Christmas Eve 2016
It was the night before Christmas and all through the house a creature was stirring …
It was Christmas Eve 2016. Festive lights flickered and danced over a blanket of North Carolina humidity.
People were rejoicing, singing, and enjoying laughs and the company of friends and family. There we stood … only we weren’t the people rejoicing, singing, and enjoying laughs.
But it didn’t start that way.
It had been years since Christina had the entire family over for Christmas. But it was important for her to do so. She was never really all that big on Christmas, but something was different with her this year. All of a sudden she had an almost questionable enthusiasm for the holly jolly holiday. Who was I to argue? I always enjoyed Christmas.
Believe it or not, it is my favorite month for movies. When I was younger, Christmas was it. I loved that time of year. The snow, the lights, and just the entire positive vibe.
So when Christina said she was going to hold a family Christmas at the house, I just couldn’t say no. I was a bit skeptical considering the obvious worry of an explosion or fire or something terrible happening to one of us, or worse yet, one of the children. However, plans went forward regardless of a potential attack from Norman. History repeating itself had been a little too accurate up to this point, so you can imagine my concern.
And Christina’s complete one-eighty from the anti-Christmas girl to the new spokesperson for the holiday kept my eyebrows raised.
Was this another Norman trick?
He can get into your head, and as I learned, he can squeeze the life out of you.
Whether I liked it or not, our house was going to be hosting the lights, magic stories, and carol of the bells for all the family to enjoy.
So as families do, we took the few days we had before Christmas and decorated. Our main focus was the living room, where the Christmas tree was placed. Lights were placed everywhere, as well as dozens of decorations throughout the house. The living room is where everybody would gather for the children to open their presents and for me to end up being a paranoid freak awaiting something demented from Norman. After all the tinsel, glow, and mistletoe, the house was ready.
Christmas Eve morning was a blur to me. It was as if I were half asleep and half awake most of the day. I felt like I was walking through our house and going through the motions, only the house was darker, different, and alive in some way.
You know when you dream and the perspective you tend to see during that time? That’s what it felt like. It was like I was asleep and dreaming. I would hear Christina talk to me. I would hear the dogs barking. But everything sounded as if it were coming from the other side of a wall. It was muffled.
I don’t know if it was nerves or full-on anxiety, but all morning long I felt as if I was going to have a massive panic attack.
It wasn’t like before when I called for an ambulance. This was much different. I felt like I was in an alternate version of our house, yet everything was operating the same.
I needed to keep my mind occupied, so I decided to spend some time behind the computer and make a soundtrack full of Christmas songs to play during the gathering.
I mixed in everything from the classics to modern versions of them. I had a little something for everybody. From “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra performing holiday music.
Before anybody even arrived, I had the disc in the player out in the living room blasting the joyous melodies all day long. I was doing my best to keep the atmosphere as positive as possible.
Liam and Lyndsay were to be there and that of course rattled my nerves considering what happened with Norman during their last visit.
I’m still not certain what Norman’s infatuation was with Liam and what Liam’s infatuation was with Norman. But something was there. It was evident from the surveillance footage that Liam, although obsessed with the doll, held a little angst toward him too.
I hated to think the worst, but possession is a tricky phenomenon. I also hate to bring even more clichéd thoughts into this, but maybe Norman wanted to be Liam. Maybe Liam was to act as his new surrogate.
I don’t know. At this point I wasn’t going to give Norman the opportunity to do anything to harm the children. Invasion of the body snatchers wasn’t exactly something I wished to ponder for too long.
I was going to keep him as far away from the children as possible. We all wanted this to be a joyous day.
Talking about or seeing a haunted doll that the entire family was now aware of certainly wasn’t going to help bring out the Christmas spirit. No pun intended.
If all went as planned, our house would be hosting about twenty or more family guests.
I was hoping all of the positive energy from family would keep anything foreboding distant.
Norman was placed in the master bedroom where the children could not reach him or even think about him. He was out of sight.
Our situation this Christmas Eve was much different in comparison to the 1968 incident.
Those bearings involved a little girl, her mother, and of course Matty the doll.
Christmas Eve may have been a tragedy then, but the setup for us was contrasting and distant from that infamous night.
Everybody was to arrive at five-thirty that afternoon. Within minutes the house was full of conversation, laughs, presents, and kids running amok.
All the food that we prepared, coupled with what the others brought, placed an aroma in the house we all know too well around the holidays. Everybody was drinking and being merry, with the exception of me and a few others who wanted to keep a clear head. After dinner, everybody opened their gifts and the laughs and smiles continued. I too was starting to feel a little better about the night. All the same, my incessant need to observe every little detail in people from their vocal tone to their body movements still remained firmly in place.
That’s when I started to notice a certain blanket of antagonism and dubiousness begin to overtake our company. Arguments were starting to break out between family members over the most trivial conditions. A few people left without saying a word, only to return more intoxicated than when they left. Red flags were popping up everywhere. Despite all of the colorful lights, the house was slowly becoming dark and gloomy.
As hosts tend to do at a party, I moved from group to group, being as entertaining as I possibly could.
I was just trying to lighten the mood.
Christina could tell something was off as well, so she too joined in on acting goofy and playing with the kids to keep the house upbeat. Still, the leeriness remained and I was reluctant to believe the source was something else. Christina’s son Blake started acting very antisocial. It appeared as if every little thing was setting him off in a negative fashion.
All of the children became introverts all of a sudden. They were all sitting by themselves, either playing on a laptop, a cell phone, or some other portable gaming device.
The children would become angry if you approached them for any reason. For me, the room began to shrink. I was standing there trapped in tunnel vision.
However, with all of the distraction and my focus on the adults becoming more and more distant and agitated, I missed the fact that the music had reached the end of the disc I had playing.
Nobody even noticed the silence. They were all too preoccupied with their bickering and arguing.
At this point I was standing in the living room. I looked around wondering what the hell was going on to cause such a mood change in everybody.
Possession is typically a singular event. There was no way I was going to stand there believing everybody was individually becoming possessed. But they were being manipulated.
Possession and manipulation are two completely different actions. When one becomes possessed, they literally turn into a passenger inside their own body. Most possessions derive from malevolent entities controlling your body for evil purposes.
You become a remote-controlled vehicle. Your body is used to perform the task a spirit alone cannot. The same principle can be related to the haunting of dolls.
Manipulation, on the other hand, is a spirit affecting your environment with the goal of controlling it. I describe the difference like this: If you are exposed to the sun for long periods of time, you burn. The sun is now controlling your skin. If you stay inside, the sun heats up the house and you become hot and you sweat. The sun is now manipulating your environment. But all things, in the end, point to the sun.
Norman was changing our environment. The human body has an electrical component that reacts to other electrical components.
Norman was causing such negative energy within the house it was affecting all of us.
He just wanted to sit back and watch the show he was directing. Another perfect example of his sociopathic behavior.
You have heard people say, “I have a bad feeling about this,” or “I get a bad feeling around him.”
We do feel energy whether it is good or bad. I was starting to lose my mind. Everywhere I looked I saw Norman’s face. The bodies of my family were the same, yet they all had his smiling face. It was frightening. The sounds in the room became more and more muffled. I felt like we were all crammed inside of an elevator with the oxygen running out.
The whole room had a haze to it. I was floating inside a mirage. Yet everything happening was real. I knew in my head that this illusion was either brought on from anxiety or Norman. Maybe both. But all adults accounted for were experiencing claustrophobia and the incessant need to go outside for air. So it wasn’t just isolated to me.
Then something remarkable occurred, and nearly every one of us witnessed it.
I started focusing on Mason, Blake’s son. He was watching cartoons on a tablet. He kept saying he wanted to watch Frosty the Snowman.
All my ears would fixate on was the fact he wanted Frosty the Snowman. That’s all I heard over and over.
He eventually found it and the show started playing on his device.
Almost simultaneously, the DVD player started to operate again and the song “Frosty the Snowman” began to play.
I vividly remember Mason, myself, and Hannah promptly glancing over to the television.
My vision and hypnotic feelings all went back to normal at that moment. Hannah asked me if I had seen the DVD player start up on its own, and of course I had.
The really interesting part about the song playing by itself on the television was the fact it was far down the track list on the disc. So even if the DVD player had been set to repeat the disc, it would have never started with that song. Hannah and I grabbed Christina’s attention and explained to her what had just happened.
She too was amazed and confused as to how that song could just randomly start playing through our television without human intervention.
Apparently, all Mason had to say was he wanted Frosty the Snowman and miraculously it was now playing off of the disc I created. The DVD player executes from start to finish. There was no random feature to explain that song popping up so we could all just call it coincidence.
That was no coincidence. It was paranormal.
I found myself in a trance, once again thinking back to the story of the girl standing in the snow as she watched her house burn to the ground.
Maybe it was the song that brought out that recollection. After our DVD player came to life, everybody was once again at each other’s throats.
We had planned earlier to get couples pictures in front of the tree as well as pictures with the kids. So I brought it up while everybody was still there. Blake, who was the first to start acting off, told Christina he had to go, he couldn’t take anymore. He said the anxiety was overwhelming.
So we quickly staged all of the planned pictures. After each couple had their picture taken, they left with kids in tow.
Within about fifteen minutes, the only people in the house were me, Christina, and Hannah.
I was relieved, in a way, that everybody was gone. I guess considering all things, bad attitudes and a song magically playing wasn’t something to be all that concerned with.
The day had taken a lot out of us, though, between the cooking, the anxiety, and the entertaining, so Christina decided to retire for the night.
I stayed up and loaded all of the pictures into the computer to edit and share with the family within a day or so. I couldn’t sleep anyway.
I just kept waiting for something electrical to go wrong or anything that would start a fire.
At about two in the morning I finally hit the bed. I still didn’t sleep, though.
I just found myself lying in that same state I was getting used to, staring at the ceiling thinking about Norman.
My mind was racing with questions.
When are you going to do it? Where’s the big finale? All this build up and for what? Are you finally done with the terrorizing?
I eventually fell asleep only to wake up in the middle of a panic attack with Christina by my side assuring me everything was alright.
I told her I could have sworn I opened my eyes and saw Norman standing on the floor by the bed, staring at me. That’s when she paused and said, “Where is Norman?”
We both bounced out of bed to find him.
He was originally placed on top of our bookshelf, but now he wasn’t there. My computer screen is always on, in addition to the surveillance monitor, so there was always enough light to see around the bedroom. Call it our nightlights, if you will. We panicked and turned on the bedroom light for better visibility.
He was gone.
How long he had been gone was the real question here. Ever since I had placed him on top of that shelf, I had not looked at him. I was wondering if somehow one of the kids managed to get him or if one of the adults was playing a prank. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
We woke Hannah up and conducted an extensive search of the house.
From under every bed to inside every dresser and cabinet, Norman was nowhere to be found.
I was even inspecting the dogs just in case they had decided to make him a chew toy.
To be honest, I was kind of hoping they had. Rationally speaking, I had no choice but to believe that somebody had taken him that evening. It wouldn’t have been hard to do considering the amount of people and the amount of distraction.
But why?
To my knowledge those who witnessed firsthand his abilities wanted nothing to do with him. And those who heard the stories steered clear of him.
For now it was a mystery.
I stayed awake for the remainder of the night as did Hannah. She was so on edge that every little creak or click in the house caused her to jump and gasp or scream. I’m surprised Christina was even able to sleep.
Norman was missing. A burning question remained. Where was he?
Christmas morning came and there was Norman, sitting firmly where I had originally placed him the day before, on top of the book shelf.
I was beginning to think the events from the night prior were just a dream. I mean, I was really exhausted, so I was just going to keep my mouth shut until either Christina or Hannah brought it up.
If they didn’t, I was chalking it up to a nightmare. Some things are just best left alone. But it didn’t take long after they woke up for Hannah to come yelling at me. She thought it was me who pulled the prank and hid the doll.
She came into our bedroom and saw Norman where he was supposed to be. I assured her I had nothing to do with that doll being moved.
In her head, I think she was just trying to justify the horror we had been living since the summer.
Christmas came and went and we welcomed the New Year with hopes of less supernatural antagonizing and more solid conclusions on what to do with Norman. Somehow, 2017 was going to either close the chapter on our life with the doll or start a whole new one.