It Just Keeps Happening
Approximately four months later, Britt started complaining the doorknob to her bedroom had been locking itself. At various times when I’d go up to check on her, the door would be locked—something that she rarely did. The knob is an old lock meant for an exterior door. It can be unlocked with a key from one side. A few years after we’d moved into the condo, her bedroom doorknob broke off and couldn’t be fixed. I had an exterior knob left over from a past remodel, so to save a few bucks I installed it on her door—although the key to it had long ago disappeared.
But not having a key didn’t seem to be important, since there was never any reason to lock that door until now, when it had seemingly learned to lock itself. A few weeks earlier, I had to call my handyman to pick the lock and let me in on a day when Britt was off with friends.
Then the lock started locking itself on a regular basis. Britt learned to pick the lock, so we basically just ignored the inconvenience.
But on the evening of June 13, I went up to check on her and found things a bit wonky. Her door was locked, the light was on in my bedroom across the hall (never on unless I’m doing something up there), the window air conditioner was on (never turned on unless I intend to be in the room for a while), my ceiling fan was on (almost never turned on), and the light was on in the bathroom (Britt might have left that one on). I’m particular about making sure that electrical switches are turned off if the light or appliance in question is not in use. Brittany knows my habits and wouldn’t have turned things on in my room.
I knocked on her door to see if she knew more than I did.
“Hang on,” she replied as I heard her fidgeting with the knob. “The door’s locked itself again.” Then she let me in. I asked if she’d turned any of the electrical gadgets on, and she said, “No, but the doorknob to my closet has been jiggling like someone was in there trying to get out. Now this. I think maybe something is going on again.”
I didn’t deny there might be some kind of rekindled paranormal activity going on. I thought the best course of action was just to ignore it since it was nothing compared to what happened over a decade ago. If Waya was looking for attention, maybe he’d give up if I simply looked the other way.
I made a few jokes about the spooks not having much to do except bother us by saying, “No one is scared by this, you know. Congratulations, you can flip a few switches. Wow! What a talented Casper!” Responding with humor is almost always more effective than showing fear.
I also thought that if I displayed fear, Brittany would be more likely to also. She was infinitely more bothered by our paranormal activities than I was, and for very good reason.
After turning everything off that had switched itself on, I went back downstairs and resumed watching television. In less than half an hour, I heard banging upstairs, like furniture being moved. I rushed back upstairs to check.
I entered my room and switched on the light. One long side of my bed is always pushed up against a wall, leaving three sides exposed. The head of the bed had been shoved out away from the wall about two feet, leaving a triangular-shaped gap between bed and wall, with the foot of the bed still against the wall. I also have a director’s chair in my bedroom. It’s very lightweight, made of canvas and wood. It was turned over onto its side, and the rack where I keep my shoes was sitting on top of it. The shoes were all neatly removed and placed in a line on a coffee table I keep next to my bed. My belts had been neatly rolled up next to each other, with various bottles of nose spray and eye drops placed inside the coiled belts. A pair of house shoes, which I’d yet to even wear, was dangling from the shoe rack hanging by the plastic string that still held the shoes together. Anchored between the coffee table and the director’s chair was a painting Brittany had done years ago for me. It had been hanging above my dresser about six feet from where it currently sat. The display in its entirety was actually very well executed and almost artistically done. But at the time, I didn’t appreciate the artistry.
I called for Brittany to come see this latest creation and could see that she was noticeably upset and more than a little scared. For her sake, I should have kept my cool, but these spirit pranksters were starting to get on my nerves. Knowing I shouldn’t, I got mad and started yelling. I told it that I wasn’t scared of it and if it wanted a fight it had come to the right place. Britt said that I shouldn’t let it get to me, because that was “just what it wanted.”
I agreed and softened my approach. I recited the Apostles’ Creed and said, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I command you to leave.” Britt went back to her room and I went back downstairs. Everything seemed to get back to normal, and within a half an hour, she yelled down that she was going to bed.
Maybe another hour later, I went up to bed and was greeted by another elaborate display. I keep a Bible and a stack of magazines on the bathroom cabinet by the sink. They had all been relocated to the floor and painstakingly stacked with the toiletry items on the cabinet neatly surrounding the books in a circle on the floor. There were pill bottles, Brittany’s various makeup items, and five or six CDs that had originally been stacked next to the CD player in the corner of the cabinet.
It looked like the entity was still trying to get my attention. I retrieved my Bible from the stack the entity had so artfully arranged and turned to the book of Psalms. I have all the passages from our previous cleansing marked, so I began reading them out loud. I walked from the bathroom, through the hall, and into my bedroom reading five of these poetic verses.
I also included my own little prayer that I came up with several years earlier at times when I felt negative entities were trying to influence Brittany again or establish themselves in my home. It goes something like this:
“Almighty God, I hereby cast out, banish, and expel all negative or evil entities or attachments from my universe, my dimension, or my reality. That includes the universe, dimension, and reality of my daughter Brittany as our universes overlap.
“I cast you out; I banish you; I expel you; and I send you back to God Almighty, where I’m sure you will be shown kindness, warmth, and love—but that is up to God. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I cast you out.”
I went to bed and continued to recite the Apostles’ Creed laced with the odd Hail Mary in my head until I fell asleep.
Cats and Big Bads Don’t Mix
About four weeks passed without further incident—with the exception of one slight change in the household. Starting the very next day, one of my cats refused to go upstairs. I mention this episode because this particular cat, Little Baast, has stayed upstairs 80 percent of the time since he came to me ten years ago as a tiny kitten. My five cats have different areas of the house they particularly prefer. Baby (Brittany’s cat and the oldest at twenty years now) mostly wiles away her time in Brittany’s room; Samhain generally can be found in the kitchen, sleeping in my chair or chasing her tail; Dinky (an obese Russian Blue) likes to stay downstairs near the major food source; and Mr. Bean (a Bobcat-sized alpha male) generally goes wherever he likes.
But Little Baast has always spent the great majority of his time upstairs, so much so that I started putting his own food dish up there. He has slept with me near the head of the bed every night for years. However, at the ripe old age of ten, he suddenly decided to stay downstairs during the day and sleep in the kitchen at night instead of with me.
He would not go upstairs after the “Night of the Shoe and Book Display.”
However, none of the other cats seemed much affected. In fact, all four of them would go back and forth from the upstairs to the downstairs areas as need be with impunity—totally unaffected by the teleportation going on that night upstairs. Baby still went upstairs to visit Brittany, and all the other cats still kept their upstairs passports valid.
The only explanation I can come up with as to why Little Baast suddenly didn’t want to go upstairs is that he was in my bedroom and witnessed the entity repositioning my footwear and reading material. He very possibly saw shoes, the shoe rack, and books flying through the air. Seeing the bed he had slept in for a decade dance across the floor on its own may have been the last straw. The other cats were all downstairs during this display of teleportation and were totally unperturbed by it.
Originally named Didley, of all my cats, Little Baast is the biggest scaredy-cat. When he was young, he used to be afraid of the ten feral cats I would feed outside. Once, he got out and was gone from home for a month. I’d see him in the condo courtyard, but he couldn’t work up the courage to cross the feral picket line to get back inside, no matter how much I called. Then one day he just appeared from out of nowhere in my bedroom. I still have no idea how he got in. Perhaps he zipped behind me undetected one day as I stood on the porch calling him, or maybe … I half-jokingly concluded he was magic and renamed him “Little Baast” after the Egyptian demigod.
I believe that my reading of the Psalms, the Apostles’ Creed, and all the Hail Marys got rid of my uninvited guests, but Little Baast wasn’t predisposed to take any chances. I’d watch him look out the front window, possibly considering whether it might be safer to brave the feral cats or take a chance upstairs—always wondering if the shoes might start dancing again.
I Hear You Knockin’
I went to bed around midnight after first opening the door to Brittany’s room, looking in on her, and seeing she was sound asleep. After I crossed over into my bedroom, I noticed that a chair had been moved out from the wall about three feet. I didn’t remember moving it and was sure that if I had, I would have put it back in its usual place. I joked to the spirits or the universe in general, “That’s not where that goes. If you’re going to rearrange the décor, learn to put things back.”
Lately I had been feeling low on energy without any desire to get much of anything done. The low energy didn’t affect my work, but anything that took much physical exertion was getting put off till later. I was tired and eager to go to bed.
However after talking to Brittany the next morning, I learned there were a lot of things happening that night I didn’t know about.
At the time, Britt mostly stayed upstairs in her room where she had her computer, TV, and movies. My office is downstairs, so I’m either working on the computer or watching TV. We usually checked on each other every few hours, and life went on.
But that morning, she hesitatingly told me that at one point the night before, she thought she’d heard me come to her door and knock. She told me to come in—and she heard me say, “I can’t. It’s locked.” Since her door had been locking itself that summer, this seemed like a normal reply, so she’d gotten up to unlock it and let me in. The door was not locked—and I was not there. She also said she heard me in my bedroom moving things and talking to the cats. That also did not happen. All the cats and I were downstairs at the time.
The most disturbing part was that Britt was hearing a voice again imitating my voice, and it looked like things were firing up once again.
By this time, I had been thinking that since we had banished negative entities with holy water and blessed the house with the reading of Psalms and the Apostles’ Creed, maybe it was time to rethink my battle plans.