The Tape
By Beth

My friend, Leah, and I were trying to contact the dead through audio tape. We were 19 and no one was home in my house as my mom was out of town. I put the tape in the player and pushed record. We made silly requests of the (demon) that we had been talking to on a homemade Ouija board made of paper just moments earlier. We asked it to sit beside us and kiss us and a lot of other crap that I don't remember.

Leah stopped her joking and asked me if I'd heard anything... of course, I had not. Then, she said it again, "Did you hear that?" "No," I said. She told me to listen and then I did hear it. It was a low sound like a growl which started to get louder and louder. It literally yelled at us! I jumped up and tried to run, but I couldn't get out of the room. Something was stopping me. Also, I couldn't see. Ever hear of anyone being so scared that they couldn't see straight? That was me. I pushed my way through the doorway... it was difficult... like a barrier was there. I ran down the hall and realized that something or someone was holding onto me. It was Leah. She had grabbed me around the waist just as I escaped the room.

As it turned out, I dragged Leah all the way down the hall until we collapsed in the TV room. She had horrible carpet burns where I had dragged her, but it wasn't funny. She asked me what we should do and all I could say was "Pray! Pray to Jesus to forgive us and to protect us!" We did.

After we had calmed down, we went to the door of the house hoping it would not be locked and would let us out. We ran out onto the street and walked to her counselor's house. The counselor's husband went back to my house and checked the tape, asking if anything else had been recorded on the tape. "No," I said. "The tape is new. See, there is the wrapper." He listened for awhile with headphones at my request. I didn't want to hear the demonic voice again.

After a few minutes, he told me that I had a promise to keep. I had told the spirit that I would destroy the tape. The promise... I said I would never let anyone hear the tape. I had broken my promise and was fearful of the consequences. I gave the tape to my boyfriend to destroy, too chicken to do it myself. I trusted him with the tape and told him the whole story about what Leah and I had done that night. He agreed to get rid of it and I believed him.

About two weeks later, I asked my boyfriend to move in with us against my mother's wishes. She allowed it after a very long and heated family meeting. I couldn't sleep. I had nightmares of something trying to coax me into jumping off the roof of my house or drowning myself in the bathtub. I heard voices arguing about something, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. It sounded almost like a language that I could understand, but I was missing a few things in translation. It's was a language I would recognize if I heard it again. Kind of like when you know someone is speaking Spanish or Japanese... you recognize the language being spoken, but you still can't understand it. I heard two female voices arguing and thought it might be coming from above me, but then I heard sounds coming from the basement as well. Like two women were whispering loudly, unable to agree on something.

I woke my mom and she brought her gun fearing that someone had broken into our home. We went to the door in the hall that led to the basement which is where our big dog lived - a not so friendly red wolf and Rottweiler mix. We crept down the stairs and we both heard the voices. As we neared the end of the stairs, the voices turned into hisses. Terrified, I just ran the rest of the way down the steps hoping to confront my fear and be done with it. There was a huge opossum backed into a corner by my barking dog. I really felt stupid. My mom and I managed to run the nocturnal guest back outside. It ran straight out the open door into the back yard.

I felt relieved that it was just a big opossum, but that still didn't explain the voices I'd heard. It kept me wondering if I had imagined it all. Still, I slept on the couch at this time before my boyfriend moved in. Things happened. When I would turn off the TV at night, I would see two red eye shaped figures that seemed burned into the screen. They were very detailed eyes, not just shapes. Framed pictures would fall off the walls. I would hang them back up and after school they would be on the floor again with the nails still in the wall. Strangely, the pictures were hung directly on the adjacent walls to the room where Leah and I had tried our little experiment.

Back to the tape. I thought my boyfriend had gotten rid of it like he'd said he would. We rode in his car to his family's house and, on the way, I noticed the tape was on the console. I confronted him angrily with more anger than I've ever felt. How could he do that to me? He knew how I felt! I told him what I'd been through and how scared I was. I took the tape and pulled it out of the casing and sent it flying down a country road. To hell with him and his curiosity! That taped was damned in my opinion! I later learned that he backtracked the country road, fixed the tape and listened to it!

Many things happened after that. My boyfriend moved in and Leah was staying on the couch. I had returned to my room with my boyfriend. The other room was left vacant and no one went in there unless they had to turn off the light that would just come on by itself occasionally. My cousin had left long ago and, to this day, won't talk about his experiences in that room. My boyfriend and I saw shadows on the wall - shadows of tiny demonic figures with large male parts. When we tried to find the source of these shadows by turning off the lights and moving things in the room, the shadows stayed and sometimes would leave without us moving anything.

One night, Leah, my boyfriend and I, were alone in the house. We'd decided to rent a few movies and get a pizza. My boyfriend lay on the floor in front of the TV watching Caligula. Leah and I were on the couch. I saw a light come down the hallway, starting out small but getting larger and larger as it approached the living room. It expanded wide and grew until it reached the size of the hall entrance. It was huge, bright and silent. When it finally reached the door frame, it sort of exploded (quietly) and disappeared. I asked Leah, or she asked me... I'm not sure... if I had or she had seen that. She said yes and I said yes. We both kind of hurriedly told my boyfriend what we had seen and asked if he had seen it, but he said no. Leah and I had BOTH seen it. I know it wasn't a car's headlights or anything like that as it traveled down the hallway, and was too contained and dense. There were no open doors or windows for light to have reflected. That light was so bright! It was nearly blue and silver and the way it shimmered and dispersed was too three dimensional to be a reflection.

The night before, I had prayed to God to help me get rid of my irrational fears or the real things that were in my house. I prayed that He would free me and banish whatever evil was in the house so that I could sleep again and walk down the hallway past that room. I just wanted to cook a meal without hands poking me in the back. I wanted to bathe without smoky filaments wafting through the air, without steam forming on the bathroom mirror that looked like an evil jester, without the thought of dying sometime during the day or night. I wanted to use the vacuum without looking over my shoulder. Once I took a bath with the door open and I was wearing my mother's gold chain and cross. I felt really relaxed, then I noticed the cross was moving upwards toward my neck in and upside down position! That was the last straw! My faith was all I had. I prayed yet again, like I had always done.

The next day was when the light appeared in the hallway. I still think the house is haunted because since we moved out, no one seems to stay longer than a couple of months. It's a rental now.

I know that I broke my vow of silence, but I also know that my faith sustains me. Without it, I would not be here. I know that is a fact.

A word of advice to anyone who wishes to contact the dead for personal or other means. DON'T! You will not get who you ask for. It says it loves you or knows you or whatever. It might even tell you things only you and the deceased would know, but you HAVE NOT made contact. The thing you are talking to is a LIAR! It knows what you want and it will deceive you. That's how this whole mess started. I just wanted to speak with a dead person that I knew. It was not him. It was an imposter who knew what I wanted to hear and made friendly with me. Later on, it wanted me to kill myself. It told me so. This imposter went from a friendly voice to a destructive influence that haunted and terrified me for a long, long time! Your loved ones are at rest and cannot contact you. Believe me, please. If someone you love has passed away, they are at rest. Anyone else you reach is not your friend! They can fool you. My demon told me things I only knew, then it requested that I kill myself. Please, don't try to contact the dead. They are at rest. Ghosts are reflections of life or imposters. Believe me, please!