Possession
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From the Case Files of Steven LaChance It was years after I left the Screaming House when I encountered one of the most intense cases outside of my own personal experiences. It was autumn, and I was called to a home in Southeast Missouri. Through conversations with the homeowner, I suspected it was most likely…
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You know what aggravates me? I mean, can I talk openly with you all without someone going off the deep end because they accidentally recognize themselves in what I’m about to say? I hope so because you know me. I’m going to say it anyway, and preferably before my coffee gets cold. I’m tired of…
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The 1949 St. Louis exorcism is one of the most documented and debated cases of possession in American history. It is the case that inspired The Exorcist, but most of what people think they know comes from film, not from the actual accounts. When you go back to Father Bishop’s diary and read what was…
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“He turns; I can see his frontal torso in the light. It’s covered in blood. Is he looking at me? The room begins to spin. The sound of his desperation matches the tempo of his hands scrubbing his body. The room keeps spinning and spinning. I still feel his eyes on me. I can’t breathe.…
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I heard a quote once that described a haunted house as one that had gone insane. That made a strange kind of sense to me. The idea that a house could harbor something hidden inside it, a kind of internal system that carries something through its walls and floors like a disease. That is what…
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Every once in a while I stop and look at two books sitting on my shelf. The Uninvited and The Architecture of Shadows. They were written many years apart, but in a strange way they belong to the same story. The Uninvited was the beginning of everything for me. It tells the story of what…
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When I wrote The Uninvited about the Screaming House, I wanted to reach the people who might be living through something similar. I wanted them to know they were not alone. I have been doing this work for a long time. But I have never gathered what I have learned into one place before. For…
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I see the Screaming House brought up in groups, pages, and podcasts from time to time, and it always gives me pause. Not because I am eager to revisit it, but because it is a strange thing to watch your own life get discussed when you never said a word. That happens more than I…
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fact that I’ve been doing this work for twenty-five years now. That number landed on me in a way I didn’t expect. Not as a milestone. Not as something to celebrate. Just as a quiet realization that a large part of my life has been spent sitting…
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What do I believe? That question has haunted me for years. Angels. Guiding beings. Protectors. Light. Love. The word itself carries a kind of warmth, does it not? But what if we have been looking at them all wrong? During the Screaming House haunting, something strange would happen. The phone would ring, and on the…
