Blessed Are the Wicked

by Steven A. LaChance

  The worst of the abuse seemed to be focused on Matthew. I just thought he was a clumsy kid. He had two concussions in the last two years their mother was living with us. She would always give me some story about how he must have fallen, and I had no reason not to believe her. Boys can be daredevils, rough and tumble, right? I now know where he got them. How could I have been so damn blind and stupid? I did everything in my power to keep them safe, but the monster was living with us all along. How do you even begin to deal with that? How will I ever begin to forgive myself for not acknowledging the obvious?

  Because Lydia kept all of this bottled up inside her for so long, she finally had to let loose in some way and when she did, it came rushing out. You can’t run away from your past. Sooner or later it will catch up with you. My ex-wife has admitted to the abuse. There are no secrets and no guessing games needed to be played anymore. Because of the nature of this section, I have to admit it was one of the most difficult I have ever written. If I write my exact feelings about the emotions inside my heart, I just might frighten you. I just have to hope in my heart that what goes around, does come around in many folds. My ex-wife needs to pay for what she did to my children. That is what I feel inside, and I can’t make that go away. I understand that there is mental illness, and she is a sick individual. I have been absolutely sympathetic to her condition. I was compassionate when she told me she was an abused child, even though it may have been a manipulation, because that is also a characteristic of her disorder. But above all, I cannot and will not forgive what she did to my babies. I just can’t let that go. I was there and I saw Lydia fall apart. But Lydia is strong; she put herself back together and as a family we went on with our lives and we dealt with the difficult things. But after hearing the truth, any love or sympathy I had felt for my former wife was completely gone. It had been obliterated.

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  Chapter 9

  March 2006

  We were contacted by New Dominion for the show, A Haunting, at first by e-mail to see if we were interested. It seemed so strange to the kids and me that someone wanted to tell our story, since it was so fresh and raw. It had only been a matter of months and we were already being contacted to do a show about it. The series was going to be filming for its third season, and from what we could tell, it seemed that they were doing a great job with the stories. Helen sat down with her family to discuss it, and I sat down with mine to do the same.

  How do you make the decision to come forward with an experience you know a certain part of society is not going to believe, on one hand, and is still so fresh on the other? There were so many factors to consider, and one of those big things to consider was the fact that the kids were still in school, and this was a national television show that many of their peers would see. How would employers react to the show? Was there the possibility of being labeled as that crazy family? However, there was the advantage of being able to tell our story to help those who were afflicted with a haunting or were experiencing paranormal activity. The idea of helping others scored big points for me, and I am proud to say for my children as well. In the end, we decided to do the show for that reason alone. Hopefully, others who were experiencing the same affliction would understand that they were not alone. And for those who were considering renting the goddamned Screaming House, they would realize it would be a good idea to look someplace else. That is why we agreed to do A Haunting. There would be no money involved. We did it for principle. We did it for free.

  We gave the producer the names of a lot of people to talk to for the show, including Lorraine Warren, John Zaffis, Father Paul, and many more, but in the end, they decided to use just the families, the original psychic, and Dr. Cheste, the psychiatrist from St. John’s Mercy. I always wondered why they chose to overlook John Zaffis for the show, and I never really quite understood it. John had helped me so much through those darker days and had been of great guidance. It seemed to me he was a missing piece of the story. I know it also puzzled John why he had never even been contacted to participate in the episode, and when we talked about it later, I had no answer for him, other than I was just has confused as he was. I think he would have added a valuable perspective to the episode. I think they missed the boat by not including John.

  Less than one week before filming was to take place, I stepped out onto my front porch to leave my house after a little snow had just fallen and fell down the stairs, cracking my tailbone. Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever cracked your tailbone before, but it is one of the most painful things you can do. My feet hit a patch of ice at the top of the stairs and the next thing I knew I was airborne, landing directly on my tailbone. I passed out upon impact. When I finally came around, I thought I had broken my back. I couldn’t stand. Hell, for a moment or two, I couldn’t move at all. I finally began to crawl back into the house and was able to grab the phone to call my parents for help. They took me to the doctor.

  “Cracked tailbone,” the doctor said with a wince and a smile. “Can’t put a cast on that,” he said, laughing. My doctor, Dr. Baker, is one of those good, happy-go-lucky types of guys. He’s the type of fellow you normally want to have as your doctor, with just the right type of bedside manner, but on this day all I wanted him to do was to stop the pain. “Stay as comfortable as you can. A heating pad might help. Take these for pain,” he said, as he handed me a prescription for Vicodin. I lay on the couch for the remainder of the week in my drug-induced, heating-padded stupor, praying I would feel better by the time filming day came around. Guess what? I didn’t. Come to find out, it takes a long time for you to recover from a cracked tailbone. As a matter of fact, the damn thing still, on occasion, causes me distress, even to this day.

  Filming day had arrived. We were going to be filming at a bed and breakfast, a rustic cabin-type place, in Marthasville, Missouri. It was obviously chosen for the atmosphere. They wanted us to dress casually and comfortably. I imagined they wanted us to match the relaxed atmosphere of the location. So, after numerous clothing changes, we all finally decided on the right look for the right effect and headed out the door. I was in pain. I mean, I was really in pain. When we got to the location, we met the director and the crew and talked about how the day was going to go. My interview was going to be first. I popped three Vicodin and some Advil and got ready for the long haul. The set decorations took a good hour. Then the interview started. The questions were asked, and I answered. This went on for eight hours. If you watch the episode, by the end of the interview, there is a part where it looks like I have tears in my eyes. They are real. They were caused by the pain in my ass. It took about 16 hours to interview us that day. That was just for my family alone. Helen’s family was filmed on a different day. Can you imagine, all of that interviewing done for a one-hour show?

  Although it was an interesting experience for us all, we had to put it out of our minds for a while, because the show would not premiere until October. We would have to wait eight long months, and the wait is always the hardest part. Eventually, you forget you did it and you move on with everyday life.

  • • •

  The phone rang. Bill was talking excitedly on the other end. He had been excited when I told him I was ready to start investigating with the team again. Of course, Bill wasted no time going out to find locations so that we could start flexing our research muscles. Missouri Paranormal Research had been gaining a certain amount of renown when I had stepped away from it that past autumn, and it seemed a shame to shut it down when things were going so well. As I look back on the situation, I should have let the team go and worked on private cases. I should have given myself more time to heal. The truth of the matter is I did not realize how vulnerable I was at the time, and I didn’t take into consideration that maybe haunted survivors had no business dealing with other haunted locations. Despite my afterthoughts, I still agreed to help, and Bill was excited.

  “I just did a preliminary investigation on a location for us, Ste
ven,” Bill said. He could hardly catch his breath. “You would not believe the evidence we caught at this place.” The location was a secret house, which had been deserted for years. Its whereabouts were not too far from the infamous Zombie Road. “We caught a full-bodied apparition on film,” Bill exclaimed. He was so excited that he choked on the word apparition. The hook had been baited and I was quickly being pulled in. Bill had already been hooked himself, and if you ever saw this photo, you would say the same thing. The photo was unbelievable. It was an image of what appeared to be a man walking out of a fog, rounding the corner of some steps. This photo would be considered the beginning of unbelievable evidence. Oh, I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to get to this location to see what all of the fuss was about. Bill and I couldn’t wait to get the entire team there so that we could get to the bottom of what was going on at this old deserted farmhouse. Never once did either of us ever consider there might be something else at play there. Why would there be?

  We picked a night. We gathered a team. We met at the undisclosed location. I remember walking into this house for the first time. It was old, something out of an old horror movie. The house was reminiscent of something from the movie Salem’s Lot, or at one time may have housed Norman Bates’s mother. I remember the old staircase had that ominous feeling to it. As I approached it, I could feel chills running up and down my spine. I began to wonder what the hell I was doing there. Once I was on the upper level, something happened that took me by complete surprise. I felt a rush pass by me and heard the sound of a child’s laughter. As I looked into the room where I heard the laughter, I saw a young girl, frightened and shivering in a corner. I glanced at her again, but she disappeared quickly. She was there and then she was gone. Shocked by what I had just seen, I stormed down the stairs and ran out of the house.

  “Dammit, Bill, you didn’t tell me there was a little girl in there!” I screamed, obviously angry, pointing at the house.

  “Wait a second, what are you talking about?” Bill asked, seeming very surprised.

  I stepped back from him, surprised at my own reaction and looking at the shock on his face. I couldn’t believe he had no idea. “There is a ghost of a little girl in there, Bill,” I whispered. I was starting to understand that he had no idea what I was talking about, and in my emotional upheaval, I stood there not quite knowing what to do.

  “I believe you. This is just the first time I’ve heard about her, is all,” Bill said reassuringly.

  There are usually two options presented when dealing with a child spirit. Option one is the sad truth: a child has not moved on for one reason or another. Some believe, after studying near-death experiences (NDEs), that there is a period of darkness before the light, and children, being children, are afraid of the dark and sometimes they will not move on because of this fear. Others believe it is the sudden loss of the connection to the parent, and they become lost looking for Mommy or Daddy. In my opinion, both of these scenarios are very sad, and if you were to dwell on them for too long, they not only appear sad but become heartbreaking. At least it seems that way to me.

  There is a second option, which is one you pray you are not dealing with. That option is the spirit is not a child at all, but something sinister or negative in nature, masquerading as a child. Once the sinister being, that presents itself as a child, has gained your trust and grasped on to your emotions, it can attach to you and cause living hell within your life. Who actually knows which option is correct? All I know is, when you are alone in the dark and you hear a baby crying, but you can’t see it, your intellect is willing to grasp on to anything so that it will make sense. The theories become a way for you to cope, rather than an actual understanding of the supernatural event at hand.

  We went back into the house, where I found Carol setting up a video camera in the same room where I saw the young girl. Carol, who had lived through the Screaming House investigation with us, immediately sensed something out of place, and could tell by my face something was going on. “Okay, Steven, tell me what is happening,” she said, with a look of concern over the top of her tripod and camera. Marie, who was not far behind, heard Carol and immediately piped in, “What is going on?” Both of them knew me too well and both of them knew the ins and outs of the game. I did not want to cause them great anxiety by telling them I had come across a child’s spirit. This is because of their past experiences with the Screaming House and its deceptive nature. To reflect back, for the sake of understanding, Marie, Carol, and I had dealt with a similar experience in Union. The apparition of a little boy in the Screaming House turned out to be an option three––a “hook” to take us deeper into the evil lurking within. I knew as soon as I told them that I had seen a child, the horrible memories were going to come rushing back, and their guards were going to go up––way up.

  “I saw a child spirit. She ran into this room and then vanished.” I tried to give a sense of calm as I said it, so that no one would overreact to the situation, but both of them instantly reacted in the way I knew they would.

  “Aw, hell no,” Carol instantly responded, and for a moment I thought she was going to pack up her camera and go home. There was never a question about the validity of what I had seen. The three of us were way past the point of questioning each other. We just instinctively knew and trusted each other. Together, we had been through a lot. We had been in the foxhole together too many times.

  “Well, what are we going to do about it?” Marie asked, with her hands on her hips and a heavy exhale. We considered Marie the eternal mother. Tears began to trickle down her face as Carol and I made eye contact. She immediately asked what all of us were thinking, “Could this be something other than a child?” Sometimes I think Marie took it to heart because she was the mother of six children and she felt so deeply about the well-being of any child. It is not that she didn’t have her guard up. Her guard went up immediately. It was the fact that she knew in her heart we had to do something to cross over that little girl.

  At that exact moment, from somewhere in the room came a child’s giggle and the sound of running feet across the floor, which stopped right in front of us. The three of us stood there with shocked looks on our faces, without saying a word. It was almost as if we couldn’t breathe. Then I felt cold little arms wrap around my leg, as if to hold on just like the way my children used to do when they were little. Tears began to roll down my face, to the shock of the other two. “She is holding on to my leg,” I whispered to them softly. “She is a child.” Tears began flowing down the cheeks of the other two, and there was an exchange of whispers.

  “Oh, my God,” Marie whispered.

  “What do we do?” Carol asked, looking me sternly in the eye.

  I felt the arms release my leg and we heard the patter of feet once again run across the floor, and then she was gone. “We are going to try to send her on,” I said, with much resolve. “Let me go get Lady Light.”

  Lady Light has very powerful gifts when it comes to dealing with issues from the other side of the veil. I remember the first time I met her, I was immediately taken with her. She has an aura about her that cannot be denied or ignored. Some people say she is a natural witch who is able to walk comfortably in the dark and in the light. When I first met Lady Light, I could tell that she was a troubled soul. I have chosen not to discuss it here because it is only her story to tell. However, I saw great gifts and beauty within her, so I introduced her to Madame Star, my closest friend and Wiccan sister, who set her on the right path of healing, inner growth, and learning. To look into Lady Light’s eyes is to look into what seems to be lifetimes of struggle and knowledge. It is very hard to explain how a person can have such a powerful, natural vibe about them. Lady Light is a gifted witch. I am not referring to the green hag witches on Halloween, with the big noses and warts. Witches live among us in everyday life, and they are the most gentle of all humanity. A true witch understands the connectivity of everything in life, from nature
to people. So, before you turn up your nose at witches or Wiccans, I would suggest you take the time to get to know a few. Chances are you have a few living in your neighborhood, or even next door. In the case of Lady Light, she is a powerful witch for both the living and the dead. That is why I turned to her for help.

  I found Lady Light standing outside the house and I quietly walked up to her, not wanting to cause a scene or draw too much attention to the situation. “I need you to come inside with me,” I whispered into her ear. She looked up at me with those eyes, and I knew she was surveying me for any signs of what was happening. Whatever she saw in me, she immediately responded, “Okay, let’s go.” On the way into the house, I brought her up-to-date on what had been happening and what I felt needed to be done.

  “Steven, moving a child on is very tricky work. It doesn’t always work,” she said, stopping me on the first landing of the steps. She was looking me in the eyes, and she was serious. “There are so many things that can go wrong, and there are so many things about the child we simply do not know, and if anyone tries to tell you they do, they are lying. You know this.” She knew I knew she was right. The truth of the matter is, you never really have the full story on anything or anyone.

  “The best I can do is try. I hope you brought a candle with you.” I knew she would be asking me for one. I had pulled out a candle from my bag before I grabbed her.

  “Wouldn’t come to this party without one,” I said, pulling the candle out of my jacket pocket to show her. She looked up at me, smiling with approval.