A Truly Haunted House
Halloween for me has always been an over- the-top kind of observed holiday full of cheap thrills — fake spider webs, plastic vampire bats, skeletons, goblins, witches and other scary things — especially on trick-or-treat night. You get the idea. It’s also my favorite time of year for haunted houses. The scary part is that some- times there are no actors, like in an amusement park where you have to pay an admission charge to get in.
UNSEEN EVIL FORCES
I am with Amy Mertz, standing in the driveway outside her home, when she reveals to me that an evil spirit attached itself to her when she was a teenager. She is holding a book, “Dead until Dark," under her arm. “You really believe that an evil spirit has been inside of you?” I ask her this because I’m naive about these things. “Yes, I do,” she says, without sounding defensive. “I knew as a kid there was something wrong with me. It’s a gift and a curse.”
Amy, 44, shaves her head. She is wearing an orange Harley Davidson tank top and black shorts. She has tattoos on her legs, hands, back, arms, forearms, ankles and neck. Some of the images are dedicated to her two daughters, and others — like the Celtic pentagram tat-too on her right shoulder — are to ward off evil spirits. Honestly, I can’t imagine anything or anyone messing with her.
“It growled like a beast,” Amy says about the day the spirit appeared in the basement of her mother’s home. It came to her after she finished reading “The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows," a 17th century manual of witchcraft. That week after work, Amy tried to get rid of the book by throwing it on the porch of an old bookstore in Kutztown. The book was back inside her car the next day. That night, her grandfather set the book on fire with kerosene in the garden at his house. “He [the evil spirit] knew I had read that book,” explains Amy, who was unable to get rid of the book or the spirit on her own. For the next 27 years, she never really felt safe again, no matter where she lived.
A PEEK INSIDE A HAUNTED HOUSE
The nondescript house, eerily strapped in between two tall crooked trees, is on a main road in Richmond Township. Built in the 1800s, it has had a long time to collect the dead. Seventeen people — 11 adults and six children — have died here, according to court documents.
Before we step inside, I ask Amy if there is anything we can say or do to protect ourselves. “Pray to St. Michael and say, ‘Don’t let me take anything home with me,’ ” she advises. She points to a plastic-coated prayer card in the framework above the door and says, “So nothing evil can come in.” Her husband, Eric, and their mastiff, Sammy, greet us at the door. “Last week Eric’s grandfather’s spirit was here,” Amy continues. She can smell the strong aroma of the dead man’s favorite coffee when he is around. “Pappy, are you with us?” she asked the spirit one day. That’s when the chandelier suddenly started to sway back and forth in the next room — it was Pappy’s way of telling the family he was there.
We walk further into the house and into the kitchen. Amy says, “We still have some spirits here, but they don’t really do anything.”
“So you really do, have a special talent,” I comment. (And honestly, I am not sure what I should or shouldn’t be asking at this point). Amy tells me, “Yeah, I see dead people and I talk to them.”
And she closes the door behind us.
Amy has lived here for 18 years. She has heard, above her bedroom, the sound of footsteps coming down the attic stairs and the sound of the attic door opening. “I used to be so afraid that I would hide my head under the covers,” she shares. Eric says he never used to hear anything strange. “He used to tell me I was nuts,” she laughs. Her two daughters, ages 3 and 5 back then, never wanted to be alone in the house. “They heard the same noises in the attic and they heard the door open...people up there,” says Amy, who believes the spirits were angry about renovations her husband made to the property. The improvements, she says, changed the location of port holes (empty spaces) that the spirits had been using to come in through various locations, including the basement, bedroom, bathroom mirror and attic. “I dealt with it a long time before I got somebody who would help me,” says Amy, who found a demonologist from Rhode Island to help her rid the house of evil spirits. It was the demonologist who confirmed that Amy was a medium, a person who is a spiritual intermediary between the living and the dead.
S.P.I.R.I.T. PARANORMAL TO THE RESCUE
Just days before the house was removed of its evil spirits by Dominic Ferrante and his S.P.I.R.I.T PARANORMAL team, an evil spirit had pushed Amy down the attic stairs; it attacked her in the shower and in her bed. “I felt the bed shake, my arm was being held down and I couldn’t move,” says Amy, who was wearing a necklace that the spirit used to choke her. “I said, ‘Jesus help me,’ and it left me go.”
Dominic and his team arrived on a Sunday around 2 pm; they stayed for five hours and then left. While they were there Amy wasn’t allowed in the house. Instead, she paced back and forth outside, full of anxiety about the cleansing. “[The evil spirit] didn’t like what was going on,” she says. “It was telling me to go back inside.”
Anointing oil was applied to every mirror, door and window to rid the house of evil.
“We felt that the house had energy, a negative entity, when we first arrived,” says Dominic, who didn't declare the place haunted until his team did a full investigation, including a dowsing rod session in Amy’s bedroom. When Dominic told the demons to “getout!" he got shocked. “You could hear the electricity go through the rods,” Amy recalls. According to itshaunted.com, dowsing rods are used to pick up on vibrations and energy waves emitted by people, places, thoughts and the earth itself.
Another cleansing ceremony, recited in Latin, was performed in October. The team poured a bottle of holy water on Amy’s body and they had her drink some of it. “After they were done, I felt so good. It was the first night I had a restful night in years,” says Amy, who, to this day, when she is outside mowing the grass, still sees the image of a ghost waving at her from the attic window.
IT’S HER STORY AND SHE’S STICKING TO IT
On March 9, Amy and S.P.I.R.I.T. appeared on My Ghost Story on the Bio True Story Channel on the Web. Since then, Amy has joined Dominic’s team. “She’s a great person and a real asset to our group,” says Dominic.
Today, Amy uses sage and rosemary oils to help ward off any evil spirits. She sprays other scented oils like Cypress and juniper on people and in the air for protection. She wraps herself in white light (a kind of psychic energy) and works with stones for their healing properties and good energy. She has her own holy water. The preventative measures seem to be working.
“This house is something,” says Amy, who seems to have accepted her fate. “I’m so glad it’s quiet now, though I have had people [spirits] come in. They stay a week or two: children, men, women and old people. I say, ‘Go to the light,’ and then they go away.”
If you asked me if I thought the house was haunted, I honestly don’t know...maybe it is. I was in it for two hours and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I did feel a delicate child-like poke at my waist on the left side of my body when I was sitting on the living room sofa next to Amy, who was on my right. I know that sounds really creepy, but that’s what happened. And I’m not even a medium!
YOU ARE NOT NUTS
S.P.I.R.I.T. PARANORMAL is a local nonprofit research group that provides professional investigations and analysis for individuals who think they are experiencing paranormal activity in their home or business. Tools used include thermal imaging and night vision cameras, digital voice recorders, infrared thermometers, digital and 35mm cameras, motion detectors, two-way radios, dowsing rods and other cutting-edge equipment to capture as much evidence as possible. The team provides its services free of charge. S.P.I.R.I.T. can be reached online at spirit- paranormal.net, by email at apparitions4u@aol.com or by calling 610.223.8440.
Originally published in Berks County Living, October 2013
