“I wish I knew what on earth is going on here. Something is definitely wrong here, but no matter what anyone sees or hears, there can be no rational explanation.”
—DONNA RANDALL FILLIE
This morning Michelle told me that she couldn’t sleep at all because she felt “bothered” by something, but she didn’t know what. She kept trying and trying, but she couldn’t sleep. She felt that she needed to keep her eyes closed or else she would see “something.” Then a very pleasant voice told her to “get the cross.” The only cross she has is the one that used to belong to me. She got out of bed, put the cross on, and immediately went to sleep.
For the last two nights in a row Michelle reported that something was stroking her hair. She said that it was not a hand in the human sense, just a gentle stroking. It can be very annoying if you’re not in the mood. It’s like, “Leave me alone,” but it won’t.
After arriving home from grocery shopping at 9 p.m. Bob went upstairs and the kids and dog were over in the corner of the living room together. I flopped on the loveseat at the foot of the stairs. My sneakers were on the floor in front of me and to my surprise, one did a complete rollover and ended in an upright position about one and one half feet from where it started. For some reason, it made me smile.
Mom and Dad invited us over for dinner, and Diane came up. We were sitting at the table eating, and the old mantle clock started running and chiming. That clock hasn’t worked for years and years. The main spring is broken because it was wound too tightly, but they keep it because it is so old, and is decorative. Well, we all stared at each other with our mouths hanging open. It chimed about seven or eight times and made a sort of grinding noise and came to a stop.
[Michelle still has that clock and it still chimes without the mechanism to this day.]
I was just putting on makeup in the bathroom and the dog kept growling and lifting up his lips like he was very agitated about something. Michelle was in her room upstairs with Bobby and they were playing quietly.
Today I went in to clean Bobby’s room and it smelled really strong of cigar smoke. There was no smoky haze or anything, just the really strong smell. Now, I know that there is no possible way on earth that someone was actually smoking a cigar in there. So, do “they” project the scent for some reason? If there’s a message there, I’m afraid I missed it.
I wish I knew what on earth is going on here. Something is definitely wrong here, but no matter what anyone sees or hears, there can be no rational explanation. I have spoken many times with the minister and he seems to understand the situation. There is nothing he can say that will change anything. We have had him speak with Michelle and he says that she has developed an attitude of acceptance as if she understands, too. Why can’t we understand it? It’s almost impossible to understand how something like this can go on. The house has been blessed, and it still goes on. Mom has demanded that “they” leave, and they do, but only for the time being. “They” don’t hurt anyone; “they” aren’t even apparently trying to scare anyone. “They” are just here and that is that!
Something had hold of the corner of the sheet on Michelle’s bed and kept pulling her toward the bottom corner of the bed. She would almost slide off the bottom, then crawl back up pulling the sheet with her. Over and over again it pulled her toward the edge and she would crawl back up. She started to get really mad about it because she didn’t want to be disturbed. It seems that something was playing a little game to see how aggravated it could get her. Rather than being scared, she was just plain mad.
Little Bob is really a quiet kid, so when he woke us up last night I thought that maybe he was sick. He was crying, and said that someone was calling him, close to his head. When he looked around, no one was there, but they kept on calling and calling his name. What should we do? No one likes when this happens. The kids are happy here, and don’t seem to typically be bothered by all of this. Something like what just happened is upsetting as it is going on, but then seems to be forgotten almost immediately.
I was just sitting in the den reading a book and something or someone was stroking the back of my hair. It was very gentle and pleasant. I put my hand on the back of my head. Nothing was there. It kept stroking. It wasn’t doing anything seriously scary, just stroking and stroking. I left it alone. It seemed to be enjoying the activity as much as I was.
Michelle’s room was full of cigar smoke last night. My pillow smelled like Lysol. Perhaps “spirits” have really poor aim!
[Again I have to wonder why there are these scents in the house. It really irritates me sometimes—less than that they are here because I can’t get a grasp on it. Irritated is clearly not the right word. These things keep happening over and over and no adequate explanation develops. Perhaps the feeling is frustration. If we’re supposed to figure it out, they better give us some more definitive clues.]
Thank God, things have been very quiet for a long period of time. If only it would stay this way. We’re all doing well, and have been able to sleep without wondering what will happen next.
I was home all alone. The phone rang and I picked it up thinking it was just like any random call we get. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I answered and said hello and on the other end there was a commotion. It was as if I was was listening to something happen in real time, but it sounded like it was from a past time by the Victrola-like-sounding voices and noise. Either that, or I thought it was some type of crank call.
After a few moments it became very apparent to me that this was no crank call. It sounded like there was a real disaster in the making going on. There was a voice echoing in what sounded like the distance as he said, “Ahoy matey! Freighter up ahead!” Then I heard men yelling in the background. There was confusion, splashing sounds as if people were abandoning ship, and other sounds typical of an old-time marine emergency. Then the line just went dead and I heard the dial tone. I know in my mind my ears were witnessing a real incident from the past that somehow came through the phone.
The clock is still going strong. Tonight when Michelle came into our room to tell us something, the dog hopped up and ran to the edge of the bed. He wasn’t greeting her, but someone behind her. We all looked past Michelle toward where he was looking. Of course, nothing was there even though he gave every indication that there was. His interest continued for some time.
Sounds like someone is banging up and down the stairs. The kids are right here with me and no one is physically there. It’s happened two or three times now and the dog keeps looking over there when it happens. Well, have a ball guys, because I’m outta here for now.
Michelle stayed home from school today, and every time she went into the living room, the pendulum on the antique clock would swing back and forth. It’s broken and hasn’t worked for years. The main spring is broken, and it’s too costly to fix. She never touched it, but it would make a cranking sound, and swing back and forth.
Michelle seems anxious and wants to stay away from her room. She comes into our room in the middle of the night with her pillow, and I have found her sleeping on the floor next to our bed. I think I will have the new minister come for a visit and bless the house again. We talked about moving again, but this time the kids had a fit and wanted to stay here. I don’t want any problems to arise from this experience. They say it doesn’t bother them, but for goodness sake, if they don’t want to stay in their rooms at night, then I know that it does.
We had bought a huge stuffed St. Bernard dog at a flea market. It kept getting in the way so I put it in the spare room over the stairs. Yesterday morning when I got up, it was sitting in the hall outside of my bedroom door. I put it back in the spare room. When I got up this morning, it was again outside of my door. Michelle was still sleeping on both days. I had put a nail in the latch to keep the door to the spare room closed. It is too high for her to reach. I think I’ll get rid of the play thing as soon as she forgets that she has it or stops playing with it.
Bob, who hasn’t been affected a lot by this, was sitting on the couch at 5 a.m. waiting for us to leave on vacation. (Cape May, New Jersey! Yeah!) Anyway, he jumped up and went running across the room. His eyes grew huge as he looked toward the television. His track trophy had slid across the entire top of the television, then stopped dead in its tracks. The fact that we were leaving for a weeks’ vacation helped a lot to stop him from dwelling on it.
[I wonder why these things only happen to one person at a time. It was obviously meant for just Bob to see. Possibly if we were all to see something at once, we may be able to figure this out.]
Michelle asked if her friend Charlene could stay overnight so, all things considered, we said yes. All went well until the middle of the night. Charlene got out of bed and jumped into bed with Michelle, yelling about Michelle keeping her awake all night making animal noises. Michelle kept denying that she was making any noises, but Charlene didn’t believe her. Charlene said that there were “creepy noises” coming out of the corner of the room, and that Michelle was “blowing cold air in my face all night long.” Her parting shot to Michelle when she left was, “If it wasn’t you, than you have a ghost in this big old house.”
[The feeling, which we’ve all had that someone is here with us, was never more evident than when Michelle stayed away from home for the first time. She didn’t say much about what she and her friend did, but mentioned that her friend’s house was “clear.”]
Much of the same goings on all summer. Nothing dramatic has happened. I didn’t get a chance to keep up the journal, because Dad has been very sick, and was hospitalized for quite a while with heart problems. I’ll try to be more dedicated to this venture in the future.
Last night there was mist in the living room. It didn’t take on any particular form or substance, just a hazy mist close to the floor. I didn’t notice it at first, but when I did, the first thing that came to mind was smoke from a fire. There was no smell of smoke in the house and the room was cool. All the doors and windows were closed. It hung close to the floor and just remained a hazy strip.
Today the mantle clock started chiming on its own. It is clearly still broken.
Bob Jr. stayed home from school today because he has a bad cold. He was watching television and I was sitting on the loveseat sewing a button on his father’s shirt. We both watched in amazement as the lamp slid across the table, hovered in mid-air, and smashed onto the floor. Okay, guys, enough is enough. At least you can clean up after yourself!
Bob Jr. has no particular knowledge about the goings-on in the house. With the exception of a few incidences, he has pretty much escaped the situation. He told me today that he was awake most of the night because someone kept shaking his shoulder and patting him on the back. He tried to sleep, but when he did, it would be repeated over and over. He was furious this morning because he thought it was his sister. She was mad at him for accusing her of doing it. The joy of being siblings!
[I didn’t try to push him about it, but he was obviously irritated. He said that he heard someone calling him as he was being tapped. I told him that he must have had a dream. Outwardly he accepted my explanation but I could tell it really didn’t satisfy him.]
I was just brushing my teeth in the bathroom and it smelled heavily of cigar smoke. Every time I smell it now I worry that something is going to happen. I turned off the light and went upstairs to bed. The toy St. Bernard was in the hall outside my door. It gives me the creeps. Anyway, as I walked into my room I glanced at it sitting there, and its head dropped over to one side. Then it flipped over onto its side. It’s almost like someone whacked it in the head and knocked it over. I took it downstairs, put it into a garbage bag, and tomorrow it’s getting thrown away. I don’t need this kind of situation going on here. We have enough already.
Last week Aunt Nonie passed away. She was in the hospital when she died. Bob and I had gone to bed that night at about 10. I woke up sometime around midnight to the sound of utter confusion at the foot of the bed. There was mumbling and a bustling sound like people were all around the bed, between the windows. Then out of the din, a loud voice booming like through a megaphone. The voice was unrecognizable. I woke up Bob, but he didn’t hear a thing. About 15 minutes later, I heard the phone ring. Mom came to the foot of the stairs and called us. She said that the hospital just called, and that Aunt Nonie had died. My first impression was that this bustling noise, and all the jabbering in hushed tones, must be what you hear as you lose consciousness and die. I got a chill from my head to my feet, and became very upset. Why would I hear something at that exact time that she died? Upon reflection, it sounded to me exactly like it would in a hospital when the staff would be rushing around a patient, trying to keep her alive. It was strange in so many ways.
At 6:30 a.m. Michelle woke up to someone tapping on her window. She cautiously pulled up the shade and there stood Aunt Nonie. I know this sounds bizarre, but I guess in the scheme of things, it is just more of the same weird stuff that has been going on here for years. Anyway, she looked the same as she always did, except her glasses were old-fashioned, round. She had on a white top, navy blue pants, and brown shoes. She was carrying a white box tied with brown string. Michelle was aghast. Aunt Nonie said, “Open the door.” Michelle started to run to the bedroom door, and a different voice came out of Aunt Nonie’s mouth. It was a male voice. When Michelle got to the foot of the stairs, we could all smell really strong cigar smoke. Michelle will sleep in our room again tonight.
[I think that seeing someone dead outside of the window is bad enough, but it happened to be three stories above the ground. Why would someone who obviously loved the kids when she was alive want to scare them when she’s dead?]
[Michelle’s recollection of the event: I was really close to my Aunt Nonie. She was my grandmother’s sister on my mom’s side). She arrived with boxes of cookies and presents all the time. I was in my bedroom upstairs, woke up during the night, and heard a rapping sound on the window (always hear strange noises here, crashes, especially on the kitchen wall, and banging on other walls too). I got up and put the light on and listened carefully to see what it was and I realized it was at the window. When I pulled the shade up, my aunt was in the window! I knew it was her but the face was not her. Then it opened its mouth and there was a moan. I pulled the shade down and ran downstairs! It had her hair and body and she held boxes. It was specific to how she dressed. She wore a housecoat; those sleeveless dresses that snapped up the front—she was a large women. And she had Christmas presents wrapped in old-fashioned paper like from the 50s the wrapping paper was floral. I knew it was her, but why was she outside? Why on the second floor? That scared me. I was awake for a few minutes before I saw that. I think that was probably the scariest thing I ever saw. Luckily, it never happened again, just that one time. I have her mantle clock at my house that will go off on occasion if I think of her or if I am talking about her. I brought that clock to a clock person twice and they told me the chime was broken and there is no way it is going to chime. It has no movement in it, it is a broken clock. It still chimes randomly on occasion.]
I was discussing Aunt Nonie’s death with my mother while I was dusting the living room. I touched the lampshade, and the lamp clicked on. Later on, someone asked Michelle how she was doing. No one was there.
Michelle went into our bedroom to call Charlene, and standing by our nightstand was an outlined figure. It was completely surrounded with neon blue dashes and sparks. The room didn’t glow, and she reported that it caused no shadow. It looked like a “ball with a sheet over it,” not like a person or anything. It was shorter than her, and was perfectly still. She stood there dumbfounded, just looking at it. She said that she couldn’t move or say anything. The sparks dashed out in all directions and, as she stumbled backward, its main shape disappeared, but the neon dashes transferred to the door molding into two zigzag rows about two feet in length. Then they disappeared.
This is the first time that something of this nature has been seen. It seems to me that this thing was maybe surrounded by an aura of some sort. Not that the figure was seen as itself, but that the lights gave its shape away. It didn’t seem to act in any way, it was just there. Tonight I am going to keep Michelle in here with us. I think that she is the one that this “it” is interested in. Bob agrees.
[Later we came to call this the Dash Man. You end up naming these things. Dashes weren’t part of the thing, they were around the figure. Charlene was not happy with this house. Something was growling at her in the closet and she got upset about it.]
[I wondered why there was not much of anything written in 1987. Going back, I now see that our best friend, and my son’s godfather, Dennis, got cancer around that time and he only lived through the end of ’87—less than a year after he was diagnosed. It threw us all for a major upset. He was 40.]
Figure 4-1. The actual diary entry for this encounter, which appears to possibly have been an alien encounter.
Dad has been having heart problems and needed to go to the hospital for tests. When we arrived back home, the whole house smelled like pipe or cigar smoke. It was really strong. As I said before, no one has smoked a pipe or cigar in this house for many years, and at this time we don’t know anyone who does.
[I would love to know what goes on in this house when we aren’t home. It’s almost like “they” choose that time to make themselves at home and hang out around here.]
Misplaced things? No, because the whiskbroom was hanging on its nail near the fireplace in the dining room. At least that’s where it was a few minutes ago when I walked by it. Now it’s around the corner on the other side of the den.
[This I don’t mind. Possibly “they” will clean the house for me. What is it with all of this stupid stuff?
I can’t understand why I’m unable to sleep in our room. It’s as if something wants to get me alone, and I always think twice before going to another room. I have heard the chanting and quiet conversations out in the hall many nights. Last night I got scared. That hasn’t happened in a long time. The voices were discussing whatever it is they discuss among them, but it also sounded like furniture or something was being moved—dragged or scooted across the floor. That was bad enough, but the parting shot was when I heard something walking up the stairs, past my door, and up into the attic. What makes this so scary is that there are no permanent attic stairs—they are the pull down variety. There was none of the sounds always associated with the pulling down of the steps, just someone approaching them and, without missing a step, walking right up them as if there was a regular staircase there.
[Michelle is away from home and out in the world more than ever before. She hasn’t specifically been pestered by “things” for a while and is happy about that. We still have the night prowlers, whisperers, chanters, and all other manner of visitors as usual, but none of that has been focused just on her. Sometimes it actually becomes boring around here. Not that I want more of it, but there are now so many little things that are repeated over and over.]
Ah! A new scent is in the house. I went to bed at about 8:30 with a severe headache. The bedroom smelled like Lysol. It was all quite overpowering. I could almost explain this one although that entails a strange and complicated explanation. Aunt Nonie always used Lysol when she cleaned the house. She had two cats and we never smelled their litter box because she would disinfect it with Lysol. She added it to her laundry and did her general cleaning with it. We never used it here in our house, so there would be absolutely no reason to have that scent here. When she babysat the kids at her place, they would always return smelling like Lysol. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, just one that we always identified with her. Perhaps she and her trusty green were visiting us.
Lysol, everywhere. The house is full of it again. Are we supposed to understand?
There seems to be increased activity around us today. At 11 o’clock this morning, Michelle went upstairs to get the vacuum for me. It was in the spare bedroom (top of stairs, left). The door to the room was closed. As she reached for the doorknob, the whole door began to shake, almost knocking off the mirror that is attached to it on the outside. Then it opened and slammed shut loudly. She summoned up the courage to enter the room; she found everything was quiet inside. Later, at 3 o’clock, we slid a long nail through the latch to force the door closed. No one has been upstairs since, but I just walked by and the nail is gone, and the door is open. This seems silly to me since if it is a spirit, it certainly wouldn’t need to open the door, it would just go through it.
Michelle and Chris are going to the junior prom tonight. They looked so cute in their dress clothes. As they stood on the front porch getting their pictures taken, the broken clock on the mantle started chiming. It hasn’t worked for years. Remember the expensive mantle decoration? That’s the one. I think someone wanted to be there for this “family moment” and was letting us know—perhaps, even helping us celebrate.
Michelle experienced a really strange one last night. She related it to me in detail. She had been asleep for some time when she was awakened by someone putting a hand on her forehead. She lay there looking around and didn’t see anyone. All of a sudden the blankets began being tucked in around her by unseen hands. She was tucked in from her toes to her chest. Tuck, tuck, both sides all the way up and down. With that completed, there was a hand on her forehead again. She heard two women talking quietly by the side of her bed. “I don’t know, Mildred.” “The poor little thing is so sick.” “Maybe she’ll get better if we keep her tucked in and warm.” Then, she again felt an unseen hand on her forehead. Michelle felt no reason to get scared. It seemed obvious that whoever these two women were they must have cared a lot for whomever it was they were tending to.
There have been so many things going on around here. I sometimes forget to write them all down. Over the past couple of months, I have taken time to try and figure out what this is all about. No matter how I try to put these pieces together, they never seem to fit. We went from some really spectacular episodes to these smells of cigars. What is with the lights and the cigar smoke? In the first place, it is hard to comprehend that something like this occurs, and that it is like little signals or hints of something that maybe we should understand. But, how can we begin to figure it out if there are no specific directions? Maybe we aren’t supposed to understand. Maybe that’s the message—that there are some things we are not supposed to understand.