My best friend, I will call her Anna, and I met when we were both in the same fourth grade class at a local private Catholic school. When we were in the fifth grade, Anna who was an only child and who lived with her mother, moved out of her condo and into a newer condo complex. The condo was built like a town house, with three bedrooms and two and a half baths on two levels. It had probably been built sometime in the 1970s.
The condo itself was nice enough amenities wise, but the first time I ever went into that house, I immediately noticed how completely awful it felt inside. Later my mother, who still does not fully believe what happened there, would admit that she also found the house creepy. It seemed to be unnaturally dark in there and it just had this miserable feeling that even permeated the front and back porch. The feeling was not depressing as much as it was ugly. That is the best word I can use to describe the way this condo felt.
Things began to happen immediately. All of Anna's cats turned up missing, I believe there were three in all. One had been hit by a car in front of the condo. This is actually really weird because the front door faced a parking lot with speed bumps everywhere. I have a hard time imagining managing to hit a cat in that place.
Anna also had several pet cockatiels. At some point they decided to give the birds to her grandmother because she and her mother were afraid the birds may die also. The birds were really loud, and after they had been removed from the house, you could still hear them chirping from the room that they had been in. I witnessed this myself and found it particularly creepy.
I often spent the night with Anna on the weekends and we all stayed in the same room together, Anna, her mom and me. We would hear footsteps going up and down the stairs or banging noises in the attic.
Anna and I took showers together in swimsuits because the almost nauseating feeling of being watched was the worst in the shower.
Frequently we would be awoken from our sleep (Anna and I slept in her moms king sized bed with her mom there) to loud breathing and growling noises that seemed to be right by our ears.
One evening, the three of us were in the living room watching the TV. We had left the light on in the upstairs bathroom and Anna's mother asked us to run upstairs and turn it off. We always went everywhere in the house in pairs, particularly at night. I followed behind Anna a few steps as we climbed the stairs. When I got to the first landing, her mother asked me a question. I turned to answer her as Anna continued up the second flight of stairs. Suddenly Anna screamed and rushed past me, back down the stairs. I followed her down. She was crying, but as she explained, not from fear or any emotion, but from pain. Her eyes were red and bloodshot and full of tears. She said that she had looked up to the top of the stairs into the hall and suddenly a huge and brilliant "whoosh of light" came at here and burned her eyes. I personally didn't see anything, and as a consequence didn't really believe her, but looking back, it was pretty obvious that something had indeed happened to Anna.
I went ahead upstairs to turn off the bathroom light and Anna went to the couch. Her mom told me not to worry about it, but I felt exhilarated and a little nervous, and actually wanted to go and see if there was anything up there. I told her I would be quick. I darted down the hall to the bathroom and as I passed the guest bedroom door, which was open, I peeked inside. I was facing a standup mirror and inside the mirror I could see small bluish balls of light floating around in the reflection.
Other things that happened included a cyclone of floating garbage from the can in the kitchen. Anna described seeing a ghastly face in a table fan in her bedroom. The fan had been on full speed and just stopped cold and the face appeared. There were also foul smells that would seem to float around the house.
Anna's mother was not wealthy, so they were not able to move immediately, though they did eventually leave as soon as her mother was able to find another place for them to live. In the meantime, her mother began to look for ways to deal with the phenomenon. Obviously, her first stop was the Catholic Church where Anna and I attend grade school. Though our Archdiocese has an Exorcist priest, the Church seemed reluctant to get involved. Anna did however start taking holy water home several times a week.
Her mother was losing patience though, and asked a Baptist minister to come take a look at the house. The man came and while he was there, they heard what sounded like heavy footsteps crashing upstairs. Then it sounded like something crashed through the ceiling and hit the floor in the living room where they were sitting. The thing then ran across the room and threw itself throw the living room picture window. They heard all of these sounds, including the glass breaking, but nothing physically had actually happened. The Baptist minister literally ran out of the house and left, never to be heard from again.
Eventually, the Exorcist priest did come to the house. While he was there, something grabbed Anna's leg and yanked her out of her chair and dragged her across the floor. The Priest witnessed this.
By this time Anna's mother had learned a bit about the house. Apparently an old woman had died after having been pushed by her own daughter down the stairs, and some of the neighbors had heard rumors that before the old woman had lived there, strange people had gatherings in the house in the middle of night. None of this really explained what was going on in the condo, however. It wasn't some big climactic revelation like you see on TV when they discover an Indian burial ground or some such thing.
The priest asked Anna's mother if she had done anything to the house when they had moved in, or if she had noticed anything odd about the house itself, besides the phenomena. Her mother recalled a small metal plaque that had been hung in the threshold of the front door. It had been in a language she was not familiar with. I had seen the plaque too when they had first moved in. It was about the size of a credit card and the letters were in relief. Anna's mother produced the plaque and the priest identified it as a Hebrew blessing. He spent some time in the house and eventually "diagnosed" the condo as being infested with something like nine separate Demons. He then replaced the plaque inside the door frame and within a week, the condo was exorcised by the Catholic Church. I don't know what happened during this time. Only her mother was present when the exorcism took place. Anna stayed with her grandmother.
The exorcism was successful for the most part. No more major incidents occurred in the house, though it still had that ugly aura about it. Also, the bad smells and unnatural shadows lingered on. They moved from the condo less then a year later. To this day, Anna doesn't like to talk about what happened when we were kids. I can't say I blame her either.