The events of this particular day will always be remembered because it was the weekend Captain America the Winter Soldier came out. I believe it was the first weekend of April 2014.
A month prior to this movie premier, my cousin from Dallas came to visit, an elementary school teacher in a Dallas suburb and also a devout Christian. She was in the know of our paranormal events and decided to bring with her a wooden-metallic cross. Written on the cross were Bible verses from Joshua 1:9, Phil 4:13, Psalm 28:7 and Matthew 19:26; in summation, verses about "strength." The cross was prayed over and immediately hung in our bedroom at the time - the third most active place of the house; but also the place where we slept and layed our heads. So, a cross positioned high upon the wall seemed a great idea.
A week or so before the Captain America movie came out, the cross went missing. Missing objects in our home are not new and not a big deal. Things get taken all the time. Sometimes they return; sometimes they don't. The items that do return never get returned to the place they were taken. This cross would be no exception.
We noticed it missing the morning we woke up. If memory serves me correctly we were awakened to continuous taps and bangs. Some bangs coming from behind our headboard. Other religious objects have been taken before, and with the house being severely active, friends, family and clergy all advised us to display our belief system openly as a means of ridding the home of negative spirits. I'm a Christian. I wouldn't call myself a devout Christian but a believer none-the-less.
So at this point in the story, the cross is gone. It's missing. My girlfriend and I had already given up on the notion of even looking for it. After all, it was a gift from my cousin, a spiritual gift at that, a gift from the heart. No one else lived with us, and objects get taken all the time. Objects we eagerly search for never come back (so why be eager and search?).
It's Saturday morning (movie day), and the cross has been gone for a few days. Like most Saturdays in my house, it's laundry day. By 11am, I had been doing my laundry so I could go meet one of my friends for drinks and movies. The guys, us geeks if you will, are descending into Bellevue, Washington to watch the Captain America Winter Soldier movie; my girlfriend doesn't get into stuff like that, but I do.
I began my first load of laundry: colored clothing. My girlfriend, Tina, is walking to and fro around the house doing her own thing. While my clothes are washing, I decide to go into my office and watch TV, work on my PC, post in forums and search for answers to our poltergeist problem. About an hour later, I noticed something peculiar. My first load of clothing was still washing. Now I know there are long wash cycles but this was weird - my brain knows how long it takes for my clothes to wash. So I'm in my office and I glance toward the wash room, hoping to hear the beep beep beep, the noise the washing machine makes when it's done. Clothes don't wash for an hour, especially my clothes, and especially a light load of clothing. So I glance at the wash room and sort of look at the time on my PC toolbar and raise an eyebrow. After that I mentally shrug it off and keep working.
A few minutes later I hear this knocking sound: a banging and knocking. You know, the sound the washing machine or dryer makes when you have shoes or a big object in it? I hear this noise, and it's clearly coming from the washing machine. So, once again, I glance up from my PC and turn to face the washing machine or wash room, I should say. Now in my mind I'm thinking - that sound wasn't there before? All I put in the washing machine was clothing. Coins, chapstick, keys, etc wouldn't make that noise. And even if it did, those sounds would have been heard almost immediately.
At this point, the wash cycle had run nearly over an hour. So why the loud noises now? Normally I would get up, walk to the washing machine and open it up to see what the commotion was about. But something prevented that idea from crossing my mind; maybe I was either preoccupied with my computer or with watching television. It was very uncharacteristic of me to not stop what I was doing and investigate.
Looking back and reliving the moment, it seems weird for me to not get up and investigate the noise, especially with the previous events having happened in this house. I acknowledged the noise, and length of time it was taking for that load to complete, but still stayed in my office.
A few minutes later, the washing machine finally beeped informing me that the load was complete. A few minutes after the beep, I got up and went to the washing machine to transfer my clothes to the dryer. As I was pulling out clothes and tossing them into the dryer (a few inches away), I immediately grabbed hold of something solid. Not clothing. Not shoes. Not anything except a metallic-wooden cross. I didn't know what it was until I pulled it out of the washing machine.
There in my hand, wet, was the missing cross my cousin gave me. There are two key points I want to make (this account is 100% true). Some might say, "Well maybe the cross was already in there to begin with." Not so. As I mentioned prior, the noise would have been heard early on, especially during the spin cycle. The knocking noises I heard began 15 minutes before the washing was complete. When my machine is done it beeps. And also the washing machine was empty when I filled it with my clothing. Some might say, "Maybe you accidentally put the cross in the machine when you loaded in the clothes." Nope. It was a colored clothing load (machine wash COLD/WARM). I sorted my clothing carefully, meaning items went into the machine almost one at a time. A cross this size was not going to be grabbed by mistake.
Someone might also think might girlfriend put the cross in the machine. My girlfriend was not ever near the washing machine that day, and I never left my office. The washroom sits right outside my office. And she wouldn't stop my wash load regardless. I do my laundry, and she does hers.
I had to get those particulars out of the way because I realize people gravitate to the obvious explanation. And that is understandable but allow me to paint the picture near perfect as possible because it even hasn't began to get weird yet. In my hand is the cross my cousin gave me. It was wet and broken. I then called my girlfriend to the room. When she arrived, we both examined the cross top to bottom. It had been taken the week before, about 4-5 days prior to turning up in the washing machine.
After this incident, the cross went missing several more times in 2014; but it never re-appeared in the washing machine again.
I have pictures of the cross before and after it went missing. If needed I can provide it. Its quite interesting the condition of the cross after popping up in the washing machine.
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