The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!

21 St. Helens Avenue

My upcoming novel Chapel Street was inspired by my experiences growing up in a "haunted" house at 21 St. Helens Avenue* in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Lauraville. This series of blogs will examine the actual haunting that inspired the book.

Most of my recent blogs have been interviews with my family members discussing their experiences at the house. I fear some of those discussions might be a little confusing for an outsider to follow without a more detailed description of the layout. I was hoping to get the blueprints by now, but I still haven't gotten them. I did find this deed that will give you the parameters of the property itself.  (I also have the plat, but I cannot use it because it gives away too much concerning the location.)

I have also found some items which should give you a better picture of the internal geography. Sadly, we have very few photographs of the bedrooms where most of the action took place during our time at 21 St. Helens Avenue. (I'm talking paranormal action.) Fortunately, my brother John provided our first visual aid. It is the booklet prepared by the real estate agent when my mother sold the house in 2005. It doesn't show all of the rooms, but the pictures and description should give you a good feel for the house.

For the full history of the house, and its previous residents, click Here.

Wow.  Who wouldn't want to live there? It is a great house. Of course, no mention was made in the sales material of the non-material resident(s). I suppose we were practicing a don't ask, don't tell policy. Homebuyers out there, here's a word to the wise: Ask!

Strangely, I felt no sense of nostalgia when my mother sold the house in 2005. Unlike when the homes of my grandparents left the family, I don't remember going over to 21 St. Helens Avenue for one last look. I can't even remember the last time I entered the house before the sale. I did, however, go over for the auction when the house sold again in 2013. My mother sold the house for $289,000. The starting price at the auction was $10,000, probably because the owner was unable to complete his remodeling.

I pulled the following photos from the online listing of the house in 2013. They showed more of the rooms. (I am using these photos without permission.)

This is the entrance hall. It is a beautiful room. We always kept an upright piano next to the stairs under the small stained glass window. The stairs led to the platform where Miss Miriam Mayfort was found after a fall. Contrary to the neighborhood legend, she did not die there. She died at the hospital.**

The light hanging from the ceiling is the one my brother John saw swinging -- and stopping -- mysteriously.

This is the living room. I don't like what the next owner did to it. I really loved the original pocket doors which have been removed here. This room was generally a place of refuge. During the height of the haunting in the late 1980s, the entity would drive a person, or couple, from their bedrooms at night. They would end up on the sofa here. John Clayton Mayfort's funeral was held in this room in 1960. I also came within seconds of killing myself while sitting on a chair in front of the rear window in May of 1983. Additionally, my father Douglas Murphy would have strange one-sided conversations with someone or something while sitting in this room late in his life. Incidentally, he would be sitting where I nearly killed myself when he had those conversations.....

This was originally our family room, before the television was moved into the living room. The next owner absurdly expanded the bathroom across the entire back of the room blocking access to the addition my parents built. Now, you could only enter the addition through the bathroom! This became known as the organ room. The old church pump organ reportedly played by itself on occasion. I might have heard it myself. My late brother Mark, believing the organ was haunted, dragged the bulky instrument outside to the driveway and chopped it up with an ax. (My mother, who was away on the Eastern Shore, had given him permission to do so.)

The previous owner, Miriam Mayfort, apparently slept in this room on a day bed prior to her death.

I call this the Front West Bedroom. The bay windows face St. Helens Avenue. Originally, my parents lived in this room, but my mother shifted to other bedrooms over the years. My father remained in this room until his health began to fail and he moved downstairs. The room then became a guest room. There wasn't much paranormal activity reported in this room. However, a friend of my niece Natalie slept there and claimed the bed shook throughout the night.

According to neighbors, Miss Miriam Mayfort slept in this room before moving downstairs near the end of her life.

If I were living in that house now, I would pick this one to be my bedroom! It is the least creepy room on the second floor.

I call this the Front East Bedroom. The window on the left faces St. Helens Avenue. The other windows face Harford Road. Originally, I shared this room with my brothers Doug and Mark. Doug and I moved to our attic bedrooms within a year or so. When Doug left, Mark took his room in the attic. My mother then moved into the room with my infant brother John. A few years later, my mother moved out, leaving the room to John alone. He stayed there until the mid-1990s. Then he moved out briefly before returning to live in the basement apartment built but vacated by my brother Mark. With John in the basement, my niece Natalie moved into this room when she returned to St. Helens Avenue.

This bedroom was the site of a great deal of paranormal activity. Furniture moved. Items disappeared and reappeared. The entity would manifest itself in this room, sometimes as a dark cloud -- or blob -- and other times as a cloaked shadow figure. The entity usually entered the room through the closed door, or came in through the wall from the Front West Bedroom.

The Master Bedroom. The bay windows overlook Harford Road. The door on the right led to the sunporch. Further to the left, out of sight, is the door to the closet. This room's closet was one of three adjacent ones that were probably once a single small room, perhaps a nursery. The general consensus opinion is that those closets were the initial center of the haunting. Originally, my two sisters, Jeanne and Laura, lived in this room. After Laura married, Jeanne had the room to herself. When she left, my mother took up residence here. Natalie joined her in this room during her initial stay. When she returned a few years later, Natalie went to the Front East bedroom instead. She didn't want to go back here.

There was a great deal of paranormal activity in this room. My sisters began experiencing paranormal phenomenon immediately upon arrival at the house. Items disappeared and reappeared. The entity frequently entered this room as a dark mist (sometimes with red eyes) or a shadow person from the closet, whose door would never remain shut -- even if blocked or locked. The entity would get into bed with girls/women in this room and would either touch or fondle them.*** The entity also spoke to people in this room, sometimes in a mimicked voice. This was a bad place.

As you can see, the next owner did not finish his renovation of this room, or the adjacent closets and bathroom.**** Rumor has it that he fell ill after starting. I am not surprised. When I saw this room on the tour before the auction, I assumed that the entity had struck at him for messing with its home. Call me superstitious.

This would be the most frightening room in the house, it it weren't for....

The Front Attic Bedroom, aka, The Hell Room or The Hell Hole. The window overlooks St. Helens Avenue. Out of sight on the right, there is a full-sized, stand-up closet. Out of sight on the left, there is a cubbyhole.

My brother Doug first moved into this bedroom. When he left, my brother Mark moved in. After Mark left, this room became a guest room. My brother-in-law Jon Coe lived here briefly. My brother-in-law Frank also lived here briefly after the death of my sister. My brother Mark's girlfriend Beth crashed here for a few weeks. Afterwards, my mother tried living in this room briefly. After a while, people generally avoided this room at night.

You don't get called The Hell Room for nothing. There was a great deal of malevolent paranormal activity in this room, especially after my mother and her friend Ted tried using a Ouija board in here during the mid-1980s. The entity manifested itself in two different forms in this room. It appeared as a dark shape with red eyes in the stand up closet. It would also manifest itself as a large, malevolent cat-like creature. It also physically attacked my brother John in broad daylight. This is a room that people would leave screaming. The entity also spoke to people in this room, sometimes in a mimicked voice.

The fact that this large cat-like creature was never seen elsewhere in the house, as far as I currently know, makes me suspect that there were at least two entities in the house. The one that seemed to live in the closets downstairs that manifested itself as a dark shape or shadow person, and the one with the red eyes who lived in the closet here that also manifested itself in cat form. I was troubled to learn that my father, near the end of his life, used to walk up to this empty room in the middle of the night from his bedroom on the first floor to talk to something....

I tried staying in this room at the height of the haunting, but, frankly, I was too scared to go to sleep!

The Back Attic Bedroom. From this window, you had a marvelous panorama view stretching from the smokestacks of Sparrows Point, to the skyscrapers downtown, to the now gone Memorial Stadium. Immediately outside of the window was the flat roof of the sunporch. Beyond that was a very long, scary drop. The room seems so small in this picture, but it was quite roomy. I moved into this room in either 1975 or 1976 and stayed until I bought my own house in 1996. After I left, the room remained empty throughout the rest of the Murphy era.

When I lived in the house, there was a radiator at the back room to the right of the window. I generally kept my bed parallel to the radiator with my head at the right side wall. I experienced absolutely no paranormal activity in this room until after the Ouija board incident around 1986. Then I began hearing footsteps on the roof, usually on the sloping part on the right side. Then, three nights in a row, I woke up to find myself climbing out of the window at 3am. After that, I prayed frequently and the entity seemed blocked from entering the room. I did not experience any additional activity within that room from that day forward. However, after I left, people would hear furniture moving in this room -- despite the fact that there wasn't any furniture in it anymore.

The final stop on our tour of the house is a short film I shot for my Introduction to Film class at Towson State University circa 1981. The Uninvited starred Paula Malloy and Amy Slaughter, the girlfriends of my friends and Amway cohorts*****, Jim Jackson and Mike Mazziott. In the film, Paula Malloy is sleeping in the master bedroom when another woman breaks into the house and chases her into the attic. The second half of the film is sadly lost. In the end, the intruder is revealed to be an overzealous Amway distributor. How daring of me to bite the hand that wasn't feeding me!

The film was shot on Super 8mm. It was silent and I added the music and sound effects later.

Here it is:

That ends my little tour of the house. Although the paranormal activity seemed more centered in some rooms than others, many of my family never felt there was a completely safe place. They always felt they were being watched. There would always be footsteps and banging and doors opening and closing.

I wonder if it is still active?

My guess would be yes.

*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.

**I subsequently talked to a number of older neighbors at the funeral of a neighborhood matriarch. They all assured me that Miss Mayfort died on the landing. They simply must've declared her officially dead at the hospital.

***I haven't formally interviewed my sister Jeanne yet, so I do not know the true scope of the activity in the master bedroom.

****I have subsequently learned that the next owner did complete his renovation. However, he took a hammer to the walls of that bedroom, and the adjacent closets prior to moving out.... 

*****Yes, we were idiots.

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 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

My novel Chapel Street was inspired by the haunting. You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother
Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

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