The Doll Made Me Do It
What was I going to do? Causing a scene and screaming that a haunted doll had been attempting to kill me certainly would not have been the wisest thing to do considering the circumstances. That bastard knew it.
I was already getting stares for believing in the paranormal. There was an irony to that. It aggravated me to no end when I would later have discussions with nurses about their paranormal experiences. Yet I seemed judged for believing it.
Considering the nature of this chapter, it is well beyond crazy to think a possessed toy caused all of this. I have no other choice but to believe so. I did not attempt suicide. I did not threaten to. It all had been done in my name without my knowledge.
What happened next was all a direct result of the medication they were giving me. I refuse to believe otherwise because let’s face it, any other reason beyond science in this case is just too unbelievable. But it happened.
I think I was seeing what I had seen so much over the past two decades. It was almost like every paranormal case I had ever worked came spiraling down into that room and was very much alive. I know it to be true because I interacted with the nurses that night, and they confirmed it all the next day. I do have to say I could see a lot of question and hesitation in their eyes. Part of me believed they were starting to see I didn’t have anything wrong with me.
They knew who I was and what I did. They had seen the A Haunting episode while I was on lockdown. One nurse in particular even said she saw me in the local paper that day. I had no idea I was even going to be in the local paper. It was an article on Norman the doll and the show I had just appeared on.
Part of me believed the staff actually considered this whole situation, from the suicide post on social media to me visually reliving paranormal memories, to be something paranormal. Part of me believed they were just humoring me.
My blood pressure resolved itself about three days into my stay. The doctor could not explain such a quick and drastic change in it. I could. But it wasn’t something I was going to tell them.
I have always been a subscriber to “spiritual magnetism.” It’s a theory I came up with nearly a decade ago. I believe that when a person is exposed to spiritual energy for long periods of time, they become spiritually magnetized. This state can lead one to be more in tune with the spiritual realm and it more in tune with you.
It’s like when you vigorously rub a paper clip across a magnet and it becomes temporarily magnetized. For a short time, it can pick up other paper clips. But eventually it loses its magnetism.
If you take a person like me who is constantly exposed to spiritual energy, it is easy to believe just how spiritually magnetized I could become. This is my job. This is what I do for a living.
With that being said, I believe that Norman did something to me that Sunday morning to cause my body to go into overload. Maybe if I stayed at home, I would have died; because after a few days of being away, my body leveled out.
To be honest, I believe that his spiritual grip on me dissipated because I was gone. Maybe he knew that it would and that’s why he went out of his way to set me up for getting committed.
The blood pressure situation was one problem out of the way. The only one left was being locked up for something that simply wasn’t true. But I had to prove that. In order to prove that, I had to play by their rules and pretty much just manipulate them with their own game.
But that wasn’t going to be easy when they were medicating me to the point I was losing touch with reality. That is definitely the downside to being medicated for something you don’t need. It is like when Ritalin is prescribed to someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They calm down. That’s the drug’s purpose. But when you prescribe it to somebody who doesn’t actually need it, they become hyperactive.
The doctor had put me on antipsychotics. The only problem was, I did not need them.
On Wednesday night of that week, I took a trip into the darkest paranormal realm: the one located inside my head. It was all so vivid. I will never forget it.
Nine in the evening was medication time, and lights-out was at nine thirty that night. I crawled on top of my mattress and just stared at the ceiling. Shortly after, I could notice the sounds of the ward registering differently. I was starting to slip into a hallucinogenic coma. It was a coma, yet I was very much awake.
The experience started off subtle. At first, I found myself watching my hands as electricity bounced back and forth between them. At the time, I thought this, and the events to come after, were really happening.
Then I started to notice the entire room become engulfed in electrical, blue pulsating webs. They looked like electrified spiderwebs. At that moment, I saw something moving from behind the toilet. For the first time in my life, I was actually petrified at the sight of something paranormal.
It was a young, short-haired white boy in an all-black suit emerging from behind the toilet. He was possibly six years old. Even though he was not intimidating, I was frozen in fear. I was paralyzed from the drugs I had just taken.
Nothing is scarier than seeing something like that and being unable to move or react or scream out for help. He just stood there looking at me, slightly swaying back and forth.
I recognized him from a dark case I took over fifteen years ago involving a little boy who had drowned. It was him. He had been chased to a pond in the middle of a field by an unseen force. That force kept him paddling for his life in the middle of the pond. Eventually, his body gave out and he drowned.
Before I could really grasp what was going on around me, the blanket of electrical webs paved the way for a young white girl in a dirty gray nightgown standing near my feet at the bottom of the mattress. Her long black hair swayed in time with the little boy’s motion. She appeared to be about ten years old.
Like the boy, I recognized her from an old case. She was Emily. She was the little girl who was raped and murdered by her father during World War II. Her wooden box, with her little dress and a few select toys, is still in my house to this day.
My focus shifted to the right toward the barred window. Outside of it stood a young black woman. She was desperately trying to communicate with me. I could hear no words. All I could see was her mouth moving up and down as she tried to talk.
She was killed in a bus accident years ago just outside of an elementary school that I investigated numerous times.
I continued lying there. The room started to close in on me. Outside, it began to snow. It began to snow in July. I leaped from the mattress, picked it up, and threw it across the room in an attempt to break the haunting cycle of my past.
A nurse came running in, screaming at me. She kept screaming for me to calm down. I ran out and down the hall with an orderly chasing me. I kept yelling out to the other nurses that I had to get out of there. I was screaming about everything I had just seen.
These are the things I can remember. What I couldn’t remember was told to me after the fact by the head nurse the following day.
Apparently, I had attempted to escape through the nurse’s station. I had ripped my bedsheet to shreds and attempted to make a phone call to my wife with an imaginary cell phone. I had even claimed to have met with deceased family members during that episode.
Was any of it true? The hallucinations and the stories they represented were certainly true. I guess those drugs brought out the ghosts living within my psyche.
The next morning, the nurses on staff that previous night reported to the doctor what had transpired. I was instantly taken off of the anti-psychotics. I had suffered from adverse effects according to the doctor. I thought I would be in the clear at that point and get released. Unfortunately, they were still going to continue monitoring my blood pressure, and their eyes were still focused on that suicide letter.
After five more days of playing patient, the doctor gave the order. Finally, after eight total days, I was able to convince the doctor I was not suicidal. I played by their rules, said everything I knew they wanted to hear, and just manipulated the game. That came easy. I just told the truth.
The truth, that is, minus the whole crazed haunted doll part. I put my ego aside, allowed the anger to calm down, and just went through the motions so they would see their mistake.
It was pretty much like you see in the movies: strict, close quarters and a lot of uncertainty due to some of the more violent patients. Like I said, it was the scariest place I had ever been. I feared for my life in there. I can only imagine what happens over a longer period of time in a place like that. Just in the small amount of time I was in there, multiple fights broke out, blood was splattered across the hall, a man committed suicide in a place that’s supposed to be impossible to do so, and another man somehow managed to catch his mattress on fire.
But thankfully, after a week and a day, I returned home. I was discharged with no further instructions. The doctors could not diagnose me because there wasn’t anything to diagnose. They did, however, prescribe me blood pressure medicine and recommended I follow up with a doctor about that.
As far as the suicide, they chalked that up to misinterpretation on behalf of my neighbor.
By law, they had to keep me for as long as they did. Suicide threats are not to be taken lightly, and when one was blasted over social media for all the world to see? Well, that draws attention. At the time, I figured I would manipulate them at their own game so I could be released. Since then, I have recovered from that experience and my views have changed. I no longer hold a grudge against the hospital or its staff. They simply did what they had to do.
This, by far, was the hardest chapter for me to write. It isn’t easy letting the world know about something such as this. Especially concerning a subject matter so sensitive. I assure you that I am fine. Everything has been fine with me and the family ever since (aside from Norman). It is almost like it never happened at all.
I lay in bed at night and cringe at the thought of being locked in that place again. It was horrible. It was prison. I could not stand having no control over anything. I was so concerned for my family. If something were to have happened, there would have been nothing I could have done about it. But I was home. I was free. I was back to doing what I always did.
It didn’t come easy facing Norman after all of that. But I had to. However, I debated within myself as to whether or not to include this chapter. It may be a little presumptuous to say, but there will be a handful of people who read this and claim it is all bullshit from a crazy paranormal guy who got locked up in a psych ward. Others will read it and possibly understand because they, too, have been there.
You probably don’t realize how many people I spoke to and how many crazy stories I heard while I was in the hospital. The funny thing is, considering my line of work, I hear stories like that all of the time, sometimes much worse. None of those people are sleeping in a psych ward.
If you don’t live the field, you cannot possibly begin to understand it. But I seek the truth. Always have, always will. Ultimately, I decided for this chapter’s inclusion because I would have been cheating you otherwise. It’s part of Norman’s story.
Three days after being discharged from the hospital, my good friend and research colleague Rosemary Ellen Guiley passed away suddenly at the age of sixty-nine. Another person in my life related to Norman now gone. My happiness about being home quickly turned to sorrow upon hearing the news.
I went into the hospital thinking about Norman, and I came out of it thinking the same. It was time to attempt another communication session with the doll. And Norman? He was about to shine again.