Confronting Her Demons

Posted on by Mark Petruska

The moment I walked through the door of a 108-year-old allegedly haunted house and saw a bed in the living room — the homeowner was too afraid to sleep in her bedroom because of all the activity upstairs — I knew I was in for a wild night. I found the idea of ghosts more fascinating than scary, but I paused in the foyer, my heart quickening its pace, wondering if I had enough courage to proceed. But I’d begged for a spot on a real-life paranormal investigation, and had no intention of backing out now. 

It was July 23, 2011. My life was in flux at the time; five years post-divorce, I was unemployed and unattached (though my future wife would enter the picture one month later). There wasn’t a lot sparking my joy, as they say, back then. Except for a friend named Steven. I’d met him that spring while researching for a possible book about Pacific Northwest hauntings. Steven had the dubious distinction of being a real-life paranormal investigator. He was even the spitting image of Jason Hawes, the TAPS founder and Ghost Hunters star. 

I’d long been drawn to the paranormal because of some truly strange events in my life. Just the previous year, I’d dated a woman who swore her apartment was haunted. She’d bought a rickety old metal nightstand from a since-shuttered mental institution and was awakened one night by the ghostly apparition of a man standing over her bed. I was skeptical…right up until the moment a ball of blinding white light drifted from her bedroom one evening, floated past the couch where we were watching TV, hovered in front of the bathroom, then “exploded” into a thousand tiny shards before dissipating. I was completely and utterly dumbfounded. Honestly, I thought I’d lost my mind or was hallucinating. The idea of a brain tumor even crossed my mind. Until Heather said, “What was that?!”

We tried to explain it away logically. Lights from a passing car? Not with room-darkening shades in the bedroom. Ball lightning? Extremely rare and only associated with thunderstorms. The night was clear and cold. Spectral entity? While not a ghost in the traditional sense, we couldn’t come up with anything better than that. 

That’s what sparked (no pun intended, although, come on!) my idea for the book. Steven responded to my ad, we met in a coffee shop, and he shared tales of his investigations. I was hooked, and asked if he’d consider letting me tag along sometime. 

A few months later, he was contacted by a man whose mother was being harassed by spirits in her Vancouver, WA home. She reported hearing noises at night and seeing things moving. The final straw? She woke up to find scratch marks on her leg one morning. He was afraid for his mom and wanted a team to come in and investigate. This man, a local cop, not only backed up her accounts; he claimed to be able to communicate with the dead himself.

Holy crap. This was straight out of Hollywood. 

Steven invited me along, and I jumped at the chance. He took the whole thing seriously, training me on using an EMF meter, recording EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon), the whole nine yards. I wasn’t just riding shotgun; he expected me to participate fully in the investigation. I was JAZZED. 

The house
The Team
The bed in the living room!

We arrived on a stifling hot summer evening. Both the homeowner and her adult son were there. The bed in the living room freaked me out, but when we walked into her bedroom upstairs, it was ice cold and the closet doors were sealed shut with masking tape because, according to the homeowner, that was ground zero for the activity. Leaving the doors open would be inviting trouble. We’d turned off the A/C to eliminate any background noise, and the rest of the house was overbearingly hot. It took every ounce of courage not to turn tail and run away right then and there. 

Instead, we went about our investigation. A female team member named Rene began taking photos, capturing a pink orb in the living room, until her batteries inexplicably drained completely. The same thing happened with a second camera. We’d made sure to insert brand new batteries in all our devices before leaving. Battery drain is a common paranormal phenomenon; it’s theorized that spirits draw energy from batteries. This was turning into a real-life Ghost Hunters episode right before my disbelieving eyes! 

We’d set up a digital recorder to capture EVPs. An hour in, Steven began reviewing the recordings. He’d captured a clear, distinctive female voice talking over the rest of us, saying, “Where was I going?” There was also a brief snippet of what sounded like a child screaming. Creepy, huh? 

Oh, but the fun was just beginning. 

The adult son went into a trance. I am not kidding: one moment everything was normal, the next he had tears in his eyes and was channeling the spirit of a little girl named Melissa. Steven interrogated him (her?) and we learned the 12-year-old girl had lived in the house decades ago, where she was raped by an uncle and imprisoned in the bedroom closet. She was still afraid of the uncle’s spirit, who in turn did not want to “pass on” due to a fear of judgment.

A little while later, the man fell into another trance; suddenly, he was an angry male spirit mocking Steven’s attempts to get him to leave the house. At one point this City of Vancouver police officer laughed in Steven’s face and said, “You have no power over me.” The whole group, along with the homeowner, told him he had no right to be there and demanded he leave. Just as abruptly as he had appeared, the presence was gone.

The rest of the night passed without incident. While the house had previously seemed heavy and oppressive, it now felt peaceful. The son said he felt like the evil entity was gone and that the little girl felt safe for the first time. He and his mother were very emotional, thanking us for helping them reclaim their house, and in the process, their lives. 

When we left, Steven said that had not been a typical investigation at all. They had, in fact, never before experienced anything so intense. Boy, did I pick a good one, huh?!

I know this whole story sounds off-the-charts bizarre. I promise you, every word I have written is true. Twelve years later, I have no idea what I witnessed that night. While I am very much a believer, I also try to take a grounded approach and always look for simpler explanations. Like, maybe this mother-son team were just messing around with us for sport. People are strange and have all sorts of motivations. 

But then I think of the bed in the living room. The closet doors taped shut. The genuine fear in the old woman’s eyes. And it just doesn’t seem likely they would go to all that trouble for a prank on a group of strangers they’d never see again. 

I would occasionally drive by the house in the years that followed. It’s totally unassuming from the outside, just a narrow, boxy two-story with brown siding and a brick chimney. Wondering if the same woman still lived there. Wondering if the activity had ever picked up again. Wondering, wondering, wondering.

The book never happened. I couldn’t find enough people willing to share their stories (though the few who did reach out had some pretty crazy tales of their own). But those nonexistent pages don’t matter; all that does is the fact that I had the courage to step inside the house that night…and keep going when things got weird. Not many people can say they’ve taken part in a real-life paranormal investigation, and fewer still experience such extreme events. 

Do you believe in ghosts? What do you make of the investigation? And if you have an alternate explanation for the glowing orb I saw, I’m all ears! 

Mark is the author of a great eco-thriller No Time for Kings which is available on Amazon and you can hear more on our podcast Episode 18: No Time for Kings with Mark Petruska. You can also follow Mark on his fabulous and funny blog Mark My Words.

53 thoughts on “Confronting Her Demons”

  1. Oh how I love this…your bravery in participating in “the hunt” and allowing us along for the ride as you share the spooky story. There are ***things*** in my life…odd occurrences…that I’ve never been able to explain and reading about your ghost hunting adventure brought some of that back. And I’ll share one observation that hit home…for anyone who knows me, I’ll likely be just like the wandering woman someday, creeping around my house when I should’ve “crossed over” while lamenting “where was I going?” cause…you know how it is…I do that NOW. Thanks for the early Halloween treat, Mark! 😉

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    1. Haha! I was hoping in the afterlife, we would gain the knowledge and wisdom of our elders over the centuries. Disappointing to think we might still wander into the kitchen wondering what we were looking for.

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  4. Wow- amazing story and experience!! We share our house with a chill, male ghost who has been spotted (and described consistently) by different visitors on a few occasions, plus has had encounters with my daughter. I haven’t seen him, but I experienced a bunch of really weird stuff when I used to work at The Fulton Opera House in Lancaster.

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      1. Haha yes- all friendly. Our house was built near the Civil War and we have this unproven idea, based on the way others describe him, that the ghost is the houses first owner/builder, who maybe went off to war and never returned alive. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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  5. Do you believe in ghosts? Sure, why not? It makes life more fun.

    What do you make of the investigation? The investigation was spooky and obviously you were involved in it so that you’d have a blog post to write today. 👻

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  6. About ten years ago my husband, son, daughter-in-law, and I visited the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield. We were in the solitary confinement area. A man with a digital recorder was sitting in one of the cells. My husband, my son, and I each tried to take a picture of the interior of the cell because we could hear a male voice captured on the recorder. The shutters on our cameras locked up. However, when we turned our cameras away from the cell, we were able to take pictures.

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    1. We were on our way to Cleveland a couple of years ago and stopped in Mansfield just to check out the prison. It was mid-morning and not open for tours yet; we would have loved to have taken one, but we had tickets to the Rock ‘n Roll HOF and a timed entrance. One of these days, though!

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  8. Interesting. My mom grew up around this type of strange paranormal activity in an old railroad house her family owned. As a child, I also saw and heard in broad daylight some of the same weird creepy stuff taking place at the old homestead. Years later, as a Christian, I learned that spirits (fallen angels/demons) manifest this way in certain circumstances, especially in places where evil or darkness has taken place or was entertained — and the story was that the old railway house was once home to a gambling gang and one of them was murdered over a card game. Who knows? All I discovered is that once these spirits are openly rebuked and assigned back to where they came from, they cannot return. All authority in heaven and on earth exists in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). (Matthew 28: 18-20) Shalom 🕊️

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  9. I enjoyed this post so, so very much, but this line was my very favorite: “Twelve years later, I have no idea what I witnessed that night.” I have experiences like these, where I’ll briefly remember them and ask, “What on earth even happened?!” The pull to lock down a specific explanation can be strong, but like you’ve written here, the truth is … I just have no idea. Still. Forever?! And that’s okay. 🙂

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  11. Fascinating! Thanks for sharing your experience, Mark. I have no idea what to make of any of it, but I’m glad you lived to tell the tale. I don’t think I’ve ever had a paranormal experience, though that’s probably a good thing because I’d shit bricks if I did!

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      1. I haven’t but I’ve shared it in answers to others. mine in not nearly as spectacular as your experience, but everyone in the house experienced it. more of a mischievous character who lived there.

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  14. Like Janis, I was very skeptical of this sort of thing, until people I know (and I’m talking about very rational types) told me very unexplainable stories. I’m considering sharing one of those stories that still has me freaked out.

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    1. I’m such a firm believer because I know what I saw with my own two eyes. I didn’t even mention some of the other things I’ve experienced…there were definitely more! I’d love it if you posted that story.

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  15. This was a wonderful post! Yes, I believe everything that happened to you, because all it takes is one ‘experience’ to be a total believer. Our quiet one-year-old granddaughter was in her car seat when we stopped at a traffic light. There was a cemetery, and she immediately whipped her head around and went into happy, excited waves and sounds. As soon as the light turned green and the car moved along, she returned to her quiet self. I have read that the youngest of children see spirits. She certainly did. My other experiences have been strong feelings, not seeing. They are few, but remarkable.

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  19. I’m glad I’m reading this on a bright sunny morning and not at night! 😆 You are brave to have done this but as someone who loves this kind of stuff too, I can see the great appeal in doing this. The paranormal is truly hard to explain and what an experience this must’ve been for you!

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  22. Holy Hell! That must have been terrifying. The skeptic in me wants to doubt the veracity but I can’t find a plausible reason for it to be a scam. How did you not run out the front door screaming?
    😳

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