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

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

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. This entry begins a series of interviews with my family members about their experiences at the house. This is the first time that some of them have ever spoken about the haunting in any detail. Most of it was new to me.

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:

*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.

**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.

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:

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Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

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

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