by AndyAfro
Joyce was relieved that the confusing episode had finally come to an end and she quickly tried to put it out of her mind. The demon was not to be denied though. A few weeks later Joyce was once again confronted with the unknown.
One morning while sitting at the kitchen table, she felt compelled to turn around and look at the wall behind her. She saw a triangular shaped light, about two and a half feet in height, and appearing on the wall with it, the name - Gregory Carter-Smith. She was no longer aware of anything except that light and a voice she seemed to hear inside her head. She asked the voice what it was doing in her house. The voice answered, "I've lived here for thirty-five years!" She then asked the voice if it liked her. It answered, "In my heart I do, not your husband, only you." The entity, who for the time being had taken the name of Gregory, was getting bolder!
From that moment on it seemed that John and Joyce were never totally alone in the house. When John was not there, Joyce would hear whispering behind her. When she turned around, it would still be behind her. The magic whispering was always mumbled, it could never be understood. One summer every night at precisely 11 o'clock they heard someone running down the back stairs, but no one was ever seen!
It was late one particularly dark night, Joyce had just fallen asleep. John was in bed next to her just about to drop off to sleep when he heard something that caused him to look up. There, just off to one side, he saw a floating, burning, bright orange ball of fire! It was the size of a basketball with two slanted slots where eyes should have been. He was frozen with fear! He wanted to reach out to his wife, but he couldn't move. John knew it had to be some kind of demon. As it moved closer it seemed to sap all of his strength and willpower. It passed over him and moved to the other side of the room and as it did, he felt that he was about to die. With the realization of his probable death came his last surge of strength. John used this new power to concentrate, to reason and to fight a mental battle with this malevolent demon. As he fought his will increased-until finally, with the greatest of effort, he won and the fireball faded away. John held his wife in his arms for the rest of the night. In the morning he told her about the demon he had faced the previous night.
A few months later John and Joyce had their second child, they named him Dennis. Their first child, Theresa, so far hadn't been bothered by any of the supernatural occurrences. With Dennis, things were to be different.
In the middle of winter on a frozen, cheerless night, John and Joyce experienced their next encounter with the unknown. They had just gone to bed when they heard a loud explosion and saw a blinding flash of light just outside their bedroom window. Joyce jumped out of bed and ran over to look out. She noticed that the window was open at the top about an inch… yet the window was still locked! When they searched the house, they found that the windows in the living room and in Dennis' room were in the same condition. It was almost as if the windows had shrunk.
Time passed and more and more of the mysterious happenings seemed to surround Dennis. Many times, in the evening after Dennis had been put to bed, John and Joyce would hear the sounds of banging and jumping around or crying accompanied by the high pitched voice of a woman. When they reached his bedroom they would find him staring blankly out the window, shaking with fear and perspiring profusely. When he was questioned he couldn't answer coherently, and never remembered the next morning what had happened to him the night before.
Joyce's sister-in-law, Betty, babysat for her one night and she, too, heard the woman's voice upstairs, this time it seemed to be arguing with Dennis. Each time she went upstairs to investigate, the voice would stop. Betty's restlessness caused the family dog, whose name was Lady, to become restless too, so she let her out. Betty tried to settle back to her reading. Suddenly she heard a man's voice behind her say, "Hey, Lady!" When she turned around, no one was there. Betty didn't know whether the voice was addressing her or the dog, but she knew she had heard the demon!
Joyce's most frightening meeting with the demon occurred, once again, just after she had gone to bed one night. She could feel the covers being pulled from her, and there from the very place where she lay, the apparition of a woman arose! She stood up and framed by the moonlight shining through the window, Joyce could see her in crystal clarity dressed in a housecoat, the moon reflecting on her long brown hair. She tried to cry out to John, but fear had taken her voice. She watched the woman walk out of the room, and a moment later she heard Dennis scream. By the time she got to Dennis' room, the woman had gone. Joyce knew that she had seen the woman whose voice had tormented her for so long; she would never forget her!
During the times that they weren't being plagued by the demon, John and Joyce tried to lead normal lives. Their encounters with him seemed much more frequent.
While John was cleaning out the attic, he felt someone grab onto his ankles and pull his legs out from under him. This caused him to lose his balance and he was easily pushed out the window. Fortunately for him, he managed to hang onto the inside casing and climb back inside. The attic window was about thirty-five feet above the ground. A few weeks later Dennis had a similar experience, luckily John was there to catch him.
On another occasion Joyce's mother agreed to babysit for her. She had heard about the strange voices in the house and hoped that she could hear them for herself. As the evening wore on she began to relax. The family dog, Lady, slept at her feet. Suddenly she heard what seemed to be a low, menacing growl. It was as if a mad dog was in the room, right behind her! Lady didn't move, she was sound asleep. Joyce's mother knew it couldn't have been Lady that made that sound. As if she was defying the demon, she shouted at it that she was not afraid, she told it to get out and leave her alone! She was not bothered by the demon again that night.
John and Joyce continue to notice many more "little" things. Not too long ago they noticed the bannister seemed to sway back and forth when they walked down the stairs. They have both seen the fireball again. It even seems that they have become ill more often and have more little accidents around the house. Joyce said that twice unseen fingers tried to choke her. She is terrified of the house and refuses to be left alone in it.
In the spring of 1972, Joyce heard the woman's voice again coming from Dennis' room. In an attempt to reach the room while the woman was still there, she rushed up the stairs without calling for John. The woman was gone, but Dennis was lying there, his arms outstretched, as if reaching for someone to pick him up. He seemed to be in shock staring blankly, shaking and perspiring profusely. Joyce ran to the head of the stairs and called to John for help. When they returned to the bedroom, they noticed a depression on the mattress as if someone was sitting next to Dennis.
John and Joyce decided that the only way to fight the demon was through prayer. Being Catholic they bough
t a crucifix for each bedroom. When they had finished hanging the cross on the wall in Dennis' room, he began to jump up and down and twist about, trembling and sobbing as if he were in agonizing pain. Suddenly the cross jumped from the wall and fell to the floor. Three times it was hung up, three times it flew from the wall and landed on the floor. The fourth time John nailed it securely to the wall, this time the demon gave in.. for now!
At times it seemed that Dennis was possessed. Many times he had knowledge of deaths that occurred many years ago, deaths of people even John and Joyce had not known. What could they do? Would the demon ever leave their home?
John and Joyce considered many explanations for the events happening to them and their family. They even looked into their past for the answer. Before they had moved into this house, Joyce had made extensive use of the ouija board. Could that be the cause of their encounters with the demon? Whatever the cause, the heartbreak they suffered was not about to end. Their house is haunted by a demon. How long it has existed in that house is unknown, but John and Joyce hope that it will end soon. Lately, intense psychic cold spots have been coming and going in various places in the house, and a huge black mass has been seen several times lurking in the corners of the bedrooms. It seems as if the demon is telling them that what they have seen up to now is only the beginning, their misery has just begun!
CHAPTER VI
You See, He Put A Curse On You
Ruth is an attractive 20 year old who, since her divorce has lived with her parents. She had lived a fairly simple life consisting mainly of taking care of her young daughter and doing er part of the household chores. Her life chang 1 recently because of a chain of unexplained, : comprehensible events. Ruth had never believed in the supernatural but soon had more proof of it than she could ever hope for. Ruth had believed, at first, that it was her parents house that was haunted. She soon had horrifying proof that it was not the house, it was she.
Furious clouds tumbled endlessly overhead while thunder exploded amidst great bolts of lightening. The earsplitting din of the storm made that night in March 1972, even more dreadful, and Ruth's baby daughter Linda, found it difficult to sleep. Sometime after midnight Linda cried for her mother to take her downstairs to the bathroom. Stumbling through the thick darkness, they made it down and back again without major mishap but something made Ruth uneasy. She almost convinced herself though, that the storm had given her the strange feeling. After she had tucked Linda safely in bed, she bent over to kiss her. Linda was staring, wide-eyed, right past her mother. Ruth suddenly froze. She felt a tingling, warm substance numbing her feet, then her legs, oozing higher and higher. It felt like thousands of tiny fingers scratching, pushing, prodding her back, her sides and squeezing against her.
This groping mass slipped further around Ruth, almost enveloping her, it reached over her shoulders and caressed her cheeks. She managed to turn around in the hopes of seeing who, or what, was trying to suffocate her. There was a single brilliant flash of lightening… and then, nothing. The room was now as empty as it had been earlier that night. Ruth ran from the room, it was dawn before her mother could calm her down. With the slow, painful passing of each day, the event repeated itself. Not only did she encounter the entity at night, but now she experienced its presence in broad daylight. She soon noticed that each attack was preceeded by about five minutes of warning sounds - whispering and tapping. She still could not do anything to stop the attacks but at least she knew when they were coming and she could try to be with someone. The entity would glide up behind her and eventually tower over her, threatening to engulf her. Although its dimensions were never exactly the same, she could feel that it was much taller and wider than she. It was shaped like a small cloud. She felt that the entity was male, an incredibly evil male. She knew that if she ever allowed it to completely surround her, something terrible would happen to her, perhaps she would even die.
It soon became almost unbearable. She feared going to bed at night, she feared getting up in the morning. Ruth became desperate, her mind was in a turmoil. In an effort to protect her sanity she went to a psychiatrist for help.
The psychiatrist wasn't much help. He told Ruth that the events that she described just couldn't have happened to her. He said that she had an over-active imagination and once she realized that, these things would stop happening to her. She left his office with a prescription for tranquilizers, in the hopes that they would calm her down and allow her to take control of her mind again.
That night she took even more than the recommended dosage. She did go to sleep, but not for long. Soon she felt the all too familiar cloud once again overtaking her, surrounding her body. The pills didn't work.
Ruth was now deeply worried, what could she do? She didn't really believe in the supernatural but she thought if it was, just by chance, perhaps she could overpower it with the help of religion.
Ruth hadn't been going to church lately, since her divorce. She was a Catholic though, so she simply went to the Catholic Church nearest her house. She asked the priest to listen to her story. She told him of the entity, how it seemed to come from behind her and almost envelope her. She spoke of her visit to the psychiatrist and his recommendation of the pills. She said that she might be possessed by the devil and only a religious blessing would send him away. The priest wanted no part of this kind of talk and told Ruth to go home, take the pills and stop acting like a child. Ruth was not satisfied so she went to another church, hoping that she might receive a blessing there. The Monsignor seemed very friendly to her, he listened closely to everything that she said. He told her that she had experienced a "light exorcism". He blessed her, said that it would never happen again and sent her on her way. He told her that any time that she wanted to talk to him, he would be there.
That night the entity came again. The blessing that she had received from the Monsignor had not helped, but Ruth felt that she would like to talk with him once again. When she returned to the church, the Monsignor was not there but she was allowed to talk with another priest of the parish. She felt that this priest treated her in the same way the first priest treated her. He told her there was nothing wrong with her, he thought perhaps a few trips to a psychiatrist would help. He said the reason she was experiencing these things was that she had a guilty conscience. She felt guilty because she hadn't been attending church lately, and she knew this was wrong. He told her that if she would start going to mass again, her problem would soon go away. Ruth just couldn't accept that advice.
The attacks on her continued. Each time Ruth believed that the entity would suffocate her, and she would die. She thought that the only solution for her would be to leave that house. She packed her belongings and she and her little daughter moved in with her sister-in-law. The entity attac
ked again. It was then she realized that she was doomed, somehow she had become involved with the supernatural, it was after her.
Why was this happening to her? What had she done in her life to warrant this? She began to look back on her life, trying to determine exactly when these encounters with this thing began. Then she saw it, a connection that was so contrary to all her beliefs that even then, after all she had experienced, she found it hard to accept.
Early in March, Ruth had been asked to go out on a date by a man whom she really didn't know very well. She did know, however, that what she had heard about him, she didn't like. She had heard that he practiced satanism. She didn't believe in the occult, but it was enough to make her wonder about his reputation. When Ruth refused to accept his invitation, he went into an unbelievable rage. In fact, he threatened her and told her that she wouldn't be sleeping at night any more. Ruth couldn't believe that anyone could get that excited at a refusal of a date. That was the last time she heard from him, she erased the incident from her mind.