The Evil That Uncle Jake Raised

I feel like I should apologize for jumping all over the place in this story. So, I'm sorry, but please bear with me.

In May of 1978, two months before my 13th birthday, my parents bought the home they currently live in. Before I share my experiences, you probably need some information about my parents' home.

My parents' house flooded in 1997. One afternoon I was the only one still there. Everyone else who was helping clean up the flood damage had already left for the day. I stayed there while my mom and one of her friends had gone up the road to my aunt's house to take showers. This was within days of the flood, so everything was still pretty nasty - mud, water, dirt, trash, etc still in the house. Anyway, there were no working utilities in the house, everything had been shut off. So, while waiting on them to come back, I heard the furnace kick on. Remember... No electric. As soon as I heard it, I hurried to my aunt's and told my mom she needed to come back down or I was leaving. Of course she didn't believe me when I told her the furnace kicked on. Mom said there was "no way, the furnace couldn't have kicked on because there was no electric." I told her I knew that, but when the three of us got back down there, my mom and her friend also heard the furnace. Needless to say, we left.

A few weeks later, an old man and his young grandson stopped by. He said my parents had given him permission to fish, and he also told me his grandparents had lived there a long time ago. When my parents got back, I told them about the old man. As we were talking, the old man and his grandson came back up from the creek. I asked my mom to talk to the old man and see if she could find out anything about the house because of the "odd" things that had been experienced while we'd lived there. So my mom asked the old man about the house. I'm not sure exactly what she asked him, but he told her his Uncle Jake used to "raise tables" in the bedroom my younger sister and I shared when we lived at home, which was also where the furnace was located.

And now my experiences: One night not long after we moved in (I believe it was within the first couple of nights), my sister and I heard a loud crashing sound like something had fallen in the living room. (Our bedroom wall adjoined the living room.) Scared, we ran to our parents' room, but our mom told us it was just the dogs under the house, to go back to bed. I'm not sure why we were so scared, except that it was a really loud, unexplained crashing sound in the middle of the night. We both knew it wasn't the dogs, though, because the dogs couldn't get under the house. When we checked the next morning, nothing had fallen in the living room.

It seemed like I had nightmares every night that I lived there. It was always the same three nightmares. Two of them I remember, but the third one I can't remember anything about. I guess maybe it was so terrifying that I've blocked it out. Whatever, I have never been able to remember anything about it. I just know that I had those same three nightmares over and over.

I was always afraid of that house when it got dark. Even as an adult I would leave before it got dark, just so I wouldn't have to be there, especially if I had to be there by myself.

When I was 16, during my sleep one night, something told me to go to the kitchen and get my mom's knife out of the cabinet drawer and kill my family.

I was a good kid, willingly went to church every time the doors were open. I loved my family and never gave my parents any grief. I was the stereo-typical "good-girl" who never did anything wrong. I didn't go to parties, didn't date, didn't drink or do drugs, had never smoked a cigarette, or had a drink of beer. I didn't watch scary movies or anything like that. I don't think there was any "real crime" TV shows back then either. Even if there were, I didn't watch them. I didn't do anything that wasn't church-related. Go ahead, roll your eyes and laugh, but I was exactly that girl. Yet here I was, ready to kill my entire family.

I never heard a voice, not a "real" voice, telling me to go kill my family, but there was something there. Something that influenced me, made me get up out of my bed, go to the kitchen, open that drawer where I knew that knife was, put my hand on the handle and start to pull that knife out of the drawer. This knife had at least a 12 inch serrated blade.

I "woke up" when I had my hand on the handle. I feel that if God hadn't smacked me upside my head, I'd be in prison, or an insane asylum, for slaughtering my parents and siblings that night. It took me 17 years before I told anyone that. How do you tell your family that you were going to kill them? And you don't know why.

In all that years since that happened, whenever I would allow myself to think about it, I never understood why me? What was it about me that made it choose me? Why was I different than my sister, who shared a room with me? Was there something, even then, that made my sister and me different? That this evil "thing" could sense, because my sister and I have such completely different beliefs where ghosts are concerned?

Up until we rebuilt that house, it terrified me. Funny thing, though, after the flood and we remodeled Mom and Dad's home, whatever evil was there is gone. There is still a woman and a child... But the evil that Uncle Jake raised isn't there. I think God did His own cleansing.