29: Wavering
2009–2010
I continued to research the local paranormal groups and OKPRI was still my number-one choice. They were active in the community and frequently hosted public events. I attended one of these events and liked how they conducted their classes—I knew they were dedicated to trying to help others understand more about ghosts. It was obvious this group was passionate about what they did and the service they provided.
Like other groups, they utilized scientific methods to gather data for their investigations. If they found evidence of a haunting, whether it was pictures, voice recordings, or video, they’d pass this information and a copy of the findings on to their clients. Like the investigation itself, this came at no cost to the home or business owner.
Differing from some of the local groups, they also used psychics to aid them in their investigations. I was a little uncomfortable with this aspect. Even though I believed Carroll had this type of ability, I knew other people claimed to, but offered little to no proof. Since I can’t explain how Keshia and I often receive the same impressions from ghosts, who am I to say what is and isn’t possible?
Deciding OKPRI was the group I wanted to investigate our home, I talked it over with Wes and filled out the investigation request form online. Within a week, I received a phone call from Cathy Nance, the case manager.
Cathy was very professional and thorough. She asked a lot questions about our home and the activity we’d experienced. After talking for quite awhile, she told me our house was a case they’d be interested in investigating and I could expect Christy, the founder of the group, to call.
There were more calls over the next couple of weeks until the investigation was scheduled. As I wrote it on my calendar, the excitement began to build. I’d waited so long to do something like this, but along with the excitement came something I hadn’t expected, nervousness.
I’d spent years trying to cover up the fact we had ghosts and now I’d invited a team of strangers into my home to look for them. I knew time had changed many people’s perspective on ghosts, but a part of me still had the same old fears of not wanting to tell people my house was haunted.
Second-guessing my decision, I contemplated calling OKPRI and cancelling the investigation. On one hand, I desperately wanted answers and didn’t know where else to get them. On the other, old fears are hard to lay aside. As the battle raged on in my mind, Keshia unknowingly helped me make my decision by remodeling her own haunted house.
Anxious to move into their new home, they started working on it before they signed the final papers. On top of their “to do” list was taking out the carpet and painting the walls. In the process, they discovered some crazy things previous homeowners had done. The first thing they found was that someone had laid carpet over carpet and in some cases, carpet over carpet over tile. Tearing out the layers, Stephen complained about whoever had done this.
As they continued working through their projects, Keshia got the impression that the entity wasn’t too happy with all of their grumbling. After all, he was probably the one who’d done a lot of the things they were complaining about. As they worked on the house, Keshia made a conscious effort to keep her complaints to herself. She’d never been scared of ghosts, but she said this one made her a little uncomfortable and she didn’t want to agitate him.
Soon after moving in, she and Stephen started to notice more and more activity. Apparently, like many men, this ghost took his TV time very seriously. If they were watching a show and decided to turn it off before the program was over, the TV would frequently come back on.
Each day, it seemed they gained a little more insight into the personality of the entity they now lived with. With a few bumps here and there, Keshia, Stephen, and the older male entity were learning to live peacefully together. Nighttime was probably the most difficult because the ghost would stand in the hall just outside their bedroom and Stephen complained that he could feel the entity staring at him, which made it difficult for him to go to sleep.
Because Keshia had lived with ghosts all of her life; she’d learned to tune them out when she needed to, but Stephen hadn’t learned to do this yet. Lying in bed one night, feeling as though he was being watched, Stephen saw a movement across the hall in the bathroom. Seeing it several more times, he told Keshia about it. She looked across the hall and into the bathroom and confirmed that she saw it too. Despite the fact that the bathroom was dark, they could see a shadow moving around. She got bored with watching the shadow and rolled back over. Before getting to sleep, she heard Stephen exclaim, “I saw him! I saw his face!”
Keshia looked into the bathroom again, but this time she couldn’t see anything. From her own experiences, she knew this was to be expected. If an entity chose to reveal himself, the image usually didn’t last very long. Keshia had never seen the entity. She had, however, gotten impressions of what he looked like, so she asked Stephen to describe what he’d seen.
He told her the face was illuminated with light and that it reminded him of the character Gollum from the movie Lord of the Rings. Gollum is an almost skeletal-looking man with sparse hair and missing teeth. This description matched what Keshia had envisioned exactly.
After the latest of what had become almost daily “ghost reports” from Keshia, I had to suppress a shudder. Just because I’d had similar experiences myself didn’t mean that sometimes these things didn’t totally freak me out. It appeared Keshia’s life was going to continue as it had started. Ghosts were going to be a part of it—but why?
The more I experienced, the more questions I had. My mind was made up. I wanted OKPRI to come to my house, and hopefully I could gain some insight.