Okay, here goes. We have never to this day figured out what plagued us, but it neverthless haunts us. I live in Brooklyn, New York. I moved into an eight family walk-up tenement building in Bushwick in 1995. There were always noises unaccounted for and strange “footsteps” that I just chalked up to neighbors in my building or the building next door. We shared a “courtyard,” if you want to call it that; the buildings had a shaft between them that allowed us to peek into each others’ homes via windows carved out in the apartments facing the shaft.
About the time my current husband and I started dating in 1998, I decided to go into a Bible study. Now, my two children from a previous relationship have a grandmother who practices Santeria, a “voodoo” and so-called Christian religion, and so when things got weird, we’d just say it was because spirits and demons revolved around her and tend to attach themselves to people from place to place and also to inanimate objects. I’m talking about watching movies “demon” based and having my parakeets die the next day stuff here… no joking. There were mysterious cracks in the walls that appeared out of nowhere, knocking that came from no one, that sort of stuff. The building is very old, and lights flickered often. But how many excuses could you come up with until you finally believe?
Well, we believe in demons, and how they mess with people, and finally we got to see one as we were talking to a friend in our living room. All of a sudden, all three of us saw a black “gloom” or streak pass by us, in BROAD daylight, with LIGHTS on. We were scared stiff, because we had been discussing the bible and to see this, well, it was unnerving. We said a prayer as we always do when we feel any negative presence arounds us. We had brothers from our congregation come and they advised us to not accept objects from questionable sources, to get rid of demonic movies and objects. We did, but we still were terrorized by an angry something. I got “spit” on often, I could feel it and see it on my skin, drops of wetness from nowhere, no leaks in my ceiling, nobody near me, just out of nowhere this happened. I would get angry because I felt this was my home, I felt violated.
My mom came to live with me soon after and she experienced this spitting also. There were days when I thought I heard her call me, but she wasn’t. And vice versa. We would hear children crying, but again, the buildings were so closely connected. Whisperings at night, it was something we got used to, until my daughter was born in 2000. She was sleeping peacefully on the bed, my husband was on the computer, I was watching tv. I turned to check on her and all of a sudden she was jerked, all of her was moved onto her side. I screamed “Oh my God! Did you see that???” I was frightened and angry, my baby is crying, and my husband just says we need to move. She was only a few weeks old. Too newborn to move by herself like that, and I have had two others before her who jerked in their sleep, but not like this.
We finally moved into public housing in 2001, and so far, haven’t experienced anything of the like since that place. The place since has had quite a few mishaps, gas leaks, electricity fires that caused it to be uninhabitable for awhile, and now it has been deemed okay for residents again. It is an an area notorious for a rich history in tobacco farming, a once thriving beer industry and also for the unfortunate fires that burned out most of Bushwick in the 70’s. I have been looking for answers to this mystery to no avail. But I swear to God, this really did happen, and although mild in comparison to other ghost stories and sightings, my “demon” story is true.
From: “Virginia Miller-Rivera” redvmille01@hotmail.com
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: My story
Date: Monday, March 20, 2006 2:31 AM