.”

So I hop in the car and drove over there. I said,“Okay, what’s the story?” She says, “Come into theliving room. Come in here.” I said, “Okay, what?” Andshe points in the living room and I look down at the

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rug, and there’s a set of footprints going from thefolding door diagonally across the room to the cen-ter of the far wall.

Okay, fine, footprints in themselves are one thing,but recall what I said about this rug. It used to bea thick carpet which has now been crushed downexcept for the fact that the where the footprintsare, the nap is standing straight up vertically as ina brand-new rug. So you’ve got very high contrastfootprints going across the room from the foldingdoors to the wall in the opposite corner. They werevery distinct footprints in that one of them was aboot. You know what a Calvary boot looks like? It’sgot a heel and it’s got kind of a square toe. There’sone of those going across the room, and the otherone is barefoot with five distinct toes, with a padof the foot, with the arch, and the heel—very dis-tinct. This lasted some months. We had variouspeople come and visit, of course, and everybodysaw it. Many, many people have seen it, and it tooksome months before normal traffic could obliteratethese footprints.

If I could figure out how to make an old rug rejuve-nate itself like that, I would be filthy rich in thecarpet restoration business. It was one of thosethings that you couldn’t explain by conventionalphenomena. It’s one of those things you can’t justexplain by imagination, or a trick of the eye, or

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whatever. This is something distinct, it’s physical,and there’s no doubt at all that it’s there. It’sstanding right there for you.

Having been in a life of science,what do you make of theseexperiences?If it hadn’t been for the experiences that I hadgrowing up in that house in Toronto, which exposedme to a somewhat different view of the world, Iprobably wouldn’t be thinking what I’m thinkingnow, and I probably wouldn’t be having the discus-sion that you and I are having now because Iwould’ve been locked into the conventional scientificthinking—this is the current dogma, this is what webelieve, this is the way it is, and that’s it: caseclosed. But when you’ve experienced A, B, [and]C, which is completely contrary to what conventionalscience tells you, all that tells you two things. Onething is that you start questioning conventionalscience, and two, you start questioning the peoplepurporting conventional science. You say, “Okaywhat I’ve seen, they’re saying doesn’t exist, butclearly it does and what is it about all these otherthings over here on the right-hand side in sciencethat I can question as well?” Then you start hittingon a broader base of knowledge, such as when Istudied quantum physics. The light starts coming

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on. The light only came on because I had the experi-ence of growing up in that house.

I’m not sure whether I’m a believer or what. All I cansay is I’ve experienced a number of phenomena, Ihave seen a number of things, I don’t know whatthose things mean, I don’t know what those thingswere. They could be a psychological aberration on mypart, I accept that. But if someone can show me that,fine, I’ll accept that. But at the moment, I’m at apoint where I can say, I’ve seen this, I’ve experiencedthis, I don’t know what it is, I have no explanationfor it, but I can start speculating. And given my frameof mind and background, when I start speculating onwhat I have seen, then I go into the area of quantumphysics.

Morris Sabanski’s mother sold the house in 1995.He doesn’t know if the people living there nowhave experienced anything like what his familyexperienced.

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