North Second Street

When you’re a kid and creepy things hit the news where you live you file them away under ‘Proof of the Supernatural’ in your brain and you only open that file once in a while when your sitting around a campfire with close friends or blogging for Halloween. When I was young I filled my file cabinet with stories from the occult. This was during the time of the PMRC and the kid who killed himself after listening to Judas Priest, heavy metal hair bands wore pentagrams on their belt buckles and parents everywhere were ‘concerned’ that Twisted Sister was twisting our sisters.

At the all night skates inevitably we would end up huddled up in our sleeping bags in the middle of the skating rink hearing stories that “I swear to God are true, it happened to my sister’s boyfriend’s cousin…” Around this time, the local news broke a story too gruesome to ignore. A senior at a local high school killed his best friend in some sort of ritualistic occult-like slaughter. If I remember correctly he beheaded him and then hid the body and head under his bed. His dad found the body, upon which the son killed his father and shortly after committed suicide. We talked about it for months around campfires, at parties and at the skating rink surmising the motive and circumstances regarding the deaths, and wondered at the connections to rumors about ritualistic animal killings at a local and close state park or Witch Beulah, or Bloods Point Cemetery. Over the years it all kind of faded away into the microfesh of the brain.

It turns out a house like that is hard to sell after such an incident, they tend to go pretty cheap if at all because they have to disclose the murder. Everyone knew the house and the story and so it went until years later long after we had all stopped talking and people quit driving by a divorced mother of three boys moved to the area to be closer to the son that lived with his Dad. The realtor informed her people died in the house but she didn’t seem to mind. It was cute and cheap so she bought it. Soon she and her youngest son started to hear things in the middle of the night: bumps, pounding, stomping across floors and slamming doors. Her boyfriend, a retired police officer moved in and he installed locks and motion activated lights and soon no body was getting any sleep.

Amidst all the uproar happening in the night the woman’s middle son Brian asked to move in with her – it seemed he was uncomfortable sleeping at his Father’s house, something about rumors or whispers in the middle of the night. Yes, you read that right, Brian’s mother was the woman that bought the house. Poor guy couldn’t get away from it. While he was having problems at his Dad’s house with creepy whisperings and glowing green orbs, across the river over at his mother’s house his little brother was waking up to doors slamming and stomping through the halls. Twice his mother’s boyfriend called the police about the stomping and pounding but when the police could find no one and no point of entry they stopped reporting it.

While there, his little brother had a freak accident with a jungle-gym of all harmless things. He was hanging by his arms when the pipe broke and fell on his face, half his skull crushed inward breaking his eye socket and check bone. He underwent reconstructive surgeries and was never quite the happy silly kid I remembered. The family was mired in bad luck while they lived in those houses; divorces, car accidents, quarrels, miscarriages, dead pets, and in general restlessness and ire. Of course all of those things happen in day to day living especially when with teenagers in the house but it felt excessive for such a normal bunch of people to endure.

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