Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Growling Thing

Tammy Thomas was about 10 years old when the growling thing came into her home.

Her uncle and new aunt brought their newborn to Tammy’s house for a visit and unwittingly brought something with them. Tammy blames it on the mother of her new aunt who practiced black magic and devil worship.

“The mother had given my uncle’s wife some yarn to make a blanket for her and my uncle’s new baby,” Tammy said. “They had been at our house one evening and when they left they forgot that baby blanket. We didn’t realize it at the time. Soon after that we began having all kinds of weird things happen around the house.”

Scratching sounds came from inside the walls and deep growling would haunt Tammy’s nights. Her entire family would hear people having conversations in the dining room and den after everyone had gone to bed. But to Tammy, the growling thing was more personal.

“I was awakened several nights with what sounded like someone whispering or growling in my ear,” she said.

The growling dragged Tammy from sleep one night and, when it stopped, she could hear voices from the dining room.

“Some neighbors had been over at the house playing cards with my mom and stepdad,” she said. “The dining room was right next to my bedroom and that is where they always played cards. Well this night I woke up and heard voices from the dining room and thought it was my parents and the neighbors still playing cards.”

A faint light shown through a crack in Tammy’s door, so she slid out of bed to see what the adults were doing.

“As soon as I opened the door the talking stopped and it went dark again,” she said. “I thought I had been dreaming so I went back to bed.”

But as Tammy dozed off, the room grew unnaturally cold.

“It was summer and was always extremely hot in that bedroom,” she said. “I was freezing cold and could not go back to sleep.”

Then she saw what caused the cold – the growling thing was in her room.

“Something made me look up at the top of the door and I saw a dark gray mist and in that mist was a face,” she said. “The face had huge black eyes and it was making a sound that was like a growl or a sinister chuckle is the only way I can describe it.”

Lying in bed staring at the face in the mist, Tammy suddenly knew she wasn’t asleep.

“After a few seconds when I realized that I wasn’t dreaming and was really seeing that face I started screaming,” she said. “My mom and stepdad and brother all came running into the room and from the looks on their faces I knew that they had seen something, too.”

But what was it, and why was it in Tammy’s house?

“As my parents started trying to figure out what may have brought this demon into our house my mother realized that the baby blanket was there in the house and that all the scary things started right after the blanket was left there,” Tammy said.

They telephoned her uncle who rushed to the house. He and Tammy’s brother put the blanket in the trunk of her uncle’s car.

“They were going to throw that blanket in the river,” she said.

But whatever inhabited the blanket didn’t like this.

“On their way to the river the trunk of the car flew open for no reason,” she said. “They got it closed and took off again but then the brakes went out on the car and they started hearing a scratching and growling coming from the trunk of the car.”

They pulled the car to a stop on a bridge, dark water rushing beneath them, and opened the trunk.

“My uncle put lighter fluid on the blanket lit it on fire and threw it off the bridge,” she said. “As the blanket was burning and falling from the bridge my brother and my uncle heard horrible loud screaming coming from the blanket. After the blanket was gone we had no more experiences of those kinds in that house.”

Copyright 2009 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 c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

stories like this are really impossible to view as anything other than personal accounts.....stories. the time lapse involved makes any investigation impossible. perhaps there were family, emotional, physical, or environmental causal factors. for example, a person sleeping can sometimes snore and be awakened by the snore, and not realizing it has emanated from them can feel it is an external noise. scratching in the walls can be rodents, voices
can be he neighbors or their tv, this girl had a step-father...family issues? the event began after a new baby visited... jealousy? attention getting ? to project this on to a baby blanket made by a "practitioner of black magic?" bit of a stretch.....do evil black sorcerers knit baby blankets?
far more likely this was an emotional issue with some overlying physical and family issues. its a shame she held on to it so tightly and for so long.

Julie Ferguson said...

There was something evil in that blanket..... This story gave me chills.

Anonymous said...

Dear Anonymous,

Using soft pseudo-scientific pop psycho babble to wildly speculate about someone you don't know is no more scientific than saying that black magic caused the encounter.

MaryAnn said...

I'm sorry to tell you but you are misguided anonymous. I advise you to do a lot more reading and research. In time you will come to realize that these occurrences are real and have been around a very long time.

I had my own experience with a dark hooded shadow when I was around 8 years old. I am 62 years old now and I can tell you that it was real and changed my life.

WB said...

Something rather similar to this happened to me, only it went on for years. And yes, dear anonymous, I know a great deal about sleep disorders, having researched the topic for some time as part of an attempt to make sense of some very strange and seemingly unlikely occurrences. I still don't have any good answers or explanations. Do black magicians crochet baby blankets? It seems highly unlikely. But I've had some experiences that seemed just as unlikely. They even seemed unlikely to me when I was ten. But then, if you see something, you see it. You may not have a good explanation, but it isn't exactly more sane to deny the evidence of your own senses, is it? Think of all of the readily observable phenomenon visible to ancient people for which they had no explanation. Would you, then, expect those people to simply deny the existence of those things? Of course you wouldn't. Because that would be insane. We have explanations for so many natural occurrences now it might be tempting to believe that we have an explanation for everything. A talk with a quantum physicist would disabuse you of that notion.

Anonymous said...

dear anomomouses, (anonomice?),
i've heard a saying that in every situation the most logical and most sensible solution is probably/possibly the right one, so to rather rashly assume that a baby blanket is cursed and causing a haunting may be considered by some a little extreme.

why aren't family issues and emotional ones as well as physical and environmental causal factors just as likely, or at least worth considering? ...further, why isn't the poltergeist aspect being considered? after all, here we have a haunting with anomolous events centered around a young girl. from what i've read about poltergeists they use the energy of (female) children to manifest.

a belief in the paranormal should not have to mean an ardent belief in any and all paranormal tales or every aspect of every paranormal tale, nor should it necessarily cause defensive attitudes and borderline rudeness.

to investigate the paranormal you have to put aside the NEED to believe it and be open to the possibility of any and all possibilities from the mundane to the far fetched.

Anonymous in Texas said...

Fascinating. And as silly as it sounds, anything can have a spirit attachment. They can be placed on objects.

I do believe the stories.

I have had experiences since day one myself, and I do remember my toddler years. My parents could not keep a babysitter. They ran.

I tried to explain some away as sleep paralysis, but mine not only took on solid gigantic form, it also left gigantic well shaped hand/finger prints when it attacked. I have small hands, did not come from me.

That house once belonged to a grandmother, the old neighbors tell me that no one stays long. It has been bought and sold from one to three times a year.

I drove by it once, it was angry that I was no longer there. I could feel it reaching out, as to take a swipe at me. So I believe in that case, it was attached to the grounds. Also want to note, it was built over an old stream. You have to go down 60 feet to hit anything solid according to an engineer. Water still runs underneath, is bad on the foundations.

Though I do not agree with all he comments here I believe there are some important things to consider.

Such as family issues. Fear, anger, pain, all these things can feed anything negative already there.

Some people act as batteries, they recharge things, they wake things up.

Crissie said...

Posted this yesterday but didn't get through. I have since registered. Hopefully this time I shall be successful!
Re the shadow men.Hadn't thought vey much about them really -'cept mention to a 'psychic' friend of mine, who accepted my thoughts -
'They' appear when I least expect them. Most often around the time I go to bed.
I am not usually scared of this sort of thing & accept what happens.
One night , though, one shadow-man came after me & hit me!
I sat up & fended him off with my arms - whereupon he disappeared.
He was 'scary' .
He wasn't wearing the 'traditional'
hat but a funny cap. He had red eyes!
They are still around, I notice but tend to ignore me.
In one of your posts I read about these guys hanging around waiting for one to die!
Now that IS scary!

I haven't encountered a shadow man for a while now - when I think about it they came around 'right in my face' not long before I had an accident- about 2 years ago.I fell & had to have a hip replacement. Maybe like the vultures & the crows they were waiting for my demise, so that they could devour my soul!
Incidentally whilst in the hospital, I saw many , many, shadow men. They were around me constantly. So vivid I made drawings, & took notes(since destroyed- but clear in my memory)
After my operation I didn't see them again.
So maybe they really were waiting like the vultures & the crows.......
Who knows?

Malachi said...

Okay you pitiful fools who cring at the bumps in the night, and fanciful tales as thus. If that was my childs blankey, any moron, even of my wife's family would return the blankey. To throw away or destroy at the hysteria of a borderline female is overt disrespect of it's owner, maker and beholden. I would not be surprised this family of mouth breathers have other such stories to tell.

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