FEBRUARY 9, 2019

I disclosed the bell witch cave as the address only because the abandoned town doesn’t necessarily have its own address. I’m not sure if it’s to deter people from going into them (as they’re rather decrepit inside and could cause harm if the floors gave out with someone inside), but it’s on the same main road heading toward the Bell Witch Cave. My friend, ex-boyfriend, and I decided to take a day trip to the Bell Witch cave in the spring time as it was only a few hours out from us. We brought along a ouija board, crystals, and candles to use in one of the abandoned buildings in the town since we figured the property owners of the cave wouldn’t appreciate us doing that on their land. The reason we suspected the town was haunted was because the Bell Witch property used to be a lot larger, as in acres upon acres larger and we figured the old land must have stretched to the town at least. Upon arriving to the town, we discovered that the cave was closed and wouldn’t be open for tours until the beginning of summer. It was a bummer, but we still climbed into the far right building of the town strip. Sadly we couldn’t go into the church (lots of no-trespassing signs and the house next to it is occupied by the church owner). However, there were 3 buildings perfect to roam around in without any warrants. We had to crawl through the window because the doors were blocked, and when we got in there was a giant breakage in the floor. Parallel to the open floor was a doorway that was too dark for us to peer into. My friend wanted to climb through a broken window to the other half of the building but it was across the crack in the floor, so she hopped across alone. Then she looked at me and my ex and said “something in the other room just moved.” We we’re all around 16-18 at that time, so we only carried with us a taser, mace, and a pocket knife in case we encountered anyone aggressive in the buildings such as junkies or homeless people. I called loudly that we were armed hoping to deter whatever was in the other room and I whispered to my friend “Was it big enough to be a person?” And she nodded back at me. She climbed out of a taller-drop window on her side and we climbed out the window we came in from. There was another building far left that was harder to get into, as in you’d have to sit on someone’s shoulders to climb up and then pull everyone else in. The nice part about it was that it was just a huge, empty space and there wasn’t any hazards like open doorways or broken glass. We set up the ouija board and sat there for about 10 minutes until something finally connected. It was extremely weak at first, and kept repeating “no” to everything we asked of it. My ex told us that we should stop pestering whatever it was, and felt really uneasy about it but we both chalked it up to him being a woos since he’d never used a board before. I started to get irritated with whatever was communicating with us, because it felt like such a waste we had driven so far for something so weak and puny. I told the entity that it was being rude, and it response it yanked the sleeve of my jacket to force my hand to “goodbye”. I had never had anything grab me and what’s more so aggressively, so I started panicking. I hopped out that (somewhat second story) window on my own, and walked to the car also alone. The entire time I was severely paranoid; I even contemplated putting that board back into my car because I felt like something was following me. A few days passed after we headed home, and I couldn’t shake the feeling something was attached to me. I couldn’t sleep at night and thought I was going insane, so I turned to one of those stupid gambit phone apps. The silly ones that tell you a single word every few minutes, just something to spook yourself out with for free. Sometimes the app told me something extremely gibberish, and other times it would say a word relating to what I was asking about. It really was hit or miss though, so I asked my friend to download it one night and then call me. She was convinced the app listened to what you said, so we devised a plan: Only think of questions, record the answers, and then call each other back to see if all the replies were bogus. I was turned on my right side, watching television to keep my mind away from paranoia. At first the app said random crap, “roof” and “alone” different things as such that didn’t retain to anything paranormal. I blamed myself partly because I wasn’t asking any questions, instead I became fixated on a looming feeling behind me in the far left corner of my room. That’s when I looked down at my phone and saw the newest word was “corner”. Words cannot describe the amount of fear, adrenaline, and dread that came with slowly rearing my head to look behind me. I know the way that I’m writing makes it sound cinematic and a little too “101 ghost stories”, but it’s difficult to covey the paranoia and coldness that comes with an encounter any other way. There was a black shadow of a man sitting beside my dresser staring at me in the corner of my bedroom. I immediately leapt out of bed and yanked the dangling light cord from my ceiling fan to turn on my light so hard that the cord broke. Then, he was gone. I called my friend sobbing that there was something in the room with me, and I ended up sleeping with the lights on in my room. After that, I surrounded my bed with crystals every night until I realized that the shadow figure was just as curious of me as I was of it. He purely just watched me sleep, and would respond to me speaking to him with actions and no words. If I told him to go away, he would merely hide behind my dresser and then I would pretend he wasn’t there. I named him Thomas, just because I ended up using the app again with him present and that was what he said his name was in response to my question. He messed with electronics here and there such as turning on my Xbox while it wasn’t plugged in, or making lights turn off randomly. I think he was just simply curious of things in my room. I had a sleep over while he was still present, and reminded my friends not to bring any crystals over (because I’m 99% sure that he was lured by a crystal pendant I wore to the abandoned town). Subsequently, my friend had a crystal in the bag she brought over and she unknowingly took him to her friend’s apartment the day after the sleep over. I would have thought of myself crazy if it hadn’t been for both her friend and her seeing him that next day. Her friend apparently saw him in the middle of the night and cried hysterically to the point it woke her (my friend) up and she saw him too. After some heavy sage and cleansing practices, Thomas left her friend’s house. Now, all I have is a low-quality photo of him, witnesses, and evidence we went to that town.

Submitted by Grace