Disembodied Voices -- Part 1

Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part story about a family plagued by disembodied voices.

Craig McFeeters sat in his home office in Lawson, Mo., on Dec. 22, 2009, when he heard a woman call from outside. The woman’s voice was clear – maybe too clear.

“I heard a woman who sounded like she was outside on the sidewalk about 15 feet from the front door and just outside of my office,” McFeeters said. “I heard a woman fairly loudly and vividly say, ‘Hello? Is anybody home?’”

McFeeters walked to the front door and opened it to an empty sidewalk.

“I fully expected to see a woman standing there,” he said. “I was wondering why wouldn’t she just ring the doorbell or knock on the door? But sometimes when the garage door is open, people will come in the garage so I thought maybe that was it, she didn't know which place to go.”

He looked for a car in the driveway or for a woman walking toward the road, but saw nothing. The houses on either side of his were silent.

“No signs of someone from a neighbor’s house causing the event,” he said. “And it is very cold, so it’s not like someone had their windows open. But the voice wasn’t coming from far away. It was more like from the corner of the room, or just outside of the walls of the house.”

When McFeeters went back inside, he asked his son and daughter who were watching television in the living room if they’d heard “it.”

“Hear what?” his son said.

“You didn’t hear that woman?” McFeeters asked his son. “Then my seven-year-old daughter said, ‘I heard her.’”

McFeeters went toward the hall leading to the garage; the garage was the only place left for the woman to be.

“I walked into the kitchen just knowing I would find a woman standing either in the garage or just outside on the driveway,” he said. But when he opened the door, the garage door was shut, the garage empty. “I knew then for certain that it was a spirit of some sort.”

McFeeters said the woman sounded confused.

“Which is what struck me as odd right from the start,” he said. “Maybe she happened onto this time and space and had no idea what she was doing here. I got the feeling she wasn't from anywhere near this time, like from the 1800s or something.”

Shortly after, his four-year-old daughter began having problems sleeping.

“She has been wetting the bed nightly and she is scared to sleep in her room,” he said. “You know the typical monsters in my room kind of thing. But the strange part is that she really seemed to be telling the truth and describing them.”

His daughter wouldn’t sleep in her room. She would sleep with McFeeters and his wife or on the floor outside her room, but she wouldn’t set foot in there after dark because of the goblins.

After seeing the fear grow in his daughter, McFeeters spoke to two clairvoyants over the telephone. They agreed that something was wrong with his house which, he thought, may account for the disembodied voice.

“They both almost simultaneously said there is a portal opened up in her room from a ceremony done on the land a long time ago,” McFeeters said. “Someone opened it up, and didn't close it properly.”

McFeeters, who feels he’s sensitive to the paranormal, has often been uncomfortable in one part of his daughter’s room.

“Then they proceeded to tell me about that same area that I was picking up (a strange feeling),” he said. “Which was more than spooky – and somehow validating.”

The women told McFeeters how to close the “portal” and the goblins and the fear disappeared – for two nights.

“I did it, but didn't feel that I had closed it properly,” McFeeters said. “It seemed to help for a couple of days, and then was obvious that it didn't work.”

The fear crept back into his daughter’s life and she began wetting the bed again.

“I told the lady about it like a week later and she said she would call one of her best friends and they would attempt to close it for us,” McFeeters said. “Apparently they spent two hours on the phone doing this ritual.”

Since that time, although she’s had a couple of accidents, his daughter stopped wetting the bed.

“She has slept in her bed every night since, for like three weeks now,” he said. “She has only wet the bed twice in over three weeks, which is a minor miracle to us.”

The ritual seemed to stop the goblins and stop the girl’s terror, but it didn’t stop the disembodied voices.

Next week: The family discovers the voices are something more than ghosts.

Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.