"I would say it's one of the scariest places on Earth!"
-- People Magazine

Excerpts

That evening when I came home from work Lesa and I were in the kitchen eating dinner and watching the news. The phone rang. It was Jessica calling from the third floor. She told us she was sending two and a half year old Collin downstairs to visit with us and he would be down in a minute. I paid the call little attention as I was fixated on the news on TV. About a minute later I heard what sounded like the loud gasps of a child who was drowning. The television was on but I still heard the sounds all the way from the front of the house. I immediately ran to the steps and up to the second floor balcony handing to find little Collin standing in front of the blue room shaking like of leaf in terror and gasping loudly for air.

“Monster, monster will get me,” he gasped, as he pointed to the blue room. His face was a mask of fright, eyes bulging out of their sockets in a frozen stare! His mouth was wide open as if he was trying to scream but couldn’t. Because of his developmental issues he could not yet verbalize fully what had occurred but finally said “monster” (Collin, now eleven, will still not venture to the second floor by himself. He’s not sure why but vaguely recalls the “black monster” that lunged out of the room at him.)

Lesa carried him downstairs and I felt like an idiot. I knew exactly what had happened and I was angry at myself for being so stupid. Here we were in the middle of a battle with a supernatural being and I had let my grandson walk alone right through the middle of the battlefield! What was I thinking, how could I have been so short-sighted?

I went into the blue room and said in a loud, firm voice, “I’ve had enough of you. You are a coward, going after a child.” In my mind I could almost hear it laughing at me. Why would it care if I called it a coward? It was all about hurting, terrorizing, and if possible, killing innocent children. I felt foolish and at that moment impotent against it. I realized that it had accomplished its purpose, it had scored a direct hit on me and was probably standing there laughing at me. When the then stench wafted over me I knew it had just experienced a major victory. It had found my greatest
weakness.

When I regained my composure, I went downstairs to where Lesa was holding Collin who was still trembling. The demon was upstairs stinking up the place and I knew that it would probably soon be back on the third floor as well.”

That evening as Charlie went into the small bedroom to practice guitar he discovered that the crucifix had been thrown off of the wall and was lying face down in the middle of the floor. Where the crucifix had hung there were drops of the spattered blood running down the wall. As he sat there and played he heard what sounded like nails being scratched across the wall.

That night as I was lying in bed I was scratched on the leg so hard it woke me up. It felt as if I had been jabbed and scratched with a needle or sharp pin. This thing was moving around the house at will displaying what seemed to be a temper tantrum. I could almost feel its frustration, which again convinced me that we had to push back and persevere.

I was in 5th grade and I’d stayed home from school sick. My mom took all the kids to school and then she went to the pharmacy. I was in my room in bed looking out the window. I heard a strange noise, something like bagpipes playing . The noise got louder and louder and then the door to my room opens and I’m looking and this thing comes into my room. It looked like that plastic clear globe at the mall that has lightening in it. It was made out of static, lightning bolts, in the shape of a kid’s torso, like a ten year old with no face but a body. It then like hopped into my room, stood at the foot of my bed, and then it went back out the door. I stared at the door and then this black figure, like someone you threw a black sheet over, went real fast past the door. As I stared at the door I saw a hand stick out with a black robe on its arm. As I’m staring at that I pulled my blankets over my head in terror. Then the blankets were ripped out of my hands and flew to my feet, folded perfectly. I looked up and there was another figure floating above me, it was looking down at me. If you took a human torso and turned it into a light bulb that’s what it looked like. There were no facial features, just a light bulb person. I closed my eyes and screamed really loud. I lay in bed until my mom got home but didn’t say anything. I felt total terror, like I was going to die.

When I told the story to the priests they said the little thing that came in the first time was like a ghost or a spirit the evil thing in black had under its control and it was all designed to terrify me. However, the glowing thing over my bed apparently was a guardian angel that intervened to protect me and that ended it. The whole experience was terrifying— and I didn’t feel there was an angelic being there at all, it was horrible.

Later that night my son-in-law was walking up the steps and stopped to look in on Collin who had been put to bed about an hour earlier. The room was dark but light was shining in the window from the moon outside. To his surprise he saw the back of a figure standing at the bed bent over looking at the sleeping little boy. Naturally thinking that it was Jessica he said “What are you doing in here with the light off?” When the figure did not turn around but moved into the wall which led to a crawl space and disappeared, Tom moved quickly to see who it was and stood there mystified beside the bed wondering what he had just seen. He picked up Collin and went into the apartment where Jessica was watching television. He was very excited and told her what had just happened. He was completely befuddled. Up to this point the problems with the house had been kept as a family secret, except for the priests involved, and Jessica had never told her new husband any of the stories. Had she done so he would not have believed her anyway.

When I got drowsy I set the alarm for 3:30 am and went back to the cot and fell asleep. I was then startled awake by a loud pounding on the wall directly behind my head coming from the crawl space. This area was behind the wall and was also used for storage through a small access door. As I got up I continued to hear some movement in the space. I removed a door into the area and once again began to read the Bible aloud in a very strong voice. I believed that I was getting to the thing and would simply keep poking at it. You’d think that I would have been terrified at this point, and to be truthful a part of me was, but I drew such strength from the words that I was reading that it seemed as if I were firing a spiritual machine gun into that crawl space. But truly I didn’t know what was going to happen next and I was flying by the seat of my pants.

This went on for some time, with the rain and thunder continuing unabated. I eventually put the panel back in place and lay back down refusing to retreat from the room. I was exhausted and fell asleep once again. The next time I awoke it was almost daylight and I immediately felt an irritation on the right side of my neck. I probed the area with my finger and it hurt. I then went downstairs to the bathroom in our bedroom and looked in the mirror to see three long deep scratches on my neck that started below my right ear and continued down my neck underneath the shirt I was wearing – which was buttoned. These three scratches were very pronounced and looked like a cat had clawed me. There was no blood but the area was red and inflamed. I went to bed and slept for an hour or so until it was time to get up for work. I showed Lesa the scratches in the morning and she responded with disbelief. She couldn’t know that she’d eventually experience similar wounds of her own. Later that day as I was at the gym working out I could see the scratches protruding and with physical exertion they became even more pronounced. I was somewhat alarmed but figured I had gotten to it. What would it do next? I told myself that as long as I faced the presence through the power of the cross I would be protected from serious harm. At least I hoped I would!

Over the next week we all wore our crosses, but Bobby’s cross didn’t want to stay in place. Even though the chain was small enough that it couldn’t fit over his head, it consistently came off while he slept. When he woke up in the morning the cross and chain would be on the floor. One morning it was nowhere to be found and he and I finally found it between the mattress and box springs. Bobby became more and more uneasy because each time we found the cross, the clasp was still closed. A few days later we found the cross both removed and folded in half upon itself, as if it had been placed in a vise and bent with pliers. With this last incident we decided to move Bobby out of the blue room. We moved Bobby and his furniture into the fifth smaller bedroom on the second floor that had originally been the maid’s linen room with a walk in closet.

It was a Saturday morning and I had attended Mass at the Passionist convent as I usually did every Saturday. At around 9:30 am I was in the kitchen with Lesa having coffee. As I walked through the dining room earlier I had noticed the faint smell of the demon but by now the putrid stench was somewhat burned into my nostrils so I paid little attention to it. Our son David—who, miraculously, did not seem to be affected by the evil spirit at all, even when he woke up occasionally with scratches down the center of his chest–was in the T.V. room on the couch. From his vantage point he could see directly through the dining room into the entrance to the kitchen. He walked into the kitchen and asked us “Where did that person go and who was it?”

“What person?”

“I just saw someone at the kitchen door wearing a black robe or a dress,” he told me. “What did they look like?” I asked.

“It had jet black hair down to the shoulders so I couldn’t see its face. It walked into the doorway of the kitchen and then turned and walked over towards where you and mom were sitting so I lost sight of it. I came in to see who it was.”

He wasn’t excited or upset because it looked so real that he was sure someone was in the kitchen with us. I was taken aback at first but then understood what had happened.

During the first two weeks of January I tried to get my head on straight but I wasn’t able to. The thing had me in such a weakened state that it soon would be pushing us out the door. I knew that if I left it would win. It had driven me out once before and was on the verge of doing it again.

I didn’t have any time to recover because on the 13th of January the demon began its anticipated grand attack. Since Jessica and her family had moved out, the third floor was vacant and I had been retreating to it and actually sleeping there for solitude. Moving to the third floor was the first step in moving out. My mind was a mess. I also had contracted the flu and was pretty sick. I came home early that afternoon to go to bed, no one was home and the house was empty. As I walked up the steps to the third floor I was struck with an unbelievable sight at the top of the stairs.

All of the walls including two doors were spattered with large drops of red blood from the ceiling to the floor. The blood was still wet and was running down the walls. It was if someone had just taken a container and a sponge and sprinkled the walls as Fr. Mike had done numerous times with holy water.

After I realized what I was looking at I went downstairs and called Fr. Ron.

“This is just the type of thing I expected, Bob. Don’t be alarmed.”

That was easy for him to say, but he didn’t have to look at blood dripping down the walls. Lesa soon came home and I showed her the ghastly discovery. We didn’t touch it except for a small area that I had originally wiped just to see what it was.

Over the next several weeks the blood continued to be sprinkled down both stair cases to the first floor, including my den. Some of the areas where the blood was dripping from were so far up (over nine feet) that a person would have had to use a ladder to get there. Another interesting aspect was that it was only on the walls and not on the ceilings so that if it were thrown up there it would have been impossible to miss hitting the ceilings. It looked as if the walls were bleeding.

“This is the demon’s way of claiming the house for evil – with its stench and the blood of death – just as we had claimed the house for good with holy water and blessed incense.” Fr. Ron explained.

The PRS team arrived around 8:00 pm on Friday February 21, 2005 and it would prove be an eventful visit. They set up their equipment and once again used the third floor as a base. We let them work and went to bed around midnight. As they were having a meeting on the third floor, sometime early in the morning hours, three very pronounced scratches suddenly appeared horizontally across Adam’s forehead. This was caught on tape and when I saw them the next morning I told them that they were the exact same scratches that had appeared numerous times on my neck and chest, however blood actually ran down Adam’s forehead. Also, what was different about this incident, was that Adam was not asleep when it occurred, and others actually saw it happen.

Adam later related his story of the night:

“It was cold, and snowing outside. We were talking on the third floor but it felt oppressive and overwhelming. I walked outside with Ryan and Elfie, one of the girls in the class, to breathe. We walked for about 15 to 20 minutes. Then lightning hit nearby and everything went black except the four streetlights right around us. We felt like we needed to get back right away because something may have gone wrong.

We returned to the apartment on the top floor and entered one of the crawl spaces off the back room. Ryan demanded that the demon say its name. We were sitting in tight quarters when he said, ‘I demand you to say your name.’ My eyes were open but I saw letters as if there was a piece of paper held in front of me, I saw “S” “A” “T.” The next letter was “H” We left the crawlspace and when I got home I looked for names and turns out that Sathi is a female demon, a consort of Moloch who is associated with facilitating women going through with child sacrifice.

Then everyone was brainstorming about what do we do, what does it mean? I was very new to all of this and hadn’t had these strange images and impressions before. I thought maybe I should reflect on it. I went to the other room alone, sat on the floor, closed my eyes, meditated, I pictured the house and I could see it. Underneath the lower part of the house I saw faint tattered souls and then bigger things milling about and they weren’t good, then one turned and looked at me. I opened my eyes and stood up and I felt dizzy so I went back into the other room. The others turned and asked me “what’s wrong.” I stood there and these scratches welted up and appeared on my forehead as they watched, and they were filmed.