Part 3: Chapter 55

Steven’s relationship with God is stronger than it ever has been. He’s more cautious now, not know what the unknown has for him.

Part 3: Chapter 54

Helen is better now. She’s out of the institution and is mostly healthy. Helen and Steven see the priest often and the priest didn’t think Steven should leave the paranormal behind him. Steven agreed and got the MPR back together and are now helping others.

Part 3: Chapter 53

Helen went to Steven’s house. She was very angry and was banging on the door. In her other hand, she was holding something behind her back. When Steven go up, his three cats were at his feet arching their backs and hissing. He felt like he shouldn’t answer the door and decided to call Helen’s daughter. Helen’s daughter called Helen who told her that she had a gun and if she called the cops, she would be dead before the cops got to her. Helen’s daughter (they’re not mentioning a name and it was previously mentioned that Helen had more than one child. I’m not sure if this is Kelly) wanted Steven to call Helen and stall her.

Steven go to the real Helen, not the possessed one. She put the gun down and looked at her daughter who was at the car window. Helen told her daughter to make sure Steven called Father Paul. Helen’s recovery has not been easy and as not been short.

Part 3: Chapter 52

Helen’s daughter called Steven up saying that Helen had been acting strange and she left the house. She didn’t know where she was. Later that night, she called Steven back saying that Helen was home and that she was “so gosh darn tired”, the ordinary Helen.

Part 3: Chapter 51

It was almost Halloween and a bunch of people were going out to take a hike on Zombie Road. Steven didn’t know that Zombie Road was really haunted, though. Throughout the entire night, they saw ghosts. Once they got to the train, Steven felt as if something was wrong. He called for Helen. She answered. When the train ride was done, Helen was possessed, though Steven didn’t know it. He drove her back to Helen’s daughters house. He dropped her off and didn’t look back until he was far from her street.

Part 3: Chapter 50

Helen and Steven went to see Father Paul. He told Steven that he was going towards a path of oppression and said a prayer. Father Paul put his hand on Steven’s head. Steven couldn’t breathe and thought the it was the dream. Father Paul told Helen that she was on a road to oppression and possibly possession. He also put his hand on Helen’s head. She said she never felt better.

“‘Steven, God didn’t take Janice from us. God accepted her.’” When Steven's mother told him this, Steven's spirituality started taking over the paranormal.

Part 3: Chapter 49

Helen called Steven from the hospital. She said she was afraid to tell any of the doctors there that her house was haunted, tough the next day she did. The doctors told her that she had depression and that was all that was wrong with her. Helen asked if Steven had found a priest to bless the house. He did but she didn’t give him enough time to talk. She started cursing at him and asked if he thought she had all the time in the world in the facility. The line went dead and Steven found out Helen ripped the phone out of the wall.

Helen didn’t return to the Union House. Charlie and Kelly moved out.

Part 3: Chapter 48

Helen go up an decided to go to the day room. Somebody walked in front of her and started screaming that she was possessed by the devil. Guards came and quickly escorted him away from Helen. Once Helen go to the day room, the man sitting next to her started reading verses from the Bible. Helen felt as though she was being attack. That man was too escorted away from Helen. She then went back to her room to go back to bed.

Part 3: Chapter 47

Steven left the hospital and followed a moving van on to the highway. What Steven didn’t know was that he was driving the wrong way on the highway. He realized that something wanted him dead. He questioned whether he was going too far by taking Helen from the Union House.

Part 3: Chapter 46

Steven brought Helen to the emergency room. By all medical standards with the way Helen’s blood pressure and pulse were, she either would have been in a coma or dead. A doctor walked in and asked her if she felt like hurting herself. Her response was yes. The doctor then proceeded to ask if she thought she was going to hurt someone else, where her response was also yes. Helen’s last yes was in response to the doctor asking if she wanted help.

“Helen was suicidal and homicidal, and the doctors knew it. There was no turning back now.”

Part 3: Chapter 45

Helen called Steven telling him that she tried to kill herself the night before. When he got to the house, Kelly and her two friends were “snarling” at him. (By “snarling”, I don’t know if he means any or literally snarling, like they were possessed.) Steven pushed Helen out of the house and started driving to a place where he could get Helen some help.

Part 3: Chapter 44

Steven slept for hours, though the more he slept, the more tired he felt. Helen called him and told him that she wanted to kill Charlie. She went to “visit” him at lunch one day and brought knives. Kelly and her friends even helped Helen choose which knives to bring; which would do the most damage the fastest. Helen knew Charlie had been cheating on her, though Charlie wouldn’t admit it. Helen got the knife out and kept stabbing at Charlie, missing him every time. Steven needed to get Helen out of the house before she hurt anybody. He told her he was going to pick her up to take her somewhere to be checked out.

Part 3: Chapter 43

It was Saturday night again and people would be coming to the house for then night experiment again. By four in the morning, everybody was gone. Nothing out of the ordinary (at least for the Union House) happened. Before Steven left, he and Helen saw the entire outside light up with blue. They figured it was just the transformer and a strong burst of lightning. Helen and Steven went running to the door. When they go there, the same werewolf-like creature that Helen saw in one of her dreams was standing in the street. Steven went outside and chased it. When it turned around and looked Steven in the eyes, he fell backward. Helen helped him up. Steven told Helen that she needed to move as quickly as possible. “That was the beginning of Helen’s last week in the house, but the start of many new nightmares.”

Part 3: Chapter 42

Steven went to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis. That was where the exorcism too place that inspired the movie The Exorcism. Steven felt nervous going to the chapel, where the actual exorcism took place. Once he go in, though, he thought about the good. He said that you really have to think about good vs evil. If you only think about the evil, the evil is always going to be around you. If you only think about the good, you’re only going to see the good around you. If it wasn’t for the good, you wouldn’t have the bad and vice versa.

Steven got another phone call from Helen that night. She realized that she was being raped by the unseen forces.

Part 3: Chapter 41

Charlie ignored what was going on in the house, until he woke up and saw a black figure standing at the bottom of the bed. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t speak. Helen woke up and could tell that Charlie had seen something. She talked to him and told him to go back to bed. Helen got up to go to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She saw Kelly standing on the steps staring emotionless. Helen asked her what was wrong and Kelly responded with “nothing”.

Part 3: Chapter 40

Steven woke up to his phone ringing. It was Helen. She was crying. She said she was talking in her sleep. But she was agreeing to something. When she opened her eyes, she saw a black hooded figure. She’s afraid to find out what she was agreeing to.

“...there was a black-hooded figure sitting on my bed next to me. It was sitting there, and I was having a conversation with it. When I comprehended what was happening, I yelled at it and it disappeared. What do you think we were talking about? What do you think I was agreeing to?”

Part 3: Chapter 39

Helen and Steven were babysitting Marie (one of the people staying in the Union House during the nighttime experiment)’s four-year-old daughter. The little girl started crying and shaking. When Helen asked what was wrong, she pointed and said “clown”.

Steven got thinking that the demons were targeting their fears.

Marie had a nightmare that she told Steven and Helen about. She was standing outside the Union House and everybody was looking up toward the roof. Behind her, she heard a giggle from behind her. When she turned to look, she saw a demonic clown slamming a baby on the ground.

“...I heard a giggle from behind me. It was deep and low, an evil giggle. I turned and there was a demonic clown with red glowing eyes behind me. He was holding a baby by its feet, and he was laughing. He had razor-sharp teeth that glowed in the moonlight. He laughed as he held the baby by its ankles and slammed it on the ground over and over again like it was a sack of potatoes.”

Part 3: Chapter 38

Steven called John Zaffis, a world famous demonologist and paranormal investigator. Steven and Helen found that they could call him and tell him pretty much anything that was happening in the Union House. Helen noticed that no matter how often she cleaned the carpet, a few days later, the stains would be back. Steven called John and told him about the carpet. John told Steven to look under the carpet and tell him what was under it, which was nothing. This stumped John.

Part 3: Chapter 37

Helen and Steven had an over night experiment. They had 3 different groups of people come. They had a christian group of women stay in the backyard, a sensitive and a skeptic stay with Helen in the living room, and Steven, a sensitive, and a man with an EVP stay in the basement. The women in the backyard felt like someone was stalking them and came running in the house. One of them stopped for a picture and in the corner was a group of people surrounding a burning cross. It was a mocking of Jesus' crucifixion. When Steven was downstairs, him and Trudy, the sensitive who he was also in 5th grade with, caught the demon in the basement answer yes when they asked if there was a monster with them.

Part 3: Chapter 36

Helen and Steven went to a church to ask a priest for a blessing of the house. Helen was baptist and didn’t like walking into the church. She could feel God’s judgmental eyes on her and she didn’t like it. The priest agreed to preform a blessing on the house.

When the priest arrived, he didn’t do the blessing as Ken (the ghost hunter) had told them he should. He went through the house very quickly, and before he even got to his car, the banging started again. Helen called Ken back up and he told them they should do the blessing themselves.

Part 3: Chapter 35

Steven found Ken, a demonologist who investigated over 10,000 cases. He told Helen to get a priest to do a good blessing on the house. He went on to explain what a good blessing was, how to prepare for it, and to call him after to let him know what everything was going. This was a relief to Helen and Steven. They didn’t feel so stupid.

Part 3: Chapter 34

The MPR broke up after Alex became a “prisoner of war” to the house, as Steven explained it. Alex wanted to do a bloodletting ceremony in the basement of the Union House, using his blood and the blood of one of the boys from the neighborhood. Steven said no. Alex then asked Helen who also said no. Alex was institutionalized and everybody else left he MPR.

Part 2: Chapter 33

Helen called Steven up in the middle of the night and told him that she wanted to kill her husband. She saw a cane and had a vision that she hit him with it and it cracked his head open. She was afraid that she really wanted to. She also told Steven that the night before, she saw Kelly standing at the bottom of her and Charlie’s bed looking at them like she wanted to kill them.

Part 2: Chapter 32

Helen was never alone in the house any more. Somebody from the MPR was always with her. The encounters started to become more and more religious; the ghosts started saying Jesus and God when they passed them

“...I found myself standing to-to-toe with a large, black mist apparition hovering over my head it was huge and engulfing. Its negativity pulsed through me, making me nauseous. I stared at the mist as it hovered around and above me.”

“He [Mark] turned to see a large black-hooded figure with red glowing eyes enter the basement from the fruit cellar.”

“She [Helen’s mother] said a woman had answered Helen’s phone, uttering the Lord’s Prayer, and hung up.”

Part 2: Chapter 31

Helen and Steven had many people claiming to be psychics come to the Union House to try to figure out what was going on. All of them turned out to be drunks telling her her house was haunted and giving her names of the people haunting it. Every time, the names were different and so was the amount of people haunting the house. Steven, Helen, Alex (a psychic), Mary (a photographer), Mark (who had tons of surveillance equipment), and Carol (a sensitive), created the MPR, Missouri Paranormal Research.

Part 2: Chapter 30

This was a really short chapter and the first part was really uneventful. Helen called Steven up telling him something was growling at her and she was scared. Steven drove over to her house and could feel the shock when he walked in the house. He heard it growling and it seemed to be getting closer and closer. He screamed at it and the basement door opened three times. They sat down on the couch and Helen rolled up her sleeved and showed Steven a bite mark.

“She rolled up her sleeve, revealing what appeared to be a large, red, and bruised bite mark. I could see where the teeth had punctured her skin.”

“Something bit me in my sleep.”

Part 2: Chapter 29

Kelly called Steven and told him that she saw a baby hanging from the tree. Helen didn’t know whether to believe her or not, so Steven went over. Lightning flashed in the sky, coming closer to them. Why are there thunderstorms when something really creepy is going to happen? Steven, Helen, and Kelly stayed outside and then saw a baby hanging upside down from the tree. They stood petrified, not moving and no emotion. Steven decided it was best to stay with them that night until Charlie got home, though none of them slept.

“Hanging in the tree, lit only by the blinking flashes of lightning, was a baby. It hung upside down by its feet and wore a christening gown. The gleaming white gown flowed brightly in each flash of light. The child was clearly dead as it swung from the tree.”

“...the song of a ghost child.”

“Then violently, viciously, a low guttural growl came ripping through the window from outside.”

Part 2: Chapter 28

Steven is back at the house for the walk through with Helen, Betty, and Betty’s assistant, Lee. Betty was already winded when she came up the front steps saying that somebody didn’t want them there. A cold wind went past Steven and Helen and raised Betty off the ground and pushed her against the wall. Betty and Lee never came back to the house.

“A second later Betty was lifted about three inches off the floor and thrown against the wall.”

“Betty told us they had come across the spirit of a man upstairs. He made it clear to her that this was his house and he didn’t like having people live there.”

“‘There’s a vortex in the basement where spirits can freely come and go. Sometimes something very bad can come through these vortices.’”

“‘It isn’t my place to tell you to move, but if you continue to live here you need to try to avoid that area as much as possible.’”

Part 2: Chapter 27

Steven lost his job because he let a “woman of color get a managerial job”. Steven and Helen were both looking for jobs but found it harder and harder to find one.

Helen found out her daughter Kelly was cutting herself. She eventually found out that Kelly was hearing voices telling her to hurt and kill other people. She thought self-sacrifice would stop the voices.

Steven got in contact with Betty, a woman who gave tours at one of the most haunted places in America. Steven and Helen went to one of Betty’s tours and asked her to come back to the Union House to see what was going on. The three of them agreed on a date. Steven and Helen’s ride back was quite, until Helen started laughing. She commented on how that was one of the scariest places in America. What would Betty think when she went to the Union House?

Part 2: Chapter 26

Steven and Helen went to the library and court house to get some information on the Union House. They found out that the land was far more interesting than the actual buildings. On the land of the Union House, Officer Cromwell, a union soldier, had a slave labor building. Much of the land around the Union House had a lot of history and Helen and Steven really wanted to figure out what it was. On the land of the Union House, there were many painful and torture-some deaths. Illegal abortions were being had around the land, and possibly one to Officer Cromwell’s wife who supposedly got pregnant from a slave.

“Were all of these rumors and just folklore of a small town?”

Part 2: Chapter 25

Steven was on the phone for over two hours with Helen. They compared their stories of Mr. Winters and the happening in the house. Some were similar, but Helen seemed to be experiencing many more supernatural events. The gutters were catching fire and the transformer would light on fire every couple months. One time, she found her grandson at the bottom of the steps bloodied and bruised. When she asked him what happened, he said something pushed him.

“‘When I went into the bedroom I found the cat dead on the floor. Its neck and back were both broken. I got my granddaughter out of the room so she wouldn’t see it, but it was horrible.’”

“‘I was home alone one night last week...In the middle of the night came a knock on the door and it was the police. They told me a suicide call had came from my house…’”

Part 2: Chapter 24

Helen grew up a troubled life and left the house when she was young. She married young and had kids. She divorced young as well. She worked as a jail guard then a jail guard trainer and eventually worked at a juvenile correctional facility. One day, she feel down icy steps and broke a couple ribs but her food suffered the most damage. She had several surgeries which caused her to quit her job and become a stay-at-home-mom. One of Helen’s daughters made the same mistake she did when she was younger. Left the house young, got married young, had three children with an abusive husband, and then divorced him. She moved back in with her mother.
Helen was always the type of person that every child loved. She considered herself the surrogate mother to many different children in the neighborhood.

Charlie was a truck driver who also had kids from a previous marriage. When Helen and Charlie met, they felt an instant connection. They later got married and had a daughter. Charlie’s oldest son made the same mistake as he did. He had a drug problem, which really worried Charlie.

Charlie and Helen saw an add in the paper for the Union House. They thought it would be perfect for their family. What they didn’t know was what it was going to do to their family.

Part 2: Chapter 23

Sheila called Steven and told him that she went to the Union House. When she got there, a woman was sitting on the porch and told Sheila that her house was haunted when she asked. The house hadn’t been transformed into a dog kennel. The woman who lived there name was Helen March. She lived there with her two kids. Sheila gave Helen Steven’s number and told them to talk.

“The house was drawing me back.”

Part 2: Chapter 22

More dreams came after. One very vivid one where somebody with white eyes and pointed teeth was chasing him. It felt so realistic to Steven that he almost didn’t believe his daughter when she kept telling him it was only a nightmare.

Steven wrote about the events that took place at the Union House. When he finished, he posted them on the internet in hopes that at least one person would have had the same experience. When he woke up the next morning, Steven found over 100 e-mails in his inbox, all from people expressing their thoughts on the events. Steven was on a “strange social experiment known as the paranormal chatroom and forum” where he met Sheila. Sheila wanted to take pictures of the Union Home, which was now turned into a dog kennel.

“The sound of shattering glass brought me back to my senses. He was climbing through my window. A huge smile revealed pointed teeth. His white eyes danced with menace. He was in my room and I could clearly see him. He was a demonic imitation of a man.”

“Nothing could have prepared me for what was going to come.”

“That’s how I met Sheila, and because of her I was about to meet Helen.”

Part 2: Chapter 21

Part 2 takes place a couple years later. They’re still in the duplex, but Steven is getting a test done to figure out why he isn’t sleeping well. He was in a pitch black room, which he didn’t like because of the Union House. He thought he suffered from a deep depression, but it turns out that he had sleep apnea. He stopped breathing once a minute. He asked the doctor what that meant about his nightmares. The doctor looked at him puzzled and told him he shouldn’t be dreaming because the apnea doesn’t let him go into REM sleep.

“‘No, Mr. LaChance, with this type of sleep deprivation you should not be dream at all. No dreams. No nightmares.’”

Part 1: Chapter 20

Mr. LaChance and Steven had to pack up their old house. This would be the last time they would be in this house. The banging started again and Steven screamed at the ghosts. They were quite for the rest of the time they were there. 

Steven and his kids got to the new house and decided they would all sleep together, not because they were scared to be apart, but because they wanted to be together. The ice cube maker dropped ice into the freezer. The kids screamed and Steven laughed.

Steven had the same bad dream that night, but woke up in the morning ready to get his kids together for Sunday School.

“It was just the icemaker, guys. No bogeyman this time.”

Part 1: Chapter 19

Steven spoke with Mr. LaChance who brought his friend Lillian with him. Steven wanted out of the least and the only way to do that was to have someone else rent the house. He felt bad knowing that they wouldn’t know about what was in the house. Steven suggested that the next person to buy the house shouldn’t have children. Mr. Winters agreed and his (Mr. Winter’s) cousin was going to lease it.

Steven stayed with his parents until that time and found a new place to live.

“...do you practice witchcraft here in my house, stirring things up and such?”

“‘That charged feeling you sometimes get when you move around the house?’ I nodded in shock...Lillian simply laughed. “Well, that’s your ghost, honey. I felt it as soon as I walked in the front door.’”

“It would be a house without a history, and safe for me and my family.”

Part 1: Chapter 18

Mr. and Mrs. LaChance arrived with Josh and his wife, Rita. Mrs. LaChance said once again that the house seemed too quite and the shock went through her. They head whispering coming from upstairs and the men (Steven, Josh, and Mr. LaChance) went up to see what it was. The screaming started again, but quite this time. The scream was a heavy labored breathing coming between Rita and Steven. 

Everybody left the house, knowing what was in it was the question. Josh waited with Steven while he locked the door. They head something above them and then saw a shadow drop to a branch. Steven and Josh ran. They could feel what was in the tree was following them. 

“I tried to get straight in my mind what was happening to my family. There had to be answers, and tomorrow I was going to get them from that old man [Mr. Winters].”

Part 1: Chapter 17

Steven was on the phone with his mother when he heard doors rattling. He figured it was just the kids playing. Eventually though, Lydia told him it wasn’t them; the boys were sleeping and she was reading. The screams and the loud boom started again, getting louder and louder. Steven was still on the phone with his mother who could hear all the commotion from the phone. Steven frantically screamed for her help. He hung up the phone and tried to get out of the house. The boys were already out but Lydia was in a state of shock; she wouldn’t move. They eventually go out of the house, backed up the car to the top of the hill and watched their house flicker and the black figure move from room to room.

“Then, as before, the doors rattled harder, but this time before I could say anything, Lydia’s scared voice cut me off. ‘Daddy, that’s not us. I’m reading and the boys are sleep.’”

“Whatever was in the house was searching for us. We could see its blackness move from room to room, searching carefully, methodically. Oh my God, I realized. It was looking for us.”

Part 1: Chapter 16

Steven got home early and met his kids and bother at his parents house. They all caught up on everything and then Steven took the kids home. They spent the next day shopping, seeing a movie, and going out to dinner. Their day was so filled with so many thing, all of them were asleep once their head hit the pillow. 

Steven had another bad dream. It was the same dream he kept having. He heard someone’s labored breathing coming from the basement. He went downstairs and saw a man taking a shower who was scrubbing his body so much, that he was bleeding. Steven shot up from bed, looked around, told himself it was only a dream, and went back to sleep without waking the kids. The next time he woke up was 5:07 p.m. He was late for dinner at his parents.

“The room begins to spin. The sound of his desperation matches the tempo of the rushing water. Still the room spins, spins, spins. I can still feel his eyes on me. I can’t breathe. Oh my God, I can’t breathe…”

Part 1: Chapter 15

Steven, the kids, and his parents went back to the house the next morning. Someone commented that the house seemed quite, then there was a loud boom. Steven’s mother suggested that maybe there was a wild animal living in the house. They searched but didn’t find anything. Lydia came running in the room and told them to look in the shed. They found boxes of birth and death certificates. Steven called Mr. Winters to ask if anybody else experienced anything life they have been. He said no. They hung up and Mr. Winters called back right away saying that a drug dealer lived there before and that maybe a spirit was in the house because they were such bad people. They hung up again and Mr. Winters called back. He offered to call a priest to do an exorcism, but Steven said no.

Steven was leaving for his buisness trip and the kids were staying with Mr. and Mrs. LaChance. Mrs. LaChance suggested that maybe being away from the house for a while would be good for them.

“As I put the key into the lock, the shade on the door moved aside as if someone was peering out at me. With a shudder, I hurried to lock the door and we were gone.”

Part 1: Chapter 14

Steven and the kids came home, and the light were all on, yet again. The kids were out of school and summer had officially started. As they were getting ready for bed, they payed a board game. Steven saw a figure in the corner. He thought it was only his imagination, but then realized it was coming toward him. His plan was to calmly leave the house, not letting the kids suspect anything. As they got out of the house, they heard something fall and heard a loud scream that made all the dogs in the neighborhood bark. They went to Steven’s parents house, and to Steven’s disbelief, his father believed him that the house was haunted.

“You don’t think you rented a haunted house, do you?”

“I envied their [Mr. and Mrs. LaChance] life, a life that I would never lead.”

“...I glanced up at the second-story windows that peeked through the leaves, and for a brief moment I though I saw someone spying on us from above. I blinked and looked again, but there was no one there. What an imagination…”

“I noticed it first out of the corner of my eye, just a quick flick of movement, something in the doorway that led to the family room. I looked toward it again and realized that it wasn’t something; it was the dark figure of a man backlit by the light from the kitchen. He was solid in form, except his form seemed to be made up of moving, churning dark gray and black smoke or mist. I looked down at the game board, certain that when I looked up again it would be gone. I was tired, I told myself; my eyes were playing trick son me. I kept trying to rationalize what I had just seen, but I couldn’t. When I looked up again, he was still there. And to my horror, he began to move toward us. He came slowly at first, but then he picked up momentum. He moved into the family room and paused in the center of it. His form was still a churning mass of blackness. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his eyes watching me, staring directly at me, challenging me. He stood in the center of the room for what seemed like an eternity but was actually only a few moments. Then he melted from sight. He was gone.”

“...a loud, painful, tortured, agonized scream came pouring out of the house. Our house! It was the voice of a man screaming in pain, and it was so loud that the neighborhood dogs began barking in response.”

Part 1: Chapter 13

Steven breaks it to the children that he was going on another business trip and that they were going to be staying with their grandparents. 

The lighting situation has really been bothering Steven. They know that before leaving their house in the morning, that they turn all the light off, but when they get back home, all the lights are on. Steven and Lydia even go through the house in the morning making sure of it. Also, an “electrical charge” went through Steven one of the days. He was worried that something was going on with their electric. He called his father over. They heard something upstairs fall and then felt the charge go through their bodies. Steven’s father assured him that what he was feeling wasn’t electrical, but the lighting situation was a different story.

“As I turned the corner onto our street, I saw that we had again left on all the lights in the house.”

“Something odd was going on though. Every day, when we left the house for school and work, I would make sure that all of the lights were turned off. Every night we would come home to find the house blazing brightly with every light on.”

“A surge of panic ran through me as I pulled up to the house. Someone had to have been in the house since we left that morning. I ran from the car and through the front door. I checked the living room, the family room, the kitchen, my room, the boys’ room upstairs, the bathroom, the basement. Nothing.”

Part 1: Chapter 12

This was the third day in the new house. Lydia, Michael and Matthew had to get up early for the grandparents to pick them up to go to Sunday School. When they got home, they changed and excitedly did yard work. Matthew thought he saw something chase him up the steps, but Steven assured him nothing was there. Matthew then went to the bathroom and claimed to have seen it again. Steven started to worry about him. He was wondering if the move was too much for him or not having a mother was too much for him. “...I looked up the steps and that’s when I saw it. It was so horrible. It came rushing down the stops at me...A clown, a monster clown came after me.”

That night, a noise woke Steven up from a deep sleep. When he sat up, he saw someone. “...an old man wearing a red flannel shirt stood there. He was motionless, expressionless, just staring, staring at me and my three sleeping children. I rubbed mt eyes. When I opened them again the doorway was empty.

Part 1: Chapter 11

This was Steven, Lydia, Michael, and Matthew’s first and second night in the house. Steven and Lydia set up the kitchen while the boys played upstairs. Lydia wanted so badly to sleep in her room that night, so she was the only person sleeping upstairs. Steven set up his canopy bed in the living room for him and the boys, since they were getting new beds that would arrive the next weekend.

“Each of the interior doors had an old-fashioned hook and eye latch, but they weren’t located on the inside of the doors, so anyone within the room could maintain privacy-but one the outside as if to keep someone in the room.”

“Slightly irritated, I hung it [the angel pictures] a third time, but this time, when I turned and began to walk away, I felt a rush of air and something hit the back of my ankles. ‘What the hell…’ I turned to see the picture lying at my feet.”

“People don’t like walking in front of our house, Dad. Isn’t that weird?:

“She looked at me with sleepy eyes and said, ‘I was, Daddy, but my closet door kept opening up. And it sounded like boxes were moving around in the room. I got a little scared so I came down here.’”

Part 1: Chapter 10

It's moving day! Steven's dad came to help the pack, load the truck, and move. Steven's father drove the moving van. One of their soon-to-be old neighbors claimed that Steven's dad hit his car with the moving van. He didn't, but since the moving van was insured by a company, the man would have his car repaired for free. This angered Steven. 

"'Hope you get along okay here,' called the passenger, and then the car sped up and drove away. 

'What do you think of that, Dad?' my daughter asked, slightly puzzled.

'Friendly neighbors, I suppose,' I replied..."

Part 1: Chapter 9

The stress of being a single father finally sank in the night before Steven and his kids were going to move into their new house. Steven was thinking about his life before and after his wife, how he didn't have any friends.

That night, Steven had a dream. Steven and his kids were living in their new house. Someone pounded on the door. When he opened it, it was his wife holding a small bundle. She handed him the bundle and said "I told you before, I can't be a mother." Steven soon realized that the small bundle his ex-wife had dropped off was a baby. LaChance didn't know what the baby represented after he woke up from that dream. The child he and his wife were supposed to have?

"I've heard people refer to the hours between midnight and six a.m. as the lonely hours, the suicide hours."

Part 1: Chapter 8

Steven went to the house to meet Mr. Winters, who was late as usual. The walk through went well. Quick and well. Steven and his kids now had a new house.

"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. LaChance?"

Part 1: Chapter 7

LaChance and his family got the house that they saw previously in the book. Mr. Winters, the relator, wanted to meet with LaChance to iron out a few final "kinks". They met at a restaurant to sign some papers and pay the down payment. Mr. Winters wanted to meet with Steven for a walk-through, again. The time that Mr. Winters offered wasn't a doable time for Steven. Steven offered six o'clock and Mr. Winters said they had to do it quickly because he didn't like driving in the dark.

Part 1: Chapter 6

LaChance's youngest son Matthew woke up from a nightmare. He claims he saw a man in the corner of his room. LaChance the father routine check of under the beds, in closets, and in the bathroom. LaChance had Matthew sleep in his room that night. LaChance wanted to get a glass of water and saw a dark shadow of somebody running by. He laughed it off and thought it was only his imagination.

LaChance had a nightmare that night too. "It was one of those nightmares in which you think you're awake, but you're not." LaChance looked up and saw a blurry figure above him. This figure was pushing LaChance farther and farther into his bed. There was so much pressure that LaChance couldn't breathe. LaChance prayed to God to let him live through this.

"'God isn't here. It's just...' It paused and revealed its face to me: the face of Christ possessed, Christ gone mad. '...me.'"

Part 1: Chapter 5

LaChance saw an add for a house. It sounded amazing. He called the relator and found out it was only $600 a month to rent. He figured something was drastically wrong with it, for that great price. LaChance went to the open house and got a "museum tour" of the entire house.

Part 1: Chapter 4

LaChance started a job at a photography company. He had been hired to open a new studio in one of the biggest malls  in St. Louis. The job provided the LaChance family with a lot more money, and LaChance himself with pride. The only downfall to this new job was the uniform that LaChance had to wear. "It wasn't even the tacky khaki vest that I had to wear. It was the hat. It was an ugly hat. A professional clown would blush to wear this ridiculously ugly hat. It was brightly color all the way  around from the top to bottom. A beaded wire stuck straight up from the center of the hat and, to add insult to injury, on top of that wire was a brightly color propellor."

With LaChance's newfound status and money, he started opening up more and more photography studios around America. This, however, took him away from his kids quite often. For every studio he opened, he had to hire and train each of its managers.

Part 1: Chapter 3

LaChance had to find new housing for his family. They went through many different apartments, all with either nosey tenants or landlords, or stalker-esque neighbors. They found themselves not staying in one place for too long. Though in the apartment they were living in in 2000, it saved them from the devastation that the flood had caused Union, Missouri.

"Anyone living in Union then will never forget that night, the night the waters raged."

Part 1: Chapter 2

LaChance's sister, Janice died two years before his wife left him. LaChance and Janice were very close.

Easter was the last time LaChance was going to see his sister. They were arguing over LaChance's relationship with his ex-wife. He describe it as only a fight siblings could have. He eventually realized that she was only looking out for him and wanted the best for him.

Janice died in May. She took a nap and never woke up. Her kids were home, thought she was sleeping, and didn't bother her. Janice's husband found her dead.

This event was a very difficult time in LaChance's life. The sister that he looked up to wasn't going to be with him anymore; they weren't going to grow old together in a nursing home like they had joked about.

At the funeral, LaChance thought it was going to a somber time for him to reflect on their relationship, but when he got up to her casket, LaChance felt anger, pain, and fear. He didn't understand why God chose him to have to deal with this kind of pain. LaChance's relationship with God dwindled until there wasn't a relationship anymore.

"Early one morning about a year after Janice's death, Lydia told me she had seen Aunt Jan. 'She was in my closet last night wearing a pretty yellow dress.'"

Part 1: Chapter 1

Chapter 1 basically explained a little about Steven A. LaChance's (the author's) life. He grew up in Union, Missouri and stayed there. He married his high school sweetheart and had a daughter, Lydia, and two sons, Michael and Matthew. LaChance said, "...Matthew's birth would be the last happy day in the life of my marriage." LaChance's wife went into a deep depression and decided to divorce him, leaving him with the children. LaChance moved around with his children shortly after he found out his ex-wife had kept their house. "Life as I knew it had been dramatically, drastically, and permanently altered with a few words and the slamming of a door."

The Book

For the independent reading project, I chose to read The Uninvited: The True Story of the Union Screaming Home by Steven A. LaChance. From reading the synopsis, it seems like an intriguing book.

This is www.borders.com's synopsis of it.

"What kind of evil lives at the Union Screaming House?

In this true and terrifying firsthand account, Steven LaChance reveals how he and his three children were driven from their Union, Missouri, home by demonic attackers. LaChance chronicles how the house's relentless supernatural predators infest those around them. He consults paranormal investigators, psychics, and priests, but the demonic attacks--screams, growls, putrid odors, invisible shoves, bites, and other physical violations--only grow worse. The entities clearly demonstrate their wrath and power: killing family pets, sexually assaulting individuals, even causing two people to be institutionalized.The demons' next target is the current homeowner, Helen. When the entities take possession and urge Helen toward murder and madness, LaChance must engage in a hair-raising battle for her soul.

Selected as one of the Best Books of 2008 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch."