The living room

[-B.(o).C-®]

Good evening members off DMC.org.

I bring a tale sure to send chills down your spine.

Who knows what lurks in the Darkness...

Our tale begins here

I can understand her fear, believe me. It's been extremely violent in the past, so much so that she is terrified to stay there and has been unable to sleep for fear of her life. This has gotten to the point that she underwent psychiatric evaluation to rule out the possibility of schizophrenia and/or any latent psychological problems that would explain the vivid night terrors and physical attacks she has experienced in the living room of her apartment in the middle of the night. Angela is the most rational, logical person I know and when she was given a clean bill of psychiatric health it actually upset her. She would rather be crazy, she said, than be faced with the inexplicable evil she's still currently enduring in her own home. And Angela is not alone: her sister, whom she did not tell for fear that she would think her crazy, has experienced phenomena while staying over also. Initially, when Angela moved into the apartment a little over three years ago, she couldn't have been happier. The one-bedroom with new carpeting in a security building was a dream come true. She said that occasionally she would get chills that first year when she was passing through the living room, but that she attributed it to a draft. Nothing ever really manifested itself until the death of her grandmother in February of 2007. At first she had nightmares and a feeling of dread when she returned home from work. Her grandmother, a devout Catholic, was her only real parental figure, and they were very close. Angela had taken care of her grandmother for several years preceding her death, and naturally she experienced deep grief, only made worse by the escalating events in her apartment.
The air conditioner is in the living room, and it was when she began to sleep out there in the summer months that bizarre, horrific night episodes began. She would wake almost every night between 2 and 4 with something choking her, holding her down on the bed and refusing to let her breathe. She would plead with it in her head to let go and in response, next to her ear (not in her head, as voices in our dreams - even waking ones - seem to manifest themselves) an evil, seemingly sadistic voice would chant in a minute in a minute with the words eventually quickening and blurring together inaminuteinaminuteinaminute... And then it would let go. She has experienced sleep paralysis before and is familiar with the sensation, but she asserts that she is fully awake and has begun to move before this entity grabs her and begins holding her down. This happened several times a week, to the point that she began staying up until she would literally pass out from exhaustion, and then these evil entities would come for her again. Once she cried out for her grandmother to save her, and the chandelier light in the dining room - a light bulb that had burned out earlier that she hadn't yet replaced - came on. Nothing else happened for the rest of that night, but she was terrified and shaken. Still, Angela worried that she was going crazy, that the trauma of her grandmother's death after a long illness had made her crack. This was when she went for psychiatric help. They diagnosed her with mild, bereavement-induced depression and put her on anti-depressants, but they didn't help her and she soon quit taking them. The phenomena continued unobstructed and unchanged by the medication.
Meanwhile, I still knew nothing about the events going on in her apartment. I knew she was seeing a therapist, but she told me it was just because of her Gram's death. This was totally understandable. Angela had never been remotely depressed before, and I had never seen her so withdrawn. Looking back, I feel like I should have known that there was more to it than just bereavement. Afraid that I would call her crazy, Angela still didn't tell me about any of these events. I was so concerned for her, though. I saw the circles under her eyes and made her stay on my couch as often as possible, thinking she just didn't want to be alone. She was fine when she was at my home. Her usual self. Back in her apartment, her entire demeanor would change. I noticed it when I would come over. I'm actually a total skeptic, was a borderline atheist at the time, but the hair on my arms would stand up when I walked into her living room, or I would suddenly get a headache. Of course I didn't tell her, I just passed it off as some sort of reaction to her air conditioning.
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[-B.(o).C-®]

At night, Angela was still being terrorized. These things manifest themselves as pure, inky-black humanoid outlines. Sometimes she wakes and they're just studying her before they seem to disappear into the wall. Other times they attack her. Sometimes she hears people shut the bedroom door and walk into the kitchen, then a sound like keys being dropped on the counter, or shoes scuffing on the linoleum. Sometimes she hears voices, but can't understand what they're saying. Angela and her sister Haley have both seen the shadows move across the room freely.
Angela also saw a woman in her apartment building lobby walk by her and get on the elevator. When she asked her to hold the door, the woman didn't. The doors closed, but Angela was able to get to the elevator before it began to move. When she hit the button, the doors opened and there was no one inside.
On the night when Angela finally called me at 3 in the morning hysterical and demanding that I meet her at a gas station up the road from her house because she couldn't stay in that apartment anymore, the forces at work changed things up. I have two nieces, Sam who is 15 and Jenny who is 9 and they refer to Angela as an aunt, too. During the summer, we would all go to Angela's apartment building to swim in her pool. The kids never stayed the night, but on this night Angela woke up and saw Jenny standing at the foot of the bed, in the shadows. She was alarmed that something had scared her or tried to hurt her - Angela had awakened from a dead sleep, mind you - and as she reached out to ask her what was wrong, the thing rushed at her. It wasn't my niece, needless to say. Its eyes were missing, and its teeth were like needles. She said the worst part was the pure hatred she felt radiating from it. She grabbed her grandmother's metal memorial crucifix, the one that had been blessed and placed on her grandmother's coffin, and it literally fell apart in her hands. The thing scratched her on the neck before Angela could grab her keys and flee, barefoot, out of her apartment. I only live about 5 minutes from her, so I was able to get to her quickly at the gas station. I've never seen her hysterical like that, before or since. More importantly, I saw the scratch marks on her neck. They were thin, like a cat scratch and had welted up. There was nothing I could think of that would cause those marks, least of all her own nails. I also saw the cross, and I do not have any explanation for how something soldered at the joints would just fall apart when picked up. I took her back to my house and we sat up together all night as she told me everything that had been happening to her.
This was last summer. The phenomena only happens in her living room/kitchen/dining room area. In the winter when Angela doesn't sleep in her living room (her bedroom is too hot to sleep in during the summer because the only air conditioner is in the living room), the attacks diminish. Angela's sister Haley lives with her part-time in the summer, and she also had nightmares. The nightmares were how things began with Angela initially and both girls are afraid that this is the beginning of another episode. The phenomena peaked in July and August last summer, but Angela continued to be terrorized well into October, when she stopped sleeping in the living room.
Angela didn't tell Haley anything about her experiences until recently, when Haley began experiencing strange phenomena herself. She described a black figure of a man moving from the bedroom/bathroom area, walking into the kitchen, and then disappearing through the balcony door. Haley thought she was dreaming until something began knocking on the glass balcony door. Haley then got up out of bed and took a few steps toward the balcony door (the blinds were closed and she couldn't see outside) before she realized that Angela lives on the fifth floor. Haley has since seen these shadowy figures several times.
Another phenomena is what they call 'the heartbeat bed.' Angela and Haley have both experienced this. In the middle of the night, they have each awakened to a sense of pressure on the bed next to them, like someone is lying with them. They can feel the heartbeat of the person, but when they open their eyes there is nothing there. The beating continues for a while though, and on one night they spent half an hour feeling the floor and the walls, thinking maybe it was bass from a neighbor's stereo. The only thing pulsating was the bed.
The sightings have become more frequent recently, and Angela is starting to become afraid again for their personal safety. I'm noticing that the frightening, dark circles under her eyes are becoming more prevalent - last night she called because she was lying on the floor reading and suddenly the light overhead began to shift, like how outside the sun is concealed by the clouds and then emerges again. It was subtle like that. The only problem was that there was only one lamp on, and it was dark outside. She emphasized that this wasn't just a sort of flicker, like the lamp in the corner was dimming or anything. It was overhead, and there are no ceiling fixtures in her living room. She said she was hit with 'the dread,' which is the feeling she describes before something inexplicable happens in her apartment, and was afraid to look up. She was alone in there and so she called me, grabbed her keys, and we went for coffee at 3am.
I've tried to encourage her to get her house blessed by the church, but what with the Cross falling apart in her hands, Angela is terrified that she will anger the entity and that it will exact its vengeance on her and her sister.
To be continued...​