Real Haunting - Part 2/2

thecactus · Joined: 07 Mar 2011 Posts: 3196 Location: Northern Ireland

continued...

Whenever John left the room the knocking, thumping and scratching
would stop. Whenever he was laid on the bed it started up again; if one
of us lay down beside him it quietened; when he was lifted free of the bed,
it stopped. A crucifix placed on the bed would cause it to shake violently;
when it was removed, the shaking ceased. All these variations in sound
and movement demonstrated to us that the being had an uncanny sense of
awareness. Sometimes when visitors called we’d have to turn up the volume
on the TV to drown out the unearthly racket in the bedroom.
My parents viewed the menace as an aberration somehow brought on by
the family, and therefore something to be mortally ashamed of – on a par
with the ignominy of a daughter going out with a Protestant, as had happened
on one memorable occasion. They’d cut short that particular liaison
with prayers, holy water and a threat to disown the luckless sister. Now
those same prayers and holy water were being used to help banish the terror
in the room.
Such scruples also prevented us calling in the psychic detectives, experts
who could throw authoritative light on the mystery. By the same
token we couldn’t have cheque-book-toting journalists – and, God forbid,
banner headlines in the local newspaper – or the prospect of a book perhaps
and the sale of the film rights. Mr Blatty had The Exorcist and Mr Anson
The Amityville Horror (the latter since unmasked
as a hoax), and there we
were with the screenplay for The Forgetown Phantom being hammered
out in our midst, blocked by Mother’s shame and Father’s ignorance. Oh, to
have even raised the idea of a public airing would have been looked upon as
sheer insanity, and would no doubt have brought ‘the priest and the doctor
in their long coats running over the fields’.
A consistent theme running through rural Ireland is the inability of the
people to challenge the resolute belief systems of an introspective communal
ethos. Many choose to live, suffocate and die in a ‘safe’, benighted fog.
My parents thought that the manifestation might simply go away, given
time.
We were halfway through the ordeal when the two boys were moved
to the girls’ bedroom: Rosaleen and I in one bed, Mark and John in theirs,
against the opposite wall. The parents hoped to prove by this experiment
that the scourge was confined to one room only. It surely wouldn’t have the
nerve to travel. The electric light was left burning in the hallway; ever since
the beginning of the episode, the thought of darkness was unbearable.
So all four of us lay there in the stillness, terrified and longing for the
sleep that would transport us from this nightmare into gentle, soothing
dreams. I lay with the blankets clutched tight around my face, my eyes concentrating
on my brothers as they too tried to sleep; the whispered prayers
fell helplessly from my lips as I begged ‘it’ to stay away.
I kept watch over the boys, snug in their blankets, and willed them not
to move a muscle. I felt that the merest shift from them would bring on
the haunting. The sheer dread of those hours carved such fearful pathways
in my psyche that even now the most innocent knock on a door or tap on a
table has the power to jangle me.
Was God listening to my prayers that first night? I do not know. For
about an hour I watched and waited, and then it happened. What I witnessed
next was terrifying.
The strike was sudden, swift and brutal. The boys’ mattress lifted clean
off the horizontal, hovered for a second above the frame and, in one brisk,
motion, sent Mark and John crashing to the floor. We all dashed screaming
from the room. We set up a howling that was as uncontrollable as it was
unreasoning and seemed destined to stretch over an entire lifetime. I felt
certain even at that moment that I would never have need to scream like
that again. A turning-point had been reached.
We had hardly slept during those first three weeks, and that was bad
enough. Now we had to contend with a new and frightening development:
the first physical assault.
My parents decided to take John to the shrine at Knock – an appropriate
place if only because of its name. They’d pray for a solution that would give
him a few nights’ release, and the rest of us some sleep. My mother, like so
many women of her generation, was devoted to Our Lady and had visited
the shrine many times.
The village of Knock, County Mayo, is a famous place of pilgrimage.
On 21 August 1879 the Blessed Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to fifteen
locals. This apparition remained for two hours, and was not witnessed
again. The incident was unusual in that the BVM neither moved nor delivered
a message. At other more famous sites, such as Lourdes and Fatima,
the witnesses have all received messages.
She appeared on the gable wall of the village church as the central
figure in a tableau, flanked by St John the Evangelist and St Joseph. To
the left of the group was an altar with a large cross surrounded by adoring
angels, and at its foot a lamb. Not a word was spoken during the apparition,
but many words have been written about it since.
The pilgrimage undertaken by my parents appeared to yield results.
While they prayed with John in Knock, we waited at home for results;
twenty-six days had passed since the haunting had begun.
All seemed well that night. The sleep we yearned for was restored; the
house was quiet, there was a glimmer of hope in the long darkness. The
Virgin Mary had routed our weird visitor, had sent it packing for good.
Or so we thought. The following day John and my parents returned,
sleepless and demented. The entity had followed them all the way to Knock
and back; it had kicked up a racket under the bed in the B&B they stayed
in and continued its pestering in the car. John could not sit anywhere now:
stool, chair, sofa, bed, it followed him everywhere. It got to the point where
sending him to school was a risk that could not be taken.
In the sixth and final week of the ‘visitation’ a third mass was offered
in the room, but to no avail. The racket continued as before. The hands
of the most devout – several holy men and women from various orders and
parishes – and relics of the most sainted were laid on John’s head, but the
evil cacophony persisted, wreaking havoc in our hearts and all around us.
We thought things could get no worse, but they did.