
THE CURSED BOOK
By: Gabriel Fernandez
This event occurred in 1980 or 1981 (I forgot the exact year) and was experienced by a very good friend of mine. I will call him David (not his real name). In the early ’80’s, David was married for more than a year and his wife had just given birth to a baby boy. He was then three months old and in order to be more comfortable. the family moved in to a larger house. It was actually the house of the brother -in-law of David’s wife. It was located in the suburbs. The house was furnished, had several rooms, a library with hundreds of books, and a locked store room. David and his wife were (and still are) Christians. The whole family had been residing in that home for more than a month and everything was fine. They did not know they were about to face the scariest event of their lives. One afternoon after work, David went into the library and checked randomly on various books. He was checking some book in the bookshelves until he came across an odd book. It was about a notorious witchdoctor who lived in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. He would transform himself to a rooster man- human body with a rooster head- terrorizing people in the area. He could make objects fly and hit people, curse them by sending a raining could over their head, and much more. He had a very had reputation and was extremely feared by the people in the area.
David was totally absorbed by the book and spent almost an hour reading about black magic, potions, stories. Then his wife reminded him that they had to attend an evening meeting at their church. He then put the book away and and the whole family left. They came back at around 9:00 and David noticed that their dog, who usually would welcome them at the gate, remained in his kennel. As he enter the house, he noticed that the storeroom was open. This seemed very strange to him because this room has been locked since they moved in the house. He went inside the room and checked if someon was there. There was no one. The windows and shutters were all tightly closed. He just closed the door and didn’t make much fuss about the whole thing . The sleelping baby was put into his room, they had dinner, watched a bit of TV, and went to bed at around 11. The couple was on their bed, ready to call it a night when David heard a weird noise in the house. He waited for a moment and then decided to check for open windows. As he reach the hallway, he immediately noticed that the storeroom was open again! The sound was also coming from the room. It was the soundof heavy scratches on a window’s glass, as if someone was trying to break the glass window. As soon as he entered the room and switched on the light, the noise stopped.
He inspected the room and noticed that the windows and shutters were all tightly closed. But as he was leaving the room and was closing the door behind him, the noise was now being heard from another room. At first, it was heard from the kitchen, then the library, then it stopped. It must be a rat, he thought. He went right back to bed. Just as he was falling asleep, the noises started again. He got up, walked back into the corridor and saw that the door of the storeroom was open again! He decided to check the room thoroughly, trying to find an explanation to the open door. Because of the close windows, no wind could enter the room and cause the door to swing open. Again, he went back to bed after closing the storeroom but the same incidents happened all over again that night. David was then convinced that something spooky was happening. The atmosphere was then heavy and eerie. But still, he conducted a general check around his house. Everything was normal. The dog would have barked if someone had been trying to break in.
David went back to their bedroom, hoping the noises would stop. But the worst was about to happen. As he was about to close his eyes, he heard the noise again. This time, the noise was coming from the window directly over their headboard! David slowly moved the curtains away and looked at the window. What a fright! There was nothing behind the curtains but the noise just got louder. From their bedroom window, he had a clear view of the huge front yard being illuminated by the street lights. Now things got very scary. His wife also heard the noise and got up from their bed. Now, they could hear something like people running all over their bedroom, on the ceiling, on the walls, and under the bed! As David turned around, he noticed that they were actually “floating” above their bed! The bed was being violently shaken and their cabinets rattled, their contents spilling on the floor. Then they felt that they dropped on their bed, no longer floating. They could also hear the sound of people running into the corridor, doors slamming all around the house. David and his wife scooped up their kid up from his crib and drove to David’s parent’s house. They were scared to death because of what happened. They went back to the house the next morning with their parents and friends to collect their things. They were moving out from the house. The weirdest thing was that when they arrived, the dog was gone. The storeroom was locked and all the stuff that had fallen down on the floor were back on the cabinets. They looked undisturbed.
Knowing my friend, I know he really experienced this situation. He is very reliable man. He actually do not speak a lot but as he told me this story (in 1995) his wife was with him. I could still see fear on her face and she looked pale by reliving the event. It seems that the cause of the unexplained phenomenon was the opening and reading of the cursed book.