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

Thursday, December 5, 2019

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

Yours Truly, circa 1975

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 the previous entry, I discussed my own paranormal experiences in the house in a narrative form. This blog, and the ensuing one, consist of my mother, Clara, and my niece, Natalie, interviewing me. I had already interviewed both of them, so my words would not affect their interviews.

Here's a video clip of the interview:

Below you will find the transcript of the first part of the interview. The transcription was made by my niece Emily. The interview has been edited for clarity, and to make it look like I don't say "uh, like, you know, um," every other sentence.

CLARA: It's November 30th, 2019. This is an interview with Sean Paul Murphy by his mother Clara, and his niece Natalie Murphy. We have a few questions, Sean, to ask you.

SEAN: Okay. And I know I am being videotaped.

CLARA: Yes. Do you need a lawyer present?

SEAN: No.

CLARA: What is your goal after all of us have come forward and put our stories out?

SEAN: What's the goal? That's a very complicated question. This will probably be a very long answer. Well, the first thing, I just want to give my background before any of this happened, when I had that near death experience before I wrote my first book, I really decided that I was way too private. I had a lot of stories and a lot of secrets. And I'm like, I'm going to let it all hang out.

So in that book, I pretty much dealt with everything, except the haunting. I dealt with Laurie's death in the book to a degree, but I didn't really deal with Mark's death in detail. And I really think that, me personally, and I think as a family, we're still living in the shadow of those events. The fact that we never talked about the haunting is a sign that we're afraid to talk about it, and if you're afraid of something, if you're afraid to act because of something, then it's sort of like that's your master, you fear it. And I want to be liberated from it.

But actually, you (Clara) started this whole process when you asked me whether I thought that the thing in the house could have been partially responsible for Laurie and Mark's death**. And that's when I wrote Chapel Street. This is like when I wrote my first book, before I wrote that book, I did a video of my life. It looked like I was going to die for a while and Debbie said no one would do a tribute video for me if I did. So I dragged myself downstairs and I essentially touched on all of the elements that were in my first book in that video. Because I felt if I could show that video to people, then I could tell the story of my life, too, because I'd already broken the ice.

But the odd thing is, the video was the prelude to me writing my first book. In this case me writing Chapel Street, which dealt with a lot of these issues indirectly in an exaggerated way, was the prelude to writing this series of blogs. Because Chapel Street let me deal with these issues and see whether I was capable of dealing with them.

There's been a lot of coincidences since we started doing this. When the book was done, I kind of thought I was was done with these issues until Jeanne said we should get together and talk about all of this. So, in a sense, Jeanne started me on this thing to really talk about the entity directly even. Because if you read my thing, I was hesitant to actually write about it directly on the blog. So that -- that's why we're doing it.

So what is the purpose of this? That's sort of the background of how this came as far as it has. What's the purpose, I really think that, you know --

CLARA: As a catharsis?

SEAN: Yeah, it's a catharsis, I think, is going to work for all of us. That's why I'm hoping that we all come out, we all come out publicly. Because I know one thing, there were a lot of things in my first book that bothered me a lot, but once I wrote about them and once I put out the book, those things aren't even at top of consciousness anymore. And I talked to a number of people who had also wrote memoirs, and the same thing happened. People have, like, really traumatic childhood sex abuse that really haunted them, but when they wrote their books it really diminished the power that those events had over them.

So I really -- so one of the main goals is to diminish the power that this thing -- because we really do -- we really -- I like to say we're still in its shadow. It's not directly influencing us anymore, but we're, lingering in its shadow. And it is a shadow creature. It's amazing, the more -- that's the image that people who see it see it as. It's a shadow. And what do you do to get rid of a shadow? You shine light on it. So --

CLARA: Well, don't you think it will always be a part of our lives because we lived it for so long? It's not like just by talking about your childhood that your childhood automatically becomes --

SEAN: I think this will be a long process to doing it. Because you got to remember, one of our kind of rules is we don't talk about it. So by talking -- just talking about it is breaking its power.

CLARA: Its power?

SEAN: Yeah, breaking its power over us, not necessarily its power as an entity. That may be another goal -- I would not be surprised if this ended up with at least me dealing with it directly at some time in the future. You know, because things seem to be working in that direction. Though we'll see whether I will or not.

CLARA: Will you be writing another novel based --

SEAN: I would not write a novel about it. Debbie was very concerned about supernatural blowback from the entity, even though she had never experienced it herself. But she heard enough stories from us. So she called our pastor over, and my pastor heard the story and he thought that this would be excellent for me to write a companion piece to the book about the real haunting and how people should deal with it.

But part of it is --

CLARA: Well, we didn't know how to deal with it.

SEAN: Exactly. So that's why it could be helpful for us. And it's sort of like, why are we doing this publicly? Because doing this publicly gives us the opportunity to help other people. I think it's important, and I would like to help some other people because I think there may be other people in danger. So I'd like to do that.

But that is just part of the thing. This is a two-step process, but the first step is dealing directly with the haunting. The second part is dealing with the deaths of my siblings. Because I think at the initial time, we were in such a state of shock that we didn't really look into it. You think I'm right? Do you think we really investigated it in a very sound way and really looked at all the circumstances leading up to it?

CLARA: I don't think we knew any of the circumstances leading up to it.

SEAN: Well, that's what I mean. I think there's a lot of information out there that we --

CLARA: I think for us it pretty much came out of the blue.

SEAN: Yes.

CLARA: Whereas with Mark, it was easy to see what happened with him, you know, as it was happening, that eventually something like that was going to happen.

SEAN: Yeah, Mark was a train running down the track.

CLARA: Right, exactly.

SEAN: But we still don't even know necessarily all of the details. I mean, we heard what we heard.

CLARA: No, we don't. But we --

SEAN: Yeah, I'm going to look at that. I'm going to hire a researcher to do it. I'm going to get the police reports on both of the deaths. I'd already gotten the autopsy and toxicology for Laurie, but I want the full police reports. I work with people working for ID.*** So I'm going to have one of those researchers look into this.

And I also want to know the immediate circumstances. And I honestly think -- when I look at the people's stories, and we don't have all the stories yet, there were a lot of suicide related things. There's something I've been calling -- a term, I don't know if I invented it, called suicide events, where for instance, if things would have happened, it would have appeared to be suicide. But, you know, they were not willful events. Like you, the brakes in your car, and me on the roof, and --

CLARA: John.

SEAN: And John had an incident. And Jeanne alluded to stuff, but she didn't give any details. So that's why I think it's essential.

And I do really believe we should go public or we're not going to help anyone else. And I think we'll help neutral people that will never even know us and all. Because I think this is more honest. I was talking to a priest yesterday about getting -- not just a normal priest, you know, but a serious priest who is an --

CLARA: Exorcist?

SEAN: Yeah, an exorcist, let's say an exorcist. But I also want to get a Protestant guy in as well to look. I want them to read all of these reports and tell us what they think. But I don't think we know the full capabilities of what we were dealing yet until we get all the stories. So that's why I think it's essential to get all the stories and I want to get some third party stories, people that were not in the family as well. But I really planned for it to essentially be a two part thing, the haunting and the suicides.

And you know, when I've been interviewing people, I've only been dealing with the haunting now, because I think it's too much to deal with both of them at the same time.

NATALIE: So what prevented you from seeking this out while we were still living there and would have had more ability to actually do anything about it?

SEAN: Well, okay, that's a very good question, and this is one of the things I really feel bad about. It's because, you know, I always say there wasn't one haunting, there were seven hauntings at the house. People were experiencing different things at different times, and it's very rare, like when we all heard that knocking on the door on my last day there.

CLARA: Mmhm.

SEAN: But as I think all of us know, most of what happened at the house happened to one person at one time. And even if other people were there, they didn't necessarily hear it, which makes you wonder sometimes whether it was actually really making the noise or if it was just making you hear something that wasn't really there. And I do want to investigate the physics of this as well.

CLARA: Well, there was physical stuff also that happened that could not be denied, like the water turning on.

SEAN: Yeah, things like that. Like the light turning on in my story.

CLARA: Right, right. Light bulbs, you couldn't keep a light bulb in that house.

SEAN: So there was physical stuff. But it's sort of like it was dealing with us individually. And I think a number of people, and I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, but I know a number of us feel guilty that we didn't act individually or act with others. And I definitely look at that in my case. If you read my book Chapel Street, you'll see that it really is dealing with one brother's guilt about not really doing enough for his brother.

Mark

And I'm looking at this like: did I miss this entirely? Did I miss the effect that this was having on Mark or Laurie? I don't think that this would necessarily have stopped what happened, but did we miss this? But it's not only that. There's other people feeling guilt.

And the other thing I feel guilty about is when I prayed and basically locked it out of my room. It never bothered me again. So, up until -- literally it was probably like 1988 to when I left in, I guess was it '94 or '96, it didn't really bother me again in my room. So I didn't do anything. I didn't make any effort. I didn't get together with you or anyone else to say, "Look, you know, Father Callahan doesn't want to come here, you know, this guy won't come here. Well, let's find someone who will come here."

We did at the end because you wanted us to try to find an exorcist right before you sold the house, and we were talking to that Pentecostal guy. But he had just done one of these and he said it almost killed him, and he said it was going to take him about two months to get ready, to get all prayed up to do it. And then he wanted everybody to get baptized and everybody to do this and everybody to do that. We're like, “Dude, we're selling the house in three weeks.” We don't have this amount of time.

CLARA: Do you have answers why none of us ever actually saw entity itself? I mean, we saw at night maybe a shadow person, but we never actually saw what it was.

SEAN: A full figured apparition?

CLARA: Right, right.

SEAN: Well, Natalie, you saw a face.

NATALIE: I saw a face but it wasn't necessarily a --

CLARA: The demonic face.

NATALIE: -- distinct face.

CLARA: Oh, yeah.

NATALIE: But I think to answer your question, it's because I don't think what was in that house was ever bodily, you know.

CLARA: Never had a body.

NATALIE: It never had a body. I think it was more demonic, so therefore it wouldn't have a body necessarily.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: Not like a corporeal body.

CLARA: Yeah, none of us were -- you know, you see a lot of that stuff where there is a demonic presence and people are scratched or something. We never had that kind of thing.

NATALIE: That we know of.

SEAN: We never had any scratching. We had plenty of physical things moving, but we never had scratching.

CLARA: We had touching. I mean, people --

SEAN: Well, I don't know. I -- no. Wait until you hear John's story. You're being --

CLARA: Okay.

SEAN: I never saw it. I can say that I never saw the thing, and it never spoke to me in the way that it spoke to either of you. One thing I do know, if you spoke to it, it knew what you were saying and it could react.

CLARA: Actually, maybe I did see it as that cat that time.

SEAN: But that's not a human being.

CLARA: No.

NATALIE: No.

SEAN: And I tell you one thing, I know that Jeanne saw it as a cat-like creature. She saw it like a leopard. Which is odd, if you remember, because in my story I have the leopard. So Jeanne saw a cat-like creature as well. So this is something we wouldn't know unless we were doing this. You know, so -- so what was the question again?

So why I feel guilty -- why we didn't do it at the house is because I didn't push because once it stopped bothering me, and because we weren't talking about it, I didn't know it was still active. I didn't know how active it was before the Ouija board thing. I lived in that house for ten years before the first thing happened to me that I knew for sure was something.

CLARA: Yeah, you always said that it didn't bother or that you -- "I don't know what you're talking about" kind of.

Decorating the Christmas tree with my brother John in 1986

SEAN: Yeah. Literally all I remember, and I can't even say who it was, Jeanne or Laurie, is them saying that the organ**** would play, that they would hear the organ play. And I think I heard it once, but I don't know whether it was really the organ. You know, I'm up in the third floor. I could tell you exactly what I heard. I heard like one note, like mmmmmmmmm. And if I went through a scale, I could probably tell you what note it was, because it's clear enough in my mind that I remember the sound.

CLARA: Well, when did you --

SEAN: But I didn't know whether it was someone down there playing it.

CLARA: When did you start hearing the pitter-patter of little feet on your --

SEAN: That was probably -- that was around the time of the Ouija board because I know Jeanne was already back. It's hard to remember the time scale.

CLARA: Exactly.

SEAN: But it was around the Ouija board time, it was probably --

CLARA: Because I remember asking you.

SEAN: It was about three weeks at least before the meeting. It was a number of -- no, it might have been months, like three months before we had that meeting. Because I know I didn't really freak out for sure until I ended up on the roof, because that's what really freaked me out.

CLARA: Yeah.

SEAN: But the pitter-patter of feet, that's the small starting of it for me.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: You know, and I think --

CLARA: But I remember asking you did you find anything strange happening, and you were, "No".

SEAN: For ten years I did not hear anything. I did not experience anything. But I felt when I started experiencing it, I started experiencing it a lot. But I do really feel guilty because once it stopped bothering me, it's like I didn't care, you know what I mean? I really feel guilty that I didn't take more of an effort to get to the bottom of it and get it out at the time. It's like, it's not bothering me, so it's like it's over. But it wasn't over. And I'm thinking, had it -- would it have had an effect on Mark?

Because you know, from my experiences at the Charismatic Pentecostal prayer group at Saint Dominic's, there were some people there who were kind of mentally unbalanced. And when the people would like start praying in tongues, this one woman in particular would start saying all this really weird satanic stuff. So on one hand, she was just bipolar/schizophrenic, but when people go into that kind of prayer, she would start saying the satanic stuff. I was just standing there with my mouth open, like what the... I'm not one of these people that believes mental illness is all demonic possession, but I think if you're mentally --

CLARA: It's easier for --

SEAN: It's easier for them to get in.

CLARA: Yeah, through your mind.

SEAN: So that's why I'm saying, I'm not one of these guys that says my siblings weren't responsible for their deaths, but what I'm wondering is, had this not been a mitigating factor --

CLARA: Right, exactly.

SEAN: -- would it have happened?

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: I can tell you, I didn't do enough to stop this thing. So this is still kind of an answer to question one --

NATALIE: Mmhm.

SEAN: -- as it is to question two. But it does answer why. I think it's true of everyone that we never made a concentrated effort as a family to exorcize this thing.

CLARA: I made an effort to exorcize it.

SEAN: I know you did. I think that was good, and I think you were successful for a while. But then again, like you said in your interview, sometimes it would go away for a while anyway.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: You know, and maybe it can't be cast out. There's always a possibility of that. Because it's different than a person.

CLARA: Right.

SEAN: Because in a way, you'd have to figure out -- like one thing people would ask me is, do you find that it's associated with an object? But I don't think so. It's not the piano because we didn't have anything in Hamlet Ave, and it's not the organ. Mark thought it was the organ, that it was connected to the organ, but it wasn't the organ because we didn't have the organ in the beginning. And both Laurie and Jeanne had stuff happening.

CLARA: Yes, but it was more subdued at that point.

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: I think over the years, it just gained power.

SEAN: Yeah.

CLARA: Because of energy from the people.

SEAN: Yeah, well, they do say like poltergeist activity feeds off of young people. But here's the thing: our silence about it didn't weaken it either.

CLARA: No.

SEAN: You know, I think that's something that people got to take into account. The fact -- it was growing stronger even when we weren't talking about it. When no one was talking about it, it was growing stronger. But I'm not saying talking about it made it any weaker either, on the other hand. You know, it may have made you a target, but you know, I'm willing to take that risk, at least now. Debbie less so. He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.

NATALIE: Amen to that.

SEAN: We are battling the principalities and powers of the air.

Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3

Mark during the 1995 renovation of the house.

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.

**My sister Laura Lee Murphy Valenti took her own life on 15 February 1994. My brother Mark Brendan Murphy took his life on 14 September 1999.

***Investigation Discovery. I work as a contractor worker for various networks at Discovery.

****My mother purchased an antique church pump organ. My brother Mark would eventually drag it out into the driveway and chop it up with an ax because he thought it was haunted.

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

SeanPaulMurphyVille

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Thursday, December 5, 2019

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

No comments:

Post a Comment

Counter

Labels

Popular Posts

Statcounter