This Story isn't as scary as other stories but it can not be explained.

 

I was living with my mothers best friend Judy at the time when this strange event took place.

I was in grade 5 at primary school so I would have been about 10 years of age. At the tender age of 10, your mind is still full of wonder so the effect that this event had on me, was to last all through my life.

 

Judy and I had just finished doing the dishes after dinner that night and we were sitting around the dinning room table talking about different things (what we talked about, I can not remember) On the buffet/sideboard behind us sat Judy's Mother's antique clock. It was the only item that Judy's Mother had left for here in her will. No-one was ever alowed to touch it but as Judy was in high spirits that evening (she was having a beer) I decided to ask her about the clock.

Judy stood up and picked up the clock to bring it back to the table so I could have a better look at it. It was a beautiful clock and looked very old to me. She then explained to me that Judy was a young girl when her mother passed away and that her mother always loved the clock. The same day that she passed away, the clock stopped ticking. The clock had a turning mechanism to wind up the clock for it to work. This no longer worked. No-one ever thought to have it fixed and was packed away till Judy grew older and moved away from home.

The clock went every where Judy did and at one time, she had taken the clock to an antique clock repair shop to have it fixed. But the repair man could not fix it. He stated that all the mechanisms inside the clock were in perfect working order but the clock just would not work.

As Judy was telling me this story, she was touching the clock, tracing her fingertips over the curves of the clock very lovingly. She then showed me how you wind the clock up, which she did. Then if the clock had been working, you would hear the deep ticking sound as the clock kept time. It would then chime on the hour.

She finished her story about the clock and got up from the table to place it back on the buffet/sideboard.

She sat back down at the table with me, deep in thought. I didn't want to say anything so I kept the thoughtful silence.

There was not a noise in the house, no radio, no television. I thought about the love she had for her mother and I thought of my own mother and when I would see her again.

It was at that moment that we heard the deep ticking sound of a clock. We both looked at each other for a split second, then both of us looked at the antique clock on the buffet/sideboard.

The seconds hand on the clock was moving. Yes the clock had started to work. I remember distinctly, the hairs on my arms rising as I saw and heard the clock ticking. I gasped and put my hand to my mouth. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I don't know if I was crying because I was scared or if I was just in shock. Judy and I looked at each other again unable to believe what was happening.

Then the clock stopped ticking, as fast as it had begun. I remember Judy crying out her mothers name with tears welling up in her eyes. She ran over to the clock and listened but there were no sounds, no ticking, no nothing. We were both in complte shock and had no idea what was happening. Was Judy's mother trying to let her know she was with us? Did we some how summon her with our loving words.

We held each other crying for a long while. I was crying because at that moment I believed in life after death. Judy was crying because she knew her mother was with her in that room at that very moment. And would always be with her.

We never mentioned this encounter to anyone else as it is too hard to believe unless you were there.

 

Written by Me (Diana) 2006

 

 

Our story begins in September 1839 with the birth of a baby girl to Leonard and Sarah Pardee of New Haven, Connecticut. The baby’s name was also Sarah and as she reached maturity, she became the belle of the city. She was well-received at all social events, thanks to her musical skills, her fluency in various foreign languages and her sparkling charm. Her beauty was also well-known by the young men about town, despite her diminutive size. Although she was petite and stood only four feet, ten inches, she made up for this in personality and loveliness.
At the same time that Sarah was growing up, a young man was also maturing in another prominent New Haven family. The young man’s name was William Wirt Winchester and he was the son of Oliver Winchester, a shirt manufacturer and businessman. In 1857, he took over the assets of a firm which made the Volcanic Repeater, a rifle that used a lever mechanism to load bullets into the breech.
Obviously, this type of gun was a vast improvement over the muzzle-loading rifles of recent times, but Winchester still saw room for advance. In 1860, the company developed the Henry Rifle, which had a tubular magazine located under the barrel. Because it was easy to reload and could fire rapidly, the Henry was said to average one shot every three seconds. It became the first true repeating rifle and a favorite among the Northern troops at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Money began to pour in and Oliver Winchester soon amassed a large fortune from government contracts and private sales. He re-organized the company and changed the name to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.  The family prospered and on September 30, 1862, at the height of the Civil War, William Wirt Winchester and Sarah Pardee were married in an elaborate ceremony in New Haven.
Four years later, on July 15, 1866, Sarah gave birth to a daughter named Annie Pardee Winchester. Just a short time later, the first disaster struck for Sarah, as her daughter contracted an illness known as "marasmus", a children’s disease in which the body wastes away. The infant died on July 24. Sarah was so shattered by this event that she withdrew into herself and teetered on the edge of madness for some time. In the end, it would be nearly a decade before she returned to her normal self but she and William would never have a another child.
Not long after Sarah returned to her family and home, another tragedy struck. William, now heir to the Winchester empire, was struck down with pulmonary tuberculosis. He died on March 7, 1881.  As a result of his death, Sarah inherited over $20 million dollars, an incredible sum, especially in those days. She also received 48.9 percent of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and an income of about $1000 per day, which was not taxable until 1913.
But her new-found wealth could do nothing to ease her pain. Sarah grieved deeply, not only for her husband, but also for her lost child. A short time later, a friend suggested that Sarah might speak to a Spiritualist medium about her loss. "Your husband is here," the medium told her and then went on to provide a description of William Winchester. "He says for me to tell you that there is a curse on your family, which took the life of he and your child. It will soon take you too. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance."
Sarah was then told that she must sell her property in New Haven and head towards the setting sun. She would be guided by her husband and when she found her new home in the west, she would recognize it.  "You must start a new life," said the medium, "and build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."
Shortly after the seance, Sarah sold her home in New Haven and with a vast fortune at her disposal, moved west to California. She believed that she was guided by the hand of her dead husband and she did not stop traveling until she reached the Santa Clara Valley in 1884. Here, she found a six room home under construction which belonged to a Dr. Caldwell. She entered into negotiations with him and soon convinced him to sell her the house and the 162 acres which it rested on.  She tossed away any previous plans for the house and started building whatever she chose to. She had her pick of local workers and craftsmen and for the next 36 years, they built and rebuilt, altered and changed and constructed and demolished one section of the house after another. She kept 22 carpenters at work, year around, 24 hours each day.  The sounds of hammers and saws sounded throughout the day and night.
As the house grew to include 26 rooms, railroad cars were switched onto a nearby line to bring building materials and imported furnishings to the house. The house was rapidly growing and expanding and while Sarah claimed to have no master plan for the structure, she met each morning with her foreman and they would go over the her hand-sketched plans for the day’s work. The plans were often chaotic but showed a real flair for building. Sometimes though, they would not work out the right way, but Sarah always had a quick solution. If this happened, they would just build another room around an existing one.
As the days, weeks and months passed, the house continued to grow. Rooms were added to rooms and then turned into entire wings, doors were joined to windows, levels turned into towers and peaks and the place eventually grew to a height of seven stories. Inside of the house, three elevators were installed as were 47 fireplaces. There were countless staircases which led nowhere; a blind chimney that stops short of the ceiling; closets that opened to blank walls; trap doors; double-back hallways; skylights that were located one above another; doors that opened to steep drops to the lawn below; and dozens of other oddities. Even all of the stair posts were installed upside-down and many of the bathrooms had glass doors on them.
It was also obvious that Sarah was intrigued by the number "13". Nearly all of the windows contained 13 panes of glass; the walls had 13 panels; the greenhouse had 13 cupolas; many of the wooden floors contained 13 sections; some of the rooms had 13 windows and every staircase but one had 13 steps. This exception is unique in its own right.... it is a winding staircase with 42 steps, which would normally be enough to take a climber up three stories. In this case, however, the steps only rise nine feet because each step is only two inches high.
While all of this seems like madness to us, it all made sense to Sarah. In this way, she could control the spirits who came to the house for evil purposes, or who were outlaws or vengeful people in their past life. These bad men, killed by Winchester rifles, could wreak havoc on Sarah’s life. The house had been designed into a maze to confuse and discourage the bad spirits.
The house continued to grow and by 1906, it had reached a towering seven stories tall. Sarah continued her occupancy, and expansion, of the house, living in melancholy solitude with no one other than her servants, the workmen and, of course, the spirits. It was said that on sleepless nights, when she was not communing with the spirit world about the designs for the house, Sarah would play her grand piano into the early hours of the morning. According to legend, the piano would be admired by passers-by on the street outside, despite the fact that two of the keys were badly out of tune.
The most tragic event occurred within the house when the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 struck. When it was all over, portions of the Winchester Mansion were nearly in ruins. The top three floors of the house had collapsed into the gardens and would never be rebuilt. In addition, the fireplace that was located in the Daisy Room (where Mrs. Winchester was sleeping on the night of the earthquake) collapsed, shifting the room and trapping Sarah inside. She became convinced that the earthquake had been a sign from the spirits who were furious that she had nearly completed the house. In order to insure that the house would never be finished, she decided to board up the front 30 rooms of the mansion so that the construction would not be complete - and also so that the spirits who fell when portion of the house collapsed would be trapped inside forever.
For the next several months, the workmen toiled to repair the damage done by the earthquake, although actually the mammoth structure had fared far better than most of the buildings in the area. Only a few of the rooms had been badly harmed, although it had lost the highest floors and several cupolas and towers had toppled over. The expansion on the house began once more. The number of bedrooms increased from 15 to 20 and then to 25. Chimneys were installed all over the place, although strangely, they served no purpose. Some believe that perhaps they were added because the old stories say that ghosts like to appear and disappear through them. On a related note, it has also been documented that only 2 mirrors were installed in the house.... Sarah believed that ghosts were afraid of their own reflection.
On September 4, 1922, after a conference session with the spirits in the seance room, Sarah went to her bedroom for the night. At some point in the early morning hours, she died in her sleep at the age of 83. She left all of her possessions to her niece, Frances Marriot, who had been handling most of Sarah’s business affairs for some time.  Little did anyone know, but by this time, Sarah’s large bank account had dwindled considerably. Rumor had it that somewhere in the house was hidden a safe containing a fortune in jewelry and a solid-gold dinner service with which Sarah had entertained her ghostly guests. Her relatives forced open a number of safes but found only old fishlines, socks, newspaper clippings about her daughter’s and her husband’s deaths, a lock of baby hair, and a suit of woolen underwear. No solid gold dinner service was ever discovered.
The furnishings, personal belongings and surplus construction and decorative materials were removed from the house and the structure itself was sold to a group of investors who planned to use it as a tourist attraction. One of the first to see the place when it opened to the public was Robert L. Ripley, who featured the house in his popular column, "Believe it or Not." The house was initially advertised as being 148 rooms, but so confusing was the floor plan that every time a room count was taken, a different total came up. The place was so puzzling that it was said that the workmen took more than six weeks just to get the furniture out of it. The moving men became so lost because it was a "labyrinth", they told the magazine, American Weekly, in 1928. It was a house "where downstairs leads neither to the cellar nor upstairs to the roof." The rooms of the house were counted over and over again and five years later, it was estimated that 160 rooms existed..... although no one is really sure if even that is correct.
Today, the house has been declared a California Historical Landmark and is registered with the National Park Service as "a large, odd dwelling with an unknown number of rooms."
Most would say that such a place must still harbor at least a few of the ghosts who came to reside there at the invitation of Sarah Winchester. The question is though, do they really haunt the place? Some would say that perhaps no ghosts ever walked there at all.... that the Winchester mansion is nothing more than the product of an eccentric woman’s mind and too much wealth being allowed into the wrong hands.
There is no question that we can regard the place as one of the world’s "largest haunted houses", based on nothing more than the legend of the place alone. Is this a case where we need to draw the line between what is a real haunted spot .... and what is a really great story?
Is the Winchester Mansion really haunted? You will have to decide that for yourself, although some people have already made up their minds.
There have been a number of strange events reported at the Winchester House for many years and they continue to be reported today. Dozens of psychics have visited the house over the years and most have come away convinced, or claim to be convinced, that spirits still wander the place. In addition to the ghost of Sarah Winchester, there have also been many other sightings throughout the years.
In the years that the house has been open to the public, employees and visitors alike have had unusual encounters here. There have been footsteps; banging doors; mysterious voices; windows that bang so hard they shatter; cold spots; strange moving lights; doorknobs that turn by themselves.... and don’t forget the scores of psychics who have their own claims of phenomena to report.
Obviously, these are all of the standard reports of a haunted house... but are the stories merely wishful thinking? Reports of ghosts and spirits to continue the tradition of Sarah Winchester’s bizarre legacy? Or could the stories be true? Was the house really built as a monument to the dead? Do phantoms still lurk in the maze-like corridors of the Winchester Mystery House?
I urge you to visit the house if you should ever get the chance. Perhaps that would be the best time to answer the questions that I have just posed to you. I can promise that you will find not another piece of American architecture like the Winchester mansion....
And who knows what else you might find while you’re there?

 

The Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville Kentucky has it all-- cold spots, disembodied voices, and ghosts roaming the halls. It sits on a great hill overlooking the city and seems like a reigning fortress of gloom in its eerie, decaying state. The atmosphere is further darkened by a chilling history of mass death and of patient abuse during the years it was used as a geriatric hospital. In 1910, a wooden two-story hospital was built on the site, which was the highest elevated hill in southern Jefferson County, but with tuberculousis rampant in the area, the building wasn't big enough to house all of the patients. And so a new building was constructed in 1924, and the new Waverly Hospital opened in 1926. Treatment for the dreaded disease was primitive at that time. Without antibiotics, natural cures provided the only available defense. Health care providers believed that rest and plenty of fresh air and sunshine was the answer, and thus the patients spent the majority of their time in the solarium like porch ways. You can see in the picture that the patients are just outside of their rooms on an enclosed porch. The large windows had no glass and were screened. Even in the winter, patients would be placed outdoors with heating blankets on them (such tuberculosis treatments were the reason why heating blankets were invented.). Besides these natural remedies, there were also many experimental treatments which were downright dangerous, including: Pneumothorax, surgically collapsing or deflating a portion of the lung so that it could heal; and thoracoplasty opening up the chest and removing up to 2 to 3 ribs at a time so that the lung would have more room to expand and heal. And there were other dire experimental methods as well. None of these methods were effective. In fact, fewer than five percent of patients survived the pneumothorax method. Thousands of people died at Waverly before streptomycin was discovered in 1943--some estimates are as high as 64,000. Ten thousand people died during Waverly's first three years alone. But by the 1950's tuberculosis was pretty much eradicated thanks to the antibiotic. As a result, the need for such a huge facility to handle tuberculosis patients was no longer necessary and the hospital closed in 1961. It reopened a year later as the Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium, where there have been many tales of patient mistreatment and unusual experiments. The state of Kentucky closed it down in 1982 due to patient abuse. The buildings, contents, and land were auctioned off and the doors were locked for good. Over the next 18 years, ownership of the building changed hands many times. The second owner wanted to tear it down, but was stopped because the property was on the National Historic Register’s “endangered” list. He decided that if he couldn’t legally tear it down then he would do everything in his power to get it condemned. He encouraged vandalism and people broke windows, porcelain sinks, toilets and doors. They sprayed the walls with graffiti and defaced stone and wood. The owner then dug around the foundation, in some places as deep as 30 feet, to try and make the foundation crack. If this happened, he believed, he could get the building condemned and would be able to legally tear it down. But his efforts failed, and he finally gave up and sold the place in 2001. Efforts are now being made to renovate the hospital, and in recent years, interest has grown in the history of the building. It was even featured in a segment of Fox Television’s, World's Scariest Places, and on MTV's Fear. A documentary is now in the works called, Spooked, and the feature film Death Tunnel should hit the theatres around Halloween. There are rumors that satanic rituals have taken place within its walls, of a little girl moving about the third floor solarium playing hide and seek with trespassers, of a little boy named Bobby playing with his leather ball, of rooms lighting up though there was no power in the building, of doors slamming, disembodied voices, a hearse driving up and dropping off coffins, and an old woman running from the front door with her wrists bleeding screaming: “Help me. Somebody save me!” Ghosts have been seen in the form of shadow people and ectoplasm clouds, and even in full apparition form. Cries and screams are frequently heard in the lonely, moldering halls.

 

Hauntings

Here are some of the most well-known supernatural occurrences in the building:

 

Main Entrance:

Here the ghost of an old woman has often been seen. Sometimes she runs out the front door. Her hands and legs are in chains and spectral blood drips from her wrists and ankles. She cries for help before she dissipates into thin air.

 

The Third Floor

Many people have seen a little girl on the third floor who is known as "Mary." Some say that she plays with a ball; others have only heard the ball bouncing on the floor or down the stairs. This ball bouncing has also been attributed to a little boy, but the little girl seems the spookiest. One man said that he encountered a little girl that wasn't normal. She kept saying that she has no eyes. He was so terrified that he refused to enter the building again. Some have seen the child peering out the third floor windows.

 

Roof

Some have heard children chanting verses here such as: "Ring around the Rosy." But why would the spirits of children be on the roof? When the hospital was a tuberculosis facility, children were taken up to the rooftop for "heliotherapy," in which they were exposed to the supposed healing rays of the sun.

 

Room 502

Perhaps the most infamous area of all in the hospital. is room 502. The story goes that In 1928, the head nurse was found dead in the room. She had hanged herself from the light fixture. No one knows why, the 29-year old woman would take her own life, but it's believed that she was unmarried and pregnant. It is unknown how long her body hung before she was finally discovered. The county coroner’s office attributed her death to suicide. In 1932, another nurse who worked in room 502, supposedly committed suicide when she jumped from the balcony of the roof. No one knows why. Folks have seen the full body apparition of a female nurse in white on this floor. People have also reported that this room gives them an "unsettling" feeling of great despair. Some have heard a voice say, "Get out!"

 

The Body Chute or Death Tunnel

What is now called the “body chute” is actually a 500 foot long tunnel that leads from the hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill. When someone died they were sent down the tunnel via gurneys to an awaiting hearse. This was done so that patients wouldn't see the hearses or the bodies--in order to keep morale high. Concrete steps line one side of the tunnel while the other side consists of a motorized rail and cable system. Voices are often heard along the long eerie passage.

 

Cafeteria and Kitchen

A spectral man in a white coat and pants supposedly roams this area. No one knows who he is but some think he's an old employee of Waverly who contracted tuberculosis and died. The smell of food often wafts from the kitchen though no meals have been served since 1982 when the mental hospital was closed.

 

Fourth Floor

Some regard this as the most scary and "active" area of the hospital. There have been many reports of people seeing ghostly shadow-like people treading the halls, and doors frequently slam for no apparent reason.

 

Other Oddities:

A guard saw a floating head in one of the rooms late at night. He screamed and rushed downstairs where he passed out. He was so terrified that he never returned to the sanitarium. Many people have also reported that they've seen lights in the building at night though there had been no electricity in the building for many years and no glass to reflect light. A security guard once reported that he'd seen a television playing in a room on the third floor. From outside, he could see what appeared to be the distinct flicker of a television in a dark room. He went upstairs to investigate but found nothing out of the ordinary.

Troy Taylor of the Louisville Ghost Hunter's Society investigated the building in 2001 and captured a strange photo of a light burning in a stairwell though there were no lights in the building at the time and no light hanging in that spot. (See below for picture links)

In addition, he got several very odd readings from his EMF meter--a piece of equipment that detects disruptions in electro-magnetic fields, which is often associated with hauntings.

 

Conclusion:

So is the hospital haunted? It certainly sounds like it is. Hopefully, in the near future, I'll be able to travel there and get a first hand experience. It would be even more exciting if Marie St. Claire could accompany me. I've asked Marie St. Claire to try to connect to the hospital to see what she feels from afar. Here are her impressions.

 

Marie's Psychic Investigation:

I can't tell you how much this building bothered me during the course of my research. I spent a whole day studying photos of it in order to help me connect. And I made a very strong connection. At first I was fascinated with the place, but as I started to mentally connect, feelings of despair and anger overwhelmed me. Suddenly, I found Waverly repulsive. It caused a definite--though temporary--mental change in me. I can't say that there's necessarily anything evil there, but what I did pick up on was a whole lot of bad feelings and pain, which were so strong that they made me nauseous. I feel that a lot of this pain came not from the tuberculosis era but from the geriatric era of the hospital. Though certainly the TB deaths have left their mark as well. I don't know if I could go there in the flesh. I don't know if I could bear the overwhelming emotions that pour from this building. There truly is an old woman in the building with blood and metal cuffs on her arms who most often inhabits the lower levels of the hospital near the entry. Someone dropped her off at the hospital--a son or daughter perhaps, long before her death, and she's waiting for that person to come and "rescue" her, but that person never will. She is thin with long gray scraggly hair and large expressive eyes. She is a patient of the geriatric hospital--not the TB hospital. She was treated badly and felt like a prisoner. The chains and blood are symbolic, however, the staff did often restrain her to the point where her arms were raw and bloody. In addition, she was often cold, not fed well, and allowed to lay in her urine for long periods of time. I'm not sure what was wrong with her other than old age and possibly dementia. Her soul is in pain and not at rest. She does not understand that she is now free in death. She is still living the nightmare of her confinement in the hospital and is seeking aid. There is the spirit of an eight-year old girl there. Like the old woman, she can't accept or understand that she's dead. She was in bad shape when she arrived at the hospital, and she died quite suddenly. Unfortunately, they never explained to her just how ill she was. She feels lost and so alone. Many are fascinated with room 502 and the stories of two nurses that supposedly killed themselves. I only saw one nurse, very attractive, dark haired, shapely, and young. It doesn't mean that there isn't another one--only that I didn't pick her up during this short investigation. The nurse that I saw went about her duties but was burdened with feelings of great despair and hopelessness that she kept well hidden. These feelings came from the place and from the isolation she felt in working there. I don't know if she was pregnant--nothing suggested it. Is she one of the nurses who is rumored to have killed herself? I do believe that someone jumped from roof during the time that the building was used as a sanitarium. I don't see a hanging. And I never actually saw this nurse kill herself; nor did she reveal that too me, but it's likely from the feelings of gloom and despair that I picked up from her that she's the one who jumped from the roof. The anguish she carried was just too heavy to bear. To learn more about her, I would have to try another connection and focus entirely on her--something I'm not anxious to do, considering the negative affect that the hospital had on me. Still, at some time, I might take another peek as I'd like to know more about this nurse. In conclusion, Waverly is very haunted. I'm not surprised that a place with such a dark history is. I would be more surprised if it wasn't.

 

Other Great sites and Picture links about the Sanitarium:

 

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Emily Rose is actually Anneliese Michel. From her birth on the 21st of September, 1952, Anneliese Michel enjoyed the life of a normal, religiously nurtured young girl. Without warning, her life changed on a day in 1968 when she began shaking and found she was unable to control her body. She could not call out for her parents, Josef and Anna, or any of her 3 sisters. A neurologist at the Psychiatric Clinic Wurzburg diagnosed her with "Grand Mal" epilepsy. Because of the strength of the epileptic fits, and the severity of the depression that followed, Anneliese was admitted for treatment at the hospital.
Soon after the attacks began, Anneliese started seeing devilish grimaces during her daily praying. It was the fall of 1970, and while the young people of the world were enjoying the liberal freedoms of the time, Anneliese was battling with the belief that she was possessed. It seemed there was no other explanation for the appearance of devilish visions during her prayers. Voices also began following her, saying Anneliese will "stew in hell". She mentioned the "demons" to the doctors only once, explaining that they have started to give her orders. The doctors seem unable to help, and Anneliese lost hope that medicine was going to be able to cure her.
In the summer of 1973, her parents visited different pastors to request an exorcism. Their requests were rejected and they were given recommendations that the now 20 year old Anneliese should continue with medication and treatment. It was explained that the process by which the Church proves a possession (Infestatio) is strictly defined, and until all the criterium is met, a Bishop can not approve an exorcism. The requirements, to name a few, include an aversion to religious objects, speaking in a language the person has never learned, and supernatural powers.
In 1974, after supervising Anneliese for some time, Pastor Ernst Alt requested a permit to perform the exorcism from the Bishop of Wurzburg. The request was rejected, and a recommendation soon followed saying that Anneliese should live even more of a religious lifestyle in order to find peace. The attacks did not diminish, and her behavior become more irratic. At her parents house in Klingenberg, she insulted, beat, and began biting the other members of her family. She refused to eat because the demons would not allow it. Anneliese slept on the stone floor, ate spiders, flies, and coal, and even began drinking her own urine. She could be heard screaming throughout the house for hours while breaking crucifixes, destroying paintings of Jesus, and pulling apart rosaries. Anneliese began committing acts of self-mutilation at this time, and the act of tearing off her clothes and urinating on the floor became commonplace.
After making an exact verification of the possession in September 1975, the Bishop of Wurzburg, Josef Stangl, assigned Father Arnold Renz and Pastor Ernst Alt with the order to perform "The Great Exorcism" on Anneliese Michel. The basis for this ritual was the "Rituale Romanum", which was still, at the time, a valid Cannon Law from the 17th century. It was determined that Anneliese must be saved from the possession by several demons, including Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Nero, Cain, Hitler, and Fleischmann, a disgraced Frankish Priest from the 16th century, and some other damned souls which had manifested through her. From September '75 until July '76, one or two exorcism sessions were held each week. Anneliese's attacks were sometimes so strong that she would have to be held down by 3 men, or even chained up. During this time, Anneliese found her life somewhat return to normal as she could again go to school, take final examinations at the Pedagogic Academy in Wurzburg, and go to church.
The attacks, however, did not stop. In fact, she would more often find herself paralyzed and falling unconscious than before. The exorcism continued over many months, always with the same prayers and incantations. Sometimes family members and visitors, like one married couple that claims to have "discovered" Anneliese, would be present during the rituals. For several weeks, Anneliese denied all food. Her knees ruptured due to the 600 genuflections she performed obsessively during the daily exorcism. Over 40 audio tapes record the process, in order to preserve the details.
The last day of the Exorcism Rite was on June 30th, 1976, and Anneliese was suffering at this point from Pneumonia. She was also totally emaciated, and running a high fever. Exhausted and unable to physically perform the genuflections herself, her parents stood in and helped carry her through the motions. "Beg for Absolution" is the last statement Anneliese made to the exorcists. To her mother, she said, "Mother, I'm afraid." Anna Michel recorded the death of her daughter on the following day, July 1st, 1976, and at noon, Pastor Ernst Alt informed the authorities in Aschaffenburg. The senior prosecutor began investigating immediately.
A short time before these final events unfolded, William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1974) came to the cinemas in Germany, bringing with it a wave of paranormal hysteria that flooded the nation. Psychiatrists all over Europe reported an increase of obsessive ideas among their patients. Prosecutors took more than 2 years to to take Annaliese's case to court, using that time to sort through the bizarre facts. Anneliese's parents and the two exorcists were accused of negligent homocide. The "Klingenberg Case" would be decided upon two questions: What caused the death of Anneliese Michel, and who was responsible?
According the forensic evidence, "Anneliese starved to death". Specialists claimed that if the accused would have begun with forced feeding one week before her death, Anneliese's life would have been saved. One sister told the court that Anneliese did not want to go to a mental home where she would be sedated and forced to eat. The exorcists tried to prove the presence of the demons, playing taped recordings of strange dialogues like that of two demons arguing about which one of them would have to leave Anneliese's body first. One of the demons called himself Hitler, and spoke with a Frankish accent (Hitler was born in Austria). Not one of those present during the exorcism ever had a doubt about the authenticity of the presence of these demons.
The psychiatrists, whom had been ordered to testify by the court, spoke about the "Doctrinaire Induction". They said that the priests had provided Anneliese with the contents of her psychotic behavior. Consequentially, they claimed, she later accepted her behavior as a form of demonic possession. They also offered that Anneliese's unsettled sexual development, along with her diagnosed Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, had influenced the psychosis.
The verdict was considered by many as not as harsh as they expected. Anneliese's parents, as well as the exorcists, were found guilty of manslaughter resulting from negligence and omitting first aid. They were sentenced to 6 months in jail and probation. The verdict included the opinion of the court that the accused should have helped by taking care of the medical treatment that the girl needed, but instead, their use of naive practices aggrivated Anneliese's already poor constitution.
A commission of the German Bishop-Conference later declared that Anneliese Michel was not possessed, however, this did not keep believers from supporting her struggles, and it was because so many believed in her that Anneliese's body did not find peace with death. Her corpse was exhumed eleven and a half years after her burial, only to confirm that it had decayed as would have been expected under normal circumstances. Today, her grave remains a place of pilgrimage for rosary-praying and for those who believe that Anneliese Michel bravely fought the devil.
In 1999, Cardinal Medina Estevez presented journalists in Vatican-City the new version of the "Rituale Romanum" that has been used by the Catholic Church since 1614. The updates came after more than 10 years of editing and is called "De exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam" otherwise known as "The exorcism for the upcoming millennium". The Pope approbated the new Exorcism Rite, which is now allowed for worldwide use. This new form of exorcism came after the German Bishop-Conference demanded to ultimately abolish the "Rituale Romun". It also came more than 20 years after Anneliese Michel had died.

 

 

In the early 1800s, John Bell moved his family from North Carolina to the Red River bottomland in Robertson County, Tennessee, settling in a community that later became known as Adams. Bell purchased some land and a large home for his family. The Bells quickly made many friends and gained prominence in the community. John Bell acquired additional land and cleared a number of fields over the next several years.
One day in 1817, John Bell was inspecting his corn field when he encountered a strange-looking animal sitting in the middle of a corn row. Shocked by the appearance of this animal, which had the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit, Bell shot several times to no avail. The animal vanished. Bell thought nothing more about the incident--at least not until after dinner. That evening, the Bells began hearing "beating" sounds on the outside walls of their house.
 These mysterious sounds continued with increased force each night. Bell and his sons often hurried outside to catch the culprit but always returned empty-handed. The noises were soon followed by more problems. The Bell children began waking up frightened and complaining of sounds like rats gnawing at their bedposts. It wasn't long until the children began complaining of more terrifying things--having their bed covers pulled and their pillows were tossed onto the floor by a seemingly invisible force.
As time went on, the Bells began to hear even stranger noises. Only this time, they sounded like faint, whispering voices--too weak to understand--sounding like a feeble old woman crying or singing hymns. The encounters escalated, and the Bells’ youngest daughter, Betsy, began experiencing physically brutal encounters with the entity. It relentlessly pulled her hair and slapped her, often leaving visible prints on her face and body for days at a time. The evil disturbances escalated over the next year to the point it was time for John Bell to share his "family trouble" with his closest friend and neighbor, James Johnston.
Johnston and his wife spent the night at the Bell home, where they were subjected to the same terrifying disturbances that the Bells experienced. After having his bedcovers repeatedly removed, and being slapped, Johnston sprang out of bed, asking, "I ask you in the name of the Lord God, who are you and what do you want?" There was no response of any type, but the remainder of the night was peaceful.
As word of the Bell disturbances spread throughout the community, so did the entity's antics. Over time, its voice strengthened to the point it was loud and understandable. It sang hymns, quoted scripture, carried on intelligent conversation, and once quoted, word-for-word, two sermons that took place at the same time thirteen miles apart. During this time no one knew who or what the entity was, or its purpose for tormenting the Red River Settlement.  
Word eventually spread outside the settlement, even as far as Nashville, where one Andrew Jackson became interested.
John Bell, Jr. and Jesse Bell fought under General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans, and had developed a good rapport with him. In 1819, Jackson got word of the disturbances at the Bell home and decided to pay a personal visit. Jackson and his entourage, consisting of several men and a large wagon, journeyed from Nashville to the Bell home. As the entourage approached the Bell property, the wagon suddenly stopped. The horses tried pulling but to no avail--the wagon simply would not move.
After several minutes of cursing and trying to get the wagon to move, Jackson exclaimed that it must have been the "witch." As soon as Jackson uttered these words, an unidentified female voice spoke, telling Jackson and his men that they could proceed, and that "she& would see them again later that evening. The men were finally allowed to continue.
Jackson and John Bell had a long discussion about the Indians and other topics while Jackson's men patiently waited to see if the "spirit" was going to manifest itself. One of the men in Jackson's entourage claimed to be a "witch tamer." After several uneventful hours, this man decided to "call" the "spirit." He pulled out a shiny pistol and made his intent to kill the "spirit" known to all that were present.
 Almost immediately, the man began screaming and moving his body in many different directions. He said he was being stuck with pins and being severely beaten. The man quickly ran out the door, and the "spirit" announced that there was yet one more "fraud" in Jackson's party, and that he would be identified on the following evening.
Terrified, Jackson's men begged to leave the Bell farm. Jackson insisted on staying so that he could find out who the other "fraud" was. Jackson and his men eventually went out to the field to sleep in their tents, and the men continued to beg and plead with Jackson to leave.
Jackson maintained the position that he wanted to know who the other "fraud" in his party was. However, by mid-day the next day, Jackson and his men had already left the Bell farm and were seen going through Springfield. Jackson, a hero in the Battle of New Orleans four years earlier, was quoted as later having said, "I'd rather fight the entire British Army than to deal with the Bell Witch." Jackson later became the President of the United States.
Over time, Betsy Bell became interested in Joshua Gardner, a young man who lived not far from her. With the blessings of their parents, they agreed to the engagement. Nevertheless, despite their obvious happiness, the "spirit" repeatedly told Betsy not to marry Joshua Gardner.
It is interesting to note that their schoolteacher, Richard Powell, was noticeably interested in Betsy and wanted to marry her when she became older. Powell was believed to have been a student of the occult, and had been secretly married to a woman in nearby Nashville for some time. Betsy and Joshua could not go to the river, the field, or the cave, without the "Spirit" following along and persistently taunting them. Betsy and Joshua's patience finally reached critical mass, and on Easter Monday of 1821, Betsy met Joshua at the river and broke off their engagement.
The encounters decreased after that heartbreaking Easter Monday, although the "Spirit" continued to express its dislike for "Ol' Jack Bell," and relentlessly vowed to kill him. As Bell's health grew worse, the "Spirit" would torture him more severely, sometimes removing his shoes from his feet and relentlessly slapping his face while he was experiencing seizures.
On the morning of December 20, 1820, after a long battle with a crippling nervous system disorder, John Bell breathed his last breath. Immediately after Bell's death, the family found a small vial of unidentified liquid that Bell had partaken of the evening before his death. John Bell, Jr. gave some of the liquid to the family's cat, and the cat died almost instantly. The "Spirit" suddenly spoke up exclaiming, "I gave Ol' Jack a big dose of that last night, and that fixed him." John, Jr. quickly threw the vial into the fireplace, where it shot up the chimney in the form of a bright, blue flame. As family and friends began to leave John Bell's burial site, the "Spirit" laughed loudly and sang a cheerful song about a bottle of brandy.
In April of 1821, the "Spirit" visited Lucy Bell and told her that "it" would return in seven years for a visit. Seven years later, in 1828, the "Spirit" returned as promised. Most of this visit centered around John Bell, Jr. The "Spirit" discussed with him such things as the origin of life, Christianity, the need for a mass spiritual reawakening, and other in-depth topics. Of particular significance were the "Spirit's" predictions of the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.
After three weeks, the "Spirit" bade farewell, promising to visit John Bell's most direct descendant in 107 years. The year would have been 1935, and the closest direct living descendant of John Bell was Charles Bailey Bell, a physician in Nashville. Charles Bailey Bell himself wrote a book about the "Bell Witch," but it had been published prior 1935. No follow-up was published, and Bell died a few years later in 1945.
Today, the "Spirit" which haunted the Bell family nearly 200 years ago is believed by many to be the source of numerous manifestations in the area where the story took place. Some believe that when the "Spirit" returned in 1935, it took residence in Adams, Tennessee, once a part of the Bell farm. The faint sounds of people talking and children playing can sometimes be heard in the area. It is also very difficult to take a good picture there.
Several years ago, one of John Bell's descendants was rabbit hunting and shot a rabbit, which wandered into some dense brush. While searching, he felt a large rock underneath the brush where the rabbit had entered. The rock turned out to be a part of Joel Egbert Bell's tombstone, and the rabbit was never found. In the mid 1990's, a picture was taken of a girl sitting on a rock outside the cave's entrance. When the picture was developed, there appeared to be a man standing behind her. Upon expert examination, it was determined that the man-like image was not a double-exposure, but an entirely separate entity. It has been said that if you visit the fields of the old Bell farm on dark, cold and rainy nights, you can sometimes see small lights gliding over the fields and dancing in the dell.
The cause of the Bells' torment nearly 200 years ago and today's unexplained manifestations has remained a mystery. Numerous versions and theories that purportedly explain the cause of the disturbances abound, and vary from person to person. The only constant is that there was "something" wrong on the Bell farm in the early 1800s, and there is still "something" wrong at the old Bell farm today, nearly 200 years later. It happened to the John Bell family in 1817. Maybe next time it will happen to your family.