<head>
  <title>Horror: Stories: A True Encounter</title>
  <h1>A True Encounter</h1>
<pre>
<b>Copyright 1993 Eric Anderson &lt;io01255@maine.maine.edu&gt;</b>
Story-type: Actual Experience, Malignant Poltergeist.
Location: Newport Maine, U.S.A.
Source: News (alt.folklore.ghost-stories)
</pre>
<i>This story was originally '<code>ghost.story</code>' at obiwan's archive.</i>
</head>

<body>
<hr>

All right, I have been meaning to post this story for quite some time
but just haven't gotten around to it until now.  This story is fairly
long, and is very much true.  If there are any questions that you have
about what happened that I may have left out please feel free to ask me
questions or whatnot.  I would be happy to answer them.
<p>
The whole thing started for me a couple of years ago when my girlfriend
and I were driving on some old back roads in Newport, Maine.  We were
driving around the area that she grew up in, and were looking for an old
friend of her's house.  We drove by an old dirt road, and she mentioned
something about that creepy old house.  Being curious of such things, I
asked her what she meant.  She said that there was an old house at the
end of this dirt road, and the house was haunted or something.  It was
getting dark, and I naturally wanted to go check it out, but she looked
rather scared when I mentioned that we should go check it out.  I asked
her why she was so scared, and she said that she went there a couple of
years before when she was in high school with a few friends.  She
heard that the house was built on old indian burial grounds, and that
the house was supposedly haunted.  They all walked towards the house, and
during the day time, and she described how a feeling of dread suddenly
came over her as she got about 50 feet away.  She went a little closer,
and suddenly felt incredibly ill, and began to vomit.  She felt horribly
frightened, and left the area, with her friends not knowing what was
going on.  I was impressed, and didn't want to make her any more scared
than she already was, so I didn't bring it up again.
<p>
About 6 months later, I was living in an apartment with a couple of other
roommates.  One of the guys had happened to live in Newport also, and one
night I asked if he had ever heard of the house that was supposed to
be haunted.  He looked at me a little funny, and told me that if I and
some of my other friends would sit down for a while, he would tell us a
story about the house, and what had happened to him.  I knew all of the 
different people in the following story, and afterwards made a point of 
verifying it with each of them; all of the stories were the same.
<p>
My roommate, Steve, sat down, lit a cigarrette, and began to tell us the
story.  About a year back, Steve and Percy had some friends that were
hard core stoners.  They were all sitting around at a coffee place one 
day when one of the stoners made a remark about the house, and how he and 
his girlfriend had gone inside, and the doors closed by themselves and 
how they saw some image of a vase start to appear above a banister.
They both freaked out, and left through a window.
<p>
Steve and Percy laughed, and thought it would be a fun place to go check 
out that night with some other friends.  They had a couple of 
visiting friends from Conneticut who they thought would enjoy it, and a
couple of other friends that had heard of the house, but had never 
actually gone up to see it.
<p>
About 10:00 PM that night they all drove out to the old dirt packed 
driveway to this old house.  The two female friends from
Conneticut, Steve, and Percy got out to walk up to the gate, but the
two other guys chickened out, and stayed in the car.  The four of them
walked up to the broken down old iron gate.  There were some big chains on
the fence, and they had to walk around the gate into the forest to get
around.  The road was very dark, and the canopy of overhanging trees
above the road kept most of the moonlight out.  They walked and joked around
for a few minutes until they saw some light ahead.  Continuing on they 
entered into a huge clearing.  The dark outline of large victorian old 
house was up ahead, and a lake beyond.
<p>
Steve describes how they had gone on a very bright night, and how the 
moon was low enough on the horizon so when they got closer to the 
house, it was silhouetted in the moonlight, giving a very creepy 
appearance to it.
<p>
They all started feeling unexplainably creeped out, but they all laughed
it off and proceeded.  Continuing on to the house they tried the doors, all
of which were locked.  They searched around a bit more, and found that one
of the windows was open and climbed in one at a time.  Using their 
flashlights to illuminate the room they looked around.
<p>
It was an old, dusty room with the only furnishing being a sofa covered 
in a dust cloth.  The place was cold and the air smelled damp and 
musty.  One of the two ladies from Conneticut started to shake a bit.  
(It should be mentioned that this woman had some interesting psychic 
experiences before, and was sensitive to "haunted" places)  Steve asked 
if she was all right, and she explained that she felt a little strange, 
but wanted to go on.
<p>
They walked around the first floor, checking out the kitchen, a couple
of creepy old side rooms.  Finally they came into a room that had red 
vertical stripes for wallpaper and looked something like an old game 
room.  Looking around a bit there was a picture hung by the fireplace.  
It was oil painted, and depicted a scene of the back of a woman in a 
bathtub.  Her arms were reaching up, and held up her long, thick red 
hair.  The picture was simple, but very intriguing.  They all stood there 
for a few minutes, looking at the picture and getting quite into the 
image.  Steve described how all of them just wanted to look at the 
picture all night, but how someone finally said something, and they 
decided to go check out the rest of the house.
<p>
The second floor had five or six rooms strewn with junk.  The wallpaper 
was hanging from the walls and the plaster was flaking from the ceiling.
Some of the floors looked rotted and moved unsettlingly when you walked 
on them.  They went up another flight of stairs to the third floor which 
had a very similar setup to the second floor, but with more interesting 
stuff.  There was a room with lots of newspapers piled about, dating 
back to the early 1900's.  They found some old medicine bottles, and were 
reading off some of the names on them when they all suddenly felt very 
afraid.
<p>
The woman who was especially sensitive grabbed ahold of Steves arm, and 
begged him to take her out of the house immediately.  Steve was feeling 
pretty wigged out to, and agreed.  All four of them went directly to the 
stairs, and started decending.
<p>
Then the house started feeling really eerie, and as they walked down the
stairs they all were feeling an increasing amount of fear and the feeling
that they should get out.  As they were reaching the first floor the 
woman holding Steves arm stopped and whispered nervously to Steve that
there was someone down there, in the room they had to go through to get out.
Steve looked at her, made a nervous laugh, and led her down the few remaining
steps.  They went to the room where they opened the window, climbed out
one by one and walked quickly back towards the road.  About halfway back to the
road coming out of the woods, the woman with Steve stopped, and just stared
at the house for 2 or 3 minutes.  Steve stood there, watching her, and finally
asked her what was going on.  She said "There's someone watching us from
that window... I can see him"  Steve looked, but couldn't see anything, and
then convinced the woman that it was time to go.  They went back to their car,
felt a lot better, and drove home.
<p>
The next day the two women left for home.  The following night, Steve had a
very strange dream.  He was standing in a room, and a woman was standing 
in a doorway in front of him.  The woman was wearing a light, white 
nightdress that was softly flowing around her.  Her hair was a brilliant, 
striking red, and her face was beautiful.  Steve said that the whole 
dream consisted of him just standing there, looking in awe at
the woman's beauty.  He woke up, feeling good about the dream, but not 
thinking much of it until he had the same dream again for the next two 
nights.
<p>
On the fourth day after the house excursion, he met up with 
Percey again at the local Dunkin' Donuts.  When they sat down, Percy 
looked to Steve and said "You wouldn't believe this strange dream I've 
had the past few nights.." He went on to describe the exact same dream to 
Steve about the woman and the red hair.  Everything was the same until 
the end of the dream.  Rather than ending nice and peacefully, the woman 
turned into something horrifying like a vampire and ended up scaring 
the bejeesus out of him when he awoke from it.  Steve was stunned, and 
told Percy about the similar, but less dramatic dream that he had been 
having.  Both of them felt a little freaked out by it, and then Percy 
told him something else that had happened that week.
<p>
Percy had been lying in bed, not looking foreward to the dream again that 
night, when he heard a strange buzzing sound  coming from outside.  The 
sound was high pitched yet disturbingly quiet and slowly became louder and 
louder.  He heard the sound moving around his second floor window for a 
long time.  It then sounded as if it had come through the wall, and
into the room.  Percy was horrified, and looked up into the darkness for
whatever was making the sound.  It seemed to be moving around in the 
air above him, continuing to make its high pitched buzzing sound.  Percy 
grabbed some encourage, and reached over quickly to turn on the light.  
As the light went on, the sound disappeared, and a large square wooden 
box he was using as a table fell over on the other side of his room, 
sending stuff on top scattering around.  There was no reason the box 
should have fallen, as it was a sturdy square frame, and he found no sign 
of anything being there.  His window was still closed, and the was no way 
anything should have been able to get into the room.
<p>
Steve and Percy looked to each other and realized that this was all probably
coming about because of their visit to the house.  They decided that they
should go back the next day, and try to find out more about what was
going on in the place.
<p>
The next day the two of them got in a car, and drove out to the house, 
this time in the morning.  They drove to the old road leading up to the 
house, got out, and walked to the house.  The place seemed considerably 
more cheery in the daylight, and the woods not half so menacing.  The 
field around the house seemed alive with summer growth, and the house 
didn't look half so creepy.  Actually, they found the house to be quite 
beautiful.  It was old looking, and very rundown, but they easily could 
see how the house must once have looked, large and proud on the waters 
edge.
<p>
They went in through the same window they had before, and walked  into an 
old room with the chair with the sheet draped over it.  They noticed now 
that the room had an all wood floor, but was thick with dust and dirt 
and of years of neglect.  Water stains around the windows, and the floor 
all warped.  They looked around into the other rooms, and saw much of 
the same.  The kitchen was filthy, and there were old cupboards broken, 
and an old stove that had parts of it falling off. They looked around 
the house, noticing how many of the rooms had numbers on the doors, 
which struck them both as strange.
<p>
They both talked to each other about how beautiful the place must have 
been, and how they both felt genuinely sad that the place had fallen 
apart so much.  They walked back into the opening room, with the wood 
floors and the covered chair, and both decided that they should clean the 
place up.
<p>
Now, while Steve was telling me this, I was instantly shocked by the idea
of Steve wanting to go out of his way to clean...  He was my roommate, and
I knew how unclean he liked to live, and how he avoided cleaning whenever
possible.  I interjected to tell him this, and he said that that's why it
was so strange, because he was really getting happy about the idea of
cleaning the house, when normally he would never even think of doing it.
Percy was the same way, and they both suddenly felt compelled to start
cleaning.
<p>
The two of them left, and bought some cleaner and a bucket, and other
similar supplies and returned to the house.  They decided to start
cleaning the old wooden floor first.  When dusk was arriving they left for
the night. 
<p>
That night they both had the dream of the beautiful woman again.  The next
morning they returned to the house, and continued cleaning the floor. It
was large and took a lot of work to get just the major dirt and caked on
dust off.  They cleaned and cleaned on it until Steve got to a certain
part of the floor that as he took away some of the top dirt, had a large
dark stain.  Steve stopped, called Percy over and they both started
cleaning on the big stain.  As they scrubbed on the stain, the water came
up a reddish brown, and they both looked to each other, both of them
thinking the same thing about what the stain was from.  They both laughed
it off, and removed as much of the stain as they could.
<p>
A little while later, they heard someone step onto the porch outside, and
they were both startled.  A friend of theirs named Jim stood looking into
the windows.  Jim happened to live in the area, and saw their car at the
opening of the road, and had walked down to see what was going on.  The
two of them told Jim the story of what had happened, what they had
dreamed, and how they both felt compelled to clean up this old place.  Jim
told them about how he used to play in the woods around the house when he
was a kid, and how he had found some strange old markers and piles of
stones in the woods.  He showed some of them to his father, and they went
back and looked them up. It turned out that a lot of the markers were
markers associated with indian burial grounds, and the area was known to
have been a place the Indians had populated many years ago. 
<p>
Steve and Percy stood there, wondering what it was all supposed to mean,
when Jim looked to them and said, "Lets find out who your employers
are..." and left, returning a little while later with a Ouija board. 
<p>
Steve was very cynical about the board, as he didn't believe in them, and
thought it was all a big joke.  Jim asked them where they thought the best
place in the house would be to speak to something and Steve and Percy both
agreed to a room on the top floor that had a bunch of old newspapers and
other scattered papers.  They both felt a strange sensation there when
they had visited with the girls a week ago. 
<p>
The three of them went to the top floor, and into the room.  They sat next
to a window so they would have enough light to see by, and started to use
it. Steve and Percy tried first, and the oracle began to move.  Steve
freaked out and asked Jim to do it for him, as Steve felt it was too 
strange. 
<p>
Jim got on and they immediately began talking to a spirit that called herself
Cathrine.  Cathrine was very evasive whenever asked about questions about
herself, and said only that she used to live in the house.  It was also
mentioned that the house used to be an old inn.  After a lot of superficial
questions, they began to ask more about the house.  When asked if the house
was built on a Indian burial site, she said Yes.  Are the Indian spirits 
mad about this?  Yes.  Is there something bad about the house?  Yes.  Is 
there a bad spirit that lives in the house?  Yes.  Was the stain 
downstairs on the floor really blood?  Yes...  Where did the blood come 
from?  Murder.
<p>
They all stopped.  Murder?  They started up again.  Were you murdered here?
No.  Did the murder have anything to do with you?  No.  Why did the murder
happen?  Adulterer.  So someone caught someone fooling around?  Yes.  How did
they die?  Gun.  Outside it was just starting to get dark out.  At this
point they found it harder to get any more information about the murder.
What was the name of the murderer? (pause) ...Peter.
<p>
They asked a couple more questions, and didn't get much that they could
understand.  They thought they would close up.  Is there anything
that you wish to tell us before we sign off Cathrine??  (pause) ...Beware.
<p>
After the last E, the oracle stopped moving, and they all looked to each
other, feeling incredibly creepy.  Suddenly, their attention was snapped
back to reality as a truck started rumbling down the road to the house. 
Steve grabbed the board and stuffed it under his coat.  They ran down to
the window to climb out, and saw a man walking towards him.  Jim knew the
man as the guy who owned the property, and he walked up to talk to him. 
Jim explained that they were looking around, and the man was worried about
them being vandals or trying to steal some of the older antiques that were
still in the house.  The three of them left after a brief talk and drove
home.
<p>
Both Steve and Percy were both quite disturbed at the end of the
conversation with Cathrine, and didn't wish to return to the house. Some
time went by, and both Steve and Percy were both still having their dreams
of the beautiful woman. 
<p>
Steve also began having some other strange things happen at his house.  He
explained how he had started to see what he called "Shadow People" around
his home.  The "Shadow people" were always at the corners of his eyes, and
he could never get a good look at them. He would walk through his house,
and he would see something moving, or a dark figure looking at him, and he
he whirl around to look at it, and it wouldn't be there. 
<p>
This started to really wear on Steve, and he would constantly be panicky
around his house.  He also started having experiences where he would also
hear the high pitched buzzing noise, just like that of Percy's experience. 
He said he had many different times where the buzzing would happen, but he
only told us about one particular event.  While telling us about the
things that happened at his home, he seemed even more nervous when
talking, and smoked a little more heavily. 
<p>
One night when he was lying in bed, he heard the buzzing.  It was a high
pitched buzzing, different from that of an insect or of something
mechanical. It was a strange noise that he said that trying to imitate
just didn't reproduce it's frightening quality.  The buzzing was down
stairs, in the celler somewhere a bit in front of, and under his room. The
buzzing started, and Steve felt the pang of fear in his stomach again,
like he felt whenever it happened.  The buzzing continued for a short
while, and then began to move, slowly up the cellar stairs.  There were no
footsteps, or any other noises other than that of the buzzing getting
louder, and of it moving in it's placement.  The buzzing came slowly up
the stairs, and came up into the hallway, then grew louder as it moved
down the hall towards his room. 
<p>
Steve was quite frightened, and pulled all of the blankets up around him
like he would when he was a child.  The noise grew louder until it came
just outside of his bedroom door, and just stayed there, not moving or
anything.  The buzzing kept on and on, and then finally moved further down
the hall, and sounded like it went into his brothers room next to his. 
The noise faded as it went into his brothers room, but suddenly grew loud
again as it went into the closet space that was right behind the head of
his bed.  Steve was frozen with fright, and could do nothing but hope the
sound leave him soon.  The sound then moved again, down, and sounded like
it went into the pipes below his room.  He could even hear the sound
echoing in the copper pipes as it moved beneath his room and then
descended into the cellar. The noise did this cicle 5 times that night
before finally going away. Steve was quite shaken by the experience, and
the other similar experiences that happened in his house. 
<p>
One morning he was shocked to hear his father talk about the strange dark
figure he had seen at the foot of his bed when he woke up in the middle of
the night the night before, but went away as he blinked his eyes a few
times.  His mother, in the same room then commented how she had woken up
in the middle of the night one night to see the doorway to the bathroom
connected to their room lit up by the bathroom light behind it, and two
dark figures silhouetted in the light.  One of the figures was standing,
and looking towards the bed, and the other figure was crouching down on
all fours, with its head bent down... she looked at the figures for a few
moments, and then they faded away before her eyes. 
<p>
Steve was quite relieved to say the least that he wasn't going crazy, and
that the things he was seeing weren't all a part of his imagination. This
went on for over a month, both Steve and Percy avoiding the idea of
returning to the house, and both of them becoming more and more frightened
by the strange things going on in their homes. 
<p>
One night the two were at the Irving truck stop in Newport, getting coffee
and something to eat, when an old friend of theirs, Mike, came in.  He had
been away for about 3 or 4 months in another part of the country
travelling.  He had just gotten back, and hadn't talked to either of them
since he left. 
<p>
Sitting down at their table he immediatly started talking about a "Strange
bunch of dreams about you guys that you wouldn't believe.."  He went on to
talk about a dream he had over 7 nights that involved a house he had never
been to before, and a number of different rooms in the house.  Each dream
involved a different room, and a different friend or couple of friends. 
<p>
As he described each room, Percy and Steve looked to each other as each
description of a room was exactly the description of different rooms of
the house.  Each of the rooms also had a figure of a demon in one of the
corners, but the demon never did anything.
<p>
Steve only told us about three of Mike's dreams, one involving a couple
friends and something bad happening to them at the house, the next one
where Mike and Steve were sitting in the middle of a floor in a room
filled with lots of newspapers and striped wallpaper, and they were both
using a Ouija board, which was strange to Mike, because he wasn't one for
using them. They both sat in the room, and the oracle started moving under
their fingers, and kept speeding up until neither of them could keep up
with it any longer, and it flew from the board, and started gliding on the
walls, and then on the c ceiling, and then finally flew back towards them
and struck the floor leaving a dent in the floor. 
<p>
The last dream, though, involved Percy and Mike.  Both of them were
standing in a room with wallpaper hanging from the walls, and the plaster
falling from the ceiling.  The demon this time came from its corner, and
stood before Mike and Percy.  It turned to Mike and said... "Choose" 
<p>
Mike was confused and asked it what he was supposed to choose from.. The
demon turned and struck Percy very hard.. Percy went down to the floor and
got back up, bleeding. It turned to Mike again and said, "Choose" Mike was
terrified, and stammered out something about him not understanding.. The
demon turned and struck Percy again, Percy collapsing to the floor.  Once
more, it turned to Mike and said "Choose" Mike didn't know what to say,
but said "I choose life!"  The demon raised his hand again to strike Percy
again, but didn't, and turned to Mike, raised 2 fingers and said , "Two
Strikes...."  And then Mike woke up. 
<p>
Steve and Percy were dumbfounded by the dreams, and told Mike all about
what had happened, and how the descriptions of the rooms were exactly like
the rooms in the house.  Steve and Percy looked to each other, realized
just how strange things were, and decided that they had to go back to the
house to find some closure.  They were both sick of being frightened by
every little thing at their homes, and the wanted to find out just what
they had to do to get rid of all of this. They didn't know what they were
going to do, but they decided to go to the house that upcoming weekend, a
few days away.
<p>
Steve and Percy talked about the dream with Mike a bit more, and later
told some of the other people in Mike's dreams about them.  Steve and
Percy stressed that they shouldn't go to the house, because the dreams had
some bad events happening to them at the house, and just in case, the
people shouldn't go to the house.  Everyone involved promised not to go to
the house. 
<p>
The weekend came, and Steve and Percy got ready to go.  Some things
unexpectedly came up, and they weren't able to leave for the house until
that evening.  Percy was very ticked off while they were going to the
house that they had to wait until nightfall to go to the house, and Steve
was just feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing. 
<p>
They parked down the road from the driveway this time, not wanting the owner
of the property driving by and thinking they were vandals and coming to
investigate.  They walked to the driveway, and down to the gate, and then
down the road.   About halfway down the road, they heard voices, and they got
off the side of the road into the woods to see who it was and let them go by.
When the voices came next to them, they recognized the people as a couple
of their friends that had promised not to go to the house, but were just now
coming away from it.
<p>
Percy got really angry, went out into the road and confronted them about
it.  There was a brief argument, and the two continued on their way back
to the main road.  Percy and Steve continued on to the house. 
<p>
They reached the house, and went in through the windows they had done
before.  Steve noticed that the house had a strange feeling to it this
night. There seemed to be something in the air, and Percy being mad seemed
to heighten it.  Steve held the flashlight, and they walked around the
first floor. Nothing They went to the second floor, and then to the third. 
They went to a room in the corner that had a lot of peeling wallpaper and
plaster falling from the ceiling, and stood there. 
<p>
Steve was wondering about what they were going to have to do, when
suddenly Percy fell very hard down to one knee.  Steve turned towards him
to find out what happened.  Percy was doubled over at the waist, and his
arms were clutching his stomach.  Steve bent down to him and felt suddenly
as if the house had come alive.  There were no noises, there wasn't
anything, but the place was suddenly hopping with energy. 
<p>
Steve became very frightened, and reached down to help his friend up.
Percy complained of severe pain in his stomach that just suddenly hit him
without any warning. Steve put Percy's arm over his shoulder, and told him
that they had to get out of the house immediately.  Steve helped him to
the door of the room, and Percy had another stab of pain in his
midsection.  Steve, not a terribly strong person, fought to keep him
standing as he helped him down the first flight of stairs.  Steve flashed
the light at Percy periodically to see how he looked, and he was horrified
to see Percy getting paler and paler, and his strength was leaving him
just as fast. Percy continued to moan and to hold his stomach, and only
was able to move because of Steve holding him up. The presence in the
house was at it's peak now, and Steve expected something to happen at any
moment. 
<p>
Steve looked up at us as he told the story, and said "The house was
hopping with evil.  I know it sounds cheesy, but there was this real sense
that if I couldn't get Percy out of there, that he was going to die, and I
could feel the house like it enjoying it or something..." 
<p>
Steve descended to the first floor, and fully expected something to reach
out of the walls and grab the both of them.  Percy was weaker still, and
his complexion was extremely pale, his moans were even weak now.  Steve
helped him out of the window somehow, and followed. 
<p>
With Percys arm over Steve's shoulder, they moved away from the house as
quickly as possible.  After 10 feet or so as Steve was bobbling with the
flashlight, Percy looked up and said "Who the hell is that?" 
<p>
Steve looked to us again, took a drag off of his cigarrette, and said, "I
looked to where Percy was looking and saw the figure of a man standing
there in the bushes.  He wasn't all that tall, and he wore this strange
blue and red uniform, almost military looking but I don't know.  His face
though, his face was the most horrible part.  He looked at us and had this
immense, evil smile on his face.  It was the absolutely most evil thing I
have ever seen in my life.  It was full of hate and pleasure and of things
that I don't even know.  It scared the shit out of me, and then he just
disappeared." 
<p>
Steve carried Percy further, with Percy not looking any better at all. At
one point about a quarter of the way down the road, Percy raised his head
and looked to Steve and said in a voice that was Percy's, but not like
Percy would talk, "I have to go back to the house..." Steve freaked, and
started going faster down the road, telling Percy to fight him, to fight
whatever was going on with him.  He got to the end of the road and Percy
started looking a little better.  They got to the car, and Percy seemed
even better, the color returned to his face, and some of his strength
returned.  When he got into the car, though, he passed out. Steve drove
them to the local Dunkin Donuts, and Percy woke up. They went inside, had
some coffee and doughnuts and felt better. 
<p>
Steve looked to us and said, "That was about a year ago.  I haven't been
back there since.  The bad things stopped happening at our houses, and the
dreams stopped coming.  But I really have the feeling that things still
aren't resolved there..." 
<p>
We all sat there in the dim light of a candle that still burned, and all I
could think about was going to the house.  I looked to Steve and said,
"Lets go to the house Steve." 
<p>
He looked to me, smiled, and agreed. The other people in the room though I
was crazy, and a couple didn't want anything to do with going to the
house.  But our friends Pat and Trish did, though still being hesitant
about it. 
<p>
We planned to go to the house that the upcoming Friday and see what would
happen.  I talked to Steve afterwards about the story, and he felt that
the reason that Percy had been so affected by the house was because he
went there all mad and funking, and kind of opened himself up to being
influenced.  I had a lot of ideas of my own about when things could and
couldn't affect me, from a lot of experience with a lot of strange
happenings using the Ouija board.  I had always been able to talk to
things easily on the board before, and had been told that I had a very
strong soul, and i was very protected. (There is a whole other set of
tales behind that that I won't bother to get into, but suffice to say, I
had a good amount of experience with wierd things in the past)
<p>
So, we planned on going to the house on that Friday, at about 1 or 2 in
the afternoon.  Pat, Trish, and I waited for Steve to get back from work
but he was terribly late, and didn't get to our place until about 5. Steve
looked a bit panicked when he got to the house, and we left immediately. 
<p>
Along the way, he told us that something strange had happened at work, but
that he had to tell us something that happened to him as a child for it to
really make sense. 
<p>
When Steve was younger, he had a friend in Newport that he used to hang
out with all of the time.  The strange thing was that they lived in a
house that did some weird stuff now and then, like the toilets would flush
in the middle of the night for no reason, and the doors would open and
close after being latched and such.  Many times as a kid, when he would
stay over, these things would happen while they would be up late at night,
and they would talk about the ghost in the house, and they would get
freaked out and have a lot of fun. 
<p>
Once, when the family went on a vacation, they paid Steve to come over and
mow the lawn while they were gone.  Steve was mowing the lawn on one hot
summer day when he got thirsty, and went into the house to get a drink of
water.  He was drinking his water when he heard the sound of giggling
coming from up the stairs.  He thought it was weird, but tried to ignore
it. 
<p>
The sound came again, the sound of children giggling from up the stairs.
He felt a bit strange, but he decided to go check it out anyway.  So,
being a suave kid, he walked up the stairs looking like he had something
else to go upstairs for, trying not to make it look like he was going
upstairs to go check out the sound.  He went up the first flight, and he
heard the children giggling above him.  He went up the second flight and
saw nothing. There were some stairs to the attic, and he heard the
giggling come again. He walked up the first couple of steps nonchalantly
when it suddenly hit him about what exactly he was doing. 
<p>
He promptly turned around and walked down the stairs now, trying to act
cool, but speeding up as he went down until by the last steps he was
practically running. He got to the kitchen, scared out of his wits, and
caught his breath.  Then from the room next to him, he heard the sound of
the giggling kids.  He bolted out the kitchen door, ran to his bike and
peddled as fast as he could the rest of the way home. 
<p>
Steve told us the story, and then said, "I went into work this morning,
and in the other room I heard the guys saying stuff like "wow, weird..."
until one of them came into the room I was in and said I should go check
out the screwed up message on the phone message system.  I walked in and
they played it for me.  The message was of a disturbing high-pitched
buzzing noise, and the sound of some children giggling... It lasted for
about a minute, and then hung up.  I played it again, and it scared the
hell out of me.  It's like they left a message for me or something." 
<p>
We all looked to each other, and had nervous smiles... We drove the hour
drive to the area of the house, and parked up the street from the
driveway.  We walked through the woods to the road leading to the house,
and then down the road to the house. 
<p>
The house was just as he had described it, big and rundown.  You could
tell how beautiful the place had been at one time, but now it was all just
run down. 
<p>
We went to the window that Steve had gone in before, and found that it was
broken, with the glass littering the floor inside.  We all climbed in, and
we figured we had about an hour or two before we had to use our
flashlights. We decided to check out the house first, and use the Ouija
board that we brought afterwards. 
<p>
He showed us where the stain in the floor used to be, and indeed, the
stain in the wood looked very bloodlike.  We went in and looked at the
picture of the red-haired woman in the tub, and it was a beautiful
picture, but didn't seem as entrancing as it did to Steve and everyone
else that night long ago.  Even now, Steve found it strange how the
picture entranced them.  We checked out the cellar, descending the very
narrow stairs down to a very creepy basement.  It extended the entire
length of the house, and had a big hole in the ground that we figured must
have been an artesian well. We left the cellar, as it was icky, and went
up the stairs to the second floor. 
<p>
Steve explained that most of all of the furniture and stuff that was there
was gone now.  The owner must have taken it all. 
<p>
The rooms in the second floor were terribly run down.  The wallpaper
peeling from the walls, and the floors in many of the rooms not feeling
safe enough to walk in the middle of.  We went into an old bathroom that
had a very strange feel to it, it had old tub, old decorations, and very
old sink.  I didn't like it in the bathroom very much. 
<p>
We went up to the top floor, and into the room where Percy had fallen in
pain.  There was a dent in the floor where his knee had come down hard. 
We went to the room that used to have all of the newspapers, and we found
a dent in the floor where Mike had described the dent to have come on his
dream with the Ouija board. 
<p>
We sat down here, and began to use the board.  Steve and I were using it,
as Steve had gotten over his fear of it a while ago.  We tried talking to
something, but had no real luck.. It was dusk now.  We decided to change
rooms and went downstairs. 
<p>
We started talking to a spirit, and asked it to put Cathrine on the board. 
It said no, and refused to do it.  We tried repeatedly to get Cathrine on
the board, but were unable.  We did, though, as it turned dark out, talk
to Peter. 
<p>
Peter was very hostile, and had a bad feeling to him on the board.  We
demanded that he allow us to speak to Cathrine, but he refused. He said
that she could not speak to us at night, because he controlled her then.
That was strange to us, and we questioned farther, but could get nothing. 
<p>
Then Peter became even more hostile, and began swearing at us, and saying
some horrible things about the woman that was with us until it suddenly
stopped in mid sentence.  It started again, with something that was
leading into something nasty, but was again cut off in mid spelling.  It
would go very strong, and then all of a sudden stop.  None of us could
figure it out.  This happened a couple more times, until I asked Peter if
he was being restrained.  He said Yes.  Who are you being restrained by?
(pause) ...Eric. 
<p>
Everyone looked at me.  You mean I am restraining you? Yes. Then an idea
ran through my head.  Are you being restricted by one of my guardians?  It
went quickly to yes.  I asked to talk to the guardian, and Peter quickly
left the board, and I talked to what was supposed to be my guardian.  It
turned out that it was protecting all of us from Peter, and that was the
reason the house didn't seem all that nasty tonight.  It said that I was
there so that Steve could finish everything, and so he could find out what
was needed.  We found out that Cathrine was being held to the house by
Peter, and that Steve could release her by writing something, and reading
it in the house.  We asked what he had to write, and it said that he would
know. 
<p>
After a short time talking with us, it left, and we couldn't get anything
else on the board.  It was all right though, because we had been in the
house for quite some time and we were ready to leave, and all rather happy
about the whole guardian thing I don't understand everything about it, but
it's something that has come into play before.  I'm still trying to figure
it all out.  Everyone felt happy and playful as we left, and Steve felt
relieved.  On the way out to the main road, we were looking around in the
dark woods, and saw something glowing in the woods.  Yes, glowing green. 
We all were quite interested, and Pat bound into the VERY dark woods
towards the glowing.  We waited, and he came back and handed us each a
piece of glowing green wood.  We figured it must have been some
phosphorescent fungi or something, and we played with the stuff for the
rest of the walk back to the car. 
<p>
One the way home, Steve, who is a very talented poet, felt suddenly very
inspired and wrote a long poem into his notebook by the light of his
flashlight. A few weeks after we had gone there, Steve returned to the
house alone, and read his poem aloud in the house.  Nothing happened, and
he left, feeling good for doing it.  A lot of other people have gone to
the house since then and have said that whatever was there, isn't there
any more.  The house seems very dead, and lacks the presence it used to
have. 
<hr>

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