I have never doubted the power of evil, but it is still a
miraculous horror to think of its potency when its name is
called upon. Although many a reader may approach the
following tale from an agnostic perspective, please open
your mind to heed one person's experience. The following
story is true; although I choose not to disclose the
particulars of its settings herein, the situation that has
occurred is as real as the terror that it still brings me
today.
There is a congregational church not ten miles from my
home. The church is the oldest within a forty mile radius,
and on its grounds is a moderately sized cemetery. The
church is small, rather inviting, and the graveyard is a
well-kept landscape of fresh verdure and neatly rowed
tombstones.
A narrow dirt path running the perimeter of
this cemetery widens as it approaches a deep wood just
northwest of the church. The path leads to a crumbling,
abandoned estate situated on the burial grounds of a large
Indian tribe. It was built circa 1775 by the wealthy Davis
family, who owned a great portion of land in the area.
It
was passed on through Davis generations, later through the
Willises (leaders in the shipping industry)and finally, in
the 20th century, became a pleasant guest spot for getaway
retreats.
Marilyn Monroe courted the playwright Arthur
Miller while staying at this estate (for them, a summer
home). The estate went on to serve as grounds for
children's summer camp from the 1950's to the early '90's.
The mansion sat on a cliff within the woods, overlooking
the harbor. To walk fifty yards to the cliff edge at night
and observe the ships docking from this lofty view, with
the starlight twinkling in the still waters below, must
have been a truly breathtaking sight.
Throughout the woods on the abandoned property, junkies
would get their fixes and many homeless found the seclusion
they desired to literally drink their lives away. Several
overdoses - some intentional- occurred in these "woods of
vagrancy." The most notorious corruption of the estate,
however, took place at the edge of the cliff.
Here there is a clearing. There stands today a large wooden
stake - perhaps it may be called a totem pole - driven into
the ground and cemented at its base to ensure its erection
through rough weather. Large stones are scattered in a wide
sketchy circle around this stake, and remains of wooden
planks around these stones rest atop boulders - clearly to
serve as benches. This clearing was used as a gathering
place for the occult. Black mass was held in this open
field, and small animals were captured from the surrounding
woods, then ritualistically tortured and burned as
sacrifices. The members of this witchcraft cult would call
upon names from the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead), a
partner to the Satanic Bible. Spirits were conjured through
what may be most mildly termed "séances."
I did not discover this property behind the church until a
year after the Satanic rituals had ceased. As a curious and
quite lonely teenager at the time, with an unquenchable
thirst for the supernaturally macabre (and a die-hard fan
of Stephen King tales), I was intrigued after stumbling
upon the estate.
The mansion was located just short of one mile into the
woods from the cemetery grounds. When I first looked at it,
it was like looking into a tired and old face. The face was
genderless, yet it conveyed strong emotions of loneliness
and weariness - but certainly not emptiness. The cracked
and missing windows were many black and melancholy eyes.
Filthy white paint peeled from concaved beams and dead
branches stuck the collapsing roof like permanent
intravenous needles. Upon entering the main doorframe, I
was confronted by a scene of greatness lost. The giant room
that was once a sunny living area was now a mess of
scorched debris and past tenants' garbage. The grand
spiraling staircase to the second and third floors was now
littered, on nearly every riser, with animal excrement.
This wealthy Davis home had been reduced to a wasteland of
unspeakable neglect.
Drawn by the palpable yet unseen presence of a beckoning
inhabitant, I timidly inspected each room of the giant
house. Two corridors were impassable. In one, the walls had
swelled and broken inwards so that little more than a
forearm could enter the narrowest opening. The other, on
the third floor, had no floor in many places. As I toured
the home, I discovered that there were many more rooms than
the house seemed it should hold. Some doorknobs would turn
but the doors were stuck shut. Other doors had been ripped
free from their jambs. Some were even bashed in the center
as if a very impatient person had taken an axe to them
(quickly my mind references Kubrick's take on The Shining).
I would leave the home but its image would burn itself in
my mind. I would have nightmares of the house almost every
night in which some unimaginable evil crouched behind
closed doors like a hungry cat ready to pounce. And each
time I visited the estate, I would have the strangest bad
luck the following day.
Some incidences were minor - flat
tires, my windshield was bashed over night, et cetera.
Other times were more serious. Shortly after introducing
the property to a close friend, her brother took his own
life. I also knew past tenants of the estate who were
terminally ill, some who committed suicide, and some whose
loved ones died suddenly and most tragically.
Despite the misfortune around me, I felt comforted by
thoughts of the old Davis Estate when I was depressed, or
lonely, or just a bit lacking in self esteem.
So I would return to the home, sometimes several days in a
row at a time, and I would bring large black trash bags to
fill with garbage (it was a neverending cleanup). While I
cleaned, I spoke to the house, assuring it that I loved it
and that I would never leave it or let it be torn down (as
if I had any control over executive county decisions). It
became my project, my pet, and - most disturbingly - my
beloved.
Yet as much as I was called to that old property in the
harboring woods of the congregational church, I was also
discouraged from its very paths. Often I would drive,
jittery with nerves that build from thoughts of overriding
quiet fears, and park in the church lot. I would hurry to
the main path, excited to see the mansion, but was in some
extrasensory way deterred at the mouth of the wooded
entrance. Each time, not four feet into the path, I was
wholly overwhelmed by the sense that I was being shunned. I
was not welcome to the estate I cleaned and cared for and
spoke to. Screaming bounced off the walls in my head as
soon as I began walking the path, and though the shrieks
had little cadence, the message was as clear as the
keyboard before you - TURN BACK NOW!!
Maybe it stems from low self-confidence during my outcasted
adolescent years. There were so many long days in high
school of being mocked and teased, and my inclination to
antisociality didn't encourage any normal conformance with
peers. But psychology aside, there was something in my
soul - in my guts - that made me persist. I could press on
down the path to the estate, like a lone sailor beating his
ship against the gusts of some treacherous hurricane. I
could take it on. Here is man at his weakest - the
vulnerable sad fool - ignoring the warnings of a more
powerful world beyond to satisfy the pride that no fear may
lick him.
My desire to just be around the house intensified over
time. Some nights I would find myself standing thirty feet
before the house's mainframe, wondering what I was doing
there and what I expected to accomplish by paying this
visit. To defend my nerve and prove that my fears were not
unfounded ones, I will need to bring up memories of the
supernatural events I have witnessed there. It is not
unlike a middle-aged man forced to retrieve memories of
childhood abuse from some cavern of repression in his mind.
It is the voice of experience piping up through a mountain
of suppressed thoughts.
Early in my visits to the estate, I was attempting to clean
a large ground-story room that had once served as a sort of
playhouse. Behind the simple stage was a pitch-black
hallway and two small storage rooms. In curiosity, I opened
one room to find nothing unusual - paint cans, dropcloths,
power tools, and lots of graffiti. On the other room's
door, someone had crudely drawn a skull and scrawled "Death
to All" over it. This graffiti was no surprise - there was
an abundance of significantly crueller messages written
throughout the house on walls and doors. Yet within that
room I found piles of bones. Perhaps they were no more than
stage props. Yet they splintered and discolored as if they
were real. In damper corners, the bones were in curling
piles, as if the humidity and time worked together to
create some bizarre works of architecture.
The room stunk
of decay - not like wet wood or excrement, but a more spicy
and pungent smell like the atrophy of flesh. Just as I
meant to shut this room's door, there was a terrific bang,
one that made me jump and emit a small shout. Stepping out
from the backstage hall, I discovered that I could not see
a thing. The heavy double doors were shut tight. The doors
had chains and pins at their tops to keep them open. In
addition, large boulders and a couple rusting car batteries
had ensured that they stayed open. In fact, when trying to
budge one door earlier to push aside some litter, I
discovered that the doors would not move an inch. Now they
were sealed together, I was swallowed in a blind absence,
and light ceased to enter the windows that lined each side
of the room - although it was noontime on a bright (and
windless) summer day.
In a silent panic, I managed to push
out a door and run from the estate. I ran until the house
was out of sight and stopped on the dirt path, trembling to
light a cigarette, with tears of fright brimming my eyes. I
walked fast down the path - for some reason, I felt that I
would be "captured" by some predator if I broke into a run -
until I saw the end of the path approaching and the sunlit
tombstones of the manicured graveyard beginning to rise
over the slope of clear land ahead. I knew I was being
watched as I walked out of the woods - as if a triumphant
angry mob was crying "Farewell!" to my hurrying figure. I
did, however, glance over my shoulder.
When I did this, I saw darkness take shape. It wasn't like
a low thundercloud, but like a black amoebic tunnel racing
towards me at a dizzying speed - yet not able to reach me
despite its velocity. Looking to the ground, I saw many
black shadows scurrying towards me - they were no larger
than overfed raccoons - and they changed directions
suddenly as they ran at me from a distance. I saw one
shadow slip into the ground like oil spreading into the
sandy dirt.
My gaze fixed in horror, I still caught something
peripherally. A long, gaunt torso hung from a high tree
branch near the path's end. It waved at me like a wind-
tossed handkerchief before melting into the trunk, quicker
than my eye could blink it away. Despite these visuals, I
continued to journey - usually alone - to the old mansion.
Some days I stood outside of the house, studying second and
third story windows. One time, a young girl in a white
nightgown stood at one of these windows. When it seemed
that she noticed me watching, she disappeared immediately.
[In one daytime photograph of the house - I took many rolls
on disposable cameras - a picture's development revealed
five human forms, constituted of bright light, that posed
on the porch like some formal family portrait].
Other
times, the windows would bang open and shut furiously as if
being beaten ruthlessly by the whirls of a tornado - yet I
would not feel the slightest of breezes on my cheek while I
watched this. Sometimes, when on an upper floor of the
house, I would hear a maddening rush of footsteps
bombarding up the staircase like a heavy adult being
chased. And then there were instances when my hair was
yanked or my sleeve was tugged by an invisible playing hand
while I walked through the rooms. Even when the house was
still and quiet, I knew I had a great deal of company.
There was a sense that a large family watched me from all
different heights and perspectives as I walked through the
house. In the woods, it felt that legions were banded
together, watching me come or go with small crafty eyes.
Time passed and I went away to college. I would often visit
friends in dorms late into the night and walk back to my
apartment across campus just before dawn broke.
One night I
was walking up the metal stairs to my apartment door. There
was a short upper-level walkway from the stairs to my door.
From a corner of my eye, I saw something quickly following
me, yet pausing from time to time. I thought little of it -
it was common to see skunks by the apartments. I turned
around and saw a shadow, encased in the night, slipping up
the stairs like a puddle defying its gravitational
properties. It started rushing towards me - this
indescribable black blob moving in the ground, rather than
on it. I slammed the door on it and could visualize it
splattering against the painted wood in a cartoonish
defeat. This was one of several occasions where I noticed
odd shadows scampering over and in the ground on campus.
Although friends laughed at my "visions" - some attributed
them to hallucinations - I quietly knew. The presence of
the Davis Estate had followed me.
After college, I returned to my parent's home and didn't
visit the estate. One night, however, I succumbed to the
whispered beckon of the old property. I had broken up with
my boyfriend (really, it was just another brawl we had had
before finally parting ways). It was about 1:00 a.m. and I
was driving back to my house - except I took a little
detour. I found myself standing at the mouth of the path to
the estate and suddenly felt like some ignorant victim-to-
be in "Pet Sematary." The internal screams were especially
loud that night. The dense woods were full of shadows - God
knows if there was anything to create those shadows - and
though the path was wide enough for a car and the branches
did not close anywhere over my head, I could not find any
light at all. The orange shine from the parking lot's lamps
was unnaturally cut off on this path. The moon was quickly
veiled by thick clouds. And despite the warnings moaning in
my head, I could not hear a single insect chirp. The
abysmal silence was deafening.
As I walked deeper into the woods and followed the turns of
the wide path, black shapes jumped about within the woods
as if propelled by giant springs. I saw luminous shadows
fly above the treetops and fall back inside the towering
trunks as if a child were throwing her rag doll as high as
she could. There was terribly thick evil watching me. Yet
it was having fun while it did so. Perhaps it is paranoia,
but it seemed as if it knew my greatest weaknesses - being
laughed at - and took great sadistic joy in this. Suddenly
I was walking in a high school hallway again - except the
power was out this time, and the magnification of my fears
was spread around me like exhibits in a grotesque art
gallery.
There had never been electricity in the mansion since I
began visiting it. In fact, I didn't even see traces of
electrical work within the gaping, half-eaten walls. Yet
the moment I rounded the path and could see the side of the
mansion beyond some foliage, I was startled by the high-
pitched wailing of an alarm! I could not identify the
source of the sound immediately. I only looked around in
shock, trying to comprehend what was taking place. I wanted
to cover my ears from the brilliant electrical shrieking,
but I was too frightened to bring my hands to my head. I
could only stand in place, then cautiously took a step
forward as if trying to cross over quicksand. I realized
that it was the house that was issuing the cry of the
alarm. Not an electrical system, but the very structure
itself.
A man stood in a wide-brimmed hat not twenty feet in front
of me. I had seen this shadow a few times before. Once had
been the first night I had visited the estate. I had
watched him approach me, walk by, and then disappear into
the night. He had been wearing that large old-fashioned
farmer's hat. Having had a few too many drinks that night,
I had blamed the apparition on my own carelessness with
alcohol. Now my doubts vanished. All the fears logic and
reason consistently pushed aside came running at me full-
force. There was no more "playing" in the woods. My surety
to overcome all internal fears was cowering somewhere in
the pocket of my windbreaker. The "farmer shadow" I had
dismissed stood before me. He stood very still, and I
couldn't tell if he was staring at me or something else. I
knew that if I ran, he would surely try catch me. What was
worse, he was not quite human. He was somehow larger and
more translucent, yet he was also black as a cutout and his
features were equally undefined. I realized that he would
not need to run in order to catch me. As long as he
existed, he could control me. He would not give chase, he
would just BE.
And the alarm continued its intermittent shrieks. I bolted
out of the woods. I didn't see the ground or the woods or
the sky or my own feet. I just knew that my body was
getting forward and that I would be able to stop when I was
inside my car.
Since then, I have stopped paying visits to the old Davis
Estate. I have had more haunting experiences there than I
can recount in this tale, and my bad luck has followed me
like those odd scurrying shadows for every visit I have
made. I cannot muster the courage to even walk to the
entrance of those woods on the harborside cliff. Yet from a
safe distance, I have spent hours in numerous local
libraries digging for some scrap of history on the
property. Little is spoken of that piece of land. However,
I recently read a couple of articles from the online County
Executive's newsletters that local officials were
considering turning the estate grounds into county
parklands.
I picture children holding the hands of their parents and
strolling through the woods that had once chased me out
with their own shadows. I thought of families and young
couples smiling up at the trees as they carried on
lighthearted banter and walked easily down the sandy path.
Perhaps an innocent eye would fall and linger on a
particular tree - the one where I had seen that skinny and
demonically bent torso swaying.
I cannot be so bold as to confront my fears when evil has
been given a formal invitation. It had not taken long to
make the connection between those past Satanic rituals and
the horrors I incurred thereafter. I knew that although
evil could not chase me if I did not follow it - not in so
outright a form - it is something to avoid when it can be
avoided. I still hear it calling for me and I have the
occasional nightmare, but I have learned how to resist its
twisted pleas. Sometimes you need to eat a little of your
own pride to protect your life.
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