The Red Baron

Last fall my mom and stepdad offered to let me move into their new house, rent free, while I saved some money before moving to Europe.

Since it was a beautiful Indian summer, I took the opportunity to do some garage selling to look for furniture for my new room.

I saw a small garage sale and decided to check it out. The house was small and I have to admit the family was very strange. Looking through the small amount of stuff I spotted this very unique, very old looking red baron. After showing interest, the owner of the house came over and showed me it was in fact a music box. When you twisted the propeller of the plane it played a broken melody. It was cartoonish looking, with a creepy looking "red baron" pilot. I, for whatever reason, felt like I needed it.

Fast forward a week. We were moving in, I took the day to unpack and I came upon the red baron. I set him next to my bed on the night stand and went about my day.

That night I stayed up listening to music, poking around my new room and relaxing. I turned off the light and laid on my stomach in an attempt to fall asleep. All of a sudden I felt and heard someone come up behind me and breathe an ICE COLD breath down my neck. The creepiest part is I actually heard loud and clear the "huuuuuuhhh" sound someone makes when exhaling their breath. Total and complete panic ensued. I have never felt so scared for my life.

At that point I was sure someone had broken into the house and was going to harm me. I sprung out of bed, like a bat out of hell. Turned the light on, ready to fight for my life. I felt the adrenaline running through my body. No one was there. "Impossible!" I thought. I ran screaming and crying, like a 24 year old child, into my mom's room. I barged in and tried to explain hysterically what had happened. I knew what I was saying didn't make sense. I knew I sounded insane, so I just told her and myself I had a bad dream to spare the embarrassment. I knew this wasn't true but I was trying to be logical.

The next few weeks I found myself not wanting to go home. Usually at the end of my long days I couldn't wait to get home, now I dreaded it. Why? I'm not sure. It gave me anxiety. I hated being in my room and found myself sleeping in the living room most nights.

One night, after falling asleep in my room, I awoke at around 2:30. I couldn't sleep, I got up, went to the bathroom, laid in bed looking at my phone for a bit. Finally I decided to try to sleep. I closed my eyes and almost immediately the red baron music box started to play, the most broken eerie sounding melody. I am not kidding when I say I got full body chills. The chills seemed to make me sick to my stomach. I have never felt such intense chills. I froze but then sprung from bed, turned on the light to see if there was any reason this thing would be playing and then left the room.

At that point I knew there must have been a spirit attached to the music box. The following day I got rid of it. As stupid as this sounds, I talked to the music box, I told it I was getting rid of it and it was no longer allowed around me or around the house. I cleansed my room with Rook's method (couldn't do the whole house as my stepdad is a devote catholic and against anything like that) and that was the end of that problem... In my room.

Afterwards the heaviness left my room and it felt comfortable being in it again. It wasn't until a couple weeks later strange occurrences started happening again... Outside of my room.

My fiancé came to visit, during the day when I would work and no one was home. He would say he heard things (slider door opening, banging, etc.) At first, I thought he was just hearing the washing machine or possibly the refrigerator making sounds.

Then my best friend came to visit and more strange things happened. Glasses would break in the middle of the night in the kitchen. We would get up to check it out, it seemed something was pushing glass jars we had on display in the kitchen window into the kitchen sink. After she left things only got stranger.

One night I was sitting in my room, talking on the phone to my fiancé. My door was open, when suddenly something threw one of my earplugs (the hard plastic kind) at my door from the hallway. I SAW and HEARD the earplug directly hit my door. Whatever or whoever had thrown it, threw it with force. No one was home. There is no logical way that earplug could have been thrown at my door. I took this as a sign that whatever was there, couldn't enter my room and was trying to get my attention from outside of it. Creepy.

The last experience happened before I left for Europe. This one was by far the scariest. My mom and I were sitting in the living room watching TV, it was a quite scene in a movie when suddenly I heard, clear as day, someone yell, inside the house "HEEEEEELP!" It sounded like whoever it was was struggling for breath... Like they were in immense pain. I immediately thought it was my stepdad. I panicked and turned to my mom, "I JUST HEARD HELP!" My heart was pounding, I had my phone with 911 dialed in as we went to check on my stepdad. He was fine and didn't know what we were so worked up over.

Keep in mind we lived in the country and didn't have close neighbours, we checked outside anyways and nothing. I knew it wasn't outside though, as I had heard it inside. Afterwards I was frustrated and told my mom, "I know I heard someone say help." She told me she heard the exact same thing. I felt validated that finally my mom had experienced something.

What it was, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it had anything to do with the red baron music box. But I did do some research on the area and found out the road we lived directly off was a very busy pioneer road back in the day. One of the main ways into Spokane. Also, I drilled my mom and stepdad about the history of the house, the actual house was built 5 years ago, but before it was built there was an original homestead there. Dating back to the early 1900s, they plowed it over and built on top. Not good mojo in my book.

Since moving I haven't experienced anything, which is funny considering I now live in a house that was built in the late 1800s.