Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (30 page)

“My daughter has been sleeping with us because she won’t sleep in her room anymore,” Teena told us. “Last night I think she was harassed because she woke up four times, screaming at us.”

She asked Katie if she remembered what had happened.

“It was a monster,” Katie said.

Katie and her brother both seemed pretty happy. We played with them a lot, and Katie enjoyed the attention. They weren’t thrilled about their parents freaking out, but there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal about them.

Unlike the house, the kids were clean and seemed healthy. They also claimed Charlie had some experiences, but he was only one and a half, so there was no way to validate that. All children read off of their parents, though. That’s a given anywhere.

During the walk-through we also met Pat, a family friend who was present for a lot of the phenomena. Teena met her through Raymond—they’d worked together—and at one point she said she worried they’d had an affair. Even so, Teena said she saw Pat as a blessing. They could always go to Pat’s place if they had to flee. Pat, for her part, was there nonstop. Teena said she would come home from work to find Pat had been there all day with Raymond.

Nearly everything Pat said seemed geared to increase Teena’s anxiety. For instance, when someone knocked at the front door Pat said, “Do not open it! It’s the demon!”

Teena seemed to pick up on any cue from Pat. “Oh my God! Don’t open the door, Ryan!” she’d said.

“You really don’t want me to open the door, Teena?”

“Pat’s never been wrong.”

“So, you just sit here and ignore it when someone knocks?”

“It goes away if you ignore it.”

“Well, that’s what happens if you don’t answer the door. The person will eventually leave.”

When the knock came again, I said, “It’s probably someone from production.” And I swung the door open. Teena gasped. Sure enough, it was someone from production. I looked over at Pat and said, “See?”

That sort of thing continued all day. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I’m not. Pat had Teena believing so many ridiculous things, I was beside myself. Clearly Pat was trouble, even if she was ultimately trying to help.

I interviewed Teena and Raymond next. It was a small space, so Ray stood in the doorway.

“What caused it all to start, I don’t know,” Teena said. “I want to know. I really do.”

I asked about Katie’s monster complaints. “That’s the night I woke up getting choked,” Teena explained. “I had handprints on my neck.” She explained that Raymond had seen the prints. Then they showed me the torn shirt he said he’d been attacked in.

“I was in the middle of the living room,” Ray said. “I felt something really cold on my back, and it kept touching me on the neck. And I asked it, ‘Who do you think you are?’ That’s when I got spun around. It ripped my shirt. All the shades went down all at the same time. And that’s when it told me that it was B—.”

We’d already cautioned Ray about saying the name, but he seemed intent on not listening.

Afterward, I spoke to Teena alone about their marital problems. She became very emotional, near tears. “When I really needed someone to talk to I couldn’t go to him. He was withdrawn.”

“What does he think when you tell him things like what happened with Katie last night?” I asked.

“He said he was ready to move. He didn’t want to be in the house no more. Financially we can’t do it. I know this entity is putting a strain on our relationship. We almost divorced.”

My sense was that the activity was only part of the problem and I tried to explain that. “You take away the demonic, and there’s still a lot of sadness, a lot of depression, and a lot of struggle. If the demons are here, they have a lot to feed off of. That’s what it does, it sort of finds people who are . . .”

Teena finished the sentence, “ . . . weakened to begin with.”

She seemed to feel they’d brought things on themselves. It’s hard to say what people bring upon themselves. While they may have contributed to the situation, I didn’t think they started it.

Meanwhile, Ryan Heiser and another PRS member interviewed Ray, who was also convinced about the nature of the haunting. “This thing is demonic. I believe in God, you know, and if you believe in God, you’ve pretty much gotta believe in the devil,” Ray said.

When they asked about the attacks, he again repeated the name. Since we’d already cautioned him, Heiser just said, “Ow.”

Again, he was reminded. “Just for the record, it’s not good to say the name you heard out loud.”

Ray’s response was strange to say the least. “It ought to be a fun night, then, because that’s the third time I’ve said it.”

It was a strange scene. His wife was crying in the other room. She’d reported being seriously abused by the entity and her children had experiences, but he wasn’t listening when we asked him not to say the name.

As I said, the situation didn’t lend itself to a lot of research. We tried to interview some neighbors, but Teena was worried about being judged, so we backed off to respect their privacy. Those we did speak to had no experiences in the park, and nothing negative to say about Teena and Ray. We did find out that the land had some Native American ties, but I didn’t think that had anything to do with the phenomena. Every part of the United States has
some
Native American ties.

It was late by then, so we took a break for dinner, then came back. I took a walk with the team, trying to sort things out, going over how complicated the threads in this case were. There was the name, a wild variety of activity, Ray’s reticence, and Pat’s melodrama. It was hard to think where to begin, or how.

One of our producers ran up to us, saying, “Guys, Teena’s calling for you. She’s saying something happened in the house.”

We went racing in. Several of the crosses hung in the house had been turned, some upside down, some sideways. Teena was visibly upset. “This isn’t funny! We pissed it off,” she said.

Was I suspicious they’d done this themselves? Sure. If I had to suspect someone, I’d suspect Raymond, but I had no proof. As much as we checked, there was no indication they’d tampered with any evidence.

In any case, Teena remained agitated. “I’m scared. This is what happens every time it messes with the crosses. It’s just shaking my belief.” She also said that the demon was near Pat.

“He’s here,” Pat told us. She said things like, “The sense I’m getting? He knows you’re here to get rid of him and he’s fighting it. It’s around me. It’s trying to get to me. Get the Bible!”

So Teena found a Bible, got down on her hands and knees, and listened as Pat gave her instructions on exactly what to do. As Teena obeyed, reading from Psalm 7, she started crying. “Let the enemy pursue me and overtake me, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my soul in the dust.”

It didn’t take a degree in psychology for me to believe that while Pat seemed to really feel there was a presence, she wasn’t helping the situation. Teena was upset, yes, but Pat’s melodramatic comments were apparently fueling the fire. I felt that in order to have a chance at helping Teena, I had to get Pat out of there.

“Something has to be done about this,” Pat said. “It’s going to attack me and attack them.”

I always tried to be diplomatic with clients. Confrontation doesn’t help. But here, I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. I blew up and said, “No, Pat. I think you’re part of the problem. You’re making this family hysterical. Maybe the crosses
did
turn upside down by themselves. I don’t know. But the last thing we need is for Teena to be in tears. You’re not helping. I’d appreciate it if you left this house.”

Put on the spot, she agreed to go. Before she drove off, there was a final interview with her in her car. “I don’t know anything that would turn crosses like that. When he said, ‘Turn around,’ my eyes went right to that cross first thing. Upside down? It’s been right side up since we put it there. It’s in there.”

Throughout, Raymond sat there, not showing any emotion at all.

At this point, I felt I needed help. Lorraine had other commitments, but I’d been in touch with Father Andrew Calder, a part-time pastor who was recommended to me by Chip. He claimed to have experience with the demonic and was involved in some social circles of the paranormal community. After his arrival, one of his first suggestions was that we move the clients to a safe location, and do a spiritual walk-through of the home.

After they’d left, we didn’t rifle through their belongings by any means, but what was left out in the open held some surprises. Raymond’s screen name was Tiny666. The numbers 666, as many readers will know, is famous as the “number of the beast” mentioned in the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, in the New Testament.

The lights were turned off as we did the walk-through. Father Calder sensed a presence, and felt that in the dark it had gotten stronger. “Darkness is their realm,” he explained. He also described what it felt like to sense the unseen. “When I’m dealing with a demonic entity, I will get pressure. I will get stinging sensations.”

Chip had also been invited on this case; the father asked that he be brought in. As we moved through the trailer, Chip started acting very bizarrely. Because of what had happened last week in Elizabethtown, he obviously knew something demonic was up before he arrived. He seemed fine, but once inside, he got a bit crazy, talking forcefully, and faster and faster. In Katie’s room, he felt hit in the gut. The presence, he said, was rattled because we were there.

Father Caldwell agreed. “We’re all a threat to it.”

“It knew we were coming,” Chip said quickly, phrasing things in that quirky way of his. “I’m confirming that at this point in time. It knew we were coming. I am one massive goose bump.”

During the walk-though, I was using a thermal camera, which basically shows the relative temperature of whatever it’s pointed at, different colors indicating colder and warmer. It showed Chip’s body temperature as unusually low. I didn’t think this was paranormal, but it may have been an indication of his emotional state.

He went on, seeming more and more frantic. “It wants the child. There’s something very negative in this house. And it wants the kid. Whatever is in here is very demanding, and this is the feeling I get, this big kind of energy. Whatever it is, is ramping up.”

Suddenly, Father Calder said, “Okay, Chip, time to go.”

He took him out of the house to calm down.

Chip did return for Dead Time later that night. In this case, since the presence certainly seemed demonic, it took place at 3:00 A.M. As Chip tried communicating, I sensed a weight in the house beyond the stifling clutter. If there was something demonic, it was definitely present.

There was little activity to speak of, though, beyond the brooding darkness, until we heard a sharp, constant, electronic beeping. After some effort at maneuvering the crowded space, I tracked down the source. It was an alarm clock, set to go off at 3:33, half of 666. It may well have been someone setting us up, or a coincidence, but it felt as if the entity was toying with us.

There was something unusual about the house that’s hard to explain but that I’ve only experienced during demonic cases. There’s a disorientation, and shadows will flicker as if there’s a candle in the room.

When it was over, we all left, Chip and Father Caldwell agreed that the presence was demonic. Part of the question for me was, was it B—, the name I encountered in Elizabethtown? It seemed a stretch. If the activity began after Charlie was born, it overlapped with what happened with Jodi and Nate on the other case. At the same time, things seemed linked.

Could demons be in two places at once? Perhaps, but Satan is often described as the Prince of Lies. As Lorraine said, demons try to deceive people about who they are, to pump themselves up in the eyes of their victims. I have no definite answers, and my own theories about these beings is open-ended. My sense, though, is that it was a network, two entities using the same calling card.

While Chip was getting strong messages that Katie, the girl, was its primary victim, I disagreed. It seemed to me that the force was more focused on Ray. There was the physical attack, his depression, his quiet, angry personality, Teena’s claims that he’d changed when the activity started and last, the fact that it was Ray who repeatedly said the name. Taken together, it sounded like Raymond was experiencing oppression, an initial stage in possession.

Father Caldwell recommended that no matter what else we tried to do, the house had to be cleaned up first. How can you address a spiritual issue when the clients’ lives are so literally and symbolically messy? It made a lot of sense. To get them on their feet, we had to get them to help themselves.

Beyond that, the spiritual situation required more than a quick house cleansing. That meant that like the last case, we would have to return after arrangements were made. I was worried production would be concerned again, but maybe because we were already planning to return to “The Name,” or maybe because of their own experiences, everyone agreed easily.

I rode with Teena to her church to explain. This is no exaggeration: McDonald’s trash was piled above the minivan seats, all around me. I couldn’t see the floor.

We sat down in the church. I told her what we’d learned about Ray’s screen name. She said she was aware that devil worship had been part of his past, and part of the reason she felt the presence had been influencing him.