The Sallie House Haunting: A True Story

by Debra Pickman

  Upon inspection of his legs and thighs, we found red marks shaped like handprints on his upper and inner thighs. The red marks then morphed into bruises. I wondered how this happened and doubted that something paranormal had been responsible for such an act. I could tell from the location of the handprints that Tony could not have made them himself. They pointed upward in such a way that it would have been impossible for him to fake. We came to realize that he was being attacked while he slept. In the morning, the bruising was completely gone.

  I wondered how many times this had occurred, leaving no telltale signs of physical harm or damage to validate his experiences. It was horrifying to think that someone was messing with him and he that hadn’t realized it. I wondered how long it would have continued if he had not been honest with me.

  After I realized the nature of some of his experiences, I finally began to understand that Tony was going through more than I had been willing to admit, and perhaps more than he had actually let on. I knew I needed to be more supportive and not only listen to him more, but actually hear him. A united front against whatever was affecting him seemed to be our only defense. Of course, it was easier to decide that than to actually accomplish it.

  Possession

  As Tony and I bonded as a force against whatever was in the house, it stepped up its efforts and began working from within Tony. Sometimes I didn’t recognize it for what it was. For instance, I generally attributed his changing moods to a lack of sleep. I didn’t consider that there could be evil spirits in our own home, and I was not aware of all the signs I needed to look for.

  I didn’t recognize the first sign as it was happening. Several weeks later, I realized that specific event mimicked a possession. At the time, I dismissed it completely and didn’t think about it until after we had moved out of the house. Now I wonder if some influence had been clouding my thoughts.

  This event took place in the living room on a weekend afternoon. We had spent a leisurely morning playing with Taylor. He was now upstairs taking a nap while we relaxed on the couch. I was sitting at the far end of the couch while Tony stretched out lengthwise, his feet within a few feet of my hand. I don’t remember what we were watching, though the television was on.

  Tony had fallen asleep as he often did on the weekends after his tormented attempts to sleep during the week. It was probably easier to fall asleep when someone else was in the house.

  Without warning, Tony sat up. He then stared me straight in the face and, in a strange voice, said, “He’s mine!” Confused by this behavior, I looked at him dumbfounded and waited for him to say something more. He remained motionless for several moments, but said nothing. Then, he simply lay back down and remained quiet for quite some time.

  I tried to figure out exactly what was so weird about what had just happened. Certainly the manner in which he sat up and the sound of his voice struck me as odd. While his voice did sound like him, it was cold and disconnected, even mechanical.

  Since I thought he was just talking in his sleep, I wondered what he might have been dreaming about. Who was he talking about? Perhaps he had been dreaming about someone wanting to take Taylor, and his reply was, “he’s mine!” This explanation suited me just fine. Perhaps because I didn’t want to think about other implications, perhaps I wasn’t being allowed to think about them.

  Weeks later, I thought how strange this was and how strange he sounded. The way he moved and spoke just didn’t seem like him at all. What if it wasn’t Tony who spoke to me? Was the word “him” actually referring to Tony and not the baby? What if something in him was challenging me and claiming Tony for itself? Was it the same woman Tony had seen so many times? Had she been trying to gain his affection? Had she been the one attacking him in the bedroom when he slept?

  I remember asking Tony his opinion. He simply said, “I don’t know what to think.” We never discussed it again, which makes me wonder why I didn’t pursue it further. Maybe I didn’t have enough information and had put it on the back burner until something else triggered thoughts that made me reconsider it? Had I been influenced to ignore what my gut was telling me? All I know is that it wasn’t like me not to explore this theory further. It didn’t come back to me until years later.

  Dead Cat

  I now believe the event was the beginning of the turbulent feelings Tony had toward me. As he later described it, he’d been having very angry and harmful feelings toward me on a daily basis. He described having hateful thoughts when he saw me. He remembers how hard he fought the desire to hurt me. To this day he wonders what stopped him from actually doing so.

  One day, he called me at work and told me he had trouble sleeping that morning. After some general conversation, he mentioned how uneasy he felt and he suggested it might be time for us to move because he felt that someone was going to get badly hurt. “And I think it’s going to be you,” he said. He described that I was the focus of anger and rage coming from the spirits in the house. We hung up the phone and I was distracted for the rest of the day, trying to make sense of his words.

  It just did not make sense. I had not been the one physically attacked and I was not having trouble sleeping. I didn’t hear the voices or fear the dark. Tony seemed to be the focus of the spirits in our home, not me. Once again, I did not heed the warning and I chalked it up to his growing paranoia and lack of sleep.

  His feelings of aggression continued to grow. He became argumentative, short on patience, and his temper flared often. Unaware of its depth or origin, I blamed this on a lack of sleep, and the anger on our arguments each time Sightings came back to the house. I’m not even sure how aware Tony was of what was going on, since he found himself confounded by his actions and thoughts.

  One of these instances had to do with what I assume was a neighborhood cat. There had been two significant and horrifying experiences in the house concerning cats and these experiences were very different. One was the unfortunate incident with the cat in the dryer described in chapter 10. The second I didn’t find out about until we moved from the house.

  Tony had gotten home just before I awoke. We both went about the morning as usual—I got ready and left for work while Tony tried to unwind before going to sleep. Years later, he described this day and he sat on the couch downstairs with terrible thoughts about me.

  He remembers getting a bowl of cereal shortly after I left. As he turned to put the milk away, he saw a cat drinking out of the bowl. He did not recognize the cat and had no idea how it had gotten into the house. Seeing the cat drinking from his bowl completely infuriated him. He took a few steps closer, angrily pulled the French knife from the countertop holder next to the stove, and stabbed the cat.

  He remembers being very proud of the act. Knowing how much of a cat lover I was, he was excited about leaving it there for me to see when I returned home. Without a care in the world, he then went into the living room and sat on the couch, his feelings turning more hateful and wretched. “I’ll just stab her, too,” he thought.

  His thoughts continued to reinforce his mood: “I can’t stand the way she looks at me. It’s her fault we’re here. I can’t stand her nagging. I can’t stand looking at her.” Eventually, he made detailed plans to kill me upon my return. “If she walks by me, I’m just gonna slit her throat.” He remained in this state all morning with the dead cat in the kitchen.

  At some point in the early afternoon, he went up stairs to dress for the day and eventually left the house to pick up Taylor, who was staying with Tony’s parents. He returned a few hours later feeling more like himself. He cleaned up the dead cat so I wouldn’t see it and thought, “Oh, God. What was I thinking?”

  Over the railing

  Two days after he killed the cat and planned my demise, there was another attempt to do bodily harm to me. Tony reports the following:

  “I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just going about my d
ay. I had just gotten out of bed and was going to head downstairs. As I approached the doorway, I was suddenly struck from behind with great force. It felt like someone had run up behind me and shoved me as hard as they could. My feet left the floor, I was airborne, and flung towards the upstairs railing, which was about three feet in front of me. My upper thighs hit the railing and my knees, legs, and feet inadvertently knocked out three of the rungs below it. It scared the crap out of me and to this day, I don’t know what stopped me from going over the top of the railing and going headfirst down the stairs.

  “Startled and nervous, I made my way down the stairs, holding the railing as I did so. When I reached the living room, I sat on the couch, afraid to move, for the rest of the day. I flinched at every sound I heard.

  “I called Debra at work, hoping the comfort of a familiar voice would relieve the feeling of being alone. Although I didn’t tell her my most recent experience, I did tell her that I had a feeling that I just couldn’t shake, a feeling that someone was going to get hurt, and that I thought it was going to be her. Then I told her that we really needed to get out of the house. Her reply was that we would talk about it when she got home, and I feared that my words, once again, fell on deaf ears.

  “I remained in the living room until she arrived home later that day. I told her about the threatening event I had experienced that morning. I realized that this time she had taken my concern seriously. Perhaps there was something in my voice when I called her, or perhaps it was something I said. Whatever it was, it motivated her.”

  I remember Tony’s phone call and that I was distracted by it. I knew that something was very wrong. Tony had never been so adamant about moving. I knew there was more to this than just a call out of the blue to suggest a move. I couldn’t wait to talk to him and find out what had led to the desire to move.

  When he told me about the morning’s experience, I was immediately concerned. If there was that much force or energy acting against us, what else would Tony or anyone else suffer? I wondered why he was pushed with such force, and what stopped him from falling over the railing. I couldn’t help but think it must have been some sort of angelic protection or intervention that saved him from a tragic accident. If this was truly the case, I didn’t think we should take it for granted.

  Over the previous six months, Tony had done a few things in a desperate attempt to help himself and understand what he was going through. He had started talking on a weekly basis with a priest at the St. Benedict Abbey that was located on the north end of town. Although he left each session feeling much better, within days he was again feeling oppressed and unlike himself. The anger, hateful feelings, and thoughts all crept back in.

  Through these weekly and sometimes bi-weekly sessions, Tony told the priest much of what went on, but held back some of the more personal things. He chose not to share information about the scratches, voices, noises in the walls, his mood swings, hatred for me, and the fear that he felt for his family.

  Shortly before we finally moved, the priest had planned a trip to the house in order to better understand what Tony had described to him. He also talked of blessing the house, but before this took place, the priest died suddenly. We’ll never know if the timing of his death had anything to do with what was going on at our house.

  Shortly after he began seeing the priest, Tony began to share some of his more grueling experiences with me. In turn, I realized that much of what he was experiencing was not just in his head. Although I had not known many of the details, I had witnessed the changes in his personality and some of the activity myself. I knew things had been changing, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was or why it was happening. As he continued sharing some of his experiences, it became easier to understand why I noticed changes in him.

  I also realized that he was not in control of these changes. While I considered that he might be acting as an agent of a poltergeist, I dismissed this thought because that typically takes place with young adolescents and Tony was twenty-nine years old. Additionally, I had seen the bruising and the looks of terror on his face. I felt his heart pounding, heard the fear in his voice, and witnessed the unnatural mood swings.

  Eventually I realized there was something more to our haunting than anyone had originally thought or understood. Tony and I agreed that I would try to help him as best I could. I would listen more and give more credence to his personal experiences. It was about this time that I became very uncomfortable with the spirit and activity in our home, and I became more concerned for his safety as well as that of our family.

  After months of extra support from the priest and me, he no longer felt so isolated and alone. Not only did his love for me seem to win out over the horrible thoughts being put into his head, he also realized that leaving the house washed away some of the emotions he had felt while in the house. We spent a great deal of time at his mom and dad’s house and on outdoor excursions with Taylor. Although we didn’t fully understand what we were up against, Tony and I tried to thwart the activity and oppression that seemed to focus on him.

  Was something lashing out at him even harder because we made it more difficult for it to control Tony’s thoughts and emotions? Looking back and knowing what we know now, there was something more than just benign spirits at work in that house. It seemed that our united front raised the stakes and Tony became even more of a target.

  The little prankster and child-like activity dwindled and almost disappeared completely until Sightings returned. And although there were non-threatening parlor tricks on each successive visit, more malicious activity also became prominent. The scratches were significantly more numerous during each visit and whoever or whatever facilitated the unnatural activity seemed to take pleasure in baffling the investigative team.

  What took place after the team left was more focused on creating havoc in Tony’s mind and physical condition. Over several prior months, I definitely noticed the lack of sleep, the inability to eat, and the fear and anger Tony displayed did not reflect the man I loved and had married. There were the complaints of feeling sick as well as several emergency room visits. Tony would feel pain in his chest and arm, along with other life-threatening symptoms. The battery of tests done during and after each visit ultimately revealed nothing wrong with him. None of it made sense and for some reason, I was finally able to see that it was simply adding to Tony’s torment.

  Not only were we dealing with unknown and unwanted changes in our life and relationship, we were also trying to understand the more treacherous paranormal activity that had seeped into our home. The medical bills were piling up and Tony missed a lot of work putting our finances in a precarious place. There was also the concern that something might be medically wrong with him, which weighed heavily on us.

  After the incident where Tony was pushed toward the railing, I realized it was the last straw and that the situation was very grave. Tony and our family were in danger and I agreed with him—it was time to leave the house.

  The next day, we got a list of rental houses and that evening, we began looking at them. Tony’s mom did everything in her power to help us and within two weeks, we were packed and ready to go. We moved to a house only a few blocks away on October 31, 1994.

  We informed Kerry Gaynor of our move and asked if he believed that the activity would stop. He did not give us the resounding yes we had expected. Instead, he explained that there were different types of hauntings. There were location hauntings and people hauntings. He went on to say that in a location haunting, the activity was generally localized to the dwelling or land. In the case of a person being haunted, we might never actually be free of the entity that affected Tony and our lives.

  “Time will tell,” he said. “It might take a couple of weeks, or it might take a couple of months before we know for sure.” We thought we were done with the activity, but in early January 1995, we got our answer and it was certainly not the
one we had hoped for.

  epilogue

  Over the course of a little more than a year and a half, we experienced enough to begin drawing conclusions about who or what we were dealing with. Sadly, they were based mostly on the events that I and others had witnessed rather than Tony’s experiences which at the time seemed unlikely due to the sleep deprivation factor.

  I had gone several months feeling that Sallie had grown warm and friendly to us, and I talked to her every evening as if she were in the room with me. I could swear there were times that I would feel or smell her presence. One night I even felt a cold presence, which I assumed was her, lay down next to me and cuddle close just as a frightened child in search for comfort would do. I felt that was a sign of her acceptance—I was a step-parent finally being acknowledged. There were also times in which I felt especially in tune with her, as if through telepathy she was telling me her thoughts and feelings.

  In contrast, it was very easy to see that Sallie was not fond of my mother-in-law. Perhaps it was jealousy or what Sallie perceived as her overbearing nature when it came to the baby. The activity surrounding events when my mother-in-law was around was just too coincidental and seemed to clearly signal Sallie’s displeasure.

  There was a very human quality to my relationship with the spirit in the house. Most times when I made a request, Sallie seemed to make an effort to comply. She stopped acting up when my mother-in-law was visiting, she stopped waking the baby, and she lit fires in the lamp when excited or needing to make her presence known. These and other instances suggested that Sallie was capable of understanding and compliance, suggesting an intelligent spirit and real-time interaction with the surrounding area.