SeanPaulMurphyVille: November 2019

Thursday, November 28, 2019

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1

Yours Truly, circa our arrival at 21 St. Helens Avenue

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. In this entry, I will detail my own paranormal experiences at the house.

According to the methodology I discussed earlier, I was planning to post my younger sister Jeanne's story next since she was the first surviving person in our family to experience any paranormal activity at the 21 St. Helens Avenue. However, she does not feel comfortable publicly sharing her story now, and I am sympathetic to her feelings. I will not press her to do so. Her tale is very personal and harrowing, and her unwillingness to share it in detail, even with members of the family, shows just how far the shadow of the beast extends into our current lives. Perhaps she will share something later. That is her choice.

So I guess it is my turn. Rather than wait to do an interview, I decided to simply write down my experiences. That said, I definitely want one of my siblings interview me so that we have video documentation of my experience. And, who knows, they might ask me a question I never considered that adds insight to the experience. But for now, here's my story.

First, I want to say that I never felt I had experienced any paranormal activity prior to arriving at 21 St. Helens Avenue. To me, it seemed to start after the Ouija board incident my mother discussed in her interview. However, after finally discussing the haunting in detail with my mother and siblings, I have begun to wonder exactly when the entity in the house began to work on me.

I had an intense but private very religious conversion in the winter of 1977, about three years after my arrival at St. Helens Avenue. As a result of that experience, I began to hear the voice of God on a regular basis. I guess, in evangelical circles, the phenomenon would be called "words of knowledge," but it wasn't quite that. I discuss the phenomenon in great detail in my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. I considered this phenomenon an extremely rare blessing, which I did not discuss in any great detail with anyone at the time, aside from some veiled remarks I made occasionally to my first girlfriend Kathy Gardiner.**

Needless to say, I was quite surprised when my sister Jeanne told me, in our first meeting about the haunting, that she received a form of clairvoyance after her first encounter with the entity living in the house. Then my mother reveals that an angelic visitor warned her of impending deaths. Wow. Although the circumstances were quite different in these three cases, three members of our family had supernatural, prophetic experiences.

It makes you wonder. And I did wonder.

My book, which I do not have the space here to recount in full, dealt predominately with one word of prophecy I received in 1977: That I would marry the aforementioned Kathy Gardiner, whom I started dating two years later in 1979. My theology demands that any true prophecy would come true, but I didn't marry her and therefore I began doubt everything regarding everything I believed. In my anger and disappointed, I put God to the test, prepared to take my life in the living room of the house if he did not perform the demanded miracle. I was deadly serious. I was conscious of my decision, and, sadly, the repercussions my family would feel. Thankfully, the demanded miracle was delivered and my life was spared. Two of my siblings would later take their lives, but I was the first one of us to step out onto that precipice. Sadly, I was the only one to walk back.

I never told anyone about this incident until decades later. You can read about it here: Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight.

In the months after my close call, I still doubted my beliefs. Was God really talking to me, or was it all a delusion? Was I crazy? Ultimately, I concluded that I wasn't. There were just too many circumstances and coincidences in my life that wouldn't be explained without supernatural intervention.

Then again, perhaps it was supernatural intervention of another kind.

Once the entity made its presence known in an undeniable manner, I had to wonder if any of the actions I credited to God were perhaps demonic counterfeits. I had to consider that possibility again once I heard about my mother and sister's experiences. My sister's clairvoyance in particular seemed directly inspired by the entity. However, I rejected that possibility. Although I have mistakenly underestimated the power of the thing in the house in the past, I do not believe it had the power (or patience) to perform the acts God performed in my life. And, most importantly, I survived the suicide attempt. Had the entity been the main mover and shaker in my life, I would have died that night in the house.

However, that doesn't mean that the entity didn't play a hand in that event.

Yours Truly with Kathy, blurred for her privacy

When I was writing my memoir, I spent a long time trying to figure out why I found myself on the verge of suicide in May of 1984. If I were going to kill myself over my break-up with Kathy, I should have done so the previous September. Things were actually getting better between us. Much better. In fact, I had just had the happiest weekend of my life with her at her college. We weren't necessarily altar bound anymore, but we were definitely friends. And there were benefits. However, when I got home I nonetheless suffered a complete emotional and spiritual collapse. It was inexplicable. Now, after hearing the stories of my other family members, I believe it was the entity. It saw my weakness and attacked. And, as you'll see, it would try again.

I only consciously became aware of the entity itself after my mother and her friend Ted used the Ouija board in the Hell Room. My bedroom was across the hall from the Hell Room, on the third floor of the house.

My haunting began as most hauntings do, I suppose, with noises. I started being awakened by scurrying on the roof. It sounded like something small, like a squirrel. There was a tall oak tree on the other side of our driveway taller than the house. Nowadays, there is considerable debate whether the branches actually extended over to the roof. (A subsequent owner of the house took down the tree.) However, at the time, I reasoned that a squirrel must gotten on the roof from the tree. No problem, right?

But something was wrong.

The scurrying would stop anytime I opened my eyes. I would just lie there waiting, but it remained still -- until I closed my eyes. Then it would start again. From the sound, I could literally follow its movements, but it would always stop when I opened my eyes. It was maddening. Sometimes I would jump out of bed and go the opening to the small crawlspace between my ceiling and the roof and shine a light in, hoping to see something, but there was never anything to see. I would be up for hours a night playing this game of hide and seek.

The really scary thing was that only way it could know when I opened my eyes was that it could see me.

That meant it was looking at me, and it was intentionally screwing with me.

That showed both intelligence and intent.

This would go on for days or maybe weeks at a time. Sometimes it would stop, but it would always start up again.

Then it got worse. Instead of the scurrying of a little animal, I began hearing footsteps -- human-style footsteps -- on the roof. Once again, my mind tried to rationalize what I was hearing. There had to be someone up there -- a person -- but there couldn't be. There were no low branches on the oak tree. It was essentially unclimbable. The only safe way to access the top roof of the house was through the window of my own bedroom. The roof of the sunporch was right below my window. When we were new to the house, my friends and I often hung out the sunporch roof on a lazy summer afternoon. However, none of us climbed from there to the top roof. Even us foolhardy kids recognized that the top roof was too high and too dangerous to play on. There was no one on the roof. Yet I could hear him. (I don't mean to be sexist or patriarchal, but the entity always felt more male than female to me.)

And, yes, of course, the footsteps stopped anytime I opened my eyes.

And I wasn't asleep. I would lie in bed awake listening to it walking, mentally following its movements.

It was bad enough when it was on the roof. Then it came inside.

I had a single bed with an old wooden frame, a wooden box spring and a thin mattress. I would be sleeping only to awakened by something moving inside the mattress. Something really big. Imagine a fifteen-foot python trapped inside a thin mattress. That's what it felt like. I never saw it, but it was definitely snake-like in its shape and movements. When it moved, it moved me, too. I shifted in bed, to the right or the left to accommodate it.

That really scared me. I tried to be as quiet and motionless as possible when it was in the mattress. Afterwards, either that night or the next morning I would pull the mattress off the bed and look for holes to see how it got in. Of course, that was totally irrational. Nothing that big could have gotten into the mattress without utterly destroying it. Not only that, how could something that big even get into my room without me seeing it?

Now you see why we never talked about any of this. It was insane.

There was no rational explanation for this phenomenon, except perhaps nightmares or mental illness. Unable to discuss this with anyone, I grew more isolated. Especially at night.

Let me say one thing: This was not sleep paralysis. I never experienced that. I could always move in bed. Nor was it night terrors. I never woke up screaming. I don't think it ever made me scream.

Sometimes the bed or the mattress would just shake. Like in the movie The Exorcist, but not quite that extreme. This confounded me even more. If the bed was moving in the dead of night like that, how come no one heard it downstairs? When we finally started talking about the haunting, we were all shocked that the others hadn't heard the things we experienced. It was extremely rare for more than one person at a time to see or hear an event.

Then things got really bad, and this is what inspired the key plot point in my upcoming novel Chapel Street.

One night, I woke up finding myself crawling out of my bedroom window. The window, as I said early, opened to the roof of the sunporch. But there was an extremely long drop off that roof to the stone patio below, or, worse yet, the metal stairs down from back porch. I still shudder to think what it would feel like to fall onto that. I would have definitely died. No question about it in my mind.

I don't know what stopped me, but I woke up suddenly. I was shocked. As I got back into bed, I looked over at my alarm clock. It was 3:00am exactly.

That would have been the time of my death.

Photo of my bedroom from the 2013 sale of the house.
There used to be a radiator at the right rear of the room
near the window. My bed was right in front of it with my
head at the right wall and my feet by the window.

The next night the same thing happened again. I hit my head or something while I was crawling out of the window. I looked at the clock again. It was 3:00am. Despite the fact that I had never previously walked in my sleep, I tried to convince myself that this was just some sort of weird coincidence. Until it happened the next night. At 3:00am again.

Once is an anomaly. Twice could be a strange coincidence. Three times was definitely design. Something was trying to kill me. I was sure of that.

That was what I now call a suicide event. If I had sleepwalked off the roof, I am sure everyone I knew would have considered my death a suicide. Although I had never told anyone about my intentional suicide attempt two years earlier, everyone knew I had wrestled with depression since my break-up with Kathy. That would have been the perfectly reasonable explanation for my actions.

I can't remember who initiated the first family meeting about the haunting, but I think it might have been me right after these suicide events. I was finally desperate enough to speak up. I can't remember the month, but it was definitely in 1986 because my sister Jeanne was pregnant with her daughter Marion at the time. She and her then husband Jon were living in the master bedroom -- you know, the room with the closets where the entity seemed to live. Not the best place to sleep.

I know Jeanne, Jon and my mother were definitely at this first meeting. Somehow I think my late sister Laurie was there, too, but I am not sure. I know we discussed it with her later. My older brother Doug was not present. Neither was Mark. The meeting took place in the dining room. My father was in the living room watching TV. I went in and asked him if he wanted to talk about the haunting with us. He just looked at me like I was crazy.

But I wasn't crazy. And I wasn't alone either anymore. Everyone admitted to some private terror, and was questioning their sanity. It was a relief to finally talk about it. However, I don't know how honest everyone was. I, for one, was willing to talk about the bed and the footsteps, but I never mentioned crawling out of the window. That would be going too far. I didn't want to be fitted for a straight jacket. We decided that night not to mention anything to my kid brother John. We didn't want to scare him. (We didn't take into account that the entity was perfectly capable of scaring him on its own. It didn't cut him any slack because of his youth.) Our policy of silence also, over time, extended to my nieces.

The situation actually got worse rather than better in the immediate aftermath of the meeting. As far as I was concerned, this was the height of the paranormal activity in the house. Our daily reports revealed one thing: It only seemed to bother one person a night. It was always easy to figure out who that person was. You would find them sleeping on the sofa in the living room the next morning. The entity seemed content simply to drive people out of their bedrooms. It was agreed by all of us that the Hell Room, the front bedroom on the third floor, was the center of the activity at the time. We credited the Ouija board session to its strength in that room.

It was a really strange period. I was working at the advertising agency Smith Burke & Azzam and I loved it. Great people. Interesting work. Very exciting. My social life was active, too. I had my old neighborhood friends, college friends and new work friends. I went out practically every night to either dinner or a movie or both. However, no matter how much fun I had, a sense of dread would fill me when I headed home because I knew the thing would be waiting for me. It was unbelievable. During the day, I lived the life of a happy-go-lucky, rational, 20th century man, but at night I found myself buffeted by an ancient, nameless demonic entity that wanted to harm me.

Yours Truly as The Young Ad Man

I remember when an account executive at the agency asked me to house sit at her place while she and her husband went away for a long weekend. I found her house very strange. It took me a day to figure out why. It was clean. It didn't have the unseen but tangible spirit of oppression and dread I felt at 21 St. Helens Avenue. It was a vacation from the darkness.

Strangely, despite crawling out of the window and nightly terrors visited upon us, I still considered the entity was more of a nuisance than a physical threat. Then a friend of mine, Tim Ratajczak, lent me the book The Demonologist by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The activity in our house seemed to follow a distinct pattern in their book. In fact, it indicated that our haunting had reached a critically dangerous level were people start to die by either murder or suicide. Something had to be done.

While my mother worked with her priest friends, I also took offensive action against the entity on my own. Although I had previously resorted to prayer at some of the worst moments, I never tried to cast out the entity. Ad-libbing my own prayers, I managed to cast the demon out of my room in the name of Christ. I really felt its anger then. Although it could no longer enter my room, some nights it would completely surround it as if it were coated on the outer walls. I could feel its seething malevolence, but it couldn't physically get to me.

The malevolence -- the pure hatred -- that it directed at me showed me that the entity was capable of emotion. That was another sign of moral agency in the entity.

Later, I tried casting it out of the entire house, but God told me: "It's not yours to cast out." (Remember, I said God would talk to me periodically.) Still, the entity could no longer bother me directly as it had done in the past, although I was still susceptible to the oppressive spirit one felt in its shadow. But I was not completely safe. Once my curiosity almost got the best of me. I remember one night, standing in the hallway outside of the darkened Hell Room, wondering about the entity. It hadn't been active in a while, and, when it wasn't active, it was easy to convince yourself that it was all just your imagination. I remember saying out loud: "There's nothing here. If there was, it would turn on that light."

And it did.

I never tested it or tried to communicate with it again. However, that little show of force of its part proved to me that the entity wasn't just a force or random energy. It was an independent intelligence that understood human language. It could interact with you if it chose to do so.

Later still, after hearing about some new activity, I asked God why he didn't cast it out. He replied: "You don't want it gone. You want to write about it."

I hadn't knowingly considered that possibility at the time, but I then resolved never to write about the entity. And I stayed true to that resolution until my mother recently asked me whether I thought the entity was responsible, in part, for the deaths of my two siblings. I wrote my novel Chapel Street to explore that possibility.

And now, of course, these blogs....

Am I being disobedient now? No, I don't think so. Remember God didn't say I couldn't or shouldn't write about it. He was just questioning my motivations.

One final story. I finally bought my own home in 1996. While I was upstairs in my room getting ready for the move after my final night at the house, it began banging on the door at the bottom of the stairway to the third floor. It sounded like someone was hitting it was a sledgehammer, but really fast. Both my mother and my niece Natalie were on the second floor and they were terrified. So was I. But then it stopped, and that was that. I guess the banging was its way of saying, "Goodbye, hope to kill you later."

The timing of that manifestation, which seemed to be directed at me, tells me that the entity was consciously aware of our activities in the house. It knew I was leaving and wanted to send me a message.

I frequently returned to 21 St. Helens Avenue for holidays and family events. However, I don't recall ever going back up onto the second or third floors again. Not until the auction.

In 2005, after the death of my father, my mother sold the house for $289,000. A pretty good price, since she bought it for $25,000. The buyers did not ask whether the house was haunted, and she didn't volunteer the information. She came to believe, perhaps accurately, that the entity fed off the energy of young people. Since the couple didn't have any children, my mother assumed they were probably safe.

The house later came up for auction in 2013 with a starting price of a mere $10,000. I wanted to buy it. I felt if I owned the house, I could finally cast out the demon. My wife, showing characteristic wisdom, wouldn't hear of it. Still, we went to the auction anyway. I talked with many of the potential buyers, telling them that I was a former resident. When they'd ask me about the house, I told them it was haunted. They'd all say, "That's cool." I would say, "No, it isn't."

I don't think I spoke with the people who actually bought the house.

I hope they are faring better than we did.

Because I know the entity is still active.

Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2

Here I am discussing these events on video:

Yours Truly in the Hell Room in 2013.

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.

**Not her real name.

Additional blogs about the haunting:

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

Let's stay in touch:

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy

Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy
Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy

Monday, November 25, 2019

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2

Jeanne and Clara, circa our arrival at 21 St. Helens Avenue

Here's a brief clip from this part of the interview:

Below you will find the transcript of the second part of the interview. The transcription was made by my niece Emily. It has been edited for clarity.

SEAN: Was there an increase in activity after the extension?**

CLARA: There was a lot of activity after the extension. But I think the activity really was the most when John was in high school. I think that's when, you know. And it was all his friends there all the time. And that music, you know, like Black Sabbath, and you know. I think a lot of that stuff played a role in -- that was conducive to a lot of the stuff that went on.

SEAN: What was the worst thing you remember from that house?

CLARA: Well, I think being upstairs in that Hell Hole was the worst thing. Although I could never sleep -- the other bedroom, the big bedroom was really, really bad. Like I say, at nighttime, things disappearing. Sharon and Doug gave me a computer, it was one of the Mac strawberries, and I had it on the cabinet at the bottom -- at the foot of my bed, there was a cabinet against the wall. I had it on there. That was on, I guess you call it a dressing table, it had a mirror in the background. And at nighttime, I would hear it, (whistles), it would kind of like whistle and turn on by itself. And then there would be something on there writing, and I'd be like, what does that say? And I'd grab my glasses, and as soon as I would go over to look at it, it would click off. And it did that, I don't know how many times. I don't know how many times it did that.

Natalie and Clara

I think one of the scariest things, and I really wanted to leave, was when Natalie was there getting ready for school that morning and the bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang on that door. You were there.

SEAN: I was there. That was literally my last morning at the house I lived there.

CLARA: Was it?

SEAN: Yeah. And to me, that was -- you know, I think Natalie knew what door it was banging on. It was banging on the door --

CLARA: It was banging on the door --

SEAN: -- to the attic.

CLARA: -- to the attic, yes. and I was like, "Natalie?" (holds ears shut).

SEAN: Yeah, and it was, like, really loud.

CLARA: It was so loud. I was getting dressed and Natalie had taken her shower and all, she was getting ready for school. She had to be -- we used to leave early because her school started at a quarter after 7:00. And it was that bang bang bang bang. And I was like, "Natalie, please stop that noise!" And she was like, "It's not me, Grandmom! I'm in the bedroom, it's not me." I was like, "Oh, my God." I mean... You know.

SEAN: That was a rare event, that a lot of people --

CLARA: You know, Natalie --

SEAN: Because usually, I think it kind of -- it would kind of control -- you know, it was psychological in the sense that it would usually attack one person at a time, and you would never know that it really happened.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: So you were always afraid to talk about it.

CLARA: I remember Alex used to lay there and he would watch (looks up in the air and follows something with her head) something go by. You know, you could see him looking at something. And dogs, you know, it would be like, what's he looking at?

SEAN: Alex might have been high, because I remember Mark -- when Alex was sick, Mark would smoke pot and blow it into his mouth.

CLARA: No, no, no, he wasn't high. He used to look all the time. Ginger did, too. Ginger used to follow something.

SEAN: Mmhm.

CLARA: Used to look around and follow something. You know. I was going to tell -- oh, my first day after I lost my job, I was sitting up in my bedroom in that rocking chair reading. I was the only one in the house, and I heard the bathroom water. And I went in and both faucets were turned on full, you know, full blast. I turned them off and I went in and I sat back down, and about ten minutes later, I heard the water on. And I went back in and the water was turned on full blast.

Clara, Debbie, Sr., Jon Coe

I remember after Laurie died, and after everybody left and went back to their life, Debbie Sr.*** came down and she said, "So what's going on?" I said, "Oh, nothing." She said, "Well, who's here?" And I said, "Oh, nobody's here." And with that, we heard somebody walk across the floor upstairs and go into the bathroom and close the door. And she said, "I thought you said nobody's here?" I said, "Nobody is here. You want to go up and check it out?" And she's like, "No." I said, "Well, I think we should leave," and we both got our purse and just left.

But I think it got a lot more vocal, you know --

SEAN: Mmhm.

CLARA: -- than it did. It got braver, it got ballsier as time went by. That it was like, okay, now you know I'm here, you know, after a certain point in time, and so it didn't bother trying to -- maybe it just got stronger, I don't know, that it could do stuff. I remember when they were working on the -- when the workmen were working on the new house -- on the new kitchen, I went to a meeting, I had a class that I went to, a sewing class, and I left a note on this table for them that I'm not here, I won't be here today, I won't be home until about 2:30. This is where I'm at, if you have any questions or you need me, call this number.

And then I came home and I was like, "Oh, wow, what's going on?" You know, they were like -- they asked me something. I said, "Well, I just got back." They were like, "What do you mean you just got back?" And I said, "Well, I've been gone all day." They said, "No, you haven't. We heard you upstairs with the dog. You were talking to the dog and the dog was barking." I was like, "No, I just walked in the door." You know, so...

And then they -- I heard it call my name. I heard it call other people's names, too. It got a lot worse -- it got a lot bolder, I think, as time went by, it really did.

SEAN: Now, did it always -- did it always mimic a known voice, a voice you knew?

CLARA: Yes, yes. It could mimic the voice. It didn't just -- wasn't a voice that you -- it was a voice you recognized, you know. And then your father, God only knows what...

SEAN: Someone -- now, I'll say concerning him, that it was probably around 1984, the Ouija board time, when things got really bad, we had a meeting. I definitely remember Jeanne, you, me, and Jon Coe, a decision was made not to talk to John, and Pops -- well, this was around this table, but it was in a different house.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: And Pops was in watching TV in the living room, and we're like, should we tell him? I go, "I'll go in and ask him if he wants to sit in on this meeting." And I said, "Hey, we're talking -- we're having a meeting in there about the stuff that's been going on in the house." "What stuff?" "You know, all the stuff." And he -- he just looked at me like I was crazy.

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: So I assumed nothing was ever bothering him. But I recently heard from someone that he told them he could hear furniture moving in John's room. But there was more disturbing stuff than that, too, that Natalie said that she would hear him --

CLARA: Yeah, I heard him.

SEAN: -- go up into the Hell Hole and talk -- and have conversations up there with someone.

CLARA: He had conversations in the living room also, with -- he would argue with --

SEAN: This was opposed to, however, his normal alcoholic --

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: -- yelling at the TV type thing?

CLARA: Right, right. But you could never understand what he was saying. He was like, "No, that's not (indistinguishable yelling)," you know. Yes, no, he -- yes, no, I think at the end there, it got to him probably because he had himself so open with his alcoholism, you know. Where before, he wasn't home much.

SEAN: Yeah. So, would you --

CLARA: I mean, he wouldn't come home until, like, late at night. So he wasn't in the house like we were until he was retired, and then I think it started messing with him, too. I don't know how much he actually knew what it was or who knows. I think his mind was just all screwed up at that point. Yeah, and look at him. He had that aneurysm in that house on Christmas.**** You know, was that just an aneurysm, did the thing cause that? I don't know. You know. I know he was never right after that.

Christmas 1983
My father was not in this picture. We thought he
was one step behind us visiting the family, but he
was actually on the floor at home bleeding internally.

SEAN: Yeah. Yeah. He was sort of like a case study, in my opinion, of a skeptic in the house, whether it would affect a skeptic or whether it wouldn't affect those people that were more willing to engage.

CLARA: Yeah. I think probably he did not have as much intuition into it as some of us did.

SEAN: And I think definitely his alcoholic state opened him --

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: -- to it.

CLARA: Exactly. That's what I was trying to say, yeah, that he would be more up to it, you know.

SEAN: I consider him a victim, to a degree, of what was in the house.

CLARA: Well, I think we were all victims of what was in that house. And I'll tell you the truth, I was always afraid, because I knew it followed -- something followed me. The incubus would always follow me to Taylor's Island. I was always afraid it would follow me wherever I went. I was afraid it would follow me here.

SEAN: Do you think it followed you here?

CLARA: No. No.

SEAN: Do you think there's anything here?

CLARA: No. No, I think this house is very calm, there's nothing here that is going to hurt anybody. Yeah. No, this is a safe house. But that's why I would never go back to that house. If invited, I would never go back there, because I would be afraid it would recognize me and then would be like, oh. Maybe I snuck out without it, you know. Maybe it thought I was going to come back before I left completely. I don't know. I think I was lucky to get out the first time without it and I would not go back. Or maybe that's where it lives. I don't know. But I think whoever lives there, I think they're probably having experiences also, and probably still questioning.

SEAN: Do you think that this entity was in any way responsible for the deaths of either Laurie, Mark, or your husband?

Douglas Ernest Murphy, Sr.

CLARA: I don't think your father, no. I think he drank himself to death. I think he was just extremely depressed. See, and that's another thing. I think there was a lot of depression on his side. With Laurie and Mark, I'm really not sure. I think it may have messed with their minds. I wouldn't write it off as no, it didn't have anything to do with it. I don't think it was there at the moment of their death, if you know what I mean.

SEAN: I personally think it could have been.

CLARA: Well, maybe it could. I think it -- I think it screwed with them enough, that yeah, at least made them -- made their minds -- screwed up their mind. I think it had the possibility to do that. You know. I think Mark especially, yeah. I often wondered, had we not moved to that house, would they both be alive?

SEAN: I wondered about that too.

CLARA: You know, Mark was always a very quiet child when he was growing up. As a baby, he was probably the best baby I ever had. And, you know, I wonder all the stuff that he got into, I don't know what all drugs he took. I know he smoked pot, but I often wonder if a lot of that stuff would not have happened if we didn't live there.

SEAN: Well, I know I asked him one of those times when he was in a very lucid state, you know, when he was on his meds. After the Ouija board incident, he was no longer living at home, and I asked him, I said, "While you were living up in that room, did you experience anything supernatural?" And his response to me was, "When I was living in that room, I was so high all the time, I would never have known if it did or whether it was in my mind."

Mark, with Ginger, in the basement apartment he built

CLARA: But you know, I know when he built the basement, I know it got -- oh, man, that place. That basement. Wow. One time I -- I know he couldn't sleep in that bedroom that he built there because it was -- there was something in there. But I know the one time I went down there, it was the 4th of July and Ginger was afraid of the fireworks and I went down in there. That place was spookier than the upstairs. I mean, that place -- I couldn't stay down there. I had to leave. It just -- that basement was just terrible. I often felt bad, then, because we used to make Alex sleep in the basement. I didn't know it was that bad. The whole house was just -- that whole house was just bad.

SEAN: Yeah, well.

CLARA: The whole house was just bad. There wasn't any safe room. There wasn't any safe spot that you could be in. You couldn't go to the bathroom without thinking something was watching you. You know. And it's a shame because I always liked that -- I liked that house, the way -- you know, it was a beautiful house.

SEAN: It was a beautiful house.

CLARA: I wish you would talk to whatever we said is who claimed to have information on that house, because I would like to the know what happened in that house before we moved there. Was there something there before we moved there? And I think the fact that it was just so many teenagers, the energy, I think it really exacerbated whatever was already there.

SEAN: But here's the thing: As there were no teenagers left when Nat was, say, in college, when it was you, Nat, and John, John's in his late 20s, it was still active. It was woke up and it stayed awake.

CLARA: Well, because -- well, yeah, right. Right. I think once -- yeah, once it gained its strength, it was just a very strong entity.

SEAN: Do you think the Ouija board was the thing that triggered it?

CLARA: -- the trigger? I really don't. I think it just brought it more to the forefront of my knowledge, that it was there. I think it was always there, and I think it was messing with us before that. No, I don't think that that invited it in or anything like that. I think it was always there.

SEAN: I think you make a good point. I think it was always there. I think in some ways, at least for myself, I think it was stronger before I knew it was there. I think it was having more of an affect on me mentally before it really started to play its hands. Because once it started -- once it made itself known, then you knew something was there. It wasn't something in your mind. You weren't crazy, you know.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: But it's funny, no matter what, when I got home --

CLARA: You couldn't sleep.

SEAN: During the active period, I would be out, and then I'd be driving home and it was getting dark, and it's like, it's going to be there. You know, because it really -- it's like you say, at night.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: -- suddenly you're in this weird supernatural, superstition world.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: So you're a normal, rational human being living a 20th century life during the day.

CLARA: Yeah, at a certain point in time, I know when I was working, I don't think I ever got a full night's sleep without being woken up, without feeling that thing climb in bed with you, without all of a sudden you couldn't move. I mean, every night it was something. The black shadow.

SEAN: I never saw it, I'll say that much.

CLARA: Well, it used to come out of that closet.

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: No matter what you did, you couldn't keep that door -- that door would open up in the middle of the night, you know. No matter what. No matter what. It always came out of there.

SEAN: Natalie said that when she was living in that room alone, she would actually lock it and it would still open.

CLARA: It would still open. You couldn't -- you couldn't lock it. I mean, it always opened. It was always something, the thing turning on, I think even lights turned on sometimes, you know, would wake you up. You -- I never had a full night's sleep in that house without being -- having something happen during the night to me or around me. You know. I mean, Mark seemed to think something was with that organ. Whether it was or not, I don't know. It was in there before that organ ever came into that house.

SEAN: Oh, yeah.

CLARA: You know, where that organ came from, I don't know. I mean, I know Mr. Kirk, but I mean, where it lived prior, I don't know. You know, where the piano lived prior to being in that house, I don't know either. You know. But no, I don't think we brought it. I think it was always there.

SEAN: I don't think it was anybody's behavior that brought it either.

CLARA: No. No. I know Jeanne blames me with the Ouija board thing, but like I say, that made me realize, yeah, it really is something here. But I don't think that that opened up any portal that wasn't already there. I think whatever was there was there, was always there, you know, came and go, would come and go by itself. Did it come and go? I don't know. There were periods of time when three months would go by and there really wasn't anything that happened, and then all of a sudden it was one thing after another after another. All the stuff that happened, it's hard to remember all of it, you know. But the furniture moving was, you know, one thing. You could hear people -- you could hear footsteps, that was another thing. You know, I mean, there was just a lot of stuff that went on there that...

SEAN: So what -- here's the question that everybody asks: Why did you stay?

CLARA: Why? Your father didn't believe in it. What was I going to do? I wasn't even making $10 an hour. What, I was going to pack up everybody and buy another house? People say that all the time, why don't you just move? Well, your father had the checkbook in his name only, so I couldn't really get any money out of it anyway. And he didn't believe in it, so... "Oh, yeah, we should move because you're scared to stay in this house." That wasn't going to happen. He didn't care. So. I could want to pick up and move. What could I do? You know.

SEAN: So what would you say are your final thoughts?

CLARA: My final thoughts. That I'm glad I'm out of there. You know, I watch a lot of stuff on television and it's like, oh, yeah, we had that. Oh, yeah. You know. I remember that. Oh, yeah, that's... I try to forget a lot of it. It's so much more peaceful now, I don't like to think about it.

And I would never go back there. I would never go back there. And like I say, I'm just glad that it did not follow me. And I know one time, you weren't serious I don't think, but you were considering buying that house when it was for sale, and definitely I would never have gone to visit you if you did because I would never go back there.

SEAN: Well, I was considering it because I felt I could cast it out if it belonged to me. That if the house was physically mine, I could cast it out of the house.

CLARA: No, I don't think you could. I think it would find a way to get itself back in there. I don't think anybody -- and I'm sure that it's there now.

SEAN: I'm sure that it's there now.

CLARA: We did not have a mass hallucination about the stuff that was happening in that house, because for many years, we didn't even talk about it to each other. We were all experiencing things on our own thinking, oh, this can't be happening. So I don't think you can get rid of it. I think somehow or other, as long as that house is there, it's going to be there. People perceive -- how much they perceive it is another story. Some people don't have any psychic ability and so maybe they wouldn't perceive it as much or there would be just quirky little things. I mean, maybe I didn't -- did I really hear that noise? Maybe it was outside, that wasn't in here.

SEAN: So do you feel bad that we didn't tell the next owner about it?

CLARA: It was up to them to ask. I kind of did. But then I thought, well, maybe they wouldn't experience it. Because they didn't have children. You know, I know when I started looking for a house afterwards, that was the first thing I asked when I went into a house. Are there any ghosts in here, do you have any psychic stuff going on in here? And if you ask, they have to tell you. And a couple places we went and the owner -- you know, there was no owner there or whatever, and I made sure to ask the real estate agent, "Make sure you find out because I'm not moving into another haunted house."

SEAN: Well, I will say that when I was at the auction for the house after the next owners were departed, I told the people, anyone who asked me, I told them that I had lived in the house, I was a resident. So they all wanted to talk about the house with me, you know, since I had lived there. And the first thing I told them was that it was haunted.

CLARA: Did you?

SEAN: Yes. Anyone who talked to me.

CLARA: And probably a lot of them didn't believe you.

SEAN: No, a lot of them were like, "Oh, wow, that's really cool."

CLARA: Yeah, yeah.

SEAN: And I'm like --

CLARA: No.

SEAN: I'm like, "No, it's not really cool. It's actually pretty bad."

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: You know, and --

CLARA: I always said, it's not Casper the Friendly Ghost.

SEAN: Yeah. It wasn't Joe Ghost either.

CLARA: And it wasn't Joe Ghost.

SEAN: Question: Did Laurie ever discuss anything, you know?

CLARA: Oh, I didn't talk about the red eyes. There were red eyes in that closet at night, too. When that closet door would open, a lot of times at night, you would look in and there would be red eyes in there.

SEAN: You saw them in the bedroom closet? You didn't see them up in the third floor closet

CLARA: No, I never tried -- I tried never to open that. I tried never to go near that closet. I was always looking over my shoulder, especially at night when I would be up there sewing. You know, when you went up into that room, you could hear the street sound when you first went up there, and it was like, if you were up there for a while, it was like you were in a vacuum or something. You never heard -- you couldn't hear anything outside it. It was just like you were enveloped in it. And all the outside noises and all just disappeared and it was just you and that room. And it was a pretty room. It's too bad it was...

SEAN: Too bad it was haunted as hell.

CLARA: It was a pretty house, you know. I really liked the house, I liked where it was located and everything. But on hindsight, if I knew 20 years after, later if I could go back, if I knew then what I know now, I never would have moved there.

21 St. Helens Avenue

Notes:

**My mother added an extension to the back of the house increasing the size of the kitchen and adding another room.

***Debbie Senior was the wife of my late uncle Brian Murphy. She had the word Senior attached to her name after I married a woman named Debbie, who is now called Debbie Junior to avoid confusion in the family.

****My father suffered a near fatal aneurysm on Christmas Day 1982. He was lucky to have survived, but he behavior changed as a result.

Additional blogs about the haunting:

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.

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Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1

Clara Murphy, circa our arrival at 21 St. Helens Avenue

This blog consists of part one of my interview with my mother Clara Murphy. I wanted to use her interview first since she was the owner of the house, and she had the most paranormal experience prior to our arrival. I interviewed her, on video, at her home. We were the only two people present in the house. Below, you will see a short snippet of the actual interview itself.

Below you will find the transcript of the first part of the interview. The transcription was made by my niece Emily. It has been edited for clarity.

SEAN: Before you moved into 21 St. Helens Ave., did you have any paranormal experiences?

CLARA: I've had paranormal experiences most of my life.

SEAN: What's the earliest ones you can remember?

CLARA: The earliest one probably -- well, I always knew when people were going to call, just different stuff like that. You know, with the phone, I always knew before it rang. I knew before people died, I usually knew a couple weeks beforehand.

SEAN: So tell me how you were struck by lightning.

CLARA: I guess I was about eight or nine and my brother and I and two of our friends, Skippy and Patricia. Skippy lived around the corner and Patricia lived a few doors down from me.

SEAN: This was on Llewelyn?

CLARA: This was on Llewelyn Ave.** And we had bricks, kind of like the little -- smaller than the regular bricks. I don't know what you call those bricks, plastic bricks.

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: And we built this enormous tower. There was a storm going on outside at the time. And I don't know, my brother and I got into an argument over the tower. I think I probably wanted to take it down and he wanted to build it higher or something or another. So I went up to complain to my mother.

Now, I had on my finger my Captain Video Video Rangers ring, which I had just gotten in the mail that day so I never got to do any of the secret decoding on it. I went into the living room. I walked in toward the front of the house from the kitchen. There was a staircase coming down on my right-hand side. My mother's sitting in a chair on the left-hand side with the television set down in the corner, and there was this terrific boom, lightning came down the steps. And my mother was sitting there sewing, it didn't bother her, came around, blew the television set up, hit my Captain Video Video Rangers ring, knocked me unconscious, and went through the house, through the tower, and out through the back door.

And we later found out the roof was on fire, the neighbors had called about the house being on fire. And I had a hole in the ceiling in my bedroom, which is where it came in, about this big (making small circle with fingers), where the lightning came through. So that's how I was struck by lightning.

SEAN: Now, did you ever see any sort of apparitions or figures or anything supernatural prior to moving into 21 St. Helens?

CLARA: Yes. Yes, I saw -- I did.

SEAN: Okay. Could you tell me about that --

CLARA: Yes, I saw.

SEAN: -- and the circumstances, and how -- probably how old you were, what house you were in or whatever --

CLARA: Well, we were living on Hamlet Ave, and I went up into the attic to get something, and when I turned around, there was an angel standing there. And the angel said to me, "Your grandmother is going to die in two weeks," and it went away.

SEAN: What did the angel look like? Do you have any memory of it?

CLARA: It was enormous. I mean, it was (gesturing upwards) very tall.

SEAN: Was it like dressed in white or anything? Do you --

CLARA: It was in some kind of gown. It didn't have wings, but I knew it was an angel. If it had wings, I don't remember wings. I knew it was an angel.

SEAN: So you would have been about 17 or 18 at the time?

CLARA: Yes. Yes.

SEAN: You were already married.

CLARA: Yes. Because she died in 1963.

SEAN: Yeah, no, see, she died in 1960. Or lower '61, right? She died right after I was born.

CLARA: Yes, she died right after you were born. April 23rd, because it was John's -- also John's birthday, born on the day that she died -- a different year. But yes. And so then later -- then a week later, I heard the angel, and the angel said to me, "Your grandmother's going to die in a week." And then we were watching Bonanza on television, Tony and I, my mother was up in the bathtub, and the phone rang. And I said -- it kept ringing and Tony said, "Aren't you going to answer that?" And I said, "No, because they're calling to tell us that Grandmom died." And he got up and answered the phone, and he turned around and he said, "Grandmom died." And that was one of my visitations by the angel.

SEAN: And was that your first visitation by the angel?

CLARA: Yes.

SEAN: Now, do you have any conception of why you got that visit? Was there -- were you, like, unusually tied to your grandmother that you thought that someone --

CLARA: I -- yeah, I was pretty close with my grandmother. I don't know. I just -- I think some people have experiences of the paranormal, I guess you call it. That wasn't the last time that the angel paid me a visit either.

SEAN: Well, what are -- what are some of the other times prior to 21 St. Helens?

CLARA: Well, and then I had the miscarriage, too.

SEAN: Yes. This would be between me and -- no, Laurie and Mark?

CLARA: Yes. And then that's when I died and went through the tunnel and all that, and my grandmother met me and told me I had to go back.

SEAN: So tell me about this, because I never heard about this.

CLARA: Okay.

SEAN: I knew you had a miscarriage. I did not hear of this story.

CLARA: Yeah. Well, I started bleeding profusely and it just kept bleeding and bleeding, and I had -- it turns out that I pretty much lost all the blood in my body. So I was waiting for your father to come home, and then when he came home, he took me to the hospital. They took me right in to the operating room, my doctor -- well, my doctor -- we called my doctor.

SEAN: Dr. Alessi?

CLARA: Yeah. Silvio, not Eddie. Silvio. And he was the OB/GYN. And then I remember there was one of the nuns was in there in the OR and she kept on saying, "You're going to be all right. You're going to be all right." And then I left my body. And I looked down and I saw them all, and I saw what they were doing and I heard -- they were panicking, the doctor was panicking, you know. And there was the tunnel and the light, and I just, like, zoomed through it. And then my grandmother came down, and she said, "You can't go any further. You have to go back." And I said, "I don't want to go back," because it was so peaceful and it was so quiet and it was just so -- so nice. And she said, "No, no, you can't come yet. You have to go back." And then all of a sudden, voom, I went back in my body.

SEAN: Mmhm.

CLARA: And then I remember the doctor, Dr. Alessi came when they took me to the room. And I came to, he said, "Where's your husband?" I said, "Oh, he went home." And he said, "You know, you died," and I said, "Yes, I know I died." And he said, "You lost all your blood, is why you died, you know." I can't -- I forget how many pints he said I lost. Nine pints or something. So anyway, that was my death experience.

SEAN: Now, did you have any other kind of experiences at 5507 Hamlet Ave.?

CLARA: No, not really.

SEAN: So there was nothing, you would say -- would you say there was anything in that house at 5507?

Doug Sr., Doug Jr., Sean, Clara and Uncle Richard

CLARA: A lot of times I felt uneasy in there and I don't know why, but I never saw anything or whatever that I would say, oh, yeah, there was something there.

SEAN: So okay, let's skip ahead to --

CLARA: Saint Helens.

SEAN: -- the '70s. So describe how you found that house and what your initial impressions of it were.

CLARA: I really don't remember how I found the house. I think it was through Amelia Darrah.

SEAN: Diane's mother?

CLARA: Yes.

SEAN: Okay. Was she a real estate agent?

CLARA: I think she said -- no. But she was friends with the Liberccis who lived across the street, and I think she said that the house was for sale, and we were looking for a house. And I drove by there, I was like, oh, wow, this is really a nice house, you know. And so -- and it was a reasonably priced house, and that's where -- the house we bought.

SEAN: Did you at any time during the process feel anything in that house? Any, like --

CLARA: No, no. Of course, we weren't there very much, you know. And --

SEAN: No one said anything, did they?

CLARA: No. No. And we just knew that the old lady that lived there died, and that it was an estate sale and that's why it was not as expensive. They just wanted to get rid of it, you know. So they had an auction of the furniture. Well, they had a sale of the -- actually, it was an auction of the furniture and all in the house.

SEAN: Did you hear any stories about how the woman died?

CLARA: Well, we heard that she fell down the steps, or that she laid down at the bottom of the steps there on the platform. And that the mailman -- she wasn't taking her mail in, so the mailman peeked in through the door and saw her laying there, and called whoever. That's the story that we heard.

SEAN: Okay. So what was the first experience that you're aware of that anyone had, the first paranormal experience in the house?

CLARA: I think the first thing was right after we moved in, pretty much. I think it was Laurie said she saw somebody up on the sunporch. I think that was the first one.

SEAN: When was the first time anyone else complained to you or --

Clara, with daughters Jeanne and Laura

CLARA: Nobody really complained. You know, one thing that really creeped me out was Jeanne and -- I don't know if it was Jeanne or Laurie had that their friends over, and they were upstairs in that bedroom, the big bedroom, and they did this thing, and they raised Jeanne -- you know, Jeanne up off the floor, and I really did not like that. That really to me seemed like that was something that shouldn't be happening, it really creeped me out, you know. And I had never seen or heard of anything like that before. I didn't like it.

SEAN: Okay. Now, did you ever hear the organ playing?

CLARA: No.

SEAN: You never heard the organ playing? Okay.

CLARA: No. No.

SEAN: What was the first thing that you became aware of at the house?

CLARA: You know, it's hard to say, it was so long ago. I mean, gosh, it's been 40 years. You always felt like you were being watched. That's one thing that always really bothered me, is like, you always just felt like somebody was watching you, especially upstairs in the bathroom, you know. The girls were living in that middle room.

SEAN: They were living in the big room, the master bedroom?

CLARA: Yeah, the big one. Well, I don't know if that was the master, but I guess it was. It was the biggest room.

SEAN: And it connected to the sunporch, had a closet.

CLARA: Right. There was just a whole thing with that whole -- the upstairs was really creepy.

SEAN: But obviously things happened and you were aware of them. When did you really become curious about what was going on in the house? So no one complained -- Jeanne didn't complain to you, Laurie didn't complain to you? Did Laurie ever talk --

CLARA: I don't think any of us really -- like, you would see -- maybe you thought you saw a shadow go by or you turn around and look and, oh, maybe I imagined that. I think in the beginning I thought a lot of the stuff was just imagination. You know, maybe that didn't really happen. Okay, so maybe a light swinging, maybe it -- a breeze came through. You know, just different things that you did. It took a long while, I think, for me to realize, no, stuff really was happening in this house, and other -- but nobody really communicated to each other what was happening to them or around them at the time until it became so obvious that different things were happening.

SEAN: So what -- when did it become obvious? How would you say -- what was --

CLARA: I would say especially for me, the thing that -- when I moved into the big bedroom was when I noticed that things were really, really bad. Things would just -- like,I always put my hair brush down the same place. You get up in the morning, your hair brush is gone. Okay, where is it? You know? It didn't fall on the floor, it wasn't anywhere, you know. And then three or four days later, you'd wake up and your hair brush was right where you left it. You know, earrings, different things would just -- I know I put that there. It's not there now. Where did it go? And you could look all over for it and you'd never find it, and then all the sudden, there it would be. A lot of that kind of stuff happened.

SEAN: But that was later because you tried to communicate with it before you moved into the room. Jeanne was still living at the house, Jeanne and Jon. Jeanne had come back from England, I remember. Something must have happened, because I know you were talking to Ted about it, and was it Ted's idea or your idea to, like --

CLARA: Ted.

SEAN: Okay, Mark was already out. Because Mark had moved up into the Hell Hole.

CLARA: I think something was going on when Mark was sleeping up there, because all the sudden -- Mark was not religious -- he started putting crucifixes up there and a nativity set and a Bible and a lot of different religious articles. And I think something he was aware of, but maybe didn't want to --

You know, it wasn't like you saw it. I mean, it wasn't like all the sudden there was a figure standing there of, like you see on television, “oh, there's a little boy in my kitchen.” No, you didn't -- it was a lot of mental games, I think, that it played with us more than anything, or a lot of it was mental games.

SEAN: I would definitely agree with that. I think it was definitely screwing with us in a mental way.

CLARA: Yeah, yeah. At night -- well, at night there was the black shadow thing. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of that. I don't think we all ever really talked about it.

SEAN: We didn't talk about it until after the Ouija board incident.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: I don't think I ever had a conversation. I remember the girls saying that the organ would play. And that was about it. I don't remember anyone complaining about footsteps, anyone complaining about entities, anyone complaining about anything like that. The only thing I ever heard them complain was about the organ, and I think I heard it once myself. But once again, I'm upstairs, so if I hear it, how do I know it's not somebody playing it?

CLARA: Exactly, yeah.

SEAN: You know, the house was filled with people.

CLARA: There was so many people in and out that a lot of it -- it was, like, if you were upstairs and you heard it, well, you assume somebody was home. If you heard footsteps upstairs, which I heard a lot of times, you just assume somebody was up there walking around. I think a lot of it really was mental, and I think a lot of it happened at night.

SEAN: Yes.

CLARA: The witching hour.

SEAN: Yeah. So did you find yourself frightened in the house?

CLARA: At night. Especially later as it -- things got stronger. I think especially after John was born, it was a lot more obvious about stuff that was going on in that house. And I noticed -- one thing I noticed was that there would be a lot of activity for, like, a week or two, and then it would die down, and then it would start up again. It was like it started, and then it stopped some, and then it started back up again. At one point, I had started writing on the calendar when things were happening because I think it really got bad after John was born. Probably it was the Ouija board. It was a bad idea.

SEAN: Okay. So obviously something was going on at the house.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: And do you think you were working at Doner*** yet or did you just know Ted from --

CLARA: Yeah, oh, no, well, stuff was happening at the house before I started working at Doner.

Clara at Corpus Christi Church

SEAN: Yeah, but did you -- you knew Ted from Corpus Christi.

CLARA: Right. His aunt died and he wanted to communicate with her. Ted brought that ouija board.

SEAN: So did Ted -- he brought the Ouija board to our house to try to communicate with his aunt?

CLARA: Yes.

SEAN: And nothing related to our house?

CLARA: Correct. And we even said prayers and all before, you know, that no evil would come through and all that stuff.

SEAN: And you took it up into the Hell Room to do it? Why did you choose that room of all rooms?

CLARA: Because it was the quietest room in the house at the time.

SEAN: Mark was probably already out of that room.

CLARA: Mark was out, the room was empty.

SEAN: Okay.

CLARA: You know, I don't know. I may have had my sewing room up there at that time. Probably did. No, no, I'm lying. No, I did not have my sewing room up there. It was just an empty room at the time. You know, it's so hard to remember, it's been so long ago. And like I say, I don't remember a lot of things.

But I remember Ted asking for his aunt, I can't remember what her name was, and the thing just was pulling (mimicking planchette moving quickly and forcefully) and I said, “Ted, stop it! Stop it!” And he's like, "I'm" -- he said, "Open your eyes, I'm not doing anything!" And I was like, "Oh, shit," and that was it. I said, "That's it."

SEAN: His hands weren't on it?

CLARA: No, they weren't even on it. And it was pulling. But I think --

SEAN: Did you have any communication through the board?

CLARA: I don't know what it said. I don't know what it said.

SEAN: Did it freak Ted out?

CLARA: It freaked Ted out, yeah. And I think it probably was because I had some psychic abilities that it knew that I would -- that it could ingrain itself --

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: -- into me or whatever, however you want to say that, you know.

SEAN: Well, I have a theory that it -- it bothered some people more than others, and probably because of psychic ability.

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: And -- or they were just more open to it than other people.

CLARA: I think so, too.

SEAN: You know, and I think you were probably the most open person to it.

CLARA: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember I told -- that was when it was getting -- after that, it was really bad.

SEAN: What do you remember happening afterwards? Was it just like more active or?

CLARA: It was extreme -- yeah. There was a lot more activity, that was undeniable. And I think about -- it was about that time that different ones of us started saying, "Did you see that? Did you hear that? Did you feel that?" You know. That was like when -- it was after that, like -- and John was down in the living room, I was in the living room, and I guess one of his friend were there, and we heard all the furniture move upstairs. And when we went up, you couldn't open his door because all of furniture had -- he had to go out on the roof and go out the window and come in the other window. All the furniture had been pushed up against his door. Stuff like that started happening, and I think that happened twice. It was about that time that I was sleeping in the big bedroom. I guess Laurie was gone and the only ones left in the house were probably you and I, and Mark on and off.

SEAN: John.

CLARA: And John, right.

SEAN: And your husband, of course.

CLARA: Well. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. I was sleeping in that -- that bedroom was really I think the worst room. One of the worst rooms in the house. There was all kinds of stuff that happened in there. Especially at night.

You know, and I do think that it did go back and forth between our house and the house next door. Why, I don't know. But I know when John was in his room with Richard next door, and the shadow went across his mirror, Richard said, "Oh, you have it too?" So I think, it wasn't just our house. And when it wasn't in our house, I often wondered, was it in their house? You know, did it go back and forth from house to house?

SEAN: I wonder if it went as far as the houses up to the school.

CLARA: Yes. Yeah, I thought -- I wondered, too, because there was a lot of --

SEAN: Darkness.

CLARA: You know, I think that house was a portal, though. I think there were lots of things. There were different things in that house. It wasn't just one thing.

SEAN: What makes you think there was more than one thing in the house?

CLARA: I think there was a female, at least in the beginning. Whether it stayed there or left, I don't know. And then there was -- I think there was a demon, and I think there was an incubus.

SEAN: What do you mean by that?

CLARA: Well, you would go to bed at night, you could feel the bed, mattress, somebody sitting on it and then laying down on it, and then they would get very sexual with you. You tried not -- you tried to ignore it. Maybe it would leave. So that was one thing. I think that was different than the black shadow.

SEAN: Now, Natalie said that -- she didn't include it in her interview, but said later that something would spoon with her in the bed all the time.

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: And she said she didn't include it in the interview because she was thinking about the weird stuff that happened, but that happened so frequently that it wasn't --

CLARA: Yeah. Not only that, you could -- you would wake up in the middle of the night -- usually it was at 2:22, and you couldn't move. You were -- you were awake, but you couldn't move, it was holding you down, you know. And I know John looked it up and it was supposed to be like night terrors or --

SEAN: Sleep paralysis.

CLARA: Sleep paralysis. And that's baloney because I never -- once I left the house, I never had it again. But that was just about every night. And then some nights, well -- the closet door would always open, click, you'd hear it open. And then you'd say, oh, God, I don't want to look, I don't want to look. You'd keep your eyes closed as tight as you could, and you would feel it walk around the bed. And it was a black thing, it was black. Blacker than black. And it would lean over you, it had a cape. It was just -- you couldn't make out any figures or any -- any features, but it was, I would say, masculine.

SEAN: So human, humanesque?

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: What do you think it wanted?

CLARA: To scare you.

SEAN: So you would say it was malevolent?

CLARA: I think it really wanted to -- yeah. I think a lot of them -- I think they were, yes. I think they wanted -- I think they wanted my soul, really. I really think it wanted my soul.

SEAN: That would seem to indicate that it would be demonic, then.

CLARA: Yes. There was definitely -- and then one time, I -- Father Lowell, I called -- talked to Father Lowell about the house.

SEAN: Where is Father Lowell from?

CLARA: Father Lowell was -- I think he was a Jesuit. He was at Corpus Christi. I mean, he didn't live there. We had a lot of priests come in just to say Mass because we only had one priest. And a lot of his friends would come and say Mass and they'd hang around, eat dinner and this and that.

And Lowell had some experience with this type of stuff. He knew the priest that did the big exorcist thing in Washington D.C., he knew that priest. And he told me that it was a demon, and he said he was afraid to come to the house because he would want to know its name, and you're not supposed to ask its name. Don't ever ask it its name. And he told me the -- put the salt around and to go through with the holy water and do all that stuff. And I did all that.

SEAN: I remember you putting salt around everywhere.

CLARA: Yeah. I did that several times.

SEAN: Did it have any effect?

CLARA: It seemed like it did, but then it would always come back.

Father Callahan, family friend

SEAN: Now, you said -- well, first, what about Father Callahan? Did Callahan ever come over and bless the house?

CLARA: No.

SEAN: Did you ask him to?

CLARA: Yeah, but he didn't really believe in that kind of stuff, you know. He thought it was all just, "You got to be kidding me," you know.

SEAN: Mmhm.

CLARA: No, he didn't believe in that stuff, so he really wasn't into that. And then after a while, it did start.

SEAN: Well, first before we go there, you say that you felt that it was cast out for a while.

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: Any idea on the context of that? What did it? What did cast it out?

CLARA: What did cast it out?

SEAN: Yeah, what tactic was used to cast it out of the house?

CLARA: Well, the Bible, read -- Lowell told me what to read from the Bible, and to do the Saint Michael, the Archangel Prayer and all that stuff, and the salt and the holy water. And I think that did -- that did help get rid of it for a time. But it did disappear from time to time anyway, you know. And the last time that I did cast it out, I invited it back in.

SEAN: Tell us that story, or tell me that story, sorry.

CLARA: Okay. That was when John was in City and I went and I did all that stuff, with the salt in all the corners, but I didn't know about sage. I should have probably saged the house also, but I didn't. I didn't know it at the time. And I think it got out, and then one day I was up in my sewing room and I heard somebody walk up onto the front porch. It was in the summer. I heard the front porch, you know, somebody walking, knocked on the door. "Who's there?" "Mrs. Murphy. Oh, it's Jeff. Because -- and it used to do people's voices.

I said, "John's not home, Jeff." (knocks) "Mrs. Murphy." I said, "Jeff, John's not home, but if you want to, you can come in and wait for him." I heard the front door open (stomps), heard him come up the steps, then I heard him start up the second pair of steps. And it got to about the platform there and it said, (sing song voice) "Clara," just like that. All my hair stood up, and I thought, I did it again. I invited it back in. So -- and I went screaming out of the house, of course, at that point.

SEAN: Now, here's something -- and, let me refresh your memory because a lot of the stuff happened to people privately. But I remember when you were sleeping, around sometime after the -- after the Ouija board, you were -- it was -- your bedroom was on the upstairs.

CLARA: That was long after.

SEAN: Yeah. But I remember once -- I mean, it was still very active at that time.

CLARA: It was extremely active at that time.

SEAN: And you went screaming from your room, or so you said, and I was awake in the next room, like typing, and I didn't hear anything.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: And you're like -- you came up to me, you said, "You didn't hear me screaming and running down those steps?" And I'm like, "No, I didn't hear anything."

CLARA: I had at that time my pillow in my hand and I was holding it so tight that I -- all the marks, I was bleeding from my fingernails digging into my hand, that's how tight I was holding. That's when the thing came out of the -- I was up on the top floor in that bedroom.

SEAN: Mmhm.

CLARA: My bed was against that wall toward the Weisses. That taller closet was there and -- well, that room was horrible, that room was awful. You couldn't sleep in there, you could not sleep in that room. It was just awful. Anyway, that closet door opened, and there was a ball of fire, and it went (moves hands over each other in rolling motion), it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and it came, zoom, like right at me. That's when I jumped out of bed and went screaming out of the room. Of course, there wasn't anything that you could go back and see.

Also up there, there was this one time I was awakened at night by this big black cat, (hisses) right in my face, another time I went screaming from that room. That room was just hell. It was the Hell Hole. That room was hell.

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: I didn't live up there very long.

SEAN: No. I -- around that time, I do remember that --

CLARA: You used to come home and you would say, "Oh, your light was on." And I'm like, "No, it wasn't." "Oh, yes, it was. I saw it under the door." "No, it wasn't on." You know, different things, like you wouldn't hear. You could scream your head off up in there at 2:00 o'clock in the morning and nobody would hear you, you know. It was -- that was the worst place.

Yeah, but that thing that used to climb in bed used to climb in bed with me down at Taylor's Island, too. It must have followed. And the one time, I was driving down to Taylor's Island, and it must have been in my car, maybe that or one of the other. I was on the Bay Bridge and I had no brakes. Fortunately, I had that five speed so I could downshift, and fortunately I wasn't, like, really SPEEDING, there was nothing in front of me.

But when I got off the Bay Bridge, I went to the first gas station, and I got in there, I said to the guy, "My brakes are going." And they put my car up on the lift and they said, "No, your brakes are fine." And they were fine then. But they were not fine. I had no brakes on the Bay Bridge. So, I mean, there was just things like that that happened all the time.

SEAN: So this thing you're talking about, the brakes on your car, this is what I'm calling suicide events, in a sense that had what happened happened --

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: -- it would have looked like suicide.

CLARA: I used to think about killing myself all the time when I lived there.

SEAN: You did?

CLARA: Quite often.

SEAN: Mmhm. When -- was it out of character for you?

CLARA: Oh, yeah, I guess so. Of course then, looking back, it's like, oh, you know, did depression run in the family? How much was it the house, how much was it, you know, blood? You know. It was like, Uncle Butch was never happy, I think. I think he was probably depressed his entire life. So I don't know. Of course, there was suicides in the family.

SEAN: Yeah. And nervous breakdowns on the --

CLARA: And nervous breakdowns, yes. So I don't know how much was blood, but I know I had no brakes. I mean, I don't make that up, you know.

SEAN: Yeah. I think had any of us died, it would have been considered a suicide no matter what happened.

CLARA: Right.

Natalia and Clara

SEAN: Natalie talked about an incident where the entire house filled with smoke on a situation as well, which -- from the kitchen.

CLARA: Was Mark cooking hot dogs?

SEAN: No, it was not Mark cooking hot dogs. It was a similar event where Mike was there and they had cooked some bacon, and then they went upstairs, and when they -- and then the house was, like, filled with smoke. Dougie was out back working in the garage, and they came down and an oven mitt was on fire on the counter, but there was -- the stove wasn't on, the bacon wasn't there, and the bacon was not melted, you know like how it gets.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: Gelatinous. And it was just the oven mitt was just there on fire, but it had filled up the entire house with smoke. And they were like, opening up the window, and Dougie was like, "What's going on?" You know, and they're like, "I don't know." But she said that was the only time that something could have killed her.

CLARA: That stove, after the new kitchen was built, I remember I came home one time, all four burners were on as high as they would go. There was nobody in the house. That stove did not turn itself on.

SEAN: So you came home and all four burners were on?

CLARA: Yeah. And the flames (mimics large flames). You know.

Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2

Notes:

**Her family lived at 2413 Llewelyn Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland.

***Clara worked at the advertising agency W.B. Doner.

Additional blogs about the haunting:

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.

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