A True Ghost Story, Complete With EVP
I had an experience of EVP which is still fairly vivid after nearly twenty years and which still unnerves me when I think about it.
A friend, Marie, who I had been in the same class with since year 8 at school and who I visited when she was on an AFS scholarship year in the US (I was spending a year's working holiday in the US) was in university at the same time as me. We shared many classes and spent much of our free time together (two country kids in the big city).
Marie was living in a fairly new house in a new subdivision, sharing a rented house with three other "girls"- one was a little younger; another was a classmate of ours, Anne-Marie; the other in her late 30's- they may have been some kind of relation to Marie, I didn't know them well (except for Anne-Marie, of course). They hadn't been there long when the incidents began to occur.
All the occupants of the house were woken many times by scratching and knocking on the house sides, doors and windows. They (being four females on their own) were concerned that these might be burglars and contacted police, who investigated, found nothing, and told Marie and her housemates "It must be tree branches". There were no trees near enough to the house to be brushing against any part of it.
Soon they were also being woken by the sound of glass breaking- like the contents of a china cabinet being smashed. On investigation, they would find nothing- not even a broken lightbulb. (I know this is a classic poltergeist phenomenon.)
Whatever it was upped the ante soon by telehoning them. I know this sounds crazy, but a number of times the phone would ring, they would answer it, and there would be no-one there- if they were lucky. A few times they got cryptic (at the time) messages. Once a voice (female) said, "Tell Marie I know." "Know what?" asked Marie's housemate (Marie was out at the time). "Just tell her I know," said the voice. The line became silent. When Marie returned home to a fairly rattled housemate, it was revealed that Marie had, at that time, been discussing the "ghost" with a friend- and the possibility of approaching a minister to perform an exorcism or something similar on the house.
Marie had read about Raudive's EVP experiments, and the four girls decided to try it themselves. I heard the resulting tape, and it was *really* creepy. They put a blank cassette tape in their recorder, and sat quietly in a corner of their lounge room (as far away from the recorder as possible without leaving the room, so they could see if anything happened to the recorder) for about ten minutes. On the tape, you could hear them as a faint background noise (the occasional rustle of someone shifting position, quiet coughs, whispers, etc), but - it sounded as if someone was sitting almost on top of the microphone, breathing very loudly and in a very laboured fashion. It was the sort of breathing that you hear from overweight people (no flames, I'm a big girl myself) with congestive heart disease, or very bad respiratory problems- irregular, phlegmy and with a slight whistling quality- very "chesty".
No one had any explanation for the sound- there was no-one else in the house and they were all together about fifteen feet from the recorder. I wish I could describe how really unnerving the sound was.
To end the story:
We held a seance, with a home made ouija made of letters written on pieces of paper laid on a tabletop, using a glass as a pointer. We hoped to find out the identity of the ghost and why it was targeting the house and its occupants. I had been involved in this sort of seance a few times before, at first as a "kid thing" and later as a semi-serious "party game" (but also to find out about ghosts). I am wary of dealing with the spirits but when I participated in ouija sessions, I seemed to have the "knack" of asking the right questions- ones that would result in yes-no answers and save the spirit (and us) a lot of effort in spelling out long answers. Marie's older housemate also considered herself to be psychic and had apparently operated a few times as a medium (not in my presence).
The upshot of the session was that the spirit claimed to be a woman Marie had known as a child. She had died of a heart attack. She also claimed to have a message for Marie (I can't remember if she then passed it on or if she did, what it was). Marie, after thinking, recalled an aunt who had died of a heart attack when Marie herself was very young- three or four. Both Marie's parents were dead so she couldn't consult them about this. (They died about a year apart while Marie was in high school, as did a brother of Marie's.)
That night, I slept in a sleeping bag in Marie's bed while Marie slept on the floor next to the bed. I had an "old hag" dream where an evil woman was pressing on my chest to stop me breathing, but in the dream I reached down with my foot and nudged Marie awake, which broke the "spell". I *know* this didn't happen (my foot was still firmly ensconced in a sleeping bag), but it was very real. I *was* wearing a bag around my neck containing a number of fresh herbs which I had read were good protection against evil- whether they did anything or were just a good psychological prop I don't know.
The household (which continued to experience the knockings, scratchings, glass-breaking sounds, and phone calls) broke up soon afterward (as soon as their six-month lease expired) and Marie moved into a flat with Anne-Marie. I left uni soon after and lost touch with her, although I hear of her from time to time from a cousin of hers (second or third cousin) who lives in the same town I do and who I see occasionally.
Before I lost touch with Marie and Anne-Marie they indicated that the "ghost" may have followed them to their new flat as they were still experiencing wierdnesses (silent phone calls, a female caller saying "Tell Marie I'm back", small items moved in the flat while they were out).
Every so often I think I must track Marie down and find out if anything further happened afterwards- but I never do. I have no idea what happened to the tape, although a fews years after the incident I ran into Anne-Marie working at a local library and she thought that the tape still existed at that time. We didn't really have time to talk any further than that. At no stage did I feel they were making any of this up, and I had known Marie and Anne-Marie since we were 13 (we went to a very small school, about 120 students in the whole school (years 8 to 12) at any given time, and by the time we all were in year 12 there were only about 12 of us so we were pretty close) and had no reason to doubt their veracity.
