Strange Occurrences In Our Billerica House 2

After the events of D E Red and the young woman in the white dress (See: Strange occurrences in our Billerica House) J had enough of the Ouija board, and got rid of it. For me however, things just got weird.

We had a 20' round above ground pool, I took to swimming as if I were a fish in a human body. You could hardly ever get me out of that pool. One day I was swimming, the siblings were off with their various friends, so I was alone. So to speak, at this point, my father was unemployed, so he was "watching me". As in; from his bed fast asleep... Passed out... Take your pick. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't a bad man, he just liked to drink... More than work. He found out he was adopted when he was an angry youth, and in his mind he felt that he was garbage, thrown away by his real parents. I'm sure he isn't the only person who was adopted to ever feel that way, but that's how he dealt with it, drunk. I can't say anything personally about it, because I can't relate. An outsider can easily say "just get over it" but, unless you have experienced it, how can you say that. What I do blame my father for is the beatings, but that's another story, for a very different website. Anyway, as I was saying. I was swimming in our pool. My father had built a fence on that side of the house long before the pool was built, effectively hiding part of our backyard where we mostly played. The point of the fence is that, unless you have been there, you would never know that a pool was there.

So, there I was, doing laps, underwater, coming up for air each time I reached the wall. So I came up for air, and I saw two kids, about my age, which was 6 at the time (it's the 70's, many parents left their young children alone...right?) anyway, I said, "who are you?", they responded, giggling, "We're new here, do you want to play" their voices sounded funny, like they were talking into a fan, and there was something off about their faces, like puffy, but not puffy, I can't really describe it.

I swam over to them, I was across the pool from them when I saw them. I said, "O.K. Do you want to swim with me, or do you want to play hide and seek?" my two most favorite things to do. Just as I got within reach of them, they both reached out, grabbed my head, and forced me under water. I thrashed around under the water, squirming trying to get free, then they let go. I grabbed the side of the pool, and dragged myself up and locked my arm over the side, gasping for breath. When I looked for them, I saw them on the other side of the pool laughing, and then they just vanished. I was terrified, to say the least. I calmly made my way to the ladder, climbed out, locked the ladder in it's safety position, looking all around my yard as I walked back around to the other side of the house where the door is, I made my way back to my room, sat on my floor, soaking wet, and began to cry. My brother showed up a little while later and asked me what was wrong. I told him everything that happened. He kind of just looked at me, his eyes got wide and he said to forget about it, that I was probably seeing things.

The next day my Mom took us to my grandparents house in West Newton for the day, and having taken my brother's advice, we had a blast. I most certainly never forgot it though, but I tried to move past it. We got home later that day to find that my Father had drained the pool while we were gone. Without asking, I just assumed that my Brother told my Father what had happened, and he never opened that pool again.

Soon after the pool incident, my Father began to study mysticism. Trying to harness his Che, and looking into this "Eye" thing I never quite understood, though my sister P kept jokingly calling it the "evil eye". He tried to teach us meditation and awareness of errant energies. I say tried, we were too young to understand the complex metaphysical concepts he was talking about. We just thought he flipped. I did try to do as I had been told though.

I was laying in my bed, trying to channel my Che, whatever that meant to my 6 year old mind, when I heard my closet door open. So, as I was alone in my room that I shared with my brother, I got scared. The way my room was set up was, my brother had the hallway side of the room, I had the outer wall side of the room, with the window that faced our neighbors house. My Father had built a 6 foot high wall between us, to provide more privacy for my Brother, since he is 5 years older than me. So the room was divided into thirds, my Brothers side, my side and the common area, which was between the closets and our beds, of which, I had the head of my bed facing away from the closet. So, there I was, laying in my bed, trying to relax and the closet door opens, by itself it would seem. So, I kind of adjusted my head to look at the closet. What I saw, I can only describe as Swiss Miss and the Dutch Boy advertising icons, but they were walking out of my closet, both of them looked angry, they got to my bed, glared down at me, grabbed my pillow and held it on my face. I was screaming and swinging my arms around to try to knock them away. I felt my arms knock into their arms, they were like squishy bags of ice, then they were gone.

I got up and ran down stairs to my Father, he noticed I was shaking and sat me on his lap, he patted my back and said "here, take a sip" he gave me his beer, which was gross, but I did what he said, he took me into the living room and we watched some TV until I calmed down, he never asked what happened, like he knew or something. I'm not saying he conjured anything, I just think he was also a target, because of what happened to him later.

After the events of that afternoon, I would occasionally hear breathing under my bed, the dog was either in his pen outside or downstairs with everyone else. My bedtime was 7, everyone else was allowed to stay up until 9. So again, I was alone at those times.

One night, I had the window shade by my bed open so I could see the stars. Of course I fell asleep with the shade open, well, morning came, and the sun with it.

I saw a dark mass out of the corner of my eye, assuming it was J (P was too small and B was too big) I asked her to close the shade. With the room dark again, I went back to sleep. I woke up a while later, went downstairs, I saw J there eating her breakfast, I thanked her for closing my shade earlier. She looked at me like I was crazy, she said that she just got up. Also, the girls never entered our room after the young women in the white dress showed herself, they would barely look in that direction. My brother didn't do it either, because the dark mass was not big enough to be him.

That closet seem to be the source of torment for me. I would have nightmares that there was a man living in between the walls of my closet and my brothers closet. He was always stoking a fire in a large furnace, at least I think it was a furnace, it was big, metal, and hot, and he was partially burnt on his hands and face. When I saw him, it was always through a medium sized hole in the wall of my closet, and it was as if I was looking down at him as he went about his work.

In another closet related incident, this was also in nightmare format, we were all getting ready to go out for dinner, a rare treat for us, I was so excited that I got ready fast and instead of going out to the car through the side door in the kitchen, I went outside through my closet. A remarkable feat since it was on the second floor and there was no exit in the closet. For some reason, the car was parked at the bottom of the hill. As I approached the driver side back seat of the car I felt uneasy. Just then, I saw a light from the side door of the house, I turned to look to see. It was my brother, yelling something unintelligible down at me. As I turned my head back to the car, it lit up like a white hot almost blinding fire, and almost simultaneously this terrifying thing popped up and glared menacingly at me with this kind of twisted, contorted grin. I stared into this face, frozen in my spot, unable to wake up, wishing that I could, then the reflection of my face merged with the face inside the car. I woke up to raging flames surrounding me in my crib, clearly I'm not really awake, nightmare within a nightmare. I look toward the window and see an unformed shape fly through the window, I take that as an instruction and I jump out the window as I finally wake up, on the floor, arm hurting from landing on it, and the smell of lit matches in the air. My bed was higher than most because it had two large cubby holes and 4 drawers, like a captains bed or a mates bed, it was about 5' off the ground, I had to climb it to go to bed.

Years later, in high school, my family splintered once more, and my mom, her new husband and I moved to Westboro, while my siblings stayed with my grandmother in West Newton. I met a girl, she never claimed to be psychic, but she had a deck of tarot cards, and offered readings. She told me that the nightmare was a manifestation of D E Red and that although he would be leaving, he will be back when he is stronger. Normally, things like that I would shrug off, but since I never told anyone about D E Red or the nightmare. It was during a random conversation I was having with her, she just broke out in tears and told me about my nightmare from years ago, and what it meant. Not only am I completely freaked out, but I am willing to believe, at least in her psychic abilities.

She gave me a tarot card reading, to which I asked if I would attend Northeastern university, I was in my sophomore year of high school, but I was curious. So, keeping my question to myself, like she said, she proceeded to read my fortune. She turned three different shades of pale and said, "I don't know what you asked, but don't do it!" I said "why?" she said "If you follow that course, you will be responsible for the fall of our civilization!" Needless to say, I have never set foot on Northeastern University property from that moment on. Just in case. At the time, my sister P was going to Northeastern. It was closer than U Mass Amherst, where my sister J was going. I digress.

Back to Billerica. My parents had been fighting a lot over that summer ('79'), it had been building over the course of a few years, but everything seemed to culminate over the course of that summer. So, on this seemingly uneventful summer night, everyone was just doing their thing when we heard my dad screaming in the dining room. We thought he was yelling at Mom again so we just kind of quietly snuck around the hall to the doorway of the dining room. Our mother joined us which we thought was weird, since she had to be in the dining room with dad, but clearly she wasn't. She confronted him in the dining room, and screamed at him asking what he was doing, but her scream wasn't angry, she was afraid.

We all stood in the doorway to see what was going on, and there was our father, shouting incoherently at the ceiling, holding a steak knife in his hand. Before anyone could think, dad had slit his wrist, blood sprayed straight up to the ceiling. My Mom started screaming for help, and our neighbor, my Brother's friend N's mother, N lived in the house next door. She gathered us all and brought us to her house. We saw the lights of the ambulance a few minutes later, and we could still hear our dad screaming, Mom was with us, dad was alone in the house. When the ambulance got there, they were accompanied by the police and fire, Mom went over to try and help, we saw them try to drag dad out of the house. They called down for help and 4 more guys came up to help subdue him. What can I say, even impaired our dad was a fighter. They finally got him strapped down and took him away.

We were told that as the ambulance pulled away, he stopped shouting and squirming, and just started to cry. He never spoke about it, and his studies into mysticism and the occult all ended abruptly. Which he also never spoke of again. He died in 2012, his health declined drastically over the course of a few weeks until he was found on his front porch, sitting in his own filth in a semi catatonic state holding a beer. They took him to the hospital where he died a few days later. They said acute liver failure. Whatever. I prefer to think he went down swinging. I am named after my father, I am a Junior. So it was kind of surreal to see my own name on a coffin.

Aside from the reoccurring nightmares and odd corner of the eye stuff, the next 2 years were uneventful. Except of course for my parents divorce. The house was sold in '82' and we (Mom and us kids) moved in with our Grandparents in West Newton. The Billerica house was bought and sold a few times since we left, but I have never heard of anything happening there after we left. That's why I started coming to this website in the first place, checking in to see if the current owner or any of the previous inhabitants had any stories.