Honey, Look At The Kids!
James Hooper, USA
August 2002
Things seemed strange from day one of our moving in to the small mobile home in Fort Mojave, Arizona. Our two daughters were just 17 months and 4 months then. We were excited to be in our own place with our new little family.
Our living room was small but cozy and in the far corner we had put a bookshelf to store the many movies and books we had accumulated. James, my husband, was home watching the girls and attempting to clean the living room while the girls were down for their afternoon nap. I was on my lunch break so we were chatted briefly on the phone for a few moments before I went to get my lunch.
A short time later my husband called back to relay an odd happening with the bookshelf. "I put a couple of movies on the shelf about chest high as well as some receipts and camel cash I'd been collecting. The receipt fell so I picked it up to put it back and and the receipt and camel cash fell. So again, I picked it up and put it back on the shelf. I turned around, looked at the kids. The lights flickered over the couch where the kids were laying. I looked to the shelf again and the receipts and camel cash were on the floor again.
While speaking with me on the phone he again picked up th receipt and the camel cash, put them back on the shelf. All the while telling me exactly what he was doing. While speaking to me the papers again flew to the floor.
I was ready to dismiss this as pure coincidence but he insisted that it was like someone was right there in the room with him and pushing it off the center of the shelf in a room with no drafts, no open windows, and no air conditioning of any sort, directly on the floor just to remind him he was not alone.
A month or so later things got even stranger. The children began laughing and playing with an invisible playmate. Emily, our oldest would play chase with "the little boy" as she ran up and down the hall. She would sit and talk to "him" on the floor and even the baby would coo and giggle at a spot in the corner of the living room time and time again. Then late at night well after the children were tucked away in their beds electronic toys would go off on their own. Some playing music, others like a baby doll making crying sounds.
One night in sheer frustration I yelled at this unseen "he" and told him to stop or I would throw the toys out. This continued into the wee hours of the morning so I did what any tired parent would do. I opened the front door and took the toy of choice and threw it out the door.
Then things got worse.
My Husband dreamed of a man, a boy and a dog in the house. And we struggled to find any information but no one knew anything.
One evening while we picked up the living room from the childrens afternoon of play. My Husband discovered a straightened metal coat hanger on the floor under an outlet. As panicy parents we were quick to blame each other for such a dangerous ignorant act. Truth was neither of us had done it and the chidren couldn't possibly have done it. But, there it was waiting to claim one of our girls.
Then came a night that will never leave me. That was the night that even the neighbors horses would not settle down.
The girls and I were asleep in the back bedroom and James had fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie. Suddenly it was as though the entire house was surrounded by hundreds of people banging with metal hammers all around the house. I was screaming and the back door stood between James and the rest of us. He desperately searched for intruders to no avail. In the desert there is no place to hide, you can see for miles. There was no one there, just a very frightened family facing a very angry something.
There were other things that happened, things being moved mysteriously, things disappearing all together. The day I snapped a photo of our baby babbling to the unseen, which by the way shows a white whirlwind in front of her. I still have that photo. It reminds me we weren't imagining things.
We had had enough we moved away, far away. The final kick was when the landlord would not return our deposit because the dog had messed up the floors. Strange thing was.... We didn't have a dog or any pet for that matter.