by Rick Kueber
FOREVER ASH:
THE WITCH CHILD OF HELMACH CREEK
REVISED EDITION
FROST AND FLAME TRILOGY BOOK 1
GRANT PARK, ILLINOIS 60940
BY RICK KUEBER
STELLIUM BOOKS
GRANT PARK, ILLINOIS 60940
i Forever Ash: The Witch Child of Helmach Creek is the first book of the Frost & Flame Trilogy of fictional books by Rick Kueber. These books are, however, based on true events.
www.stelliumbooks.com Copyright 2014 © Rick Kueber All rights reserved First published 2014 Manufactured in the United States ISBN: 978-0692475966 Fourth edition
ii “ Rick Kueber has written a direct hit to the core emotions of paranormal investigations in Forever Ash. As you read the book, you feel the emotions that often are left out of other paranormal publications. I am honored to be a part of Rick and his team’s experiences.”
BElieve ~Rick~
Rick Hayes – Psychic Medium/Life Consultant
www.lifesgift.com
iii
Dedication
For my son Daniel: You have inspired me to be the best person I can be, and have taught me the true meaning of unconditional
love. Whether I am here with you on earth, or have transcended to the life beyond this one, I will always be
with you and will always watch over you. You are the
greatest miracle I have ever experienced. I love you, and thank you, for being you.
Love, Dad
Forever ASH
by Rick Kueber
Edited by the E.V.P. Team Final Edit by Cinda Inman Payne
v Special Thanks to: Sanela Leila Kubiak – Cover Photography. P.E.Kubiak – Cover Photo Effects
With an Extra Special Thanks to our Cover Girl :
Ayane Rayne Kubiak
CHAPTER INDEX
Chapter 1 THE GOOD DOCTOR pg. 1
Chapter 2 TERROR OUTLINED pg. 17
Chapter 3 RICE PLEASE, WITH EXTRA SALT pg. 27
Chapter 4 HOUSE CALLS pg. 35
Chapter 5 TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING RIDER pg. 45
Chapter 6 REVISITING THE PAST pg. 63
Chapter 7 THE TRUCE pg. 79
Chapter 8 ROAD TRIPPIN' pg. 87
Chapter 9 THE CHILD WITCH OF HELMACH CREEK pg. 95
Chapter 10 RELATIVITY pg. 111
Chapter 11 BURNED pg. 123
Chapter 12 BLESSING THE CURSED pg. 135
Chapter 13 UNEXPECTED GUESTS pg. 153
Chapter 14 FAMILY REUNION pg. 159
Epilogue:
Ashley Sue Helmach pg. 173
vii Forever Ash is a True-Horror Novel, with some fictionalized elements, concerning actual events and investigations. Though most of the locations, dates and names have been changed for legal purposes and to protect those involved, some remain. The team members of Evansville Vanderburgh Paranormal Investigations, and Psychic/Medium Theo Kostaridis are portrayed as themselves, and a short bio on each has been included
Katie Collins-...................... pg. 175
Jennifer Kirsch-................... pg. 177
Theo Kostaridis....................pg. 179
Rick Kueber-.........................pg. 185
Links the websites mentioned in Chapter 3 can be found on -pg. 180
Glossary of terms and equipment pg. 181 viii
Foreword
I’ve always been one of those people who never grew out of the “why” phase of childhood. If I didn’t know the answer I would find it in books or the wisdom of those I trusted. Maybe that's why I have been fascinated with science as far back as I can remember, and still am to this day. If I could have been anything growing up, I would have chosen to be a scientific researcher. What could have possibly been more rewarding than answering a question for the first time in history? Life sciences were always my favorite, but now I find myself researching just the opposite, and as puzzling as it may be, it is exponentially more rewarding.
My life changed at the young age of thirty one, when my first child was born. A cotton topped little boy who reminded me of myself more and more every day. I recall being at the orchard on my birthday with my son who was just over 14 months old and seeing the look of wonder in his eyes when I helped him pick an apple off of the tree and taste it for the first time. It was on this same day when we returned home that my life would begin to change again and slowly take me down a path that would lead me in a direction I had never dreamed.
As we made our way into the old house we were renting, a young boy in one arm and a bag of freshly picked green apples in the other, I noticed the flashing light next to the phone. It was 2001 and I still didn’t have a cell phone. It wasn’t that unusual to not have one, but they were becoming more commonplace and I was behind the times.
Once things were put away and my boy was occupied, I listened to the message on the answering machine. It was from my sister-in-law Kris. The voice on the recording was shaky and obviously crying, “Keith is in the hospital, they think he had a stroke. You should come as soon as you get this message. He isn’t doing well at all.”
Part of me was in shock and another part of me was in disbelief. When he had had other illnesses or injuries in the past I thought they were sometimes enhanced, and I wanted to think this was all being grossly exaggerated, but there was something in my gut that made me gather myself together and head to the hospital. Without going into too much detail, let me put it as simple as I can. My brother had a massive stroke on my birthday, and for the next two days, the whole family and many friends lived at the hospital in the intensive care unit until he died on October the first.
Over the course of two years, I had seen the birth of my son and the deaths of far too many family members and good friends. My faith was shaken and I found myself asking once again, “Why?”
It was at this same time that the home that we lived in had some unexplained things happening... nothing that incredible, but things that made me pause at times to collect my senses and tell myself what rational thing it must be.
The home belonged to a friend who lived in England and had been renting out. He found that he had to come to the states to remove the people from the property, empty it out and remodel the majority of the home. He came down one evening when he was nearly finished. His exact words were, “If I could give that house away, I would, but it is in a family trust. That place just has a bad vibe and it is really getting to me. I have to get out of there.” So, a deal was struck, we would live there free for a year for finishing the house. The house never made me feel uncomfortable, but I must admit there were many times, at night especially, that it just seemed a bit ‘creepy’.
Nothing phenomenal ever happened there to my knowledge. There were the odd sounds from the attic or basement that I attributed to an animal getting inside, or old pipes…you know, the normal weird noises an older house makes at night, but occasionally there were things like a set of keys left on the coffee table would come up missing, only to be found on the same coffee table later that day, or a door being closed and a few minutes later being open again when no one had been in that part of the house. One example that is burned into my memory is the sound of a woman's shrill scream as I lay in bed trying to go to sleep. I had always told myself that it came
x
from outside, but if it truly did, the screaming woman must have been right outside my bedroom window. It wasn’t until years later after living in two other homes that I saw a television show on paranormal activity and investigation, and how different electronic devices were use
d to capture what was labeled as ‘evidence of a haunting’, that I thought back on how I would have loved to have known about this when we lived at the troubled house. Why couldn’t I do just what they were doing on TV? I began researching all types of paranormal phenomenon and different metaphysical beliefs and practices. The internet was a great tool for research, but the paranormal education I enjoyed and valued the most came from searching through older, even out of print, books in some of the older library collections.
I searched for the lead paranormal investigator on the web and soon became friends with him. We chatted online, sent emails back and forth, and even exchanged numbers. During our friendship, he encouraged me to begin investigating the paranormal if I had the desire to do so, and even gave me a few pointers.
It took a few months, but I purchased a few pieces of equipment that I had seen read about: a Mel-meter, a digital recorder and a K-II meter. I already owned a couple of digital cameras and a video camera. While I excitedly waited for my new online order to arrive, I began to build a website and used social media to begin letting people know I was a ‘ghost hunter’. My first real investigation came before the website was up, but after my order had arrived.
The location was teeming with paranormal activity on several different levels and it is where I met Jennifer Kirsch. The house she lived in was quite haunted, and Jenn had a prior knowledge of the paranormal as well. She became the first member of my team. I could go into details about that investigation as well as several nights when we captured some incredible audio and video evidence at her home, but that is another book in itself. We have been through an assortment of team members who never worked out for one reason or another, but Jenn was the first and remains the lead investigator to this day. A few years later we picked up a young woman named Katie Collins, and she is also still with the team. During one of our earliest investigations, we encountered a very negative, almost evil, spirit and needed the help of someone with talents we did not yet possess as a team. That is when this unlikely trio added a fourth element, Greek psychic-medium Theo Kostaridis, and became the team that is now commonly known as Evansville Vanderburgh Paranormal Investigations: aka- E.V.P. Investigations.
This trilogy of True-Horror Novels chronicles some of the most active and frightening hauntings Evansville Vanderburgh Paranormal has ever experienced.
Though a few different locations and investigations were used to compile this book, this is the story of one entity in particular, and begins when Katie and Theo had been with the team less than a year.
xii
Chapter1 THE GOOD DOCTOR
A long struggle through the underbrush of the woods had finally ended in success. Shari stood beside her mother Sarah on the front porch of the old abandon home. Shari turned the key, and with a pop, the old lock was unlatched. Shari reached for the knob, and with a turn and some effort, pushed the door open with an eerie creaking sound. The two looked at each other with wide eyes and hints of smiles.
The thunder boomed and lightning cracked nearby as Shari stepped past the threshold and disappeared from her mother's sight. The ancient interior, painted with dust, decay and cobwebs, that she had seen from the entry way was now clean and new. The shadowy vacuum of a winged blackness overtook her, and a timelessness of pain and torment began.
Sarah had not even had a chance to enter the dilapidated dwelling. Shari took two steps inside and immediately fell backwards, out of the door and onto the wooden decking. Her mother dropped to her side and found Shari unconscious but alive. Her pulse and her respiration were labored, but strong.
Sarah was a powerful woman, but Shari was a grown adult. Sarah struggled to drag her limp body from the porch. The woods that lay between them and the car proved to be a far greater challenge. Sarah ran her arms under Shari's from behind and around her chest and interlocked her fingers. She began dragging her daughter backwards through the thick undergrowth of the woods.
Her clothes and body snagged on the stickers and fallen branches that covered the young forest. Sarah's heel caught a twisted root that protruded from the ground causing her to fall backwards with Shari landing on top of her. The adrenaline coursed through her veins and her only thought was to get medical attention for her only daughter.
Both women were covered in cuts, bruises and scrapes when they succeeded in reaching the car. Sarah found a rush of energy and picked her daughter up as she had when she was just a child and placed her in the front seat where she could monitor her as she drove. Sarah raced to the driver’s seat and with spinning tires, she backed out onto the desolate roadway and sped off into the night to find help.
*** Every day was much the same. I worked an endlessly tiring construction job about three hours from home. I stayed out of town Monday through Friday and when I returned home late Friday evenings, I would follow the same routines. Unload my truck, bring in the mail, unpack, gather up a clean outfit and head for a long hot shower. Once the dirt of the day, and the weariness of the week had been washed away, I would find something quick to pop in the microwave for dinner and open an ice cold Mountain Dew.
This had been my typical Friday evening for nearly four years, but tonight would prove to be very different. I had been given a last minute notice that Monday I was to begin overseeing a four month project only thirty-five minutes from home, and that was reason to celebrate! I had already decided that tonight I was going out. I had planned to hit a few clubs in town, have a couple of drinks, and maybe even strike up a conversation with one or two ladies (if luck was truly on my side).
So, I continued my Friday evening as always. I had a dinette that was nice, clean and mostly unused unless my son was with me for the weekend. My dinner table was usually my lap while I sat on my couch and watched the shows I had DVR’d during the previous week, but on Friday evenings, my computer desk in the office was where I dined. Tonight was a computer desk dinner kind of night. I fired up the old desktop and began to eat my General Tsao's chicken straight out of the carton.
My first order of business was always to visit the office and check for any new emails generated from the website, or social media sites. Our ‘office’ had bounced from my home to Jennifer’s, and back, so tonight ‘going to the office’ meant walking into the spare room.
We had helped many people. I preferred to call them people or friends, not clients, as I had heard some paranormal groups do. We had our victories, and more than our share of good evidence and haunted investigations, but no past investigation, none of the classes I had taken, not even the class on exorcism and possession could have prepared me for what was about to consume the next several weeks of my life.
We had received several emails. Most of them were the usual, “are you taking new team members?”, “how much does it cost to join your team?”, “I know this really haunted place I want you to investigate, but I don’t know who lives there.” and so on. Amidst the flurry of new paranormal enthusiasts who just wanted to be a part of the phenomenon, one email stood apart from the rest. What grabbed my attention first was the sender’s address, dr.covand.dds@... Hmmm, I thought to myself, this one might be a credible email. The second eye catcher was the subject line. It simply said, “HELP ME PLEASE” in all caps. Nervously I opened the email, afraid that this would be another dead end request. Before I could focus, I could immediately see the contents were very brief.
“I know nothing about ghosts, or paranormal things. I only know I am terrified by something I can’t explain. Would you be willing to speak with me? Please call the number listed below as soon as possible. I haven’t slept more than an hour or two in the past three days, and though you are the first person I have contacted, I don’t know where else to inquire for help except for a psychiatrist, but I am not mentally ill. Please keep this confidential!”
Dr. Emily Covand DDS
141 Commerce Place Evansville, Indiana
Ph.-(812) 683- **** Cell- (812) 438-****
I sat in disbelief at my makeshift desk for nearl
y an hour as I read the email over and over. Then I pulled up a new internet page and began Googling the good doctor. Everything seemed legitimate, the address, name and phone number. I could only hope this wasn’t a prank. I held my phone in my hand and dialed the number over and over without ever pushing the send button.
I typed in the cell number once again noticing it was already after 8 pm, and that almost became my newest excuse for not making the call. I don’t know if it was my subconscious that pushed through my nervous fears, or if I just couldn’t stand the thought of not making the attempt to help someone who so desperately asked, so I pushed the button. I pushed the button. OH CRAP! I pushed the button! I put the phone to my ear quickly and heard the first ring, followed by the second, and the third. I was preparing myself for what short message I would leave on the voice mail, when I heard a faint click, and a distant voice.
“Hello?” said the distant voice of a woman with an accent that I couldn't quite place.
“Hello, may I speak with Dr. Covand please?” I politely requested.
“Speaking.” The voice on the other end quivered. “This is Rick Kueber, the founder of Evansv-“, I was cut off. “Thank you for calling. Can you meet me at 11 a.m. tomorrow?” Her response was short, emotionless and cold. “Absolutely! Could you meet me at the Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble bookstore on the east side? Would you like...” “Okay.” Click. I was cut off once again. This was beginning to seem more like a case for Sherlock Holmes than for EVP. It was definitely a mystery at this point. I leaned back in my chair, puzzled, staring at the screen on the phone in my hand. When I had absorbed the short phone conversation, I stood up and slid the phone into my front pocket. I stepped to the walk in closet where I had made a space for the cases of team equipment, folding tables and chairs. I pulled a digital recorder and a notepad and pen out of one of the cases. I placed the three on the corner of the coffee table, sat down on the couch and began to day dream about having a great investigation filled with amazing experiences, capturing some concrete proof of the paranormal and life after death, and above all helping someone.
