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.