Growing Up Scared

by Lisa Gallo
(Pennsylvania,USA)

For years before I was even born my mother had seen a house that she told everyone she would always live in when she was married. Let me back track and tell you that the house needed to be sold "quickly" due to the owners needing to "relocate".

My parents moved into the home when I was one year of age. From the beginning they noticed strange things. They would hear people walking in the area of our kitchen and voices that were muffled of what sounded like a man a woman arguing. I was sleeping in a crib, but every night I was crawling through the house knocking on the walls and putting my ear up to the wall. Our home continued with this activity, sometimes with more intense activity and then with no activity, but that was usually short lived.

When I was 7 or 8 I was in the "spare bedroom" watching TV and my father was at the other end of our ranch house. I was facing towards the hallway when something caught my eye. It was a figure - a blobby black figure - that hovered in the hallway outside the room I was in. It did NOT make any noise and the blobby looking figure (which I will call it that for lack of a scientific name) just kind of shimmied its way along the wall. I watched it for a few minutes before I called out to my dad. When he did not answer me I called to "IT". I yelled louder and in doing so it vanished and I heard my father run through the kitchen and into the hallway. He put the light on in the hallway as he entered and also on the "spare room" (I put in quotes due to the relevance of the most terrifying time in my life.)

My father had the most unsettling look on his face as I relayed what I had just seen. I told him even though the hall was pitch black dark this thing was blacker than the color black, and left when I yelled for him the second time. He must have believed me because he left the lights on in the house and made me stay with him the rest of the night until my mom came home.

We did not discuss it anymore and I never did see that THING in my home again, but it was not gone. I had seen it outside of my home on 2 occasions. Our home had already been blessed at this point by one catholic priest who left the priesthood not long after the blessing. My parents thought it would be a good idea to have the home blessed again. We had another catholic priest do the blessing and not soon after that he died unexpectedly.

Growing up scared was just the way it was for me. We were normal people. We had a cousin from Yugoslavia stay with us for about a month when I was 16 or 17. He was set up in the "spare room". After about a week we noticed he was going to bed later and later and was up at 4 to 5 AM everyday. He was looking very tired, so one night my father and and my cousin were having a few beers and father asked why he looked so tired - was he sleeping okay? My cousin replied with a deep sigh saying "Oh Dick my room, the wall..." and was imitating a banging noise. He then pointed to his watch showing my dad that it was ALWAYS at 3 am that this would happen.

We had a going away party for my cousin about 7 miles away. I was picked up early from the party by my boyfriend. When Erin and I entered the house we heard someone open the big front door and walk in. We jumped and looked at each other and he looked around the corner to the front door - no one.

All the hair on my body stood up. I was in my room alone when the noises started in the kitchen, then I heard the whispering of that man and woman. I walked out of my room and through the kitchen, and this big gust of wind came at me (or through me). It blew the hair back off of my face! I just told whatever it was to stop it.

We went to a seminar at Chatam college in Shadyside where Ed and Lorraine Warren were giving a seminar on the paranormal. I raised my hand to tell some of my family's story. The next day the Warrens were at our home. While the Warrens were there I felt I needed to discuss everything.

What I am about to tell you is very difficult. Sleeping in the "spare room" one evening I was on my right side. I heard tapping on the wall next to me. In my mind's eye I could see what appeared to be an old hag of some sort. She was old with long stringy gray hair, dressed in all black. It was like a robe with a hood on it. I felt a cold bony finger get inserted into my rectum. Despite my parents hearing all this, and my mom saying "are you sure you were not dreaming?", it was confirmed later that morning when I went in to get a shower and saw claw marks and scratches that went from the inside of my buttocks to the outside.

I told the Warrens about the experience I had during the blizzard of '92. As I walked up to the front door I heard the whispering of the man and the lady. It was literally coming through the heavy oak door. I was sure it was my mom and dad waiting inside. I was tired so I went to the family room and just sat on the couch. The whispering started again, but this time it was coming from the wall, then it shot to another part of the room. I put my ear up to the wall and that was when I finally realized that all those times when I was little - that is what I was hearing.

At our home Lorraine did a walk through. She explained that where my parents home now stands there had been an 11 room farmhouse. There was a woman named Elsie, a daughter named Claire (age 5),and a man. I'm not sure if he was the father or a boyfriend of the mothers, but the psychic impression she received was that the man "John" was sexually molesting the little 5 year old "Claire" and he told the little girl that if she told anyone he would kill her.

Claire did tell Elsie her mother and John supposedly killed the little girl. In a fit of rage Elsie (the mother) killed John with an ax in the area of what is now my parent's kitchen. Then the impression she got was that the mother hung herself.

We did go to the courthouse and verify that there was a farmhouse that stood on the land of what is now my parents house, and we did find the names of John and Elsie, but then the trail went cold. Lorraine Warren felt a demonic presence and the presence of a benign spirit it the house. Our home was blessed a third time by a Serbian orthodox priest who said all the prayers in Latin. We had a candle that burned for 7 days in our home. The doorways of the house were blessed with holy oil from Medgigoria in Yugoslavia as well. During this blessing the lights were flickering, the phone was ringing, with no one on the other line except for static and the priest instructed my mother to leave it off the hook for the remainder of the time.

I was not there at the time of this house blessing, I was at work at that store I had told you about earlier. I spoke with the owner (who like I said was our neighbor) about the things that had been going on in our house for years. He made me sit down and talk with him. What he told me validated everything my family and I were going through.

The people that sold the house were NOT relocating out of state as they had told my parents. They ended up moving to another town about 15 minutes away. My neighbor told me that the wife that used to live in our house would run over to his house next door crying and yelling that she hears people walking and talking in her house, but she is the only one there. That was the real reason they moved and took my parents offer on the house despite it meaning the sellers were selling at a loss.

My parents still live in the home. Things still happen, but less frequently. I now have 2 children of my own. My oldest has always seen things and we have seen him talk to someone when no one was in the room with him. His toys would turn on all by themselves in his crib, even when he was not staying with my parents. Many other things went on in that house that it would take me a lot longer to go into, but for right now I feel somewhat liberated to have shared this with others.

I want people to know these things are real, they do happen to normal everyday people. If you are a parent that is reading this - PLEASE if your children are telling you they see things or hear things, please do not discount them. Imagine how they feel, thinking that their own parents don't believe them. I was fortunate to have the loving and understanding parents that god gave me.