19 scary stories

16. The Watering Hole

My wife and I moved in to my parents’ house when my uncle died unexpectedly in 2009. They had to move in with my grandmother to take care of her, so we assumed ownership of my parents’ house. Now this house had been the watering hole for my town back in the day … the well is in my basement. It is a hole in my basement floor covered by a five foot wide slate rock. This is important because our priest told us spirits can travel along waterways, which is why every time we bless the house, it is only calm for a few months before things start happening again. Anyways…

We move into the house and things are nice. Everything is calm and my wife (fiancee, at the time) and I are happy to be out of my sister’s house. Once my wife gets pregnant things kick into high gear. Her shoes go missing on a daily basis when every day she puts them in the same spot after work. One day, when she was in the attic, she heard a woman ask: “Is that my baby?” She said the woman sounded genuinely confused as to whose unborn baby she was pregnant with.

Things kept escalating until one night when I was just about to turn off the lights and go to bed when I see a black mass by my wife’s side of the bed. It was pitch black and completely solid. Before I realized what I was looking at, my hand flipped off the lights and my sleeping wife immediately started speaking in what sounded like French. Since we took French in high school and college we deduced that she was saying “Je me suis.” Which means I am myself.

The next evening we were at play rehearsal for our local acting group and we were talking to our friend, Rhonda. As we were talking with her about random bits of small talk, we noticed she seemed very distracted. She kept glancing quickly from side to side, the way you would if you watching a bug zig-zag around a room. We asked what is going on and she said “I know this sounds crazy but there is this black thing in the auditorium. Every time I look at it, it moves … I just can’t get a fix on it.” We freak out and immediately tell her our story.

We leave the auditorium and call a priest to have a blessing for the house. As he is blessing the house he stops and does a double take at one of the crosses hanging on the wall. After the blessing is over he asks about it. My wife says it is beautiful and “it called to her.” She had to have it, she said.

He leaned back and said, that’s interesting … it’s a Benedictan Crucifix. We reply with “uhh….ok?” And he continues to say, “Benedictan crucifixes are used in exorcisms. It is very interesting that this crucifix called to you so strongly.”