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| John, circa 1994 |
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, at one point you said that wasn't the scary stuff. So what was the scary stuff when you were on the second floor?
JOHN: So there was a time when I think Natalie was in -- Natalie was in, you say the master bedroom. The room with the sunporch, so that's the master bedroom.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Mom was either upstairs in the front room or in the bathroom, and I was in that bedroom still, and all the doors started banging. And I mean, if you had ten people banging on the door, you couldn't have banged as hard and as fast as the knocks were coming on the door. And it sounded like all the doors on that landing, which there were what, one, two, three, four, five, six doors, were all just, I mean, banging in the hinges. It woke me up in the morning, Natalie was screaming and mom was saying, "Nat, don't open the door." And she -- I mean, that's what I remember hearing, bang, I mean banging at like -- I can't describe that type of banging on the doors.
SEAN: I think that was the same incident that I had.
CLARA: No.
SEAN: I had an incident like that on my last day at the house.
JOHN: And it went on for a good maybe ten seconds.
CLARA: That wasn't the same time.
JOHN: It wasn't the exact same incident, I guarantee you. I don't think you were there anymore. I think you had moved out.
CLARA: Because the three of us were only -- it was only the three, Natalie, you, and I in the house at that time.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: But that was definitely -- that was definitely one of the scarier things. You would get bangs like that sometimes. I was woken up by I'll say maniacal banging on the door a couple times, but that time stands out because it went on, like I say, probably for ten seconds. And when something like that is banging at your door, ten seconds is a long time. Okay. That is -- I mean, if you can count to ten seconds and imagine, you know, the sound of a dozen maniacs trying to break your door down as you wake up out of bed, that's terrifying. So that happened.
SEAN: I know that feeling. It may not have been the same event. Now, did anything ever approach you in the bed or get in bed with you?
JOHN: Like I said, there were times when you felt like you were kind of frozen in bed. I don't know. Again, I've heard kind of around the table type thing that people would feel something sat down or whatever with them and things like that. I don't think I can say that I ever had that happen. There were times when you would kind of wake up and feel like you were just unable to move, you know. Maybe something might be kind of -- you were almost sunken into the bed, and then that's kind of when you would start seeing these, you know, things, hallucinations or whatever for lack of a better word, I don't know.
SEAN: Did you see any other creatures in your room other than that one thing you were talking about earlier?
JOHN: Not necessarily, I don't think so.
SEAN: Okay. Let's go to something you mentioned earlier.
JOHN: It was always the unseen things, I'll tell you that. Like, looking back on this, like I mean, everybody always wants to hear about stories and all that, and it's really hard to put it into words. It was an unseen, like, force that was also just kind of chasing you around almost. And it wasn't -- I don't know, it wasn't always out showing itself. Like, it wasn't -- I don't know. It would be hard to make a movie about it because it's not a real visual thing all the time.
SEAN: So let's go back to the cats.
JOHN: Okay.
SEAN: Now, are you familiar that other people in the house had seen cats other than you and your friends?
JOHN: Yeah, I had heard that.
SEAN: Now, the thing is, if I'm not -- I could be wrong because I haven't interviewed Jeanne yet, but Jeanne saw a cat-like creature apparently up in the Hell Room, and your mother also saw a cat-like creature up in the Hell Room, so until your conversation here, you know, the only cats that people saw were up in the Hell Room. So did you -- where did you see any of these cats? You saw them down -- they saw them downstairs, too, right?
JOHN: People would say that they saw a cat. People would go downstairs to the kitchen. So what, you would go down -- yeah, you would go down through the dining room into the kitchen to get a glass of water, ice, whatever, and they would mention a cat, and I would say, we don't have a cat. You know, maybe, you saw something else.
SEAN: But it wasn't something malevolent, it wasn't like a screeching, demonic cat?
CLARA: A kitty cat, he's talking about.
SEAN: Yeah, that's what you're talking about, like a neutral cat.
JOHN: They would -- it's not -- as far as I know, nobody ever picked it up or petted it or anything, but they would say that they saw a cat down there and they would mention that I never said that I had a cat. And I said, well, we don't have a cat. They said, well, we thought we saw one or whatever. Some of these people are the people that never kind of wanted to come back again.
A lot of my friends would have experiences in the bathroom on the second floor. That bathroom had a lot of bad vibes associated with it. People always felt uneasy. No matter what you did, I don't care who you were, you were not going to take your eyes off of that closet in that bathroom while you were in there. Whether you were watching it in the mirror while you were brushing your teeth or whatever else you were doing, you had your eyes on there because there was something up with that bathroom, with that closet in there. It was just a bad feeling coming out of there.
SEAN: Well, I must say that I occasionally would reach over and make sure that that door was closed.
JOHN: Yeah, yeah, right? Uh-huh.
SEAN: Well, part of it is also, too, it connects to other rooms in a weird way. So did you feel any -- did you feel that there were any places in the house more haunted than others? I don't think the word "haunted" is correct.
JOHN: I think the upstairs front bedroom, as we say, the Hell Room.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Was certainly the center maybe of it or whatever. There was a short period of time when I thought it would be fun to go up there, and I, you know, took some stuff up there and tried to stay up there a couple nights, but I would always either end up on the couch or camped out back in the bedroom down there. I mean, like as a, I don't know, maybe 12, 14, teenager or whatever. Because it was a cool room. It had the sloping ceilings, you know, and you had the great view of the street from up there. And it was private, it was away from the rest of the house for the most part. You know, I mean, it was quiet up there. But it was definitely creepy up there.
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| The Hell Room -- Seems innocent enough, right?** The cubbyhole was on the left. The closet was on the right. |
I don't think I ever spent a whole night up there. Both of those closets up there were terrifying. That little cubbyhole was really scary. Just the fact that -- I mean, it was -- I don't know, it was always just so dark in there in that little corner where the cubby was, and it had another weird cut up into the ceiling that just kind of made that really dark over there.
Yeah, and I had a -- I had a really -- probably the most realist experience I ever had in that house happened in that room. There used to be -- I'm guessing this is before -- it's probably right before Jeanne moved back because I'm guessing they probably would have redecorated it a little bit, but it was basically an empty room. Like I said, I had a little bit of handful of things up there, it was an empty room. It had been painted already because, if you remember, it was painted all --
CLARA: Dougie did that.
SEAN: Dougie painted it with black lines. White and then spray painted black lines.
JOHN: Yeah, it was white and then black all over, and it was like a zigzag crazy pattern or whatever, kind of random pattern on the wall. It had already been painted.
CLARA: To gray.
JOHN: Yeah, it was gray with, like, gray tones on the woodwork and stuff. And then there were -- you had the mirror in the center of the front wall -- I mean, I'm sorry, you had a window and you had mirrors on either side of the window.
CLARA: Mark*** did that.
JOHN: And then on the one side, you had photographs of old sports teams, maybe it was Mark's, Dougie's --
CLARA: Yeah, Mark's.
JOHN: -- Sean's, whatever. Anyway, they were hanging up there. They were old, washed out photos, and I can specifically remember standing there, looking -- I don't know why I was up there, but I was up there, I was young. Like I say, it was probably -- it had to have been before Jeanne moved back, so I was probably 11 or 12. Maybe I was 13, I don't know. I was standing up there, looking at the photos, and I was always trying to find whoever it was, you know, trying to find a person in the photo. It was a whole team of kids, and I remember almost getting, like, hypnotized by the photos and just kind of zoning out for a second, and something, a hand on each shoulder, lifted me and threw me into where the photos were on the wall, like off of my feet, boom, into the wall.
And I remember coming off of it, stunned, and I said, "Sean, that's not funny," and quickly realized Sean wasn't there, nobody was there. Obviously you weren't there, you would probably remember responding to something like that. And I remember seeing -- I remember it all clicked in my head that I could see the mirror, I could see the doorway of the Hell Room behind me into your room where your door was open, so nobody came through that doorway because I would have seen it in the mirror. There was nobody in the room with me. Something definitely grabbed each side of my shoulders, lifted me and threw me into the wall. So that happened.
You know, I was probably, I don't know, at least 150 pounds or something. It's not like I was light. I didn't stumble, wind didn't do it. I don't know. I didn't slip, trip, fall. So that is the experience -- a lot of the other stuff, maybe I could say it's mass hysteria, maybe I could say, you know, yeah, everybody's crazy, maybe I'm crazy too. You know, maybe it is a hallucination, maybe there is a more natural explanation, which is something I've been always looking for, which helps to explain my belief or lack of, maybe you would say. But that one thing really stands out to me because I can't explain that one away.
SEAN: Well, let me say something, because I just first found out about this when we had that meeting over at Jeanne's house, and you said something that I thought was very important. You said that you felt that, had you been a couple inches over, you would have been out that window and everyone would have thought it was a suicide because you were at that age.
JOHN: I didn't think about that until years later. Like I said, this is something that stuck with me. This is the one thing that kind of jumps out and always kind of gets my attention whenever I would think about it. But yeah, it threw me into the wall with enough force where I hit the wall. So if I would have been standing in front of the window looking out and whatever happened happened, it might have been enough to push me through that window. And that's a long way up. So yeah, that would have been bad. It would have looked like I jumped out the window.
SEAN: Yeah. So you know, I kind of got interested in this, and I wrote my book Chapel Street because your mother asked me whether I thought that the entity in the house was in some way partially responsible for the deaths of Mark and Laurie****, and that was further reinforced in my mind by hearing -- you know, by my own experiences of crawling out the window, your mother's experience of her brakes seemingly to go out while she was on the Eastern Shore, and also when you told me this incident recently about you at the window. You know, it seems to me that there are a number of things.
Now, I'm not saying that Laurie and Mark didn't kill themselves. Obviously they killed themselves. You know, I mean, it was not an accident, it was not a manipulation. I mean, it wasn't a physical manipulation in that sense. You know, these were actual real incidents. But do you in any way think that the entity or the lingering affects of the spirit of the entity could have been in any way responsible for those things?
JOHN: I don't know. That to me -- that's a leap I can't make right now. I mean, as far as I know, I barely remember a time that Laura lived in the house. She moved out.
CLARA: You were probably 2 or 3, 8?
JOHN: Six. Well, what, Natalie was -- I think I was 7, so she probably moved out I guess when I was around 6 and a half years old or something. So I don't ever really remember her being there. I can't say that it ever had an affect on her. As far as Mark, I mean, who's to say? You know, Mark was a very complicated character. I can't say that, that it would -- in hindsight, I can't say that.
SEAN: Well, I'll say -- let's talk about Mark for a second because I don't know if you considered Mark your mentor, but I think Mark tried to consider himself your mentor. It seemed like he was always --
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| John and Mark, circa 1980 |
JOHN: Mark thought he was, I think, everybody's mentor in some sense.
SEAN: Yeah, so I always felt kind of sorry for you because it seemed like he was always taking you under his wing.
JOHN: Yeah, he gave me a lot of shit.
SEAN: Now, did Mark ever talk to you about things in the house?
JOHN: No, I don't think so. Nothing more than, like I said, I mean, talking about maybe the organ or something going off. More I remember as a kid. But no, I don't ever remember any serious talk with Mark about this. No, I don't think so.
SEAN: Yeah, but you remember, he did cut up the organ. He did take one day when your mother was down and --
CLARA: He asked me if he could.
JOHN: Yeah, he wanted to get rid of that organ.
CLARA: Yeah.
SEAN: And I think it was because -- you know, he had told somebody else what was ever in the house was in the organ.
JOHN: I mean, that could be. I don't know. He may have thought that, I don't know. He -- I don't think anybody really liked that organ. Why did we even have that organ? I don't know if it ever truly worked.
CLARA: Mr. Kirk****.
JOHN: Oh, it was Mr. Kirk who set it up?
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CLARA: Yeah, some church.
JOHN: I mean, I know the piano was always --
CLARA: I mean, it was there before the organ.
SEAN: Yeah, it was there before the organ.
JOHN: Yeah, I know. Just as an aside, that was a big old creepy organ. You know, I remember playing on it when I was a kid.
CLARA: It stunk, too.
JOHN: Yeah, it smelled like an old -- I mean, it was just sitting wood.
SEAN: It smelled like dust.
CLARA: It smelled like an old man.
JOHN: Yeah, like an old church basement or something.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: But it's funny because we always had a piano, and the piano was always tuned and it was always able to be played and all, but the organ I don't think was ever truly operational.
SEAN: No.
CLARA: You had to pump it.
SEAN: You really had to pump it. And it's funny that people have said, and I think I heard it once, in all honesty, but no one ever claimed to hear the piano play, that I'm aware of.
JOHN: No, I don't think I ever did.
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| Sister Jeanne playing the "haunted" organ. |
SEAN: It's interesting that people claim they heard the organ play but not the piano.
JOHN: Yeah, right. Yeah, that was always the tale, you know, that the organ was heard. I don't know who said it.
CLARA: I never heard it.
JOHN: Yeah, I don't think I ever -- I can't say I ever did.
CLARA: If anything, it would have been the piano, and I would just assume it was somebody.
JOHN: That was something I remember when I was a little kid, people would say, and I always, you know, who knows, they were just saying it to scare me. But I always remember that being something that was always talked about, that the organ would play at night or whatever.
SEAN: Okay. Now, let's get back to the darkness, as it were, if there was any. Now, do you ever -- did you find yourself in any way, like, spiritually or psychologically oppressed at heights of this thing's activity?
JOHN: I don't know. I don't know what you mean by that.
SEAN: I mean, did you feel like an oppressiveness or did you have suicidal thoughts while you were living in the house?
JOHN: No. No. Like I said, it was always just kind of something that I thought was kind of lurking, you know. But I -- no, I never felt like it was -- what would you say?
CLARA: Like it got in your mind?
JOHN: Yeah, right. Yeah, no, it never got inside of your head type -- or at least not to me. I can't say that that ever happened. You know, it was always something that was outside of myself. It never tried to, like, whisper in my ear things or whatever.
SEAN: Okay. Well, that's an important point. Did it ever speak to you?
JOHN: I never heard it say anything directly, no.
SEAN: You're putting some caveats on that. Like, I never heard it say anything directly.
JOHN: No, I never heard it speak at all, uh-uh.
SEAN: Okay. Well that puts you -- because other people have heard it speak.
JOHN: Yeah, I can believe it.
SEAN: I find it interesting that --
JOHN: A lot of people had a lot of weird encounters in that house.
SEAN: Yeah, so okay. And other than Mark, you were the only other person that I'm aware of who actually lived in the basement.
JOHN: Yeah. So I lived in the basement for I guess six or seven years.
CLARA: That long?
JOHN: Well, I moved in there I guess in '96 until you moved out. So what was that?
SEAN: Ten years.
JOHN: No. Was it? 2003?
CLARA: When did Mark die?
SEAN: Mark died in '99. Pops***** died in 2003.
JOHN: So yeah, that's about right.
SEAN: Butch died in 2005******.
JOHN: In 2002, 2003.
CLARA: That's when I remember it.
SEAN: And in 2005, July 21st.
JOHN: Okay. 2005, yeah, right.
CLARA: That's when I moved out.
JOHN: So it was about ten years, okay, yeah.
SEAN: Now, did you -- was there any activity in the basement?
JOHN: Like I say, you could always kind of hear stuff going on upstairs. I think that it -- as far as I know, it was pretty much -- it was a lot more quiet when I lived in the basement.
CLARA: I couldn't stand it.
JOHN: You know, I don't remember being as, would you say maybe like aware of it all the time as when I lived upstairs at all.
SEAN: So up on the second floor you were aware of it all the time?
JOHN: It seemed like it, yeah. I mean, it was always kind of -- like I said, there was always kind of something in there going across that hallway, going up those stairs. It always just seemed like there was something kind of right on your heels, you know. Something following you, something watching you. In the basement when I lived down there, it wasn't so much, I don't think.
CLARA: Did you --
SEAN: Did you have, like, objects moving or anything?
JOHN: You would get a little bit of that.
CLARA: Did you sleep in that bedroom or did you sleep on the sofa?
JOHN: No, I always kind of slept out on the sofa. I didn't really like that bedroom.
CLARA: Yeah, Mark I know told me he couldn't sleep in that bedroom.
SEAN: So Mark said he couldn't sleep in it?
CLARA: Mark said he could not sleep in that bedroom.
SEAN: It's interesting, because the bedroom, where the bedroom was, that was -- he built a free-standing bedroom there at first, which he destroyed.
CLARA: No.
SEAN: Yes, he did destroy it. I remember he tore it down because he said it was a sound proof room and he felt that somebody was going to molest children in there if he didn't take it down.
JOHN: Well, I don't know about that.
SEAN: Oh, I remember that.
JOHN: No, that bedroom, I didn't like sleeping in that bedroom.
SEAN: Plus there was no -- there was only that little window that was at the driveway level.
JOHN: Yeah.
SEAN: So it was probably a gloomy room. I don't think I was ever in the bedroom once that room was set up as an apartment on the bottom. I was down in the big room numerous times, you know, like the living room/kitchen, but I don't think I ever really went in the bedroom. I mean, I was aware of it.
JOHN: Well, I think part of it for me was that I -- when I was in that house, and I noticed this, I always slept with the TV on when I lived in that house. I didn't like to sleep in the quiet. I always wanted to have the television on when I slept, and so I always slept -- I always had a TV in the bedroom. But when I lived in the basement there, I didn't have the TV in the bedroom, so I think that was a big part of it, that I always had the television on out in the living room.
SEAN: Now, where you live now and where you lived after that, did you always feel the need to keep the TV on?
JOHN: No. Uh-uh.
SEAN: So that was something because of the house?
JOHN: I think so. Like, you didn't want the quiet because you didn't want to hear the footsteps upstairs and you didn't want to hear the furniture moving around. You know, things like that.
SEAN: So here's another question: Do you think there was only one thing in the house or were there -- you think there were possibly more than one entities?
JOHN: Oh, I don't know. As far as I know, there was only one. I mean, it's hard to say. But as far as I know, there was only one. I can't say there was more than one thing.
SEAN: Okay. And you had experiences on the second floor, you had experiences on all floors except the basement, except in a real sense?
JOHN: Yeah, you could say that. Yeah.
SEAN: So did you ever have -- you didn't really have many conversations with Mark about the...
JOHN: No, I didn't. I can't remember him ever bringing it up, and I know that I never brought it up with him. Yeah, he was usually really focused on something that he would come to me about. So if he wanted to talk about it, I'm sure he would have talked about it with me or whatever. I don't ever remember him bringing it up.
SEAN: Well, it's funny in a sense that after the Ouija board incident where we had the family meeting, which we pointedly did not want to discuss with you, but I went to Mark and I asked him -- he was not living in the house at the time. And I asked him, "Did you have any experiences up in the Hell Room while you were living up there, supernatural experiences?" And he said, "I was so high all the time when I was living up there, I wouldn't know if I did or not."
JOHN: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know.
SEAN: But also as your mother pointed out, when he was up there, he suddenly got religious. He started putting up, like, crucifixes and had a Bible and a nativity scene and things like that when he was there.
JOHN: I do remember that. I do remember that, when he had the nativity scene, he wanted to have that set up up there. Yeah, that definitely was a thing, I remember that.
SEAN: It was out of character for him.
JOHN: Yeah, it was. It was. I guess that was after he had come back from Phoenix.
SEAN: Yeah. And Beth his girlfriend stayed there too for a couple of months, if I'm not mistaken, up in the Hell Room, too.
CLARA: At least a month.
JOHN: Yeah, she crashed there a couple weeks.
SEAN: Yeah, that will be interesting. And also I think one of the reasons you were up in the Hell Room a lot was when we got that Commodore 64, our first computer in the house, it was up in the Hell Room, underneath where that light was, with the cubby closet to your right-hand.
JOHN: Yeah.
SEAN: I would write on that. I started -- we got the program Paperback Writer, so I was writing a lot. But there were also a lot of video games.
JOHN: Yeah, I was going to say that too. We spent a lot of time up there, Joe and I particularly, because Joe also had a Commodore 64 and he was in a club, or members of his family were in a club where they would trade games. So we always had new games coming and going. And Joe and I, you know, would spend a lot of time up there playing games, and we were always -- like I mean, it was kind of an inside joke. We were always getting creeped out up there. Because I know you would kind of take over the computer at night, I think it was.
SEAN: Yeah, because I'd get home and I'd write.
JOHN: Right, you would get home and write and we would always be up there, either during the day if it was a rainy day or whatever, sometimes at night we'd be up there. We were always kind of creeped out by stuff up there. Like I say, it was kind of almost an accepted thing, like an inside joke that we kind of both knew it was haunted but we both really wanted to play video games up there.
SEAN: Now, Joe told me he felt -- and I think Joe was mistaken in this, because I was communicating with him on Facebook. He said that he always felt that it lived in the cubbyhole in my room, and that you guys would considered it crazy that I could even live in that room, sleep in that room. But I was wondering if he was confused and thinking the Hell Room or my room. Did you think my room cubbyhole thing was --
JOHN: Well, the cubbyhole, like I said, was always something that got our attention. The cubbyhole was just always super, super creepy. I can't speak for him, but we knew that you had that cubbyhole in there too that was all loaded up with whatever, I don't know. I mean, there was all kind of old junk in there, so we always were like, oh, my God, what could be in there?
SEAN: It was filled with boxes of books. There wasn't room for anything else in there.
JOHN: Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, so it was always just kind of mysterious, the cubbyholes and all. We knew that there was just stuff packed away in there and it was just really creepy. Yeah, I don't know specifically what. It would be good to talk to him about all this, too. See what he remembers.
SEAN: Yeah, I'm going to reach out to him and a few other people. So any final thoughts? You know, what are you -- what is your takeaway from living on 21 Saint Helens Avenue?
JOHN: Well, I don't know. It changed probably the way that I look at a lot of stuff. Like you say, like a belief system or whatever. Like, I've always tried -- I've looked at a lot of different angles to try to explain what happened there. You know, I mean obviously there's a lot of different beliefs in the world, you know, different cultures believe different things. I've tried to maybe look through different explanations, I guess, you know, natural or otherwise, and I don't think there's anything that really defines the whole thing. I mean, there's parts of it you can explain as this, parts of it you can explain as that, you know. I mean, maybe -- like I say, there's some of it could be hallucinations, but a hallucination didn't pick me up and throw me into the wall or whatever. You know? I mean, there's --
SEAN: It didn't bang on your door either.
JOHN: It didn't bang on the door.
SEAN: While other people were hearing it as well.
JOHN: Right, there's other people verifying these things. Carbon monoxide poisoning, you know, radon poisoning, there's -- I mean.
CLARA: It's true.
JOHN: You know, that chimney went up the whole house.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: That chimney could be leaking. All these things are things that I thought about over the years. It had to be this, it had to be that. Because the most out -- I don't want to say outrageous, but the most outlandish and unexplainable thing is that something was haunting that house. Any natural phenomenon would be a more quote, unquote "reasonable explanation" for that than something supernatural. You know, so just looking for a way to kind of figure out what happened there is kind of what led me down the path to believing or not believing what I think of now. So maybe in closing it is a mystery, I think, that maybe we'll figure out, maybe we won't. A lot of things, it might be too late, you know, so... But it's good to talk about.
SEAN: But you did not have any similar experiences when you moved out?
JOHN: No.
CLARA: No.
JOHN: I've been to a lot of places -- I mean, everybody has. I've never felt anything like that any place else. Any place I've ever lived or any place I've ever been.
CLARA: Before you end, let me ask you about when Ben was here.
JOHN: Yeah, right.
CLARA: I know I asked him at breakfast after he was first -- the first night he stayed, and he told me he couldn't -- I said, "How did you sleep?" And he said, "Every time I would fall asleep, something would push my head." Did he say anything to you about anything?
JOHN: Yeah, Ben.
CLARA: I mean, because he was -- he wasn't a neighbor, he wasn't somebody who heard stories. He just --
SEAN: Let me explain, yeah, Ben was an --
CLARA: Exchange student.
SEAN: German exchange student.
JOHN: Ben was a German exchange student. He was probably there for a month and a half or something? Was it four weeks?
CLARA: A couple weeks, yeah.
JOHN: I think it's four weeks that we did, and then I went there for four weeks. Anyway, I had met Ben the summer before when I went to Germany, and so when he came as an exchange student, it was a no-brainer that he would stay with us. So we set up -- what did we have? We had like a little rollaway cot --
CLARA: A cot, he had a cot.
JOHN: -- that we had set up, a little twin size bed for Ben that was kind of at the foot of my bed.
CLARA: By the radiator, it was.
JOHN: Yeah, he was along the wall by the radiator. It fit right in there. And yeah, he was saying that he couldn't sleep and that there was something, that he felt like something was messing with him at night, that something was waking him up, something was pushing him around.
SEAN: Did he think it was you?
JOHN: At first he asked me if it was me, you know, like... But I'm like, no, you know. And then we kind of explained to him what was going on or whatever. I don't know what he really thought about it, but yeah, I do distinctly remember him saying something was pushing him, keeping him up at night, poking him, you know. And yeah.
SEAN: Why do you think it was so hostile to him but not -- like, it didn't physically attack you on the second floor at any point, it never touched you, did it?
JOHN: No, I don't think so. Like I said, there were times when you would wake up at night and you almost felt like a pressure.
CLARA: Yeah, you would feel like you were --
JOHN: But I never felt like I was actually being, like, physically touched by it, no. But see, that's the thing that's so strange, is that you can't --
CLARA: Right.
JOHN: Everything that I saw, everything, whatever happened to me, is completely different. I don't think I was ever touched by anything as far as physically touched while I was in that bedroom, which obviously I was in there a lot more times than Ben, but that was what happened with him. I wish I could ask him about it now, but that was so long ago. But yeah, there was definitely an incident with Ben.
SEAN: And I also want to point out that you have not read the transcripts that are online or you have not watched the interviews with the other people.
JOHN: No. Actually, I didn't want to, I don't know, what do you say, like...
CLARA: Taint yourself?
JOHN: Yes, right. Taint my interview or whatever you want to call it by, you know, hearing somebody else's and maybe having that flavor my thoughts or whatever. I wanted to try to come into this with just a clean slate, as it were, in my mind and try to remember. Like I said, I've been thinking about it the last couple days, trying to get it together. Just if there was anything that really stood out. I actually might watch them now.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Just to see everybody else's.
SEAN: Well, it seems to me that you'll be surprised. You say everything was different, I think you'll be surprised to see that there's a lot of similarity.
CLARA: Yeah.
JOHN: Okay. Yeah, right, there's definitely a lot of overlaps.
CLARA: See, I didn't know that you had the disappearing things.
JOHN: Oh, yeah.
CLARA: My brush would disappear, my earrings would disappear, or whatever, I always put it down right there and it's gone, and you could search the whole house and you weren't going to find it, and then you wake up one morning, there it is right there.
JOHN: I remember very distinctly, and I'm sure if you get ahold of Joe, he could tell you this too. There was a glass prism like that you used to split the light or whatever, that we had, and it was notorious for disappearing. We would actually put it either, like, on top of the television or on top of the doorway or somewhere, and everybody's like, see, we're putting it right here. And then you know, whatever, you go back about, we played a lot of video games, whatever, listening to music, whatever, go about your business, and everybody's like, oh, look, it's gone. Look on top of the door, the prism's not there. Maybe a day later you would look and it would be gone.
Now, there's always a chance that somebody grabbed it and was playing a joke, but I doubt it. Because it would show up again. I bet you I still have that thing someplace. But that was something that was -- I know just because a prism is something you're going to remember, but I remember that we always had that, and I bet you that Joe would remember that too.
Here's another clip from the interview.:
Notes:
SEAN: Yeah, because I'd get home and I'd write.
JOHN: Right, you would get home and write and we would always be up there, either during the day if it was a rainy day or whatever, sometimes at night we'd be up there. We were always kind of creeped out by stuff up there. Like I say, it was kind of almost an accepted thing, like an inside joke that we kind of both knew it was haunted but we both really wanted to play video games up there.
SEAN: Now, Joe told me he felt -- and I think Joe was mistaken in this, because I was communicating with him on Facebook. He said that he always felt that it lived in the cubbyhole in my room, and that you guys would considered it crazy that I could even live in that room, sleep in that room. But I was wondering if he was confused and thinking the Hell Room or my room. Did you think my room cubbyhole thing was --
JOHN: Well, the cubbyhole, like I said, was always something that got our attention. The cubbyhole was just always super, super creepy. I can't speak for him, but we knew that you had that cubbyhole in there too that was all loaded up with whatever, I don't know. I mean, there was all kind of old junk in there, so we always were like, oh, my God, what could be in there?
SEAN: It was filled with boxes of books. There wasn't room for anything else in there.
JOHN: Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, so it was always just kind of mysterious, the cubbyholes and all. We knew that there was just stuff packed away in there and it was just really creepy. Yeah, I don't know specifically what. It would be good to talk to him about all this, too. See what he remembers.
SEAN: Yeah, I'm going to reach out to him and a few other people. So any final thoughts? You know, what are you -- what is your takeaway from living on 21 Saint Helens Avenue?
JOHN: Well, I don't know. It changed probably the way that I look at a lot of stuff. Like you say, like a belief system or whatever. Like, I've always tried -- I've looked at a lot of different angles to try to explain what happened there. You know, I mean obviously there's a lot of different beliefs in the world, you know, different cultures believe different things. I've tried to maybe look through different explanations, I guess, you know, natural or otherwise, and I don't think there's anything that really defines the whole thing. I mean, there's parts of it you can explain as this, parts of it you can explain as that, you know. I mean, maybe -- like I say, there's some of it could be hallucinations, but a hallucination didn't pick me up and throw me into the wall or whatever. You know? I mean, there's --
SEAN: It didn't bang on your door either.
JOHN: It didn't bang on the door.
SEAN: While other people were hearing it as well.
JOHN: Right, there's other people verifying these things. Carbon monoxide poisoning, you know, radon poisoning, there's -- I mean.
CLARA: It's true.
JOHN: You know, that chimney went up the whole house.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: That chimney could be leaking. All these things are things that I thought about over the years. It had to be this, it had to be that. Because the most out -- I don't want to say outrageous, but the most outlandish and unexplainable thing is that something was haunting that house. Any natural phenomenon would be a more quote, unquote "reasonable explanation" for that than something supernatural. You know, so just looking for a way to kind of figure out what happened there is kind of what led me down the path to believing or not believing what I think of now. So maybe in closing it is a mystery, I think, that maybe we'll figure out, maybe we won't. A lot of things, it might be too late, you know, so... But it's good to talk about.
SEAN: But you did not have any similar experiences when you moved out?
JOHN: No.
CLARA: No.
JOHN: I've been to a lot of places -- I mean, everybody has. I've never felt anything like that any place else. Any place I've ever lived or any place I've ever been.
CLARA: Before you end, let me ask you about when Ben was here.
JOHN: Yeah, right.
CLARA: I know I asked him at breakfast after he was first -- the first night he stayed, and he told me he couldn't -- I said, "How did you sleep?" And he said, "Every time I would fall asleep, something would push my head." Did he say anything to you about anything?
JOHN: Yeah, Ben.
CLARA: I mean, because he was -- he wasn't a neighbor, he wasn't somebody who heard stories. He just --
SEAN: Let me explain, yeah, Ben was an --
CLARA: Exchange student.
SEAN: German exchange student.
JOHN: Ben was a German exchange student. He was probably there for a month and a half or something? Was it four weeks?
CLARA: A couple weeks, yeah.
JOHN: I think it's four weeks that we did, and then I went there for four weeks. Anyway, I had met Ben the summer before when I went to Germany, and so when he came as an exchange student, it was a no-brainer that he would stay with us. So we set up -- what did we have? We had like a little rollaway cot --
CLARA: A cot, he had a cot.
JOHN: -- that we had set up, a little twin size bed for Ben that was kind of at the foot of my bed.
CLARA: By the radiator, it was.
JOHN: Yeah, he was along the wall by the radiator. It fit right in there. And yeah, he was saying that he couldn't sleep and that there was something, that he felt like something was messing with him at night, that something was waking him up, something was pushing him around.
SEAN: Did he think it was you?
JOHN: At first he asked me if it was me, you know, like... But I'm like, no, you know. And then we kind of explained to him what was going on or whatever. I don't know what he really thought about it, but yeah, I do distinctly remember him saying something was pushing him, keeping him up at night, poking him, you know. And yeah.
SEAN: Why do you think it was so hostile to him but not -- like, it didn't physically attack you on the second floor at any point, it never touched you, did it?
JOHN: No, I don't think so. Like I said, there were times when you would wake up at night and you almost felt like a pressure.
CLARA: Yeah, you would feel like you were --
JOHN: But I never felt like I was actually being, like, physically touched by it, no. But see, that's the thing that's so strange, is that you can't --
CLARA: Right.
JOHN: Everything that I saw, everything, whatever happened to me, is completely different. I don't think I was ever touched by anything as far as physically touched while I was in that bedroom, which obviously I was in there a lot more times than Ben, but that was what happened with him. I wish I could ask him about it now, but that was so long ago. But yeah, there was definitely an incident with Ben.
SEAN: And I also want to point out that you have not read the transcripts that are online or you have not watched the interviews with the other people.
JOHN: No. Actually, I didn't want to, I don't know, what do you say, like...
CLARA: Taint yourself?
JOHN: Yes, right. Taint my interview or whatever you want to call it by, you know, hearing somebody else's and maybe having that flavor my thoughts or whatever. I wanted to try to come into this with just a clean slate, as it were, in my mind and try to remember. Like I said, I've been thinking about it the last couple days, trying to get it together. Just if there was anything that really stood out. I actually might watch them now.
SEAN: Yeah.
JOHN: Just to see everybody else's.
SEAN: Well, it seems to me that you'll be surprised. You say everything was different, I think you'll be surprised to see that there's a lot of similarity.
CLARA: Yeah.
JOHN: Okay. Yeah, right, there's definitely a lot of overlaps.
 |
| John with his surviving siblings. Sean, John, Jeanne & Doug |
CLARA: See, I didn't know that you had the disappearing things.
JOHN: Oh, yeah.
CLARA: My brush would disappear, my earrings would disappear, or whatever, I always put it down right there and it's gone, and you could search the whole house and you weren't going to find it, and then you wake up one morning, there it is right there.
JOHN: I remember very distinctly, and I'm sure if you get ahold of Joe, he could tell you this too. There was a glass prism like that you used to split the light or whatever, that we had, and it was notorious for disappearing. We would actually put it either, like, on top of the television or on top of the doorway or somewhere, and everybody's like, see, we're putting it right here. And then you know, whatever, you go back about, we played a lot of video games, whatever, listening to music, whatever, go about your business, and everybody's like, oh, look, it's gone. Look on top of the door, the prism's not there. Maybe a day later you would look and it would be gone.
Now, there's always a chance that somebody grabbed it and was playing a joke, but I doubt it. Because it would show up again. I bet you I still have that thing someplace. But that was something that was -- I know just because a prism is something you're going to remember, but I remember that we always had that, and I bet you that Joe would remember that too.
Here's another clip from the interview.:
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.
**Photograph from the 2013 real estate listing. Used without permission.
***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.
*****Alfred Augustus Kirk, Jr., b. 21 May 1891, Cecil, MD., d. 12 January 1982, Dade, Florida. He was our piano teacher. He was a World War I veteran and a respected impressionistic artist. My mother still has some of his paintings.
******Douglas Ernest Murphy, Sr., b. 2 October 1941, Scranton, PA, d. 12 March 2003, Baltimore, MD.
******John Norbert "Butch" Rosenberger, b. 23 January 1917, d. 15 May 2005. A great-uncle on our maternal side. He was a frequent visitor to St. Helens Avenue, and sometimes in his later years would stay at the house when his sister Rita, who cared for him, went on vacation.
****Laura Lee Murphy Valenti, b. 27 September 1962, Baltimore, MD., d. 15 February 1994, Baltimore, MD. Cause of death: Suicide.
*****Alfred Augustus Kirk, Jr., b. 21 May 1891, Cecil, MD., d. 12 January 1982, Dade, Florida. He was our piano teacher. He was a World War I veteran and a respected impressionistic artist. My mother still has some of his paintings.
******Douglas Ernest Murphy, Sr., b. 2 October 1941, Scranton, PA, d. 12 March 2003, Baltimore, MD.
******John Norbert "Butch" Rosenberger, b. 23 January 1917, d. 15 May 2005. A great-uncle on our maternal side. He was a frequent visitor to St. Helens Avenue, and sometimes in his later years would stay at the house when his sister Rita, who cared for him, went on vacation.
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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