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| John and his mother Clara in the living room.* |
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 first half of an interview with younger brother John. John is unique because he was, to the best of my knowledge, the first child raised entirely in the house.
Here is a clip from the interview.
My wife Deborah and my mother Clara were also present for the interview. It was transcribed by my niece Emily. It has been edited for clarity.
SEAN: So you have a really odd distinction when it comes to the lore of 21 Saint Helens Avenue, is that you are the first baby, to my knowledge the only baby brought into the house. Prior to our arrival in 1974, the youngest person to have lived at Saint Helens Avenue that we're aware of is Charles Immler, the son of John and Emily Immler. He was born in 1901 and they moved into the house in 1915.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: So he was 14 years old. And they moved out in 1927, so he would have been 26 possibly, depending when his birthday was and when they moved out, and he probably was there that entire time, would be my guess, because in those days people stayed at home.
JOHN: So they lived there for a little while, yeah.
SEAN: Yeah. So he was there for 12 years.
JOHN: Right.
SEAN: And he was the youngest. When we moved in, in 1974, Jeanne was probably 9 and Mark*** was 10, and then the rest of us were over the age of Charles Immler. So in a sense, you are --
JOHN: What was the date in 1974 that you guys actually moved in?
SEAN: It was spring.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: Early spring. Now, Miriam Mayford died on February 5th, 1974.
JOHN: Okay.
CLARA: I was going to say it was either in late April or early May.
SEAN: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, too. I was thinking.
JOHN: So you guys were there about a year when I was born.
CLARA: Yeah. It seems to me it was right after Easter.
SEAN: Yeah. So technically speaking, John, you were the only human being conceived in that house, unless it was, you know, in a parking lot somewhere.
JOHN: That's interesting.
SEAN: Yeah, so you are literally the only one. And also before I go in, on the blogs I say that there's this fear that maybe people are saying this is all some sort of mass hysteria or religious thing, but you have no religious belief, would you say?
JOHN: That's pretty safe to say, I think, yeah.
SEAN: So while you were growing up, you were not in any way seeking after supernatural or religious experience?
JOHN: I don't know. I feel like I was kind of interested maybe in things like that.
SEAN: Like the occult or more religious?
JOHN: It's hard to say. Maybe a little bit of both. I mean, obviously I was introduced to religion at an early age.
SEAN: You did go to Saint Dominic's.
JOHN: Went to Saint Dominic's. Went to Corpus Christi with my mother to Mass quite a bit, ran around in the rectory, got to know a lot of, I guess you could say church people.
SEAN: Priests.
JOHN: Priests, you know, the lay people that take part in the church and do the things behind the scenes and stuff. So I was always kind of in that kind of realm in a way, I guess you could say. As far as the occult stuff, I don't know. I guess maybe that was something that maybe kind of went along with it, I would guess. There was a lot of that in the air in those days, you know?
SEAN: Like with music and...
JOHN: With the music, and I mean it was kind of in the news, there was a lot of people talking about --
SEAN: The Satanic Panic.
CLARA: New age. There was a lot of new age.
JOHN: There was a lot of new age stuff. There was, like you say, Satanic panic. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and people were saying Dungeons and Dragons was making people worship the Devil and things like that. So yeah, I guess you could say I was kind of interested in those things.
SEAN: Okay. So now let's get back. I was just trying to lay a groundwork for your background at the time of these events. So how early was it that you began to think something was wrong at the house?
JOHN: That's hard to say. I mean, it was definitely as a young kid. I don't know, early memories that it was always kind of something coming up the steps behind you, something kind of creepy in the corner watching you at night type thing. It's hard to say. I would say early/mid '80s? I mean, I was probably 9 or 10? I mean, it's hard to say, you know. Childhood memories are... It's hard to say when all that stuff starts.
SEAN: Would you say preschool? Do you have any memories of preschool?
JOHN: I don't think preschool. That would be too young.
CLARA: You didn't have -- did you have any imaginary friends when you were little that you can remember?
JOHN: I don't know about imaginary friends. I mean, being that I was always kind of like the only kid in the house, I always kind of made --
CLARA: Right.
JOHN: You know, played by myself. But I don't know about any real imaginary friend type things. But there was definitely a sense that -- like you say, I kind of grew up there so I didn't really say something's wrong, but there was always kind of the sense that there was kind of something lurking, I guess you could say.
SEAN: Now, did anyone ever discuss in these early times that there was -- anybody else ever discuss with you any experiences they were having?
JOHN: I remember as a kid there was always a legend that Mark or Laurie**** had heard the organ play. That always went around, that was always around the dinner table type of thing.
SEAN: But no one talked about seeing entities or hearing voices or anything?
JOHN: I don't think so, no. It was just kind of a feeling kind of for me that there was just kind of something following you up the steps, something like you wanted to run in your room and lock the door at night. I always thought that was kind of weird. I always locked my bedroom door when I lived in that house.
SEAN: Do you think it kept it out?
JOHN: I don't know, but I haven't really done that since. I always locked the bedroom door, I always kept the key in the lock in the door. As soon as you shut the door, you always lock it, click.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Because there was always a sense that there was something right behind you, like it almost was going to get you type thing.
SEAN: Now, at some time, did the experience grow more intense? Did the thing start behaving a different way in a more physical way or manifest itself in some way?
JOHN: I think some things definitely picked up as I became like a teenager type time.
SEAN: What are you talking about, 13, 14, or like 15, 16, 17? Were you like in high school or junior high or...
JOHN: Probably junior high was when I would say things started to kind of pick up. So what would that be, probably 1988, '89-ish time, and then up through high school and beyond, I guess. So yeah, there was a good couple year period there when I things were at a higher, yeah, at a peak, at a definitely higher pace, making itself known more.
SEAN: Okay. So Jeanne came back from England in '86 and Marion was born in '86 as well.
JOHN: Yeah.
SEAN: So was it around the time they were there or do you think this was after?
JOHN: I think things started to be known around the time Jeanne came back from England.
CLARA: For you.
JOHN: For me, yeah. I mean, lines started to be drawn. That's when other people were scared of it too. It wasn't, as you say, like an imaginary type thing. That's when people started running down the steps in the middle of the night, that's when doors started slamming, that's when figures started showing up a lot more often. That's when cats started walking around the house. We never had any cats.
CLARA: Mrs. Mayford had a lot of cats.
JOHN: Yeah. The neighbors always talked about how Mrs. Mayford had cats.
SEAN: Wow. That's an important piece of information.
JOHN: So that stuff, that, like, friends of mine in high school would swear that they saw a cat. They'd go downstairs to get a glass of ice or whatever.
CLARA: Just a regular cat, not a big black cat? I mean, just a regular cat?
JOHN: I suppose. People would say, oh, we saw a cat. You never said you had a cat. I'd say, no, we don't have a cat. We have a dog, but the dog's away with my mom, so it couldn't have been the dog. Like, you know, when I'd have friends over or whatever.
SEAN: So what was the first real thing that happened? First off, did --
JOHN: Well...
SEAN: How did it start messing with you?
JOHN: I would say that things kind of started to become displaced. You'd set something down and walk and go to the bathroom and come back and it would be gone and it would be nowhere to be found. And then three days later when you walk in the room, it would be sitting there on your left like it was there the whole time, you just missed it. These are the things that it really started to kind of do things like that. You started to think it was kind of tricks, almost like it was playing a joke. But you knew it wasn't really a joke, but you just kind of... I don't know.
It's like, that wasn't the scary part. These things would happen so often that you kind of didn't even question it. You almost, you would forget about it. It's not like you expected it to happen, but when it happened, you just kind of said, oh, that's right, and went about your day and made due without it until it showed up again. I mean, we all kind of talked about that type of stuff happening.
Yeah, I mean, things like, I don't know, the room would get darker than normal, you would think, like at night in certain spots. You know, your night vision, swear it was seeing things, you know.
SEAN: Like what kind of things would you be seeing?
JOHN: I don't know, things that people now would probably say are like shadow people type stuff. Just like maybe not a full form or full figure, but almost like a cloaked type person standing, like, six or eight feet away from you across the room. Not quite in the corner. You could tell they were kind of out in the -- it wasn't like a shadow in the corner. It was kind of three-dimensional.
SEAN: You kept your bed by the door on that wall, right, mostly?
CLARA: No.
JOHN: No, my bed was on that wall when mom was in that room too when I was a little kid, which was prior to any of this. But my bed was always kind of in the other corner, if you can imagine, where the holly tree was.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: That window was always kind of either above my head or to my right, in one way like that.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: So I was kind of always in that corner.
CLARA: So your feet were to the door?
JOHN: My feet were either to the street or to the door, yeah, right. Yeah, one of those ways. I would change up the floor plan or whatever you call it.
SEAN: So if a shadow while you were sleeping in the room, if you would see one of these shadow figures, did it generally materialize in the same place?
JOHN: On the doorway side of that wall, either -- so it would be the wall going into what was daddy's bedroom, I would say.
SEAN: Yeah, by the door though?
JOHN: Yeah, by that door or further over along that wall.
SEAN: Natalie was saying that's where something would enter the room, it would usually be right by there as well.
JOHN: Yeah, that door always seemed like it attracted a lot of attention. Because you could see the crack of light through that door, and there was always -- because at the bottom of the steps, a lot of times you would keep that little night light on.
CLARA: Yeah, I always left that night light on.
JOHN: So you could always see a little bit of light through that crack in the door. So I always kind of kept an eye on that.
SEAN: Did you ever see something moving in front of that light, blocking that light?
JOHN: You couldn't always see the light, yeah, so I don't know.
SEAN: Now, before we go into the figures a little more, did you ever hear any footsteps or knocking or anything up on the second floor?
JOHN: You're talking about up on -- into the attic?
SEAN: No, your room. Your room.
JOHN: Knocking? Yes. Footsteps, you could -- I want to say you almost always heard footsteps on the ceiling no matter where you were in that house. There was almost always footsteps on the floor above you, whether I was in my bedroom, whether I was in the living room, or even into the point when I lived in the basement, there were always footsteps on the floor above you at night when you knew that nobody was awake. Some of that, of course, obviously would be house shifting, but ahh...
SEAN: Nah. I was hearing footsteps on the roof.
JOHN: Yeah, there were a lot of footsteps going on at night, and it became something that kind of my friends were used to. As you know, I had a lot of friends that were there a lot, and the people that were there a lot kind of got used to these same things.
SEAN: Yeah. But they all heard it?
JOHN: They all heard it, yeah. They all heard it.
SEAN: Did anyone else see the shadow figure?
JOHN: I mean, there was always talk about it, but it's hard for me to say because --
CLARA: Didn't Richard see it?
JOHN: Richard next door?
SEAN: Let's wait for Richard next door.
JOHN: Well, it's hard for me to say because I don't know who really saw what and who just kind of wanted to get on the bandwagon in a way. So I can really only tell you what I saw, to be honest.
SEAN: Okay. But basically it wasn't necessarily an isolated thing?
JOHN: It was not an isolated thing. Other people knew about it. Some people came to the house once, never believed it. Some people came to the house and saw something that freaked them out and they left and they wouldn't come back. Because I knew a lot of kids through the neighborhood or through school or whatever, and it seemed like we always had a lot of people over, you know, so...
SEAN: At that time you probably had the most active social life of people coming into the house.
JOHN: Yeah, that's probably safe to say at that point when I was a teenager, yeah.
SEAN: Okay. So now before we go on, let's go back to -- your mother brought it up. So Richard who lived next door.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: You had an experience in there with Richard that seemed to indicate something.
JOHN: Well, I -- I don't know.
SEAN: Didn't something happen in your room and Richard said, "Oh, it's here, too"?
JOHN: Well, Richard, I don't know if Richard saw anything or if there was an experience in the house, but Richard one time -- Richard didn't come over a lot.
CLARA: No.
JOHN: When we were kids, Richard and I were a lot closer, but Richard didn't come over a lot but he knew everybody, whatever. So he came over once in a while. He came over the one time and I don't know what was going on, but we started talking about it and Richard kind of knew what was going on. Like, in his own thing. He kind of knew that there was something that was going on there that was a known thing.
CLARA: In his house?
JOHN: Alluded to it, that it was happening in his house as well.
SEAN: And Richard lived exactly next door.
JOHN: Richard lived right next door.
SEAN: At 23 Saint Helens Avenue.
CLARA: I thought that at the time when you told me about it, you were up in the room and you had that bureau that had the mirror on it, and something black walked in front of the mirror and that's when Richard said "Oh, you have it, too."
JOHN: I don't remember anything specifically.
CLARA: That's what you told me at the time, yeah.
JOHN: But I do remember that Richard -- I mean, we didn't talk about it. Him and I, we honestly weren't really close, but the one time he did -- he mentioned it and we talked about it and he alluded to the fact that there was something there at his house, too, which got us all talking about it. I believe that there were other people there with us, and he started -- because his grandparents, I believe, lived in that house for a very long time, and, in their family, it was kind of the same thing going on. Like, there was definitely a haunting of some kind in their house as well that their family knew about.
SEAN: So back to the shadow figure.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: Now, did you ever see any of the -- did it appear in any sort of full apparition or was it just a cloaked figure that you would see?
JOHN: It was always kind of a cloaked figure, I think. It kind of stayed, you could say, at a distance. It never really got close or anything, but it was definitely there, just kind of watching, I always felt like it was just kind of affirming itself, kind of showing you that it kind of really was there.
SEAN: Now, did you get any indication that it was either male or female?
JOHN: I never got any indications. I never considered it male or female, to be honest. I never really put a gender to it.
SEAN: Did you put any sort of -- do you think it was human in nature?
JOHN: I never thought it was human. Whatever happened there, I don't think it was human.
SEAN: Okay. Now, let's get -- now, did you ever see the black blob? Like, a couple other people at the house would describe sort of like a cloud or blob.
JOHN: I don't know about a blob. There was definitely like a cloudy thing.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: When you say "blob," I'm thinking more of like something physical, but there was definitely like a cloudy kind of intangible type thing that would kind of -- it would ultimately become this cloaked figure.
SEAN: So the blob would become the cloaked figure? It would start as a blob?
JOHN: It would kind of seep in as, like, just a smoky type thing and it would turn into this thing, yeah. It would take a little bit of time. It wasn't like it just walked through the wall. It would just kind of start to...
CLARA: Manifest.
JOHN: Manifest would be a good word, yeah.
SEAN: Now, this thing you said was kind of looking at you, sort of like maybe staking a claim to that, like this is mine or...
JOHN: I felt like there were times when it was like pressure on me when I was -- like, it would kind of wake you up almost, and you would be kind of wide awake and it would kind of be there.
SEAN: Still in the corner, so at a distance?
JOHN: Well, it would be standing -- like I was saying, it was three dimensional. It was -- I mean, it was only from here to there, it's not like it was far, but it's not like it was something that was in your face. But it was standing -- I mean, if I got up, it was almost like I could touch it with my hand, it was that close. But it was right there. It was, yeah.
SEAN: And did you feel it had any hostile intent towards you?
JOHN: Oh, yeah, definitely. I never felt safe when it was around at all. There was no way to get away from it. I mean, you would be so scared that there wasn't much you could do. Like, you see it in the movies when people get so frightened and they freeze, you know, and it's kind of, you know, fight, flight, or freeze.
SEAN: Now, was this something you mainly saw during the night or only at the night?
JOHN: Well, that's something I was thinking about. This thing would be something you would wake up at night and kind of see it. The only time I ever saw anything like that would be waking up at night and seeing this, yes. That was always at night.
SEAN: Now, you say "this thing" as if there was more than one thing.
JOHN: Well, that's what I was trying to -- yeah, well, we'll say shadow person or whatever only came at night, yeah.
SEAN: But was there something else?
JOHN: There were things that would happen during the day. We had a lot of hanging lights, you know. I don't want to say chandeliers, but you know, hanging ceiling lights, and they would -- I witnessed them swing, like, once like a pendulum and bam, straight back, stop. You know, and I mean, this is --
SEAN: First floor or second?
JOHN: First floor. I saw that happen to the entrance hall light. You would see the lights in the living room kind of shake and move a little bit and stuff. That would happen in broad daylight. It was always kind of you didn't want to -- well, I can only speak for myself, but you know how sometimes when you see the sunbeam coming through the window and you can see the dust kind of? Like, you almost didn't want to look at it because you would kind of see it swirl and move. I mean, you know, maybe it was just wind or whatever, but I mean it was like there would be things that would happen during the day that would kind of play tricks on your eyes. Like maybe stuff would turn a little bit or whatever on a table or just little things like that. A bag, a piece of paper would just slide off of the table, you know.
As a kid, again, talking about Dungeons and Dragons, that's a game that's played on paper with pencils and dice. I spent a lot of time, mom would give me paper from work, and I was meticulous, made characters, character sheets, almost inventing whole new games and all, putting a lot of time into this, and paper would just (slides hand) you know, paper would just slide away. You know, paper would fall off. And you would just kind of keep going, you know? I mean, if you had a stack of something and you went to get a drink, you might come back and it might all be laid out, and you know, okay.
So I'll just say that as far as the stuff during the day, the furniture movement stuff that we heard, which I'm sure you know that we've always talked about, that all except one time, that always happened during the day.
CLARA: Yeah.
JOHN: It was always broad daylight when that would happen.
SEAN: Now, did you ever actually see furniture move or just hear it?
JOHN: I saw paper move, I never actually saw furniture move. I heard it move.
SEAN: Okay. Now let's go back to something that's part of the family lore. Now, furniture did physically actually move in your room?
JOHN: Yes.
SEAN: Can you tell us that story?
JOHN: Joe and myself --
SEAN: And Scott Sims?******
JOHN: No. It may have just been Joe and myself. Baltimore didn't have an NFL team at the time so we would always just watch whatever games were on. We always got the AFC games, and we were watching, I don't know, whatever the big teams were at the time. I think it was Buffalo playing somebody else. It probably was, they went to the Super Bowl all those years. Anyway, we were watching it and my father was always watching downstairs, Joe and I both went running downstairs to say something about the game, we knew he was watching it, a big play or whatever.
As soon as we got down to the bottom of the steps, boom, I mean just a crash was heard upstairs. So we all kind of stopped, you know, talking about whatever it was we were -- the football game or whatever, and Joe and I went back upstairs and we couldn't get my door open. And we couldn't figure out what was going on, and we kind of went out the window in daddy's bedroom and went around the roof, opened up the window of my bedroom and went in. And the weight bench, which was kind of, you know, next to the door, the weight bench, the weights, the bars and all that had fallen into the door and were barricaded in a way so that when you, like -- when you put a chair behind the doorknob so that they can't open the door. Like, it was all placed in a way --
CLARA: Wedged.
JOHN: It was wedged in place.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: I don't see how that could have fallen like that. That was the most I would say memorable time that that happened. I mean, there were times that, like the dresser would move. You'd go upstairs, the dresser would be away from the wall. You would hear things like (makes dragging sound), stop, you'd go up there and look, and yeah, sure enough, the dresser had moved away. Or back then you had big giant tube TVs, so I always had a big TV, so that stand with the television on it was probably 200 pounds or something, you know, it had slid away from the wall. Okay, you know. Like, it took two of us to move it back. But yeah, no, that one time with the weight bench, I guarantee you that Joe would verify that.
SEAN: Yes, he actually was talking about that with me on Facebook about that.
JOHN: I remember we looked at daddy and daddy was like (lifts hands, shakes head).
SEAN: Did he go up?
JOHN: No, he didn't go. I mean, it was just a big play or whatever in the game so I'm sure he was much more concerned about that. So yeah, but no, Joe and I did see that. That happened at night. The tie in with Scott Sims, I think, is that he had an apartment or something around the corner for a couple weeks and he had a party one time. And Jeff and I had went to his party and came back to the house, and we were sitting in the kitchen eating, and our plan was to go back out and go back down there or whatever. And him and I were sitting at the table, I don't know, we were probably reading the Baltimore Sun or whatever, it was always sitting around. We were just sitting there eating whatever, and we both heard it sounded like all the furniture in the house move upstairs for I'll say a good eight seconds, just scraping (makes scraping sound) around all the floor. You could almost feel it. And we both just looked at each other and got up and left. We didn't even go to see what happened or anything. We just got up and left, very quickly. It was dark. That time it was at night.
SEAN: Yeah. And was anyone home upstairs?
JOHN: No, we were the only ones there for sure.
SEAN: Now, Natalie relates an incident that her and your mother were on the second floor, you know, mom in the master bedroom, and Natalie in your old room, and you were in the basement.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: And this was a -- she said a rare group thing -- because a lot of things -- well, you have more group events than a lot of us. But they said they could hear the furniture moving at night on the first floor, and they were going, running downstairs, and you were running upstairs because you had heard the furniture moving from the basement.
JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. I could believe it. I can't remember that specifically, but I can, yeah. Like I said, up until the time I was in the basement, you always heard things. It was mostly just footsteps, but you always heard stuff on the...
CLARA: Ceiling.
JOHN: Yeah, right, on the ceiling above you. Like something was happening on the floor above you.
Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Story, Pt. 2
JOHN: So they lived there for a little while, yeah.
SEAN: Yeah. So he was there for 12 years.
JOHN: Right.
SEAN: And he was the youngest. When we moved in, in 1974, Jeanne was probably 9 and Mark*** was 10, and then the rest of us were over the age of Charles Immler. So in a sense, you are --
JOHN: What was the date in 1974 that you guys actually moved in?
SEAN: It was spring.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: Early spring. Now, Miriam Mayford died on February 5th, 1974.
JOHN: Okay.
CLARA: I was going to say it was either in late April or early May.
SEAN: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, too. I was thinking.
JOHN: So you guys were there about a year when I was born.
CLARA: Yeah. It seems to me it was right after Easter.
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| The House, circa 1974 |
JOHN: That's interesting.
SEAN: Yeah, so you are literally the only one. And also before I go in, on the blogs I say that there's this fear that maybe people are saying this is all some sort of mass hysteria or religious thing, but you have no religious belief, would you say?
JOHN: That's pretty safe to say, I think, yeah.
SEAN: So while you were growing up, you were not in any way seeking after supernatural or religious experience?
JOHN: I don't know. I feel like I was kind of interested maybe in things like that.
SEAN: Like the occult or more religious?
JOHN: It's hard to say. Maybe a little bit of both. I mean, obviously I was introduced to religion at an early age.
SEAN: You did go to Saint Dominic's.
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| John at St. Dominic's. |
JOHN: Went to Saint Dominic's. Went to Corpus Christi with my mother to Mass quite a bit, ran around in the rectory, got to know a lot of, I guess you could say church people.
SEAN: Priests.
JOHN: Priests, you know, the lay people that take part in the church and do the things behind the scenes and stuff. So I was always kind of in that kind of realm in a way, I guess you could say. As far as the occult stuff, I don't know. I guess maybe that was something that maybe kind of went along with it, I would guess. There was a lot of that in the air in those days, you know?
SEAN: Like with music and...
JOHN: With the music, and I mean it was kind of in the news, there was a lot of people talking about --
SEAN: The Satanic Panic.
CLARA: New age. There was a lot of new age.
JOHN: There was a lot of new age stuff. There was, like you say, Satanic panic. We played Dungeons and Dragons, and people were saying Dungeons and Dragons was making people worship the Devil and things like that. So yeah, I guess you could say I was kind of interested in those things.
SEAN: Okay. So now let's get back. I was just trying to lay a groundwork for your background at the time of these events. So how early was it that you began to think something was wrong at the house?
JOHN: That's hard to say. I mean, it was definitely as a young kid. I don't know, early memories that it was always kind of something coming up the steps behind you, something kind of creepy in the corner watching you at night type thing. It's hard to say. I would say early/mid '80s? I mean, I was probably 9 or 10? I mean, it's hard to say, you know. Childhood memories are... It's hard to say when all that stuff starts.
SEAN: Would you say preschool? Do you have any memories of preschool?
JOHN: I don't think preschool. That would be too young.
CLARA: You didn't have -- did you have any imaginary friends when you were little that you can remember?
JOHN: I don't know about imaginary friends. I mean, being that I was always kind of like the only kid in the house, I always kind of made --
CLARA: Right.
JOHN: You know, played by myself. But I don't know about any real imaginary friend type things. But there was definitely a sense that -- like you say, I kind of grew up there so I didn't really say something's wrong, but there was always kind of the sense that there was kind of something lurking, I guess you could say.
SEAN: Now, did anyone ever discuss in these early times that there was -- anybody else ever discuss with you any experiences they were having?
JOHN: I remember as a kid there was always a legend that Mark or Laurie**** had heard the organ play. That always went around, that was always around the dinner table type of thing.
SEAN: But no one talked about seeing entities or hearing voices or anything?
JOHN: I don't think so, no. It was just kind of a feeling kind of for me that there was just kind of something following you up the steps, something like you wanted to run in your room and lock the door at night. I always thought that was kind of weird. I always locked my bedroom door when I lived in that house.
SEAN: Do you think it kept it out?
JOHN: I don't know, but I haven't really done that since. I always locked the bedroom door, I always kept the key in the lock in the door. As soon as you shut the door, you always lock it, click.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Because there was always a sense that there was something right behind you, like it almost was going to get you type thing.
SEAN: Now, at some time, did the experience grow more intense? Did the thing start behaving a different way in a more physical way or manifest itself in some way?
JOHN: I think some things definitely picked up as I became like a teenager type time.
SEAN: What are you talking about, 13, 14, or like 15, 16, 17? Were you like in high school or junior high or...
JOHN: Probably junior high was when I would say things started to kind of pick up. So what would that be, probably 1988, '89-ish time, and then up through high school and beyond, I guess. So yeah, there was a good couple year period there when I things were at a higher, yeah, at a peak, at a definitely higher pace, making itself known more.
 |
| Rita, Emily, John, Marion, Laura, Natalie in the dining room. |
JOHN: Yeah.
SEAN: So was it around the time they were there or do you think this was after?
JOHN: I think things started to be known around the time Jeanne came back from England.
CLARA: For you.
JOHN: For me, yeah. I mean, lines started to be drawn. That's when other people were scared of it too. It wasn't, as you say, like an imaginary type thing. That's when people started running down the steps in the middle of the night, that's when doors started slamming, that's when figures started showing up a lot more often. That's when cats started walking around the house. We never had any cats.
CLARA: Mrs. Mayford had a lot of cats.
JOHN: Yeah. The neighbors always talked about how Mrs. Mayford had cats.
SEAN: Wow. That's an important piece of information.
JOHN: So that stuff, that, like, friends of mine in high school would swear that they saw a cat. They'd go downstairs to get a glass of ice or whatever.
CLARA: Just a regular cat, not a big black cat? I mean, just a regular cat?
JOHN: I suppose. People would say, oh, we saw a cat. You never said you had a cat. I'd say, no, we don't have a cat. We have a dog, but the dog's away with my mom, so it couldn't have been the dog. Like, you know, when I'd have friends over or whatever.
SEAN: So what was the first real thing that happened? First off, did --
JOHN: Well...
SEAN: How did it start messing with you?
JOHN: I would say that things kind of started to become displaced. You'd set something down and walk and go to the bathroom and come back and it would be gone and it would be nowhere to be found. And then three days later when you walk in the room, it would be sitting there on your left like it was there the whole time, you just missed it. These are the things that it really started to kind of do things like that. You started to think it was kind of tricks, almost like it was playing a joke. But you knew it wasn't really a joke, but you just kind of... I don't know.
It's like, that wasn't the scary part. These things would happen so often that you kind of didn't even question it. You almost, you would forget about it. It's not like you expected it to happen, but when it happened, you just kind of said, oh, that's right, and went about your day and made due without it until it showed up again. I mean, we all kind of talked about that type of stuff happening.
Yeah, I mean, things like, I don't know, the room would get darker than normal, you would think, like at night in certain spots. You know, your night vision, swear it was seeing things, you know.
SEAN: Like what kind of things would you be seeing?
JOHN: I don't know, things that people now would probably say are like shadow people type stuff. Just like maybe not a full form or full figure, but almost like a cloaked type person standing, like, six or eight feet away from you across the room. Not quite in the corner. You could tell they were kind of out in the -- it wasn't like a shadow in the corner. It was kind of three-dimensional.
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| John's Bedroom, repainted. John's bed would be located below the window on the right.***** |
CLARA: No.
JOHN: No, my bed was on that wall when mom was in that room too when I was a little kid, which was prior to any of this. But my bed was always kind of in the other corner, if you can imagine, where the holly tree was.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: That window was always kind of either above my head or to my right, in one way like that.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: So I was kind of always in that corner.
CLARA: So your feet were to the door?
JOHN: My feet were either to the street or to the door, yeah, right. Yeah, one of those ways. I would change up the floor plan or whatever you call it.
SEAN: So if a shadow while you were sleeping in the room, if you would see one of these shadow figures, did it generally materialize in the same place?
JOHN: On the doorway side of that wall, either -- so it would be the wall going into what was daddy's bedroom, I would say.
SEAN: Yeah, by the door though?
JOHN: Yeah, by that door or further over along that wall.
SEAN: Natalie was saying that's where something would enter the room, it would usually be right by there as well.
JOHN: Yeah, that door always seemed like it attracted a lot of attention. Because you could see the crack of light through that door, and there was always -- because at the bottom of the steps, a lot of times you would keep that little night light on.
CLARA: Yeah, I always left that night light on.
JOHN: So you could always see a little bit of light through that crack in the door. So I always kind of kept an eye on that.
SEAN: Did you ever see something moving in front of that light, blocking that light?
JOHN: You couldn't always see the light, yeah, so I don't know.
SEAN: Now, before we go into the figures a little more, did you ever hear any footsteps or knocking or anything up on the second floor?
JOHN: You're talking about up on -- into the attic?
SEAN: No, your room. Your room.
JOHN: Knocking? Yes. Footsteps, you could -- I want to say you almost always heard footsteps on the ceiling no matter where you were in that house. There was almost always footsteps on the floor above you, whether I was in my bedroom, whether I was in the living room, or even into the point when I lived in the basement, there were always footsteps on the floor above you at night when you knew that nobody was awake. Some of that, of course, obviously would be house shifting, but ahh...
SEAN: Nah. I was hearing footsteps on the roof.
JOHN: Yeah, there were a lot of footsteps going on at night, and it became something that kind of my friends were used to. As you know, I had a lot of friends that were there a lot, and the people that were there a lot kind of got used to these same things.
SEAN: Yeah. But they all heard it?
JOHN: They all heard it, yeah. They all heard it.
SEAN: Did anyone else see the shadow figure?
JOHN: I mean, there was always talk about it, but it's hard for me to say because --
CLARA: Didn't Richard see it?
JOHN: Richard next door?
SEAN: Let's wait for Richard next door.
JOHN: Well, it's hard for me to say because I don't know who really saw what and who just kind of wanted to get on the bandwagon in a way. So I can really only tell you what I saw, to be honest.
SEAN: Okay. But basically it wasn't necessarily an isolated thing?
JOHN: It was not an isolated thing. Other people knew about it. Some people came to the house once, never believed it. Some people came to the house and saw something that freaked them out and they left and they wouldn't come back. Because I knew a lot of kids through the neighborhood or through school or whatever, and it seemed like we always had a lot of people over, you know, so...
SEAN: At that time you probably had the most active social life of people coming into the house.
JOHN: Yeah, that's probably safe to say at that point when I was a teenager, yeah.
SEAN: Okay. So now before we go on, let's go back to -- your mother brought it up. So Richard who lived next door.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: You had an experience in there with Richard that seemed to indicate something.
JOHN: Well, I -- I don't know.
SEAN: Didn't something happen in your room and Richard said, "Oh, it's here, too"?
JOHN: Well, Richard, I don't know if Richard saw anything or if there was an experience in the house, but Richard one time -- Richard didn't come over a lot.
CLARA: No.
JOHN: When we were kids, Richard and I were a lot closer, but Richard didn't come over a lot but he knew everybody, whatever. So he came over once in a while. He came over the one time and I don't know what was going on, but we started talking about it and Richard kind of knew what was going on. Like, in his own thing. He kind of knew that there was something that was going on there that was a known thing.
CLARA: In his house?
JOHN: Alluded to it, that it was happening in his house as well.
SEAN: And Richard lived exactly next door.
JOHN: Richard lived right next door.
SEAN: At 23 Saint Helens Avenue.
CLARA: I thought that at the time when you told me about it, you were up in the room and you had that bureau that had the mirror on it, and something black walked in front of the mirror and that's when Richard said "Oh, you have it, too."
JOHN: I don't remember anything specifically.
CLARA: That's what you told me at the time, yeah.
JOHN: But I do remember that Richard -- I mean, we didn't talk about it. Him and I, we honestly weren't really close, but the one time he did -- he mentioned it and we talked about it and he alluded to the fact that there was something there at his house, too, which got us all talking about it. I believe that there were other people there with us, and he started -- because his grandparents, I believe, lived in that house for a very long time, and, in their family, it was kind of the same thing going on. Like, there was definitely a haunting of some kind in their house as well that their family knew about.
SEAN: So back to the shadow figure.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: Now, did you ever see any of the -- did it appear in any sort of full apparition or was it just a cloaked figure that you would see?
JOHN: It was always kind of a cloaked figure, I think. It kind of stayed, you could say, at a distance. It never really got close or anything, but it was definitely there, just kind of watching, I always felt like it was just kind of affirming itself, kind of showing you that it kind of really was there.
SEAN: Now, did you get any indication that it was either male or female?
JOHN: I never got any indications. I never considered it male or female, to be honest. I never really put a gender to it.
SEAN: Did you put any sort of -- do you think it was human in nature?
JOHN: I never thought it was human. Whatever happened there, I don't think it was human.
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| John, November 1988. The tiny old kitchen from before the renovation is seen behind him. |
JOHN: I don't know about a blob. There was definitely like a cloudy thing.
SEAN: Okay.
JOHN: When you say "blob," I'm thinking more of like something physical, but there was definitely like a cloudy kind of intangible type thing that would kind of -- it would ultimately become this cloaked figure.
SEAN: So the blob would become the cloaked figure? It would start as a blob?
JOHN: It would kind of seep in as, like, just a smoky type thing and it would turn into this thing, yeah. It would take a little bit of time. It wasn't like it just walked through the wall. It would just kind of start to...
CLARA: Manifest.
JOHN: Manifest would be a good word, yeah.
SEAN: Now, this thing you said was kind of looking at you, sort of like maybe staking a claim to that, like this is mine or...
JOHN: I felt like there were times when it was like pressure on me when I was -- like, it would kind of wake you up almost, and you would be kind of wide awake and it would kind of be there.
SEAN: Still in the corner, so at a distance?
JOHN: Well, it would be standing -- like I was saying, it was three dimensional. It was -- I mean, it was only from here to there, it's not like it was far, but it's not like it was something that was in your face. But it was standing -- I mean, if I got up, it was almost like I could touch it with my hand, it was that close. But it was right there. It was, yeah.
SEAN: And did you feel it had any hostile intent towards you?
JOHN: Oh, yeah, definitely. I never felt safe when it was around at all. There was no way to get away from it. I mean, you would be so scared that there wasn't much you could do. Like, you see it in the movies when people get so frightened and they freeze, you know, and it's kind of, you know, fight, flight, or freeze.
SEAN: Now, was this something you mainly saw during the night or only at the night?
JOHN: Well, that's something I was thinking about. This thing would be something you would wake up at night and kind of see it. The only time I ever saw anything like that would be waking up at night and seeing this, yes. That was always at night.
SEAN: Now, you say "this thing" as if there was more than one thing.
JOHN: Well, that's what I was trying to -- yeah, well, we'll say shadow person or whatever only came at night, yeah.
SEAN: But was there something else?
JOHN: There were things that would happen during the day. We had a lot of hanging lights, you know. I don't want to say chandeliers, but you know, hanging ceiling lights, and they would -- I witnessed them swing, like, once like a pendulum and bam, straight back, stop. You know, and I mean, this is --
SEAN: First floor or second?
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| The Entrance Hall light Look at that beautiful hardwood and stained glass. Who wouldn't want to live there? |
As a kid, again, talking about Dungeons and Dragons, that's a game that's played on paper with pencils and dice. I spent a lot of time, mom would give me paper from work, and I was meticulous, made characters, character sheets, almost inventing whole new games and all, putting a lot of time into this, and paper would just (slides hand) you know, paper would just slide away. You know, paper would fall off. And you would just kind of keep going, you know? I mean, if you had a stack of something and you went to get a drink, you might come back and it might all be laid out, and you know, okay.
So I'll just say that as far as the stuff during the day, the furniture movement stuff that we heard, which I'm sure you know that we've always talked about, that all except one time, that always happened during the day.
CLARA: Yeah.
JOHN: It was always broad daylight when that would happen.
SEAN: Now, did you ever actually see furniture move or just hear it?
JOHN: I saw paper move, I never actually saw furniture move. I heard it move.
SEAN: Okay. Now let's go back to something that's part of the family lore. Now, furniture did physically actually move in your room?
JOHN: Yes.
SEAN: Can you tell us that story?
JOHN: Joe and myself --
SEAN: And Scott Sims?******
JOHN: No. It may have just been Joe and myself. Baltimore didn't have an NFL team at the time so we would always just watch whatever games were on. We always got the AFC games, and we were watching, I don't know, whatever the big teams were at the time. I think it was Buffalo playing somebody else. It probably was, they went to the Super Bowl all those years. Anyway, we were watching it and my father was always watching downstairs, Joe and I both went running downstairs to say something about the game, we knew he was watching it, a big play or whatever.
As soon as we got down to the bottom of the steps, boom, I mean just a crash was heard upstairs. So we all kind of stopped, you know, talking about whatever it was we were -- the football game or whatever, and Joe and I went back upstairs and we couldn't get my door open. And we couldn't figure out what was going on, and we kind of went out the window in daddy's bedroom and went around the roof, opened up the window of my bedroom and went in. And the weight bench, which was kind of, you know, next to the door, the weight bench, the weights, the bars and all that had fallen into the door and were barricaded in a way so that when you, like -- when you put a chair behind the doorknob so that they can't open the door. Like, it was all placed in a way --
CLARA: Wedged.
JOHN: It was wedged in place.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: I don't see how that could have fallen like that. That was the most I would say memorable time that that happened. I mean, there were times that, like the dresser would move. You'd go upstairs, the dresser would be away from the wall. You would hear things like (makes dragging sound), stop, you'd go up there and look, and yeah, sure enough, the dresser had moved away. Or back then you had big giant tube TVs, so I always had a big TV, so that stand with the television on it was probably 200 pounds or something, you know, it had slid away from the wall. Okay, you know. Like, it took two of us to move it back. But yeah, no, that one time with the weight bench, I guarantee you that Joe would verify that.
SEAN: Yes, he actually was talking about that with me on Facebook about that.
JOHN: I remember we looked at daddy and daddy was like (lifts hands, shakes head).
SEAN: Did he go up?
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| John, in his bedroom. |
SEAN: Yeah. And was anyone home upstairs?
JOHN: No, we were the only ones there for sure.
SEAN: Now, Natalie relates an incident that her and your mother were on the second floor, you know, mom in the master bedroom, and Natalie in your old room, and you were in the basement.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: And this was a -- she said a rare group thing -- because a lot of things -- well, you have more group events than a lot of us. But they said they could hear the furniture moving at night on the first floor, and they were going, running downstairs, and you were running upstairs because you had heard the furniture moving from the basement.
JOHN: Yeah. Yeah. I could believe it. I can't remember that specifically, but I can, yeah. Like I said, up until the time I was in the basement, you always heard things. It was mostly just footsteps, but you always heard stuff on the...
CLARA: Ceiling.
JOHN: Yeah, right, on the ceiling above you. Like something was happening on the floor above you.
Continued here: The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Story, Pt. 2
Here's another clip from the interview:
Notes:
*In May of 1983, I nearly committed suicide sitting in that corner in that room. (Different chair.)
**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.
***Mark Brendan Murphy, b. 26 February 1964, Baltimore, MD., d. 14 September 1999. Flint, Michigan. Cause of death: Suicide.
****Laura Lee Murphy Valenti, b. 27 September 1962, Baltimore, MD., d. 15 February 1994, Baltimore, MD. Cause of death: Suicide.
****Photograph from the 2013 real estate listing. Used without permission. (The entrance hall picture is also from the same webpage.)
*****Scott Sims lived briefly under the front porch of the house.
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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