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| Laura holding Natalie during her baptism at Corpus Christi Church in Baltimore |
Natalie stayed at 21 St. Helens Avenue at times between the death of her mother on February 14, 1994 and her father Frank Valenti's marriage to his second wife Gail on May 18, 1996. During that time, Natalie stayed in Bedroom C, the master bedroom, sometimes with her grandmother Clara and sometimes alone. She returned to St. Helens Avenue in 1998 and stayed, with some interruptions, until 2005. Upon her return, she stayed in Bedroom B, the front east one. That room had become vacant when her uncle John moved downstairs into the then vacant basement apartment.**
Here's a clip from the interview. You will notice an edit. This was not about content. My camera stops after ten minutes, and it stopped during this story. I had to restart the camera and have her continue:
The interview, the first one I undertook, was transcribed by my niece Emily. My wife Debbie was present and asked a few questions. I have edited it for clarity. I am posting this interview out of the order I originally intended and stated in my previous methodology blog. The holidays have interrupted my ability to get the other interviews I need, but I wanted to continue with the story.
NATALIE: Yes, I have memories prior to her death.
SEAN: And what were these memories, these paranormal memories?
NATALIE: I'm trying to think of the earliest. I'm trying to think in chronological order of the earliest. The first one that I can remember is I was probably maybe six or seven, and I was old enough that Marion was already little but I don't remember Emily being there to play with us. But we would always play underneath the front porch, and always had this imagination that somebody lived there.*** And I think maybe Marion had said -- because we were both pretty little, and I think maybe Marion had said that she saw somebody under there. But we would always play games where, like, we just knew that somebody was under there, I guess? So we would do that a lot.
And I know for sure -- and I don't know who thought of the game, but we would start playing, like, hide and seek. And then somehow we would end up on the landing underneath the stained glass and we would be laying there, we would have a blanket over our head, and I think at one time Jeanne actually asked us what we were doing. We're like, we're playing like we're sleeping right here. And then it wasn't until years later that we even heard the story that the lady had fallen down and was, like, dead or almost dead on that landing.**** But it was, like, in the same exact spot. So it really creeped us out when we found out later, but as little kids we were just like, oh, this is a cool game. And now looking back, who would play a game like that? It was just a weird game.
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| Natalia, Marion & Emily |
And then I know that I saw people. As to when I saw them, I don't know.
SEAN: This would be prior to your mother's death?
NATALIE: All of these would be prior to her death. Because this would be when we would just be -- I'd visit or Grandmom or Grandpop would be watching me, or we would just be there. But I know that I would see people, but as a kid, you don't always know that you're not seeing -- you're seeing somebody that's not there. So it's hard to say. So those are kind of sketchy.
SEAN: So you --
NATALIE: But the landing thing was definitely a situation. And then there was also -- then that's probably when I first saw the eyes, was before I moved in there. Before my mom died.
SEAN: When you say you saw people, do you have any kind of consciousness of what kind of people you saw? Male, female, young, old?
NATALIE: It would be older men that I would see, maybe like balding-ish. But I would -- I think when I saw them, I thought they were maybe, like, friends of Grandpop's or something. But -- because I wouldn't see them, like -- like, I would just see them in, like, passing.
SEAN: Out of the corner of your eyes?
NATALIE: Yeah.
SEAN: Or like you would actually really see them fully?
NATALIE: No, not fully. It would just be, like, in the corner of my eye.
SEAN: So you would see mainly male presences at the house?
NATALIE: Yes, it was pretty much male.
SEAN: So tell me about the eyes.
NATALIE: The eyes were -- I wish I could remember the year, but the eyes were -- I was probably about nine or ten and Marion and Emily were there, and Jeanne was there because they had asked me to go get something out of Grandmom's sewing room.
SEAN: Was this when the sewing room was on the third floor?
NATALIE: Yes, the front room on the third floor: The Hell Hole. When you turn into that room, straight in front of you is the window that overlooks the street. And to the left there's, like, a closet that goes into the attic on that side, and then immediately behind the door there's another closet. And so that's the closet I had to go into. So when you turn in and you go into this closet, you look into the closet and it's the back wall, and then to the left, the closet went down into, like, the -- I guess, like, the eave of the house.
So I'm looking for whatever it is, and then I hear this noise and I look up and all I hear is hissing and I see, like, these red eyes, like -- I mean, like, it was probably right in front of my face. And I just freezed and was like, what do I do? And I was just like, I don't know if I even grabbed what Grandmom wanted, I just turned around and I was, like, running down the steps, like "Grandmom! Grandmom!" I'm like, "I'm not going back up there." And I never told her why. I just told her, "I'm not going back up there. I don't -- I don't know. I just can't do it." It was scary. I mean, it was like, you never realize what you're going to do when you're faced with something like that. It was creepy.
SEAN: And did you discern any other shape other than just the eyes?
NATALIE: No. There was no -- it was just black and, like, these red eyes.
SEAN: Now, were they just red dots or were they eyes, would you say?
NATALIE: They were absolutely eyes. I mean, it was -- my best description would be it was the shape of eyes, but there was no white that you have on the outside. It was all red, but you could see the black -- you could see the black around the eye, and then you could see the black -- like, I don't know my eye anatomy that well.
SEAN: So it had black pupils but red everything else?
NATALIE: Yes. Everything else was red, but you could also see, like, the outline of, like, the eyeball, the iris.
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| Laura and Natalie |
NATALIE: No.
SEAN: Did your mother ever mention anything about the house, about her experiences at the house?
NATALIE: I don't recall her ever mentioning anything to me about anything that happened at the house.
SEAN: Okay. So there was a period after your mother's death you lived with your grandmother, and then you lived with your father and your stepmother. And after that time, you came to live back at St. Helen's Avenue. And how old were you when you returned? And just give us a background on how old you were and what bedroom you were in initially and what happened there.
NATALIE: So right after my mother died, I was 12. That time when I lived there, I was in, I guess, the master bedroom, the room that had the sunporch. And I was in that room with Grandmom, like we both shared the room at the time because I believe Grandpop was still in the front, the smaller front bedroom, John was still in the other front bedroom. And so we share a bedroom for a while. I think maybe until I moved out, when I was like in eighth grade, so I was probably, like, 14 or 15 by then. And then when I went to ninth grade, I lived with my dad, and then I moved back in. I guess I was about 16 when I moved back in.
SEAN: Okay. Could you tell us about the experiences you had in the master bedroom during your first stay?
NATALIE: During the first stay, one of the earliest experiences in that room was Grandmom had her bed kind of at the wall where the door was to the sunporch. So it was the French doors there, and her bed was, like, right next to that. And in between the bedroom door and the closet door, she had bought me a day bed. And so my bed was right between those two doors because we shared -- those were the only -- because I was not sleeping upstairs.
So I shared a room with her, and we were getting up for school, and I remember Grandmom got up and she turned on her lamp on her nightstand and she was getting her robe on. And she was just getting ready to walk out the bedroom door, so that would have been at my feet, and I was laying on my side, and I opened my eyes and there's this face, like nose to nose with me, but it was, like, upside -- so, like, the eyes would be at my mouth just looking right at -- like, just like (glares at the camera). And I was like, "Grandmom! What is that right in front of me?" And she was like, "What, what?" I was like, "Grandmom, there is something right in my face." And she was like, "Just close your eyes. Just close your eyes and give it a second and open them back up and see if it's there." And so of course I did that. I was terrified to open my eyes back up. And so I did and it was gone.
SEAN: Now --
NATALIE: And she never asked me, like, what it was or anything. She was just like, okay, let's go about our day.
SEAN: So you get the sensation that she was familiar with what that face was?
NATALIE: When she said -- when she was like, "just close" -- it seemed to me that she already knew probably what it was, or she had seen it before, maybe, at some point. I don't know.
SEAN: And could you describe that face? Do you have any memory of it?
NATALIE: Not like -- I want to say it wasn't -- it didn't necessarily look like a person’s face. I mean, it had eyes, it had a nose, it had a mouth, but it did not feel to me like it was a person. I don't...
SEAN: Did you get any sort of feeling whether it had tendencies towards being male or female?
NATALIE: No. I remember maybe, if anything, it was dark -- not black eyes, but just dark eyes.
SEAN: Did you have the sensation that it was studying you or could you sense what it was thinking or what it was -- did you feel -- in other words, did you feel any intent? Do you think it intended to scare you? Did it have a positive or negative feeling?
NATALIE: The feeling I got from it was like -- like it was, like, sizing me up, I guess, would be the best in my -- I don't know.
DEBBIE: Did it smell?
NATALIE: I don't -- I don't remember any kind of smell. I just felt like it was looking at my soul. Like, I don't know. Just... Like, you know how somebody -- sometimes you feel like somebody's looking at you and they're like, looking, like, right through you, and you're like, (jumps back in seat with intake of breath) that's not... Like, it took my breath away and it was just like -- besides being terrified, it was just like, I knew I did not want it to look at me any longer because it just didn't feel right.
SEAN: So it was not a positive feeling at all?
NATALIE: No, definitely not a positive feeling.
SEAN: Did it feel malevolent?
NATALIE: I don't remember feeling, like, ill intentions or anything. But the fact -- if something's staring at you and you feel like it's, like, looking at your soul... Like, I don't think that's a positive experience.
SEAN: But in other words, it wasn't angelic, say, looking at your soul?
NATALIE: Oh, no, I did not feel any kind of angelic presence.
SEAN: Okay. Okay. So did -- so you and your grandmother never discussed that?
NATALIE: After that incident, we never discussed it.
SEAN: Wait a minute, let me go back. So you said it didn't look human. Did you feel the sensation that it was once human?
NATALIE: Probably at that time -- not knowing and understanding Biblical theology in the way I do now, at that time, I probably would have thought it was a ghost.
SEAN: Okay.
NATALIE: And I think that's probably my -- was my -- like, I thought it was a ghost but not -- like, it's no Casper, you know?
SEAN: Yes. So what would be your next experience at the house that you remember?
NATALIE: That same room, that closet would never, ever, ever stay closed, ever. And I remember even -- I remember asking Grandmom, "Where is the key?" Because they were all skeleton keys to the closet, "Where is the key to this closet?" I'd like -- because the closet freaked me out. I didn't even like looking at the closet. In fact, I sometimes still have dreams about that closet, I don't know why. So it always, like -- you close it and hear it, like, click, and then, like, you'd, like, walk out the room and come back in, and then it would be, like, open. And even when I would lock, I would lock it with the skeleton key and I'd take the skeleton key out, and it would still be open, every time.
SEAN: Did you ever see any other apparitions while you were in the room?
NATALIE: I wouldn't call it an apparition. It was darkness, which it wasn't exclusive to that room for me. It was in the shadows and you were never quite sure that you were really seeing it until you saw it, like, move as, like, a whole collective shadow.
SEAN: Now, yeah, so this shadow shape, did it have a form, would you say? Was it in a human shape or a human form?
NATALIE: I never experienced it in any kind of form. It would just kind of grow in size, like a blob.
SEAN: When it moved, did it have any sort of human or animal-like trait?
NATALIE: Not that I recall, any kind of trait like that.
SEAN: Now this shape, this shape that you would see, did it -- did it have eyes?
NATALIE: No. I never witnessed any eyes. The only time I ever saw eyes was in that closet, and it was just that one time.
SEAN: Did the shape ever approach you while you were in that room?
NATALIE: I think when I was sleeping. There's no tangible evidence or anything, but I know that when I was sleeping, especially when Grandmom and I were sharing that room -- because I would sleep and the head of that bed would be right at that closet door, that I would feel it, like, just come around. It always just felt like it was looking at me off the side. I could feel it move out of the closet and just come and sit, like, right next to me. Like, it didn't want to interact with me, it just wanted to watch me, which is creepy. I don't know which one's creepier, you know?
SEAN: So where did your grandmother move? Did she move to the front room?
NATALIE: She had moved to the front smaller room with the bowed windows. When she moved out, I think I kept my bed actually in the same spot that it was in, for some reason.
SEAN: And when you were in the room by yourself, would you say the intensity of the experience increased, decreased, or stayed the same?
NATALIE: The intensity definitely increased.
SEAN: So what happened?
NATALIE: The first memory that I have after, or at least when I was in that room by myself, happened -- it was early in the morning. And now that I'm looking back, my time line might be a little messed up. Because I think -- no, this was, like, the end of middle school for me. So we were getting up to get ready for school, and my alarm was set for 6:00 o'clock or 6:30, I had set it, but for some reason I didn't actually turn it on. After all of this happened, I realized I didn't actually turn it on. And so at the time my alarm would have gone off, all of a sudden, the bedroom door started shaking. And the bedroom door on that room, it was kind of like it was the original door and it wouldn't fit in the doorframe.
SEAN: It was kind of warped.
NATALIE: Yeah, it was, like, a little warped. So there was, like, the eye hook thing you would have to put to hold the door closed, and the door would, like, sit open. It had, like, a crack, like, so big that you could see into the hallway. And that's how the door would stay closed, because you couldn't -- it wouldn't latch in the hook or anything. So the door would always hang open.
And so around the time that my alarm was supposed to go off, all of a sudden, there was like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam, and the door is, like, rocking back and forth. It was rocking so much, I thought it was going to come out of the hook. And at the time, this was when Mark kept having his episodes, his schizophrenic episodes, and so my first instinct was that it was Mark. Because he at the time was still living in the basement and there had been so many tries of his to rescue me and Marion and Emily from the family. So my first instinct was that it was Mark. And like, I just froze in my bed, and it was like -- and you could hear it, it was like knocking, like physical, like, knocking on the door, but the door was, like, banging back and forth at the same time. So I mean, you're like, there's somebody behind the door.
So I waited a few minutes, and then it stopped. And so I went up behind the door and I kind of, like, put my hands on it. And Grandmom always kept the lights on at the very bottom landing, so you could always see the light through the door, but this time the light was not on for some reason. And so I was like, well, what do I do? Because nobody in the house made a peep. Grandmom was sleeping on the same floor and she could hear everything. She didn't make a single peep, she didn't ask me if anything was going on. And I listened because you can hear the creaking of the steps. I was -- nobody was moving around, nobody was standing on any of the wood panels outside the door, there was nothing, it was complete silence. And it was like, here I was, like, do I open the door and see who's there or do I just sit here and wait?
So I go up to the door and I kind of, like, put my hands on the door, and I'm just sitting there for -- listening for, like, any kind of sounds to indicate there is definitely a person on the other side of this door. No creaks, no nothing. I couldn't see the light through the door, and so I was like, something is really not right. And I was like, I either open this door and my uncle's back there and he's going to try to, like, kidnap me, because, I mean, you're not banging on my door with any kind of good intention, the way that that door was moving, or I don't know what's going to be back there. You know?
So I waited and I waited, I probably waited for a good 10, 15 minutes, nobody in the house made a peep. And so I was like, you know what, forget it, I'm going to open this door and see what's going on. So I turn on all the lights in the room first, so I unlatch -- I turn on all the lights in the room first, unlatch the door, open it up, there's nobody there. And I'm like, well, okay, this is very uneventful. So I run out and I turn on the hallway light and there's nobody there, I run in the bathroom, turn that light on, I look in the closet in the bathroom, I open the door to the upstairs, there was nobody anywhere. I was like, what in the world? Like... I was like, this had to be somebody. And I mean, at the time I was like, okay, it couldn't be a ghost. But I really thought it was my uncle losing his mind trying to kill me.
SEAN: He was trying to rescue you.
NATALIE: He was trying to rescue me.
SEAN: Your uncle always had the best intent for you.*****
NATALIE: It was, it was.
Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
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| Natalie, with her uncles Mark and John, in the living room of 21 St. Helens Avenue |
*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.
**Interestingly, within the family, the biggest disagreements about the content of these interviews relate to who was in what bedroom when, not the paranormal activity itself. Family members shifted from one room to another over time. My mother, for example, slept in every room with the exception of my bedroom, the back attic. (When I left, no one ever used that bedroom again for anything.) That said, please take into account that some of these events took place forty years ago. We are all having difficulty placing them in an accurate, collective timeline.
***People did actually live under the front porch! For a while, a friend of my brother Mark stayed under there. Later, a friend of my brother John stayed under the porch. However, there was no one staying under the porch at the time of this incident.
****The previous owner, Mariam Mayfort, reportedly tumbled down the stairs from the second floor to the landing immediately prior to her death.
*****When my brother Mark was off his meds, he would become obsessed with the idea that someone was molesting his nieces. He would attempt to kidnap them from their parents in order to protect them from their would-be abusers.
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 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
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.
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:
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:
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