Seekers Investigation
Background
I accompanied Alan R., founder of the now defunct “Seekers of the Unknown,” to a tiny rural town in Central Kansas about an hour from Great Bend. This was in the summer of 2005.
Alan has an admirable amout of experience dealing with the paranormal, and has investigated domestic and foreign hauntings with Lorraine and the late Ed Warren (http://www.warrens.net/).
This haunting involved a man in his 40s or 50s living alone in a 100+-year-old home in this rural Kansas town. Alan and I arrived early in the evening so the resident could brief us on the activity, and the returned much later that night to conduct a formal investigation.
Activity
The man told us the activity began when he started doing some minor remodeling on the home. The television, lights, and other electronic appliances in the home would shut on and off of their own accord, often all at the same time. In the bathroom, where the majorty of the remodeling was taking place, the man could stand and hear the sounds of a couple arguing coming from the living room,when, of course, there was no one there.
Once this strange activity began, the man contacted previous tenants of the home. They told him that on one occasion they opened the door to the attic and went up to explore. They found an old box which apparently held photos or some sentimental things left over from the previous owners. The tenants took the box downstairs with them, and, the current owner quotes, in their words, “All hell broke loose.” The lights, televison and appliances flashed erratically. The tentants stayed for three days after bringing the box downstairs, and then left, unable to cope with the activity.
Upon hearing this story, the current owner of the house –the man who had contacted us — either bravely or stupidly decided to explore the attic. He had no more than climbed the stairs and stood in the attic when something bit him on the ankle. He quickly descended the stairs and examined his ankle, to find what looked like human bite marks on is skin.
The homeowner’s significant other spent the night not too long after that. When the homeowner awakened the next morning, he was surprised to find his partner was gone. The homeowner called his partner to find out why the man had left in the middle of the night. The parter told him that he had awakened to “something” trying to strangle him. He refused to enter the house again.
Following this incident, the homeowner began to frequently wake up in the mornings to find bite marks, scratch marks and bruises on his arms and chest. He never remembered receiving any of these injuries during the night.
The man said he had known an elderly woman who had lived in the home before and died there. She was a sweet, harmless person, and he often came over to relight the pilot light in her furnace. He did not believe she was the source of the activity.
In additon to all of this activity, the homeowner had begun having terrible headaches, sometimes accompanied by visions. He had a vision of his boss driving to work and getting in a car wreck and killing a woman in a grey car. He warned his boss and begged him not to drive the next day. Surprisingly, his boss listened. Later that day, his boss had a heartattack — which would have been disastrous had he been driving.
One one occasion, the homeowner had a very realistic dream. He was in the living room talking to a woman, but he couldn’t hear her. He thought he could make out that she was trying to tell him that her name was Charlotte, but he couldn’t figure out what she wanted to tell him.
The man had a friend call in a Celtic priestess of some sort who attempted to do some sort of cleansing on the house. The phenomena didn’t stop, and the priestess found scratches and welts on her arms the next day. After this incident, an image appeared on the bathroom wall that the man thought looked like a face. Alan and I both saw an indiscernable smudge on the wall, but niether of us would call it a face.
After hearing all of this, I asked Alan once we were alone if he thought the activity could be demonic. He said he didn’t think so. Demonic actvity is usually much more violent — furniture shooting around the room, for example. Alan had told the man to put religious figures or symbols around his home and to pray. The man hung rosary beads on doorways and said this helped somewhat. But not enough that he didn’t want us to come and investigate.
Investigation
When Alan and I returned later that evening, prepared to investigate, the man sat us down in the living room and said he needed to tell us something. “Alan,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell you this earlier, but I knew what you looked like before I met you.”
I was still pretty new to this, so I watched Alan for his reaction. “Oh?” he asked.
“I had a vision,” the man continued, “That a man with black hair and black eyes was being flung out of that window over there,” he said, pointing to a picture window.
“I don’t know how it happens. It didn’t make sense when I saw it before. But that man was you. And I just — please, just — everyone, be careful tonight. Please stay away from the window.”
“Right.” Alan nodded. “Okay.” He turned to me. “You want to help me get the equipment out of the car?”
Once Alan and I were outside, he said to me: “We’re not going near the window.”
Alan and I set up an analog tape recorder and attempted to capture EVPs. We asked a series of questions and waited for answers. We, of course, heard nothing, but we hoped the tape might pick something up. Then we left the tape recorder on as we walked the house.
We turned off all the lights, and, by flashlight, walked around the house, snapping pictures, talking, trying to concentrate on weird feelings or cold spots. Nothing. Alan even climbed the attic stairs and poked his head upstairs. Nothing scary. He snapped a few pictures anyway.
As we wrapped up our investigation, the man suddenly told us he didn’t feel well and would wait for us on the front porch. “I just feel very sad,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
When Alan and I came out to say goodbye, the man was crying. I gave him a hug, and we promised to let him know what we found. The man told us this was the last night he was going to stay in the house, and that he’d only held out this long waiting for Alan and I to come, but it wasn’t getting any better and he couldn’t handle it anymore. Alan recommended that he get his home blessed by a priest – ”Sometimes, when you move, it will follow you,” Alan warned. But the man insisted on moving.
Afterward
I asked Alan in the car if he believed the man. “Yes, I do,” Alan said. “I’ve been in sales long enough that I think I have a pretty good bullshit detector.”
“What do you make of the tears?” I asked him. “And the visions?”
“They can be very powerful, very influential,” Alan said.
“They? I thought you didn’t think it was demonic.”
“I think it could be.”
“But nothing happened while we were there,” I said. “I wasn’t even scared after a while.”
“That’s actully not that unusual,” Alan said. “They like to f**k with you, or with the victim. They don’t want to be run off. It’s in their best interest to lay low when we come to visit and make it look like he’s nuts.”
“Do you think they knew we were coming?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “That vision he had — about me going through the window — that was a good indicator.”
The next day we listened to the tape on the drive back to Kansas City. Nothing. In between our questions, there was only silence.
A few weeks later, I asked Alan if he had heard from the man. Alan said he hadn’t been able to get in touch with him, but he had received an e-mail from the man after he moved. “Basically, he said it followed him,” Alan said.
Leave a Reply