The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us

Family Portrait, circa 1977

My upcoming novel Chapel Street was inspired by my experiences growing up in a "haunted" house at 21 St. Helens Avenue* in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Lauraville. This series of blogs will examine the actual haunting that inspired the book. My previous blog discussed the history of the house and its occupants, before we arrived in 1974. This blog will examine my family before we moved to the house.

I was born in December 1960. I was the second child of Douglas and Clara Murphy. Not only was I their second son. I was their second child born that year! My mother was seventeen when I was born. My father was nineteen.

Needless to say having that many children at that young age -- and others would quickly follow -- could lead to a great deal of stress. And it probably did. However, at least they had a roof over their heads. When I was born, my parents were living at 5507 Hamlet Avenue**, about a mile more or less from our eventual home at 21 St. Helens Avenue. The house belonged to my maternal grandmother Rita Rosenberger and her second husband Robert Pollock.

My grandmother had two children, my mother and my uncle Tony, with her first husband Kenny Protani. After Kenny left, Rita and her children were forced to move back home. Her parents, George Rosenberger and Maria Anna Kostohryz, had recently been stampeded from their downtown rowhouse on 2207 Biddle Street in East Baltimore as part of the notorious white flight from the city. They settled in a nice Cape Cod home on 3204 Evergreen Avenue in the leafy near suburban neighborhood of Hamilton. It was a very crowded house. In addition to Rita and her two children, and her parents, the house was also occupied by my adult great-uncles Norbert "Butch" Rosenberger and Anthony "Buzzy" Rosenberger.  My great-aunt Helen Rosenberger Ernst was the only one of George and Mary's surviving children who did not live with them on Evergreen. In this manner, the Rosenbergers very much resembled the Mayfort family of 21 St. Helens Avenue.***

One more thing about the Rosenbergers. If there is a history of depression in my family, it seems to come down their line. My brother John would later opine that "the depression on the Rosenberger side mixed with the substance abuse on the Murphy side created a perfect storm in our generation."

Perhaps. We'll weather those thoughts in due time.

The Rosenbergers

My grandmother met Robert Pollock and they married on 26 June 1959. Afterwards, they bought the house at 5507 Hamlet Avenue, which was located about six blocks west from the Rosenberger house on Evergreen. My parents married soon afterwards and moved in with them. Overcrowding looked like an imminent possibility, until my great-grandmother Maria Anna suffered a fatal heart attack in her living room while watching television on 23 April 1961. She suddenly exclaimed, "I can't breath, I can't breath." Then she collapsed. It was a Sunday night. (No one seems to remember what show she was watching, but she was a big fan of westerns so I am going to assume it was Bonanza.)

The fact that her father and two brothers were left in a house without a woman to look after them horrified my kind-hearted grandmother. She asked grandpop Bob if they could move back to Evergreen Avenue so she could look after them. Bob agreed, much to my grandmother's everlasting joy. So off they went, leaving the Hamlet Avenue house to my parents. I actually never knew that my parents didn't own the house, that it belonged to my grandparents, until many years later.

My parents didn't waste any time filling up the space vacated by my grandparents.  My two doomed siblings, Laura Lee Murphy Valenti, born 27 September 1962, and Mark Brendan Murphy, born 26 February 1964, quickly followed my brother and me. Trust me, there was no hint of self-destruction in their innocent faces. My sister Jeanne soon rounded out the original quintet. My kid brother John didn't arrive on the scene until ten years later, after the family had moved to St. Helens Avenue.

Doug, Jeanne, Sean, Laura, Mark
backyard of Hamlet Avenue, October 1965

If you'd like a more detailed look at my family and idyllic childhood in Hamilton, I would recommend Chapter 3 - Childhood from my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. Or, better yet, just buy the book on Amazon. They're practically giving it away on Kindle. Here, however, I want to concentrate on other aspects of my youth that I do not deal with in that book.

We were not a particularly superstitious family that knocked on wood, never walked under ladders or avoided the paths of black cats. Our superstitions mainly revolved around traditional Catholicism, but we varied greatly even along those lines.

Clara & Doug. May 1968

My parents were both born Catholic. My mother was a reasonably avid churchgoer. My father, on the other hand, mainly devoted his Sundays to the Murphy Football League -- tag football games played on the field at Northern High School with his brothers and his work friends from Social Security. We kids were required to go to St. Dominic Church every Sunday. Usually my mother took us, but, thank God, she didn't make us wear matching outfits like some parents did. Sometimes we had to go alone. That's when my brother Dougie taught me the art of sneaking into the back of the church to grab a bulletin as proof of attendance, then taking off for some unsupervised fun. I didn’t feel particularly guilty about skipping church. I was too young to get anything out of the mass, especially when it was in Latin.

In addition to attending church, our parents also sent us to parochial school with mixed results. Dougie clashed with the Sisters of Charity and left St. Dominic Elementary School for the more freewheeling Baltimore City public schools. It was a decision that probably extended the lifespan of all involved. I made it through eight years at St. D., and followed through with four years at the boys only Archbishop Curley High School. Laura finished St. D., and started at the all-girl The Catholic High School. (Cattle High, as we Curley boys called it.) She only lasted a year under the thumb of the nuns before exiting stage right to Mervo. Mark successfully finished St. D., but he only spent a year at Curley before taking the public option. Jeanne was my only sibling who, like me, spent all twelve years in Catholic school system. My baby brother John would only survive a few years at St. D., before heading off to public school. (The parochial school system in Baltimore is only a shadow of itself now.)

Sean & Doug.  Catholic School Boys

Just as our length of time in Catholic school varied, so did our opinions on religious matters. We ranged from outright skepticism to genuine belief. We also varied on spiritual beliefs. I definitely don't think any of my siblings sought out paranormal experiences. I remember playing with kids who lived two doors down from my grandmother on Evergreen Avenue who said their house was haunted. The haunting of the Stallings house became quite famous. It was investigated by the author Hans Holzer and later even dramatized on television. My mother, who believed in ghosts, seemed very skeptical of that haunting. I remember her rolling her eyes once as she said, "The ghost does their laundry." The ghost did more than that. According to Nancy Stallings' book Show Me One Soul, one of the ghosts behaved like the star of a movie on Cinemax After Dark.

But I didn't give the haunting a second thought. I don't even remember being too curious about it. It made no impression on me at the time.

My mother, however, believed in another haunting on Evergreen Avenue. She said a house belonging to the mother of one of her friends near the corner of Evergreen and Hamlet was haunted by the angry spirit of a man who once lived there but later committed suicide in an apartment on Hamilton Avenue. She and her friend were afraid to enter the house. Nowadays, when I walk pass the house, I always keep an eye out for the current owner. I want to ask him/her if the house is still haunted. Sometimes I think hauntings are transactional. Entities seem to bother some people more than others. I think it sometimes depends on how spiritual attuned -- or vulnerable -- the occupants are.

Young Clara

My mother Clara seemed more attuned than the rest of us. She believes it is a result of "gifts" inherited down her family line. It might also be as because of a lightning strike. In my research, I have read that people gained psychic abilities after being struck by lightning. My mother was struck by lightning as a child at her home at 2413 Llewelyn Avenue. The house was hit by lighting and it came down through the electrical system and arced out and connected with a metal ring she was wearing. My mother was knocked unconscious and initially mistaken for dead. She wasn't.

Interestingly, my father Doug also met Thor -- as we call electrocution in the film business. As the news story below shows, he touched an electrical wire while climbing a tree. He was knocked to the ground and hospitalized, but showed no ill effects.

Douglas Murphy makes
the newspaper the hard way.

Speaking of electricity, I had an odd experience with the little seen phenomenon called ball lightning while living at Hamlet Avenue. It happened while I was sitting on the back porch on a metal chair early one evening. It was summer. I was about eight years old. A thunderstorm had just passed. It wasn't all clouds. I remember seeing some blue in the sky. Then I saw what seemed like a ball of fire, about the size of a basketball, falling from the sky. It initially fell at a steep angle, but, as it neared the tall bamboo that bordered the back of our yard, it leveled out and seemed to be headed straight toward me. I had been leaning back in the chair, and I remember letting go and the back of the chair hitting the house.  Then, when it was about ten yards from the porch, the ball just evaporated. I remember it very clearly, as if it happened yesterday.

Until recently ball lightning was considered a paranormal phenomenon. Now, although still unexplained, it is accepted as a rare but natural event. That's the only weird thing I experienced at Hamlet Avenue. I don't think anyone else experienced anything else either. I never heard anyone complaining about ghosts or entities at that house, despite the fact that we were younger and more impressionable at the time.

We were a normal, happy family on Hamlet Avenue.  Look at us:

And it isn't like people hadn't died at Hamlet Avenue. Remember how creeped out I was in the last blog when I found out that they held John Mayfort's funeral in our living room? Guess what? Thomas A. Morrow, the previous owner of Hamlet Avenue, had his funeral at the house after he died in 1957. Geez, what were the people in that neighborhood thinking? Spend the money! Remember, we're modern Americans. It's our job to keep death, and the things of death, as far out of sight as possible.

The Hamlet Avenue house is much smaller than the St. Helens Avenue house. The family definitely had to move some furniture around to squeeze a coffin into that living room. Plus, the front steps were steeper than the ones at St. Helens. The pallbearers definitely had a tougher job.

Thomas A. Morrow Death Notice

Before I wrote this blog, I discussed the fact that none of us experienced any paranormal phenomenon at Hamlet Avenue with some family members. They all agreed. We went to St. Helens Avenue devoid of biases and preconceived notions.

Lambs to the slaughter.

Yours truly with his siblings Mark and Laura.
Only one of us would eventually survive to talk about suicide.

Notes:

*21 St. Helens Avenue was the original address of the house when it was built. The street name and number changed over time, but I use the original address to protect the privacy of the current owners.

**5507 Hamlet Avenue is the actual address of my first home.

***Also like the Mayforts, many of the Rosenbergers died in their house. My great-grandmother died in the living room. My great-grandfather died in his sleep in the middle bedroom on the second floor (that's where I slept when I spent the night.) My great-uncle Anthony died of a heart attack in the living room after using an exercise bike in the basement.

Additional blogs about the haunting:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 1, An Introduction
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 2, The House
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 4, Arrival
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 5, Methodology
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 11, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1 
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 16, Marion's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 17, Marion's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 18, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 19, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 20, Lisa's Tale
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 21, Recap, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 22, Recap, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 23, Recap, Pt. 3

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

My novel Chapel Street was inspired by the haunting. You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother
Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

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