DLT FORUM

I used to go for hikes through the woods with an old Army map, a knife, and my dog. He used to go for rabbits, catch them, and bring them back to me alive and kicking, like he didn't know what to do with this fuzzy twitching thing in my mouth. Occasionaly I'd come across him eating one though, but that's neither here nor there. Foxes had a thing for him as well, and we'd always see one up on a ridge or on some rocks, watching us walk past.

It was following a "trail, unimproved" that I came across this house. It wasn't very surprising at this point to see a house abandoned in the middle of nowhere. The explanation given was that farms would go bust, no one would tend the fields, and the trees would reclaim the plowed fields. Fair enough.

It was the middle of Autumn, so the trees were in a good lather, falling leaves and everything looking decidedly poetic. I didn't really notice anything until my dog jerked my arm, not because of him running off but because he had froze. He had looked like this a few times before, when someone was trying to break into the house and whenever he saw another male dog who tried to bump chests with him. On point, looking huge and ruffled, which is saying something when he's a rotty/chow mix. I thought maybe he got a hint of coyotes, and then I saw the house.

What paint it had once faded off ages ago, leaving warped grey side boards. It was a two story farm house, and someone had obviously wanted to keep something inside. With some resistance at first, I moved closer. How do I know the above? Mainly because the wood 2X4s were nailed on the outside of the windows and doors. Okay, I thought, they couldn't do it on the inside, because then they would lock themselves in, right?

But why would they do it period?

Something else got my attention. There was a walk around porch roof, and going around back I could see where in one second story window all the boards had been blown out, shattered, along with some of the house itself. While the 2X4s were good and rotted, I could still see where someone had carved something into them, or perhaps clawed at them? I don't know. I do know, like the protagonist in an HP Lovecraft story, I should have probably at this point ran for the woodline, or at least until I had a can of gasoline. Especially after the events in Seaford.

But I was young, and impetous, and taking matters into my own hands, I went around to the front door again. With a running start, I threw myself through the front door, and into a fucking nightmare.

The wooden walls were covered with streaks of brown in impressions in the whitewashed wood, which I know realise was blood from fingers being scratched down to the quick. And perhaps white washed is too strong a term. There was white, but someone had taken time to write hex marks in line after line around the house. I could see what I thought was huge spider laying almost out of my line of sight in a doorway. I realised that it was a hand as my brain put things together. Baxter, the dog, had entered with me, growling low in this throat, coming up to my side and never taking more steps than I did. He did not like the hand, and bared his teeth at it in a way more akin to wolves, with that sudden sharp two tone snarl they do.

The hex lines, basically pentacles about every foot interspersed with crosses, ran into what I want to call the kitchen, with empty cabinets and an old iron stove. Needless to say, a thick curtain of dust covered everything, but there were places were there were less dust. Squatting, I made out footprints, bare human footprints, and ran a finger along the middle of one. Somewhere in the house, something thumped, and there was a giggle. More like in the back of my mind, but Baxter lurched as if he heard it too. I didn't like where this was going, but I continued on, my heart beating in my chest.

Perhaps I imagined the next rattle, coming from behind me, but I don't think I did. Investigating, I saw that the hand had slid several feet down the wall, further into the room. I could see the dust trails where it had moved, and shook my head. Something was fucking with me, but again, I was too headstrong, too reckless. I also thought my being a paratrooper, and under the auspice of St. Michael had something to do with it - if he could face the down devil, I could explore the domain of some half ass ghost, couldn't I?

Perhaps! But when a finger fucking twitched, it did not sit well in my stomach. And when I heard, much like I had before, the sound of something beating around upstairs, Baxter getting more and more anxious by the second, I decided to leave. I grabbed my fear by the throat, and walked from the house, through the threshold.

I don't know if my walking pissed it off or my running only inflamed it further, but when I heard the sound of footsteps coming, I took off for the woodline and the open fields, thinking for some reason it represented safety. Baxter ran beside me, ears back and in a flat out sprint. The wind kicked up behind me and I could smell the rot in the air. The smell of open sewage on a hot day, of a corpse putrefying and wet. The bile rose at the back of my throat and I spit, dodging through trees and leaping over more than one rock. It was riding the wind though, it's footsteps only taunting to heighten the thrill of the chase. How can you outrun the wind?

You can't. So I turned, ripped the medal from my neck, and shoved it into the wind. I don't remember what I yelled, to be honest. I suspect it was a cry to St. Michael with all of my faith, because there was a white explosion in my head, and my vision was filled with light. The only equivalent I have is when I got caught too close to a flashbang, with the noise slowly filtering back in with my vision.

Again, the smell of roses and gunpowder on the wind, and something else. You could smell fire on the wind, like your clothes might smell after standing too close to a bonfire. I heard steps again in the leaves, but it was only my dog, looking around curiously, licking the air. After a moment he looked off into the distance, wagged his tail, and then began to turn back. I followed him, looking where he had stared so intently. I saw nothing, but there was a cool breeze suddenly from that direction, and the smells, so apart but seeming so right, were stronger for a second, and then faded out. I walked with my dog out of whatever horror I had wandered into for a second.

When I got back home, my mother asked me what girl I had been with. She said she could smell me from there, and while I smelled good, I smelled STRONG. She didn't believe I wasn't with a girl, and only said "You don't have to lie, but we can pretend if you're embarassed to tell your mother. Just ask your "friend" what perfume she uses, because I'd like a bottle."

A deployment later, I returned to the house with the can of gasoline, the dog, and some handwritten prayers. What I found when the house burned to the ground is another story altogether.

A little over a year later had me driving down the "trail, unimproved" in a jeep, three five gallon jugs of gas in the backseat, a sheet of handwritten prayers tucked into my pocket, and the dog curled up in the backseat. I had left with this, I told my mother the area where I was going to hike, and took off. These were what I hoped, enough to finish what I had started.

I kept the events of that place to myself, knowing that I had experienced what some might call "a minor miracle" in my faith. I had told the story when I was younger about the first ghost to some people when it came to telling "Oh man this one time..." stories, much like this thread. Things would always get quiet shortly afterwards, and someone would eventually go "That's fucked up" softly, and that was that. Still, I knew the house was there, and unlike in the first case, I didn't know that I had broken whatever presence haunted that house for good.

I arrived at noon, with the first whispers of an early summer thunderstorm starting to show on the horizon. If this fire got out of hand, I hoped to let nature deal with it, and hauled the three cans out of the jeep, along with a coil of rope, and a shovel. I had my knife in the small of my back, and hefting three cans awkwardly, I walked towards the house, ignoring the sudden sinking feeling in my stomach.

Where there had once been a good wind moving through the woodline had died when I began walking towards the house with my goods. Baxter's tail was stiff, and his hair was on end again. Everything was literally silent. No birds flew, no trees moved. It felt like high noon at Dodge City, and to ease the tension I blew the first few notes of that song you hear in every spaghetti western.

Apparently, I hadn't broken shit. Just driven it away from me in a desperate moment, and I couldn't be sure when it might come back. Indeed, as I set the cans down, one of the 2X4s in the second story windows chose that time to pop out, making an empty thunk as it hit the top of the awning. Baxter barked once, and I loosened the St. Mike's medal from inside my shirt, wearing it openly and spreading the contents of the first can around the outside of the house.

The complete lack of anything serious happening was more frightening, I think, than if it had appeared gibbering and screaming around the corner of the house. I took a note from Ghostbusters, of all things, and tried my damndest not to think about what the hell it could do. When my foot got caught on a root, I let out a scream, thinking that it was coming out of the ground for me. My heart was beating as loudly in my chest as the first time I jumped out of a plane, and I was glad when the first can was completely empty.

The second can and third can were meant for the inside of the house, and while it was high noon, the light inside seemed less substantial, and the door yawned like a mouth, inviting me inside. Calling the dog to my heels, I marched in, and immediately spread the gas as fast as I could. With my first step a hard stiff wind blew from the direction of the storm front, and the entire house groaned in protest. The hand I had seen the first time had not moved at all, from where I remembered it, but all the same I avoided it. As I went into the kitchen, I took a moment to look around, and noticed on the counter there were fresh footprints on the dust, about infant sized. They dissapeared thanfully under the onslaught of gas, and I had used up over half of the first can when I saw the entryway into the parlor.

Draped over the windows were large white sheets, each painted with a single pentacle. A hex mark, in other words, designed to keep something in. The darkness was more complete in there, and my bravado failed me when I tried to take the first step in, pouring the gas from the safety of the threshold and letting it leak into the room. Something thumped upstairs, and I felt I didn't have much more time before events went quickly out of hand again. I went back to the center of the kitchen, grabbed the last can, and started spreading that on the hallway walls that led to the upstairs. I was not going up there, I decided, but I didn't count on the small trapdoor in the pantry, leading to what might have been a root cellar.

Flicking my lighter, I could see that it was covered with steel banded wood, holding down the rusting door. There was no need for a lock, as the boards over the door were bolted into cement around the trapdoor. Nothing was getting out of that. All the same, when I flicked my lighter shut and continued on my crusade something wailed in the dark place under this house, that made my dog howl in response and me drop the gas, spilling it over my boots and jeans. Something down there made the house shake, sending loose chunks of ceiling down on me. It was time to leave.

I drove my knife though the jug, and tossed it down the hallway, ignoring the persistant thump thump upstairs, like a heart, and ran until I was clear of the pooling gas. Running my lighter along the wall, the gas began to spread, running in blue flames both directions. I was careful to keep the flame away from me, and ran for the door.

The inside of the house had shielded us from the wind that waited for us outside. The storm had snuck up on us and I was almost thrown back by the wind. Reaching down I picked up the dog, threw him over my shoulder, and walked towards the car, taking shelter behind what trees I could. I turned back towards the house, and the fire was starting to take, licking against the dried and rotted wood. I stood there in the wind that bent the trees almost sideways, and watched as one tongue of flame sent a blue ring around the house.

Then the smell, the rot and the decay of last time, with something slamming around in the doorway, highlighted by the flames. I felt my fear drain away at that moment, all the anxiety that had been building was gone replaced by a sudden anger. At what, I don't know. Maybe at whatever had caused this to happen, but regardless, Baxter was put on the ground and I drew my knife and took a step forward. I was literally seeing red, going into the berzerker drive that had won me so many fights before.

"I'm right here motherfucker! I'm not going anywhere!" I screamed over the wind, as if this was just another shit talking dude. The ridiculousness of it all still strikes me today, a guy yelling at the air, brandishing a knife like a retard at something only he can see. Baxter came up next to me, growling low in his throat, eyes deep set in his massive head.

I wonder why it didn't charge me. Was I just taking out my rage and frustration on the unknown that surrounded this place on a figment of my own mind? Or was it there, and it was just unused to simple human courage, drawing a line in the dirt and saying "Here, and no further". Whatever the reason, it stopped thrashing, and the outline of flames surrounding it dissapeared.

The red faded from my vision shortly after the first story ceiling caved in, and I walked backwards the entire time, never taking my eyes from the house. I went to the jeep, got in the with the dog, and we had dinner at subway.

Roast beef with bacon, for both of us, on that cheese bread. It started to rain when we arrived at the Subway, and kept on after we had returned to the smoking embers of the house. I had made a stop on the way back to pick up a flashlight and a crow bar, and with that and the shovel, I shifted the ashes, not finding anything of interest until I got near the trapdoor. Baxter dug it out, a caved in skull that was partially destroyed by the fire, but huge and mishapen. The skull was too large, the eye sockets uneven. I ran a finger around the nose hole and wondered again what had happened here?. After several minutes of work with the pick and crowbar, I had a sort of answer. The faintest smell of corpses rose up to meet me, like a soda can in winter that a mouse died in during the spring.

There was a skeleton down there, and from the wider set of the hips I assumed it was a woman, with both of her femurs smashed. Several skeletons surrounded her, small infant skeletons. Making several knots in the rope, I tied off the rope to a sturdy looking tree nearby. If worst came to worst I could always chimney my way up, as it was only a ten foot drop. Either way, I had made sure that someone knew where I was if the shit met the fan.

I crawled down, looking at the skeleton surrounded by three infants with odd skulls and other deformities. I was surrounded by great despair, and shook my head at the waste of it all before carefully shouldering the skeleton and making the climb up with it. My internal revulsion was offset by a need to do the right thing here. So it took me several trips to collect all the bones, longer than it took me to dig the actual graves in the rain soft dirt. I piled stones over each, five graves. One for the mother and her four children, I think, and pulled out my sheet of prayers. I prayed to God, to Saint Michael, and I folded it up and offered my own blessings. Baxter sat quietly and watched throughout it all, and when I was done, he howled low and long.

I walked from that place filthy and covered in soot and dirt, and my nose was filled with the smell of fire. There was no scent of roses, no smell of gunpowder freshly burnt, but there was a smell of things growing underneath it all that hadn't been present before. That, I think, was all the sign I needed to know we had done the right thing.

I got in the jeep, and we drove away. I have never taken the supernatural for granted since.

Meat puppet

I begin my sojourn west. With my car packed to the gills with clothes, books, and a Pentium 2 400 PC, I make my way to South Dakota. I stop at friends' places in Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska... and take about three weeks getting there. Many of these people were elders, who offered me advice (and warnings) about the choice I was making... but I felt like I knew what i was doing and where I was going (for once), so I kept on plowing ahead.

I arrived at Pine Ridge, where i would be spending the next six months of my life. I gave floyd a box full of food (stew meat, noodles, coffee, vegetables, etc.), a little bit of rent money from the stuff I sold before hitting the road, and got to crash in a trailer outside. This began Floyd's "Dickhead School." I have talked to people who went through what I went through out there (I am not the first or the last who has gone through this), and the closest comparison is a boot camp of sorts. Pine Ridge is the poorest county in the USA. It's practically a 3rd world country. 85% of the population is unemployed, 1 in 3 adults have diabetes from the commodity food that the government is giving them to sustain themselves, and hardly any companies want to set up on the rez to give these people jobs. Gang violence flourishes and breeds there, born of governmental interference in the 70s and played out now by the children of the two sides who fought each other(If you have ever seen Val Kilmer's Thunderheart... you know the story. Everything but the Plutonium in that story is true).

There are neighborhoods where you can go at night, and those you cannot. There are places where if you park your car, it will be lit on fire and have all its windows broken. There are brutal beatings, gunfights, and murder... and the feds don't care, because its "just another Indian." I was the only white guy in Pine Ridge Village, and one of about fifty in a population of 35,000 or so in the county.

The home where I was living was less then 1/2 a mile from a BIA headquarters that was forcibly removed from the government some six months previous. for the first month or so of my living there, I had an indian sniper on the roof put a bead on me as I drove by. It wasn't until they was told where I was living that they cut it out.

Floyd is a hard teacher. He has alot of knowledge under his belt... but he also can be frightening at times. He is very connected with his spirituality, and this connection is prevalent throughout everything he does(whether you believe in spirits or not is something I will avoid altogether; everyone is entitled to their own beliefs... needless to say, mine were challenged out there, and I will tell all parts of the story as best as I can remember them). He has me mend fences, take care of and feed his horses, and type stuff up for him. He also has me help build fires for the sweat lodges, and teaches me some of the songs.

It was about three weeks into living there that Sonny (his son) and I were sent on a mission to deliver Wakpomoni District Meeting Minutes to the residents of the district. It was then that I encountered one of my most mind bending and frightening experiences ever.

Floyd's son Sonny and myself got into the F-350 pickup truck, and started delivering the minutes to the various residents of the Wakpamni district.

It was becoming dusk, and we were driving up the hill to Uncle Toughie's house. It had rained pretty heavy the past few days, and all the back roads in that county are dirt, so this turned out to be a recipe for disaster. The truck hit a mud hole, and sunk in to the bottom of the doors. for those of you who know the 350, thats REALLY FUCKING DEEP. Nothing we could do would get the truck out, so Sonny elected to run to Uncle Toughie's house and see if he would bring his tractor down to help us out of the mud hole. I stayed by the car, because cars on the rez that are left alone have the tendency to be vandalized, then lit on fire.

So i sat there alone for about 15 minutes. Around that time, it was beginning to really darken outside. I heard Sonny yell as he appeared on the top of nearby hill, and said "SLIDE OVER, KELLY!" So i did, and he dove into the driver side seat. He cranked up the truck, and started running the vehicle as hard as he could trying to get out. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that we had to leave now... that there were Wanuki here. I asked what Wanuki meant... and he said that it meant spirits.

I got out of the truck and tried pushing from the front... my legs sunk into the mud hole up to about 1/2 way up the thigh.

Sonny got out, and said that there was a house holding lodge (its a native ceremony) near Uncle Toughies that he didn't want to disturb earlier, but now didn't care if he did or didn't. He asked me if I wanted to come along. I said sure, took two HEAVY steps forward, and had the shoes sucked off of my feet.

I asked him to wait for me, but he took off. I leaned into the mudhole, painting my chest and face with some mud, grabbed my shoes, and walked out of the mud and onto the hill. I put my nasty shoes on, then crested the hill.

standing about ten feet away from me way a shadow. that is the easiest way to describe it, as it was pitch black, two dimensional, maybe eight feet tall and man shaped... but the shadow was being cast onto the empty air. It stood detached from its surroundings, and was impossible to see through or make any detail of. I suddenly grew very cold. I watched as there was movement around the area of the head, as if it were shifting its gaze... and I bolted back to the truck. I dove in, turned the lights on, and prayed for the next 20-30 minutes. I heard sloshing noises around the truck, as if something was pacing around the vehicle... but i saw nothing there... even when the sounds passed in front of the headlights.

After this hellish wait... another pickup arrived. Sonny got out of the passenger seat, and a woman got out of the driver's. She hooked a chain to my hitch, and pulled the truck out of the mud hole.

After we hit the road, sonny turned to me and told me what happened. He said that he arrived at Uncle Toughie's house and he wasn't home. He also saw a family in the middle of lodge and didn't want to disturb them... so he ran back tot he truck. As he was running, he saw something running beside him out of the corner of his eye. He said, "hey there, Kelly," but got no response. So he turned to look, and there was an eight foot tall, inky black being running right beside him. He freaked out and ran to the car as fast as he could, twisting his ankle in a prairie dog hole on the way.

He explained that he wasn't bothered on his second trip to get help... thats when i told him what happened to me. We drove back to Floyd's house, and explained to him what had happened. He told us that when he was 12, some 50-60 years ago, he was riding one of his horses on the field at the top of the hill we were at, and watched as a black being, about eight feet tall, started running towards him. He watched as it passed through the fence as if the fence were not there. His horse bucked and almost threw him off, but he managed to ride away.

He explained that the spirit was a "grandmother" of the property... something that has remained there for generations, defending... something. No one knew; it was a mystery. But whenever she shows up, it usually meant death was near.

I was told to go back out there and prepare a spirit plate for her, during the day... I planned to do that, but needed sleep... my foundations were shaken. I broke down in tears in my trailer that night, hugging my pillow for some kind of comfort. I had no idea what was going on; I was completely disconnected from everyone I knew, I felt isolated in ways I didn't think were possible, and I encountered something that I would have not put any belief in some four hours before.

I'm a big fan of the kind of horror stuff you see in games like Silent Hill, so when a friend told me that there was an abandoned 'haunted' jail, you know I had to hit it.

Now, this abandoned jail is very much the old style concrete and bars set-up. No computers, the only lights were the kind you have in your house now. Supposedly the back story is that a high number of deaths happened here (inmate to inmate) and after a few years they got 'tired of cleaning the blood off the walls' and just shut it down.

Furthermore, when they say it was abandoned they weren't kidding. This wasn't a slow pull-out where everything was scrubbed and it was left 'as new' in case they ever wanted to use the place again. From what I'm told everyone just left in a matter of a day or two and many things were left behind. You could actually see this as their were magazines, open soda bottles, toilet paper (!), and all kinds of.. things, just strewn about.

Anyhow, on to the creepy! This place had 3 'well known' urban legends. One, that at the very bottom of the place there was a 'killing room' in which supposedly was used for lots of firing executions. I didn't believe this as who heard of firing squads on the inside of a jail? The second legend talked about cell 13, which would supposedly drive whomever was put in it to suicide with 100% success rate. The final legend was the one about the graveyard in the back, where they put inmates whose family didn't want to/couldn't pay for a funeral. Supposedly some 'angry spirits' still wafted around the area.

Me and my friend decide to do the first myth, as we figured we might lose our wits too much if we did the other ones first. So we found the stairs down to the basement. Now, on the bottom floor it was basically a long hall with 3-4 doors on each side. We only opened one and it seemed to be for storage. At the very end of the hall was 'the room'. On the outside it had one of those old-fashioned 'locks' that consist of a long piece of metal and two prongs to put it on, basically barricading the door. The metal was missing, but the prongs were still in there.

We opened the door with some effort as it was nearly rusted shut. The inside room was dark crimson in colour and smelled *awful*. We couldn't tell if it was blood or rust as there were what we assumed to be 'fumigation' holes in the upper parts of the walls that were dripping water. What wasn't hard to make out where the claw marks on the walls. There weren't a lot, but the ones that were there were fairly deep. (Note: These were all on the ground, which was stone, not metal)

The smell started to get to us so we decided to leave. As we left we heard a loud sigh, but we both assumed it was from the 'fume holes' and just left as fast as we could. As we started up the stairs we started to hear footsteps that slowly went from a slow thump and then quickly to something that was running. It also was breathing heavily, whatever it was. We ran up the steps and closed the door to the downstairs behind us.

We decided to go now, but not before just glancing at myth 2 and 3. Luckily (if you can say that) cell 13 was near the exit to the graveyard. We passed by it and shown our light into it and I'm not kidding when I tell you it's like the inside of the cell "ate" the light. Nothing was illuminated at all. Then we heard the sound of a rope being made taut and then it went silent. Quickly, though we heard something.. land. Yeah, we didn't stay to find out what as we ran out of the prison and straight into the graveyard.

We both basically thought 'fuck the myths' and ran to our car. Both of us swear we heard footsteps again from somewhere deep in the graveyard as we ran, but like hell we were gonna see what was there.

We drove back to town and haven't spoken about it since. The prison is about an hours drive out of Higginsville in Missouri, for those who want to try and find it. As it doesn't exist on any actual modern road, there is no real address to be given. Ask locals, I guess.

The saddest thing about all this is now I can't be scared by movies or games anymore. Damn.

Here in México, it is common that families share a ghost or paranormal stories, as in each family has a group of stories that are particular for each family. They can be relative apparitions, poltergeist activity in a house or familiar place, family members with paranormal abilities, etc. Most of my family members have had an experience with the paranormal, well, except me, but I’m whole different case.

Well, this story takes place decades ago, at my grandmother’s house. My mother’s family was composed my grandmother and grandfather, my mother, two sisters and a younger brother. My uncle, who’s name is Ignacio (Nacho, from now on.) was raised in a house full of girls, so he had the tendency to play alone in his room.

He used to play ball, or any other game alone, but every once in a while, my grandmother would hear more “movement” inside his room, as in if he wasn’t alone. Footsteps and the like. One time, my grandmother just bursted open the door to my uncle’s room and he was alone, he turned to my grandmother and shouted “Don’t come in! You scare him away!”. My grandmother asked “Who am I scaring away?” “My friend, Sergio.”he responded. That creeped my grandmother out, but she still had the hope that he was just an imaginary friend. In another occasion my grandmother would ask my uncle how did Sergio looked like, and he would respond “Just like me.”

For a couple of years he played with Sergio, only my uncle could see him, and any other person would scare him away. There was even one occasion in which my uncle would say “I’m not Nacho anymore, my name is Sergio!” And he would acted like another child, and he would only respond to the name of Sergio.

But after a while, Sergio disappeared. Or at least that was what my grandmother thought.

My Uncle is now in his late 30’s, all of my mother’s sisters are married and with children, all was good. One of my aunts, Janina, would need to work during the mornings, so she needed to take her son, Manuel (He was like 3-4 years old at that time, he is not in elementary school) to my grandma’s house, so my grandmother could take care of him. After a while, Manuel started to play at my Uncle’s room. Manuel started to play with an “imaginary friend” too. My grandmother started to hear “movement” again. If my grandmother would enter my Uncle’s room, she would scare “him” again…

… My grandmother asked “Manuel, what’s the name of your friend?” “Sergio” he responded. What are the posibilities? For a young child to choose the same name for his imaginary friend, after almost 3 decades apart from my Uncle? And that’s not the weird thing of this story.

When my grandmother asked him”Manuel, how does Sergio looke like?” He responded “He looks like my uncle Nacho, all grown up.” And then, I freaked out.

AngelBaby wrote:

I don't really know how to do this. All I know is that I want this damned thing out of my house. I'll start from the beginning:

When I was a young child, I had a large stuffed toy bear, and named him "Baron". Baron was the one I always blamed for stolen candy and broken dishes, dressed in a button up shirt to imitate Calvin dressing up Hobbes, that kind of best imaginary friend who I would talk out loud to. I don't remember a whole lot about what went on, but some things (which they will not discuss with me) happened to make them get rid of Baron and take me for counseling, and then to several religious figures in the local community. This didn't last long, and I turned into (according to everyone else) a healthy, well adjusted young man.

Two weeks ago, I was in Cleveland on business. There was a small antique shop on the other side of the street where I was parked, and after finishing what I was there for, I walked up to the door for a quick peek. "Merryweather Curiosities" was not only closed but in a severe state of disrepair, and very dim inside, but I could swear that back in the shadows I saw movement once or twice. As my eyes adjusted to peering through the glass into the darkness, shielded by my hands, I saw a stuffed bear that looked very much like Baron tucked away in one of the corners. Nothing of note happened and I went home, only to come back the next day to retrieve my clip-on sunglasses that I had accidentally left in the waiting room of the office.

Baron, and it was indeed my childhood friend, was on the sidewalk outside the shop, a McDonald's hamburger wrapper plastered around his leg by the wind. There was no pricetag. On closer inspection, his fur was ragged and worn in some places, mostly on the extremities of the forepaws, and most oddly, his eyes were gone.

I looked up and down the street and put him in the back of my Isuzu Trooper.


At home, I hurried in to check my email and phone messages. I forgot to bring Baron in, which I sometimes do with groceries if I don't need them right away. In the morning, I went out to the car. Opening the door, I was practically bowled over by a very powerful stench of rust, mold, and what can only be described as the scent of a filthy wet dog. A dead filthy wet dog.

The back lining of my trooper had been torn out after it started to mold from being used as a work truck (hauling firewood in the winter got it wet and dirty), so I figured that maybe the carpet up between the seats needed cleaning, and that some of the smell might be coming from Baron who if I remembered properly from the tag, was machine washable. I pulled him out, put him on the porch, stuck my bike in the back of the trooper, and drove down to the local carwash and auto detailing place to have the interior steamcleaned to see if that would help. My seat was slightly misadjusted and some of the controls were sticky for no apparent reason. The cycling ride home was uneventful. The bear was still in the same position where I left him.

Once I got home, I stuffed Baron into my Staber washing machine, which is an expensive high quality washer, and ran him as a light cold water load. Afterwards, I spread him over a laundry rack outside to dry because it was such a nice sunny day. Right after coming inside, the phone started ringing. It was the auto detailer, and they wanted me to pick up my car (this was much earlier than expected).

On arriving, I found the Trooper to be only partly cleaned but the smell was greatly diminished. None of the college students who worked there would look me in the eye or give me more than a monosyllablic reply. The manager pulled me aside, told me that he wanted me to take my car and leave, that he wasn't willing to discuss anything about it, and that there would be no charge. This made me feel very uncomfortable and embarrassed, and I tried to think of what might have happened. The Trooper had the windows rolled up tightly while sitting in the sun and was very warm, so I put on the air conditioning on the drive back. There was almost no airflow, and then a few dried feathers started to spiral out of the vents, followed by a shaking rustle and a dead baby bird dropping onto the carpet from the under-dash air vent.

I immediately pulled into the Target parking lot, locked my car, and spent an hour pacing and then looking underneath the car. I decided that the source of the stench and problems with the carwash had been birds nesting in the air conditioning ducts, which then died. I finally scooped up the dead hatchling with a plastic bag, dropped it in one of the errant shopping carts and got back in my car. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something looking at me from in back. Not malevolently, but accusingly. Like I had done something wrong.

At home, I worked outside for a while cutting down some new brush growth and dragging it down to the ditch by the road, then went inside and out into the back yard to check on Baron drying. The rack had collapsed and he was sprawled on the ground several feet away, but completely dry. It almost felt as though there were hard objects inside him, just deep enough to be difficult to feel under the padding. There was no smell. I put most of my problems outside of my mind and carried him upstairs to be stowed away in the guest bedroom, with some of my other old stuff.

For a few days, nothing happened. Then I began feeling like I wasn't alone in the house. My girlfriend came over, and started to mention seeing things out of the corner of her eye. I said they must have been my cat Harlequin, but we found her upstairs asleep on my bed. That night when we were watching The Island, we both heard a very loud banging sound coming from upstairs. Later, she swore she heard footsteps descending the basement stairs and then sounds coming from underneath us. I was still trying my best to be skeptical about the odd things happening, and made fun of her being easily spooked. Our night didn't last much longer, she went home and I stayed up listening to every single sound - and this is an old house, it DOES have some creaks from the heat making it expand and contract - with my hair slowly prickling up on the back of my neck. Some of the pieces from my chess set were missing.

I went to sleep with a small light on for the first time in years, and finally drifted off around 3 am. I can't remember much from my dreams from that night, but I woke up with most of the coverings balled up on the floor and dark bags under my eyes. The one mental image that remained was the lingering sensation of being trapped deep underground in a space too small to pass through, with the knowledge that something was coming after me.

Harlequin didn't show up for her breakfast, but I figured she was just out sleeping in the bushes or in a sunny spot. I realized that I hadn't seen any birds or squirrels around lately, and there hadn't been any birdcalls in the morning. Harley takes a bird now and then, but not enough to silence them all. Walking out the front door, I saw a massive puddle under the back of the trooper. It was something like motor oil but was dried and blackish brown. Test driving it showed no problems and there was no longer any smell at all. Also, the feathers were gone. At this point, I began questioning whether some of the events were just my overactive imagination running wild after a period of stress and extra work. I decided to take the car for a drive to make sure nothing was wrong, and ended up heading toward Cleveland again. The antique shop popped into my mind, and I made a beeline for it, thinking maybe I could ask where they found Baron. I was starting to put some of these strange occurences together.

At the corner where I had picked up Baron, there was only brick wall at the section where the shop had been. I thought I was going nuts. It was the exact same place, but nothing was there. I walked to the next door down, a local coffeehouse. The grayhaired lady behind the counter told me that there never had been any "Merryweather" shop there.

The shop was completely cleaned out, down to the cleaner area on the brick where the sign used to be. I don't know where it went and haven't had much luck in researching.

Sure that I was going mad, I came back home to see the local utilities board scooping up all the brush I had been cutting over the past week. One of the orange hard-hat wearing workers flagged me over and pointed at what the backhoe claw had unearthed pulling up branches. There was a good four or five cubic feet of small bones mixed in with the twigs and saplings, drying white and brown. Feathers, fur, and scraps of flesh still clung to most of them. Among the bones was a pink flea collar exactly the same as the one Harlequin had been wearing.

This incident caused me a great deal of difficulty with the city, fortunately some of the executives on the utilities board and city council members were close friends of my parents and didn't take to any wild flights of fancy as to why a small animal graveyard might have appeared in my discarded branches. I was beginning to be terrified about the possibilities. My house was rapidly taking on a very uncomfortable feeling, and no one came inside without commenting on feeling unease or even outright fear. At several times I heard low moans uttered from other parts and this happened once while a guest was over. The shuffling sounds increased in frequency, always happening on a floor I wasn't on until one day they started happening several rooms over on the same story. This set me on edge like nothing you would believe. It was worse than hearing the scraping sounds inside the walls at night had been. Sometimes I would wake up with a few scratches on my face, or feel something jump up onto my bed at night. I started to question my sanity more and more.

Up to this time, I had only looked in the spare bedroom a few times, and Baron was always in his place, eyeless sockets staring into space. I looked at him that day I heard the shuffling, and caught myself starting to talk to him. This time it wasn't a pair of child friends, it was me threatening him with the evisceration of his stuffing and the fate of being stuffed into my woodchipper if he didn't stop whatever was going on, if it was related to him and I was sure it was. As I spoke, I felt chills trace up and down my spine and tears jumped into my eyes for no reason. The room felt twenty degrees colder and visibly darkened. My heart was in my throat and I felt an incredibly palpable sensation of hostility spreading through the air like waves.

Shakily I backed out of the room, slammed the door, and ran downstairs to fix myself some tequila. I noticed in the kitchen that most if not nearly all of my knives were missing, and that there were chunks of wood missing out of the locked cupboard under the sink, a holdover from when the previous owners had had small children to keep away from drain cleaner, almost as if a very short person had been gleefully chipping away to try to break past the latch.

After drinking for a good twenty minutes, I started to rationalize everything that had happened. The feeling that washed over me had been a natural reaction, all part of my mind spooking itself and reacting on cue to my subconscious desires to find strange and scary things. Emboldened by liquor, I strode back upstairs and decided for no apparent reason to repair Barons eyes. I remembered that once, long after Baron disappeared but still in my childhood, that I had found a small box with a pair of stuffed animal type eyes in it, nestled in strips of paper with scrawled writing, and then was scolded heavily for snooping. As if my hands found it unbidden, it only took a few minutes of searching in one of the upstairs closets. The box was wooden with inlaid crucifixes and a carving of the Virgin Mary, which struck me very oddly as my parents had most definitely not been Catholic. Inside were many little strips of parchment, almost as if it had been put through a shredder. Written on each one was a latin phrase, repeated over and over from one strip to another. Underneath a wrapping of these were a pair of simple button eyes that I recognized as definitely having belonged to Baron in the past. They felt very, very cold.

I took a needle and thread left over from my last shirt repair and took Baron downstairs. Slamming him onto the dining room table, I roughly stabbed the needle into the sockets, laced in the eyes, and sewed them both tight. Again, I felt as if there almost might be an actual skeletal structure under his padding, but after prodding quite hardly, found nothing. Tired of the whole thing and wondering why I had done what I did, I opened the basement door, threw him down the stairs, and locked it.

Nothing happened all day and all night. Maybe I had solved the problem. Loading my week's laundry into the machine, I noticed that it was already full of liquid. Looking closer with a flashlight revealed a layer of scum floating on oily water, glinting red under the beam from my mini mag. My reflection swirled and distorted in the water, and I heard whispering, not just one voice but one main tone with a whole chorus of others in the background. I slammed the lid down and put a cinderblock on top of it, and ran the machine empty. Five minutes later all of the power to that side of my house went out and I have still not been able to find the circuit fault. I called up an electrician the next morning, after a tormented night of sounds and bumps, and then tried looking up an exorcist. Exorcists unfortunately aren't in the yellow pages. The workman came around noon and went down to the basement (where I had not gone) to check the breakers. He left shortly after going down and told me that he was never coming back and that he had a good mind to hit me with his wrench for calling him here. The shadows in the corners of the house seemed bigger than before, and I don't like shadows that shift and adjust when you aren't looking. There was a puddle forming under the washer.

I went outside to pace under the sun, and started to notice odd scraps of ragged fabric stuck to some of the trees and brambles edging my property. One of them was recognizeable as part of one of my much older stuffed animals, from when I was a toddler. There must have still been a box of them tucked away somewhere. I went upstairs to look, and found only a decapitated Pooh in an otherwise empty cardboard box. Pooh's eyeless, mouthless head was on the seat of my car. The rest of the never-alive animals slowly came to view as I dug through some of the uncleared thickets, some of them with their heads seperated, some of them much worse. I saw the entrance to the crawlspace under the sideporch was open. This crawlspace leads directly to another crawlspace that goes to the basement. I saw some scraps of fur and stuffing laying in the entrance and was sure that I heard heavy, animal breathing deeper inside.

Staying in the house for another night was a terrifying prospect. I was being forced to accept that some sort of evil supernatural entity was making a residence and destroying my life and my wellbeing. Looking in the downstairs bathroom mirror, my skin was almost china-pale, with dark veins showing through. The corruption that was overtaking the house was starting to get me as well. As I looked at my face in the mirror in the dim fluorescent light (I needed to change one of the pair and hadn't) the reflection slowly faded to grayish dark, and swirled into ornate patterns that gave way to a pure blackness that looked back at me through a pair of bright red eyes, the only thing I could see. I heard a horrible scream that might have been my own, as the lights went off through the entire house. The bathroom door is opposite the basement door, only a few feet to the other side and back a bit. I could hear slow shuffling sounds coming up them. My maglite was in my hand and my adrenaline was on full fight or flight mode. I chose fight.

I shone the light into the door and pulled it open. I swear to god I'm not crazy, and this is what I saw. There below me on the steps was Baron slowly walking up on two legs, one of my kitchen knives in his paws, scraps of other animals hanging off him. I yelled at the top of my lungs and shut the door, but it bounced back open. I was already several yards away, running upstairs for my guns. In my bedroom, the moonlight filtered through my curtains and I quickly grabbed my 870 and prepared to charge back down. I felt prickles on my neck and turned to see the eyes outside my window. They winked out into nothing with an unearthly moan and I left the house as fast as I could. I did not see 'Baron' on the way out.

The rest is too traumatic to tell, from the ordeal under the cellar to what we found in the crawlspaces. In short, with the help of a Wiccan aquaintance, my house is partially cleansed and the bear is now locked up in a box. I need to sell it, for someone to willfully accept it. There is something dreadfully wrong with this bear. I never used to believe in powers of darkness, but now I do. If you are willing to buy it, please let me know. I take no responsibility for what may happen afterwards and for God's sake don't keep it anywhere near children. The lingering presence is still in my house to some extent and I need to get the source out. Please help me.

There is a large rip on the back, a small one on the belly that is sealed up with red thread. The eyes are firmly attached and for reasons I am not willing to discuss should not be removed under any circumstances.


*

And so the auction went and went and I wish I had been able to save the full question and answer set because it was AWESOME, but c'est la vie.

Here, for the first time ever, is the ending, which I typed up and sent with the bear:


I made several phonecalls from a hotel room that night, and the next day several trusted friends entered the house with me. Under the guidance of one, a complicated cleansing ritual involving burning sage was performed, and we began feeling 'resistance' to our efforts after finishing the upstairs. The air seemed to thicken. In the downstairs, the house went noisy. Doors clicked, windowframes rattled, and the television turned on. This faded as we persisted in the purification. Finally, all that was left was the basement and cellar sections under the porches. Opening the basement door let out a rush of wailing cold air that left a rank mildew odor. We turned on our maglites, and in the case of the one friend who always obsesses over having the best gear, a surefire, and descended the cellar stairs. The fluorescent lights flickered and went dead before we got to the bottom. Then, nothing.

Halfway through the basement, the lights went on, and there in the middle of the floor, un-noticed with our flashlights, was the bear, sitting motionless like a puppet with slashed strings. A faint buzzing sound, angry and hot, was coming from it. The wiccan friend raised his lump of sage incense and stepped forwards while chanting, and was immediately engulfed from the face down in an impossibly large swarm of bloatflies that poured out of the slightly torn hole in Baron's fur. Screaming, he staggered into the shadows as the lights dimmed out again. My flashlight began to turn off every few seconds and would only come back through shaking. Shining it on the spot where the bear had been revealed nothing but dirty concrete floor. From this point, everything became chaos. Fluttering scaly wings seemed to fill the air and buffet my face, I couldn't tell whether the screams were from an unholy source or coming from the other people in the basement, and unhealthily fast skittering sounds circled the floors and, from the change in tone, went up the wooden walls as well. Fighting my way to the stairs, I was able to account for everyone but the man attacked by flies. By sticking close together we managed to circle the basement shouting his name, but we didn't hear a thing. When we got closer to the porch crawlspace entrance, the floor surface seemed to become like carpet, except the entire basement is done in cement. I shone my light to the ground and realized that I was an inch deep in writhing pale maggots the size of ricegrains. The only thing my mind could think to do was to jump up off the floor, onto the counter that lines the wall on that side, and from there dive head first into the crawlspace.

I really wish I hadn't.

Inside I felt maggots dropping from the ceiling onto my head from the animal corpses wedged up into the floorboards, which my light quickly revealed. I saw the Doc Marten of the missing man and started to crawl toward it, screaming the entire way. Writhing drops of insectile larva covered my clothes, some going down my neck or up my sleeves. I had just reached the shoe and realized that it was sitting there by itself when a low bestial growl met my face along with warm, fetid ursine breath. The bear was on all fours with teeth bared, eyes shining demonic red. It smelled like it brushed it's fangs with year old garbage, the extra juicy kind. I yanked my hand back to the Benchmade at my belt and then it all went black.

They tell me I fell out from underneath the basement stairs, with the wiccan friend over my shoulder. I don't think that's possible, since there is no area underneath the stairs that isn't open and it isn't anywhere near the crawlspace. They found Baron in my bedroom upstairs, ripped and unmoving. While the house still 'crawls', it isn't as malevolent for now and I think the main reason behind the bad things has been subdued. The rest might be symptomatic or just parasitic to the main infestation. Maybe they are souls the bear claimed, forever doomed to haunt his location.

I sealed up the crawlspace with bricks and listed the bear on eBay immediately. After the sale finalized, I began to come down with a horrible case of hives. Once Baron was shipped, they began to go away.