| Lucy and Carter have been together for eighteen years. She works the overnight shift at CVS, he works as a machinist and they have both lived in and around Salem for most of their lives. They have the typical problems a family might have, but they never really considered themselves a typical American family. They live with their son Brad, 25, and their daughter Sarah, 16 a in three-story single family house on Allen Street in Salem, but they are unsure of how many people might actually be living in the house. Lucy has lived with ghosts her whole life. As a child, she was once pushed down the stairs by unseen hands so hard it left marks on her body. She has always known when people close to her are going to die, including her father and mother. She usually smells roses when someone close to her is about to pass. She has seen unexplained lights and has an interest in both the history of the area around her and about the paranormal. She doesn’t consider herself psychic, but instead says, “I think some people just have an energy that attract things.” Brad also has that energy. As a child he had an imaginary friend he called the Man with the Hat. He often talked to him and Lucy shrugged it off, knowing children often create imaginary friends. One day while looking at wedding pictures Brad pointed to his grandfather in one of the pictures and said, “That’s the Man with the Hat.” “There were not a lot of pictures of my father lying around,” says Lucy, but her son was sure of his companion. On the day of his first communion he came down the stairs with rosary beads in his hand. When Lucy investigated them she recognized them as her father’s; the same ones he had been buried with. Lucy’s mother later confirmed what Lucy had thought. Part of Brad’s sensitivity might be explained by a medical condition. As a child he was diagnosed with epilepsy and has been on medication since. There has been research done that reveals a higher rate of paranormal occurrences in people with epilepsy and the sides have formed their arguments as to why. Cynics say the condition effects the brain by interfering with signal transmissions, causing hallucinations and misinterpretations of the physical input of the brain. Other scientists believe the same cause has a different effect. The interference is seen in the parts of the brain that control our logical mind and effects the part of our brain that says ghosts and spirits do not exist, making the person more sensitive to the paranormal, like a small child who has not been taught that things do not exist or animals, long known to see and hear things we do not. Either way, Brad has experienced things physically and has had witnesses back up the activity around him. Lucy’s experiences did not fully prepare her for life in her new home however, and what they have experienced in the house has left them confused, interested and at times scared. “It’s not a matter of I believe just because I believe. I want to know why those things happen. I want to know who is doing this and why they’re there.” Even before they moved in she started to get a hint that something might be unusual in their new home. She had a nightmare the night they visited the house. Most the dream she now forgets, but she remembers waking up and knowing that two people had died in the house. Her fears were confirmed when she went to a party at a friend’s house awhile later. She was excited about moving in and showed her friends the pictures. She and Carter noticed people became quiet, even people who should have been excited for them. Even her girlfriend was acting weird. After pressing the point they were told of the death of two little girls. Sunday February 10, 1980 was the night before school children had the day off for President’s Day. Michelle Titus, 11, had permission to sleep over a friend’s house for the first time. She and Karen Lavoie, 10, played around like little girls do and then fell asleep. Sometime in the night a fire broke out in the house and by 1:00 Monday morning the two girls had died of asphyxiation. Reports of the tragedy vary. According to the papers and the official report the fire started in the interior front hallway where the mother was sleeping and it most likely came from the mother’s cigarette. Her younger daughter, Shelia, woke her up and the two escaped through a window. Michelle and Karen, asleep on the third floor, died in their sleep and were only freed after fireman cut a hole in the wall. Neighbors and the house’s owner at the time tell a different story. According to neighbors Lucy spoke to later, the two parents had a fight and both left the house at separate times that night, leaving the little girls alone. The fire, if it had started in the hallway from the mother’s cigarette, would have taken her before waking the girls upstairs. The girls did not die in their sleep as the papers reported. Neighbors, seeing the fire, rushed to the house. They heard the girls screaming and tried to raise a ladder to the third floor, but by then the fire had gotten out of control. Almost immediately the owner of the house, who rented it to the Lavoie family, noticed things were different after the fire. It had sustained $65,000 worth of damage and he went about trying to renovate the house and getting new clients. There were always odd things happening and he could not keep workers on the job site. Most were closed mouthed about why they were leaving, but a few said they kept losing things they knew they had just left someplace. The neighbors noticed things about the house as well. The girl who lived next door, kept her window that faced the house closed because she said she saw the two little girls in the house. She still does not open her shades, fearing she will see them again. Lucy and Carter were never told this about the house. The real estate agent said she never knew about the fire or the spirits. The previous owners, one of whom is a Salem police detective, had experienced things for the ten years they lived in the house, according to the neighbors, but denied anything strange happened and only confessed there had ever been a fire after Lucy confronted them. They paid $10,000 of the mortgage for Lucy and Carter and they signed the papers on January 28, 1998. For the past five years the family has lived with at least five ghosts, although they believe there might be more. Most of them are seen the form of orbs, which almost all camera in the house pick up but that Lucy sees very clearly, especially in the upstairs bedroom. Most are about the size of a silver dollar and bright white. They are all over the house, but brighter in the bedroom. She can see a difference in them as they dart or hover in the house, but she does not sense different personalities from them. “I’ll be sitting there watching television, “ claims Carter, “pick up my camera and point to the corner of the room and later on see what comes out.” The orbs are mainly in the bedroom and the living room, but they seem to follow Sarah wherever she goes. “You can’t take a picture of my daughter in that house without orbs,” says Lucy. Last year before a dance they took a picture of her and her friend in front of a hutch. In only one of the five or six pictures is there a bright light near the girls. They are sometimes unusual smells. Upstairs Carter smells cigars, although no one smokes in the house, and a perfume Lucy and Sarah don’t use. There are often noises, again, mainly on the third floor. One day Lucy came home from work and tried to take a nap before everyone got home. She laid her head down and heard people talking all around her from inside the house. The voices were low and muffled, just below being able to be understood. There was more than one voice but she could not determine the sex. She feels she overheard something, that there was no intention to scare her, and she remained more annoyed than scared. “If you are going to talk, let me hear what you’re saying.” That is their attitude about most of the occurrences in the house. They have become use to them and shrug them off. Carter often hears things upstairs while he is in the living room or kitchen but rarely goes to investigate. “I know what is up there, I don’t need to check.” Things are often moved in the house or impressions of people appear. Shortly after moving in Lucy bought Brad a calendar of women in bikinis for him to hang in his room. He hung it up but the next day it was thrown behind his dresser a few feet away. The pin that held it into place was still in the wall. They bought a car calendar the next day and it stayed up. When they first moved into the house they were in the kitchen and had made some cinnamon rolls. As they debated waking Brad up a muffin jumped from the pan ten feet away and hit Lucy in the head. Carter also hears footsteps and feels the baker’s rack move as if some has just walked down the back stairs and across the kitchen. There is also a feeling of being watched from the stairs in the kitchen. The remote control for the television has a habit of disappearing. Once Carter and Brad were watching television on the couch with the remote between them. Carter went to change the station and it was not there. They tore the couch apart looking for it, replaced the cushions and continued to look. The phone rang, and when they looked back it was there next to the phone. Another time Carter took his ring off to wash his hands and then could not find it. He search the bathroom and the house, but the ring did not show up until two months later when he found it hanging from the antenna of the police scanner next to the couch. He had used the scanner several times over that period and had changed the battery a few days before. Sarah once heard things being thrown around, in her parent’s room and was too scared to check. She knew she was alone in the house. After the noises stopped she went in. All of the Christmas gifts her parents had wrapped were thrown around the room still wrapped. Cater and Lucy are unsure of how many spirits might be in the house because of the frequency and differences in the nature of the occurrences. They feel they have nailed down a few of the personalities though. There are the little girls, at least one male in the basement, a protective spirit that once tucked Sarah’s boyfriend in while he was sleeping over, a dog and a darker more concerning spirit. Lucy feels the spirits of the little girls linger in the house, but at times they go away. They have made their presence know in different ways, although it seems they manifest themselves more for men in the house then females. Mostly family members get the feeling the girls are near, but other times there is more physical evidence. Andrew, Sarah’s boyfriend recently saw one of the little girls on the front stairway. He was climbing up the back stairway in the house and looked through the hallway on the third floor. He saw a girl and thought it was Sarah. He walked into the room and saw Sarah sitting there. When he looked back the girl was gone. Lucy has run into the girls as well, although she has never seen them. The room where they died is now a guestroom. One day while she was cleaning the house she went to work on that room. The room did not have much in it; just an air mattress with sheets and a few old lace dresses hanging on the door. She fluffed up the dresses and straightened out the sheets. When she came back later the sheets were messed up. The dresses had flattened back out. As she refluffed them, she distinctly saw an impression, large enough to be a person on the bed. The dresses she had just been working on flattened out as she watched. Lucy’s brother slept in the room the two girls died in and experienced things for himself. He knew two girls had died in the house, although not in the room he was sleeping in. He laughed off their stories of ghosts in the house. “I guess they decided to prove it to them,” says Lucy. He woke up in the night and reached for the large glass of water he kept next to the bed. It was not there. He went to the bathroom and the glass was back on the night stand. He drank the water, but when he woke up later the glass was missing again. It was found later in the middle of the room across the hall. Another time he decided to shower in the bathroom upstairs. He came running down a few minutes later wet and angry. According to him, he was showering when the lights went out. He yelled for whoever it was to turn the lights back on. They came back on, but went out a minute later. He yelled again and they went back on. Each time he heard two little girls giggling from the hallway. Sarah and her friend, who he blamed, had left the house as soon as he had gone upstairs. “He doesn’t sleep upstairs when he comes anymore.” Lucy’s other brother won’t stay in the house after dark. While there, he spends his time looking at the clock or out the window and leaves when the sun starts to set. Both Sarah and Lucy do not go into the basement where there is at least one spirit. The basement looks as it was redone some years ago. The cement on the ground is not the foundation but rather shows the signs of having been dirt with cement hastily put over it. There is a little room closed off from the rest, forming the basement into a U. They have gotten pictures with anomalies there before. Their dogs will not go downstairs no matter what. Lucy has brought a crystal down there and it moves rapidly counterclockwise in some parts. One night she saw a man in the furthest part of the basement as it turns the corner of the U. He was solid and slightly under six feet tall. She can not provide any further description because she saw him for only a slit second before she turned away. When she looked back he was gone. They checked the basement but there was no one and no way for him to get out except to go by them to the stairs. There is another unusual presence in the house that they believe might be a dog. A puppy, belonging to the two girls that lived in the house was found dead under the bed after the fire. Their two dogs are sometimes seen playing with the air the same way they might play with another dog. They look at spots on the wall, but their heads are low as if looking at something close to the ground. Their ears will rise. They will growl at doors and the stairway. Some of these activities might be directed at the human spirits in the house as well. Once one of the dogs looked at the wall then brought his paw up as if someone had just extended their hand and said, “Shake.” Then the dog lay back down. The family is not overly frightened by these things. There is a bit of pride to living in a haunted house for them and as people who are into the paranormal, often taking pictures at grave sights and taking trips to haunted places they enjoy having their own ghosts. The only thing they fear is the “Spook”, Carter’s name for the shadow that drifts through the house. Lucy refuses to call him anything, fearing that would give him more power over her then he already has The Spook has made himself known to every member of the family and Andrew and his presence is a source of tension and bad feelings in the house. The Spook is described as over six feet tall and made of a black fog-like substance. Arms and legs can sometimes be seen but he usually has no real substance. He gives off negative energy, but none of the family was able to put their finger on why. He floats when he moves and has been seen in the bedrooms and downstairs on occasion. He gives off no smell or temperature, but everyone definitely feels he is male. He first made his presence known in the bedroom where Lucy and Carter sleep. They feel the room is his main haunting area and he existed before the girls died. The bedroom takes up one whole side of the house. There is a Jewish symbol on the door left by an old occupant, but placed on the inside. There is a Jewish tradition of placing these symbols on doorways to keep evil spirits out, but usually they are on the outside and rarely on the doorway of a bedroom. They have kept the symbol even though neither were raised Jewish and neither is overly religious. Lucy saw him when they moved in, but did not give him much attention. Then he started to appear at the foot of the bed. She became nervous but would try to ignore him. Then he began to appear on her side of the bed. She finally left the bedroom when he began to poke her awake when she would fall asleep and creep into bed with her. She has not slept in the bedroom for almost four years, although she still experiences him from time to time on the couch downstairs, most unusually accompanied by night terrors. Sarah and Andrew see the Spook walking the halls at times. Andrew saw him even before he knew the history of the house or had heard about him. He often sleeps with the covers over his eyes. Brad has had many experiences with the Spook, most often leading to Brad trying to confront him. He sees shadows and sleeps with his door shut, but sometimes sees him while he is working on the computer. Once he woke up to find the Spook standing over him. He yelled at him and the fog moved from the room. He followed it down the hallway and it disappeared into the wall. The Spook will react to being yelled at, leaving for months at a time when confronted. Lucy once went up and down the stairs yelling at it for making itself known to her daughter. The hauntings stopped for three months. Carter had always felt safe in the bedroom. In early October he saw the Spook for the first time. “Things have happened but this is the first time I had seen something like that.” While trying to fall asleep he saw the figure walk from the closet, which was originally part of the bedroom, to the bathroom. He did not really feel threatened by the presence, but he tried to follow it into the other room. It was not there. He does not feel the Spook was trying to scare him that night. “It was just passing through and I happen to be there.” They took pictures, but nothing came up. They brought the crystal in and it moved quickly around and then stopped completely as if someone had stuck their hand out and stopped it. Lucy and the rest of the family wonder why he is there and whether it is the house or them that have attracted him. “I want to know why he thinks he has such a hold he can do these things.” There might be a few reasons for the occurrences in the house. Obviously the little girls death in 1980 has left some kind of mark on the property, but the story might start earlier than that. Salem has a long history of paranormal activity, and Lucy and Carter have found out one possible reason why. The house was built in 1897 and before then might have been used as part of a livery, maybe a barn. There is also proof another structure existed on the property before their house. Fieldstone, often used in older house is underneath the brick in the basement. Old maps show another structure on the property, but they have been unable to find out what it might be. Then there is the information they found out from a documentary film crew filming in Salem. At the turn of last century, around the time the house was being built, laws regarding burial changed. People now had to be embalmed in Massachusetts, an expensive procedure for some people. Instead some people buried their families in their basements to save the cost. There is some debate over whether or not this actually was practiced. A member of the Woburn Cemetery Commission has heard the rumors and dismisses it as an urban legend. She claims the changes in burial standards led to an increase in pauper graves and more church assistance in burial proceedings and that most people would not degrade their dead in such a fashion, especially a loved family member. While this might be the official stance and the standard, it does not discredit the claims of the film crew and the family. It would certainly account for the uneven cement over the dirt in the basement and the appearance of one of the spirits there. Lucy, Carter and the family do not intend to leave the house. Brad has recently married, is living in Lynn and expecting his first child in February. Although they all are hesitant to see the Spook, there has been no physical harm done to them by him or any of the other spirits. There are more questions than answers on Allen Street in Salem. Do the spirits see each other and what is their purpose. For now, Lucy wonders, but gives the spirits their space if they give her hers. She has always been in touch with the paranormal and the ghosts in her house have become part of the family. |
| The Spook |
| Location: Salem Number of Witnesses: 10+ |