B (5:31)
I'm literally, I'm gonna die. Its limbs were just, like, wrong. Everybody moves back into the. Even if it takes them a minute. My name is Evelyn. I'm 26 years old. I live in Cleveland, Ohio, and I am a cannabis union organizer by day and a musician by night. I help cannabis workers across the country start unions at their workplace. So that's dispensaries, cannabis cultivation sites, processors. We represent, I think, around 10 to 15,000 workers from across the country. I had gotten a degree in theater from a small liberal arts college in Cleveland, and I was working in theaters around the time that this, what I'm talking about today, took place as a director and a dramaturg. Just basically just like, if you're unfamiliar with dramaturgy, it's just doing the research for plays. I did that for a little bit and then found that theater wasn't my true calling at the time. I was trying to figure out which direction I wanted to go, and theater was my number one when I was 18. Then at 22, after college, I decided I wanted to join the cannabis industry in Ohio, where I'm from, especially in the 2000s, 2010s, there was a large, and still is, but a large opioid epidemic. And I had lost a partner to an overdose. And after his death, I was truly affected by this and wanted to find a way to help combat this. And using cannabis, as opposed to using opioids or other painkillers like that, is an awesome substitute for people because it helps give them similar pain relief without taking the toll on their body. So I graduated college in May of 2021, and there was a general sense of, especially once I figured out I didn't want to do anything with theater when I got my degree in what am I doing with my life? Where do I go next? And there's just. There's not as linear of a path as there was for, you know, you go to school, I went to college, which was extended school. And there was always people telling you what the next step is. And this was the first time I had to choose what my next step was. So me and my dear friends from high school, a few of them from actual childhood, prior to high school, we decided to rent a house from my best friend Cassandra's sister and her sister in law in Akron, Ohio, which is about 45 minutes south of Cleveland, close to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. So over the course of our time there, there were many girls that were moving in and out. Various friendships just kind of Figuring out their early 20s and we had room to let. But Cassandra and I were the only ones that stayed in this house from the very beginning to the very end. We all were in a similar place where we were like, okay, college is over. We don't know what we're doing. We have this house that Cassandra's sister is willing to rent to us. Let's all move to Akron and figure out where we want to go from here with our lives and figure it out together and have like a family to come home to. I packed up what little I had from my parents house and we moved into our first big girl house in this beautiful neighborhood. The entrance was at a top of the top of a hill and then you went down and it was brick roads with massive oak trees cascading over the road. It just looked like, like a fairy tale place with a lot of. There's some big fancy homes near the entrance of the neighborhood. And then at the bottom of the neighborhood was more of like the houses that someone in their early twenties might live in. Or like starter homes, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. It was a small house, but there were multiple levels of it and it was built in 1957, so definitely not the oldest house I've lived in. It's not a new house, but it's not hundreds and hundreds of years old. It had original furnishings in the kitchen, so it had these light rose pink original oven and original stove from the 50s, which was just the cutest. It was very dark the house, but it definitely had a darker kind of. I say witchy in a good way, but like a witchy vibe to it. Like it just seemed like there was this energy. There was two old trees with moss on the side and the house was a navy blue with dark red shutters. I think at this time I was in cannabis school, so I was doing. I was working as a waitress and going to school. And then the rest of us were doing a lot of gig work or shift based work. Anna was working at the county park at the time and as a landscaper, so she had really early shifts. Cassandra was working as a nanny and teacher aide at the time. So she was working a lot during the day, but also some evenings. And then Caroline did Disney and superhero character parties. She'd dress up like Cinderella or the Little Mermaid or like Wonder Woman and be hired for children's birthday parties. And so like I would say at this time, it was a lot of classic like horror movie things that we were writing off. And what I mean by that is like objects falling, hearing noises, you know, things going completely missing and then finding them in a completely random spot, like weeks later. Initially, when all of this went down, the ricketiness of the house caused us to write off a lot of the smaller things that were occurring. The house had all of its original piping and plumbing, so a lot of the noises we were chalking up to just being the house settling or various old house noises, the objects moving or falling. We did have. Each of us had a cat, so we had four cats in this house at the time, which was kind of insane, but lovely. And, you know, so it was just like little things, like, okay, like, this could very well not be paranormal. Like, this could just be an explainable thing. Not a big deal. Caroline was the first to move out of the house, and she moved back up to the Cleveland area to move in with her partner at the time. And then my friend Olivia, who is friends with Cassandra and Anna as well, through me, moved in. At the time she was starting her grad school program. So one of the days when she didn't have class early, she woke up, went up the stairs into the kitchen, went from the kitchen to the living room and then upstairs to the bathroom on the most upper level to brush your teeth. And when she had come upstairs, she saw me on the couch drinking coffee, which was my normal routine. I love having a slow morning, so usually I had my first cup of coffee on the couch and watch the birds out the window. Wasn't an unlikely scene for her to see. And then she came back downstairs and I was not there. My car was not there. I remember at this time receiving a series of texts. And I had gone to a doctor's appointment way early that morning, which is about an hour away. And it was like, are you home right now? Like, all caps, exclamation points, question marks, emojis. Like, I'm really freaked out. I'm the only one home. And I swear I just saw you on the couch. And I was. I said no. Like, I had left at a quarter to seven that day for a doctor's appointment. And she's like, that's crazy, because I swear I saw you and I greeted you and you greeted me, and we had a morning exchange. And that was like the first, I would say, like, big instance of something like, I guess, like concrete occurring like that. And that was about. She said it was. That happened on All Saints Day, which is the day after Halloween of 2022. I absolutely thought, like, oh, she's. She must have been Dreaming or this. This wasn't real. She didn't go into too much detail through texts. When I got the text, at first there was concern because her texts were very much like, are you here? Like, seeming as if, like, oh, there's someone in the house that maybe she assumed. But then when I came home and she told me she physically saw me, I was. I believed her because of how scared she was. But I also. 40% of me wanted to chalk it up to being a trick of the eye or a maybe she was still asleep and, like, was sleepwalking and doing these things. So I definitely, like, I believed her. 60% of me believed her. 40% of me was suspicious of it, but only because she's not one to make things up like that. Everyone in that house who lived there was open to the paranormal. But it wasn't necessarily like, that would be our first instinct. But I was still suspicious just because of how obscene it sounded. And it was also, like, that's a very routine thing for me to be sitting on the couch in the morning. So maybe it was just, like, it was a routine thing for me to be doing. So she thought she routinely saw me that morning. It was a pretty quiet winter after that, into the spring of 2023. Anna had moved out in March. April of 2023. In this next story takes place in around May, May, June. So it was just me, Olivia, and Cassandra living at the house. My younger sister, her nickname is Bunz. My younger sister, Bunz, she came down from Cleveland to visit for the weekend. And it was just me and her at the house at this time. My sister and I were hanging out, and she was like, you know, I'm really tired. I think I'm gonna take a little nap so I can hang out when everyone gets back later this evening. Cause she was also friends with me and my roommates. I was like, okay, that sounds good. And I was like, well, it's a beautiful day. And especially as we're coming out of winter into spring in Ohio, it's like, oh, my God, I just need to soak up as much sun as possible. So I went outside on just a little picnic blanket. And I was working on some lyrics for my band, doing some pictures, just kind of, like having a creative time outside, soaking up the sun. And I was out there for about probably, like, 45 minutes. And I looked up at the back of the house. And so the back of the house had. On the ground level, it had a dining room window, which would. If you're facing the house on the far left side, and then a kitchen window next to it that was slightly narrower, and then the upper level windows. And so I looked up at the kitchen window, and I see the silhouette of presumably, my sister, since she was the only one there. Walk up to the window, look out as if, like, she was checking on me or seeing what I was up to, and then turn to the left, and as if they were heading down the stairs to Olivia's bedroom, which was on the lowest level. And so I'm the ever extrovert. So I was like, oh, my gosh, my sister's up. I'm gonna go up there. We're gonna go hang out. We're gonna have so much fun. She wasn't in the lower level bedroom, so I figured, okay, she must have gone up to the bathroom or to my bedroom maybe to get something from her bag. And she was still out cold asleep on the couch. I was so confused because I saw. I saw someone walk up to the window. I looked around. Maybe Cassandra or Olivia had come home. And they had not checked their locations. They were still where they were earlier that day. And I just kind of sat there, like, what the hell did I just see? It didn't feel like it was a ghost or, like a paranormal thing. But it was so weird that I saw somebody similar in physique to my sister, and she's a very petite, tall woman, come up to the window and stare at me and then walk away without a trace. It wasn't as if I came back in and my sister was gently stirring like she was still out cold, like she was when I had left 45 minutes or so prior. I was so grossed out. I was so grossed out by that, especially since it was like, take like, it was me six months ago, and now, presumably, it looks like my sister. It was wild. I waited until she naturally woke up. So she must have woken up, like, probably 20, 30 minutes later. So it wasn't very long. And I told her, and I was like, well, I didn't tell her outright at first. I said, did you wake up during your nap? And, like, look out the window to see where I was. Just kind of, like, I wanted to see what she said. I didn't want to lead her to anything. She was like, no, I was out cold, dude. I didn't wake up. Like, my head hit the pillow. I went to sleep. And then I woke up, and I was like, well, I saw what I. I think I saw you. I thought I saw you in the kitchen window. And I. I had her go Outside to the backyard and stand where I was and demonstrated, like, what it looked like. And she was so creeped out. I don't think she ever. After that weekend, I don't think she ever stayed at that house again. In that. July 2023, after we had had this experience in May with my sister, Olivia moved out. So From July of 2023 to the following summer, it was just me and my roommate Cassandra, living in the house. It started out as us hearing one another, just like the creature comforts of hearing, you know, someone you love in your house. So, like, I'd be up in my room on the upper level working on music or reading or whatever, and I'd hear the front door open, and I'd hear Cassandra, who has a very distinct voice and way of speaking. I hear her open the door, and I hear her go, hello, foolish kitties. Which is typically how we address our cats. And then I heard her set her things down, take off her shoes as she normally would, go up the small set of stairs to the upstairs, and then go to her bedroom, which was across the hallway from my bedroom. And similar thing with my sister. I think somebody's home. I'm like, okay, yes, it's time to hang out. I run into her room, and she's nowhere to be seen. And I look outside. Maybe she had gone back outside to get more stuff from her car. Whatever, her car's not there. We had shared each other's locations with one another, so I checked her location. She's at her sister's house, which is about 20 minutes away from our house. It was so, so, so scary. It just felt invasive, like there's something in the house that wants me to believe it's someone else, and it's doing these very mundane and normal things that I had heard every single day. Which also added to the questionable. Am I crazy? Am I imagining things? Is this something I'm used to hearing all the time? So my mind's just playing it because this is around the time when she would normally come home. I don't have a history of auditory or visual hallucinations, but it's still, moments like that make you second guess it, you know? I laid out the facts. I went. Cass got home that night. I was like, hey, this happened. And it really freaked me out. And I heard you talk, but you weren't there. And I heard you walk up the stairs, but it was not you. And I heard you go into your bedroom, but it was not you still. And you were 20 minutes away. And there's Something like it was just truly unexplainable. And when I shared this story with her, she said that she had experienced the same thing, but with me, we had not. She had not talked to me about it before. Cassandra's always been, I guess you could say, like, sensitive to the paranormal. So she has. I'd say she's a little more comfortable with it. So it didn't shock me that she didn't say something about her hearing me come home or her hearing me come through the front door or things like that. And then it happened over the course of a few months after that. Like, it was just continual. Like us hearing each other and the other person not being there. And I feel like we should have been more freaked out about it, but we just kind of laughed it off. Like, oh, it's just this old haunted house that we live in. Cause it never felt like, in retrospect, it sounds and feels so scary to relive. But in the moments, it was just kind of like, well, that happened. That's terrifying. Let's not think about it too hard. It definitely did feel like it was replaying moments, since it was replaying such mundane things. And that also there was never a sense of, like, I feel unsafe, or there's like, an evil presence in this house. There was just energy in this house that was picking up on the life in this house and the routine of this house and, like, the souls that were in this house. And it didn't make me want to leave the house until this next. The next part of this story. The next part of the story is kind of like the crux of when I was like, okay, fuck this. My roommate Cassandra, my partner, and I were sitting in our living room. So the living room is the first. Was the first room that you entered from the front door. It's on the ground level. And we were getting ready to watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Because we love trash reality tv. We are not inebriated at this point. Then there's a pause in the conversation, and we all hear my voice upstairs. And we are all like. We turn the volume off the tv because I think we had music playing before we turn on the show. And we listened to what sounded like my voice coming from upstairs, having a phone call conversation. But it was very distinctly my voice, my timbre, the way I talked. It was as if I was on the phone with my mom, for instance, because I called her all the time. Just having a conversation, pausing for responses, just a normal, happy conversation. It wasn't dramatic. Conversation. But it went on for about like 30 seconds. And then we all looked at each other. And my partner is a staunch skeptic and he was like, what's going on? I could see genuine fear in his face. And then it continued for about another 30 seconds, just my disembodied voice coming from upstairs. And it was just so eerie hearing myself, because I'm a vocalist, so it's like I'm used to hearing my voice recorded. And it wasn't like, you know, when you hear yourself on a recording and it sounds different or it sounds weird, but it was like as if I was upstairs talking on the phone and it was so, so creepy. And I would say that was like, like when things got the most amped up, I just was like, I was truly dumbfounded. I think, like, all I could do was laugh because before it was like, you know, footsteps, like she was being kicked off, like a couple, like a greeting, a hello. But then it's like me having a full, full blown conversation and I'm not talking and I'm in a different room from what that's coming from. Because at first it just says like, oh shit, there's somebody in the house. But then as we listened, it's like, that's. Your voice was like what my partner said to me, like, that sounds like you. And then we were quiet for about another 30 seconds and then we started it stopped. Then we started talking again, but then it started again for about another 30 seconds. So I'd say probably like a minute and a half, a minute and a half total of this disembodied voice speaking. It was as if a scene from my life earlier that week was replaying in the bedroom upstairs. I'm a phone talker. I talk on the phone a lot, especially with my family and friends that live far away. So it just seemed I couldn't make out words, but the tone of the conversation was very much like talking about our days, figuring out a logistical plan, Just a normal conversation you have with your mom. Obviously I couldn't tell you what the content was, but it's just hearing that and it was as if we weren't there too. So it's like it's having this whole separate conversation from us. It's not trying to speak to us, but it's speaking around us and it sounds like me. And we could not distinguish what was being said, but we could tell it was me having a conversation with somebody, whether it was on the phone or they were talking to something that wasn't there. Or we couldn't hear, I don't know. But, yeah, it really, it really freaked me the hell out. My partner freaked out after we had heard this. Cassandra, I just kind of saw like, the color leave her face. Just like it was nothing that any of us could write off. It was nothing that could be, oh, this was just that. Or oh, this was just that. Or like, did you play. Were you playing a video on your phone? Like, no one had their phone on them. No one was on their phone at that time with audio out. So it was like we were trying to come up with a possible explanation in the moment, collectively. Well, me and Cassandra were. And then my boyfriend was just kind of like, I like, fuck that. Fuck this. Like, I need to smoke. This is, this is freaking me out. After the initial shock, there's like the, what the hell is in this house?