The Haunting Returns

Witness: Shane Brown
Location: Middletown/Carlisle, Ohio
Date of Encounter: 1977-present

These occurrences are remembered to my absolute best ability. From the time I was around 4-5, I was having occurrences that I could not explain. I had an imaginary friend I know I could see but no one else could — I would always talk to my mom about her and she even remembers her name which even I cannot recall. She was always nice, but older then I was, and we always played together but when we moved from Middletown to Carlisle she didn't come.

We lived in a house where a man had killed himself in the corner and a blood stain would not come off the wall no matter how hard you tried. My mom and sister always experienced unexplained events there, but I was too young to notice aside from my female friend. We moved out and a short while later a mysterious fire burnt the house down while it was vacant. We bought a new house in a brand new subdivision about 20 minutes from Middletown in a village called Carlisle.

Right after we moved into our new home in 1977, in a development that was built over a huge cornfield known as Castlebrook estates, many of the new residents were quite aware of a violent murder and rape of a young girl that had happened in the cornfield many years before. We had all discussed one of the property area's had to have been built where the event had taken place. I am quite positive it was where our new home was. Within the first week of moving in, we all experienced things in the home that no one could come close to explaining.

At night you could always hear someone walking/pacing on the carpet as it made kind of a swooshing noise as you walked on it. Sometimes we would hear indecipherable music played just at an ambient-low volume but you could never find the source of it while walking from room to room. The worst was what we all called "the darkness" which happened every night. I had to sleep with a night light on because I was always terrified of being in the dark and I still am to an extent. When you would turn off the lights, the dark would get darker and darker and envelope the walls of the room. The nightlight would not give any light on the wall behind it but always would illuminate my bed, stereo ect. This happened in the bedrooms when the lights were out.

Because of this, many of my friends would not spend the night and the ones that did often would not do it again. Everyone who did noticed something was not right in the house. The living room was also always darker then the rest of the house. Even with all the lights on it seemed we never could get that room bright. With my own bedroom, we also always had to sleep with the door open because if it was closed we would wake up with it open or it would fly open and slam closed then re-open. Finally we just left the doors open while we slept.
Shortly after we moved in, my mom wanted the Ouija board out of the house in case it was causing some problems so we gave it to our friends from school, Danny and Jeff *last names omitted*. From the first night we gave them the board, their house became violent — the doorbell wouldn't stop ringing, doors would fly open, and screams would ring out in the hallway. Their mom and the boys destroyed the board and then burned it (no it did not scream as per urban legend) and then they had a minister bless their home. The hauntings stopped right afterward.

Mine only seemed to increase as I got older. One night while laying in bed when I was around 12, I was just falling asleep when the room became ice cold and I couldn't move, scream, or say anything. I was instantly paralyzed and the only thing I did was pray to God and Jesus for any help. After what seemed like hours, but I'm sure it was only a few minutes, my room became warm and heated again and the coldness left. It was one of the scariest events of my life as I felt like I was in the presence of the most evil being. I still don't know what it was and I probably don't want to know.

Things continued to go downhill the older I got. I started feeling rages of anger/guilt, schoolwork and interest in everything dropped, and I started turning to the occult and Satanism for guidance and answers. I was listening to bands that were considered satanic at the time like, King Diamond, Slayer, Helloween, Metallica, and Megadeth (yes, back then they were considered evil) and my mom turned to the opposite. She started going to church and anytime she went into my room without me there she would swear she was under some sort of demonic attack. I believed her because of all the things that were happening. I also was having frequent nightmares of murders, violence, suicides, and the house exploding.

We knew we were going to be moving due to things getting worse in the house as I got older and plus the fights with the neighborhood kids was also increasing we knew it was time to go.

Shortly before moving day, two things happened within a week of each other. The first was at a garage sale where I bought the book The Amityville Horror and sat down in the loveseat and started to read. Within moments I started to feel like I couldn't breathe and then my mom and I both felt an evil presence like we have never experienced before. She demanded to know what I was reading and I showed her. No sooner then it felt like we both were about knocked off our feet so I instantly ran out of the house and threw the book away in a neighbor's garage can. When I returned, things still didn't feel right, but the evil we were feeling in the room was gone. Mom made me promise to never try and read that book or anything occult oriented again. I have still kept my promise.

The next was about a week before we were moving — my cousin, Shawn, was staying over helping me pack and we were using chairs, boxes ect. to stack my music on that we were listening to while finishing the packing. I sat a bunch of 45 records on this folding chair that I told my cousin we couldn't sit on it because it would flip up and break but a few records isn't enough weight and would be fine. We went to bed and he knew about the footsteps and the darkness that happened when we turned off the lights, but I guess my door wasn't open far enough as it was 1/2 cracked allowing light from the bathroom to come down the hall. We weren't all the way asleep yet and suddenly we heard the swoosh sound coming down the hall and Shawn started flipping out. My door opened by itself and the footsteps walked to one side of the bed then to the other, then I thought it would leave my room as usual, but it didn't. The sound shuffled to the foot of my bed and stopped, causing me and Shawn too almost scream. We looked up and there was nothing there but my 45's were slowly being pushed off my chair then they hit the side of the speaker, then the floor, and at that instant the chair flipped up and broke like someone had just sat on it. We grabbed the blankets and ran into my mom's room and slept on the floor at the foot of her bed.

A few days afterward my mom had her encounter. We would sometimes play pranks and scare each other. This was 2 nights after the chair incident happened. She was just laying in bed when she said she felt something brush around her so she screamed for me to get out of her room. Then her bed gave a huge shove and banged against the wall so she came running out and into my room where I was sound asleep. From what I understand, she didn't go back to bed that night. I know my mom has had more experiences there from what I know, but many she will not even discuss. One of which freaked her out so much she pretty much tore up things and trashed my room. All she said was that there was something evil in my room and it was almost like a demonic attack when she walked inside. When we were moving, though, nothing unusual happened. Once we moved back to Middletown in 1988, things were fine and the hauntings, darkness, voices, and other odd occurrences stopped until 1998 when I got married and moved out, and then things were more scary then in Carlisle. Those stories are for another post. All these events are very true and as real as I can remember. Is it possible also for someone to have a spirit follow them or leave you alone for almost 10 years and then come back? If anyone has any comments or can answer some of my questions you can email me at theebaydj@yahoo.com. Thanks for taking the time to read through all this. There were many other weird occurrences inside the house but these were a lot of the main ones that still sticks in mine and my mothers memory.