by Hans Holzer
They tried every means at their command. Holy water, incense, a minister’s prayer, their own prayers, curses and commands to the unseen: but the scent remained.
Gradually, they learned to live with their psychic problems. For a mother possessed of definite mediumistic powers from youth and a young adult in the household are easy prey to those among the restless dead who desire a continued life of earthly activities. With the physical powers drawn from these living people, they play and continue to exist in a world of which they are no longer a part.
As the young man grew older, the available power dwindled and the scent was noticed less frequently. But the tortured man on the stairs of the house in Somerset will have to wait for a more willing medium to be set free.
* 61
The House of Evil (New York)
PARKER KEEGAN IS A practical man not much given to daydreaming or speculation. That is as it should be. For Parker makes his living, if you can call it that, driving a truck with high explosives, tanks containing acetylene, oxygen, nitrogen, and other flammable substances for a welding company in upstate New York.
So you see, he has to have his mind on his work all the time, if he wants to get old.
His wife Rebecca is a more emotional type. That, too, is as it should be. She is an artist, free-lancing and now and again making sales. There is some Indian blood in her and she has had an occasional bout with the supernatural. But these were mainly small things, telepathy or dream experiences and nothing that really worried her. Neither she nor her husband had any notions that such things as haunted houses really existed, except, of course, in Victorian novels.
Now the Keegans already had one child and Rebecca was expecting her second, so they decided to look for a larger place. As if by the finger of fate, an opportunity came their way just about then. Her teen-age cousin Jane telephoned Rebecca at her parents’ home to tell them of a house they might possibly rent. It developed she did this not entirely out of the goodness of her heart, but also because she didn’t like being alone nights in the big place she and her husband lived in. He worked most of the night in another city.
“There are two halves to this house,” Jane explained, and she made it so enticing that Parker and Rebecca decided then and there to drive over and have a look at it.
Even though they arrived there after dark, they saw immediately that the house was attractive, at least from the outside. Built in pre-Civil War days, it had stood the test of time well. As is often the case with old houses, the servant quarters are in a separate unit and parallel, but do not intrude upon, the main section of the house. So it was here, and it was the former servant quarters that Jane and Harry occupied. As the visitors had not spoken to the landlord about their interest, they entered the unused portion of the building from their cousin’s apartment. This was once the main house and contained eight rooms, just what they needed.
The ground floor consisted of a large front room with two windows facing the road and two facing the other way. Next to it was an old-fashioned dining room, and branching off from it, a narrow kitchen and a small laundry room. In the dim light they could make out a marvelous staircase with a lovely, oiled banister. It was at this point that the two apartments which made up the house connected, and one could be entered into from the other. Underneath the front stairway was a closet and the door leading to the other side of the house, but they found another, enclosed, stairway leading from the bedroom at the top of the front stairs into the dining room. Exactly below this enclosed staircase were the cellar stairs leading into the basement. There were three cellars, one under the servant quarters, one underneath the front room, and one below the dining room.
As Rebecca set foot into the cellar under the dining room, which had apparently served as a fruit cellar, she grew panicky for a moment. She immediately dismissed her anxiety with a proper explanation: they had seen the thriller “Psycho” the night before and this cellar reminded her of one of the gruesome incidents in that movie. But later she was to learn that the feeling of panic persisted whenever she came down into this particular part of the basement, even long after she had forgotten the plot of that movie.
For the present, they inspected the rest of the house. The upstairs portion contained two large bedrooms and two smaller ones. Only the larger rooms were heated. There was an attic but nobody ever investigated it during their entire stay in the house.
They decided the house was just what they wanted and the next morning they contacted the owner.
George Jones turned out to be a very proper, somewhat tight-lipped man. He inquired what they did for a living and then added, “Are you religious people?”
Rebecca thought this an odd question, but since she had told him she was an artist, she assumed he considered artists somewhat unreliable and wanted to make sure he had responsible and “God-fearing” tenants. Only much later did it occur to her that Jones might have had other reasons.
It was a cold, miserable day in December 1964 when the Keegans moved into their new home. They were happy to get into a home full of atmosphere, for Rebecca was an avid amateur archaeologist who read everything on antiques she could get her hands on. At the same time they were doing a good deed for her cousin, keeping her company on those long nights when her husband was away at work. It all seemed just right and Rebecca did not even mind the difficulties the moving brought them. For one thing, they could not afford professional moving men, but had turned to friends for help. The friends in turn had borrowed a truck that had to be back in the garage by nightfall, so there was a lot of shoving and pushing and bad tempers all around. On top of that, the stinging cold and snow made things even more uncomfortable, and Rebecca could do little to help matters, being pregnant with their second child at the time.
Late that first night, they finally climbed the stairs to the large bedroom. They were both exhausted from the day’s work and as soon as they fell into bed, they drifted off into deep sleep.
But even though they were very tired, Rebecca could not help noticing some strange noises, crackling sounds emanating seemingly from her cousin’s side of the house. She put them down to steam pipes and turned to the wall.
When the noises returned night after night, Rebecca began to wonder about them. Parker also worked nights now and she and Jane sat up together until after the late show on television was over, around 1:30 A.M. All that time, night after night, they could hear the steam pipes banging away. Nobody slept well in the house and Jane became jumpier and jumpier as time went on. Her mood would change to a certain sullenness Rebecca had not noticed before, but she dismissed it as being due to the winter weather, and of no particular significance.
Then one night, as she was thinking about some of the events of the recent past while lying awake in bed, Rebecca heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. They were the steps of a heavy man, and since she had not heard the characteristic clicking of the front door lock, she knew it could not be her husband.
Alarmed, and thinking of burglars, she got out of bed and called out to her cousin. She then went to the top of the stairs and was joined by Jane coming through the connecting door, and standing at the foot of the stairs. What the two women saw from opposite ends of the staircase was far from ordinary. Someone was walking up the stairs and the stairs were bending with each step as if a heavy person were actually stepping upon them!
Only there was no one to be seen. They did not wait until the footsteps of the invisible man reached the top of the stairs. Rebecca dove back into her bedroom banging the door shut after her. Just before she did, she could still hear her young cousin downstairs screaming, before she, too, ran back into the assumed safety of her bedroom.
The experience on the stairs made Jane even moodier than before and it was not long afterward that she took her little girl and left her husband. There had been no quarrel, no apparent reason for her sudden action. He was a handsome young man who had treated her well, and Jane loved him. Yet, there it was—she could not stand the
house any longer and did what her panicky mind told her to do.
Rebecca was now left alone nights with the noisy wraith on the stairs and she scarcely welcomed it. Soon after the incident, Jane’s abandoned husband sold his belongings and moved away, leaving the former servant quarters empty once again.
It was then that Rebecca kept hearing, in addition to the heavy footsteps, what seemed to be someone crying in the empty side of the house. She convinced herself that it wasn’t just a case of nerves when the noises continued at frequent intervals while she was fully awake. Her time was almost at hand, and as often happens with approaching motherhood, she grew more and more apprehensive. It did not help her condition any when she heard a loud banging of the cupboards in the dining room at a time when she was all alone in the house. Someone was opening and closing the doors to the cupboard in rapid succession soon after she had retired for the night. Of course she did not run downstairs to investigate. Who would?
Fortunately, Parker came home a little earlier that night, because when he arrived he found Rebecca in a state of near hysteria. To calm her fears as much as to find out for himself, he immediately went downstairs to investigate. There was no one there and no noise. Getting into bed with the assurance of a man who does not believe in the supernatural, he was about to tell his wife that she must have dreamed it all, when he, too, clearly heard the cupboard doors open and close downstairs.
He jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs. As he took the steps two at a time, he could clearly hear the doors banging away louder and louder in the dining room. It must be stated to Parker’s eternal credit, that not once did he show fear or worry about any possible dangers to himself: he merely wanted to know what this was all about.
The noise reached a crescendo of fury, it seemed to him, when he stood before the dining room door. Quickly he opened the door and stepped into the dark expanse of the chilly dining room.
Instantly, the noise stopped as if cut off with a knife. Shaking his head and beginning to doubt his own sanity, or at least, power of observation, Parker got into bed once more and prepared to go to sleep. Rebecca looked at him anxiously, but he did not say anything. Before she could question him, the ominous noise started up again downstairs.
Once more, as if driven by the furies, Parker jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs. Again the noise stopped the moment he opened the dining room door.
He slowly went up the stairs again and crawled into bed. Pulling the cover over his ears, he cursed the ghosts downstairs, but decided that his badly needed sleep was more important than the answer to the puzzle.
Shortly after, their son was born. When they returned from the hospital, they were greeted by a new couple, the Winters, who had meanwhile moved into the other half of the house. Although friendly on the surface, they were actually stern and unbending and as they were also much older than the Keegans, the two families did not mingle much. Mrs. Winters was a tough and somewhat sassy old woman and did not look as if anything could frighten her. Her husband worked as a night watchman, and there were no children. It was not long before Mrs. Winters knocked at Rebecca’s door in fear.
“Someone is trying to break in,” she whispered, and asked to be let in. Rebecca knew better but did not say anything to frighten the old woman even further.
It seemed as if winter would never yield to spring, and if you have ever lived in the cold valleys of upstate New York, you know how depressing life can be under such circumstances.
To brighten things a little, the Keegans acquired a female German shepherd dog for the children, and also for use as a watchdog.
All this time Rebecca was sure she was never alone in the house. There was someone watching her, night and day. Her husband no longer scoffed at her fears, but could do little about them. The strange noises in the walls continued on and off and it got so that Rebecca no longer felt fear even when she saw the doorknob of a perfectly empty room turn slowly by its own volition. By now she knew the house was haunted, but as yet she did not realize the nature of the uncanny inhabitants.
One day she left the baby securely strapped in his seat while she ran to catch her little girl who was climbing the front stairs and was in immediate danger of falling off. Just at that precise moment, the strap broke and the baby fell to the floor, fracturing his skull.
All during their stay at the house, someone was always having accidents or becoming unaccountably ill. Their debts increased as their medical expenses grew higher, so it was decided that Rebecca should go to work and earn some money. In addition, Parker started working extra shifts. But far from helping things, this only served to incite the landlord to raise their rent, on the theory that they were earning more. To make things even more difficult for them, Rebecca could not find a proper baby-sitter to stay with the children while she was at work. Nobody would stay very long in the house, once they got to know it.
She turned to her mother for help, and her mother, after a short stay, refused to spend any more time in the house, but offered to take the children to her own home. There was no explanation, but to Rebecca it seemed ominous and obvious. Finally, her teenage sister consented to become a baby-sitter for them. She could use the money for school, but soon her enthusiasm waned. She began to complain of a closed-in feeling she experienced in the old house and of course she, too, heard all the strange noises. Each day, Mary became more and more depressed and ill, whereas she had been a happy-go-lucky girl before.
“There are prowlers about,” she kept saying, and one day she came running to Rebecca in abject fear. On a moonless night she happened to be glancing out a living room window when she saw what appeared to be a face. Rebecca managed to calm her by suggesting she had seen some sort of shadow, but the incessant barking of the dog, for no apparent reason, made matters worse. Added to this were incidents in which objects would simply fly out of their hands in broad daylight. The end of the rope was reached one day when they were all in the front room. It was afternoon and Mary was holding a cup in her hand, about to fill it with tea. That instant it flew out of her hands and smashed itself at Parker’s feet. Without saying another word, the young girl went up the stairs to her room. Shortly after, her things all packed, she came down again to say goodbye.
Once again they were without help, when Rebecca’s sister-in-law Susan saved the day for them. A simple and quite unimaginative person, she had put no stock into all the tales of goings-on she had heard and was quite willing to prove her point.
Within a day after her arrival, she changed her tune.
“Someone is watching me,” she complained, and refused to stay alone in the house. She, too, complained of things flying off the shelves seemingly by their own volition and of cupboard doors opening and closing as if someone were looking into the drawers for something or other.
The footsteps up the stairs continued and Susan heard them many times. She took the dog into the house with her but that was of little use: the dog was more afraid than all of the people together.
Incredible though it seemed to the Keegans, two years had passed since they had come to the House of Evil. That they still had their sanity was amazing, and that they had not moved out, even more of a miracle. But they simply could not afford to, and things were difficult enough in the physical world to allow the unseen forces to add to their problems. So they stuck it out.
It was the night before Christmas of 1966, and all through the house a feeling of ominous evil poisoned the atmosphere. They were watching television in order to relax a little. Rebecca suddenly saw a presence out of the corner of her eye, a person of some kind standing near the window in back of the sofa where her sister-in-law was sitting. Without raising her voice unduly or taking her eyes off the spot, she said, “Susan, get the rifle!” They had a rifle standing ready in the corner of the room.
Only then did Susan take a sharp look at the face peering into the window. It was a man’s face, either Indian or Negro, and so unspeakably evil it took her breath away. Scowling at th
em with hatred, the face remained there for a moment, while Susan grabbed the gun. But when she pointed it towards the window, the face had disappeared.
Immediately, they rushed outside. The ground was frozen hard, so footprints would not have shown, had there been any. But they could not see anyone nor hear anyone running away.
The dog, chained at a spot where an intruder would be visible to her, evidently did not feel anything. She did not bark. Was she in some strange way hypnotized?
Soon after Christmas, Susan had to leave and the Keegans no longer could afford a baby-sitter. Rebecca had quit her job, and things were rough financially again.
To help matters, they invited a young couple with a small child to move in with them and help share expenses. The husband did not believe in the supernatural and the wife, on being told of their “problems,” showed herself open-minded, even interested, although skeptical.
What had appeared to be a sensible arrangement soon turned out a disaster and additional burden to an already overburdened family. The Farmers weren’t going to contribute to the household, but spend what money they earned on liquor and racing. The tension between the Keegans and the Farmers mounted steadily. But the monetary problems were not the sole cause. The Farmers, too, noticed the noises and the unbearable, heavy atmosphere of the house and instinctively blamed the Keegans for these things. Then there was a quilt with an early American eagle and ship motif printed on it. Soon the wife noticed that someone had turned the quilt around after she had put it away safely for the night. In the morning, the motif would face the opposite way. They could not blame the Keegans for that, since the quilt had been stored out of anyone’s reach, and they dimly realized that the house was indeed haunted.
As the tension grew, the two couples would scarcely speak to each other even though they naturally shared the same quarters. Rebecca began to realize that no matter how gay a person might have been on the outside, once such a person moved into the House of Evil, there would be changes of personality and character. Although far from superstitious, she began to believe that the house itself was dangerous and that prolonged life in it could only destroy her and her loved ones.