It wasn’t in the “Exorcist of Emily Rose” type of way. But, something was off about her ever since we moved into the house that backed up to a cemetery. We had been together 9 years before moving into our first home together, although we had lived together at my folks place for a few years prior. During the pandemic, maybe even right before, she had gotten heavy into drinking. That eventually led to some issues which resulted in her going back to live with her mom and step dad. Things were great for a few months, she was even able to say sober with her mom always watching over her. Then, the pandemic hit. Her mom was one of those traditional, overprotective parents, that didn’t want her daughter going out past 10pm, let alone mingling with people during the middle of a pandemic. So, we started seeing each other less and less.
After a few months, we both had enough of the “long distance” relationship, and decided to start looking at places together. We started off our search by looking at rental units, mainly townhomes and a couple of houses. We soon realized that we were limiting our search, and together, we could afford a pretty nice house together. She was doing taxes for a big marketing company, and I was an over the road truck driver. We ended up finding a house in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Honestly, it was the first one we looked at. I think we were in a rush to start the next chapter of our lives, or maybe the house just felt like home, but we didn’t even look at any other houses.
Our house was actually pretty dope. I know it wasn’t a mansion or anything, but we were both pretty proud of our first big purchase together. It has a 2 car garage that lead into a basement. The basement was a bit outdated, but it was still nice. The carpet was an ugly green color, probably from the 70’s, which was complimented by light brown wood paneling on the walls. It also had a gas fireplace, and a giant TV and surround sound sytem, which was left behind by the previous owners. There was also a half bath on the way up to the main floor. The stairs led you up into the kitchen, which was all updated. Nice, newer appliances, with a nice modern tile floor. One end of the kitchen led to the front door, and the other end had a sliding glass door going out to the back. It wasn’t huge, but we were both able to cook comfortably together. Who am I kidding, she did most of the cooking….anyways, enough of the kitchen.
We also had a 2nd story, which had 2 bedrooms, and 1 master bedroom/bathroom. The bathroom had heated floors, and even a heated toilet seat. It also had a jacuzzi tub and shower combo, which was pretty sweet. The master bedroom also featured reading lights that were installed in the ceiling, so you can read without disturbing your spouse while they’re sleeping. Overall the house was pretty awesome, however, there was one part that made my girlfriend uneasy. The backyard. See, the backyard backed up to a small, local cemetery, with tombstones dating back to the early 1700’s. There were maybe, I don’t know, 75 or so headstones there. Maybe more, I never really took the time to count them. The cemetery was separated by a single chain link fence, that went all the way down the row of houses, and eventually opened up on a side street about 20 houses down. There was a small gravel path you could drive on, that went through the cemetery, it was kind of like a one way in and one way out kind of deal. Basically, looking at it from our backyard, the gravel road was like a C. Anyway, I was kind of excited to live next to a cemetery. I thought it would be cool. If only I had known…
The first night, we both felt a little creeped out. We really didn’t have everything put away when we decided to go to bed. Honestly, it was a long day, and we were both tired from moving an entire U-Haul truck worth of stuff into a home. As we laid in bed discussing how we were going to set up the rest of the house in the morning, the reading lights above the bed started flickering. We instantly stopped talking. Neither of us were really religious, to be honest, but we didn’t dismiss the possibility of ghosts existing. After about 15 seconds of the lights flickering, it stopped, and went back to normal. It was almost like a ghost was welcoming us to the house. Or maybe that was our warning sign to get out…
On day 3, we’re still trying to get everything situated, when we hear a noise coming from the upstairs bathroom. We froze in place, listening carefully, wondering what the hell it was. It almost sounded like a pipe had burst, or a radio had turned on but it was all static. I grabbed the closest thing to me that I can use as a weapon, which happened to be a 10lb dumbbell, and went to investigate. My heart was pounding as I walked up the stairs, starting to think of all the different possibilities it could be. As I reached the top of the stairs, I was able to see into the bathroom.
It was empty.
It took me a few seconds to realize that the jacuzzi had a self drying feature on it, which, when moisture is detected, it will dry itself with air. I guess there are a bunch of tiny holes on the bottom of it, and we hadn’t even noticed it. I guess one of us did take a shower not too long ago, but it was still weird because it didn’t go off yesterday. We didn’t really think much of it, and after our blood pressure returned to normal, we laughed it off. The next day, I went back to work. My girlfriend was lucky enough to work from home, thanks to the pandemic. So she set up her little home office on the main floor in the living room, as I was on my way to Nebraska. Later that night, she called me as I was getting ready to shut down for the night. I asked her how her day was, and we mostly talked about work, and coming up with ideas for the house, like painting, remodeling, etc.. We got on the topic of putting a fence up in the backyard, to block the cemetery. Not that it was creepy to look at, but mostly for privacy. Our backyard had a small deck, and it was summer time. We planned on hanging out in the back quite a bit, since we liked to grill, and just enjoy the weather.
While we were talking about what color fence we would get, the bathtub went off. She stopped mid sentence and just gasped. I freaked out a little too, considering I wasn’t there, and she was all alone. But then I remembered, it goes off after you shower in it. The funny thing is, when I reminded her about this, this freaked us both out even more. Turns out, she hadn’t showered since the day before, and neither had I. We started talking in whispers, wondering if she should call the police or go investigate it herself. While we were trying to figure it out, it just stopped suddenly. It definitely ran a lot longer yesterday, when we actually used it for a shower.
Did maybe some moisture get into the tub somehow, and it just sensed it and started drying itself? I highly doubt it, but we chalked it up to her maybe splashing the tub when she washed her hands in the bathroom. Yeah…lets go with that. It was a lot better than genuinely thinking a ghost was playing tricks on us, while I was hundreds of miles away and she was all alone. I still had this creepy feeling about it though, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to freak out, especially since she voiced her concerns about the cemetery in the beginning.
The rest of the week went on fairly normal, we would chat on the phone a couple times a day, and nothing like that happened again. I returned home on the weekend, and we finally got to enjoy the house together. We mostly just sat back and watched movies, cuddled up on the couch in the basement. Then, out of nowhere, she dropped this bombshell on me. She said she swore she felt like something touched her while she was sleeping one night. Like a hand, gliding down the bottom half of her leg, moving towards her feet. She said she jolted out of bed, but no one was there. She had a hard time getting back to sleep, but didn’t tell me while I was on the road because she didn’t want me to worry, and she wasn’t sure if she was just tweaking out. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I started getting goosebumps all over. We talked about it a bit, and figured it might’ve just been the blanket, but I got her some pepper spray before returning to work, just incase.
The next few weeks seemed normal, until I get a call from her one night. It was pretty late, but she would stay up way later than me, watching re-runs of The Office and random documentaries that piqued her interest. When I answered, she seemed like she was distressed. her breathing was heavy and slow, and it sounded like she was worried.
“Babe…” she said, “When are you going to be home again?”
“I’m not sure, probably Friday night, why is everything okay?” I asked, starting to worry a bit myself.
“I don’t feel too good, I think I’m gonna go to sleep a little bit early tonight” she replied.
“Well, what’s wrong? Do you need me to call the paramedics, or is it just like a stomach ache kinda thing?”
“I don’t know, I think I’m fine, I just don’t feel good. Ill talk to you tomorrow. night babe” and with that, she hung up the phone and went to bed. I tried texting her a few times, but she never answered.
The next day, I called her pretty early in the morning to see how she was doing.
She seemed confused, as if she didn’t remember calling me the night before.
I told her about her call last night, and she swears she doesn’t remember making that call.
She said she fell asleep watching a movie last night, but doesn’t remember when.
I figured she had just called me when she was half asleep. I can relate to that…I’ve picked up phone calls while half asleep, and I don’t remember much of the conversation. She has talked in her sleep before, but it was usually when she was drinking. Which made me think…shit, was she drinking again?
So I asked her about it, and reluctantly she told me she had been drinking while I was on the road.
This problem went on for months, and the calls got more bizarre. She seemed completely normal when we were home together, and made promises she would stop drinking. But at least once a week, I would get a call from her where she clearly wasn’t herself. That eventually lead to arguments, as I felt helpless being on the road. I kept my cool, but she was the one that would lash out. The weird thing is, her voice would change sometimes. She would be telling a random story, or talk about something that bothered her at work that day, and just start getting really worked up. Worked up, to the point that she would raise her voice, but it would get lower in pitch. As in, she sounded like a fucking demon.
Now, I’ve known her for over 9 years at this point, and I’ve seen her worked up before. I’ve seen her drunk and worked up before. Hell, we’ve both seen each other at some of our lowest points, more than once. And I’ve never heard a voice like that come out of her mouth. She was usually very quiet, and even shy. She had a pretty feminine voice, and rarely even got angry. So this was definitely out of character for her, but I just assumed she had gotten pretty bad with drinking. At this point, I was just getting frustrated with her drinking issues, but I stayed with her. In that haunted fucking house. I didn’t put two and two together. Occasionally, we would get the lights flickering in our bedroom. The jacuzzi hot tub would start drying itself at random hours of the day. I swear, I’ve even seen things move in the corner of my eye. I thought maybe if we got a dog, it would help things. Honestly it just made it worse.
We adopted this adorable pit-bull, with a beautiful brown and golden coat. He was happy as a dog could be as we drove him home from the animal shelter. Once he got in our home though, he seemed skittish. Like he didn’t feel comfortable. And for some reason, he refused to go into the basement. He would just kind of stare at it, like he was watching something. Anytime we went in the basement to watch a movie, he would bark at us. We thought maybe he just wanted attention, so we moved movie nights to the main floor, where we had another TV, so he can hang out with us. Things seemed to be okay, but the next week, when I was on the road, the dog nipped at my girlfriend.
She was coming up from working out in the basement and he just jumped at her. As if he didn’t recognize her or something. The weird thing was, he definitely was a mommas boy. He liked her more than he liked me. And I grew up around dogs my whole life, so I knew how to train them and take care of them, but he still favored her. My girlfriend absolutely adored animals, but didn’t know the first thing about owning a dog. She did good, for being unexperienced. She took him for walks, trained him to sit, and to even ring the bell to be let outside when he needed to go to the bathroom. So it was weird when he nipped at her, and even though we both figured he may not be used to being in a new home, she wasn’t ready to be left alone with a 60lb dog that can easily bite her face off, so we returned him to the shelter. After that, things started getting weirder.
I occasionally found myself at home alone once in a while on the weekends, while the girlfriend would go run errands, or visit family and friends. I always felt like I was being watched. There was this one time, I went to grab something from upstairs, and as I was going back down, one of the spare room lights turned on. It wasn’t on when I went up, I was sure of it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I swear to god it felt like some kind of energy had touched me. My body got cold instantly, and I ended up walking out of the house. I sat in the garage for a while, afraid to go back inside. She got home, and we both went in together. The light was off, and I didn’t feel that energy anymore. I was slightly creeped out, but at this point we were kind of used to strange things happening around the house, and tried not to think too much of it.
She claimed that she could tell there were things living in the house with us, but they were all nice, and that there was nothing evil there. We never experienced cabinets slamming shut, or pots and pans flying across the kitchen, so I believed her. Fast forward a few months. We both went out to the city with some friends for a few drinks. It was a club on the top floor of a skyrise, so we all ended up microdosing LSD, which wasn’t uncommon for that friend group. What wasn’t common about that night, was how my girlfriend reacted to the drinking and drugs. We ended up getting a table, and bottle service. Tequila was our go to, and we got two bottles.
My girlfriend was doing better with drinking at the time, and could handle the occasional drink or two on a night out. So we all proceeded to have a few drinks, and were all just chatting about where we should go for vacation next spring, when out of nowhere, my girlfriend starts talking nonsense. I asked her to repeat what she said, and she just said “fuck you” in this low, demonic tone. The two friends we were with looked at me in shock, like where did that come from?
She then proceeded to stand on the chair she was sitting on, and started contorting her body and limbs. She was double jointed, but this was fucking wild to see while on acid, even if I was just micro dosing. She looked like she was throwing up demonic gang signs, if that helps paint the picture. She also said something along the lines of “I can feel my ancestors inside of me. The tequila awakened my ancestors.” She started knocking stuff over, so we quickly paid our tab and left. As we were leaving, she seemed to get 10x more intoxicated by the time we got to the elevator. She started talking more gibberish and was yelling at some of the workers. It took all three of us to hold her up, and she weighed no more than 130 pounds. At this point, staff decided to call 911 as we all stumbled into the elevator.
We get to the lobby and wait for an ambulance to arrive, while management is trying to calm her down. Once they arrived, they put her in a stretcher and tied her down. It looked like she was going to be taken away to a mental institute, the way they restrained her. There was a restraint over her chest, holding down her two arms near the shoulder. There was one on her stomach, holding down her lower arms. And then one or two on her legs, I’m not too sure. I just remember as they were wheeling her away, she looked at me and almost jolted up, but the restraints held her in place. Her eyes were rolling to the back of her head, and after throwing her head back, out came the most sinister sounding laugh I have ever heard in my life. And she just laughed like that until they loaded her up in the back of the ambulance. Me and my friends stood there, honestly creeped the fuck out.
I filled them in on everything that’s been happening, and of course, that just made things worse. We started theorizing if she was possessed, and if she WAS, she was probably standing over me while I was sleeping. Not something I wanted to think about while I was tripping, but it was already too late for that. The image of her being restrained, throwing her head back and laughing the way she did, will forever be seared into my brain.
They say when you trip, you can almost see peoples energy. Like their glow, or their aura. Some people call it vibes. When she was being wheeled away, I saw darkness. It was like a black cloud of smoke was looming around her. The glow she once had, was gone.
I think my ex-girlfriend was possessed….