© Tim Clifton
About the Author
Steven LaChance has been a featured guest on several radio stations across the US, the UK, Canada, Asia, and in South Africa. Steven is not a stranger to television interviews, either, and has had many interviews published in newspapers and magazines across the US. In October 2006, “Fear House” premiered on the Discovery Channel, as the first show of A Haunting’s third season. This show featured Steven and the story of the Union Haunting, and went on to be rated one of the more popular episodes of that series. In addition, he has been interviewed and filmed for inclusion in numerous paranormal documentaries. Steven is also a published author. His short story, “The Union Missouri Haunting,” was published by Barnes and Noble in 2006, and he is a contributor to magazines dealing with paranormal activity. In 2008, The Uninvited was released by Llewellyn Worldwide. The book received critical acclaim, finding its way on to many “best of” lists. The Uninvited was also released in a French version in 2010. Steven was also included in the books Weird Hauntings and Weird Missouri. In 2010, his book Crazy was released with great reviews and places on “best of” lists for that year. Steven has also completed a documentary for the fifth-season DVD release of Warner Home Video’s Supernatural, the popular television series about two brothers who hunt demons.
Llewellyn Publications
Woodbury, Minnesota
Copyright Information
Blessed Are the Wicked: The Terrifying Sequel to The Uninvited © 2015 by Steven A. LaChance.
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First e-book edition © 2014
E-book ISBN: 9780738740928
Cover design by Ellen Lawson
Cover images: iStockphoto.com/4846728/©ANGELGILD,
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Blessed are you when men hate you,
And when they exclude you,
And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,
For the Son of Man’s sake.
—Luke 6:22
Contents
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Dedication
Thank you, Marie Pittman from Shreveport, Louisiana. You taught me to stop and smell the roses. You knew this book needed to be written before I even understood why. Thank you for your encouragement to “Get that book done, Steven.” I will always carry you within my heart, and call upon your voice of wisdom, whenever I need it to guide me throughout the rest of my life. I love you and will forever miss you. On April 5, 2013, Ms. Pittman passed on to the other side. She never had the opportunity to read these words. Without her motivation, I would have never written this book. “Sometimes things are supposed to be hard, Steven,” she would often say to me when I had turned off the computer and walked away from the book because things seemed just too personal or painful. On the day she died, my third granddaughter was born. A life ends as a new one begins.
This book is also for those who have read and loved my work. Without you I am nothing, and my writings would be hidden away without ever seeing the light of day. I love and appreciate each of you and thank God for your influence upon my life.
As always, this book is also dedicated to my family and close friends, whose support drives me to do better and better work. Each of you know who you are, and I love you.
This book, like all of the others, is also dedicated to my sister Janice, who is no longer with us. She never had the opportunity to read a word I wrote, but always knew I had something special I needed to accomplish. My accomplishment here, like all of my accomplishments, is for her and her memory. I love you, Janice, and there is not a day that goes by that I do not miss you.
“Thank you” is not enough to say to Dr. Polizzi, his staff, and the doctors and nurses at the Mercy Heart Center in St. Louis, Missouri, for giving me back my life. How do you thank a group of people who saved your life?
I also give thanks to Greg Myers for letting me rename him “Bill” for two books, and the Paranormal Task Force, which has been not only family, but an important part of my life.
On Mother’s Day of 2013, my family lost my cousin, Jorie Wilson Rogers, to a rare form of cancer. Jorie was an inspiration until the very end––not only for myself, but many others. She was always so supportive of my work. I love you, Jorie, and will miss you always.
This past year I lost two other very close friends. One of them was an avid reader and fan of my work. Her name was Shelley Jackson. The other was a colleague and dear friend who worked with me during my Paranormal Task Force years. His name was Tom Halstead. The world is a dimmer place without the light you both shone. I will miss you and look forward to the day when we can once again be together. I love you both.
Lastly, this book is a testament to those who lost their lives and were forever changed, hurt, or destroyed in the aftermath of the Union Haunting madness. I cannot change the outcome, but I can pray they are watching from above and have found peace.
INTRODUCTION
March 23, 2013, 3:36 a.m.
I see a big orange balloon bouncing in the distance. It is bouncing up and down from the ground to the air. I am running to try and catch it. I hear someone giggling, and I look over and there is my sister running next to me. We are very young. I might be three and my sister six. As I look behind me, my parents are standing next to a blue 1969 Ford. They are watching us run and play. They have this look of accomplishment on their faces, because we are playing for the
first time in the back yard of our brand-new house. There is no grass. There are dirt and rocks beneath our feet as we run. Suddenly the orange balloon in front of us comes to its inevitable end, as it hits the sharp corner of a rock. My sister and I immediately come to a halt. The memory is over with the popping of the balloon.
This is one of my first memories. I relive it time and time again in my thoughts and in my dreams. There is some significance to this moment. I find myself searching for the answer. My life, from that particular moment on, has been a series of metaphorical bouncing, popping balloons. I close my eyes and I can still see the bouncing orange balloon, always just out of my reach, and always ready to pop. I find myself sitting here in the middle of the night, sad, and I wonder how it all could have been different if this one balloon would have stayed in the air, just for a moment longer? What would life have been like if my sister had not died when we were just young adults? What would life have been like if my wife did not go off the proverbial deep end, leaving me with three children to raise? What would life have been like if there would have been no haunted house, or no haunting at all? Events in my life have represented a bouquet of balloons going in different directions, only to pop and shrivel to the ground. Then there is also the thought of the happiness we had felt, running in our own yard for the first time, a yard that we would grow up playing in. Swing sets, holidays, birthdays. Things I had always tried so hard to give my children. Those things we learn from our parents. My childhood was average and untainted by tragedy.
There have been so many uninvited moments that have changed my adult life. Why couldn’t my life have taken the path I thought it would? Why do these damn rocks always seem to get in the way? I find myself now like a child, upset because the balloon has popped and the Uninvited has stepped in. Tonight I had a dream and I was able to get a glimpse of how things could have been different. My sister was there and we were joking and talking the way we always did. My wife was there and she was healthy, and we were happy with our grandchildren and the lives our adult children were leading. We were happy with each other. There was no haunting. It had never happened. Things were right and in place. The way they should have been. I did not ask for any of this, dammit. I didn’t ask for much in this life. All I wanted was a normal life with a normal family. Why did it all have to go away? You sit here and you wonder because you know the life you are living is not the one you were meant to have and you wonder because you know somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong. What went wrong?
Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” What went wrong? I am sure that is a question many of us find ourselves asking. Are you happy with your life? Did it go completely the way you thought it would? Did the Uninvited come to visit you? Would you even be aware if it had? Are you still afraid of taking that shower, because you never know what is lurking behind that curtain? Are the fears you have in this life real, valid, and substantiated? Or are you just bouncing along like a fragile balloon, without seeing that sharp rock ahead? I can’t answer any of these questions for you. The answers are within you. The only thing I can do is to share my path with you in the hope you might find something there that might resonate. Maybe somewhere in my journey you will find something you can relate to. Maybe I can save you before the Uninvited decides to step in—or are they already there? Do you hear them getting closer from behind you, breathing their rancid breath down the back of your neck, just waiting for you to notice them? I found my answers within the past, and just maybe you will find yours, but you are going to have to be brave.
It was May 2001. I needed desperately to find a place for myself and my three children to live. Our lease was up at the apartment where we had lived for two years. I was a single father, and I was about to find myself and my children homeless. Like many, I had answered just about every ad in the newspaper for rentals. One evening, I received a call from a man telling me about a house. He said it was a rather large old house that was in very good shape. He invited me to an open house, which was to be held that coming Sunday. As Sunday rolled around, you couldn’t imagine our surprise when my daughter and I pulled up in front of this large, old, white house. It reminded me of my grandmother’s house from when I was a child. We walked in. The smell of cookies baking hit us immediately upon entering through the front door. To our surprise, we were standing in a living room with cherubs surrounding the top of the walls, all the way around the room. All of the original woodwork was intact and a large wooden beam ran to the ceiling, which we would later find out separated the living room from the family room.
The house had two floors, three bedrooms, and a large family kitchen, with a mud room that lead to the back door. The upstairs bedrooms had a breezeway that could be accessed from either room. The basement had an old butcher’s shower and a fruit cellar. It was more house than we ever imagined for the price and we immediately made up our minds that we had to have it. Anyone who has lived in an apartment for two years with three children would understand our desperation. We had to have this house. We spoke with the landlord and he gave us an application to fill out. There were many people there looking at the house, so we knew we would have to compete to be tenants. I handed my application to the landlord. “You understand the responsibility that comes with living in an old house such as this?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I understand. It’s beautiful,” I quickly replied, not really understanding what I was agreeing to.
“Well then, I will get back to you,” he quickly responded, and was off to peddle the house to the other visiting house hunters.
He was a strange old man, and the way he showed the house wasn’t professional. He showed the house as if he were showing a museum. We felt like we were on one of those house tours often given to raise funds for charity.
A week went by. The phone rang one evening. It was the strange landlord, overly excited to tell me that he had selected my daughter, two sons, and me to live in the old house. I had to meet him that following day, at a restaurant not far from my work, to settle all of the paperwork and final payment. I thought this was a little strange, and I was a little disappointed because I couldn’t wait to see the house that would now become our home. The papers were signed just as we planned on the following day. We were all set to move in at the end of that week.
It seemed like years before Friday came that week, but it finally arrived. May 18, 2001, was moving day. The move was normal, and before we knew it all of our belongings were stowed safely inside the old white house. I was removing the last few items from the moving truck when a car slowed down, almost stopping in front of our new home. The passenger said from the window of the car, “Hope you get along okay here,” and then sped up and drove away.
That is how the nightmare began. Or is that the moment the nightmare finally escalated to a point where I would finally stop and take notice, because it no longer refused to be ignored? Looking back now, I have to wonder when was the exact moment that the Uninvited really stepped into my life. I would like to think I have a handle on that question, but the truth is I really am not sure when the nightmare began. It is all a series of events now, moments frozen in time that seem to have no beginning and no end. It all runs together.
The haunting, you could say, was caused by the land the house was built on, not the house itself. The house was built in the same area where the slave quarters of a Civil War captain named Cromwell once stood. The things that happened on this land were about to become legendary, and the town of Union did everything it could to make sure the story would never be told. They did not do enough to keep it hidden. The truth is ready to be unleashed and it is far more disturbing than anyone had ever thought it could be.
Demonic infestation, oppression, and possession are the ugly things that stepped into my life during the Screaming House haunting, according to the Roman Catholic Church, in a 156-page report. These are the elements that nightmares are made of, and this
was my way of life until November 2011. This book is the second part of my story, from damnation to redemption and everything in between. The Uninvited stepping in was only the beginning.
[contents]
Chapter 1
May 2011
I can feel my body as it hits the door and that door feels as if it is made out of concrete. Over and over, I throw my weight against the door trying to get into that room. I can hear my daughter screaming; the sound of her scream is sending me into a rage, like a wild animal––an animal with the need to protect its young. The house around me is shaking like an earthquake, filled with supernatural screaming, and I can’t get to my children. I CAN’T REACH THEM BEHIND THAT DOOR!
There is something coming down the steps from upstairs. I can hear it heading to the other door in the bedroom, at the bottom of the stairs. I can hear the pound of each footstep on each stair, getting closer and closer. And there is a man’s screaming voice, which is coming from the basement, filling the house with his agony. Whatever is causing his pain, I don’t want it to get to my family. This is a pain I know I NEVER want them to feel. So I keep throwing myself against the door. The next thing I hear is a low and guttural sound. At first I am not sure what I am hearing. Then I understand, as my body hits the door with another thud. It is the sound of my own screams. I am screaming. And in that moment, I ask God to help me and the door slams open and I rush into the room. I yell at my boys to run out of the house. That is when I look at my daughter and see she is in shock. I grab her and begin to run out of the room. The unopened door behind me slams open. Something is chasing me as I run out of the house. I never turn around. I just run with my child in my arms.
I heard the chime of my grandfather clock and jumped off of the couch with a huge gasp of air, ready to fight! It was just a dream. It was just a nightmare. A memory. I sat back down on the couch with my whole body shaking and my heart pounding in my chest. Thoughts were racing in my head. I began to reason with myself. I was not in the Screaming House. I was safe in my apartment. It was just a nightmare. It is 2011. Then I looked at my grandfather clock and noticed it was three in the morning. This was odd. My clock had a switch, which kept it from chiming in the middle of the night. My clock should not have chimed. I began to shake again.
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