Take the Hint
It doesn’t go without notice when you are alone in the house and something is thrown across a room, hitting you. Especially when that object is supposed to be a form of spiritual protection.
I was spending my day like I typically spend any other: at my desk in the bedroom.
It was fairly quiet with all of the dogs sleeping and only the sound of my keyboard clicking as I typed up a file.
The door to the bathroom was directly to the right of me as I sat and worked.
Suddenly my attention was piqued by what sounded like something falling in the bathroom. It sounded like an empty plastic cup hitting the linoleum.
I jumped up and opened the door thinking I was going to catch another rat or mouse. I was even thinking Little F was playing around in there.
I looked back over at my desk and saw Little F sleeping underneath it. So that definitely ruled her out.
There was nothing in the bathroom. The room was untouched.
I didn’t give it a second thought, and I went back to work on the computer.
I left the bathroom door open so I could hear better just in case it happened again.
A few moments later the bathroom door slowly started to close. It shut so quietly I would not have even noticed if it wasn’t for the dog on the floor beside me, growling.
I sat and watched the door come to a complete close while my dog growled faintly.
This door had never closed before on its own. The door was sturdy and heavy, didn’t squeak, and was hard to close.
I opened the door back up and loaded up the surveillance footage from the bedroom to see if anything of interest popped out while the door was closing.
The only other observation was my dog lying down and then sitting up at attention when the door began to close.
So I once again went back to work at the desk thinking I was alone in the house.
As I was sitting there, I felt an object hit me in the back of the neck, and I instantly leapt up from my chair, looking all around the room for whoever threw it.
I was already on edge, considering how creepy the door closing and the dog growling was.
Object thrown as captured on surveillance.
Discovering a statue.
When I looked down and discovered what had been thrown, I found myself standing there in shock and disbelief.
It was a one pound, hand-carved Korean protection statue.
Needless to say, it hurt when it hit me.
My heart was racing thinking somebody broke into the house and was attempting to attack me.
I picked up the statue and started walking around the bed to put it back on the shelf it came from.
There were two in the set, both identical in height at seven inches tall.
One was spiritually labeled to represent protection, and the other was to bring love.
Those seemed like such ironic things to be hit by, considering they are supposed to be protecting you.
With force, this statue had flown across the entire room with the purpose of hitting me.
I quickly checked the rest of the house, but there was nobody there.
Protection and love statues.
Now, with my head getting closer to accepting something paranormal was going on, I turned to the surveillance footage of the bedroom to see how exactly this happened.
It was amazing to watch a statue take flight from the bookshelf across the room and travel all the way to the back of my neck.
It was as if an invisible string had been pulled, drawing the statue to me. I must have watched it a dozen times. While I was reviewing the surveillance of the protection statue, I discovered an odd anomaly appear on the right-hand side of the screen.
Right at the moment the statue left the shelf, a very faint and transparent looking sphere about the size of a baseball appeared.
In sync, the sphere moved with the statue until disappearing right before the statue hit me. There was no explanation for what that was. That sphere appeared to have been what powered the throw. But how? Why?
Sphere appearing.
Nothing happened the rest of the day. It was just in and out, one time, like it was saying, “Hey, I’m here.”
That evening Christina and I watched the surveillance footage over and over to figure it all out. But was that enough?
Knowing that the surveillance system was slowly becoming our best friend, I decided to name the cameras for easier referencing.
CH3, or Channel 3, became BED to signify the bedroom.
After labeling everything involved with the surveillance system, we went to bed.
I barely slept that evening. I just couldn’t shake that feeling of the statue hitting me.
The following day was much like the day before it, with one dog on the bed and the others on the floor beside me. I went back to work early that morning.
A few more hours passed before a new picture was painted for me. I was typing away when I was interrupted by something falling behind me. I wasn’t the only one disturbed.
Tank was on the bed sleeping. When I turned around in my chair to look for what fell, he was sitting up at attention, staring at the headboard.
We had been in the process of moving our room around, so the majority of haunted objects had been spread out throughout the room. At the moment, all that was on the headboard was a painting that Christina had made of a skull.
That painting was now lying on top of the pillows.
I stood up and placed the painting back in its respective spot on the headboard.
That painting had been sitting there for days without having been moved.
I squinted my eyes with an inquisitive look at Norman, who was sitting just beyond the painting.
I glanced at Tank and then glanced back at the surveillance system.
One more time I started reviewing the bedroom footage to see exactly what happened behind me when the painting fell.
My jaw dropped as I watched the painting sit itself upright from a leaned position.
A few seconds later it fell off of the headboard and down onto the pillows, causing Tank to jump up from his slumber.
That was the moment I turned around from my desk in the video.
As before, I watched the painting stand up then fall over and over.
How was this possible? I paced around and around the bedroom contemplating the events so far. I was feeling beyond uneasy at this point.
My attention was won.
I loaded the footage onto the computer and sent the file to Christina via the internet. She immediately opened the message and started watching the videos from her phone.
The painting moves on its own.
About ten minutes later she was calling me all excited and perplexed. The footage was hard to believe, but it was right there for us to see. As Christina went on and on about the unbelievable, I stared at Norman with his sly grin. Christina and I discussed all of the recent activity and what could possibly be causing it. At one point I said it was that damn doll. She agreed.
He had me in a trance during the entire phone call. It was unsettling that I couldn’t stop staring at him, yet I was fully in control of myself. I was in mid-sentence to Christina when all of a sudden I’m knocked out of my trance and stunned by the sound of Christmas music playing.
My stomach sank.
You know that feeling when you are surprised and all of those tingles strike you inside? Without warning and without prompting, the speakers on my computer started playing a very somber version of “Deck the Halls.”
There were no instruments in the song. It was simply a choir of children singing a more dismal and dissonant version. Without hesitation and almost laughing, Christina asked what I was listening to. I told her that “Deck the Halls” just started playing on the computer. Like me, she was in disbelief as she questioned me. She was convinced I was playing a joke.
But it was no joke.
I walked over to the computer in hopes of finding a plausible source of the music. I tried to search for any type of media player that could have been activated somehow. My computer was locked up and frozen. I wasn’t able to do anything.
I couldn’t type or click, open or close, search, or even shut it down. The entire operating system was inaccessible. I literally had to unplug the entire machine to power it down and stop the music. Christina was still on the other end of the phone, full of questions and, like me, curious as to how it happened. I plugged the computer back in and rebooted it.
Once it returned to normal operations, there was nothing to be found. No computer virus or anything to explain the phantom music.
I had never heard that version of the song in my life, nor would there have been any reason for me to even have it on the computer. The music never played again.
A Christmas song of all things. As if any song playing with wasn’t enough.
To me that was all I needed to finally come to the realization our house was haunted and had been ever since bringing Norman there. I shared those thoughts with Christina as I recounted the story of the Christmas Eve fire and the unborn twin. All clues were leading to Norman.
Before the phone call ended, I told Christina I was going to run some tests on our new friend to see if there was any reason for spiritual concern. I guess a hit in the head was exactly what I needed to take the hint. The Korean statue and the skull painting.
Interestingly enough, both occurrences happened at nearly the same time, between ten and eleven in the morning. I couldn’t come to any conclusions as to why, but the similarities between days were worth noting.
I hung up the phone and placed Norman on the center of the bed. I placed him with his back against the pillow to keep him from falling forward or backward.
He was very top heavy due to his thick, plastic head and completely soft body. He had no endoskeleton, and the only thing actually inside him was the mechanism that plays his voice when the string is pulled.
I set up a video camera on a tripod to document all of the tests, with the focal point directly on the doll. My plan was to conduct three simple tests to determine anything paranormal. The first test consisted of measuring ionic energy around him. This was accomplished by placing three devices designed to detect ionic energy on and around Norman’s body. I placed one directly on top of his head and the other two at his feet.
These devices were equipped with a small antenna and a blue light at the top. If any ionic energy was present around him, the blue light would power on, notifying me of the environment change.
Sure enough, the devices lit up like a Christmas tree. All three would flicker their blue lights off and on every few seconds randomly all around Norman.
There were no electrical components inside of Norman. That fact instantly ruled out any logical causes of the energy bursts.
The detection of ionic energy went on and on with no signs of ever stopping. Every living thing has ionic energy. I could wave my hand over one of those devices and it would light up.
Ionic testers on Norman.
So was I staring at something that was actually living in some form or way?
After documenting twenty minutes of this, I removed the devices to begin another test.
Next I ran simple electromagnetic field tests to see if he omitted another form of energy.
Every electrical device gives off an electromagnetic field (EMF). A refrigerator, a microwave, and even something as small as an digital watch will give off detectable fields.
All that ever really differs is how high or low the EMF read actually is. The higher the read, the stronger the field.
It is believed in the science of paranormal research that electromagnetic fields are used as an energy source for a spirit. This gives them the ability to speak, move objects, or even manifest.
With that under consideration, the higher the field, the stronger the spirit will become.
The readings discovered on Norman were much higher than that of an average refrigerator. He was sitting in the middle of the bed with nothing electrical in him or within six feet of him.
When something can’t be explained, we call that paranormal. Like the ionic energy test, I logged the information in disbelief.
I was two for three so far with my testing, and now it was time to start monitoring his temperature. To do this I used a standard temperature gun that omits a laser. It will give you an accurate temperature read wherever the laser is hitting.
I shot it directly onto Norman. At first, he registered at seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit.
Initial temperature.
Then his temperature started to drop drastically.
Within sixty seconds, Norman’s body temperature went from seventy-four degrees to fifty-four degrees. I just witnessed and documented a temperature degree drop on an inanimate object. There was without a doubt something spiritual residing in Norman.
All it took was three simple tests with three simple conclusions to defy everyday, modern science and prove to me something abnormal was happening with the doll.
Drastic drop in temperature.
The activity from Norman had been escalating since the day we brought him into the house. For some strange reason, I had this feeling that Norman was self-aware, that he knew what I knew. If there was a consciousness in the body of that doll, he would have been watching my every move. With that being said, it is very hard to be one step ahead when all plastic eyes are constantly on you.
Christina arrived home that evening and I shared with her all of the test results as she watched the video of the trials.
We both agreed that Norman was possessed with something, and from that point we both agreed to find out what exactly that was. This opened Christina up a little bit. She decided to confide to me something she had never told me the next morning.
The narrative of this story was about to change drastically upon learning of yet another disturbing coincidence involving the spirit inside Norman.
And maybe, at this juncture, using the word coincidence is the wrong choice.