An Urban Haunting

Disclaimer: It is not my intention by writing this story to tell you what to believe. If you do not believe in the paranormal then you may either enjoy this as a work of fiction or ignore it entirely. *Mean spirited emails or comments will be ignored. If your religious views (or lack thereof) differ from what I express in this story, same advise. Enjoy the story as fiction, or ignore it. Beyond all of that, if you simply don't believe my story that's fine. Nobody is saying you have to. I'm just telling you that this is my truth, and what I experienced. If you have a problem with any of that, revert to the asterisk.

The Calm

         It began the day I fell in love with the wrong woman and betrayed my best friend. We went to high school together and shared a circle of friends. Although initially we didn't really "click" Kate and I got along well enough. My best friend Lee was painfully anti-social. I'm not sure if it was sympathy for his loneliness or jealousy of his freedom from heartache, but something drove me to hook them up. Over the course of a few weeks I had arranged for a group of us, Lee and Kate included, to hang out after school and on weekends. We'd usually just hang out and commit the typical ill-advised teenage hijinks that seniors took part of in rural Pennsylvania. Eventually, after immense peer pressure, Lee asked Kate out. To my, and most other's surprise she actually said yes.

         They dated throughout the rest of high school, after which Lee enlisted in the Marines. Their relationship became somewhat stagnant while he was away at Ellis Island. They corresponded back and forth occasionally, but not to the extent you'd expect from high school sweethearts. She drove to see his graduation ceremony which in and of itself was an ordeal. She had put on some weight thought to be due to a hormonal imbalance and poor diet. His first words to her after the ceremony were "Whoa! You're going through a chubby phase!" I was shocked when I heard about this statement of course, I nearly fainted when I found out he had also proposed. And again she said yes.

         The events following the wedding escalated rather quickly. Shortly thereafter, Lee was stationed in Japan. For a while, things were great between them. They'd talk through Skype and phone calls regularly. They seemed happy. I'm not sure exactly where or when, but this marriage fell apart. Lee and Kate grew more distant with each passing day. Lee contacted me one day asking an especially odd favor. Kate, who I was not exactly close with at this point, needed to find her own place. Apparently, she had a falling out with her mother and needed to be out ASAP. He asked me if I would not only help her find her own place, but move in with her so she wouldn't be alone.

         You can probably imagine my incredulity at this request. After a few days of his insistence, I eventually agreed. Kate and I ended up spending several months together. We'd go to dinner, see movies, for all intents and purposes we were dating. I don't want to be dishonest about it. The grief I felt having coveted the wife of my best friend, a man I called my brother at the time, became too much. So I backed off. I can't explain why, but I just couldn't stay away. Between Lee's negligence and my own loneliness, I kept justifying it in my head one way or another. Eventually we did find a place. A small studio apartment in a nearby city called Reading, Pennsylvania. Everything seemed in order. We had some trepidation towards the city, due to it's reputation of crime, but nonetheless we had fallen in love and needed a place to hide our affair. Not to mention my shame.

         For the first few months in the apartment our life of lies went well. Nobody close to us really even knew where we were or that we were together. Our bills were paid, our bellies were full, and our bodies were clothed. For the first time in a long time, for either of us, we were happy. We even got a dog, a pitbull named Daisy. Shortly after bringing her home, we began to notice strange occurrences. Most frequently, we would hear scratching in the walls. Especially at night. For quite a while I would write that off as vermin in the walls. We also witnessed strange shadows in our periphery, lights with no logical source suspended in midair, doors opening and closing on their own, lights flickering etc. Though I believed in ghosts, I still kept pushing it all aside. Until one day, I woke up with three raised scratches on my thigh and a burning pain radiating from it. It was at this point Kate decided to tell me that she "used to" dabble in witchcraft. She swore to me that it was nothing evil, but she did know a thing or two. After a rather lengthy heated argument, we picked up some sage from a small shop in the neighboring town. We burned the sage that night throughout the entire apartment. For hours we wafted this smoke until I had to disconnect the smoke detector. And finally everything was normal once more. All that persisted was the scratching in the walls, which again I attributed to rats. Once again we were at peace.

         However, as with all things in our lives this peace was short-lived. Kate developed horrible abdominal pains out of nowhere. Her doctor believed them to be due to an ovarian cyst, and sent her for an ultrasound. It was at this point we found out Kate was pregnant. When she gave me the news over the phone my initial reaction was overwhelming joy. I nearly dropped to my knees with tears in my eyes in the middle of a department store. It didn't take long for me to realize what this meant for us. People were gonna start asking questions. Our lie would soon be brought to light. And many of our relationships with friends and family would end or at the very least never be the same.

Distant Thunder

         As the pregnancy progressed, many of the strange occurrences seemed to resume and some even worsened in severity or frequency. Now most of the negative activity seemed to be directed at Kate. She would wake up with scratches a little less than weekly at first, and later more than once a week. She began to express feelings of being watched when I was not home. She also claimed to be seeing dark shadowy figures more and more, and not always in her periphery. This progressed beyond the point of only happening at night as well. Our dog even started to act strangely at this point. Almost every night for a week, I would be awoken by the sound of growling and find Daisy staring into our kitchenette in a very aggressive stance. The same stance she would assume when in the presence of another dog, or an unknown man. On more than one occasion, she would be laying or sitting peacefully and suddenly leap up as if someone had kicked her and bark violently.

         Eventually I was so worn down, and exhausted so many of my rationalities, that I could not deny the evidence anymore. It was at this point that I truly believed our apartment was haunted. The final straw was when Kate woke up around 3 or 4am with not only new scratches, but a hand print around her throat which had bruised slightly. I finally snapped. I jumped out of bed immediately and shouted at the top of my lungs. It was something to the effect of "You're gonna attack a sleeping pregnant woman??? If you're gonna attack someone attack me!" I hadn't realized at the time just how big of a mistake that was.

         Since letting my protective instincts get the better of me, I had inadvertently magnified the negative activity seemingly ten fold. I was being slapped by an unseen hand that left marks in the perfect outline of a hand. I would be scratched daily. My once pleasant dreams turned into nothing but vivid, gruesome nightmares. We suddenly had an infestation of fruit flies and other insects that would return day after day regardless of my efforts to eradicate them. The scratching in the walls grew louder, more frequent, and more violent.

         I decided it was time to seek help from the church. We traveled to my parent's neighborhood and visited the pastor across the street. I explained to her what horrors we'd been experiencing. The look of sheer terror slowly draped across the pastor's face with each passing sentence. Finally I asked her if we could obtain some holy water She informed us that the church didn't have any holy water on hand unfortunately. They only ordered some when they scheduled a baptism. She did offer some help however. She said we could bring her a jar of water to bless, and we could use that in place of holy water. I figured it was better than nothing so Kate and I drove to a nearby department store. We purchased a small glass jar with a cork, and returned to the pastor. She blessed it, and sent us on our way saying we'd be in her prayers.

The Storm Arrives

         Upon our arrival at the apartment, Kate and I got to work immediately. She with her sage and I with the "holy water" began our best attempts at a blessing. I said in a firm voice "You are not welcome here. This is MY home. You must leave and never return or harm anyone who resides here again." We immediately began to hear scratches in the walls again. Now it seemed like large claws were being slowly dragged up one wall. I sprinkled some water on the approximate spot and immediately the sounds retreated further up the wall. I continued this game of cat and mouse with the sounds until it seemed to go across the roof and down the wall on the opposite side of the apartment. I picked up my bible and recited Psalm 23:4 and any other verses I thought were relevant. The scratches continued throughout the entire apartment in response. We were seemingly surrounded by horrific clawed creatures dragging across every surface. At one point, though Kate didn't share this experience, I could swear I heard a low growl that seemed to be coming from right between us.

         The activity began to overwhelm us. I reverted to the only thing I had left which was the Lord's prayer. With each line of the prayer I recited, the scratches seemed to fall quieter. As I finished with "Amen" they ceased. For days it seemed that the entity had fled. All activity had come to an abrupt halt. And once more, I let myself believe that we would be at peace. A week or more had gone by and still nothing abnormal had occurred in the apartment. Kate and I were finally in good spirits. We left the half-empty jar of blessed water under our bed just to be safe and went on with our lives. Finally a month had passed and we had all but forgotten the nightmare we had just lived. Kate was quite far along now and things were looking good for us.

         As the birth of our child grew near, problems began to surface yet again. Kate felt as though something were horribly wrong. We went to doctor after doctor but they all said essentially the same thing. The ultrasound looks fine, we were probably just being paranoid. Amongst the negativity in our normal life, the paranormal activity seemed to subtly creep back into our life as well. We began to notice that our closet door would be open and the light inside turned on when we came back home. This got to the point that I questioned the landlord to see if maybe he had sent maintenance workers into our apartment. He assured us nobody had been in our apartment as long as we locked the door, which we always did. In response to this I placed lines of salt under each door spanning the entire door frame. I had heard that this was an effective means of warding off entities, especially negative ones. It wasn't long before I noticed breaks in these salt lines that appeared as though someone dragged their foot through them. Sometimes they even appeared as though someone had laid prone beside the line and blew it all over the floor. All the while, the door would still open and the light would still come on seemingly by itself. Sometimes while we were home to witness it happen.

         Having exhausted every idea we could think of to combat this dark force in our home, we decided to try to ignore it. After all, it seemed rather benign originally until we started questioning things. After about a week of trying this it seemed as though we were ignoring a child having a tantrum. (Meaning it only intensified.) One night (again around 3am) as I lay awake in bed watching TV, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a shape in the darkness. I turned to ask Kate if she could see it too, but she was asleep. I focused back on it. It looked as though someone were in our bathroom peering out from behind the slightly ajar door. I could see the definite outline of a human head on a slant and a hand wrapped around the door.

         I picked up my phone and opened the camera app with the flash on. Within the split second the flash illuminated the door I could see that not only was the figure gone, but the door was shut completely. I clicked on the photo I just took and in the center of the door was a small, bright ball of light. It couldn't have been more than 3 inches across using the door for reference. I snapped a few more photos to try to recreate this, but to no avail. Every subsequent photo was just that of a door and the surrounding wall. I got up, unintentionally waking Kate in the process and walked to the L-shaped hallway that one would enter the apartment from (which is where the previously mentioned closet and bathroom are located across from each other) and flipped on the light.

         As I looked investigated the shut door my eyes were drawn to movement coming from the entrance of our apartment. As I shifted my gaze I was horrified to see what appeared to be a great dane made of smoke run through the wall in front of me. The figure stood about 4 feet tall from head to foot, and 5 feet long from the end of its wispy tail to its chest. The sight of this massive entity passing through my wall as if it were not there shook me to my core. I let out an audible shriek as I fell to the floor. Kate rushed over to me and asked me what had happened. Unable to form an other words, I replied with "We're leaving...NOW!" We grabbed our coats and our phones and drove to a friends house.

The Eye of the Storm

         As I sat at our friend's house I descended into an exponential downward spiral of alcoholism and depression. My faith was shaken to its core and I felt I had tested the limits of my sanity. Growing up in a Lutheran family, I was always taught that prayer and faith were the best weapons against the paranormal and evil in general. In my despair I began suffering from worse nightmares than I had ever experienced before. I still remember them today. Visions on horrid, blood-stained gnarly fang-like teeth with flesh stuck betwixt them. Grey, porous flesh and eyes like black holes. I believe I came face to face with something truly evil. Whatever it was, I was certain it only wanted to torment us. Maybe even drive us mad, or worse to commit suicide. The thoughts were prevalent in the back of my mind. Every time I saw my pistol or a kitchen knife I couldn't help but wonder how bad it would hurt and how fast it could be over.

         Once the sun came up we thanked our friend for his hospitality and apologized for the inconvenience of showing up on his doorstep at 4am. We drove back home, reluctantly entered the building and stepped into the elevator. Tasks that had been so trivial and before, now felt like we were death row inmates being led to the execution chamber. After what felt like an eternity, we reached our floor. As the elevator doors slowly retracted I couldn't help but notice the feeling of static in the air. It reminded me of being next to an old television as a child. I would perplex 5 or 6 year old self by passing my hand over the screen and trying to comprehend what it was I was experiencing on my palms. Only now that feeling was amplified greatly and seemed to be all around us. This same feeling would now be the norm for us whenever we'd be home.

         We opened the door to our apartment and I winced with anxiety. Directly in front of me was the spot where I'd seen the horrific hound hours before. I pushed that thought aside, and turned the corner of the L-shaped hallway. Our apartment which until this point had been kept fairly neat, was now trashed. It looked as though the ATF had raided us. Our couch was askew, a single dinner plate lay smashed on the floor, our bedding was strewn across the floor and our mattress was leaning against the wall. There were other minor things amiss, but none of it mattered to me. I had to straighten it up. Just as I was compartmentalizing my mental baggage, I simply jammed as much as I could into the closet and threw away anything broken. I straighten the couch, laid the mattress back in its spot, etc. As I finished making the bed I noticed the holy water, which I had placed under the bed was nowhere to be found. That realization also got swept under the rug.

         Oddly enough a few weeks passed without any haunting activity. The only negativity we were still experiencing was from our families and friends, who were now aware of what Kate and I had done. Kate once again expressed fears of something being wrong with our soon-to-arrive child. So we once again found another OB/GYN (I believe our 4th or 5th at this point). She had taken Kate's concerns a bit more seriously. She'd said "After all, it is your body. Nobody would know better than you when something isn't right." She scheduled for us to go to the hospital to have the birth induced. To avoid sharing intimate details, something was indeed wrong. Vaginal birth could not be achieved because of whatever this issue was. They put Kate under and took her to an operating room to perform a C-Section. As I sat against the wall, breaking down like a child a member of the janitorial staff stopped to comfort me. Her kind words allowed me to snap out of it just long enough for the procedure to conclude.

         The operating room doors opened behind me and a nurse pushed a small wheeled table out to me. At last, for the first time, I looked into the eyes of my beautiful daughter. The medical staff notified me of Kate's condition and allowed me to go see her. She looked awful. She was paler than snow and soaked in sweat. Her expression was full of pain, confusion, and delirium. She hadn't fully recovered from the anesthesia. A doctor came in and began telling us how well the procedure went. He then gave us news that still gives me chills today. He said something along the lines of "It's good you guys came in when you did. A few more days, and neither mom nor daughter may have survived." He informed us that there was a serious infection in the amniotic fluid. They weren't sure what caused it, but had we waited a little longer there was a good chance both Kate and our daughter would have died. When he left the room, I fell into a chair and began to quietly sob once more. I begged God to forgive me for my doubt and faithlessness, and thanked him for my family's safety. My faith was never more resolute before or since that moment.

Aftershock

         As we walked through the front door of our apartment with our 3 day old daughter, we were greeted by that same static feeling in the air. My complacency from spending a few days in the hospital went right out the window at the realization of where, and what, we had returned to. I noticed shortly after we settled in that the holy water was back where I had left it. I picked it up in disbelief, because it had been missing for weeks. I was disturbed by the sight of what I can only describe as backwash floating in the water. It was small flakes of something I couldn't really identify or adequately describe beyond just that. I rushed it over to the sink and dumped the tainted liquid down the drain.

         Other than that, not too much else happened in the apartment as far as the paranormal activity. We still had occasional scratches and other strange noises, lights would flicker occasionally, and the closet door had opened once or twice more. Nothing really scary though. Given my past experience, I knew this probably meant that this entity was merely taking a power nap. And soon, it would awaken and get back down to business. I was not about to let that happen with my daughter there.

         Rather it was luck or the grace of God, our lease ended a short time later. We packed everything up and moved to a new place an hour away. Even that felt too close to the nightmare we'd just lived in for a year. As my father and brothers helped me pack the last of our belongings into a moving van, I began to feel that static in the air once more. I waited until my brothers and father had returned to the van, and had a monologue with whatever had plagued Kate and I. "You aren't going to terrorize us anymore. If you follow us, my determination to destroy you will never fade. I will search to the ends of the Earth and the end of my life if I must. But one way or another I will make you leave us alone. So don't you ever let me feel your presence again, you evil son of a bitch."

         I grabbed the very last box and walked out the door. As I placed that box in the back of the van I turned back to the apartment one last time. There, in the bay-style window of what once was my home of horrors, stood an enormous humanoid silhouette. It was blacker than black, darker than any shadow or any night I'd bore witness to. And though its face was featureless, I could swear that it were staring right into my soul. I raised my middle finger with a smirk on my face, and left. And I never returned to that cesspool of a city again.

The Storm Has Passed

         Though not all of our problems had ended after leaving that place, we never experienced anything like it again. Those same nightmares occasionally replay in my mind. Whether that is post traumatic stress or the entity desperately attempting to wriggle its way back into my psyche I am unsure. But I don't believe I've ever crossed paths with it since, and I pray to keep it that way.

         Needless to say Lee and I have fallen out of touch. We spoke maybe 3 times since he found out Kate was pregnant, but no more than that. Kate and I were together off and on for a few years, but things continued to worsen between us until we finally split. I sought help for my alcoholism and depression, thanks to the intervention of a few good friends and family members. I am now over a year sober, which I owe to my current fiancée Julie. My daughter is 3 years old now and lives as good a life as she can with split parents. I've lost a lot over the past few years, but I've gained a few things as well. As I mentioned earlier, Julie and I are doing great. I truly believe we were meant for each other. The love we share is more than I can describe and more than I had ever imagined. We share a very nice apartment, unfortunately rather close to the one from this story, but we love it here.

Some Final Words

         If there's one thing anyone takes away from this story, I hopes it's this. Everything ends, good or bad. And just because you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, doesn't mean you should give up or turn back. If you want my advise, fall back on faith and always keep moving forward. If nothing else, I hope you enjoyed this story. Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. I just needed to put these memories out of my mind and I figured this would be the most constructive way to do that.

End