Bound
Back in late December of 2018, I was contacted by a producer via email through my official author page on social media. The funny part about that is the fact it took me forever to even read it. Most emails I receive through that social media outlet consist of readers wanting to discuss my books or my cases, or individuals will contact me wanting an opinion on a photograph or video they believe contains something of paranormal origin.
I receive a lot of correspondence, and I honestly make an attempt each day to address a few. With that being said, it took me about two weeks to get to her email.
Her name was Dawn, and she was very curious about Norman the doll. She even went so far as to say that their company doesn’t often seek out something of interest. They typically wait for pitches and ideas to be sent to them.
Her initial email was an invitation to speak on the phone about my book Norman and the experiences my family had with him. I acknowledged her request, and she told me she represented a company called New Dominion Pictures. They were extremely interested in filming my story of Norman for their paranormal anthology program, A Haunting.
At first, I was skeptical. I always am when it comes to the entertainment industry. I mean, let’s face facts, we have all seen what television has done to the paranormal field. And it sure as shit hasn’t helped it. But I agreed to at least hear her out.
We set up a phone meeting, and I listened. I was very impressed with Dawn’s authenticity and willingness to hear the story as it should be told. I have spoken with nearly one hundred producers over the past twenty years, and none of them ever came close to sounding as genuine as she did. In fact, most of them sound like an overzealous car salesman hoping you are going to become giddy over a chance to be on television. Not this cowboy. I have heard and seen too much bullshit straight from the puppeteers of a lot of these paranormal shows.
Over the years, I have worked with various producers and production companies on paranormal projects for national television. Being behind the scenes on these shows really opened my eyes to the actual reality concerning their intent. Sadly, the intentions of a large portion of them were to manipulate facts and manufacture fraudulent material for entertainment, ratings, and advertising purposes. I learned rather quickly the show was never about the truth.
On numerous occasions, I watched as producers would take multiple lines of dialog from a testimony, cut them up, and move words around to form a sentence that said something completely different from what the person initially intended. Worse yet, I have witnessed producers stage paranormal activity without telling the cast just so they could get a genuine reaction from them. It doesn’t get any more fake than that.
Needless to say, Dawn from New Dominion Pictures and A Haunting had all of the right things to say. We would be telling the story factually. I agreed to do it with the promise there would be no blowing anything out of proportion, fabricating, or misrepresenting facts.
The show format is a lot different from the stereotypical ghost hunting programs. I mean, let’s face it. All of the investigative shows are the same. The only thing that ever changes are the faces in front of the cameras.
With A Haunting willing to allow my family and me to tell our story and have it faithfully recreated as it was told through dramatization, I couldn’t help but get a little excited. I was being given the opportunity to see my book on Norman come to life.
And I wanted a little help from my friends.
Thanks to my career, I know things, and I know people who know things. With that comes knowing people who are beating the industry by being a part of it.
When I first discovered what Norman could do, and when I began documenting his unbelievable behavior, I turned to research colleagues for validation. After all, this was my haunt, my house, and my bias. This wasn’t a case I was working for someone else. This was a case I needed somebody, aside from me and Christina, to work. I sent all of the surveillance footage to trusted colleagues.
Author Shannon Sylvia of Ghost Hunters International; the world-renowned Rosemary Ellen Guiley; and my great friend, my brother, Darren Evans, a demonologist and pioneer
of the paranormal field, all watched what I did. They read all of the notes in my case logs. They reviewed every second of footage I had concerning the doll. It was important to me to get Shannon’s opinion. She and I worked together in the field, and she is one of the strictest I know when it comes to authenticating or disproving a haunting. It was also vital to garner an opinion from someone outside of the box, and that’s why I contacted Rose. She had a generation of knowledge on the occult and haunted objects.
Little did I know that showing my old friend Darren the footage would lead to such extraordinary events. Alongside myself, Christina, and Hannah, Darren and Rosemary were asked to join the production.
A month later, my family and I were packing to head north and film the episode for the show. Darren and Rosemary were boarding a plane to head the same way. But the question was, do I take Norman?
I wouldn’t learn until after arriving at New Dominion Pictures that the producers were against the idea. I assumed they would want shots of him and actually use him in the show. As I would later learn, that wasn’t the case. They were going to use a “stand in” doll to recreate my story of Norman. I found that kind of funny coming from a crew that produces paranormal television. And without knowing all that prior to our trip, I decided to bring him. Regardless, they did not want that “thing,” as they called him, anywhere near them.
I still to this day wonder if we would have ever stumbled upon what else Norman could do if I had not accepted the invitation to appear on A Haunting. Considering paranormal research, taking Norman was the best decision I ever made.
Christina, Hannah, and I were Virginia bound. It was Friday, January 25, 2019.
From where we live in North Carolina, the drive would take us a little over three hours. Our check-in time at the hotel in Suffolk, Virginia was at 3 p.m., so we left a little before noon that day. Norman was also bound for Virginia that day. I was bringing him with us.
Excluding the many times I tried to ship him off years ago, this was the first time the three of us had him out of the house, let alone heading out of the state. In the first book about Norman, I explained in great detail the difficulty of taking him from the confines of our house. It was the strangest thing. He would always come back to us. But here we were, heading to Virginia, with a devious haunted doll in tow.
Now, I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from a near-fatal car accident that occurred back in 2014. Anybody who personally knows me is well aware of the fact that getting into a vehicle nearly takes an act of Congress. I have written about that experience, too, in a previous book.
But to keep it simple, I flipped a car seven times down a highway on Oak Island. According to officials, I should have been dead. Yet here I am.
That accident, even now, five years later, still haunts me. I still don’t drive unless I am placed in an emergency situation that I cannot avoid. With that being said, Christina handles all of the driving. So traveling in a vehicle, even for a short distance, really takes a toll on my anxiety.
A three-hour drive ahead of us was enough to have me already gripping the handle above the passenger side window. Let alone the fact I sit so tense that when I exit a vehicle, I feel like I’m thawing myself out because all of my muscles are so tight.
Then of course, Norman is resting behind me in his old, antique suitcase. Some may laugh, but traveling is my greatest fear. Add Norman to that mix, and my anxiety was on overload.
We were bound for Virginia. Norman was bound in his case. I was bound for a panic attack, and as a family we were bound to a fear-inducing ride.
None of us talked much during the first hour and a half. It is really rare for us to be so silent. People have literally nicknamed me the “mouth from the South,” (even though I’m not from the South originally) because I talk at great lengths almost always.
I could, however, feel some tension from Hannah. She would repeatedly bring up the fact that she wasn’t happy Norman was in a case on the seat next to her. Every time I looked back at her, she was biting her fingernails in a nervous fashion. That’s not something I had ever really seen her do before. At first, I attributed that to simply being nervous about filming for a television show.
I know she was excited about it. For an eighteen-year-old girl to receive an opportunity to be on national television, that had to be pretty thrilling for her. For me, I couldn’t have cared less. I like being behind cameras. I was more happy for the fact that I was able to give my wife, Christina, and my stepdaughter, Hannah, this opportunity to tell their story. Christina was a little nervous about being on camera for the first time, and Hannah was too, but being able to share their part of the story firsthand outweighed any hesitation. They could talk about the experience in their own words, and that was very important to them.
The closer we came to our destination, the more nervous the three of us became.
I can honestly say I have never experienced paranormal activity in a vehicle, let alone a moving one. I have seen phenomenal activity from inside a vehicle looking out, but never in it. I have been through a lot and I have witnessed a lot, but a haunted truck was almost laughable.
However, it wasn’t the truck that had a mind of its own. It was our devious traveling partner.
Flying down the highway at seventy miles per hour with a tried and proven haunted doll wasn’t a good combination to begin with. I should have expected it. We all had a lot on our minds, and every facet of it involved Norman.
An hour out from our destination was enough time for that damned doll to become restless.
We continued on in silence until that silence was ab-
ruptly broken. Hannah caused both me and Christina to literally jump and flinch in our seats as she screamed that something had touched her. She swore up and down that it felt like a hand brushing down her arm. I tried to assure her it was probably an insect like a fly or something, but she wasn’t convinced.
We were in the middle of that conversation when all of a sudden, the four doors of the truck started locking and unlocking on their own!
Hannah’s face turned white, and Christina was screaming, “What’s going on?”
I looked all around the truck to see what could be causing the locking mechanisms to falter. Christina had the only control to the automatic locks, and I could see her hands were firmly on the steering wheel. I could not immediately see anything else that would cause the door locks to do that, and this went on for a good thirty seconds of confusion. Then, the locking and unlocking just stopped.
The entire truck was quiet, as were we, for moments afterward. None of us said a word to one another. We just stared at the road, all thinking in our own way about what had just transpired. Hannah finally piped up, asking me what the hell just happened.
In my mind, I knew it wasn’t just a mechanical malfunction. Deep down, I knew Norman had manipulated the locks. I wasn’t going to tell her that for a few reasons.
One, she was already spooked, and two, she was already nervous about the upcoming filming. So I simply told her the cold weather probably caused the locking mechanism to glitch. She seemed content with that idea, so I left well enough alone.
We finally arrived at our hotel without anymore “Normanisms.” We checked in and settled down for the night before the long day of filming ahead of us the next day. Hannah had her own room, so I’m sure she was happy Norman was nowhere near her.
I placed him on the desk provided by the hotel. He wouldn’t be bothered for the most part until we headed out to New Dominion Pictures in the morning. We had placed a pillow inside just for the sake of compassion. When I opened the suitcase just to be sure he was still in there, he was already looking right at me.
Norman’s suitcase
Peeking out
It was unsettling to see him already peering at me. When we packed to leave for the trip, he was placed on his back in the suitcase. When closed, he was tight against the inner top of the luggage.
I’m not saying he couldn’t have shifted and moved during loading and unloading, but it would have taken a great deal of force to do so.
He was now lying completely on his side.
How could he possibly know I would only be peeking in as opposed to opening the suitcase entirely? If he would have remained in the position I left him, he would have been facing up. Weird things to consider. These are things I would have never given a second thought to in the past. But he has accomplished so much over the years, it is hard not to notice every little detail involving him.
I slept well that night. Filming, for me, was always a walk in the park. It never bothered me to actually do it, I just prefer not to. So I slept good. I can’t speak for Christina and Hannah, although I can guess their minds raced all that night. We woke up the next morning, got ready, and headed to the filming studio with Norman in tow.
When we arrived, I wasn’t really sure of the protocol, so I left Norman in the truck, and we headed straight for the studio’s office.
It was simple, we checked in, met the producers, and waited for instructions on filming.
I mentioned to the camera crew that I had brought the real Norman with me. They showed a great deal of excitement and immediately asked me to grab him from the truck. Norman and our story had been quite the talk of the studio since we agreed to go on film about it.
Almost everybody wanted to see the infamous doll that they heard so much about. They wanted to shoot what’s referred to as “B-roll” of the doll. For those of you that are unaware of what B-roll is, it’s basically extra footage in case you need to fill in a gap during the production.
About the time I was getting ready to run out to the truck, Kelly, our main producer, came back out into the lobby. She asked the camera guys what they were so excited about. They told her. She was not happy. I chuckled when she said, “That ‘thing’ is not coming in here.” So there went that idea, and Norman was brought for absolutely nothing … or so I thought.
We spent the rest of the day filming for the show, and it went really well. We were all very excited to see the finished product, but we had months and months to wait for it to be released. Our episode of A Haunting, entitled “Norman the Doll,” would air on July 15, 2019, on the Travel Channel.
After finishing for the day, we took Hannah back to the hotel. We then met up with Darren Evans to grab a late dinner at a local restaurant.
As we sat there discussing the filming and the paranormal field in general, we all seemed to go back to one idea. That idea was to film something with Norman that evening. It did not take much convincing.
Christina, Darren, and I decided to conduct an impromptu investigation into Norman back at the hotel. We felt bringing him would have been a waste otherwise, and this would mark the first time he had ever been researched outside of our home.
This was a fantastic idea and crucial to the ongoing research. Would he act the same, worse, or even at all outside of his comfort zone? Did he even have a comfort zone? We were about to find out.
Up until this point, we had never relocated Norman outside of our home to research, and maybe with our guard down a little, Norman would open up more. The three of us finished eating and headed back to the hotel to begin an investigation that would go down in history.