A Thing Named Steve

Curiosity sometimes gets the best of us, and we begin to experiment with things that we don't understand. Such was a case with today's storyteller when she was given a simple gift that eventually called up an entity and then welcomed into her home. My name is Edwin, and here is tia true scary story. My story pretty much begins. It was my twenty second birthday and we were having a birthday celebration at my mom's house. A friend of mine actually that day went to a flea market and he just so happened to be given a free deck of oracle cards, which are like tarot cards, but they're a little bit different. They're a little bit easier to read. They usually have like illustrations on them that are a little bit different than tarot cards. So anyways, he just so happened to get one for free, and he thought of me, so when he came to my birthday party, he gave those to me as my gift. I've always had a draw to anything like spiritual or paranormal related. I've always liked scary movies and really just anything to do with paranormactivity things like that. When I got home that night, right away. I was so excited. I started reading my cards and I had no idea what I was doing, so I was just learning how to do it, and eventually I got good at it, and I thought like, this was really cool. I think it was about six or seven months later I started to get really good at reading, so I wanted to try something different, and so I went to a metaphysical store in my area and they were selling these little trinkets. They're called pendulums, and they're basically a crystal that hangs on a chain, and I thought it was so cool. You could hold the chain and you would ask a question and it would swing one way for yes, or swing a different way for no. Or you could have you could make a board and it would swing to different answers based on what your board looked like. So I did this, and I had a board and I put yes going vertical, and no going horizontal, and maybe going diagonal. I held it over the board and instantly just started moving on its own, and I thought it was really cool, but also a little bit terrifying. I started messing around, asking some questions and getting some answers. I actually tried to get one of my friends to try using the pendulum, and they couldn't make it move it and I thought, that's so weird because the very first time I touched it, it just started swinging right away on its own. So I'd been playing with the pendulum and reading cards for a longer period of time now, and a friend of mine called me and she said, Hey, can you give me a reading? And I was like sure. So we got on a FaceTime call and we started with the cards and we were messing around, asking questions, and then we started using the pendulum. One thing I've always been able to do was I've always been able to visualize family members or relatives of my friends that i'm reading for that have passed on. And I've perfectly described to my friend her cat that she had when she was a kid, that she lived in Japan that passed away. I've described my friend's grandma to him like it's just it's happened a lot throughout my life. So as I'm doing these readings, I kept on thinking of this name Steve. When I was asking her, like, who's Steve, and she said, I don't know who Steve is, And I said, Okay, keep on hearing Steve and I'm seeing this man and he's wearing jeans and a yellow flannel and a blue shirt underneath. And his name is Steve. He has a goatee. And she says, no, like, I don't know anyone named Steve, and I don't even know anyone in my family or my friends or anyone, and that even looks like that that would fit that description. So I'm like, okay. Anyways, So we tried to move on, and I kept trying to ask our questions, but this name Steve kept coming up, and I kept swinging. My pendulum would keep swinging to know whenever I would ask about something else. So I said to her, you know what, I said, I have a really bad feeling. I think it's time for us to stop because this Steve or whatever is interfering with our reading is just it's very strong. It's making me uncomfortable, like it's time to stop. Even though we knew it was time to stop, we had kept going. As we're going, and we're still asking questions. I'm getting more and more uncomfortable. And I said, okay, listen, like we need to stop. I really don't feel good, like I was starting to physically feel nauseous, like I felt like I had a pit in my stomach and it was making me feel sick. So I said, okay, look, we're gon We're gonna stop now. I'm not comfortable anymore. I'm just I'm going to get off the phone now. So I get off the phone with her, and I don't to this day, I don't know why I had this reaction. It was very unlikely. It's not something that I would normally do. But I felt so uncomfortable and I was so freaked out that for some reason, I snapped the pendulum in half. I ripped the chain right off of the crystal, and I put it down on the table, and I told myself it made me so uncomfortable that I was never going to use it again. I put down the pendulum and I looked at it for a second. I said, okay, now I need to do something with it. So I picked it up and I took it to my room, and I was going to place it in a box so I could get rid of it. I walked out of the room and my fiance was in the room and he was playing a video game or whatever. I don't even think he really knew what was going on because he was playing his game. I didn't want to freak him out, so I didn't say anything, but I walked out of the room and I walked into my bedroom, which is just around the corner, and he goes, hey, like, babe, did I don't mean to be like weird, but did you fart? I was like what. He was like, yeah, like just there's a really weird it smells like rotten eggs in the living room, like really bad, like the whole room stinks. And I was like, what, No, that wasn't me. So I run back into the living room and it was just the most rotten, foul smell, and it just it came out of nowhere, and the entire living room stumped. So I walked to one side of the living room, and I'm trying to figure out, like, what could cause such a strong sense so quickly, because it couldn't have been it couldn't have been food or something like that, because it was just out of nowhere and it was so sudden and so strong. So I went to one side of the living room and I'm following my nose through the living room and I get to the other side and I noticed the smell kind of stopped, like it was like once I got to the other end, it stopped. So I stood there for a minute and I wait, and all of a sudden, I can smell it, and I'm like, okay, now it's over here too. And so I kept walking around the house and smelling, and every time I would walk into a room and wait a minute, the smell would pump like it was like it was either spreading throughout the house or it was following me. You know, just because of my knowledge of things that are paranormal, whenever you smell anything that is so strong and pungent and rotten, like anything like rotten meat, rotten flesh, rotten eggs, immediately it's something extremely negative, like this could be a demon, this could be just something super super dark. So immediately my first reaction was to start cleansing the house. So I start burning sage, I'm burning incense, I'm praying, I'm actually reading the Lord's Prayer off my phone while I'm walking around the house. I'm saging and trying to cleanse the house. The smell goes away, but I just in the back of my mind and in the pit of my stomach, like I know something was wrong, like I messed up, I messed with something I really should not have been, and I just I took it too far and I was basically in big trouble at this point. So later that night, I had a really hard time getting into bed because I was still uncomfortable, and my fiance was really trying to assure me everything is fine. You're just you're getting in your head about it. You need to relax. It's okay, We're fine, and I'm like, okay, yeah, you're probably right. So I get into bed, and it was weird because that night was the first night my cat did not come into bed with us. He always, every single night would come and lay at the foot of our bed and he would sleep at the end of our bed, but he didn't that night, and it was the first time ever. So I'm laying in bed and I just I couldn't shake the feeling that something was staring at me, or watching me, or trying to approach me, or something. Something was very persistently trying to get my attention. So I'm laying down, my fiance has already fallen asleep, and I felt like it's like being paralyzed with fear not anything is holding me down or I can't move, but I don't want to move, and I'm so scared, and I was sweating, and it was just like this deep feeling of discomfort and the terror. I was laying in bed and every time I would close my eyes in my doorway and I wouldn't see this physically with my eyes. I would only see this when I closed my eyes, almost like I was seeing in a but I know I was awake, and it looked like there was a big figure in the doorway, and it was super tall all the way up to the doorframe. It just looked like some sort of It looked like some sort of creature wearing a long cloak, and it had twisted horns coming out the top of its head. And I would open my eyes and nothing would be there. I just would see it every time I close my eyes, and it wouldn't stop. It was persistent. Every time I tried to fall asleep, I would close my eyes and I would see the doorway and its figure in the doorway. So eventually I said, you know what, this isn't working. I can't fall asleep. So I sat up, and there's my cat in front of the doorframe inside the bedroom, and he's staring at the same spot that I keep seeing this figure, and he looks like he's ready to pounce, like he's not fully laying down, but he's also not sitting up. He's in this half per position and he's his back is puffed up and his tail is puffed up, and he's staring right in the same spot I'm looking at and right there. I tried to wake up my fiancee to be like, hey, if something's wrong, but he couldn't wake up. He was really tired. He had work in the morning, and I was pretty much on my own for this. So again, I pull up my phone and I pull up the Lord's Prayer, and I wanted to stay it out loud, but I just had a feeling that if I was to start to speak, or to move or to do anything like something was going to happen to me. So I pulled up the Lord's Prayer and I'm reading it over and over again, and I just kept on reading it, and I just didn't let myself focus on anything else. And all of a sudden, I noticed the time, and it's now six thirty in the morning. So I did not sleep at all that night, and I'm waiting because I know my alarm and my fiance's alarm go off at seven am. So I stay in the bed. My cat is still down by the doorframe, and I keep reading the Lord's prayer, and all of a sudden, ding dig I hear the alarm start going off. So I didn't work that day until ten am, but my fiance had to leave for work, and I said, there's no way I'm staying in this house by myself, and so I got up with him. I got ready for work, and instantly I left. I refused to stay in the house. I was out of there, so I went straight to Of course, everyone runs to their mom, and I said, Mom, she's also she went through a phase when she was around my age of being really into the paranormal and supernatural as well. Now that she's older, she really just turns to God. She's very religious and she doesn't really allow these paralorble things into her life. Her faith is very strong. But I knew that because my mom has had similar experiences to me, that she might be able to help me. So I drive to my mom's house and it's probably seven fifteen. I got there as fast as I could, and I said, mom, here's what happened. And I sat down and I told her the story, and she, you know, kind of rushed me off. I don't know to this day if she didn't believe me, or if she just didn't want to believe that there was something like that in my life or in my household with a fiance and my son and my cat. I kept explaining to her, mom, this is what happened. I'm really scared. I don't know what to do. I tried cleansing my house, like I think I cleansed my house like six times last night, and it's not working. And she just kept reassuring me, no, honey, it's okay, there's nothing there. You just scared yourself. Get rid of your cards, don't pick up your pendulum again, like it's fine, Like you're fine. She just really didn't take me seriously. As the day goes on, it's time for me now to go to work, and I just all day I felt like there was a dark cloud looming over me, like I know that when I get home, I have to deal with this thing. I don't know if this thing is with me or if it's in my house, and I just really couldn't shake the feeling of this terror, like this fear that there's this thing I have to deal with and my mom doesn't believe me. And I actually remember that day. I have a very vivid memory of pulling out my phone. I was at work and I was actually googling signs of possession. Oh my god. Now you can't hear me in that recording, but it was at this moment when something strange happened during our call. Wow for context. During the calls, I sit in my studio with a couple of lamps on. One of them is by the door and the other is on my desk. Now, when you call in to tell your story, you're given a form, and in that form, there's a question if you want a video call or an audio call, so you'll actually be able to see the lamp in the background. But we determine that base on the connection and devices available to us. During my call with Tia, it was right at this moment when she mentioned that she had googled signs of possessions, that the lamp behind me started flickering. Now, it isn't the first time that it does that, and it definitely isn't the first time that I experienced something during a phone call. However, it is kind of a strange coincidence that it only happens during these calls, and only these certain types of calls. So again, in this call, we were talking about, well, a demon. Again, it's not a first and if you check out the story called Three Faceless Demons, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But anyway, after speaking briefly about it, Tia continues telling us about what she did and how the thing started to make itself known in the creepiest way. I completely agree. I've seen it happen. Actually, oh yeah, I definitely am a strong believer in the paranormal because of these things. The story is continuing right after this. I was at work that day and I caught myself. I actually very vividly remember sitting down in googling signs of possession because I thought that this thing was out to get me and that I had really just pissed off the wrong kind of spirit, I messed with the wrong kind of thing, and that I was in big trouble. Throughout the day, I just I kept calling my mom and texting my mom saying, Hey, I'm really scared to go home. I don't know what to do. I'm really uncomfortable. And my fiancee believed me, but also it was like, you're like, no one really believed me when it was happening, which honestly made it a little bit scarier because I felt like I was really on my own dealing with this. Was so all day. I was very persistent. I called my mom, texted my mom, and she said, Okay, you know what, fine, since you're so scared, I will call grandma and there's this Greek traditional thing. It's some sort of something she can do. I'm not sure what it's called. I guess you could call it a ritual and it has to do with oil and water and a candle kind of thing from the church. And she said she, I'm going to ask Grandma to do this and depending on what the outcome is, like, I'll call you and we'll figure it out. And I'm like, okay, I guess she calls my grandma. My grandma calls me and she's okay, like what's going on? So I tell her and she's saying this prayer and Greek while she's doing whatever ritual this is I really don't know how it works. I wish I could explain it, but I just have no idea. And then she goes, okay, honey, okay, I'm going to call your mom. But she honestly, now that I think about it, she never actually told me what happened, like what the outcome was of this little thing that she did. But she called my mom, and my mom calls me and she goes, Okay, honey, I'm going to come over after work. And so now I guess something must have happened. There must have been something there that told him that I was in trouble. If I get off work and I start driving home, and now my fiance is calling me like NonStop, like repeatedly calling me, and I remember I was in a meeting, but because I knew he was at home and I knew what was going on, I actually excused myself from the meeting and I answered the phone. He said, Hey, like, you got to come home. Something's not right in the house. I just I really need you to come home right now. And I'm like, well, I'm in a meeting, Like I can't just leave, and I don't know what's going on here. But I was just doing the dishes and something pulled on my shirt and I said, okay, I'm almost done. I can't leave right now, but I called my mom. She's coming over, she's gonna help us, and she's okay. So I get off the phone with him, I go finish my meeting and I start heading home from work. And I remember this day. While I was driving home, I had so much anxiety in me, but it wasn't It wasn't like my normal kind of anxiety where I feel stressed or overwhelmed or a little bit like uncomfortable. It was like like this, like fearful something is wrong. There's like I know something bad is going to happen kind of anxiety. And I remember having to actually pull over to take deep breaths and let it pass so I could get home. And so I got home and my fiance comes running outside and he actually found me sitting on the steps right outside the door, and he said, I was waiting for you, and you didn't, like I thought something happened. You didn't come inside. It's going on. I said, I can't go in there. He was like, what do you mean. I was like, I can't, I can't go in the house. I'm terrified. I don't know what's going on. I really don't want to be in that house. I want to wait until my mom gets here. Where is she? I said she'll be here in about an hour. He's liked, no, you're not going to sit outside. It's cold, it's you. Just come inside, sit with me. Don't be scared of your own house. Everything's fine, We'll just go sit down and watch TV. And I'm like, okay. So I go inside and we sit down and my son is watching cartoons in the living room and me and my fiance are sitting We had an L shaped couch and my son was in the corner. My fiance was on the edge, and I was sitting in his computer chair next to him, and we're watching TV. And I just the whole time was sitting there and I just couldn't. I couldn't focus on anything. I felt I felt like I was trapped in my own body almost, or I felt like I just didn't It's really it's a really weird feeling to explain. I felt like I wanted to get up and move and do something, but I felt like if I did something bad was gonna happen. Or I shouldn't move, I should just stay right here, stay still, do not leave this room, just whatever. So I'm sitting in the chair and I just had this weird feeling of eyes on me from like from down below, like near the floor, and it just I don't know how to describe it. I couldn't see anything, but I just felt like something was looking at me. So I looked down at the bottom of the coffee table, and there was like a platform at the bottom of the coffee table where you could put things, like you could put a basket or whatever. And I looked down at the platform and I didn't see anything. But the second I looked down, my cat actually pounced right at the table at the exact spot where I thought I was seeing something. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Like I was like that, I can't believe that just happened. And as I'm thinking, like, oh my god, I actually heard in my right ear a very high pitched but loud child's laugh. I know it wasn't something from the TV or outside of me, because my ear was burning as soon as I heard it, like my ear turned red and it was so hot. And I heard this it was just high pitched, child like laughter in my ear. When I heard it, I actually took a second to process what had just happened, and I flinched. It was like a late reaction because at first I thought we tried to explain it away and say it was the TV or like my son was watching a video or something. But then as soon as my ears started to burn, I like flinched in my fiance it looked at me and he was like, what, like what happened? And I was like, did you hear a laugh? He was like, no, loo, I didn't hear anything. So then I'm like, okay, so I take him to the kitchen. I'm like, you need to tell me what your experiences were today, because I just heard that laugh. And that's the first physical thing other than the cat that I've actually had happened since the actually since the cat in the smell in the living room. That's the first physical thing to happen to me. And he said, while I was doing the dishes and I felt something pull on my shirt and I said to our son, I told him to stop, and I turned around and he wasn't there. And as soon as he turned around to say stop, there was actually three knocks on the door, like three loud knocks, and it wasn't our front doors, the door that goes upstairs. We were actually living in his parents' basement suite at the time. There's three loud knocks on the door, and he thought his parents were there, so he opened the door and there was nobody there and he and that was when he got freaked out and he called me, and then I guess up until I got home, every few minutes there were three loud knocks, either on the walls or on the door. So he went upstairs to his parents and were like, hey, are you guys like working on a project? What is this banging? And they're like, actually, I don't know, because his dad had the entire day off, and he said all day he was hearing knocks in threes coming from downstairs from our suite. And when he told me that, I was just like, Oh my gosh, that shook me to my corks. I thought, whatever I did, whatever I brought into this house, it's not only affecting me, but it's also affecting my fiance and now it's also affecting his parents. So right then I called my mom and said, hey, you need to get here now, and I will never forget this moment. She showed up and I opened the door, and she had this giant Walmart bag in her hand, and the first thing she said to me, I don't know if you can I can swear in your podcast, but I just want to tell you what she said. She looked at me and she said, I'm going to show you, bitch, how to deal with the devil. And I was like, okay, Mom, okay, come inside. Oh yeah. It was My mom's very dramatic. She's amazing, though without her, I don't know what would have happened, because honestly, she saved us. So she has this big Walmart bag and she puts it down on my table and she starts pulling out So we're Greek and were My family is extremely religious. So she starts pulling out these icons, which are like pieces of wood and they'll have images of God or Jesus or Mother Mary and they'll they're embellished with gold and they're actually very beautiful. And she pulled out three or four of those. She had a lemon like candles from the church. She had not sure what the English word is forn. It's like a grail, almost like a holy grail that you would burn charcoal inside of. And she had holy water and oil that had been blessed in the church, and she just starts putting all these things together. I think she also had a bay leaf, like a branch of bay. And she goes okay, and she's the lines up me and my fiance and my son, and she starts using the oil to actually put crosses on our foreheads and over our mouths and over our eyes, so it's like the here no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. And she did it over our ears as well. And then she starts burning a coal in the cup with some incense from the church, and she's burning it. She's making crosses in the air, and she's praying, and I'm following right behind her. I was terrified. I needed my mom and I needed her to protect me. Sim just following her around the house and she does this whole blessing in every room, every crevice of the entire house. And then she's done and we go and we sit in the kitchen and she goes, okay, like, how do you guys feel? And I was still terrified. I still had a lot of anxiety. So I said, no, it wasn't good enough, you need to do it again. But my fiance is no, Like, I feel better. I think we're okay now. So what she did was she took all of those things and she actually put them on top of a bookshelf. Everything that she used to cleanse the house and to bless the house she put on top of a bookshelf in my living room. And from that night on, it completely stopped. There was no more knocking. My cat felt relaxed. I didn't have, honestly, any experiences that were paranormal for a really long time after that. I don't know what it was like. Is there really a way to know? Like it could have been. It had to be something dark, and it had to be something evil because I know that smell is associated with dark, evil presences. I believe it was a demon, but you know, who's to really say. I don't think there's really a way to know. Whenever I think about Steve, I think that was some sort of pricks, like trying to mislead me away, trying to have me focus on something different than what was happening, because I had already started to feel uncomfortable and It almost felt like whatever this thing was wanted me to focus on this Steve character so that I would pay less attention to what I was feeling and what was happening around me. So I think it was almost like a coax or like a distraction to keep me going and keep me my energy connected with the energy of whatever it was. It honestly had scared me off from things like tarot cards and pendulums for a really long time. I think that it really you don't know who or what you're connecting with. You're really just opening a door and saying, Hey, who wants to come in? Do you know of someone with a scary story that you think other listeners would like to here, or maybe something that you need to share. It's super simple to share your story, and you also help out the show by telling it. Just go to true scarystory dot com or send me a message to tell me about it. Also, our Scary Plus members get access to these types of conversations that we have sometimes after the calls or things like what happened today and some opinions on what that could be, for a few extra minutes after the show's over. So if you want to be a part of that, checkout scaryplus dot com. You can also click the links in the description of this episode and you'll get sent straight to it up next, be sure to check out Scary Story Podcast, where I read my creepiest stories. You can find it by searching for scary Story Podcast on your app right now. Thank you very much for listening. Let's see you soon.