It was a very large bathroom.  My wife discovered a small door designed to hide things.  It had no latch and it blended in with the wallpaper.  It was very hard to see.  When she opened it, she found books on witchcraft, evil spirits, white and black magic, the Works of Satan, etc.  We threw them all in the garbage.

One early afternoon, I had a flat tire in the driveway.  I went down to the corner gas station to have it fixed.  I had gotten friendly with Frank the attendant in the two months living in the neighborhood.  He asked me, "Joe, where do you live?"  I answered, "On Topher, at the dead end street, Frank."  He said, "You mean in the grey house, in the upstairs flat?"  I said, "Yes."  He said, "Do you know that a man killed his wife upstairs in that flat where you live about two months ago?  He tried to stuff a car title down her throat and then strangled her.  She lay dead there for two days."  I immediately checked it out with the local newspaper morgue file and it was true.  I didn't tell my wife, because she was already beside her self.

I came up the steps that same afternoon.  The door was jammed, and without a warning like a man possessed, I suddenly kicked the glass and received 153 stitches in my right leg.  We left the hospital and never went back to the flat, not even to get our clothes.

We moved to Frazho Road, off Fern, in Roseville, MIichigan.  One night, as I was in a twilight sleep, I saw through two walls a creature walk up the walkway onto the porch, open the front door, walk through the kitchen and living room.  It then turned and walked into my bedroom.  It lifted the covers off of me and with both hands started to possess me!  It was with a scream of terror, and a cry to the Lord for mercy, that drove it back and it vanished.  Many nights I slept with the lights on. These things that moved about were not physical, but spiritual.

Next we moved into a basement apartment on Carlyle, off Evergreen, in Dearborn, Michigan.  It was here we heard voices: people talking to each other and no one there.  At other times we could see groups of people standing or sitting together.  We could feel them and hear their footsteps as they walked by us.  One morning, as I walked out the side door, I saw two persons sitting in my car.  When I got to the car, which was only 40 feet away, they were gone.  It was that morning I had an accident on the way to work.

It was then we moved back to Warren, Michigan, on Helle and 8 Mile Road.  It was for an entire year I would dream, and the dreams would come to pass the next day.  Most all the dreams were of a troubling nature.

We then moved into another upstairs flat on Detroit 's east side, in a high crime area on Jefferson Avenue, off Shane street.  I came home from work early and was sitting on the couch playing a guitar.  I heard the downstairs door open.  It was my wife coming home from work.  She walked up the stairs, into the hallway and kicked an empty soda bottle.  It rolled through the living room on the hardwood floor right in front of me.  She walked down the hall and through the living room where I was and then into the kitchen.  I walked into the kitchen to ask her if she wanted to go out and eat. She was not in there.

There was only one entrance into that flat.  It was the way she walked in.  I called the store where she worked to find out what time she left, and she answered the phone.  My wife said to me that night, "Joe, I will not sleep in the front bedroom tonight!"  I asked her, "Why?"  She just said, "I'm scared."  So, we slept in the other bedroom down the hall.  The next morning I left for work.  I went down the stairs and out the door.  I saw a young boy of about 15 years of age standing, and he was looking up to the front bedroom window.  I asked him, "Why are you staring up at the second floor, front-bedroom window?"  He looked at me so sad, almost in tears and said, "My little sister died in that room of an incurable disease last month."  As I walked away, he just kept staring up at the bedroom, as if he was in a trance. The place was eerie.

- Joe Olivio: joe@typology.us