Steven LaChance Blog

From the Case Files of Steven LaChance

In June 2007, I got a call about a family that needed help.

They lived in a house in the Missouri woods, which they claimed was haunted. The wife had been held down and supposedly beaten in the shower, and the door to the oven had been ripped off its hinges by whatever was terrorizing the family. I decided we needed to send a team to investigate, so I asked Preacher, a new girl, Rachel, and her boyfriend to go with me to help.

At first, when we arrived on the case, things didn’t seem nearly as violent as the family had described. It was actually pretty quiet.

We began going through the house, taking initial readings and pictures, setting up equipment, and interviewing the family. The master bedroom was located at the end of a long hallway. The family had told us that most of the activity was coming from there. Footsteps and figures always led into that bedroom, and at times, it was an impossible room to sleep in.

As we entered the bedroom, I turned on the light.

We looked around, and then, all of a sudden, everyone in the room began to taste what was described as gunpowder. I’ve never been a gun enthusiast, so I could only tell you that I tasted something burnt in my mouth. The taste was sort of like when you were a kid and had those caps you used in a cap gun. Once you fired them, they left a smoky residue, and if you breathed it in, it tasted horrible. That’s the best way I can describe it. It was something like that.

We took some EVP samples along with other things, then set up equipment to monitor the room. When I turned the light off, I looked back to make sure everything was working, and that’s when I saw something glowing underneath a flag on the wall. I stopped Preacher and Rachel, and we went over to check it out. I pulled the flag back, and to my surprise, there was a note written in glow-in-the-dark ink.

It was a suicide note.

The woman who wrote it explained in the note that she could no longer handle what was happening in her life. She described a man who had taken her heart from her and destroyed everything she was. She believed he was possessed and was afraid that whatever had happened to him was now coming after her.

Heavy stuff, right?

She wrote that she would not become like him and that she intended to end her life. Then the note simply broke off.

Something else was written there, but it was no longer readable. Below the writing was a series of claw marks scratched into the wall. They looked as though they could have been made by human hands.

Preacher and I immediately began to cleanse the house. Preacher prayed, and I saged.

We worked from the front to the back, sealing the four corners. When we approached the bedroom, something drastically changed. As soon as we began the blessing in that room, the closet doors opened and closed violently. At one point, a low growl filled the room. We continued the blessing until the activity stopped.

The house finally fell quiet, and you could feel the negativity had been abolished. That is a hard thing to describe when it happens. It feels like a lifting, and the house usually looks lighter, as if something dark has been chased away. Was it the prayer or the sage? Was it an end product of suggestion and intent? I can’t tell you for sure, even though most of you who have read my work know I favor the idea of intent and its power to manipulate physical space, but in the end, how can any of us claim for sure?

Rachel, meanwhile, was desperately trying to decode what remained of the apparent suicide note while we were working.

She sat on the floor with a pen and paper and wrote down every word, along with anything else she could make out. She had a series of words, and for a few weeks afterward, she continued trying to make sense of them. I would get emails from her almost daily, each with a different interpretation. She never did figure out what the missing words said.

However, that night was the last night I would see Rachel alive.

I was working as a talk radio producer at the time. I produced six hours of talk radio during the day, and I had a show of my own. I can remember getting ready to go on the air when I heard a news story about a murder-suicide in a small town nearby. I didn’t hear the names. I remember thinking our little country bubble of safety had popped once more. There are murders out there in the country, away from the city. They don’t happen often, but when they do, you can bet they’ll be horrendous.

I wasn’t even in my house after coming home from work when I heard the phone ringing inside. I threw down my keys and darted to pick up the phone. It was Preacher, and he began rambling so fast I could barely make out what he was saying. I told him to slow down because I couldn’t understand him. The next words he said were slow and deliberate.

“Rachel is dead. She was shot in the head at close range with a shotgun.”

I can remember thinking, Please God, not a shotgun.

The case file history of the Glow-in-the-Dark Case had revealed that the girl who wrote the suicide note had indeed been killed herself with a shotgun. Now Rachel had been shot in the head with one, too. And I couldn’t help remembering that strange taste of gunpowder in the bedroom on the night of our investigation.

Preacher relayed all the details. Apparently, Rachel’s soon-to-be ex had shown up with a box of gifts for the children. He used this as an excuse to get inside the house. When he opened the box to show Rachel the gifts, he pulled out a shotgun and shot her in the face at close range. Then he turned the gun on her boyfriend, just missing him by a hair. Rachel’s ex left and went down the street to the local car lot. Someone asked him what he was doing, and he put the gun on the ground for leverage, bent over it, and shot himself in the chest.

I hung up the phone.

I couldn’t think. I sat there on the couch in complete shock, and then I became violently ill. How do you begin to comprehend something like that? I just kept asking myself over and over, Why?

Rachel’s viewing was a closed casket. Her boyfriend was in complete denial. You could tell from his face that he simply wasn’t there. I hugged him, and we talked for a few minutes. As I talked to him, I noticed the gunpowder burns on his face. It had been a very close call for him.

Rachel’s children were also there, and it broke my heart to know they would now have to go through life without their mother. The youngest was not more than a baby, and I just wanted to hold him and tell him it would be all right.

The funeral service was beautiful, and the minister spoke about anger and how you need to let those feelings go, but it’s very hard when you’re looking at the closed casket of a mother far too young to be in it, with her small children sitting right in front of you. That is something you can’t comprehend, and it does make you angry.

I left the gravesite that day, looked at Preacher, and told him I was done. I was leaving the paranormal. In my right mind, I couldn’t go on this way. Somehow, I couldn’t help feeling responsible. Could I have brought about Rachel’s death simply by involving her in the case?

I know some people will see these events as nothing more than a series of terrible coincidences. That’s their right. But when you’ve stood in that bedroom, tasted something like gunpowder, discovered a suicide note written in glowing ink, and then received a telephone call telling you that a woman who stood beside you that night had been murdered in almost the same manner as the woman who wrote the note, it’s not quite so easy to dismiss what you’ve experienced.

I have witnessed things during my years investigating the supernatural that I will never forget. Some were frightening, some were extraordinary, and some changed the way I looked at the world. But this particular case has stayed with me for a very different reason.

I did leave the paranormal for a period of time afterward, but of course when people came asking me for help I couldn’t turn them away. I knew in my heart Rachel would have been very upset with me for not helping a family who needed me. So, I began the work again because I know Rachel would have wanted it that way. I am sure if she had lived longer, she would have helped me with many more cases.

I still remember Rachel sitting on that bedroom floor, trying to decipher the words of a dead woman.

And I still wonder what the rest of that note said.