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Soul(s) Being Tortured
*I don't take credit for any content on this blog unless stated otherwise*
This was taken by a woman who was taking an evening stroll in her local park. She was reviewing a few pictures she had taken, when she noticed a misty haze in some of the photos. She then noticed this pair of glowing eyes in one of the last images she captured. Apparently, this was a picture of wall at the end of the park, where there are no lights or lamps nearby, so what is the explaination for this daunting pair of eyes?
This image was taken in the basement of a house that had been experiencing strange activity. The residents claimed that there were disembodied voices throughout the house, blankets ripped off beds, doors slamming and several accounts of footsteps roaming the hallways. This picture sealed the deal for the home owners, who frantically moved after seeing this startling image.
This photo was taken at the Worley Inn bed and breakfast in Dahlonega, Ga. in 1999. The owners were looking for a few pictures for their new website a few years later, and stumbled upon this image of what appears to be a young boy laying on one of their beds. The owners assume it to be the Ghost of Claud Worley, who was killed in 1800 after being struck by a train.
Parents can't seem to resist the urge to play amateur horror movie director when teaching you the importance of tying your shoes. "You don't want to end up like that boy two towns over whose shoelace got stuck in the escalator at the mall. They're still cleaning his toes out of the grate with dental floss." After years of riding escalators without incident, you begin to suspect that you're more likely to make a face that gets "stuck that way" than get your foot eaten by the escalator at the mall.
Escalators are hungry like the wolf -- in this case, an unseeing, unfeeling robotic wolf that appears to grow hungrier once it tastes blood. "Shoelaces will get sucked up ... like sucking soda through a straw. It'll suck it right in." That's not a quote from a guide to parenting with existential terror, but from nationally certified escalator safety inspector Kevin Doherty. And once the escalator has your shoelace, well, not even food metaphors can convey the shit Doherty's seen on the job: "It's unbelievable what an escalator can do to human flesh."
Toes and entire pieces of feet have been chewed off by escalators. And if the victim reaches down to try to free himself from the human paper shredder, that's when things can go from bad to worse. Like grizzly bears and sharks, you apparently don't want to mess with an escalator when it's in the middle of a feeding.
For instance, in 2003 a girl lost part of her hand when she reached down to free her shoe, which the escalator was in the process of eating. In 2005, a 34-year-old cook made the mistake of wearing a hood on an escalator. Nobody's sure if he was reaching down to free a shoelace or seated when the escalator got hold of his hood, because by the time they found him, the escalator had sucked his hood into its comb plate,dragged him to the ground and strangled him to death.
Painted by Bruno Amadio, “The Crying Boy” painting isn’t just one painting, but a mass-produced print with numerous alternative versions, all with young boys or girls crying, distributed in the 1950s. The haunting stories began in the 1980s after a fireman in England claimed he kept coming across the paintings in burned houses, except the paintings were remarkably untouched. People who owned the painting found their houses burned down. It reached such a fervor that newspaper The Sun gave readers a chance to bring in the paintings and destroy them in a bonfire. Psychics claim the painting is haunted by the spirit of the boy or girl it depicts. Supposedly, to lift the curse, you must hang a boy and girl crying together, or like the movie “The Ring,” give the painting to another person. Comedian Steve Punt had another theory: many of the paintings came from one person who never liked the picture and saw a good opportunity to get rid of it.
After my computer got burnt to a crisp in a lightning storm, I was left with only my old computer. Fortunately I had everything from my destroyed computer already backed up onto USB drives and CD-ROMs. My old computer was running Windows 98, and desperately needed an OS upgrade. It was time to search online for a new OS install disc that was at an affordable price. You might ask, "Why not just get a new computer?" I would have, but because of the crappy economy, I didn't have the money to do so. So my only other option was to upgrade my old one. Anyways, I searched around e-Bay to see if anybody was selling a copy of Windows XP at an affordable price. There was no way my computer would be able to handle Windows Vista or 7, so I would just have to go with XP. Lo and behold, somebody was selling a full Windows XP clean install disc for only $1.45. Nobody else was bidding on it, so I placed my bid. Even after I had bidded nobody else did. Needless to say, I won the disc, with nobody else to challenge me. A few days later I received the disc in a white envelope. I opened the envelope and pulled out the disc. It was just like any other XP bootable disc. I turned on my old computer and popped it in, and installed Windows XP as one normally would. While I waited for it to install, I popped some popcorn, took a dump, and watched some television, occasionally checking on the progress of the installation and responding to dialog boxes, entering the registration code, etc. Finally it finished installing, and I could use the computer.
The first thing I did was transfer everything I had backed up from my destroyed computer to the old computer. CD after CD, USB drive after USB drive, and finally I got everything onto my computer the way I wanted it. I decided to randomly browse around the computer a little before I turned it off and get ready to go to bed. This random browsing lead me to the "C:\WINDOWS\Media" folder. Then I noticed a file in there called "1dollar.wav". I didn't put the file on the computer, so I assumed it was installed along with all the other files in the folder. But I realized I didn't remember any such file ever being included with XP when I had had it on my destroyed computer, before I upgraded it to Windows 7. Curious, I double-clicked the file to open it.
It was a very peculiar file. All I heard when I opened it was some weird static noise, almost as if it was some extremely distorted song. The file was just 4 solid minutes of this weird sound. It kind of creeped me out. I mean, it was night time, with my sleeping dog being my only company, and I find a file on my computer that I never put there, and wasn't part of the original XP installation, and all it is 4 minutes of weird static noise. Furthermore, it's in a system folder. Thinking it might be a virus of some sort, I scanned the file. Behold, 1 trojan came up! I had no clue where I would have gotten it from. I'd barely been on the internet at all since Windows XP was fully installed. Suddenly I realized I'd seen a file with this same name flash for a split second on the screen as the disc installed all of the system files. I could only come to one conclusion: the disc had been tampered with. I decided to delete the trojan, delete 1dollar.wav, and do a full system scan with both of my antivirus programs (MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware and Microsoft Security Essentials). It was going to take a crap load of time to finish scanning, so I decided to go to bed while I waited. I still felt a bit mad that I'd went through all that time to finally get my computer set up and upgraded the way I wanted it, only to find out the install disc had been tampered with.
I woke up the next morning, ate my breakfast, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and went into my computer room. I sat down at my computer and turned on the monitor (which I had turned off last night before I went to bed). I couldn't believe what I saw.
My desktop background had been changed to a picture of a dollar bill. There were two errors saying that my two AntiViruses had crashed, along with a bunch of other blank error dialogs that were all titled "1dollar.wav", with a single OK button. Every icon on my desktop had been replaced with a shortcut to 1dollar.wav, even the recycle bin. My "start" button now said "1dollar.wav" and the usual flag icon was replaced with a $ sign. When I clicked the Start button (or in this case the "1dollar.wav" button) to bring up the "1dollar.wav" menu, every icon there was also replaced with 1dollar.wav. The Administrator name was changed to "1dollar.wav" and the account picture was that of a dollar bill. I clicked "Don't Send Report" to both the errors saying MalwareBytes' and Microsoft Security Essentials had crashed. I then clicked the OK button on each "1dollar.wav" error box. Okay, the screen was cleared of all of those windows now. I tried to reopen my antivirus programs, but they both gave me a blank error titled "1dollar.wav". I clicked OK on those. I went to the "1dollar.wav" menu, and clicked "Shut Down" but I just got the familiar "clunk" error sound. I tried the power button. Nothing happened. Finally I just unplugged the computer and it finally shut off.
I plugged it back in. I booted in safe mode, and tried opening the antivirus programs there. But when I did, my computer made the weirdest noise ever and abruptly powered off. I tried pressing the power button, but nothing happened. It didn't even whir up. That freaking virus had completely destroyed my only remaining computer. And I hadn't even gotten it from a website or anything. It had come with my operating system.
Well, that was that. I had to go get some things at the grocery store, so I left the house along with my dog.
I have yet to earn enough money to buy myself a new computer. I do everything computer related on a friend's laptop that he generously lets me borrow when I need to check my e-mail, do something on my bank account online, etc. I have used that same laptop to type up and publish this story to the internet, along with 1dollar.wav, which I have gone through and manually removed the malicious coding from. After a certain cryptic message I read talking about some "last evidence" that will have to be destroyed if I share it with anybody (which you will read about in just a moment) I have decided to research as thoroughly as I can about the mysterious 1dollar.wav, until I have figured out the sinister mystery that surrounds it.
How did I get back 1dollar.wav after my computer was destroyed, you ask?
Well, when I got home, my dog's ears perked up, and she began growling menacingly. She followed a scent into the computer room. Everything seemed normal. However, when I looked where my (second) destroyed computer was, it wasn't there. Everything else was still there. But the computer was gone. I thought of a robbery, but who would want an old computer that doesn't even boot up anymore? I also noticed the tampered-with XP install disc I had gotten off e-Bay was missing as well. In its place, was a different disc. It was a white CD-ROM, with something written on it in green sharpie. I picked up the disc and read: This is the last remaining evidence that I know of. Keep it secret, or I'll have to destroy it too. I glanced down at the table the disc had been sitting on. Where it had been, was a single dollar bill. It wasn't crinkled or damaged in any way, unlike most dollar bills. It was in absolutely perfect condition, as if it had just been made. I took the disc and the dollar over to my friend's house. The one that has the laptop that I'm typing these words on. I explained how both my computers were destroyed, and he agreed to let me borrow it whenever I needed to. So, I got on the laptop and put the CD in. On the CD was just one file: 1dollar.wav.
Post 2:
Hey everyone, it's me again. So you all remember that 1dollar.wav crap I posted about a week or so ago, right? Well, like I said I would, I did some research on it. Simply searching 1dollar.wav on Google yielded no results. I asked on a message board about the file, but nobody seemed to have even heard of it before. That is, until I got a reply from some guy saying he knew of the file, and had bad times with it. It went as follows:
Oh don't even remind me. 1dollar.wav...it's amazing how much trouble a 4 minute sound clip of heavily distorted music can cause. It was years ago. Some person on Craigslist was selling a computer with Windows XP already installed on it. At the time, Vista was still in beta and 7 didn't even exist yet. I went to her house in Cleveland to pick up the computer. I brought it home and turned it on. I noticed a wave file in the C:\WINDOWS\Media folder, entitled "1dollar.wav". Curious, I opened it and listened to it. It was nothing special. Perhaps a little creepy, but it didn't interest me. I closed it and went to the bathroom. I came back to the computer, and I could not believe what I saw. Everything was changed to dollars or some crap and a bunch of error messages titled "1dollar.wav". I tried using my antivirus to fix what I instantly took as a virus, but it wouldn't open. I tried turning off the computer, but it wouldn't turn off, no matter what. The only thing that worked was unplugging it. I tried to boot in safe mode and use my antivirus there, but upon trying to open it my computer made this bizarre noise and shut off, and refused to turn back on. I don't mean refused to boot into the OS. I mean literally just would NOT power on, as if it wasn't plugged in. The next day my computer was gone, with just a single dollar bill in its place. I know it sounds insane, and you probably won't believe me unless you had a similar experience with the file yourself.
Cleveland! eBay had told me that the item location was Cleveland, Ohio! I now had a new mission: track down the person that sold me the install disc.
I replied to him saying that I had indeed had a very similar experience, and requested he give me the exact address of the woman that sold him the computer, as I wanted to have a little talk with her. I probably sounded like a stalker, but I didn't really give a crap. I needed to figure this out. Surprisingly, the user actually sent me the address of the woman to me in a private message. Living in Ohio myself, Cleveland was not too far away. So, me and my dog got into the car and drove off.
We arrived at a small yellow house that could only be the home of the woman who sold me the install disc. We walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell.
A woman almost instantly answered the door. She seemed to be an elderly woman, short and stout with white hair tied up in a bun. Then I looked into her eyes. Oh, those eyes! They seeped through me and into my soul, hungrily examining it, seeing if it was suitable to feast upon. I almost sprinted back to my car and drove off right then and there, but I couldn't. I had a mystery to solve.
"Why hello, John Goodman!" said the woman, in a menacing voice that sent shivers down my spine. My first thought: Oh dear, she knows my name! Oh God please help me! My dog growled threateningly at the woman.
It took all of my courage to finally sputter out, "Look, I don't have time for fooling around! What is "one dollar dot wave" and why did you put it in my Windows XP install disc?"
"Oh, I can't tell you that," cackled the woman, whom I was now certain was no good.
"Why not?" I countered angrily.
"Because," said the evil woman. "However, I can tell you this: be wary in the days that follow, for one dollar will haunt until all is hollow."
And before I could say another word, the woman shut the door on me, cackling wickedly. I had no other choice but to walk back to the car. Along the way a man came by and asked me, "What were you doing over there?"
"I was talking to the woman that lives in that house over there," I replied.
The man's expression became concerned. "Nobody has lived in that house for over 10 years."
I looked to the house, but instead of the bright, yellow cheery house that I had seen when I arrived there, there was a crumbling, abandoned foundation with a wooden plank nailed to the front door saying "CONDEMNED" in green letters.
"But...but I was just talking to an elderly woman that lived there a minute ago," I argued.
All the color drained from the man's face. "...elderly woman?"
"Yes," I said. "You know, with her hair all tied up in a bun and what-not?"
"The last person who lived there...was an elderly woman...always having her hair tied up in a bun...but she's dead."
So, I didn't actually find out much of anything new about 1dollar.wav, but apparently, it was created by a ghost. Interesting...but it's no laughing matter. I realized that the moment I saw that dang woman out of the corner of my eye, giving me that freaking soul-devouring stare and smiling like a maniac. When I focused on her, she disappeared. I then proceeded to sprint out of the room and hide under a blanket for the rest of the night. When I dared go back into the living room, a dollar bill lay on the floor where the woman had been.
Post 3:
On August 29th, Goodman updated the blog again with yet another report about his research on the ominous 1dollar.wav.
It's official: that old hag is stalking me. Since my last post I've been catching glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye, always with that soul-devouring stare and demented smile. She always vanishes as soon as I focus on her. And it always has to be at night when it happens. Each time I get the heck out of there and hide under a blanket for the rest of the night. When I dare enter the room again, there's a dollar bill where the woman was. I have actually collected all of the dollar bills she's left for me, beginning with the one that came with the "last evidence" disc, into one wallet. I've gone 3 days straight without sleep because of this crap. In the most recent incident she was even holding a bloody knife. That was enough encouragement for me: I packed up a few things, and me and my dog piled into the car and went to my friend's house. (Unrelated: I haven't told you my dog's name yet, have I? Her name is Coco. As in chocolate coco. Anyways, as I was saying...) I told him everything that had happened (I'd kept it secret because I figured if I told him he'd think I was insane, but at this point I really had no other option). About 1dollar.wav, the old hag that seems to want to kill me for some reason, etc. I expected him to say I was crazy and call a mental institution, but miraculously he actually believed me. I guess he knew I wouldn't make crap like this up. So, I'm going to be staying at his place until this situation blows by.
Post 4:
Posted August 30th, 2011
Tonight my friend glanced out the window and all the color drained from his face, and Coco growled menacingly at it. I looked out the Window and I saw it: that blasted old hag. She stared into the room from outside with that soul-devouring stare, and that same demented smile. Then she disappeared. We didn't need anymore encouragement: we pulled down those blinds, and nailed boards to every window in the house, as well as the front and back doors. I don't think we'll be going outside for a while...
Post 5:
Posted August 31st, 2011
I went on my friend's laptop and checked the forum thread I had posted asking about 1dollar.wav. Someone had replied there, under the username "1dollar", and guess what their profile picture was? That cursed old hag's face, with her trademark soul-eating stare and demented grin. Her reply said simply, "Oh, more evidence. Guess I'll have to destroy it," I clicked the reply button to respond, but it said that the thread never existed. Furthermore, when I searched the username 1dollar, it said no such user ever existed. Weirdest of all, her join date had been in 1928. That was 9 freaking decades ago. The internet didn't even exist back then.
Post 6:
Posted September 1st, 2011
While on my friend's laptop, a dialog box suddenly appeared, prompting me to download "1dollar.exe". Knowing this could only be more of the old hag's haunting, I canceled the download, but guess what? It downloaded anyways.Ain't that just nifty? As soon as it finished downloading, it opened itself up. I prepared for the worst. Another computer destroying virus...the old hag contained within a computer file.... It opened. It was...it was...a game.
A game. Of all the wretched things 1dollar.exe could have been, it was just some PC game. It showed a generic menu screen, with the buttons PLAY, EXIT, and OPTIONS. The background was a picture of a dollar bill. I clicked OPTIONS. Just some graphics settings and such. I went back and clicked PLAY, again preparing myself for the worst. It gave an instruction screen on how to play. Basically, the concept was that you were a bank robber, and in each level you had to go through obstacles to get to the bank and rob it. In each bank you'd have to fight a boss, and if you beat the boss you'd get the money.
So, I played the game, with my friend and Coco watching anxiously. (Unrelated again: my friend's name is Bill.)
It was your generic platform game, and I played through it quite easily. I beat 3 levels, and then the 4th one was the final one before I got to the first bank. I beat that level, and fought the boss. The boss was some kind of banker with super powers or something. It was a world 1 boss, so he was ridiculously easy to beat. I beat him by shooting him in the head with a pistol, and got the money. The game counted up my scores and so forth before taking me to the first level of world 2.
I figured I had played enough, so I tried to exit the window, but clicking the X only greeted me with the windows error sound. It wanted me to keep playing, and judging by all the weird crap that had happened to me recently, the reasons couldn't be good. So I tried ending the application process with Task Manager, but the End Process button only gave me the error sound again. I tried shutting down, but the Shut Down button gave me the same results. It was very similar to when 1dollar.wav had first destroyed my old computer. Because the laptop was running on a battery, I had to take out the battery to shut it off. I put the battery back in, rebooted, and everything was normal again. I deleted 1dollar.exe. It didn't come back like 1dollar.wav did. It stayed deleted.
Post 7:
Posted September 4th, 2011
More corner-of-my-eye sightings of the old hag. In all of them she's holding a bloody knife. Boarding up our windows and doors didn't seem to help, she still got into the house. Today we un-boarded the front door to go and get the Sunday paper. Even if we're hiding from a sadistic ghost woman who wants to kill us we still gotta keep up on the news, right? It said that a banker had been found dead at a local bank, with a bullet wound in his forehead. It showed a picture of the man, and to our horror, he looked exactly like the world 1 boss from 1dollar.exe. The way in which I had defeated him had even been a pistol to the head, and the paper said there was a bullet wound on his head. As I read the paper, I saw the old hag again out of the corner of my eye, holding a dead corpse under her arm that looked just like the banker. This time, I didn't focus on her. I focused on the paper, to see what would happen if I didn't make her disappear. If she tried to kill me or anything I'd just look at her. She just kept standing there, with that demented smile and soul-eating stare. After a few moments her smile began to fade and turn to a frown. As if she was disappointed that I didn't seem to notice her. I looked to Bill, and surprisingly he had followed suit. Even Coco was pretending not to notice the hag. I turned back to the paper, so I could continue seeing the hag out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't easy, trying not to see something yet see it at the same time. I kept wanting to look, but I knew if I focused on her she would disappear. I wanted to know what would happen if that didn't happen.
Her disappointed expression then turned to a fierce and angry look. She raised her knife, and lunged at me. In unison, me, Bill and Coco all whirled around to face the ghost. She stopped abruptly just as she was about to reach us, then vanished.
This raised yet another question: if she wants to kill us so badly, why didn't she just do it and get it over with, instead of taunting us like this? Maybe she doesn't want to kill us. Maybe she just wants to make us think she wants to kill us, make us paranoid to the point of insanity, just for her own sadistic pleasure and amusement. Sure wouldn't surprise me.
Post 8:
Posted September 5th, 2011
I woke up this morning from the little sleep that I actually got. I opened my eyes, expecting to see the ceiling above me. But then I froze.
Standing above me, looking down into my eyes with her soul-devouring stare and insane smile, was the hag.
For several moments, there was silence. I said nothing, for I was too afraid. I didn't move. I didn't even breathe. My heart threatened to burst it was pounding so hard. Then finally the hag broke the silence.
"Good morning, John," she said menacingly. It took all of my courage to respond.
"Just tell me what you want and I'll give it to you! Just leave me alone!" I replied.
"It's just, so sad, when you have to live under a curse. The curse of my own creation. Forced to pass on the curse to others. The curse of one dollar. Of Greed. I never asked for this, but, after having it shoved down my throat so much, I've...come to enjoy it. I'm not sure if it's my sanity that's been pushed by this, or what. But it comforts me to know others are feeling the same pain as me,"
"Enough of your cryptic crap," I yelled, and then suddenly Coco jumped out of nowhere and tackled the hag to the ground, growling furiously. The hag just smiled. "Go ahead. Do it. Rip me to bloody shreds. It might just be the only hope of destroying this horrid curse once and for all. Your suffering will be gone, and everyone who's ever fallen victim to Greed's villainy," Before another word could be said, Coco began tearing that woman to bloody shreds. I never knew my dog could be so violent, but I didn't care. If it meant the end of this terror that loomed over us, it was worth it. Me and Bill (who had been woken up by all the commotion) could only watch as the hag was torn apart. She didn't even scream. In fact, she smiled, as if saying, "Thank God it's finally over,". And then it was done. Her body was mangled and ripped so badly you couldn't recognize her. Blood was splattered everywhere.
Then the body, or the pieces of it anyway, began to shimmer, and fade away, and then they were gone. No trace of them remained. As if nothing had happened. Then we noticed a note laying on the floor where the hag had been. Bill picked it up, and read it aloud: "Destroy the dollars. Destroy the disc. Do it before the remnants of the curse that lie within them enslave you as it enslaved me,"
I instantly knew what I had to do.
I found the wallet I used to keep all the dollars the hag had left me, and I lit a match to it. A blood-curdling scream of pain sounded from it and almost made me jump out of my skin. I threw it outside, and it burned until it was nothing but ashen dust. Then I found the disc containing 1dollar.wav. I threw it to the ground and stomped on it. Another blood curdling scream, and the disc spontaneously burst into flames. Now that is what I call "burning a CD-Rom". It burned until it was nothing but a bunch of melted plastic. I had to use a shovel to scrape it off the ground and chuck it outside.
For the rest of the day, nothing else happened. The hag never came back. Nothing.
I think at long last this nightmare might be over. But I won't make assumptions too quickly. I'll wait a while, see if anything else comes up. If nothing else does, I guess it's safe to assume the haunting of 1dollar.wav has ended.
Post 9:
Posted November 12th 2011
Well, I think I've waited long enough without anything happening that I can safely assume this is all over. Me and Coco have moved back into our own house. Things seem to be returning to normal.
And after some thinking, I've come up with a hypothesis as to what all that crap was about.
I think the hag was forced by a "curse" to do those terrible things. The curse was like a virus, using her to spread to others. I guess 1dollar.wav and all associated things are all duplicates of this "virus". I can only assume its proper name is "Greed", since that's what the hag kept referring to it as. How "Greed" came to be or what its purpose is, I can only wonder, but the hag seemed to hint that it was she who created it, and it was a screw-up that she made that caused all of this. I guess those dollars, the disc, and the hag were the last remnants of "Greed" and by destroying them I destroyed "Greed" forever. She was so anxious to get her hands on "evidence" and "destroy it" because she wanted to destroy the curse of Greed. I don't know whether any of these guesses are even remotely correct, but I don't really care. As long as this nightmare is over, I'm content with not knowing. And I'm pretty darn certain that it's finally over.
Okay, so recently I was on a roadtrip with my dad. We drove from Seattle to Colorado Springs in about a week. Anyway, just after leaving our hotel in eastern Utah (around Moab), we headed towards the main highway so we could get to Aspen, Colorado.
The very wealthy ironmaster Elias Baker only allowed for the very best things to touch and surround his family, and when his second to youngest daughter decided to marry, Elias couldn't have been more pleased until he discovered who the intended groom was. Screams and yelling could be heard for miles away as he and his beautiful daughter hashed it out and finally ended the escalated argument with unfavorable results as to what was to come. Anna was stubborn and didn't care about fancy houses, jewels, fine clothing and the best that money could buy; she only wished to marry the very ruggedly handsome low paid iron worker that labored for her father from sun-up to sundown at his prosperous Alleghany Furnace that offered some of the finest iron works in the area for the times.
Elias Baker and his cousin Roland Diller purchased the dying blast furnace, located in Blair County, in 1836 and turned it into a profitable business. Elias bought out his cousin's share in 1844 just as the furnace was at its peak, bringing in a mega fortune that allowed Elias to contract Robert Cary Long, Jr., Baltimore's first native-born professionally-trained architect. A master in all the prevalent styles of the day, he built the family a massive Greek-revival style mansion, completed at the cost of $15,000, a hefty sum for 1849. The interior of the mansion is nothing short of exquisite with decorative black walnut woodwork, massive fireplaces made from Italian marble, and imported hand-carved oak furniture from Belgium. The exterior shows off decorative iron work fitting for an ironmaster. Sadly Elias was in a state of financial ruins before the mansion was complete due to falling iron prices and high end details that he felt the mansion must possess at any cost.
Elias's wife Hetty understood love and all that it entailed, but her husband's strong convictions about whom his daughter should or should not marry prevailed over any belief that she herself carried. Anna was in love with only one man and if she couldn't marry him she would marry no one. Anna remained single for the rest of her life and she held a deep bitterness towards her father that caused health ailments along with a sadness that was evident to anyone that dared to look at or speak to the once strikingly beautiful spinster.
The extravagant wedding dress that Anna had chosen for her very own wedding day with detailing fit for a princess was going to worn by another woman from a prominent family. Elizabeth Bell is rumored to have mocked Anna for never having been married, and she not only wore Anna's wedding dress on her special day, it has now become known as the "haunted Bell wedding dress". Elizabeth Bell Dysart was the daughter of the prominent business man Edward Bell who founded and gave his name to the nearby town of Bellwood. The famously haunted wedding dress remains on display behind protective glass in Anna Baker's old bedroom as part of the Blair County Historical Society's museum in the Baker Mansion.
Anna Baker died in 1914 with a heavy heart over her lost love and grief stricken that she was never able to forgive her father. It is believed that Anna was determined to claim her dress back after death by wearing it in eternity, and apparently she got her wish, because because ever since her passing the dress has been moving and swaying as if a proud bride-to-be were standing in front of a looking glass admiring its beauty. Visitors to the Historical Society always study the glass encased dress for possible reasons for its movement and many claim that the historical floorboards under the display could be weak or loose, causing the case to swivel a bit, making the dress sway. Other people speculate that drafts are the reason for the unexplained haunted dress to move on its own.
The Historical Society decided to conduct their own study into the reasons why the wedding dress never remains still and concluded that after hidden cameras picked up obvious and deliberate movement while no one else was in the room that Anna Baker's spirit lives on and she has come to reclaim her dress. However the ghost and spirit sightings does end here. People have claimed to see an older female spirit dressed in a heavy black dress walking slowly up the stairs. Most believe that this particular ghost is none other then the matriarch of the Baker family, Anna's mother Hetty. The apparition of a male dressed in a uniform that is reminiscent of a steamboat crew member has been seen near the cellar. This spirit is believed to be Anna's older brother David whose frozen lifeless body remained in the basement until the ground thawed so that he could receive a proper burial after being killed in a boating accident in 1852.
Visitors to the museum along with several staff members have seen the ghosts of both Elias and Anna Baker. The bitter old maid has been lurking in the parlor and in the bedrooms on the second floor. Elias prefers to haunt the dining room area, and Anna's brother Sylvester enjoys banging his cane on the floor. This ghost is nothing short of cantankerous and bangs away until he is noticed, and then he simply vanishes into thin air. Spectral forms and orbs have been caught on video when their obvious forms have reflected in the mirrors located in the mansion. Cold spots, moving furniture, eerie and unexplainable odors and footsteps are all a part of the paranormal activity living at the mansion.
A mystical music box plays at random hours, especially when no one is in the room. A police guard dog once brought along when the security system went berserk growled and carried on at absolutely nothing, at least nothing that the human eye could detect. Witnesses walking past the mansion late at night have reported ghosts that have absolutely no connection to the Baker family as they appear to be from an entirely different era according to the garments that they are seen wearing. Visiting the mansion during a full moon reaps excellent benefits to ghost chasers, paranormal investigators and anyone who enjoys a good scare.
The wedding dress and the Baker ghosts are all now a permanent part of the Blair County Historical Society after they leased the building in 1922 and opened it up to the public as a museum. Years of fundraising and strong community support allowed the county to purchase the Baker mansion in 1941. The Baker Mansion Museum is happy to share with the public a piece of history through guided tours that offer visitors a glimpse at exquisite period furnished rooms, historic exhibits covering transportation and the Civil War. Visitors will also learn about the leisurely activities that people enjoyed during a very different time in history.
For 6,000 years, two young lovers have been locked in an eternal embrace, hidden from the eyes of the world. The “Lovers of Valdaro” — named for the little village near Mantua, in Northern Italy, where they were first discovered — were seen by the public for the first time in September of 2011.
The lovers are in fact two human skeletons, dating back to the Neolithic era, which were found in a necropolis in the nearby village of Valdaro in 2007, huddled close together, face to face, their arms and legs entwined. They were displayed at the entrance of Mantua Archeological Museum, thanks to the effort of the association, “Lovers of Mantua,” which is seeking a permanent home for the ancient couple.
After the discovery, many thought that the couple had been killed. It would fit in well with the history of an Italian region famous for many tragic love stories. Mantua is the city where Romeo was exiled and was told that his Juliet was dead. The composer Giuseppe Verdi chose it as the location for his opera Rigoletto, another story of star-crossed love and death.
But subsequent research revealed that the skeletons did not have any signs of a violent death. They were a woman and a man, between 18 and 20 years old. Some have wondered if they died together, holding each other in a freezing night. Professor Silvia Bagnoli, the president of the association “Lovers in Mantua,” doesn’t exclude this possibility, but says that more likely the skeletons were laid out in that position after their deaths.
The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana bills itself as "One of America's Most Haunted Homes". It operates as a bed and breakfast, so for as little as $115 a night (plus tax), you can stay there and see for yourself how haunted it really is. The Myrtles Plantation house was built by David Bradford, who had been a respected lawyer in Pennsylvania until he took part in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Wanted for arrest, he fled to Louisiana, leaving his family behind, and bought 600 acres of land on which he built a house called "Laurel Grove". After a pardon in 1799, he brought his wife and children to live there.
The property passed to Bradford's son-in-law Clark Woodruff who lost his wife and two of his three children to yellow fever. Legend has it that during Woodruff's reign at the plantation, he had a relationship with a slave girl named Chloe while his wife was pregnant. Chloe became paranoid when Woodruff ended the affair, and he allegedly cut her ear off as punishment for eavesdropping. From that point, Chloe always wore a turban to cover the scar.
Chloe later poisoned a birthday cake or one of the children. Woodruff ate no cake, but his wife and children did and subsequently died. The other slaves of the plantation were so upset over the incident that they hanged Chloe from a tree. Now the ghost of Chloe and the children all roam the plantation house, although there is no solid evidence that she ever existed. This famous picture taken by Myrtles owner Teeta Moss in 1995 shows the ghost of Chloe between two buildings.
Ruffin Grey Stirling purchased the plantation in 1834 and expanded the main house to twice its original size and renamed it The Myrtles after the crape myrtles that grew there. Stirling and his wife Mary Cobb had nine children, five of whom died young. The Civil War saw The Myrtles robbed of many fine furnishings and expensive accessories. The family fortune was wrecked, as most of it was tied up in Confederate currency. After Stirling's death, his son-in-law William Winter oversaw The Myrtles. On January 26, 1871, an unknown man approached the house and shot Winter dead on the front porch. It is the only confirmed murder at the plantation. Legend says that Winter staggered through the house as he died, climbing 17 of the stairs before he collapsed. Today, footsteps can be heard on those stairs when no one is there.
In 1886, the family lost ownership of the plantation forever due to crippling debts. Harrison Milton Williams purchased the home and passed it to his heirs, who subdivided the property. Marjorie Munson bought the main house in the 1950s, and at that point the ghost stories began.
*
The Long Hot Summer, a 1985 TV movie starring Don Johnson, Cybill Shepherd, and Jason Robards was filmed in part at The Myrtles. The film crew reported that when they moved furniture for a scene, someone would move it back to its original places! No one had been reported in the room at the time. They had to move the furniture several times in order to get the shots they needed, and were glad to be finished.
Current owners John and Teeta Moss are comfortable with the ghosts of residents past. They find the apparitions to be helpful and caring.
Visitors who stay at The Myrtles Plantation report a wide variety of paranormal manifestations. There is a grand piano that reportedly plays a single lonely chord on its own, in the middle of the night with no one in the room. This, of course, has nothing to do with the presence of a family of cats who have the run of the plantation. There are also reports of spirits touching people and giving them the sensation of being tucked into bed, as well as children's voices. There are many pictures of The Myrtles Plantation that show strange orbs or auras, especially at night. A mirror in the hallway reportedly shows faces of the dead from time to time. The smudges that were thought to be responsible had been cleaned over and over but still returned, even after the glass was replaced! It has been posited that imperfections in the wood behind the glass could be to blame. A French woman in a black skirt has been seen dancing with her feet slightly above the floor. Children's voice are heard, and sometime a baby is heard crying.
What binds a non-earthly soul to the physical dimension? From history and research is seems that it generally lends to a life cut short (usually traumatic in some way), or unsolved business.
There are enough allegations of emotionally charged events at the Borley Rectory, located near the Suffolk border in the eastern portion of England, to fill all of those requirements. During a séance, co-held by Harry Price, a paranormal investigator who had leased the premise in the late 30’s from Reverend Lionel Foyster and his wife, Marianne, he would uncover what he felt to be one of the strongest presences at Borley Rectory. But before we reveal the results of that séance, a brief history of the house is in order.
The history of Borley Rectory begins with the building of a gothic Benedictine monastery in the 13th century. Those were not genteel times and legend has it that a monk and his lovely young love-interest, a nun from a nearby convent, were both done-in while trying to elope the establishment and start a new life together. They were captured and the monk was hung while his fiancé was walled up, alive in the cold walls of her convent. Two lovers torn apart to be isolated forever… Was it she who had been seen wafting through the garden, head bent in sorrow? Was she the girl in white who roamed the property searching for her lost love?
After its stint as a monastery, it was sold off as a residence and a rectory was soon added in 1862 by Rev. Henry Bull and his family. Reverend Bull had become pastor of Borley Church in 1862 and despite local warnings, built the rectory on a site believed by locals to be haunted. Over the years, Bull’s servants and his daughters were repeatedly unnerved by phantom rappings, unexplained footsteps and the appearance of ghosts. Reverend Bull seemed to find these happenings as wildly entertaining and he and his son, Harry, even constructed a summerhouse on the property where they could enjoy after-dinner cigars and pleasurably idle away the time waiting for an appearance of the phantom nun who roamed the property.
After Reverand Bull passed on in one of the more famous of the haunted rooms (the Blue Room), his son Harry inherited the establishment and position until he himself passed on in 1927. Following Harry’s footsteps was Rev. Guy Smith who was so unnerved by the spectral sights and sounds, that he left the rectory just one year after moving in.
After Smith’s hasty departure, the house was then inhabited by Reverend Lionel Foyster and his wife, Marianne. The house only seemed to be getting warmed up as their experiences grew in intensity and frequency. Without any explanation, they found themselves locked out of rooms, windows would suddenly smash and personal items would vanish under their noses. Ịt wasn’t uncommon for them to hear unnerving noises from all over the house. As time went on, these mischievous antics turned aggressive and Marianne was actually accosted one evening. She was thrown off her bed in the middle of the night and even slapped by invisible hands of which she was helpless to do anything about! The final straw was when she was nearly made unconscious by a mattress that was held over her face. Someone obviously didn’t like Marianne. Perhaps it was jealousy from a female ghost that caused these physical transgressions?
The involvement of Harry Price came about after a paper asked him to investigate these poltergeists activity following a popular story written by the paper. It was during his investigation that writings on the wall started to appear, usually when Marianne was present. The writing’s ghostly owner seemed more sympathetic to Marianne compared to the other ghosts as some of the messages scrawled were, “Marianne, please help get” and “Marianne light mass prayers”.
Price was more of a guest at the manor until the Foysters moved out in 1935 at which point he leased the house for a full year for deeper investigation. Now that Price had the house to himself for an extended period, he ran an ad for other paranormal investigators to help him monitor and document the ghostly activities. He had to weed through some not-so-savory types though, but he ended up working with 40 people to uncover some of the fascinating history of Borley Rectory.
During a séance, an alleged spirit named Marie Lairre came through and told the group that she had been a nun in France but had left her convent to marry Henry Waldegrave, the son of a wealthy family whose home had previously stood on the site of Borley Rectory. The tale turned grim when she declared that her husband had taken her life and placed her remains in the cellar. To Price, she seemed to fit the profile of the ghost that haunted Borley Rectory.
One spirit during a séance even gave a fascinating prediction that the former nun’s body would be found in the ruins. Though the spirit said the house would burn down that night, thus revealing the location of the bones, it wasn’t until 11 months later that a fire was started by the new owner, Captain WH Gregson, as he was unpacking library books when an oil lamp fell over and started a fire. The fire spread fast through the manor and the rectory was in shambles, later to be demolished in 1944.
Since previously unattainable areas were now exposed, Price decided to excavate the cellar where he indeed found a few small bones, which seemed to be those of a young woman. Was this the proof needed to validate the story of the betrayed nun? Regardless who the woman was, she was given a proper religious burial and finally laid to rest.
In my old age I’ve seen a lot of things. Some things I’m a little more proud of than others. As a boy there wasn’t a damn thing that could sate my appetite for the world around me. Everything in reach I had to get my hands on, take it apart and study it. My natural curiosity is what got me into the many scraps and situations of my youth.
I remember when I wasn’t any older than six, it was the fall of nineteen hundred and twenty-eight, me and several of the local boys were out playing a game of hide-and-seek. Denny Louis was the seeker, and a damned good one at that, so I took it upon myself to find a damned good hiding place. I remembered the hayloft out in our barn, and figured I could hide myself among the many bales of hay up there, maybe even push some of those bales around like I had times before when I wanted to build a fort, and get myself a perfect hiding space. Denny started counting out loud from a hundred and I took off a running to the barn, the breeze tickling my cheeks and smelling like the harvest.
I ran through those big red doors and my eyes fell on Denny Louis’ mama laying on the ground, straw in her hair and her dress hiked up, with my Daddy laying on top of her, looking like he was trying to pick himself up, but he seemed to be having trouble. I had no idea what I was seeing, but I would later learn all about what my Daddy was doing when I was fourteen when me and Sandra Hannigan made our way up into the same hayloft that I had hid so many times, and made so many forts in, to get out of the rain. She shook the water from that beautiful blazing, red hair of hers and noticed my eyes stuck on her nipples poking out like little buttons in the cold, wet air. She hiked up that flowery yellow dress she liked to wear and spread her creamy white, freckled legs, revealing her sweet fire peach. There in the smell of spring rain and old horse shit I made love for the first time. Beautiful girl, she was.
“Daddy?” my little voice rung out, echoing off the dusty, wooden walls. My old man turned and stared at me, like he’d been caught dipping his hand into the honey pot, and for lack of better words, that’s exactly what he was doing. He hoisted himself off of Mrs. Louis and made his way over to me.
“Whatta ya doin’ in here, son?” He spoke slowly and calmly
“ We was playing hide and seek, Daddy. I was gonna hide up in the loft.”
“Yeah? You ain’t gonna be tellin’ nobody about what ya saw, right boy?” I could hear the anger rising up in his voice, but I kept on pushing it, like the curious little boy I was.
“Well, what exactly was you doin’ Daddy?” He just stared at me. His eyes slowly growing darker in the brightness of that fall day. Mrs. Louis, still a ways behind him, was up on her feet straightening her dress and picking bits of straw from her long, golden hair. I was too busy looking at Mrs. Louis to notice that my Daddy meandered his way over to the wall where kept the tools and picked out a hefty, dirt crusted shovel.
“You ain’t gonna be tellin’ nobody…Right, boy?” he repeated in that slow and calm way he always spoke when he was angry, but me being the stupid child I was, I just kept right on prying.
“Daddy…what was---” I didn’t have a chance in the world to ask before the side of my right cheek exploded with pain as I fell to the ground in pathetic bundle. My vision went hot white. All noise became muffled as if the world suddenly got sucked into a vacuum. What I could hear seemed distant. Ghostly, even. I could hear Mrs. Louis screaming her pretty head off, and strangely, the long, low whistle of a train in the distance. Whether it was my imagination or not, I do not know, but I’ve learned in life that there are no coincidences. I heard that whistle as clear as I could hear Mrs. Louis screaming, Sandra Hannigan’s soft, whispering moans as thunder rumbled across the gray spring sky, and my father’s harsh, labored breathing has stood over me brandishing his shovel as if it was Excalibur. I heard that train. Lord help me I heard it.
“You ain't gonna be telling’ nobody…Ya hear?”
“D-D-Daddy….I---” Another explosion erupted as my father brought the shovel down onto my exposed chest. I heard several pops and cracks echoing throughout my body. I held up my small arms in defense, but they were crumpled like paper the force of his blow. I dared to raise my hands up for protection again, only to see my fingers crooked and bloody. Mrs. Louis was no longer screaming, but babbling on like she’d seen a ghost. My father turned to her and waved his weapon.
“Shut up, bitch! Shut the fuck up!” He yelled, his voice like that of a angry God. While he was distracted I tried to crawl away. My crushed fingers clawing at the straw and earth, pulling myself to freedom. It was all for not, though, as my father grabbed me by the leg and threw me towards the ladder to the loft.
“He’s just a boy, Clay…Just a boy” Mrs. Louis kept muttering, “ He didn’t do nothing wrong”
“I said shut up!” He spoke again with that God-like force. He swung the shovel down on me again. I heard a very loud crack. Almost like lightning skimming across the sky. Very faintly I heard the train’s whistle again. That loud, shrill pitch in the distance. He flipped me over onto my back and spoke again.
“Are you gonna be tellin’ anyone about this, boy?” His voice had calmed down, but there was a deep anger there. Calm and intense. I felt one my teeth fall to the back of my throat. A small fountain of vomit and blood gushed from my mouth as I tried to cough it up. I feebly turned my head and spit it out.
“N-n-no…Daddy…I aint tellin’ nobody.”
“Good” my father tossed his shovel aside, scooped me up in his arms, and carried me like I was just a baby. His voice had flipped to that of genuine concern, like any good father’s voice. “You okay, boy? You took a mighty big fall off of the ladder…Right, Janice?” He turned to Mrs. Louis, still holding me in his arms. Her face burning from tears, she only nodded rapidly.
“Yes, yes…are you okay, Daniel? Are you okay, sweetie?” She rushed over and ran her shaking hands across my tiny, battered face. My father pushed me into her arms.
“Take him up to the house and into bed, tell Martha what happened…Okay? I’ll go to the town to get a doctor. Quickly now!’ Mrs. Louis pulled me even closer and ran to the house to put me get my mother to put me down and be comfortable till the doctor came. Before I blacked out I remember Mrs. Louis running across the field to my house. The smell of the harvest filling my nostrils. Mrs. Louis quietly muttering how sorry she was, and in the distance my eyes caught the slowly moving shape of a black train. Smoke pluming from the engine, the slow chug-chug-chug of the wheels, and the horrible shriek of the whistle. Calling me to darkness.
The doctor came and went, but I had no idea. I was unconscious the entire time. A broken hip, three broken ribs, one dislocated, a cracked skull, two missing teeth, four broken fingers, one broken wrist, and miles of bruises. Other bits of damage appeared over time. I lost hearing and most of the sight out of the right side of my face. On a good day, and I can say I had plenty of them, I had a slight limp, but on a bad day I was practically a cripple. My left hand froze up sometimes, couldn’t move my fingers worth a damn, but I got along fine with my condition. My father was never found out, and the fact that Mrs. Louis never came back around the house only meant she would never speak about it. We all just sort of went on with life.
I lived as best I could for ten years before I heard the whistle again. Now, it wasn’t uncommon to see or even hear a train near the farm, Hell, there was a track not more than a mile from my front door, but this train was different. The whistle didn’t sound right. It was like a dying rabbit, nails against a chalkboard, and steam spewing out of a kettle all rolled into one. It’s like that sound pierces through you and sends shivers down to your very bones. Not a pleasant feeling, in other words.
I was sixteen and living like my fathers before me. Working my hands to leather in the earth. I had spent time at what my wife would later refer to as a “hick school”, but I soon left after my teacher figured that I was un-teachable. I wasn’t un-teachable…I just would just have rather spent my time reading, or taking something apart, or going somewhere I’ve never been. The world was my playground, and I wanted to play. The thought of leaving my mother alone with my father scared me, though, I owed it to her to stay around and try to protect her. What my father did to me was only the tip of the iceberg compared to all the things he did to my mother. I remember laying up at night hearing them fighting. My father's booming voice broken up only by the reality cracking sound of broken glass, or the cool clean sound of flesh on flesh contact. My mother would be in the kitchen the next day with a few new bruises, maybe a cut or two, but she never complained. It was plain for everyone to see, but they never paid it any mind, that’s just how things were.
I remember it was a pleasant enough summer night. A little humid, but that’s just nit-picking. I spent of the night out on the porch watching the stars and listening to the creatures of the night as they went about their business. Occasionally, I found myself glancing out to the barn. It stood there like a mausoleum in the pale moonlight. An effigy to many things…Pain, lost love, hard work, and my family who died on this land before me. My mind wandered to memories of Sandra Hannigan, God rest her soul. Memories of the shovel bearing down on my like a locomotive bears down those endless steel tracks. My mind liked to wander whether or not I wanted to take the ride. Always has, always will.
I remember my father driving up in his truck. The bastard was swerving horribly, obviously he had indulged to his hearts content on Jimmy McGruder‘s personal moonshine. What burns blues makes your blues go away, boy, he would always say. I knew he’d be in a fighting mood and instinctively made me go to my room. Before I could even reach the stairs I heard his voice, dripping with that damned white lightning,
“Martha! Martha, you come here and welcome me home like a good wife should.” he shouted in a slurred fashion, the ceramic jug in his hand spilled the foul liquid onto the floor.. My mother promptly came up the cellar without a word and greeted him to his liking. A kiss on the lips and the removal of his coat. As she turned to put his coat on the hook, he reached out and began to grope her. My mother, I will admit, was an attractive woman, but years of beatings had slowly taken the brightness from her eyes, the skip in her step, and the song on her lips. We made quick eye contact, but just a brief moment said it all.
Go to bed, sweetie…Maybe it wont be so bad tonight. Just go to bed.
But like most nights it was the same. Her giving into this predator and his sexual advances just to keep him happy. She suffered through it in silence. God, the things she did to provide for me, I pray everyday that she is smiling down on me while he’s rotting in Hell. My mind quickly wandered back to Sandra Hannigan. Did she suffer in silence? Did she let him take her every night? Or did she kick and scream and bite until she was too tired to go on? I don’t know. I can’t say. God rest her soul, I pray she fought back.
I climbed the stairs to my room, trying to block out the labored breathing of my drunken father and the cold, complacent whimpers of my mother. Laying in my bed I tried to nod off and sleep, just so it can all happen again tomorrow. Soon sleep found me and I dreamed. A dream that haunted me for years, always picking up new details along the way. My father standing above me with his shovel. Staring at me with all the fury of God. His eyes black as black can be. The shovel coming down. I close my eyes in fear, only to open them and see Sandra Hannigan before me. Her beautiful, smooth skin now wormy and rotted. Her hair still crimson as fresh blood, and a deep black line ran along her neck. Too horrid to look at, but I can’t look away. She hikes up her tattered yellow dress and reveals the further decay of what was once a wonderful sight. She speaks to me. Her voice as crisp and clear as it was that day.
“You love me…Don’t you, Daniel?”
All the while the slow methodic chug, chug, chug of a train. Sandra opens her mouth, her cheeks tearing wide open into a disgusting, skeletal smile, to speak once more, only her voice isn’t there, only a sound that pierces right through you. Chilling you to the bone. Scratching at your soul. A whistle.
I woke up. Sweating bullets and soaking my shirt and underwear, but it wasn’t the dream that woke me, as horrible as it was. No, it was the rumbling in my stomach for release. I didn’t need to be told twice before I swiftly jumped out of the bed, slipped on a pair of trousers, and descended the stairs quite quickly, nearly tripping on the last step in the dark. I could see my father asleep in his arm chair in the family room. His jug tipped over, empty, and bone dry. The moonlight shone through the window and I could see a line of drool falling from the corner of his open mouth. His head tilted back in the way he always slept when he was in his chair. I quickly shoved on my shoes, rushed through the front door,and off to the tiny little shed far to the house. The grass swishing underneath my feet and the wind cooled the sweat on my body. I reached the outhouse, flung the door open and squat down on the splintery seat without a second thought.
There were always stories of porcupines getting there way into outhouses and gnawing on seats for the salt from sweat and such, but I can say I never did see a porcupine. A raccoon did get in once, poor thing fell into the hole and drowned in the shit and piss of a small farming family. Kind of sad, really. That was years ago and that hole had been long buried. I let myself relax and let the body do what it is trained to do in that type of situation. I nearly nodded off in the smelly, little shack, but something jolted me off my seat. A whistle. Low and hot at first, but it grew into a cacophony, like hundreds of screaming voices. I quickly cleaned myself up and hurried outside. There it was. In the moonlight, not too less than a mile from where I stood. Just sitting there on the tracks. Which wouldn’t have been too uncommon, except there was no switching station out there, just open land and those endless steel tracks.
Like I said, I was a curious boy, and obviously something that had been haunting me for ten years was well worth a look. I broke into a run, the excitement and fear gripping and my heart. I wanted to turn back to the house, tell myself I’m just dreaming, but my feet kept moving. Thank God for the moon that night. You could see for miles. As I got nearer to the damned thing the darker it got. The smoke from the engine creeping into the sky and blotting out the light. The bright diamonds in their satin cloth began to disappear, too. I stopped, only briefly, panting and sweating. I looked up only to find myself right there next to it.
It was unlike any train I’d ever seen. It was black all over, so black it hurt my eyes to look at it directly for too long. It was also very noticeably darker right next to the massive machine, like it was devouring the light that got near it. Most trains that came through were freight trains. Carrying coal and such to parts unknown, but this was a passenger train. The interior of the cabs brightly lit, revealing it’s deep red color scheme. And the people, oh God, the people in the windows. Each one of them just sat there, emotionless. Unmoving like statues of some lost civilization. I tried working my way to the front of the thing. Each car the same. Filled sparsely with unknown, unmoving faces, One or two passengers did turn to look out their windows at me, only to return to their original position. Their eyes gray and sad. I kept on walking my way to the engine, till it caught my eye. In one of the windows, it was my father. I wasn’t sure at first, but it had to be…It was my Daddy.
“Daddy!” I yelled out, but he didn’t turn to look. “Daddy! Hey, Daddy!” I saw that the entrance to the car was wide open. The light spilling out onto the land. I had to get in that car. Why was he on there?, I thought to myself, What the hell is he doing? I hoisted myself up onto the metal steps into the car, only to be knocked on my back by a black mass that smelled of oil and smoke. I looked up to see a man standing there. Soot stained overalls, greasy white hair jutting out from under his conductors cap. He stared at me intently, before a smile cracked his lips.
“You ain’t getting’ on, boy…” His voice was flighty and uneven. High pitched, yet low and grumbly at the same time. “Aint got no ticket! Hahaha!”. His laugh unnerving, like the sound of crunching bugs under your boot. “Why you wantin’ to get on anyways for, boy?” His smiled still beamed at me. A strange, skeletal smile. Wide and menacing. I found myself reverting back to that scared little boy in the barn ten years ago.
“M-m-my daddy’s on there…I gotta talk to ‘im.” He just bellowed that laugh of his.
“Boy, Lotsa peoples daddy's be on this train. No ticket. No ride. Hehehe.” He clapped his gloved hands together. Black dust puffing out.
“P-p-please…I…”
“No ticket, boy! No ride!”, His voice becoming angry. That’s when I truly saw him. His skin pale, and free of any sort of blemish. And his eyes…They were on fire. Glowing orange like the coals that moved his train. Those fiery coal eyes burned right through me. “Get outta here, boy! Don’t come back till ya got yourself a ticket! Hahaha” His teeth. They were jagged and pointed like dog’s teeth. I ain’t afraid to say I was scared. In fact, I pissed myself right then and there. He just laughed that crunchy laugh of his.
“Diamond, pearl, opal, jade! Hahaha!”. He turned and slammed shut the doors behind him. Soon enough the pistons started their slow chug, chug, chug. Smoke billowing out of the engine. It smelled like rotten eggs and bloated summer roadkill. I still laid there in my own filth, watching the black train slowly pull away. The conductor stuck his head out of the engine booth and yelled back to me over the locomotive.
“Maybe next time! Eh, Danny Boy. HAHAHAHA!”. His eyes burning bright as even. He laid on the whistle. Close up, I could truly hear the sound. It was screaming. Melting steel and burning souls screaming into the night. I only watched as the train pulled away. The screaming, black behemoth riding the endless steels tracks.
I walked home. Shaken. Scared. Questioning whether or not I am truly dreaming, or if this is all a nightmare. The moon was back out and shining in all it’s glory. The stars sparkled in the dark folds of the night sky. Finally reaching home, I numbly pushed the front door open. It groaned in protest, but I paid it no mind. I trudged into the family room, figuring my father would be gone, but there he was, still sitting there, I quickly crossed over to him, my hands shaking as I touched his face. It was cold. I saw that it wasn’t drool that dribbled out from his lips. It was vomit. My father was dead to the world, drowned in his own sick. I saw the Devil that night. He took my father with him on a slow, screaming ride to Hell. The funeral was like any other. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A man was buried on holy ground, and nobody but me and my mother ever knew that it was no man…but a monster. I remember how she looked when they lowered him into the cold, hard earth. She had this little smile on her face, no tears, no anguish…Just a little smile. She was free.
A few years later she sold the farm.
“I want to go to the city…Leave all this behind.” she would say. I didn’t blame her. I was glad to leave, but I admit I did miss the place once we were gone, and I know she did too. It was a quiet life. A fine life, but she couldn’t stand to be in a house where memories ran rampant and hid in every corner and shadow. Whispering to her. Reminding her of my father.
It was nineteen hundred and forty two. The world was at war and I couldn’t do nothing, but work building bits and pieces for guns and tanks. Being partially crippled I was 4-F. I could only hear about how all my friends I had growing up went over to fight for liberty and came back in boxes. I suppose I was lucky on that part. My mother took up a job in the same munitions plant as me. Propaganda at it’s best I suppose. It put a smile on her face, and that’s all I needed to know it was a good thing. We’d been living with her mother in Boston, and life was fine indeed. I liked my grandmother well enough, but she always looked at me like I was a leper. She saw too much of my father in me, I suppose. She hated him for what he did to my mother. The beatings were a secret, but she hated my father for taking my mother away. A soldier returns from war and knocks up a pretty, young woman with a whole the world in front of her. Steals her back to his home where the fruit of several steamy nights ends up dying in it’s sleep. My sister didn’t get much of a chance at the world, but I sure did. She resented me for everything that I represented. A horny farmer, turned soldier. It wasn’t until I started bring Claire around that she started to warm up to me a little more. Maybe Granny was finally seeing I wasn’t my father, or maybe she was just going senile. I don’t know.
I can’t say that I didn’t love Claire. She was a wonderful woman, but I do know that I saw a hell of a lot of Sandra in her. That blazing, crimson hair of hers and those deep green eyes. Maybe it was me mourning for a love long lost, or guilt for never stealing Sandra away from her life. Six feet of rope…Funny how something so seemingly average could remove someone from your life. I loved Sandra, I did, and so did her daddy. A little too much. She was probably praying that I’d come to her window at night and steal her away like Romeo and Juliet. She had something inside of her. Something horrible. Something God forgot about. She wanted it to be something beautiful and it could never be as such. Poor Sandra. God rest her soul. I loved her, but I loved Claire, too. Maybe not the on the truly bottomless romantic way, but I loved her all the same.
Claire and I were married at a lovely ceremony in nineteen hundred and forty five. The war was over. Our boys were coming home, and the world began to get even more scared of itself. "The Reds were everywhere!", they started saying. I don’t know. Men were men, but it’s their toys that always end up hurting them. I found work as a mechanic, and Claire was teaching. Money was tight, but we didn’t complain. We had an apartment to live in and each other. We didn’t need to worry about much else. Until one day I got home from the shop and she was waiting for me.
“Hey, sweetheart” I cooed in her ear as I kissed the back of her neck like I always did when I got home.
“I’m late.”
“What?”
“I’m…late…”
“I don’t know what you mean?” She took my hand and placed it on her belly. It all hit me ton of bricks. “You mean…”
“Yes!” She was trying to hold back her tears and smile, but they broke through anyway.
“I gonna be…”
“Uh-huh!”
My son was born December twentieth, nineteen hundred and forty nine. The most beautiful baby boy if I ever saw. William Hudson Bronson. He took after me, just as I had taken after my father. I was determined to make him have all the things I never could, but money was tight before, and it wasn’t getting any better. My grandmother had died two years prior to the birth and my mother was living all alone, but she delighted in seeing her little “Billy B” , as she called him, over whenever dropped by. She loved him with all her might. I did me well to see her so happy.
Billy had just turned one when I got the news that our old home was back on the market. My mother handed me a check that had all the money she had been saving for the last ten years. She told me it would be good to go home. Return to my roots, and raise Billy like I had been raised. I didn’t think that it was such a good idea. I just knew those memories would be waiting there for me. Hiding in the shadows and waiting for me to let my guard down so they could strangle me.
“Any ghosts in that house have long since left…” my mother said to me. “It was a good life. I know that life was hard. Very hard at times… but it’s in your blood, Daniel. You don’t like being a mechanic, do you? Haven’t you been aching to get back to the land? Watch the fruits of your work pay off?”
I did. I did miss the farm life, but I didn’t know how much I missed my farm life. We left Billy with my mother, while Claire and I made our way back to my childhood home. The town had grown quite a bit. Everything a modern family would need. When we finally did reach the old farm, my eyes fell on the barn, and a deep chill ran through me.
“You okay?” Claire asked me in that sweet, concerned voice of hers.
“Goose walked over my grave, I s’pose.”
The man who owned it most recently was a rich yuppie who thought about trying his hand at farm life. Couldn’t live without the amenities of the modern man. Fully wired, plumbing, plenty of farming equipment, and a completely new paint-job and décor. It wasn’t my home anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time.
After our tour Claire got into the car and instantly spilled out her opinion.
“We need to buy this house”
“You really think so?”
“I do…I can work at the school in town. You can make a living here, growing corn, raising cows, and doing whatever it is farmers do.”
“You really want to live here?” I questioned. I did want to come back, but there was too much in my head screaming at me not to come back.
“Yes.” She stared at me intently. She knew that I would crack, like always. She had that special kind of power over me.
“Then it’s settled…it’s ours…”
We settled in and we got our new life off to a good start. The land was good, the crops grew like weeds, and Billy was taking a liking to the open air. It wasn’t much longer after our first harvest that Claire was late once more. We had our baby girl, Esther May Bronson, in the summer of nineteen hundred and fifty three. She took after her mother in spades. A slice of the American dream.
I found myself walking out to the railroad tracks every now and then. I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe it was sort of my way of trying to make sense of something so unbelievable. I never told anyone. Never once. The Devil and his Hellbound train were my secrets to keep. I wasn’t crazy. I prayed to God I wasn’t crazy. Sometimes late at night I hear a train whistle pierce out in the night. The slow chug, chug, chug pushing the metal beasts along those endless steel tracks. Sometimes, I swear, just under those whistles I could hear screams.
We led a fine life, indeed. Billy was growing into a man before my very eyes, and Esther was blossoming into a beautiful young woman more and more every day. It was nineteen hundred and sixty eight. Another war was going on halfway around the world, but it didn’t bother me none till Billy came to me and said we was going to join the Army. He wanted to be fighting for his country. Claire had a fit, as expected, but he had his mind set and he was damned if anybody was going to change his mind. We got his letters every week, and every week we’d write back.
I was sleeping. It came again. The first time in years. My father standing over me holding his shovel. His eyes burning orange like coal. The shovel coming down on me before the scene melts away and I’m with Sandra. My lovely rotting Sandra in the hayloft. Exposing herself to me in a morbid, yet sexually exciting manner.
“You love me… Don’t you, Daniel?
“You know I do…”. Her rotting lips formed a smile. Her gaping maw opened to reveal an unimaginable darkness. From the darkness came a low whistle, slowly building into deafening screams.
I woke up. Sweating bullets and soaking my night shirt and pants. I didn’t have to use the bathroom. It was the whistle. Cutting out into the night, calling me like a sailor to the rocks. I silently slipped from the bed and down the stairs. Each step creaking slightly under my weight. I slipped on my shoes, flung the front door open and started running. The wind chilled me slightly in the autumn night air. My mind raced with the memories reaching out, not from the corners and shadows of my home, but from my mind. Reaching out and trying to hold me down and suffocate me.
It was the same as it was all those years ago. The smoke plumed from the engine, falling to the ground and lingering like a thick black fog. The deep, black metal glared back at me as I walked along the side of the great beast. The Devil stood outside of a car, watching me as I approached. His eyes burning brightly with excitement.
“Diamond, Pearl, Opal, and Jade! Hehehehe! Danny Boy has come back! Still no ticket I see!” His voice shuddered through me, but I pressed on.
“Why are you here?”
“Oh my, my, my, my…Danny Boy! We all have a job to do! Hahaha! This is just my job!”
“But why are you here!” In that moment I heard my father sneaking into my voice. A calm and quiet anger.
“Dad?” A voice from inside the car rang out like a bell. Out of the open doorway stepped my son, Billy, clad in his official army gear and looking quite confused. “Dad…”
“Billy…” The word got caught in my throat. I ran over and held him close to me, never wanting to let him go. “Billy… Why are you on this train?”
“Don’t know… I remember my squad was walking through the jungle, and then there was this white flash… And I woke up on the train… What are you doing here?”
“I don’t quite know myself…” I smiled lightly. I squeezed him tighter. “It’s good to see you, boy…”
“How touching!” The Devil spoke up. “You have five minutes, Billy Boy.” The Devil stepped into the car and made his way to the engine. Once I knew he was gone, I grabbed Billy’s hand and tried to pull him away.
“C’mon, son…We gotta get you home.” He pulled away from me.
“No.”
“Billy…”
“Dad… If this is what everyone else on there is saying… Then I can't leave. I can't, daddy.”
“We can go home right now, tell you’re mother you’re home and--”
“No. I belong here. And who knows… Maybe this train don’t just go to Hell… Maybe it makes a stop off somewhere else. I don’t know.”
“Billy, I--”
“Daddy, I heard from friends of mine who went home. They got problems, Daddy. I’d rather be dead than mangled and fucked up in the head… Sorry for cursing.”
“It’s okay, son…” We stood silently for a long moment. Staring at each other. Trying to think of the words to say.
“ALL ABOARD! HAHAHAHAHA!”
“Love you”
“Love you”
Goodbye.
The black metal behemoth pulled away from me once more. Screaming down those endless steel tracks. I waved goodbye to my son long after the train was out of sight. Even after it’s screaming whine, disappeared from the night air. I watched. I prayed. Just like every week we got another letter. Only this time it wasn’t from Billy. Claire was wrecked. She wouldn’t leave the house for days. Laying around and crying. Wailing that she should have kept him here. Kept him safe.
She left me not more than a year after that. Said she couldn’t stand looking at me and seeing Billy. I also know she hated me. I couldn’t join her in her sorrow. In her pain. I got to say my goodbye. I got my closure. I don’t blame her for hating me, but to take my daughter away from me was just cruel punishment. I haven’t seen either in years. Many years.
I did the best I could. I tried to live life as best I could with what I had. I was a good father. I was a good son. I was a good husband. None of that means a hill of beans in the long run, though. We all end up in the cold, hard earth. Feeding the maggots and creepy crawlies that haunt our nightmares. I can hear it now. The screaming. The screaming in the darkness. Calling out to me… I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. Some things I’m more proud of than others. As a boy nothing could sate my appetite for the world around me. I suppose that there is just one last thing to figure out… The train is out there, and I finally got my ticket. Only thing left to do… Is to take a ride.
The poltergeist experiences, later named The Berini Hauntings by paranormal researchers, started shortly after Joe Berini moved his wife and two of her children from a former marriage into his ancestral New England home in the late 1970s. Unbeknownst to the family then, the home had its own history of mystery, which would unfold, benignly at first, then into horrifying experiences that would drive them from their home in search of help.
Their first otherworldly visitor was a little girl whose voice penetrated this dimension one evening in May, 1979, and declared to Rose, “Mama, mama, this is Serena.” Neither Joe nor Rose knew of any girl in the family’s past by the name of Serena—at least then. What they did come to know soon enough was that when Serena visited them, something significant was about to happen to the family, usually of dire consequences. After Serena’s first visit, their daughter Daisy went to the doctors to have her tonsils taken out, except during the operation there were complications, which resulted in her heart stopping, and she nearly perished. The timing of Serena’s visit and Daisy’s near death experience did not go unnoticed by the Berinis.
Serena’s visit to the family also coincided with the stroke of Joe’s grandmother and a night in November before the elderly woman passed away. Her connection to the family seemed strong as Joe remembers waking up to Serena’s voice to find his wife choking next to him in her sleep. After shaking her awake, she shares with him that her ex-husband was choking her in her dream.
Children seemed to be the theme early on in the Berini hauntings and though there was a lull from late 1979 to March 1981, another child made an appearance to Rose. A little boy, dressed fully in white, was roaming her upstairs hall. Like Serena, these were not frightening experiences and she described them to researchers as, “A very peaceful experience.” Unlike Serena whose mission seems to have been to warn the family of danger, this young boy seemed to be searching for an object. The boy, witnessed by Joe, was seen entering each bedroom then settled on the floor of the hallway in search of something, sight unseen. Curious, Joe later pulled up the floorboards and found a medallion of the Virgin Mary.
Through family inquiry, the Berini family learned that Joe’s father, Carlos, had two younger siblings that had died in the house. There was Serena, who had passed away at the tender age of five, and a young boy by the name of Giorgio, who was gone at eight.
What I find interesting here is that there wasn’t a family investigation into these tragedies. One child is tragic, but two is suspicious. The fact that both chose to haunt the ancestral home is very unusual. Had these children been killed? And if so, by whom? Ịt was unlikely the older brother could have done it because he was relatively young himself. The father? Joe heard the little boy say to him on one occasion, “My oldest brother is the only one who can help me.” What did he mean? Help him from what? That very sentence was the beginning of the terror. It was shortly thereafter this statement that objects started to move in unpredictable fashion with phones flying, doors slamming open and shut and objects being yanked from Rose’s hands.
This turn of events led the Berinis in search of spiritual help. They asked two priests to come and bless the house, which they did with prayers and holy oil. There was a quiet spell after the rituals but it wasn’t for long.
The entity that descended upon them shortly after seemed straight from hell, though it once proclaimed itself “A minister of God.” It was a male, hunch-backed figure with oversized feet wearing a black cape. It brought with him fury and intimidation including flying objects, bookcases being moved, and eventually physical attacks. The children were hit on several occasions but Rose took the brunt of the figure’s venom. On one occasion Rose was struck by an opened freezer door but this was mild compared to what was to come.
One evening Rose was yanked from bed at night, suspended in the air, then dropped to the floor. Another night Joe was called back from work to find their bed leaping several feet in the air and Rose cowering in the corner with a crucifix.
The final straw was a carving knife jammed into the kitchen table. The Berinis left the house and again sought spiritual help. The second exorcism seemed to work as the hauntings vanished. It was at this point the family welcomed the Psychical Research Foundation to investigate their claims.