Infestation
Later that night, we sat in the master bedroom of our home examining Matty. He didn’t do much.
His head would move in one direction, side to side. He had a pull string on his back that released a few garbled phrases that were obviously articulated better during his youth.
Now they just sounded like a demon gargling razor blades while reciting some weird Latin phrase.
Matty had everything on the list for a stereotypical-looking haunted doll. I just didn’t think he would actually be haunted.
Our dog Tank came into the bedroom and as soon as his eyes lined up with Matty’s, he began to cower and walk backward out of the room. Tank did not break eye contact with the doll until he was clear of our bedroom. This I found extremely odd. It’s nothing for dogs to become spooked by the simplest of things. But with Tank, the only time I had ever witnessed him doing such a thing was when he was with me during investigations of highly spiritual locations.
So I called Tank back into the room. Again, with hesitation, he refused to come near Matty.
As I write this, four months after we first brought the doll into our home, Tank will still not approach him.
Shortly after experimenting with Tank, I decided to rename the doll from his factory given name of Matty to something that made him ours.
I tossed a handful of names around before settling. I considered Smurf, Plankton, Grumpy, Lonnie, and pretty much any other title I could think of that represented something small, unisex, and benign.
Then it hit me.
Norman. That name was perfect.
I mean he didn’t look normal, and we all know Norman Bates from the movie Psycho certainly wasn’t either. It just seemed fitting and novel.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
That night we placed Norman on the headboard of our bed alongside a row of other allegedly haunted dolls and toys we’ve acquired over the years.
That was supposed to be the end of it. I saw Norman as a conversation piece at best.
Later that evening Christina’s oldest son Matthew stopped by with his wife Tara and their two children. It was just a friendly visit. Of course they asked about Norman.
I found it funny how Matthew described the newly renamed Matty—“creepy as shit.” The coincidence tickled me. Matthew’s son Liam took a particular liking to Norman, fiddling with his head and pulling the string.
I was sitting at my desk while Christina and Matthew were sitting on the bed when all of a sudden Matthew jumped up from the bed in a panic and literally ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.
I’m sure he is going to appreciate me telling that part of the story.
But I was confused at first. I had no idea what could have prompted such a fearful retreat. Within a second Christina jumped up from the bed. It turned out to be a giant spider making its way up the center of the bed.
Now some people are afraid of spiders, and some are not. Turns out the only one of us not afraid was Matthew’s wife Tara, who took it upon herself to remove said arachnid.
From discovery to death, the event happened so fast that none of us were able to identify the species. Frankly, I was happy to identify it as dead. My apologies go out to spider enthusiasts.
After the excitement, Matthew and his family left and Christina and I retired for the evening.
At about one in the morning I awoke to something crawling up my leg. Like a deranged monkey on too much caffeine I smacked my leg and killed yet another spider.
By the looks of the remains, it was the same species as the one previously extinguished earlier in the night.
This of course woke Christina, and now becoming completely paranoid about spiders in the bed, we literally sprayed a barrier of bug spray around the bed.
This may all seem like irrelevant nonsense, but this was the first time a spider was ever found in our bed, let alone two of them.
The next morning we searched high and low for a nest or a reason for the spiders to be there. We found nothing.
To my knowledge, most North Carolina spiders avoid people. For now we called this all a coincidence.
That afternoon Christina was lying on the bed reading with me at my desk once again. I glanced over at her and saw yet another spider crawling up the side of the bed toward her.
I jumped up and grabbed her. She had no clue as to why until I had her off the bed and showed her the spider.
I should have called this chapter the great spider massacre of 2016, since we were now up to three.
This prompted us to tear apart the bedroom, pull the bed away, and search once again for the source of those spiders.
Nothing was found.
Next came the rats.
Rats in the kitchen. Rats in the bathroom. Rats in the bedroom.
If there ever was a horror movie checklist, we were quickly progressing through that checklist.
Just like the spiders before them, we never had any issues with anything other than the little common household mouse every now and again. But even that was rare.
I mean we had four dogs inside and half a dozen cats outside. It would be hard-pressed for any little critter to get past that army.
Later that evening Christina screamed at the top of her lungs at the sight of a rat staring back at her in the kitchen. It was sitting right on the kitchen stove.
Then another one darted across the kitchen floor.
Then in the bathroom and then in the closet. One was even in the toilet.
It was total chaos for a moment when they started coming out of the walls in the closet.
I’m not talking swarms like locusts. Don’t get me wrong.
One would pop out then disappear, followed by another, or a few at a time.
We regrouped on the bed while discussing a run to the store for rat poison. It was at that moment we could hear faintly from within the walls a band of little squeaks.
Christina said she didn’t care if I took down the wall to find them, and that’s exactly what I did. Meanwhile, Norman sat on our headboard giving me that sly little grin.
I took down the wall in the closet and in the living room.
I was amazed to see what appeared to be baby rats. It was as if they were just born.
Interestingly enough, we never heard them up until that moment, nor had we ever seen a rat in the house, but in the past twenty-four hours our home had become the wild kingdom.
Resting easy that night wasn’t exactly on the radar when every tickle of a hair made you jump thinking it was a spider or a rat.
We sat in the kitchen for a while, completely disgusted at the infestation.
It is unnerving to think about when the grandchildren visited so often.
But nothing prepared either one of us for what happened as we called it a night.
I am thankful to this day that the bedroom light was on when Christina decided to crawl into bed.
I was in the bathroom when I flinched at the sound of her screaming and demanding I come back into the bedroom.
Of course I stopped what I was doing immediately and ran to her aid.
Christina had uncovered a snake that had been waiting underneath our blankets.
This was horrifying.
Destroyed wall in an attempt to find rats.
Now I am not afraid of snakes, but I immediately threw the blankets back over it. You could easily see the serpent starting to move beneath our comforter. What the hell was going on? This was borderline insane.
I waited for the right moment to trap and wrap up the blankets to form a sack.
Following that I immediately ran outside, across our yard, across the road, and into a large field with the confined snake.
With every step I took, I kept saying out loud, “Please don’t bite, please don’t bite,” over and over.
I had no clue what type of snake it was or whether or not it was even venomous. But no chances were being taken regardless.
I threw the blankets down into the grass of the field.
The sun was just starting to vanish thanks to the long days of summer, so I had enough light to see our intruder slither out and make his way through the grass.
I made my way back to the house just in time for Christina to demand I throw the blankets in the washer. Yes, she demanded. She wasn’t having it, and at least she didn’t ask me to burn them.
That night we slept with our eyes open without any blankets and pretty much on top of each other.
It’s kind of funny now in a very small way.
In the paranormal world, it is not uncommon for a haunting to invoke such phenomena.
Rats, spiders, snakes, and other insects often appear in abundance to accompany a haunting.
In past cases, I’ve witnessed this dozens of times over. But I still wasn’t ready to associate Norman with our recent odd experiences. Maybe we just needed a normal exterminator.
The next day we set up an appointment with a local exterminator to give us a quote on removing all of our unwanted guests.
To my surprise, other than finding an irrelevant amount of household spiders and a few other insects here and there, the exterminator insisted our place did not warrant his services.
Flies on our windows.
More flies on windows.
I questioned the guy and told him everything, but he had no explanation for it, other than that God worked in mysterious ways.
He offered to spray for termites and set up some traps. I’m assuming he was trying to make his buck, but I declined. I did appreciate his honesty, however.
Instead, we brought in a cat for interior vermin reconnaissance. We named him Little F.
For respective purposes, you can use your own imagination as to what F stands for. It rhymes with duck if you need a hint.
To be honest, I enjoyed taking him to the vet for shots the first time and hearing the receptionist call for “Little F.” She refused to say his full name. She just grinned at me.
Little F and I were inseparable. If only that was the case for him. As it turns out, he was very separable.