SeanPaulMurphyVille: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalie's Tale, Pt. 2

Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalie's Tale, Pt. 2

Natalie's high school graduation photo

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 consists of the second part of an interview with my niece Natalie, who lived periodically in the house after her mother Laura Murphy Valenti committed suicide in 1994.

Here is a clip from the interview.

My wife Deborah also participated in the interview. It was transcribed by my niece Emily. I have done some editing for clarity.

SEAN: So anything else happened that you remember? Did anything ever address you by name or try to talk to you while you were in the house?

NATALIE: Multiple times something tried to talk to me and address me specifically. But it would not be in some weird voice. It would usually be in Grandmom's voice. Most of the time, it was in Grandmom's voice, and a lot of the time, come to find out, she wasn't even home at the time. So...

SEAN: Do you remember any of the things it would say?

NATALIE: It wouldn't -- when it would talk to me, it would be like, I would be in my room and I would hear, like, "Nat, what are you doing?" And I'd we like, "I'm in my room. What are you talking about?" And that would be it. And then I'd come running out and I'd be like, "Grandmom? Grandmom?" And she wouldn't be home. And I'd be like, oh, maybe she just went out or something. And she was never home to begin with. It was like -- it never would sit down and have a conversation with me. It would just be like, "Hey, Nat, what are you doing? Natalie, hey?" It would call me, and that would be it. I guess maybe I didn't give it enough of the fear factor. I was just like, "What?"

SEAN: So would you say that the activity was consistent or were there certain times where it was very intense and then other times it was very slow or nonexistent, or would you say you there was a consistent presence at the house?

NATALIE: Consistently, there was a feeling that a presence was there. I always felt like something was watching me or that something was on me. But the activity was not always active. It was not like there was an occurrence every single day or that, you know, you'd have something this week. You'd go sometimes a month or two and nothing seemingly happened. We always had this joke, Grandmom and I, that stuff would just go missing. You would try to look for something and you can't find it, and she would -- we would just be like, oh, just give it a couple weeks, it will show back up in the exact spot that you were looking for it. So it's hard to say whether it was that something or somebody else moved it, stuff like that.

I mean, it wasn't always something big like the things I've already said. It was just calm. But you always felt the need to talk to yourself because you knew somebody was sitting there watching you or just -- it just -- it's the weirdest feeling. And that was probably -- it took probably a year after ever moving out of the house completely before that feeling ever went away.

DEBBIE: Did you ever call on the Lord?

NATALIE: No. Because at that time, my faith wasn't the way it is now. But I knew he was there. And later -- in stories we'll get to later, that was part of the reason why I was never afraid to talk about it. Or later when we talk about me taking EVPs, I was never afraid because I already knew who God was. But I never called on God because I didn't know how to do stuff like that at the time.

SEAN: Now did you ever find yourself in an unexpected suicidal funk at the house?

NATALIE: There was an instance back before I got married to Mike** and he was visiting, and I think Grandmom was either in Las Vegas or she was at Taylor's Island, it was just him and I there. And at the time, Dougie was still in the garage outside, that's where his shop was. And somehow or another, we had made food, and then we were in my room upstairs, and all of a sudden, like, the smoke alarms go off. I was like, what in the world? The whole first floor was covered in smoke.

And so we run downstairs to the kitchen. The kitchen -- like, there's -- the oven mitt was next to the stove and it was on fire. I think we had, like, bacon, there was bacon grease everywhere, but the bacon grease was hard as a rock, like cold. And it was like, how in the world did this fire start? Because the oven wasn't -- the stove wasn't on, the bacon grease wasn't even melted, if it was, like, hot enough to have a fire.

But the oven mitt was in flames and caused the whole house to be billowed in smoke. And we opened the windows, and at the time Dougie was outside in his garage, and he was like, what the hell's going on? We're like -- and I mean it was billowing out -- it was smoky. So I can -- looking back, I can see how easily that would have been an attempt to harm myself or something, maybe, for sure.

Mike and Natalie

DEBBIE: Was your grandfather in the house?

NATALIE: He was not there. I think he had already died at this point.

SEAN: Because people have said that, well, I would not call them suicide attempts, but suicide events, events that would be misconstrued as suicide at the house. And was there ever anything else like that?

NATALIE: Not that I recall, anything that would have been misconstrued or anything along those lines of any kind of harming myself.

SEAN: Do you think it made any deliberate attempts to harm you?

NATALIE: Just that incident that I just described with the fire in the kitchen. That would be, as far as physical harm, the only time that anything like that, like, dangerous happened to me.

SEAN: Now, did you feel at any time that you were under psychological oppression while you were in the house?

NATALIE: Psychologically, I was very depressed. I mean, I had dark depressions, especially during the times I lived there.

SEAN: Part of that would be natural, though. Considering the circumstances of your life.

NATALIE: Well, I was also a teenager, so it's hard to tell whether, you know, it was teenage emotions or whatever. But I feel like maybe it was a little bit worse because it just always felt like -- you know how you'll be down on yourself, and it's natural for people to do that. But sometimes it would be like, a little too down on myself. But I never really did anything or acted on it.

SEAN: Can you tell us about these events that happened after you moved back to the house?

NATALIE: After I moved back, I ended up in the other front room. I guess we call that Bedroom Number B. [Front East]

SEAN: I want to ask a question. So you chose to live in Bedroom B. Was Bedroom C, the master bedroom available but you chose not to live there?

NATALIE: Grandmom was back in that room, and I wouldn't have chosen to move back in that room anyway.

SEAN: And John was downstairs?

NATALIE: At this point, John had actually moved into the basement apartment. So during that time, things would happen -- like, I had a cabinet on my wall, and it had been there for, like -- I mean, this was many years after I moved back in, and then all of a sudden, one night, like, I had all of my little knickknacks and stuff, and it just completely fell off the wall. But it didn't fall (mimics falling straight down), it like fell (mimics falling diagonally down), off the wall in the middle of the night. And I was like, what in the world is going on up in here? This would be the time when furniture started moving a lot.

SEAN: Did the furniture move in that room or did it move in other rooms?

NATALIE: The furniture would move -- you would hear it move on the whole first floor. And every now and then, I would hear it move in the attic. And the thing about that is, at the time, there was no furniture in the attic, so I don't know what was actually moving up there. That's actually what caused me to do the EVPs up in the attic.

SEAN: So this was after Mark was gone. So -- and was it just you and your grandmother and then John in the basement living in the house at that time?

NATALIE: Mmhm.

SEAN: Now, before we jump -- before we jump past my father, your grandfather.

NATALIE: Oh, yeah.

SEAN: So tell me about your grandfather's -- his walks at night, but first let's set the stage. At this time, he was not living in the second floor bedrooms, he was sleeping on the first floor bedroom.

NATALIE: At this time, that bow-windowed room, I guess Bedroom A as you would call it, was empty. And I think there might have been, like, a futon bed or something in that room. So nobody was in that room. He was downstairs in the newer bedroom-- that was where it was closed off from the living room, from the original living room next to the bathroom downstairs, where the organ used to be. He was in that bedroom. And so Grandmom would go visit Sharon or go to Las Vegas or go to Taylor's Island, so she wouldn't be home. And, I mean, I was a teenager and I actually was probably in college, so I didn't need her around. So a lot of times, it would be me and Grandpop. Maybe John would be home in the basement, but I mean, he could come and go as he pleased, so I never knew if he was home.

Douglas Murphy, Sr., in the
living room of 21 St. Helens Avenue

So I would be in my room a lot because, like, there was no place to watch TV except for the living room, and Grandpop would always be watching Conway Twitty or something, like I'm going to want to watch that? So I'd be in my room, and in my room, because the light was on at the landing, you could always see the light around the doorway. And I know at times I would see shadows move by the door on the outside, and I would open it up and be like, what the heck is that? And there'd be nobody there.

Then later, I'd start to hear the floor creaking and then shadows moving, and I looked, and it was him, and he would come up and he would go all the way upstairs. And I was like that's really weird. So I would just close my door and just kind turn off the TV and just sit there and listen. What in world is he doing up there, you know? It's so weird, there was nothing up there, there was no furniture.

So after a couple of times of him doing it, I would wait for him to do it and I'd go and I'd listen. I'd open the bottom [attic] door and I'd listen to see what is he doing? And I know there were at least two or three times I tried to walk up the steps, and it was hard because the steps were so old and they would creak, so he would always know if you walked up the steps. Because there -- probably one time he was like, "Go back to your room!" And that was so weird coming from him because --

SEAN: He wasn't --

NATALIE: -- He wasn't like that. But he would go up there and have conversations, and I don't know what they were about because I didn't really listen. I was actually listening more to hear if somebody responded to him and not what he was saying. Because it was like he -- it was like he was talking to somebody. And he just started -- and it was closer to the time that he died, but he would just sit there and have conversations about, like -- and people could write it off as he was an alcoholic. But at this time, he wasn't drinking that much. So it wasn't like when he was drunk, because he would sit there and talk to himself when he would get drunk, but this was later when he kind of stopped drinking a lot.

SEAN: And he was up on the third floor. Which room was he in? Was he in the back bedroom or was he in the Hell Room?

NATALIE: I want to say that he was in the front bedroom, because the couple times that I could make it to the second landing before going upstairs, it looked like the light was on in the front bedroom.

SEAN: The Hell Room?

NATALIE: The Hell Room.

SEAN: Okay. So you never heard anyone responding to him?

NATALIE: No, I never heard anybody respond to him, and I was really, really trying.

SEAN: So but did your grandfather ever talk to you about events in the house that could be paranormal?

NATALIE: Him and I never had conversations about anything that happened in the house.

SEAN: Okay. How would you say your relationship with him was?

Natalie and her grandfather Doug

NATALIE: I would say our relationship was pretty good. We would sit and talk sometimes. He -- there were a lot of times when I was little that he would watch me, he would take me places, so we had a really good relationship, I think.

SEAN: So he loved you. So it wasn't like he was being mean to you or anything by saying, "What are you doing down there?" or anything?

NATALIE: No, he never was mean to me. I mean, granted, like, when I would do something bad, he would yell at me. But like, he would -- it was very rare that he would say -- so it was odd that he would yell at me that time I was going up the steps. I was like, what? Especially because I was an adult.

SEAN: So okay. You were saying you would hear furniture moving downstairs. Did you ever go down and the furniture was actually moved?

NATALIE: There was never a time I actually saw the furniture moved anywhere. There were -- speaking of the time when we were, like, oh, more than one people had heard the same thing. There was a time when the furniture was moving and John came up from the basement apartment and Grandmom and I both went downstairs because it was late, it was probably, like, 12:00 o'clock, all of us heard furniture moving. Because John came around upstairs and was like, "What in the world are you guys doing?" And we came downstairs because we were like, "What were YOU doing?" Because nobody was on the first floor. So it was odd. It was like big stuff moving, like slamming. Bam, bam, and nothing was moving.

SEAN: So here's a question, and this is a question everybody asks all of us: Why did you come back to the house? Why did you stay at the house?

NATALIE: Well, I stayed because it's not like I had a lot of options to live. Well, I mean, I did, but not options that I wanted to take. And, like I said before, I was never physically threatened. It was stuff that was unusual and stuff sometimes that would scare you, but I never felt like I was physically going to be harmed. I was just like, oh, well, we live in a haunted house.

SEAN: So any other events that you would like to relate?

NATALIE: I feel like there are. Let me think. There were -- well, there was the EVPs that I caught.

SEAN: Okay. Tell us the history of the EVP.***

NATALIE: I decided to do an EVP, and it's called an electronic voice phenomenon, with the nice little cassette player and the blank cassette. And I decided, because I always watch all the ghost shows, I lived in a haunted house, and I watched ghost shows and I was trying to see if they were actually telling the truth. Because I knew what the truth was and I could poke [?] up your scams with your fake ghost stuff because my ghost didn't do that. So there we are. I decided to take an EVP.

So I got this cassette player, and Grandmom went to Jeanne's house one night for dinner because we would go over to her house for dinner every now and then. Then I decided, you know what? Nobody's going to be here, so I'm going to take an EVP because the house will be quiet, you're not going to have the noise from the street because it was at night. Perfect time. Perfect conditions.

So I get my little cassette, I get it all ready, and I run upstairs because it was dark and I did not like going upstairs during the daylight, let alone the dark. Run up there and I set it right in the middle of the Hell Room floor and I push record and I go back downstairs. We go to Jeanne's house, and I'm like, oh, well, I got to go, because it was a 90 minute tape. I was like, oh, it's not -- it's done. I want to see what I got. So I go back home, Grandmom stayed there, and at this point it was just -- I was upstairs in my room. I stood there at the door like, do I go up and get it tonight or do I just wait until tomorrow? Because nobody was home and the house was dark. You know, the house comes alive when nobody's there.

John was in the basement, so I'm like, I'm going to do it. If I scream, maybe John will hear me, you know? So I get up there and I go back in my room and I just, like, play it. I put it in my stereo and I turned the volume all the way up, you know. It's extra creepy in a spooky house, listening to the static of a cassette player. It's great.

So I'm just sitting there, doing all of my own stuff, and then all of a sudden I, like, hear, like, these sounds. And I'm like, what in the world? I'm like, rewind, let me play it again. It was like, what is that? So I called John. "John, come upstairs. You're not going to believe what I found." So he comes up and listens to it. He's like, "That's creepy." He's like, "Wait till you tell my mother this." It was like, I don't want to tell her. She'll get mad.

She did get very mad at me for doing that because she didn't know I did that. I didn't tell her the whole time at dinner or anything that I did it. I told her after I found something. She was like, "Why would you do that? You're messing with it. You're going to make it more active." I was like, "It's going to be as active as it wants to be." Like... So.

SEAN: I would say that your grandmother was probably kind of wise because attempts to communicate with it in the past resulted in very serious --

NATALIE: I know.

SEAN: -- serious activity. So do you think you caught anything on the EVP? But first, I don't know where the EVP is. I know you brought it over to play at our house once and my wife made you turn it off. And so who has that EVP now? I know it freaked out Marion and Emily when you played it at Raspe Avenue, you know, and apparently Emily went running from the house, you know.

NATALIE: I don't remember that, but maybe. I don't know.

SEAN: Do you have the original?

NATALIE: I don't have the original.

SEAN: Someone digitized it.

NATALIE: I recorded it to my computer back in th, like the mid '90s, where you just put the microphone to the thing and record it to your computer.

SEAN: So do you still have that recording?

NATALIE: I thought I did, but I don't. I looked for it but I haven't found it.

SEAN: I thought I had a copy of that recording. What I do -- what we do have is an additional -- with the last -- not the last minute, but about a minute of it that has what seems to be a woman, some voice on it.

NATALIE: Yeah.

SEAN: Gasping.

NATALIE: Well, what you have is -- that's what I recorded. That's the only part of the whole 90 minutes, is that little bit of that recording, because I didn't record -- I didn't copy the whole thing, I just copied that little section.

SEAN: I have that. So did you ever have any experiences with anything once you left the house? You said you had dreams. Did you ever have any visitations from the entity or the thing that was in the house?

NATALIE: You know, there was this experience I had after I had moved out of the house, when I moved to Buffalo. It was probably like, I don't know, probably like a year after I moved out of the house. I was sleeping one night and I had -- my bedroom door was open to my room that I was sleeping in, and all of a sudden I hear, like, all these people talking. And they weren't talking to each other, they were talking to me. And I just wake up, and I was living with Mike at the time and I just said, "Close the door because they won't shut up." And like, he was like, "What are you talking about?" I was like, "Just close the door because these people won't leave me alone." And so he closed the door and that was the last time I ever had any kind of reach out from the house.

But every now and then I have dreams that I'm in a house, and every time I have a dream I'm in a house, it's in that house all the time. And it seems like whenever I have those dreams, Grandmom has a dream about that house, too. It's weird.

SEAN: Okay. So now let's get to a serious question. I know I want to interview another time about your mother's death.

NATALIE: Are you recording this?

SEAN: Yes. But at any time -- I mean, do you think that this entity in the house could in any way have been responsible for either the death -- you know, and I'm not saying deliberately, but in part responsible for the death of either your mother, your uncle Mark or your grandfather?

NATALIE: I think whatever was in that house had some part in -- I'm not saying it was the sole reason, but I think it probably had a part because the oppression that you always felt when you were there. And even, you know, it took probably a year or two after I moved out to actually feel like you weren't being watched and you didn't have this thing hanging on you. And so if you -- I mean, everybody still lived in the area and they would always visit and stuff. I could see how easily it would be hard to shake that away from you. Whatever it was, it could follow you if it wanted to, like, for sure. So I don't think it was the sole reason, but I could see how it could persuade you to do things easily.

SEAN: Do you think -- you've already kind of answered this, but do you think what was in that house was limited to the house?

NATALIE: I don't think that whatever was in that house was limited to the house. I definitely think it was able to leave or at least, you know, follow you for at least a little bit. Yeah.

SEAN: But you never personally, other than some dreams, never personally experienced any phenomenon that you would attribute to the entity in that house away from the house other than those dreams you mentioned?

NATALIE: No, I never experienced anything outside of that.

SEAN: Looking back now, and you are an Evangelical Christian, so you have a Christian world view of the --

NATALIE: My belief is that anything that was in that house would have to be a demon because it couldn't be anything that's human because God doesn't allow that to happen. Anything that walks the earth is going to be of Lucifer.

SEAN: It could be angelic.

NATALIE: I don't think it could be angelic.

SEAN: Yeah. So did you find that the entity was more attached to certain areas of the house than others?

NATALIE: It seemed like the entity liked certain areas maybe a little more, but there was never any place that you didn't feel like it was there, I guess. There was no, like -- there was no free zone.

SEAN: What were some of the places you think that it liked more than other places?

NATALIE: It really liked the front bedroom in the Hell Hole, that bedroom. It really liked the master bedroom. It really liked that closet thingy between the bathroom and the bedroom in the hall. I always felt like it was in there, like that's where it lived. And then where else did it like to go? I feel like it was just in the shadows, just lurking. But those places were definitely the center points.

SEAN: So do you think it was attached to any items?

NATALIE: I don't feel like it was attached to any thing particularly. Maybe people.

SEAN: Do you think it interacted with some people more than others?

NATALIE: It absolutely interacted with some people more than others.

DEBBIE: Who more?

Natalie and her grandmother Clara

NATALIE: I think it interacted with my grandmother way more than it interacted with most people. I feel like it didn't interact with me as much because I was just kind of like, I don't know. There was never a point that I got, like, scared and it terrified me. I was just kind of like, whatever. I'm just not going to deal with you. Whereas I feel like she kind of fed into whatever it was doing, and that kind of made it stronger.

SEAN: But that said, you felt the presence of the entity even when she was not at the house?

NATALIE: Even when she was not there, you still felt it just as strong. And the fact that it would mimic her, at least to me it would mimic her. I mean, it could have mimicked any of us, but it always mimicked her for me. Which is odd, because, I mean, considering my history, it could have easily have mimicked my mom to really mess with my head, but it never did, you know?

DEBBIE: Do you feel God's protecting you?

NATALIE: I feel like God has protected me. The funny thing is I look back on all of this stuff and I say, wow, if that was a demon right in my life, God was right there even though the demon was right there. You know, and for instance, with the electronic voice phenomenon that I did Grandmom was mad that I did it, but I did it because I was like, I'm not afraid of whatever this is. It's not going to hurt me because I already know. I already know God. So I was kind of like, you let it make you afraid, it's going to make you afraid.

SEAN: Okay. I think we got everything we need. Unless you have any final words about the haunting? We will deal with other situations at a later date.

NATALIE: Final word about the haunting... You know, the -- it wasn't necessarily haunting specific, but there was a time when I remember all the lights went out in Baltimore and I had to go to work the next day, and I was like, man, I have to go home and get my clothes. My friend was like, oh, you can stay at my house, but it was like, I need clothes, I still have to go home and get clothes. I remember rolling up the street and all the lights are out, and I looked at the house just standing there, menacing, and I'm like, there are no lights on in this house and I really need to get clothes for work. And I sat there, and I pulled my car up, and I put my high beams on so that it was, like, shining bright on this house, and I just sat there and was like, I got to go in this house.

And I sat there and I sat there, and luckily John rolls up right there and he stops and he does the same thing I did, and he was like, we got to go in this house. And I was like, I know we got to go in this house. And so he's like, all right, we're going to run in this house, and when we come out, we're going to wait for the other, and if the other one doesn't come out, somebody about to go and get somebody. I was like, all right.

Well, he had to go to the basement, and there was, like, no way the light was going to go on in the basement. I at least had all front rooms except for the freaky hallway to go up the steps. So, you know, we run in, and I was, like, the whole time (heavy breathing) like catch your breath, like, please don't let anything come out. This would be the worst time to scare me. I mean, it never scared me, but I was like, this would be the time that it would do that. You don't, like, question if it's going to do it. But... And then going back to Jeff****, he always said, you never go into the mansion if the light's not on on the porch. And there were a couple of times I would go there and Grandmom wasn't home and the light wasn't on and I was like, I'm just going to stay at somebody's house tonight because I'm not going there and turning it on.

Her husband Tep, her daughter Gianna, her father
Frank, Natalia, and her grandmother Clara. 2013

Here is a clip from the EVP discussed earlier. This was transferred from analog tape into a computer microphone, not directly. Therefore, more interference and noise probably was added. The original tape was hidden away at my mother Clara's house, but it seems to have been either lost or thrown away.

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.

**Mike and Natalie married on 14 June 2008. They later divorced.

***EVP. Electronic Voice Phenomenon. This when someone attempts to capture communication with or by a spiritual entity via a recording device.

****The late Jeff DiNatale was a friend of my brother John. He was a very frequent visitor to the house.

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

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SeanPaulMurphyVille

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalie's Tale, Pt. 2

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