by AndyAfro
She began to redecorate one of the rooms in the ell, stripping off layer after layer of old wallpaper, until she found beautiful, wide wood panels underneath.
She thought how nice the paneling would look until she noticed a large, splattered stain on one of the newly uncovered walls. She tried to wash it off, but it turned bright red, and then returned to the original dark brown color when it dried.
She believed that the stain was dried blood that had been there for years and was probably the basis behind the hauntings. This discovery caused Florence to trace back the history of the house. She discovered that about 200 years ago, two men had a fight over one of the serving girls that had worked at the inn. The two men killed each other in that room! Maybe they were the footsteps that Mrs. V. heard!
In 1962, after Florence and Charles had lived in the house for twelve years, they decided that they had had enough and they sold it. A number of tenants and owners have since come and gone but the occurrences continue.
Ed and Lorraine Warren were asked to visit the house by Mrs. V. and the present tenants. As Lorraine walked about the house, she began to feel as if there was a fire in the backyard. She could smell the smoke and feel the heat faintly as it began to drift around the side of the house. When she realized that what she sensed was not a fire that was currently burning, she asked if there had ever been a large fire in the past. No one knew. Then, looking out of a bedroom window, she envisioned the fields before the house was built. She saw a night illuminated by the many fires burning on the fields. In her vision she saw large stones surrounding each fire, and how each of the stones was scarred from the many burnings. Dancing around the fires were figures with their faces smeared with black sacrificial animal fat, obviously performing some sort of ceremonial magic. Next she saw, how those very same evil stones were used to later build the Stoneham Tavern. She then understood why the house was cursed. When Ed and Lorraine inspected the cellar, they saw the large, fire-scarred stones that made up the foundation.
Later during the evening Lorraine had another vision. A soldier came to the front door of the tavern. He signed in, then sent his groom, a young orphan boy, out to stable his horse. In the barn, Lorraine could see a large black mass appear, and the boy just disappeared.
Lorraine next visited the room in which the door had exploded open. Looking out a window, she saw herself as young Laura D. watching her brothers and sisters go off to school in a carriage. As she stared down the long straight road she felt the room becoming extremely cold. She turned, walked over to the fireplace and stood there trying to warm herself. The fireplace had been dismantled and sold a number of years earlier to a nearby historic association. Thus Lorraine had no way of knowing that there had ever been a fireplace in the room, but she was standing directly in front of where it had been. Suddenly she saw a huge black cloud forming in the corner of the room. Terrified, Laura ran into the closet to hide, never to be seen again. Just one more strange disappearance connected with the old Stoneham Tavern.
There are many other mysteries still connected with the old house, the evil still lurks there. Stoneham Tavern is again near ruins, and occupants come and go quickly as each experiences his own brush with the macabre. It seems that the unearthly tenants of the old inn have added a new member to their eerie cast lately. In recent months the gentle, sad sobbing of a baby has also been heard wafting through the decaying corridors and rooms of the ancient house on the old Boston to Hartford stage coach road. The spirits of the past refuse to give up their claims on the world of the present.
CHAPTER II
Possessed
Life is filled with a wealth of strange occurrences, many of which cannot be explained in 'normal' terms. We can either make believe that such occurrences never happened, or we can accept them and look for their cause in the realm of the supernormal. The following is an account of one of those incidents for which the cause was found in the world of the supernatural, for this was a case of possession!
The story concerns two young cousins who, surprisingly, were total opposites. Anna, a shy, cute, softspoken girl, was very happily married and loved her husband and three children very much. Diane was a promiscouous, profane, vicious woman who was intensely jealous of Anna's happy life. Whereas Anna loved her children Diane, separated from her husband, hated all children, especially her own daughter, whom she often tormented terribly.
There is an old saying that as a man lives, so shall he die. On a bright, warm day in May, 1969, Diane, horrid in life, died a horrible death. The police called her death an accident; but there are those who believe, owing to the suspicious circumstances involved, that it was murder. Accident or murder, Diane's violent end was the beginning of a living nightmare for Anna.
One evening in July of 1969 Anna and her aunt, were using the ouija board. It began as a typical sitting - the board gave no real answers to their questions. Then suddenly the pointer began moving quickly, spelling out a string of profanities and then, "Diane… Diane… murdered… I… was… murdered!" In startling succession followed reasons why, and names of those involved. Totally shaken, they put the board away for the night, and Anna went home. Thinking about what had happened, though, she became so intrigued with the idea of possibly communicating with her cousin's spirit that the next day she borrowed a ouija board from her neighbor. In her home, alone except for her children, she began using the board for a few minutes each day. The answers to her questions at first meant nothing to her, but little by little more of what seemed to be Diane came through, throwing curses at Anna along with supposed information. As the contact with Diane's spirit increased, the time that Anna spent in trying to contact her also increased until she hastily rushed through her daily chores, anxious to get back to the ouija. By this time, as she explained it, she had begun to feel as if she didn't belong to herself, as if something were making her use the ouija constantly. She was right.
One night late in July, Anna awoke to the sound of heavy pieces of furniture being pushed about somewhere in the house. Her husband lay sound asleep next to her. She sat up, listening to the sounds for a moment, then got up and went from room to room, but the doors and windows were locked and nothing was out of place. She climbed back into bed, thinking that she must have been dreaming, and went to sleep again. The next morning, her compact was missing from her bureau. Infestation had begun!
Infestation is the beginning of a haunting sounds are heard and objects disappear. In this case, only Anna experienced any of this. She was to encounter much more.
Anna's sleep began to be filled with horrible dreams. In one which recurred, Anna was a spectator
watching her body being controlled by Diane! She would fight to get her body back, but still she would hear her voice change to Diane's, see her own body become Diane in every way except appearance! Anna would always lose to Diane, no matter how hard she fought. And she would always wake up exhausted from these dreams, for the fighting that she did was real! Another recurrent theme in her nightmares was sex. She would dream sexually of things that she had never dreamed before, while her body would wildly enact them. She was frightened. It felt as if it wasn't her. She had never felt as sexy as that before! It was as if she were someone else! And her body!…She just couldn't stop it!
The dreams continued, getting much worse. So did the noises and disappearances. And so did the sex urges, for they were becoming uncontrollable even during the day.
One gloomy day late in the winter something slight went wrong for Anna. She went into a ten minute tantrum, cursing at the top of her voice, using words that she had hardly even heard before, and had never used! A few days later, as her oldest child was sitting reading, Anna suddenly felt a tremendous hate for him and a desire to pick him up and smash him through the picture window. She forced the feeling to stop before she actually did anything. Anna's obsession was growing. Diane was beginning to come through.
Obsession is the next step in a possession case. First Anna had become obsessed with the ouija board, followed later by an obsession with desires to harm her children. She experienced rage against the children and constantly swore at them and felt hatred for them. This behavior was unac customed for Anna and very appropriate for Diane. Feelings like wanting to rip open their stomachs and seeing their guts spill all over were finding their way into Anna's mind, and when they came, she was completely enveloped by them; she was prevented from doing what they commanded only by her own great love for her children, which so far had been strong enough to resist complete possession.
In these past few months, poor Anna had become enamoured of her visions of death. In the middle of housework, she would abruptly stop to envision how lovely her children would look in their coffins, dressed so beautifully. She could see herself standing alongside of her children, smiling, feeling such great love for her dead children, and yet she would still feel hate for them and want to grab them and hurt them and tear at them! She thought, "How beautiful I would look in my coffin, dressed in my most enticing gown. My husband and all of my friends would look down at me and say, 'Oh, how much we love you, Anna, and how attractive you are!' They would all miss me terribly."
Then Anna forgets about her housework and puts on a gown, thinking of her preparations for the grave, and dances her own mental Danse Macabre with her dead cousin, Diane.
Anna is in the throes of obsession and some times, possession. She is preoccupied with death and how she would dress for it (just like Diane, who was buried in her wedding gown). She is rapidly becoming Diane feeling promiscuous, very profane and vicious, hating and wanting to hurt her children. Soon, Diane will completely possess Anna. Diane, ever jealous of Anna in life, carried her jealousy with her to the grave. Earthbound by her violent end, yet desiring still her earthly life, what better way to come back than to take over her wonderful and weak cousin?
CHAPTER III
Unknown Visitor On A Winter's Night
It was Christmas night, 1971, in a southern Connecticut city and celebrations were in full swing. At one particular gathering, however, the party took a strange turn, which involved a twenty-two year old girl whom I shall call Julia. She was a beautiful and very sensitive artist, intelligent and sincere, who lived alone in a studio-apartment. She was also an occasional student of the occult, whose interest was inherited from her clairvoyant mother. On this particular night Julia and her girlfriend were playing with the ouija board trying to contact the spirit of the friend's father. Only statements that were garbled and meaningless came through. Using the ouija in this manner though, allowed something else to come through, something that Julia would not discover until two weeks later. She would realize that the ouija board must be taken seriously!
It was a bleak, icy, overcast Saturday night in January. Julia's boyfriend John, left her apartment at 1 o'clock. They had spent most of the evening watching television programs on the occult and later discussing what they had seen. It was such a cold night that Julia decided to sleep on the sofa-bed in the living room next to the heater. Except for the sound of the wind, her apartment was in silence.
Julia quickly fell asleep. In her dreams she heard John coming up the stairs to her apartment and opening the latch on the outside door. She called to him and told him that she was coming. Then she awoke! Strangely enough, she heard the sound again. It wasn't a dream at all! Someone was opening the latch to the outside door. Then the door itself crashed open. She thought it must have been the wind, perhaps she hadn't closed the door properly. Then every muscle in her body suddenly stiffened as she heard the creaking sound of the inside door opening. She thought that it must be a burglar. Then there was silence. Maybe it was only her imagination, or perhaps the house was creaking because of the cold night. Then she did hear a sound, faint at first but it kept getting louder, she could almost feel it coming closer. Something was on her bed! It touched her ankle ever so lightly, then touched her again, this time at the knee. It was crawling upward toward her head. What was it? Was it going to strangle Julia? The pressure increased, the whole weight of the creature was on top of her now, its hot breath in her face! Trembling, Julia opened her eyes and there, staring down at her were the great, slanted, yellow eyes of a huge black cat. Julia was terrified, she screamed at the top of her lungs. Very slowly, almost arrogantly, the cat turned and sauntered to the foot of the bed. Finally, with one last contemptuous look at Julia, it jumped off the bed and landed rather noisily on the wooden floor.
Julia sat up, her mouth open ye; speechless, for at the foot of the bed, behind the cat, stood a girl. She was about fourteen years old and had long, straight blond hair, wearing what seemed to be a workshirt and faded blue denim jeans. Her cold, blue eyes stared at Julia. She began to walk toward her stiffly, militaristicaliy around the bed, the cat at her feet, until she was only inches away from Julia. Her e.j?es seemed to hypnotize Julia in that open-mouthed position, keeping her from even the slightest movement. Then without a word, the ghost turned her back and silently glided out through the dining room, the cat in front of her, its tail arched to its back. Julia slammed her leg against the bed frame as she leaped out and ran immediately after the girl into the kitchen. There was no one'there. The girl and the cat had simply vanished. She turned on the light and was suddenly struck by the realization that it had been so dark that she could hardly have seen her hand in front of her face, and yet she had seen both the cat and
the girl in crystal clarity. The kitchen was empty, the doors and windows were all locked, and there was no sign at all of what had just occurred. Julia was puzzled but she was no longer frightened. She turned off the lights and went back to bed, trying to convince herself that those past few minutes were just a nightmare. She eventually fell back to sleep and awoke the next morning with only a bruise on her leg as a reminder of the previous night's experience.
(Ed Warren explains that Julia called in this entity on Christmas night when she and her friend toyed with the ouija board. There have been many instances where someone has used the ouija board and then suffered, sometimes quite terribly, at the hands of an unknown entity which he had summoned. On that Saturday in January, Julia had her mind on the occult all evening; this made her especially open and susceptible to an occurrence such as the one which happened.)
Julia soon dismissed this incident as a bad dream and would have eventually forgotten it if it were not for something else that happened to her, something so completely horrifying that it sent her running to get in touch with the Warrens for their help.