Volume 3: Ghost Stories from Texas (Joe Kwon's True Ghost Stories from Around the World) (34 page)

The Church, the Priest, and My Son

Laredo, Texas

In 2002 I ran away from home with a boy my parents did not approve of. I was 18 at the time (and pregnant). My boyfriend, Johnny, was almost 21. We stayed at a friend's house for about a week then started house hunting. I was broke but Johnny had a small amount of money coming in from his extremely supportive parents.

The first two houses we looked at were perfect, but extremely out of our price range. When we drove up to the third house, I automatically noticed the cross on the roof. The real estate agent began telling us about it.

It was a small abandoned church. The outside was messy with twigs and dead plants everywhere, but the inside was beautiful. Wood floors, and pretty red carpeted stairs to a second floor. I walked up the stairs while Johnny talked with Todd, the real estate agent. I immediately got a bad feeling.

There were only two rooms. I walked into the first and saw crosses everywhere. On the walls, painted on the floor and even hanging from the fan. I shut the door quickly and went to room number two. This one was completely empty except for a Roman Gothic window which was open. This room gave me chills too. Johnny came up and stood behind me, he looked and said it would be a perfect room for the baby.

He walked to the other room and looked. The crosses didn't bother him. He said we could remove them all. I said nothing and walked back downstairs. I walked through the small kitchen and to the potential living room. There were two pews and a statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. I told Johnny I didn't like it and I wasn't going to live there. He told me it was in our price range and perfect. Reluctantly I agreed.

A week later we moved in. Everything was normal until the first night. I was upstairs trying to remove the crosses when I heard Johnny calling me from downstairs. I yelled back at him telling him I was busy. "Dani! Dani! Danica! Get down here now!" he yelled, sounding scared and angry. I went down and he started yelling at me telling me how I wasn't funny and that I need to stop playing childish pranks on him. I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me that he saw a Rosary lift off the statue of Mary and into the air then drop again. I got very nervous after that.

We removed everything. The pews, the crosses, we took it all out and gave it to a local church. Everything seemed normal after that.

About a month after that I had the baby. We named him Anthony. We set up his nursery in the room upstairs - the one that had been empty when we moved in.

For the first few months nothing happened. Johnny got a job and was gone a lot of the day at work. I stayed home with Anthony. One day I was downstairs making myself lunch when I heard Anthony cry from upstairs where he was taking a nap. I assumed nothing was wrong as I went up to check on him. When I did he wasn't in his crib. He was sitting on the floor. I called Johnny, and he thought I was losing my mind.

We began fighting a lot when all these incidents would happen. Anthony kept escaping his crib according to Johnny. I knew something was moving him because a baby that is only five months old can't crawl out of his four foot tall crib.

One night I woke up in the chair that I had fallen asleep on with Anthony in my arms. It was the day before Christmas Eve and we were sitting in front of our brightly lit tree. Then I heard something. I turned around to see a priest in black standing there. I thought I was dreaming but then I realized I wasn't when he walked toward me and reached for Anthony. I screamed and Johnny ran downstairs, but he didn’t see anything.

The next night, Christmas Eve, we had some friends over. Anthony was sitting with Johnny and we were just talking. Then I saw him again. The priest was standing at the bottom of the steps. I didn't scream this time. Instead I tapped Johnny on the shoulder. He turned and saw him too and jumped up. Then the priest vanished. Our friends thought we were drunk, so they just laughed off Johnny's reaction.

They left a little later and we decided to have Anthony sleep with us that night. We woke up Christmas morning only to find that he was gone. Me and Johnny began panicking and searching for him. We heard him cry from downstairs. We ran down and saw Anthony lying down unharmed on a pile of hay under the Christmas tree. We grabbed him and left the house. We went back a few days later to get our stuff, then we moved out. We never could explain the things that happened or why they happened. We thought the priest had set Anthony up on a pile of hay on Christmas to make it seem like the birth of Jesus Christ.

We never were sure. We tried very hard to forget it.

Now, 8 years later I'm 26 and happily married to Johnny. And Anthony has grown up to be a happy normal 8 year old. He doesn't remember or know about the church, and we won't ever tell him, but every Christmas Day while Anthony opens his gifts me and Johnny can't help but look back on the incidents that took place in that horrible church.

Shawn 

Dallas, Texas

When I was younger I used to experience a lot of things in my grandmother's house. When I lived there I used to have a little ghostly friend I would play with named Shawn.

We eventually moved out of my grandfather's house to another house about an hour away. My mom and dad also decided to have more children.

I started school and completely forgot about Shawn. Well when my brother turned about the age I was when I started to see Shawn, he would tell us about it. But it was only when we visited Grandma.

One night at dinner my little brother told us that Shawn wanted his help. I didn't catch on right away, but my mother instantly remembered who Shawn from my experiences with him.. At first we kinda ignored it, until he started getting bruises and scratches on his face and arms when he went over there.

The weird thing is my grandmother didn't have a cat or anything that could make claw marks on his face like that.

The thing that bothered us the most though, before we had the house blessed, is that my brother came to us and told us at the age of four (and I do not know how a four year old would know or come up with this), that Shawn told him he fell in a pool and drowned. He added that his body is under ground and there are bugs crawling in his body. And Shawn told him that he needed his help to feel better. And, that dying wouldn't hurt my brother. We never let him be by his self in that house ever again.

It gives me chills still thinking about it...

To Grandmother's House I Go

Plano, Texas

Due to the difficult economic times my father lost his job back in '08, forcing my mother and I to move into an apartment complex in Plano, Texas. I was 18 and on my way to college, but the living arrangements had always been a difficult situation. I was able to get in using scholarships, but I still had nowhere to live.

After countless arguments, something changed. My grandmother passed away, leaving me her house near the college I would be attending. It was a mixture of pain for her death and relief on my parents' financial burden.

My grandmother was a very strange woman. She had lived in that house ever since my mom moved out to college. But after her husband (my grandfather) died, she became unstable and was ultimately institutionalized a few years back due to hallucinations of ghosts or spirits or whatever. She lived out her final years back at home, alone.

I remember when I was 7 years old I was staying at her house.

Early in the morning my mom had woken me up, looking terrified and said that we had to leave, and I was forbidden to ever go into that house again.

My mother tried to stop me from moving into that house, but ultimately gave in, knowing that there was no choice. To this day she has never explained to me what happened to her in that house.

This house was just off a dirt path. It was a one story with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Toward the end of her life my grandmother had boarded up all of the windows. The house was beautiful; white shutters, a white door, with bricks that seemed to shine under the right light. It was intoxicating. I couldn't understand why my mother wanted me out of it.

The first thing I did was take the boards down. The evening sun shone through the windows making the room dazzle with the reflection of all the colors around the room. I was ready to spend the next 4 years here. I never knew I would only last one week.

I set up my sleeping bag, brushed my teeth and tucked myself in, falling asleep instantly. I woke up around 3 in the morning to scratching on the bathroom floor, and a muffled cry. I ran to the bathroom and swung the door open, no one was inside but there was a pool of blood behind the door, scratch marks on the back of the door, and what looked to be a few teeth. I screamed and ran to call 911. I realized I hadn't hooked up the phones and my cell had died. (How cliché right?)

I went back over to the bathroom to close the door and everything was gone. I froze, not knowing if I was dreaming or crazy. I chalked it up to dreaming. School was started next week, this is when I'm supposed to be relaxing.

The next few nights I slept peacefully but didn't set foot in the bathroom. But the fourth night, I heard it again, louder and more distinct. The moaning turned to a muffled cry, barely audible to understand that this person was crying for help. I knew that voice! It was Grandma's!

I ran to the bathroom and swung the door open and this time I saw her, her legs cuffed to the toilet seat and her hands bound, her mouth gagged. Someone had punched her face because she was bleeding and a tooth had been knocked out. In hysterics I called my mom, she told me to come home immediately.

She explained to me that my grandmother had been murdered and was found chained in her bathroom.

She also explained to me how my grandfather really died, he hung himself and my grandmother relived it over and over. I asked her if that's what she saw when I was younger, she wouldn't answer. I can only guess.

I'll never step foot in my grandmother's house again.

Cell Call

Uvalde, Texas

My step dad had died a couple weeks ago and my mom was praying and asked God if she could see him one more time.

My mom was in the living room with some of her friends. We have a house phone that only relatives are allowed to call on it. The phone started ringing and then it stopped before someone could answer it. The phone is hooked up to our TV so we can check our calls. So my mom checked it and it had my step dad's cell phone number on it and it said his name under the number (Howard). My mom walked to her bedroom freaked out. His cell phone was in a drawer in my moms dresser. She checked it and it was off.

She went back into the living room. When she walked in her friends had turned as white as ghosts. She asked what was wrong. They handed her the phone and it said there was voice message. She brought the phone up to her ear and listened to what it said.

"Darling, I'm ok" said Howard.