THE VICTIM
When I purchased the Avery house that I now live in, I knew someone had been murdered in it. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. I was thirty-nine years old and did not know how to communicate with the spirits, but I was intuitive. I believe that my intuition is driven by an ability to observe what others may miss. I don’t believe that it is some magical gift, but a gathering of information into a logical conclusion.
When I bought the Avery house, it was cut into two living areas. One part was about one quarter of the house. To get to this part, you needed to climb an outside staircase that the town condemned right after I bought the house. The small area was cold and I didn’t use it in the winter. There were no laundry facilities, so laundry had to be carried down the backstairs, which were dangerous to descend. To access the main part of the house, you needed to go down those same stairs and enter through the back door. The space was called a mother-in-law apartment by the people from whom I bought the house. This being the case, it would have been even more difficult for an elderly person to come and go. I believed that little regard was paid to the person living in this small space. I wondered if my intuition about someone being murdered didn’t have something to do with this space.
I also wondered if there might be a ghost in the house. Maybe it could be the person whom I suspected might have been murdered. I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time. It was futile to speculate on the matter because I had no way of contacting the spirit world.
In 1988, two years after buying the home, I had a horrific ghostly experience. My partner, who usually stayed awake until 2:00 a.m., was asleep by 10:00 p.m. that night. This was an unlikely occurrence. He started to snore and I began to read my Bible. Then I felt something creep up my legs until I was completely overtaken. I tried to scream but couldn’t. When I tried to move my arms, nothing would happen. I tried to open my mouth to scream. I tried to move in any way possible in order to awaken my partner, but I couldn’t do that either. I am quite a rational thinker and I sat still and thought, “I need to surprise this entity and use all of my strength and scream.” I closed my eyes and concentrated. Then I let out a dreadful scream.
My partner awoke. He sat up in bed and just stared at me. “What happened? Why did you scream?” All I could do was sob. I sobbed for a long, long time.
The next day I told a friend of mine, who was a born-again Christian, about the incident. I wanted to do an exorcism and was afraid to call a priest. (I didn’t want to be called nuts.) She discouraged me and said that it could be very dangerous. But I was my usual self, undaunted. She gave me some literature and asked me to make a promise that I would read all of it. I agreed.
After about a week or two of studying, I decided that I was ready. I asked God for protection and went into my keeping room to perform the ritual. I had my Bible, a cross, my prayer book, holy water, and whatever else I was supposed to have. I prayed like I had never prayed before. I demanded that the spirit leave my home in the name of Jesus Christ.
About an hour passed while I prayed and continued to demand that the spirit leave. Then the atmospheric pressure in the house changed. It was as if a great wind came from the dining room into the keeping room and then straight up through the house. The exorcism was successful. When the spirit left, the air in the house felt light. I thought, “I can float.” Of course I couldn’t, but I did kneel and thank God that the spirit was gone.
The spirit at the back door, which I photographed in the Avery house
in August 1986. Photo credit: author
This spirit entered the home where the back door was in 1790. In 1817 an addition was built, so the back door is now twenty feet farther back. When I bought the home in 1986, I captured this spirit on my camera twice, both times at the original back door.
In 2014 I began to do short spirit sessions using my L-rods. I would ask a couple of questions and then put the rods away. There was a female spirit that always answered. Eventually I asked her if she had been murdered in the upstairs part of the home that was added in 1817. The rods opened wide with an affirmative answer. Only if the spirit that I had banned from the home was still alive after 1817 could he be the murderer. If he had been alive past 1817, why hadn’t he used the new doorway? I decided to interview the female spirit and attempt to find the answers to my questions.
Synopsis of My Interview with the Victim
I performed this interview in an upstairs bedroom that my husband and I had turned into an office. I also confirmed that this was the same woman who had been responding to me before. She was. She had lived and died in the home, smothered by a family member. I thought, “Who am I to judge this happening?” The woman was quite old and apparently ill. Perhaps it may have been a mercy killing. I did not go into dates when this occurred and I thought it wise to avoid too many details. In the end she told me that she just wanted someone to know what had really happened. She voiced no animosity toward anyone.
I would never go to the police. They would think that I’m as crazy as they get. Then I thought, “It doesn’t matter anymore. They are all dead. And she is at peace.”
I have been asked many times by my guests if anyone has died in the Grant or the Avery home. I always say yes. The homes in this historic village are old, mostly from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Most of the colonial population died at home. There were no funeral homes. The dead were laid out at home in the parlor. This custom continued into the 1950s. Keeping rooms became parlors, and in the mid-1900s parlors became living rooms. (The term parlor is now used primarily for funeral parlors.)