In 1999, I purchased my current home. The house was originally the town creamery, built in 1870 and years later converted into a private home. I had grown up in one of the oldest homes still standing in my small hometown, built in 1745. I am used to thumps, bumps and creeks in an old home, and I don’t spook easily.
On April 1, 1999, my then husband and our two young daughters moved from our apartment into our own home and we were thrilled. We had spent two months remodeling, painting and installing new floors and carpet before we moved in. The house had been lived in by two elderly people for decades. The husband died and the wife was unable to live alone. I knew the couple all my life and their executor knew I was looking for a home in that town at the time so came to me offering the house before it was listed. Part of the deal was, we had to clean it out. I didn’t know what that would mean, but I wanted the house, so we agreed to purchase the house and clean it out.
The house was full of garbage, literal and figurative. The kitchen cabinets and draws had been stuffed with bones. Hundreds of bones from assorted animals, we suspect some from the yard and some they had eaten. Animal skeletons were in the basement and in the sheds on the property. There were collections of bone cutting knives, the likes of which I had never seen before.
During this time of cleaning and remodeling, windows would close, doors would open and things would go ‘bump’. I didn’t pay much attention to any of it, as I said having grown up in an old house I know these things can happen if a house is not level or air flowing from floor to floor can swing doors open or slam them shut.
About a week living in the house, my children were sleeping upstairs and I was downstairs still awake. My husband came downstairs to go out to the back porch to smoke (no smoking in the house was our rule). While he was outside I heard what sounded like furniture being dragged from one end of the upstairs to the other. I froze. First, there were no adults upstairs, only my children who were both preschool ages. Second, the entire upstairs was newly carpeted and what I was hearing was the sound of heavy furniture being dragged across a hardwood floor.
I quickly went upstairs and checked every room. Nothing. The children were sleeping soundly and I heard nothing while I was up there. I went downstairs and sat down and listened. This happened again. Again I went upstairs and found nothing moved.
Back downstairs I sat and listened, the noise started right back up again. My husband came in and I asked him to sit and listen for a moment. He sat with his eyes closed, half asleep at the table with me. Then his eyes popped open. He heard the loud sound of something being dragged around upstairs. Together we went up stairs and searched again. Found nothing moved and kids sound asleep. He went to bed after a while and I stayed up sitting in the hallway to listen. Not a single sound as long as I was upstairs.
Back downstairs an hour or so later and the moving sound started back up again. All night long this repeated. I slept that night on the floor of the children’s room.
Another day, I was sitting in the family room folding laundry when a snake appeared in the middle of the room. This house has a full basement, and sits well above the ground. I have no idea how any snake could get into the house, let alone my family room (which has no doors to the outside), but there it was slithering across the room. Took me and my husband a while to catch it (kept going under our furniture), but we did and removed it from the house.
Around early June, I heard a hissing sound in my dining room. My husband was at work, so I called my father who lives close to come over and check it out. I was worried it was a pipe or even another snake in the house. After listening and searching we found the spot where the hissing sound was coming from. It was about 4 feet off the ground in my dining room in one spot and nowhere else. In the middle of the air, not coming from a wall or ceiling or floor- just the middle of the air. We could find nothing anywhere to explain it. I then began to feel uneasy about this hissing sound. I began to think it was sinister. The hissing continued for over an hour then stopped- for the moment.
The week before Fourth of July, we cleaned out the basement (which we had left for last) and got rid of the last remnants of the previous owners property. That weekend, the house went wild with noises and things moving, doors slamming, open windows closing and the sound of people talking. It was so bad we nearly left and went to my parent’s house. I was a Baptist at this time, so there was no holy water to be had.
Instead I reached for my bible and went from room to room reading scripture and telling whatever was in the house it was not welcome. I told it to “shut up” and “get lost” (I was tired and fed up and I had two kids who needed sleep and I didn’t want them terrorized). I don’t know why it worked but the house went silent and we all finally slept.
For years this continued. All our family and friends knew about the “activity” in our house, some preferred to stay outside during our cookouts and family gatherings.
Whenever things got overly “active” I would go room to room reading the scriptures as I had done years ago. This helped the situation, but it never cured the problem.
By the fall of 2006, I was divorced for several years and my children and I were beginning to prepare for entering the Catholic Church that Easter of 2007. This year was full of new things for all of us, including praying for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Just before Lent began in 2007, I decided my children and I would start a tradition of coming up with a living person to pray for during Lent and someone who had passed away. We printed out prayers with our intentions and each evening we would include them in our nightly prayers.
The house activity picked up noticeably every Lent. But now we had Catholic prayers and holy water at our disposal. If you are wondering if I had spoken to a priest yet, the answer is no. I was a new Catholic and was afraid the priest would think I was nuts. Plus, I had been “dealing” with whatever was in the house for years by this time, so I thought I could handle it.
Lent of 2010 started out the same as our previous Lenten seasons, we still picked out people to pray for and printed out specific prayers we would pray daily for them. One night, my now twelve year old daughter was screaming and crying hysterically in her room. I ran upstairs to find her white. Now, I have heard that expression before, but I had never seen someone go white. She was white and shaking uncontrollably. She couldn’t even talk for a while, I half carried and half walked her downstairs. I was on the verge of calling 911 because she wasn’t making any sense and I didn’t know what was wrong with her. Finally, she began to talk and told me a ‘woman’ woke her up yelling at her. Telling her, no one really loves her, that her life isn’t worth living and she’s ugly and useless and no one wants her around and that she should just die. This female entity held my daughter down and terrorized her with insults and vulgar language for quite awhile before she was able to cry out and get my attention.
I was furious. I went room from room with Holy Water and the Saint Michael prayer and some Hail Mary’s telling this thing it was not welcome in our home and was not allowed to speak ever again. My daughter never again slept in that room.
About a week later, my eldest daughter (about 15 at the time) heard growling in the upstairs hallway and a gurgling sound beside her bed. She said it sounded like someone dying. The growling was loudest in the upstairs hallway. She was too terrified to leave her room, so she covered her head with her blankets and cried until she finally got the courage to dart out of bed and run downstairs.
Our family room was converted into a family bedroom with no one willing to sleep upstairs. For almost a year, no one slept upstairs in our home. We were prisoners to these entities.
We never verbally heard from that female entity again, but she wasn’t done. The seed had been planted. My daughter, who had been active in sports, school groups etc, fell into a quiet depression. She didn’t laugh like she used to and she didn’t seem herself. For a year, unknown to myself, my daughter began cutting herself. This thing had told her to hurt herself.
When I discovered what was going on, my daughter went into specialized therapy and I went to my parish priest (I’ll call Father M). I told him the whole story and asked him what I should do. He told me I was doing everything right (the Holy Water, prayers, getting my daughter help etc). He said he would put me in touch with the Dioceses if the situation got any worse. A week later, that priest was moved to another parish, so I had no more contact with him. I kept doing what he’d told me with the Holy Water and prayers.
Things calmed down a bit and we re-arranged upstairs bedrooms (the room with the female entity has to this day never been slept in again by anyone). That room is used for storage only.
A few years ago, my youngest daughter woke up to find bizarre "foot/hand-prints" on her ceiling and walls. They were blueish in color and didn't look human or like any animal we knew of. We took several photos, if you can tell it looks like a foot but with a long "toe" sticking out to the right and then smaller toes at the top. Just weird stuff and it was ALL over the ceiling and walls.
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| bizarre foot-like print found on the ceiling |
While sitting in the family room one day, my youngest daughter and I were talking when we both heard my name called by a man, which sounded to both of us like my deceased grandfather. We looked around the house inside and outside to see who could have called my name. There was no one there but the two of us. On another occasion my mother was over, we were watching a movie and there was a crash in the kitchen, the cooking timer had been thrown across the room and was spinning on the floor. We had yet another snake in the house and more than one bat (though that could merely be natural) making its way into our home.
One night, when the kids were sleeping I was folding laundry on the couch and separated it into different piles for the kids to take upstairs the next day. I fell asleep watching TV and woke some time later to find all the laundry moved from the couch, neatly piled up in the doorway of the family room blocking my way from leaving the room. And I felt like I wasn’t alone. I knew something was watching me, perhaps watching for my reaction to what it had done. That disturbed me because I never heard it and whatever it was, was right beside me- not to mention, moving two full baskets of laundry and neatly stacking them in the doorway is creepy!
It was time to talk to the new priest (I’ll call Father J). Father J was eager to listen and make suggestions. He said he didn’t have the “discernment” ability to tell me what sort of entities I had, but told me he believes there are “at least three entities” in my home. He wanted me to investigate the home’s history (I did only a little to discover it was a creamery. I didn’t look into any deaths on the property- I don’t think I really wanted to know those answers to be honest). Father J also suggested I contact Lorraine Warren (Catholic paranormal investigator) and watch “The Conjuring” movie. I did not contact Catholic "medium" Lorraine Warren,(I can’t say for sure why, but it didn’t’ feel like the right thing to do at the time). I did watch the movie- didn’t really help me much. What did help was he prayed over, blessed and poured Holy Water over several crucifixes then he said to put them around my home. And he told me to continue with the Saint Michael prayers and the Rosary. I did and things went completely silent for months. The first real peace we had ever had in this house.
I was also discussing these things with our parish deacon, who is currently in seminary to become a priest. He too, was helpful and eager to listen. I've worked with two Franciscan nuns also who have helped in their prayers for us and sharing suggestions that might help. I've had a lovely statue of the Holy Virgin Mary blessed and placed it in my window. And I've prayed specific prayers to Mary asking for her protection against any evil in the house. I think this might have been the most effective thing I’ve done.
Father J would check up on me occasionally to see how things were going, and they were better. The blessed items and frequent Holy Water around the house and prayers kept things quiet. Until Lent.
Every year during Lent the house gets active. We decided to stop praying for the dead in our house, and instead pray for them at church. This helped greatly. I don’t really understand it, but according to Father J, if you live around water, you can have more activity with entities. My house is nearly surrounded by water. I have a brook that runs the property line and a large pond in the backyard. Father J, told me about an elderly woman in another town he had helped some years ago, that had entities coming out of a nearby pond the moment her husband died and began wreaking havoc in her home. Apparently people had been drowned in that pond long ago.
Soon after, Father J was shuffled off to another parish just like Father M had been. The new priest was not approachable on the subject of entities and such, so I went to another parish entirely to continue working with a priest on this matter. Father E was…well, thrilled with my house. He had only heard of one other home, but nothing as active as our home and this was his first dealing with such a situation. Father E would call to check on us and we would meet with him occasionally to update him on how things were going. He prayed for us and blessed more items to place around the house. Things in the house were manageable. I had found a balance with the blessed items, Holy Water and prayers keeping the house rather quiet. Father E is no longer in Connecticut, so I am once more without a priest to help deal with this house; though things have gotten much better over the last few years. I am hoping to find another priest soon and have him over to bless the house and property and any new Catholic items I have to place around the house- though we've got quite a bit already.
My youngest daughter spent her teen years battling depression and self harm. Another priest, via the Internet, turned my attention back to Vatican Exorcist Father Amorth (I had read him years ago) and his prayers for parents to pray for the deliverance of their children from demonic attacks! I had never heard of that before. I didn’t know that I had any “power” over demonic attacks to my children, but according to this exorcist all parents do. In Amorth’s book “An Exorcist Tells His Story” there are “prayers of deliverance” at the back of the book for the laity to pray, that I began praying for my daughter. I believe these helped her. She has since graduated high school and is a college student – the self harm has stopped. Thanks be to God.
Our house has been very quiet for months now, peaceful actually. Though as it is Lent, I can’t help but feel a little nervous that at any moment, all hell is going to break loose again. More than one priest has warned that trying to remove something from a home, can often make things much more violent and stirred up. For us, it’s all about maintaining the status quo in this house until someone figures out what we are dealing with and how to remove it/them. So we take it day by day and are enjoying the peace we seem to have found at the moment.
In Christ,
Julie @ Connecticut Catholic Corner
If you have any such experiences, please share them with me. I would love to hear from you- especially from any priests!
