SeanPaulMurphyVille

Sunday, January 12, 2020

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1

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.

The House, circa 1974

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 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.

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.

John's Bedroom, repainted. John's bed
would be located below the window on the right.*****

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.

John, November 1988. The tiny old kitchen
from before the renovation is seen behind him.

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?

The Entrance Hall light
Look at that beautiful hardwood and stained glass.
Who wouldn't want to live there?

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, in his bedroom.

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

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 24, Bad News Betty

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

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

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Listen to me read some chapters here:

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

Let's stay in touch:

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Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy

Thursday, December 26, 2019

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

Natalie's high school graduation photo

My upcoming novel Chapel Street was inspired by my experiences growing up in a "haunted" house at 21 St. Helens Avenue* in the Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of Lauraville. This series of blogs will examine the actual haunting that inspired the book. This entry consists of the second part of an interview with my niece Natalie, who lived periodically in the house after her mother Laura Murphy Valenti committed suicide in 1994.

Here is a clip from the interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEBBIE: Did you ever call on the Lord?

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

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

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

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

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

Mike and Natalie

DEBBIE: Was your grandfather in the house?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEAN: And John was downstairs?

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

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

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

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

NATALIE: Mmhm.

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

NATALIE: Oh, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEAN: He wasn't --

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

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

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

SEAN: The Hell Room?

NATALIE: The Hell Room.

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

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

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

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

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

Natalie and her grandfather Doug

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATALIE: I know.

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

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

SEAN: Do you have the original?

NATALIE: I don't have the original.

SEAN: Someone digitized it.

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

SEAN: So do you still have that recording?

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

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

NATALIE: Yeah.

SEAN: Gasping.

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

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

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

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

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

NATALIE: Are you recording this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEAN: It could be angelic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEBBIE: Who more?

Natalie and her grandmother Clara

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

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

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

DEBBIE: Do you feel God's protecting you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

*21 St. Helens Avenue was the original address of the house when it was built. The street name and number changed over time, but I use the original address to protect the privacy of the current owners.

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

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

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

Additional blogs about the haunting:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

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

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

Learn more about the book, click Here.

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Sunday, December 22, 2019

Short Story: Christmas

Now that I have returned to my alma mater Towson University as an instructor, I decided to dig through my old filing cabinet in the basement and look at some of my work there as a student. And, since I am always looking for something to blog about, I have decided to share it with you. (Pray I don't start posting blogs about my grade school work!)

This is last of three short stories I wrote for a fiction writing class taught by Dr. Carl Behm in the fall semester of 1982. The class was in the English Department. Since my schedule never allowed me to the take the screenwriting class in my Mass Communications major, these were my only true fiction writing assignments at the University. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more writing classes. At the time I needed the discipline of a class deadline to finish a project. Most of my juvenile writings were left uncompleted.
I forgot the specific parameters of this short assignment. Most of my fellow students wrote thoughtful, introspective pieces. Navel gazing, some might say. Not me. My stories tended to be heavily plotted. Not that they weren't personal. They were, but in a very submerged manner.
Up until this year, my writing had been mainly comic. All three of the stories I wrote in this class were darker than anything I had previously attempted. Why? Because I had recently broken up with my long time girlfriend and I was spiraling downward emotionally. My ex, who remained a friend, read the stories and became concerned. She thought I was suicidal. I told her I wasn't, but she saw things more clearly than I did.
Enough ado. Here's my last story for the class. Although I corrected a few grammatical errors, I resisted the urge to truly rewrite or correct the piece. I wanted this to reflect my viewpoint and talents at the time.

CHRISTMAS

I haven't hung a Christmas decoration in over sixty years.
Once I spat in the collection bucket of a Salvation Army Santa Claus in Chicago. I'm not really proud of that. I was drunk. But I like to tell people about it just to raise some eyebrows. It certainly raised Santa's eyebrows. I thought he was going to punch me. That sure as hell would have been a pleasant spectacle for the evening shoppers.
Let me tell you a nice Christmas story. A true one. That's what the story of my life is. Maybe you'll find it interesting. Maybe you'll learn something. I really don't care. Maybe I'm a cynical old bastard, but there is one thing that I know for sure. A person doesn't live as long as I have without learning a thing or two.
I was born in Canada. Things were a lot different in Canada than they are now. Back in the eighteen-nineties, it wasn't even a truly independent country. We were part of the British Empire and damned proud of it. I know it is still part of the Commonwealth, or whatever, but it was different when I was growing up. It really meant something to be part of the Empire. Hell, the Empire was half the damned world. It was the biggest and richest Empire in the history of the world. The old saying was true: the sun never set on the British Empire.
Sure, the United States is a superpower now, but it couldn't compare to the British Empire of my youth. England, Canada, Australia, India, half of Africa and countless islands and subject nations all united under one language and moral code. It was enough to make a person's head swim. I bought it hook, line and sinker. We didn't have the term master race back then, but we considered it obvious that it was us. Anglo-Saxons were the natural rulers of the world. We didn't have to talk about it. It was obvious. Any fool could see that.
It wasn't surprising that I joined the British army when I came of age. I joined a Canadian regiment, the 104 Canadian Light Infantry. My family was all for it. They probably would have pressured me into joining if I wasn't an enthusiastic recruit. My father was a native of London and he joined the army when he was a young man. He traveled all over the world before he settled in Canada when he retired. He felt all men should join the British army. It would give them a chance to see the world while it made you a man. I was all for it.
I loved the army. It was everything I hoped it would be. I loved the tradition, the pride and the code of honor. I even rose to the rank of Corporal before the Great War. My family was so proud of me because it was difficult for a man without connections to be promoted during peacetime. My father was in the army for over twenty years and ended his career as a master sergeant. He received his promotions during various "adventures." He said if I was lucky, war would break out and I might have a chance to actually rise in rank. And believe me, my father wasn't the only one who wanted war.
The storm was brewing. During the three years that I was in the army before the outbreak of war, even when I was stationed in India, you could sense that a big war was coming. I don't think anyone could have guessed what the spark would be, but we knew the fuse was primed. Early in 1913, our regiment was stationed in England. We were excited. When the war broke out, we would be one of the first to fight. It wouldn't be long, we knew that. The Germans had been asking for war for years. I couldn't wait for the opportunity to put them in their place.
It came in August of 1914. When the news got to our regiment that war had been declared, we cheered. Everyone was cheering. Church bells were ringing. The whole damned nation was cheering. We had a hell of a celebration in the barracks that night. The great adventure, the great crusade, was on. Now we would get the chance to show the world what were were made of. We never doubted the eventual triumph of our values and virtues. I expected the war to be the best six or seven months of my life. I didn't think it would take any longer that that.
Just as I hoped, our regiment was one of the first units to cross the channel. We were part of the British Expeditionary Force under the command of General French. By the time we first saw action, the Germans had pushed the French and Belgians back. Things weren't going well, but that didn't bother me. I knew the situation would change once we reached the front.
We were also pushed back in the first couple of skirmishes we were engaged in. I didn't lose hope. I could see that had bloodied the Germans badly each time we clashed. I firmly believed that when the rest of the British army arrived in France, we would teach the Germans a thing or two.
Meanwhile, we were losing a lot of men. I would guess that we lost a third of the men in the regiment before the first battle of the Marne. I maintained my stiff upper lip. All soldiers know that some of us will never go home. You just had to believe that cause was worth the sacrifice. I was willing to die for my values, the values of my civilization. I never doubted it.
After the Marne the situation changed. We were the ones who doing the pushing. Casualties were high but the end was in sight. I thought we only needed one more big victory to end the war. It was great! This was everything that I wanted out of the war -- the sense of victory and glory. To see our army beating back the barbarians filled me with an unbelievable sense of patriotism and pride.
We pushed and pushed until we came to a village called Amas. The Germans could not be pushed beyond that point. I didn't know it then, but our regiment would never be more than four miles from that spot for the next three years. This is where the real hell began.
We tried again and again to dislodge them from their defensive positions on a low ridge. Finally, we were forced to set up a defensive position on a low ridge a couple hundred yards back from the Germans. This is how tench warfare began, and it was horrible. Enemy sniping kept you practically stooped over all the time. Our noses were always filled with the stench of hundreds of unrecovered, decaying corpses strewn about in no man's land between our lines. Rain would make mud up to your knees in the trenches. You could get used to the constant shelling, but there was no getting used to the bayonet charges.
When I was a raw recruit, I believed the bayonet charge was the most glorious sight on Earth. Seeing a whole regiment of men charging in unison, shouting glorious old calls was certainly impressive on the parade ground. On the battlefield, killing with a bayonet is a mean, horrible job. But killing with a bayonet couldn't compare to the terror you felt when you saw the Germans charging your positions with bayonets fixed. The worst moment was the split second when you realized that you would have to stop shooting and prepare for hand-to-hand combat. That moment always came no matter how many of them you killed with the machine guns. Some would always get through. It still sends shivers down my spine when I think about it.
It was an ugly business, but I did it. It was a job that had to be done. The cause was worth the sacrifice. Our losses were incredibly heavy. By the end of November, our regiment was down to a quarter of our original strength. I had been promoted to sergeant. Our original sergeant was killed when he stayed behind to give us cover as we returned from a foray against the enemy. We were not in a position to retrieve his body and it remained unburied in no man's land for weeks. The body was so close to our lines that I could see his still open eyes staring lifelessly at us until they blackened. That was an image that still haunts me. He was a good man, and, more importantly, a good soldier. Honor itself dictated that he deserved a Christian burial.
I was promoted in late November. For a few weeks, the front quieted down. We really couldn't attack. We were too low on men. We were waiting for reinforcements, and I guess the Germans were as well. In early December our reinforcements began to arrive. They were a bunch of farm boys from Canada who seemed to bring the cold northern wind with them. They were young, patriotic volunteers, but the only training they received was on the ship from Canada. They couldn't wait to fight and got their chance right away. We tried to overrun the forward German trenches. The results were the same as usual. We pushed them out, but we got pushed back when their reserves attacked. We got back to our lines minus fifty-seven men. Little did I know the effect one of them would have me.
I can't remember the kid's name. I probably never even knew it. He was one of those big farm boys that had just joined the regiment. He was hit on the way back to our lines after the attack. I didn't know he was still alive until the shooting died down. Then we could hear him crying for help. He must have been hit in the spine since he was paralyzed from the neck down. He couldn't move, but he could yell and that was exactly what he did.
As you can imagine, his constant pleas drove us crazy, especially the new men. Some of them volunteered to rescue him, but I refused. My orders prevented me from making any major foray into no man's land, and I couldn't send out a small group. The Germans would kill them for sure. They could hear the wounded man too. If they wanted, they could easily kill him, but they didn't. They kept him alive so that he would lure out a rescue party. It was a nasty trick, and I wasn't going to let any of my men fall for it. I just hoped the poor man would die during the night, and put us all out of our misery.
He was still alive when I woke the next morning. All of the men in my area were on edge. The veterans were all cursing the Germans for not killing him, and the new recruits wanted to rescue him. I explained the situation, but they still wanted to act. They argued it was the honorable thing to do, and it was our honor that separated us from the Huns. Still, I said no. I wouldn't let them commit suicide.
The next night the kid was still hanging on somehow, though his cries had grown fainter. Looking back, I should have put some hardened veterans on guard duty that night. Six of the new guys went over the top around midnight. I didn't hear anything. You learn to be a sound sleeper when you get shelled most nights. But the Germans heard them. They dropped a flare on them and machine gunned them before they got to the wounded kid. They pointedly did not fire on the kid, who remained alive and moaning.
That was it. Six men were dead. I couldn't allow this to go on much longer. I hoped that he would die during the day. If not, I would have to do something I never imagined myself doing. Well, he didn't die.
I waited until it was late, around eleven o'clock. As I stood looking over the top of the trench, I quietly attempted to locate where the wounded man laid. Luckily, he began to softly cry. I could sense his exact location. I got my rifle and took aim.
I squeezed off the first shot. It was followed by a faint cry of pain. Despite myself, I smiled. It had been a tough shot. I adjusted my aim slightly and fired again. That shot killed the kid. He never made another noise.
Everyone knew I killed him, but no one reported me. I got a lot of dirty looks from new recruits, but the veterans respected my decision. They knew someone had to do it. If anything, some of them reasoned, I had put him out of his misery. Still, no justification, no matter how logically accurate, made me feel any better. I felt worthless, as if all of my honor and virtue had been stripped away. In my pre-war mindset, it would have been perfectly honorable for the kid to kill himself, or for me to die trying to rescue him. Killing him like this, however, felt like murder. I was no better than a German.
Things quieted down until about two weeks before Christmas. That's when we began our Christmas offensive. Rumors spread like wildfire that there was going to be a Christmas ceasefire, but the generals wanted a victory before that. They wanted a victory to cheer up the folks at home for the holidays, and they didn't care how many young died to achieve it.
We got our orders and did what we had to do. I didn't care anymore. I was just going through the motions. The war had lost all meaning to me. It isn't like I didn't fight. I fought as hard as I could. This campaign was definitely the bloodiest, see-sawing engagement I had experienced up to that time. The battle slowly ground to a halt the day before Christmas with us ending up pretty much where we started, but with half the men. We needed the truce. The Germans could have overrun us easily, if they had the strength to attack. However, I think they were as badly cut up as we were.
I will never forget that Christmas Eve. Even a few minutes before midnight, we fell under a terrible artillery barrage. It was as if both sides had quotas to fill before the truce. Actually, we did not know whether there was really going to be a ceasefire or not. We were instructed not to initiate any small arms fire after midnight unless fired upon, but we didn't know what was going to happen.
A few minutes before midnight, no was was asleep and no one was talking. All of the men in my bunker were watching me, and I was watching my watch. As the seconds of the last minute ticked away, the intensity of the shelling decreased rapidly. By the time the second hand reach the twelve, an unnatural silence fell across the front as far as I could hear. Everyone in my bunker held their breath. I looked up to the remnants of my unit and said, "Merry Christmas." The men started to cheer, as men everywhere up and down the line did. I left the celebration and walked out to the trenches. I told the sentries to make sure that they didn't fire unless they were actually fired upon. After that, I went to my bunk and fell right to sleep.
I was up at dawn the next morning. It was so quiet. Other than some men singing Christmas carols, there was no noise. Most of the men were still asleep. This was the latest most of them had slept in weeks. I was willing to let them continue to do so, but I received different orders. I had to get all of the men up, leave a skeleton guard, and take the rest of them back to an open field about a mile behind our lines for a divisional Christmas service.
I got the men up with no complaints. Hell, I think I could have marched them thirty miles without any grumbling. Nothing could break the mood of peace and cheerfulness. I have to admit it, I was catching it, too. This unofficial truce brought back feelings I hadn't allowed myself since I killed the wounded kid. The ceasefire proved we were more than just animals. This truce was a tribute to everything and civilized in the world. I was surprised that our leaders could get the Germans to agree to it.
After the services, we had the best breakfast we had in months, eggs, bacon, wheatcakes laden with syrup and coffee. I was called away early for a regimental meeting where we received orders for the rest of Christmas day.
Once we got back to our lines, we were to retrieve as many of the bodies as possible from no man's land. Our officers told us the Germans were already doing the same thing. We were warned not to carry weapons into no man's land and not to make any threatening moves like wandering too close to their lines. After we retrieved the bodies, we were to allow the men to relax and entertain themselves. That evening we would also receive a special meal.
When we got back to our lines, we laid planks over the trenches so that we could roll wagons into no man's land. I briefed the men on the situation. I told them not to go any further than halfway toward the German lines. I wasn't taking any chances.
We began collecting the bodies. It's hard for me to describe the joy I felt despite the inherent gruesomeness of the job. Most of the bodies were mere fragments, blown apart repeatedly by artillery shells. Other bodies laid in a crumbling state of decomposition. Still, it felt like a victory. Those men were heroes and there bodies had laid out in the open like rubbish. Now we were finally able to treat them with the respect they deserved. It was another victory of our Christian virtues. I found myself believing in the cause again.
It wasn't long before we made contact with the enemy. There were a lot of German bodies on our side of no man's land, and a lot of our bodies on their side. My men came and asked me what to do with all of the German bodies. I went to the Captain and he told me to carry the German bodies to the middle of no man's land so that the Germans could take care of them.
When we started stacking the German bodies, they responded by stacking our bodies in the middle of no man's land as well. Eventually, they were crossing the middle to retrieve bodies, and we were doing the same. However, our men never strayed near their trenches and they didn't approach ours. I was a little wary at first, but I grew confident that the Germans would respect the cease-fire.
In two hours, our sector was cleared of corpses and I told the men they could relax. The weather was exceptionally mild and most of the men sat around in small groups near our positions in no man's land just enjoying the peace. I saw smiles on the faces of my men. For some of the replacements, this was the first time I ever saw them smile. I just sat alone and watched them. It felt good, really good.
Around three o'clock, one of my men brought out a football, or soccer ball as we say in this country now. I don't know where he got it. He must have had it hidden away the whole time he was in France. I found it odd, but I shouldn't have been surprised. It's amazing what people bring to war. Some people bring Bibles. Others bring soccer balls. To each his own. All I brought was my rifle and my ideals. The rifle was holding up better, but my ideals still lingered on that day.
The game attracted a lot of attention. It wasn't long before most of the men in the regiment were on the sidelines cheering and placing bets. The game attracted the attention of the Germans too. A few of them began drifting closer and closer. The Germans were unarmed, but I went down to the game to make sure there was no trouble.
The men were only playing to four and the game was quickly over. When it ended, many men volunteered to play a second game. When they were picking teams, a handful of Germans approached. In halting English, one of them challenged my men to a game.
Ashworth, the private who owned the ball, ran to ask my permission. He was obviously keen on the idea. I looked at the Germans. They seemed sincere enough. Nothing indicated that this was a prelude to a sneak attack. I turned back to Ashworth and asked if he really wanted to play them. He said yes. He wanted to beat them.
So it was up to me.
As you can imagine, it was quite a decision to make. Technically speaking, I shouldn't have been the one to make it. I should have run it up the chain of command. That was the safest thing to do for both the men and my career. However, it was Christmas and everyone wanted to do it. Who was I to say no after the unremitting hell we had experienced over the last few months?
I warned Ashworth that there better not be any rough stuff. He said he wouldn't start anything. Then I walked over to the German who could speak English. I told them that they could play as long as the game didn't get out of hand. He assured me that they would keep the game friendly. I gave my approval and a cheer went up.
My men huddled and picked a team. I was surprised to learn that their were men in the unit who played at the University level. I smiled. It certainly appeared we would make quicker work of the Germans on the football field than we had on the battlefield.
Word of the game spread before the teams were even selected. Men, from both sides, started showing up from the entire sector. British and German soldiers worked together to clear the debris from a sufficiently flat area in no man's land to create a regulation field.
As I watched, I feared that things were already getting out of hand in a way I didn't anticipate. My own immediate superiors watched from the trenches. They obviously didn't disapprove, or they would have put an end to it, but they wanted to keep their distance in case things went bad. And it looked like it might. Suddenly, the men around me began to drift away. I saw why. The Captain and his staff were approaching. He wanted to know how I could be so insane as approve the game. I asked if he wanted me to cancel it but he said no. It was too late now. However, he made it perfectly clear I would receive the blame if anything happened.
The game was to be played according to international rules. One of my men, a former University player, acted as referee. My worst fears were allayed after a couple of minutes. Both teams played hard. Each of them obviously wanted to win. But no one wanted to ruin this strange, magical moment with unsportsmanlike conduct. I felt extremely proud that my men possessed a sense of honor that permitted them to put aside their justified antipathy toward the Germans to play a regulation game. I was surprised that the Germans were able to do the same.
As I lit up a cigarette, I heard someone walking toward me from behind. I looked over my shoulder and saw a German officer approaching. He was their equivalent of a lieutenant. Feeling generous, I held up my packet of cigarettes. He smiled and nodded. I took one out and handed it to him. He thanked me in very good English, American English actually.
We introduced ourselves as we watched the game. His name was Joseph Engel. I complimented him on his English. He told me he had lived for a few years in America. He worked for an uncle who owned a prosperous import/export business based in Philadelphia. The year before the war, his uncle transferred him to his Hamburg office. When the war came, he enlisted. "I only thought it would be for a few months," he said with a smile.
I told him my life story. He was surprised to hear I was Canadian. He asked why I had joined the British Army. I told him the Canadian army was small and didn't offer the excitement and opportunity I sought. He said he understood, but I don't think he did. How could he? How could a German understand the sense of pride one got in being a soldier in the British Army. He was just being friendly.
I was beginning to like the guy.
We turned our attention back to the game. It was strange. There were no serious incidents. The players were being unusually courteous. The fans quieted down, too. Their eyes remained glued on the action, but the cheering subsided. There was still tension, but there was also a profound sense of peace. The game brought about a strange unity. I looked to Engel, my enemy friend. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. I knew he could feel it too.
The game ended with the Germans winning by one point. Both sides applauded the winners. That surprised me. As the applause died, the Captain ordered our men back to our lines. They were hesitant, as if they didn't want to break the spell. At around the same time, German officers began to send their men back to their positions.
I had to go. I turned to Engel but I couldn't say anything. He broke the silence. He said it was a great pity we would never meet again. Suddenly an idea popped into my head. I told him that we could meet after the war. He smiled, after all, that the was oldest lie soldiers shared. But I meant it, and he could tell. He said he would like too. We talked a little before we decided on a time and place. We agreed to meet in Boston on Christmas day, one year after the end of the war. We would meet at six o'clock in the evening in front of City Hall. It was set. We wished each other the best of luck and we both hoped that it would not be too long before we met again.
It wasn't.
Christmas ended at midnight and so did all of the delusions of peace. Shelling began seconds after midnight. It wasn't particularly heavy, but it was enough to force us to keep our heads down. The war was back. It was a terrible feeling.
The next morning the commanders in my regiment were called to together. We were ordered to attack. I couldn't believe it. A major assault the day after Christmas? They were insane. The generals felt an attack was necessary because our forces were in a weakened state and couldn't withstand a heavy German assault. They said we had to attack preemptively to throw the Germans off balance.
We went over the top after our forces shelled the German positions mercilessly. It was a typical bayonet charge. At first my heart wasn't in it, but the professional soldier in me took over.
As was normally the case when we pit bayonets against machine guns, we lost a lot of men charging across the field, but we didn't stop. I charged blindly, leading the men on. We hit their line like a bulldozer, forcing the Germans out of their trenches into a fighting withdrawal. We continued to push them.
I bayoneted a German private who turned to challenge me. As I pulled the metal out of his ribcage, one of my men fell to the ground next to me. I turned to the man who had shot him and charged in blind rage.
My eyes focused on my target. It was Engel. He faced me with his pistol in hand. He recognized me at the same time. In a moment of weakness or friendship, he turned the barrel away from me. I wanted to stop too, but I couldn't. I drove the bayonet deep into his chest then pulled it out. Engel closed his eyes and fell backwards.
I stood over his body. I don't know why but I began to drive my bayonet into his lifeless body again and again. I don't know how many times I did it. When I stopped, I threw my rifle to the ground and pulled Engel's pistol from his hand. I closed my eyes, opened my mouth and pointed the barrel of the gun to the roof of my mouth. I pulled the trigger but nothing happened. The pistol was out of ammunition.
I hate Christmas.

Rereading this piece, I can see why my ex-girlfriend thought I was suicidal. Dr. Behm liked it. He also appreciated that I attempted a historical piece. He said not many students attempted that.

Other Early Writings:

Short Story: Christmas

Short Story: The Intruders

Short Story: To Die A Hero
Short Film: The Lunch
The Three Stooges: An Analysis
Recent Horror Films: An Analysis

My Life - My 4th Grade Autobiography

My Poetry, or, The Sorrow and The Self-Pity

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

If you want to see if my writing has improved since college, you should check out these sample chapters of my novel Chapel Street, which will be published by TouchPoint Press in July of 2020.

Sample Chapters:
Prologue - My Mother
Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru
Chapter 5 - Gina
Chapter 6 - Tombstone Teri
Chapter 7 - The Holy Redeemer Lonely Hearts Club
Chapter 8 - A Mourner
Chapter 9 - War Is Declared
Chapter 10 - The Motorcycle
Chapter 11 - Suspended
Chapter 12 - The Harbor
Chapter 13 - Bad News Betty

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Or you can read my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press, which deals heavily with my suicidal college days:

Here are some sample chapters:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

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