Thinking it was locked, her husband got a screwdriver from his glove compartment to jimmy it open, but when he returned the drawer opened without any trouble. Inside were a few dozen green hanging files, none labeled. A few had colored papers in them, but most were empty. The bottom drawer opened easily but contained nothing.
When they got home, they moved the file cabinet into the mudroom until they could figure out where to place it. They still couldn’t understand why it was so heavy.
“It was not a very exciting buy, so I basically forgot about it for about a week,” Alice said. “Then I started to have really weird dreams—and I don’t dream.”
The file cabinet, stored in the garage.
Alice had vivid nightmares about a woman in her kitchen. She would find the stranger at her sink, as if she had just finished washing the dishes. When Alice approached, the woman would turn around and try to talk. Her lips moved but nothing came out. She would then get angry and pound on the counter, yelling without sound.
“She was beautiful,” Alice said. “She was solid, not like a ghost or anything. She had long, thick black hair, but she looked like Donna Reed. Like from that era. She even had pearls and the puffy dress. All I kept thinking was she looked like a television star from a show from the ’60s. She had these intense green eyes. She was very angry, though. And the worst part was she had a short temper. She’d try and be polite and then just start tearing into me.”
The dreams disturbed her enough to tell her husband about them. By her own admission, she rarely remembers her dreams, so to have a recurring one certainly said something. He told her to stop watching old television shows.
When the dreams continued into a second week, he stopped laughing. Alice was beginning to lose sleep. She was scared the woman would hit her in her dream and that she would feel it in real life. She became obsessed with what the woman was trying to tell her.
“I even bought a book on lip reading. Nothing helped. The only words I could make out were, ‘the kids.’ I was starting to think it was someone real trying to communicate, and I started to research my house in my spare time. But nothing from that time made any bells go off.”
Then the woman started to appear while Alice was awake, and that truly unnerved her. The first time occurred one evening while Alice was washing dishes. “I was doing the dishes. I emptied the garbage and left it in the mudroom to take out later. I guess I left the door open because I felt a breeze. Then I felt someone looking over my shoulder. I turned and there was the same woman. She looked at least 20 years older and was wearing a pair of old jeans and a red sweater, but it was her. Her black hair was cut into a bob, with a little gray in the corners, but not too much. She was there, staring at me. Also, I could see through her. It was not like the dream. I could see through her.”
The woman looked like she had something to say, but she made no attempt to speak. She just stood there making eye contact with Alice. When the phone rang, Alice looked away for a second and the woman disappeared.
According to Alice, the whole scene lasted about half a minute. She was sure it was the same woman from her dreams.
She decided not to tell her husband. “After the way he treated the dream, there was no way I was going to tell him I was seeing this woman in the house now. I even thought I might be going a little crazy myself,” she said.
The dreams stopped, but the sightings continued. About twice a week the woman would show up, always when Alice was alone and always at night. She saw her mostly in the kitchen, but two times she woke up in the night to find the woman in the chair in the corner of the room, sitting and watching her. The woman’s face was more worried and sad each time, and she always seemed to get frustrated right before she disappeared.
Alice spoke with a friend of hers who had studied ghosts. “She had a lot to say, but the thing that stuck with me was that I should try to talk to her. Right. Talk to her. I don’t think so. But I took the advice,” Alice said. “A few nights later, she came while I was watching TV in the living room. I was lying down on the couch with the lights on, but I wasn’t asleep. I felt that cold breeze again and then a hand on my head. I knew she was there, but I couldn’t see her. I said softly, ‘If there is something you want from me, just let me know.’ The whole room got very cold, and I could feel something sitting on my legs. I ran upstairs and jumped into bed next to my husband.”
Alice was too scared to sleep. “I closed my eyes and refused to open them. I knew she would be there.” Eventually, though, she drifted off and dreamed of walking into the kitchen to see the younger version of the ghost waiting for her. She offered her hand to Alice and led her into the mudroom. The ghost gently placed Alice’s hand on the file cabinet.
“I remember [her] smile,” Alice said. “At the time it was so sweet, and I felt like a kid when their mom says they did something right. I still see that smile. Now it makes me feel very scared.”
When Alice woke up, she wanted to go right to the cabinet and open it up, but she was running late for work. All day she thought about it and called her friend the first chance she got. The friend said there must be something in the cabinet that was keeping the ghost trapped in this world, and offered to help Alice look through it. When she came over, she had a tape recorder. She asked the spirit to help them find what they were looking for. They searched each of the hanging files carefully, but there was nothing in them, and there was nothing in any of the other drawers. “We didn’t know what to do,” Alice said.
That night in bed, Alice tossed and turned, thinking about the file cabinet and the ghost. The room filled with an “electric” feeling, and Alice tried to touch her husband’s leg. It was not there.
“It felt like he had left the bed and I was there alone,” she said.
Alice watched in terror as the ghost appeared in the corner of the room and ran to the bed. She remembers most how the woman’s hair blew back, revealing a pair of diamond earrings. In a moment the woman was on top of her, choking her. The ghost’s face became distorted, like the spirit itself was being possessed by another, darker force. Alice felt hands tighten around her throat, and her head hit the pillow repeatedly as the woman lifted her up and threw her back down. The woman finally slapped her, and disappeared as soon as her hand hit Alice’s face.
“I was completely frozen. I could feel my husband next to me again. I started to shake him and he woke up and asked me what was wrong. I dragged him down into the mudroom and told him to get the cabinet out of the house. He tried to calm me down. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted it out. I finally broke down and told him everything. He just nodded. I think he knew, ghost or no ghost, something was scaring me. He knew it was real to me.
“He pulled the three drawers out and found it,” Alice said.
What they found was a New York certificate of birth for a woman Alice refuses to name. She refers to the woman only as El and says she was born in 1941. The document was issued in 1963, perhaps for a marriage license. The tattered tan paper had water stains and smeared writing. William Stern, borough registrar at the time, was listed, and there was an unidentified red mark through the rubber stamp used to make the document official.
“I knew something had happened to El, that she was dead and [the birth certificate] meant something to her. I wondered if her husband was dead, too, and somehow they were lost and couldn’t find each other.” She believed this was what was keeping the woman from finding peace.
Alice went back to the house where she had purchased the file cabinet.
“The man who had sold me the cabinet recognized me immediately,” she said. “I think he was waiting for me to come back. As soon as he saw me, his eyes got large and he told me the cabinet had come with the house. I didn’t even say anything. He just told me before I could speak. I asked if he knew anything about the family who lived there before. I’ll never forget what he said. He got these real angry eyes and laughed, ‘If I knew, don’t you think I would have kept it?’ Then he apolog
ized and shut the door.”
Alice turned to the Internet. With a name, birth date, and location, she thought she would be able to find something, but her attempts to learn anything about El stalled at every turn. She searched public records to track down the family who had lived in the house before the current resident. She found out that the previous resident had owned the house for close to 30 years. Both the mother and father had died within a year of each other, and the oldest daughter had sold the house shortly after her mother’s passing. Alice tried to find the daughter but was unsuccessful, and a hunt for the cemetery where the parents were buried produced nothing.
“It was like she gave us a week,” Alice said. “We tried, but it was like we were taking too long. I woke up a few more nights to find her in my room, always far away and not coming after me. Never strangled me again. She wasn’t letting me sleep, I’ll tell you that. Every time I would close my eyes, I knew she was there. Even if I didn’t see her. Finally, I got tired of it. I yelled one night, “El, if you want me to do something, (expletive deleted) help me.’”
That night the fire alarm went off. Alice and her husband woke to find the birth certificate burning in the sink. Their first reaction was to dowse it with water, but something prevented them from doing that. They couldn’t move. After it had burned away, Alice felt as if she had been punched in the stomach, but she washed the ashes down the drain.
“I never saw her again. After that, my house was my house again,” Alice said.
The episode with El has gotten easier to accept over time, but there is still a fear she will come back. For Alice and her husband, it’s more of a mystery than a ghost story. Why was the woman so connected to her birth certificate? Why did she ultimately destroy it, and more importantly, how was she able to?
Alice never told anyone else this story, other than her husband and her friend, but feels sharing it now will offer some closure.
“People go around looking for ghosts. I just don’t get that. Maybe if they woke up to have something trying to kill them, they would think differently about it. I sometimes feel bad for that lady, not being able to find peace. Then I remember those nights I couldn’t close my eyes without her messing with me. I’m glad she’s gone, peace or not.”
Knives and Shadow: Chris’ Story
Whatever you do, don’t tell this story to my wife. We have a strict policy regarding the paranormal: Keep the ghosts inside the books and outside of the house.
Loving my wife dearly, I never told her some of my experiences surrounding the occult evidence I gathered while writing my first book. To say having that evidence in my house was creepy would be an understatement. We were wary of being a depository for evidence of real murders and crimes that remained unsolved, but we struck an accord. It was “out of sight and out of mind.” My wife never knew something else wanted to make sure its story got told.
In early 2004, I had an idea to write a book about Freetown, Massachusetts, a place that was the subject of rumors and whispers. I was on the trail of a good ghost story, but the more I read and researched, the more a question began to develop in my head. The resulting book, Dark Woods: Cults, Crime, and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest, became a way for me to try and answer those questions while telling a paranormal story so many locals knew, but which never seemed to make it across the town lines.
The town had a history of occult activity surrounding it. Crimes there were linked to different cults that claimed to worship Satan. Over the years, many youths were drawn to these alternative religions and practiced them in the state forest and on the Wampanoag Indian Reservation. I began to wonder if there was a connection between the paranormal activity and the cults. I contacted Alan Alves, a former detective there who at one time was one of the leading sources of information on occult crime and activity in the country.
Our first meeting ended with my car’s back seat full of police files, evidence photos, and books I was told I had to read. Our second meeting a few months later resulted in a trunk full of newspaper clippings, more evidence, and the sneaking suspicion all was not right in southeastern Massachusetts. I carefully went through all the paperwork he had given me, trying to find some way to classify and file the different cases. It was like trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces missing and no box cover picture to guide the way.
The Bridgewater Triangle files as they were found.
I could tolerate photographs of graves that were robbed and small bunkers filled with ritual knives and children’s clothes. But what really disturbed me was the prayer.
In the 1970s, a young man desecrated the local nativity scene. He made several cuts in his leg and poured his blood over the statues. He wrote “The Lord’s Prayer” backward in the same blood. He was not connected to any group; he was just a kid who liked heavy metal music, hated authority, and struck out against the strongest group he could find. In occult circles, this activity was seen as both an offering and a prayer. The young man was eventually caught and charged with vandalism.
Alves had kept the prayer and he gave me the small piece of poster board along with the rest of the material. While Alves said nothing strange ever happened to him when he had it, after it came into my possession, it sparked.
I put the prayer in the trunk of my car under several boxes of newspaper clippings. After I arrived home and unpacked, I saw the prayer had moved on top of the boxes. I took a closer look at it. The blood had had several decades to dry and was a dirty brown, the fingerprints still clear in the strokes. It immediately made me sick, which was no surprise. I have no stomach for blood, and the whole idea of cult activity is too much for me.
I decided the prayer was a bit too intense to bring into the house, so I put it back in the trunk. In terms of storytelling, it was a dead end. The case had been closed and there were no reports of ghostly activity attached to it. At most, it would make a nice picture for the cult section of the book.
Two days later, while loading my car for work, I noticed the prayer was on the front seat. I assumed I had forgotten to put it back in the trunk.
That evening, I brought the prayer into the house because I was beginning to organize the materials Alves had given to me. I started to visualize what was happening in the town and wondered where the prayer fit in. For reasons I can’t explain, I ended up storing the prayer under my couch. The next morning it was on top of the couch.
I called Alves and asked him if anything like this had ever happened before. He laughed at me as if to say silly little ghost hunter.
I played it safe and put the prayer in a storage bin, sealing it tight and placing other files on top of it. I woke later that night to a loud bang coming from my office. The bin was tipped over, files scattered, and the prayer lay a good five feet from the mess, neatly displayed on the floor. There was a kitchen knife lying across it.
“This is not acceptable,” I whispered into the air. The last thing I wanted was my wife to wake up and see a message to Satan in my office. “You are not welcome here.”
Anyone hearing me would have thought I was crazy, but I was resolved. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. In those early days of investigating, my toolbox included a small bottle of holy water. I placed the holy water in the bin with the rest of the research materials and the prayer and went to sleep in the spare bedroom. I left the lights on.
Over the next year I submerged myself in the history of Freetown and the recent paranormal activity there. The prayer stayed in storage for the most part. I noticed it around the house from time to time, always sneaking out when my wife wouldn’t find it and always accompanied by a different kitchen knife. It was clearly a message to me, but no matter how many times I tried to get someone to come clean using a tape recorder, no voice ever came through. I went from being frightened to being frustrated and annoyed. When I came home one night to find the prayer on top of a talking board I stored in a closet, complete with a knife stuck in the board, I decided I didn’t want to hear whatever the
prayer had to say.
Pictures I took of the prayer never seemed to turn out. I would take them in different light and from different angles, but there was always a glare. That was good enough for me—it would add to the creepiness of the picture for the book.
As with so much of the writing of that book, catastrophe hit in the final days of my work on it. My young son was playing on the computer and deleted all of the pictures I had taken for the book, including those of the prayer. I scrambled around, asking friends for anything they had, and pulled low-resolution pictures from video recordings I had made. I also tried to capture another image of the prayer for the book. Apparently the prayer did not want its picture taken again. It disappeared and did not show itself until months after the book was sent off to the publisher. This time it appeared on the floor with one of my digital cameras next to it. The batteries had been removed from the camera and placed in the shape of a cross next to the prayer.
Rehoboth, one of the most haunted towns in the Triangle.
Eventually I moved out of state and was unable to deliver the materials back to Alves before I left. The prayer stayed in a taped bin inside a storage unit for six months.
When Alves asked me to return his items, I dug deep into the unit and found them. The bin was still taped, but the prayer was neatly placed on top, despite the fact most of my possessions had been thrown around in transit. I placed all of the items in a box, making sure the prayer was on top, and shipped it back to Massachusetts.
According to Alves, when he received the box, the prayer was not in it.
The story doesn’t end there, though. It continued a few years later.
Since the publication of that book, I had stored my research materials, along with all of my old files on Massachusetts, in the garage. Tim Weisberg and I broadcast a yearly radio show where local paranormal groups search the part of Massachusetts known as the Bridgewater Triangle.
Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf Page 7