When I was a child my father was in the navy, so my family and I moved around alot. Between 1980-1981 is when my story began. At that point in time I was 3-4 and we were living in a house my parents had rented in Salt Lake City, Utah. I don't remember everything about living in this house, however there are certainly things I will never forget.
I cannot recall the exact day/time it all started. I, to this day, don't know exactly what to make of what I saw (even though I have been doing paranormal research/investigations for the past 23 years).
I don't know how to ease in to it so I will just say it. Every single time I was alone in a room in this house I saw hands. Yes hands. Not floating hands or even just a set of hands. No, I saw all kinds of hands. Coming from every piece of furniture in whatever room I may be in. Couch cushions, from under the bed, from kitchen cabinets. They were everywhere. Always reaching for me, or so it seemed. I would be terrified and tried to make sure someone was in whatever room I entered.
Why just hands? I don't know and not sure that I ever will. I never told anyone about the hands until years later. My mom would often tell me stories of my imaginary friend named Sandy. After she came around, we always played together and I even began to name all my dolls Sandy. I saw a blue sailor dress one day and told my mother that is the kind of dress Sandy always wore. I don't remember Sandy, but oh how I wish I did.
I also can remember times seeing my father drunk and abusing my mother. A side of my father I had never seen before. Something that I will never forget as well. Something like that will scar a child.
When I was about 19 my mother and I were talking about a scar over her eyebrow (a gift from my father). I remembered the night it happened and can picture everything clearly in mind. Suddenly it hit me, I was picturing the living room in that house in Utah. I asked my mother if the beatings and my friend Sandy all happened in that house and sure enough it had.
So I finally told my mother about the hands. She thought I was crazy at first. She kept saying that I must have had a bad dream about the house and was just remembering it incorrectly. She was wrong. During our stay in that house I would put my pillow in the hallway and sleep with my head outside of my room and my body on the inside. I did this so I didn't have to see the hands, so that I could actually sleep. I asked if she remembered me doing that and she did... But could never figure out why.
I wondered if the owner of the house had shared with my parents any history of the house. That is when she revealed that upon moving in the owner had told my parents that one of the bathrooms may have blood stains, as the previous tenants had sacrificed animals in it. Sure way to either leave something sinister or stir up activity.
My opinion, it was the house. The hands I saw, Sandy, my father's sudden personality change. My mother told me that when they moved into the house my father began to drink heavily, and beating on her. Upon moving out of the house my father promised he would never drink and/or hit her again... And he never did.
I don't know if the previous tenants left this behind as they moved, or if they went through strange happenings as well. One thing I have no doubt, is that Utah has its own little Amityville Horror house.
Loading comments....
I'd first like to echo Rook's message (we often come to similar conclusions through research, but our approaches are from opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum!). Portals and Thresholds are transition points: natural boundaries, such as rivers, are too. They often act as limitations on the movement of specific types of paranormal events; this is not an absolute statement, it's more a traditional generalization. Sleeping in/on transition points was seen for centuries as a dangerous behavior, as one may be taken away by fairies, goblins, specters, etc., but I see no reason that such a location (sometimes referred to as "betwixt and between") couldn't act as a protective barrier, also as you would be within two differing domains. I thought your childhood instinct to be in two physical locations at the same time was highly commendable original thinking!
The best piece of advice which Maria gave was almost certainly "I would encourage you to seek therapy to work through some of the residual harm from these experiences and for you to pray for Sandy, now that you no longer live in that house." The only reference which I recall about demons' ability to remain on the physical plain if they corrupt human souls was C. S. Lewis' allegorical novella, "The Screwtape Letters." The references to Hell in the Christian versions of the Bible are derived from St. Jerome's Vulgate translation, in which he assumes that "the lake of fire" in the Revelation to St. John the Divine, and "Gehenna" are the same location; Gehenna is, in fact, a valley in the Southern environs of Jerusalem where unrighteous persons were cremated, thus denied the right of a traditional Jewish burial. However, Gehenna left open the possibility of God's forgiveness for the apparently-wicked individual. The Jewish idea of "Hell" is much more like the Catholic "Purgatory" than anything else. The Devil was added in later, too, thanks to St. Jerome's mistranslation the prophet Isaiah corroborating the pre-existing unofficial inclusion of the Assyrian/Persian mystical figure "Sathaan" who also shows up in Jewish mysticism, not Judaism.
All of that said, pray as you see fit; don't worry too much about the deceased's souls, as that's God's business.
Take care,
-Biblio.