Haunted Houses

Within the past year I have watch two horror shows about haunted houses. One was, The Haunting Of Hill House and the other was The House On Haunted Hill. Part of the idea behind both films is that the houses were alive. The Haunting had some good “lives” in it, that made a tree house for a little boy. It created little sanctuaries for a girl to have tea parties. Yet, the house also had evil lives.

That little boy with the tree house? He also had a faceless man, who floated three feet above the ground, with a cane, who followed him everywhere. The symbolism of this little boy’s story was quite powerful. In adult life, this boy became an alcoholic/addict. That ghost who followed him? Was his addictions… his crutch (cane) on life.

The little girl who had little tea parties (with a dead little girl’s ghost), briefly died because of poison in her tea. Years later as an adult she described what she saw in the afterlife. Nothing. A grayish black space in time, where she couldn’t see anything or feel anything. Nothing was alive.

This story of her death hit home with me. It reminded me of my suicide attempt and was an exact description of what I saw and felt. Except with one added element. My parents. As I tried to see in that grayish black void, I could barely see my mom’s hands pushing me away. She was sobbing and saying, “Noooooooo… not now.” In the background was my dad, yelling in my mom’s ear and pointing at me. “I told you he was worthless… this is your fault.”

It was from this attempt that suicide never entered my mind again. That suicide attempt took place in the little town of Tamora, Nebraska. The house I lived in was pure evil. Like my childhood house, the man of the house was evil. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, you name it… there was evil.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming that house for my actions. Or the actions of my parents on my childhood home. I am saying that when a house experiences evil, it never leaves. The evil lives in those walls for all eternity.

I saw my mom bleeding from wounds inflicted by my father. That was over 50 years ago, but the memory is still there. And somewhere in that house is a drop of blood that was never found. Somewhere on a heating pipe in the basement is some of my mom’s skin from a burn on her leg.

Did the next owners of that home experience the evil that lurked within? I don’t know, even if it has been a perfectly peaceful residence, those walls will always have a touch of evil within them.

What is important for a person who has lived in an evil house is not to forget it. You can forgive the evil, but you shouldn’t forget it. I tried to forget it and it didn’t work. I became an alcoholic and just as abusive as my father.

By letting go of the secrets, the power of the past is defeated and evil dies. My evil died when I quit drinking. And then the shame of my actions began to lessen when I realized that the evil I did when I drank was not present in my sober life.

The evil I did will live forever in the walls of the homes I lived in. Those homes, like my own, are deep in our minds, no longer buried, no longer hiding. They are right next to me. They remind me how easy evil can come alive when I drink. And those memories have kept me sober for over a quarter of a century.