Terrifying
jumped at the chance.
‘It can’t get me here,’ I thought
happily to myself as I snuggled
down on the couch to watch
television at my aunt’s house. ‘I’m
fi nally safe.’
Exhausted, my eyes began to
close. Within seconds, I was asleep.
I woke with a start an hour or so
later - and immediately knew
something was wrong.
The light in the living
room was fl ickering over
my head.
‘Oh no,’ I groaned.
‘Not here, please.’
The following night, I
didn’t sleep a wink. All
night long, I could hear
whispering in my
cousin’s bedroom. But
he wasn’t sleeping in there – he
was in his parents’ room.
The entity had followed me. I
realised I wasn’t safe anywhere.
A few nights later, as I lay in my
own bed, my eyes tightly shut,
saying the Lord’s Prayer over and
over again in my head, I felt a cold
pressure on my foot.
The hooded fi gure had physically
touched me.
That was the fi nal straw. I
knew this couldn’t carry on
any longer.
The next morning, I
threw the spirit board
into the rubbish bin
outside our house.
But as I did so, I
heard a growl.
‘I’ll be back,’
whispered that familiar,- and what I saw made me whimper
with fear. There was a black,
hooded fi gure standing right at the
end of my bed. And behind it,
shadow fi gures were darting in and
out of the wall.
‘Nina,’ they called. ‘Nina!’
I lay awake all night, until the
sun came up and the fi gures fi nally
faded away.
Scared to confess
‘You look really tired, honey,’
my dad said the next day. ‘Did you
get a bad night’s sleep!’
If only he knew! But I didn’t dare
tell him what had happened. He’d
go nuts if he knew I’d been playing
with a spirit board.
Night after night, I was haunted
by these terrifying shadow fi gures
and the voice whispering my name.
‘Maybe we should take you to a
doctor,’ Mum said, concerned
about my pale face, black rings
under my eyes and lack of energy.
‘I’m fi ne, don’t worry,’ I
muttered. But when my aunt rang
and asked if I could stay over for a
couple of
nights to
babysit my
little cousin, I
E
llen Burstyn, the actress
who played Regan’s mother
in The Exorcist, believed the
film was cursed and insisted
her line ‘I believe in the Devil’
was taken out of the film.
However, this didn’t stop her
from being injured during
filming – the scream in the
scene when her possessed
daughter throws her from the
bed is real!Did you know?
menacing voice.
The energy in my
house felt lighter
after that – but I still
had the sense that the
entity hadn’t gone
completely.Demonic entity
One day, my older
cousin Amy came to visit. I
soon discovered that, like me, she
was fascinated by the paranormal.
‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’
she asked me.
I found myself telling her all
about the spirit board and the entity
it had unleashed.
‘I think it’s demonic,’ I told her.
‘It’s defi nitely evil.’
But even as I spoke, I noticed the
house had fallen
unnaturally quiet.
‘What’s that noise?’
my cousin whispered,
her eyes wide and
scared. ‘I can hear
heavy breathing.’
I could, too – but we
were alone in the
house. The noise was
coming from the
direction of the stairs.
We both turned to look – and as
we did, the dog, who was sitting at
my feet, looked too. She growled,
deep in her throat. Whatever was
there, she could see it – and she
didn’t like it. Not one bit.
After that, I never felt truly safe
in my own home.
I was so relieved when we
moved house a year or so later.
But as the years passed, and I
grew up, I gradually forgot all
about it...
...Until 2011. I’d recently given
birth to my son, and he was
sleeping in his cot next to my bed
while I dozed next to him.
Suddenly, I jerked awake. A
black hooded fi gure was walking
across the room and into the wall.
The demonic entity hadn’t leftme. It had just been waiting, biding
its time.
I think it’s attached to me – that I
somehow created that attachment
by playing with the spirit board as a
15-year-old. I know that I’m
sensitive to spirit, as I’ve had so
many strange experiences
throughout my life.
I don’t know its identity. But
sometimes, I wonder exactly what
it wants from me.
I truly hope that I never, ever fi nd
out the answer to that...The dog
started
growling at
the stairs
Spell book:
Mysterious wordsOuija board:
DangerousMother now:
Sensitive to spirit