Room 501

One of my most profound experience to date, if I had to pick one would be an apartment I lived in briefly in Bellingham, WA. 

It was in the spring of 2013 and I had just moved out of a place with a friend into a low-income housing building located in the original downtown area called the Mount Baker Apartments that was built in 1929. My room was located on the 5th floor in room 501.
 I felt I needed my own space. Growing up an only child, I was used to being alone. Yet I felt the moment I walked in that something was not right. But I was determined to cleanse the energy and make my own comfy abode with my cat, Nico.  Not only was the room cleaned by myself, but others. One native, a Reiki "master" and an acquaintance who was into Wicca. 

Still, however, things never seemed right. I would hear noises in a small room, only to be the only one there, I also heard what seemed to whisper coming from my closet, I would have horrible nightmares, and constantly feel like whenever I was alone, I was not really alone. 
My cat, Nico would constantly be looking at things in the air that I could not see and went from a social and fun cat to hiding under the futon couch or in the bathroom.  She wouldn’t go near the closet.  
 It was an old building that had an elevator that would constantly lose power and the lights would go off. I will never forget the first time I felt threatened was when I woke up on my 3^rd night there in the middle of the night to the faucets in my kitchen and bathroom opened full blast spraying water everywhere.  I had no explanation and it didn’t stop there. 
 One particularly muggy and warm night there were several of us sitting in the room watching a movie. We had all the old heavy wooden windows open with props as they tended to not like to stay up. Two had large books, one a wooden block,  and the other an empty Absolute Vodka bottle to keep them up.  All of a sudden all at once All 4 windows slammed down, shattering two of them and knocking the props holding them up 5 stories down into the alleyway. 

Then, one night, I had a friend over for the night and early morning another friend stopped by with coffee to visit.  We were up late talking about spirits, my current as well as past encounters, and hers as well. 
In this building I had to physically go downstairs and open the door for people when they came over, I couldn’t just buzz them in I had to go downstairs and let them in after they buzzed the phone.  Within seconds I heard a bloodcurdling scream (and I lived on the 5^th floor) and her running down the stairs. She entered the lobby shaking, trembling, and looked extremely unnerved.  We all went back upstairs to show us what she saw. 
The closet doors were double doors, each door twice as wide as a normal door, and made of extremely heavy wood.  She said she was sitting in the bed watching a movie waiting for me to bring him back up and the closet door opened full wide and slammed 3 times.  It caused her to spring out of bed and down to us, white as a sheet and still in her pj’s.

At this point, I knew I had to get out of there. 
After speaking with another tenant, I found out that the previous tenant had hung himself in the closet not only a month before I moved it. 
It was lucky timing that shortly after I met someone and we moved in together.  Unfortunately, my cat Nico never did get through it. The energy in that room changed her, and when we moved she became something out of Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery.  She would hide up in the rafters and dive-bomb you.  She would hiss and scratch, and even after another move, she got worse and eventually needed to be put down.  

The House on the Reservation

When I was 19, a friend and I moved into an apartment together. Along with our partner in crime, we were like the three musketeers.  We did everything together. There was never any bad energy in our place, and we never had a problem at all, that was until we learned about “the house”

It was the Christmas Season and I was with my Mum at a friend’s having Christmas Breakfast.  There were a lot of kids there around the ages of 13-16 and I overheard them talking about this house that was out on the reservation.  I immediately interjected into the conversation with my interest in haunted locations and got some pretty amazing first-hand stories and claims from these individuals. 

There were reports of ghost hitchhikers, (which was our first encounter) lights seen in the attic in a house that had been abandoned for decades and was nearly falling apart.  Others had seen lights on the lower floor and when they went in they would hear footsteps upstairs, and when upstairs hear footsteps downstairs.  Also, there was this phenomenon that would cause people to drive by to have their cars to lose power.  Static on the radio, dead radios, headlights that wouldn’t work, and full-on vehicle power loss. 

I was instantly intrigued and asked for directions and a map to this house.  One thing that really piqued my interest was that there were two horse skulls on each side of the house, on the gate in front of the driveway that eye’s glowed red.  It was a super creepy site of those horse skulls red eyes staring you down almost as to warn you.  Don’t go in here!! But what did I do? Of course, I did.     

It became an obsession for the three of us after our first visit there.  We became drawn to the house and found ourselves heading out just to see it, feel its energy… and eventually, go inside.  Our countless trips there all resulted in strange phenomena.  Our radio in the truck would go out, we would hear static sometimes and others lost power completely.  And saw lights both in the upper and lower floor.

Everything became about the house. Whether we were talking about it, researching it, or planning trips out there.  We tried to learn as much about the house as possible, and after going to the local historical society and library (this was back when the internet was not widespread and investigation was all done the old fashioned way. In my opinion the best way) but because it was tribal land we were lucky with any information.

Yet, the story went (it was a known island story that’s one the thing we did discover) that back in the 1930’s a man a woman-owned a farmhouse and owned a small business growing grain.  The husband was away on business and two men broke into the house, raped the woman and literally hacked her to bits.  Now again, this was only the story…. Which I cannot say is really true, the effect the house had on us and the feelings we got when we finally went in however, they were very real.

A few weeks leading up to finally going inside, we all started having horrible nightmares. Often they would be so vivid it would wake us with sweats, tears, and terrified.  We were trapped in the house and couldn’t get out.  My roommate had such a vivid nightmare about being trapped in the house and she could hear her Mom outside trying to save us.  All the windows were bordered up and as she would pull them loose, they would fly back and attach themselves.  There seemed to be no way out.. I woke to her jumping in my bed with me shaking and crying. I had a different story.. We were in the house and it was as it was back in the day.  I could see all the furnishings and pictures on the wall, an orange 60’s looking chair, and a sofa on a big round rug and a small kitchen.  I was standing in the kitchen looking into the main room, the lady was sitting in the chair watching her programs when two men break into the house.  There is a struggle and I witness before me the unspeakable horror of watching the massacre that had had this strange, but strong hold on us all. 

This only made us more interested.  Why the dreams, why the draw to the house… can we help this lady? is she trapped there and that's why car’s stall in front of the house, and is she the source of the light people see on both the upper and lower floor? We wanted to know more, so it was time to go in.

Several of our friends were now also interested as they saw our obsession with this “haunted house” grow and grow… they wanted to come.  Two of them did, so it was the 5 of us.  We went out during the day because the house was so run down and dilapidated, parts of it looked like it could fall apart with a touch.  We parked our cars and got out to approach the fence.  I got a better look at the horse skulls that have haunted us for weeks up close and they were indeed real.  Someone had put reflectors in them, that’s why they were glowing red at night. 

Suddenly a gust a wind so strong it actually knocked one of the guy’s hats off his head blew around the house while the tall grass all around us stand still, completely still.  We all looked at each other saying without words, “it’s now or never” We entered the house through the side porch to the kitchen as the main one was almost caved in and the upper eves were drooping down in front. It looked very unsafe.

Once we entered the back door we were in the kitchen. It looked like someone had just got up and left.  There were plates of molded food on the table, a kettle on the stove and other things that had not been picked through by squatters.  It was eerie.. And then I saw the living room.  I had a strange kind of flash back to my dream as I saw a sofa pushed back and on its side in the back, a big round rug rumpled in the corner to expose a deep dark stain on the floor which was obviously old blood which also was on the walls and even the ceiling. Then, there it was, the orange 60’s style chair just like in my dream. 

We explored the rest of the lower level and upon some of our findings were old farm equipment and rusted tools hanging on the walls propped up with nails.  Everything from what looked like an old bear trap, a set of chains, and other stuff that looked like old-time farm tools. We also found a dead cat and a whole bunch of invoices for their company strewn about the house and up some stairs.  We went up the stairs, worried they could fall beneath us. So we all together went carefully up to find just a small room with another door.  This was obviously the door to the attic where often lights are seen from the road.  One of our friends was quite built, and strong and he pulled as hard as he could, nothing we could do would make the door budge.  Just then we heard some movement…. Downstairs.  We were all accounted for upstairs.  As we decided to give up and go back down as we descended the stairs and door with the stairs to the attic slowly just opened on its own.  At this point we felt like it was time to leave

But all I could do was think of going back and going in that attic.

We felt like we needed to do something to help this woman that we had come to believe was trapped in that house.  Through our dreams, our obsession, and the energy that house and it’s effects it had not only on us, but those around us made us feel like there was more to it.  We had to do something.  So, being the young, and ignorant to the power of the paranormal we used a Ouija Board to contact here and got a response asking for help.  We asked how we could help, but couldn’t decipher what the spirit needed. It seems that we had done what it needed because our next and last trip to the house all seemed normal.  No electrical problems, no wind, no evil feeling.  We drove home in silence and its hold seemed to let go. 

Not long after the house was torn down and the land lays there still, unsold, and unvisited.

Or so they think.  

Introduction to my paranormal life

My paranormal experiences started when I was a young child. I grew up in Point Robert's Washington. It is a small 5.4 square mile peninsula right on the 49th parallel. It also is in a cluster of ley lines that intersect right on the area. If you look at the map of Washington you will see a small bit of land over the line, that is Point Robert's. 

A great deal of the land is ancient burial ground, as it was once occupied by the native American tribe of Tsawwassen, as proven through historical evidence and information. 

I did my senior paper on the area, and through the historical society, library, and interviewing the older residents I learned that it had never been an odd thing to experience the explainable.  UFO enthusiasts know that it is an area where there have been many sightings over the years (my first was when I was 7 years old) .... but my paranormal experiences started when I was very young, even before my first NDE. I was always into the macabre, loved horror movies, true crime, I knew more about famous serial killers than I did pop culture.. and that trend hasn't stopped.  That seemed to fuel my ability, because as I researched more, and knew more I could reach out to that part of myself that I believe has always been there. 

I was born with congenital heart disease and had my first open heart surgery when I was 13 months old, and the second when I was 11. 

Things really started to pick up after my first trip to the other side during my open heart surgery when my hear stopped for 2 minutes and 37seconds. My second when I was 19 during a gallbladder removal surgery where they nicked my pancreas giving me a serious case of pancreatitis. I flatlined during surgery again for 1 minute and 42 seconds. 

After each time I began to see and feel  my senses heighten to feel and sense things that were seemingly not there.  I would feel drastic changes in energy depending on who I was around, and where I was. 

When I was 13, my Nana whom I was very close with passed, she was sick for some time and eventually the cancer took over her body.  We were always very very close. I spent a lot of my time with her while my Mum worked, and not only was I her namesake, but we looked more alike than I did to either my Mum or Father. 

The day she died, I was at school and I will never forget the way the room looked, what day it was, even what I was wearing.. almost like it was yesterday.  I got this overwhelming feeling of dread.  I asked to be excused to use the phone and call home and when I called to check on nana, my mum had a difference in her voice, I could hear it so clearly... she told me everything was fine, and I would see her after school. I found out that night that my dear Nana passed away nearly 3 minutes before my phone call. 

I feel some explanation was in need as it makes me who I am, and gives me the deeper connection and sensitivity to the other side that a lot of others do not have.