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The Lion, The Faun, And The Shaman

 

What you are about to read, even the most amazing and fantastic aspects of this account, is true. We lived with this for about 7 years and it really opened my eyes, ears, mind, and my "skills" in dealing with disincorporated souls and other entities.

We moved from Houston TX to Brentwood TN back in late November 1995. The move was normal and uneventful. This wonderful suburb of Nashville is the perfect place to raise a family; the public schools are as good as the private schools, violent crime is non-existent, people are still small-southern-town-friendly, and the area is steeped in history from the colonial era through reconstruction after the civil war and into the present. Enough of the cheerleading for my former home town.

Unknown to me and the rest of my family, my mom had a very strange feeling about the house since the first week we lived there.

Within the first month of living in our newly built house, there was an electrical fire in the garage. The fire was confined within the outlet socket box, which prevented the entire house from going up. This was just the beginning. As the house was new, the builder had to come out a few times to fix nail pops and other workmanship issues. One day a plumbing contractor for the builder came out to work on one of the bath tubs. He was an older man. While he was waiting for the builder's representative to arrive, he told us that we were lucky he came out, this was because the rest of his group believed that the entire back part of our subdivision was haunted/cursed. He attributed it to the old belief that spirits can not cross water and water (really little creeks) surrounded the back part of it. He also told us that our foundation was one of the first to be poured and the house was one of the last to be build. We though this was the "local color" of the area manifesting itself through the local urban lore. Things were mostly quiet except for the occasional thump or creaking sound, but we attributed it to the new house settling. Life went on in a normal fashion.

Around Easter, my maternal grandmother came out to visit. While she was there, she said that she saw a young man run through our back yard; odd but not out of reasonability. Again, she felt something weird in the house, but told no one until she was back home in Portland OR. The oddities continued evolving into unsettling.

The main manifestations we experienced during this time were the "normal" thumps and bumps you typically expect with a haunted house. The difference was the frequency of incidents, which were higher than what is typical, if there could be such a thing. This and the weird feelings (on my mom's part) continued for some time.

Around Christmas time in 1997 my grandmother had come out for an entire month. During the previous year we adopted a new dog. We got him as a puppy. My grandma stayed at home a lot doing some of the house work for my mom while she was busy doing school related stuff. She told us, later on, that there was something not right with the house; that it had a powerful presence in it. During her stay, she and now my mom saw the same "person" run through our back yard as was seen earlier. This was very interesting since in the interlude between the sightings we had fenced in the back yard for the dog. Also around this time our dog started to bark at something; it was like he saw something we didn't. He would bark at the front door, at the table in the dining room, at the counter where nothing was, etc... This was the beginning of the most intense period of the haunting.

During the early winter of 1998 my little brother, 4 at the time, came down to my mom and told her that he saw a lion in his drapes. My mom thought this was his overactive imagination. He insisted that he saw it. She went up to his room and looked around but there was nothing. A few days later my little brother told her that a nice man came and visited with him while he was going to sleep. He said that he would lay down next to him to keep him company and protect him while he slept. My mom started to get nervous about these encounters; beginning to wonder about the purpose and the nature of the entity in the house.

In the spring of 1998 my little sister came down from her room one morning insisting we had to move. She would continue with all the reasons to move, but she was holding something back. A few days later she broke down crying and told my mom that she had seen a small red faun-like creature standing on her night stand and it had woken her up. She said it just stood there and looked at her. After that, she said, it left and never returned to her as far as she knows. My mom was getting really nervous after the past two encounters my siblings had.

After that the activity really increased to the point that we sought out the help of a paranormal research group. We called them and they came out to look into our haunting. They spent about 30 minutes investigating the house. Towards the end of the investigation, the lead investigator met with us in the master bedroom to discuss his findings. While we were discussing these, the house started to make a thunder-like sound. It wasn't outside since he had one of his investigators photographing the yard and he did not hear anything that sounded like thunder. This event reduced the duration of our discussion. They left shortly afterwards and told us they would be in touch shortly with us once they had analyzed all their data they had collected.

My mom received a phone call from the lead investigator stating that he wanted to meet with us at his house; he wouldn't say why. When we got to his house, he explained that the entity in our house was something he had never come into contact with. It was extremely powerful, beyond what is considered normal for a human haunt, but it was not malevolent. His crew had captured the spirit on film, however the photos only showed dark areas that should not have been there.

He also informed us that we had 2 portals in the house, one at the bottom of the back stairs and another in the second floor storage room, and it was his best guess that whatever this spirit was was there to prevent bad stuff from coming through the portals. He asked us if we would mind having a medium come by and do a walk-through. We agreed and he came over a couple of days later.

He stayed for about 10 minutes. When he had calmed down outside of the house, he told us what he had experienced. He said that the house was, as he stated it, possessed with the son of an Indian shaman. He said the young man had been ritually sacrificed by the tribe to protect the portals and act as a guide for the recently dead spirits. He said that we were in no danger whatsoever from this spirit, in fact, it liked us. He did warn us that if this spirit hadn't liked us, we would have been living in our own personalized hell on earth. He said that visitors to our house who the spirit didn't like would most likely experience very negative feelings, almost like they knew they were not wanted.

I personally experienced his presence in different ways. The first time it was like someone was watching me. Later on I noticed something would sit on the adjacent couch; there would be butt prints in the leather cushion! I later visualized him in my head. As disturbing as these encounters were I still felt completely safe.

Living in this house sparked my curiosity in the paranormal and I started to ghost hunt, but not in our house. The investigators told us that the land around our house was very haunted so my friends and I started there. This didn't last too long. On the second trip we made we encountered 3 entities perched on a knoll about 50 yards away. They were dark shadows. I started photographing them. My friends then told me that they covered the span between them and myself rapidly and started to circle above me. I remember being "dive bombed" by them, but at first I thought they were bats or bugs drawn by the flash. I remember they felt hot and dry. After I realized what had happened I ran. They then turned on my friends and proceeded to attack them. I am not aware of any physical damage they caused to them but the emotional damage was sufficient. I, to this day, believe they were demons. Why they didn't attack me as much as my friends I don't know.

Our experiences in the house grew more intense, but less frightening. We almost came to regard him as part of our family. During this time period, from late 1998 through 2002, we all had visual encounters with him. We also "discovered" that he had a sense of humor due to the fact that my sister and my mom became "the butts" of a few harmless pranks such as various things disappearing and reappearing some days later. He would interact with our pets in a playful way that was not returned to him especially by the cats.

When we moved out, on the day we left, the house developed this bitter icy feeling. The spirit was royally pissed off with us. It was the worst feeling we had ever had in the house. So ended our 7 year adventure living with an extremely powerful spirit. Needless to say I personally would not mind never coming into contact with a spirit like that again.

Thanks for reading!

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Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, StudentDO, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

StudentDO (1 stories) (13 posts)
 
12 years ago (2011-11-20)
I think that he or whatever it was could have been down right ugly, however my family does not represent typical suburbia. I feel that we were able to convince this spirit that we wanted to coexist with it and we were not going to try and get rid of it. Also, we did recognize its presence early on. These two factors, I feel, is what kept us from having the more stereotypical male native american haunting.

As for having this critter follow us, HELL NO! He might have been fine there, but we got tired of being known as the haunted family. We quit entertaining at our house fairly early on. This was due to the fact that when people would bring cameras, they would almost always get weird pictures. We knew what they were but there was no way in hell we would tell them what they had photographed. Some were observant and realized what the anomalies were, but not many did.

One of the weirder things that occurred was other ghosts seemed to appear from time to time. I think they had come through the portals, but the indian guy sent them packing rather rapidly. I'll tell y'all the entire area felt like a scene out of Stephen King's Rose Red movie minus the psychic downs syndrome girl. I will post these other odd manifestations probably over the Thanksgiving break.
zzsgranny (18 stories) (3329 posts) mod
 
12 years ago (2011-11-19)
StudentDO: The title is pretty catchy! 😊...I had mentioned in a comment on a story posted shortly before yours about how spirits of Native American males are usually presented in a negative light...I'm glad you posted a story to the contrary 😆...

I'm looking forward to reading about your other experiences, but I for one, would like to hear more about the antics of this one, too...

I also wanted to mention that I believe our ghosties do get upset if a family they've become fond of decides to move away...I've invited my ghosties to follow us if they'd like, but I don't think this gentleman would have been able to, given the nature of his charge...

Thank you for posting, and welcome to YGS 😊
StudentDO (1 stories) (13 posts)
+1
12 years ago (2011-11-18)
Yes the title was a play on the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. I thought it was catchy:) . I do chalk my brother seeing the lion as imagination. My sister was 12 or 13 when she saw the red faun-like thing. I know from personal experience that paranormal investigations last for a while longer. The thing about this haunting is it turned on something in me. Ever since then I have been able to sense/see spirits. I was hoping to not inherit this triat from my mom but it looks like I have. I'll post my story about the Carton plantation and the bookstore near by when I have a chance to write, probably over thanksgiving.
Mountaineer (4 stories) (176 posts)
+2
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
The title sounds like a long lost book by C.S. Lewis... But never mind that. How old was your sister at the time she saw Mr. Tumnus on her night stand? In the case of that and the lion in the drapes, I would have to pass it off as imaginative kids and tired eyes. Everything else though, seems legitimate. The half-hour paranormal investigation was, as everyone else has pointed out, abnormally short and I'm hoping you didn't pay for their services. Thank you for posting this detailed and intriguing story.

--Mountaineer
Argette (guest)
 
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
I did Google the site and I can see what was likely to be a mound. We have them in my area, too, along the river.

The bit about noise in the garage is scary.
StudentDO (1 stories) (13 posts)
 
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
Actually there are burial mounds in the area, in fact there's one about 1.5 miles as the crow flies. There were a total of 6 in the area per the state historic office. 2 of them were excavated by the Smithsonian and 3 "disappeared". I think they went fast because they seemed very uneasy after about 10 minutes and the thunder sound really freaked one of them out. As for the psychic, he wouldn't go back in.

If any of y'all want to verify the burial mound stuff, google map Moores Ln, Brentwood TN and look for the boiling springs school house. The mound is right next to it. The land where the other ones were is now the Nashville Golf and Athletic club.

The psychic said the energy coming off the spirit was extremely intense, he didn't elaborate on it. I found it really fascinating that the ghost hunters didn't hang around for long. They seemed like they had somewhere else to be and were in a hurry to leave.

One detail I forgot to mention was the fire in an electrical outlet when we first moved in. It was the second night we lived there. If the electrical box had failed, the house would have burned. I don't know if this was paranormal or not but we did hear a lot of noise coming from the garage for some time after this incident.
Argette (guest)
+2
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
I don't know much about the length of a typical paranormal investigation, but 30 minutes seems very short indeed. I liked the amount of detail in your story, though, and thought the narrative was easy to follow. Somehow, you got to me, and I found your story intriguing. I'm still not sure what I believe about anything.

I just know there are sensations, noises, visions and other things that cannot be explained.
zzsgranny (18 stories) (3329 posts) mod
+1
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
StudentDO: I agree with Moongrim... I don't know how much information could possibly be gathered in such a short time, by the investigators or the psychic... I also find it interesting that the psychic had to "calm down" after his walk through... Was he an individual who the spirit didn't like?...

I'm glad you never felt threatened or uneasy... Wonder how the next tenants are handling it? 😆
Moongrim (2 stories) (871 posts)
+3
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
The only thing missing here in this story: An Ancient Ameri-Indian Burial Ground.

A 30-minute investigation by the local paranormal research group?

That's fast. Extremely so.
quixoticqt (5 stories) (104 posts)
 
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
The red small faun reminded me of when my brother went exploring in an old water tank when we were kids. He lit his normal lighter and the flame came out blue and a little imp was dancing in the middle of it.
❤ Qt
snowhite (203 posts)
 
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
Well,I'd also like to hear about the evil spirits in the house.
stephyw2001 (guest)
+1
12 years ago (2011-11-17)
What a neat story. Poor sprit was losing his buddies and there was nothing he could do about it. I hope he ended up liking the new people that moved in.

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