Devilish Doings In Tyler, Texas

In a little 1950's ranch-style, unremarkable suburban house in Tyler, Texas, there occurred one of the most famous instances of poltergeist activity in the world.

In 1965, a gentleman named L. Howard Beaird moved his wife, Johnnie (everyone just called her by the name of "John") and their teenage son, Andy, to the little home in Tyler after Howard and John both retired, having worked together for 32 years at the same company. Almost immediately upon moving in and until the family fled the house 3 years later, some of the most strange and horrifying events imaginable began to make their lives a horror.

One of the reasons Howard decided it was time to retire was because John began exhibiting signs of having mental issues. Previously, she had thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Howard and Andy, going to a nearby park to walk, going shopping together, taking weekend trips, but gradually she began pulling away, preferring to eat alone, not wanting to go anywhere. Howard thought maybe a change of scenery to a different town, a different home, would be good for her and so shortly before their last day of work, he purchased the house in Tyler and spent several weekends getting it ready for them to make it their home.

After the move though, John got worse. She began getting up at 5:00 every morning and eating breakfast at a nearby cafe. The house had a small workshop in the back yard which Howard had turned into an office for his part-time business of making rubber stamps and John wouldn't return home until she knew Andy had gone to school and Howard would be out of the house in his little office. In the evenings, she would take a cab to various restaurants around town and not return until after dark. She would then go straight to the bedroom and shut the door, refusing to come out. She said people were spying on her, watching her every move. When Howard told her that wasn't true, she became convinced he was the leader of the group watching her and forbade him to come into the bedroom. Howard began sleeping with little Andy in his room. 

John began smoking, something she had never done before. She began chain smoking and leaving lit cigarettes on furniture and in the bed. Howard told her she had to stop smoking, but she wouldn't. Radio's and clocks in the house began to quit working and upon inspection, Howard found that John had removed the inner workings and hidden packs of cigarettes and matches in them. Even though she could easily get more during her morning and evening trips around town, she hid hundreds of packs of cigarettes and lighters under sinks, behind books, taped to the bottom of drawers, under her mattress, above closet shelves, literally all over and around the house.

Howard and Andy were scared John would set the house on fire with one of her careless cigarettes, but she didn't allow them to be around her so John was sent to live with her sister in a different town since she was also retired and could be with her 24 hours a day. That's when things got interesting.  Even though John was now living with her sister, Howard continued to sleep in Andy's room because once John came back home for a visit and found that he had slept in the master bedroom and had thrown a fit and stormed out.

One night in July, 1965, Howard and Andy went to bed and as soon as the bedside lamp was turned off, hundreds of June bugs began flying into the room hitting them in the face and head. They came with such force that it stung when they hit and the ones that missed smashed against the wall behind the bed and splattered. Some hit the metal window blinds with a loud thwack, leaving their insides splashed across the white slats. When Howard managed to turn the light back on, the flying bugs stopped. Andy was screaming in fright, but Howard told him the bugs must have come in through a hole in the wire window screen and he would fix it in the morning. As soon as he turned off the light, the bugs, hundreds and hundreds, began hitting them again. Once more, when Howard turned on the light, the flying bugs simply stopped. No bugs were flying, none were crawling around; they were all dead. Howard and Andy slept with the lights on that night.

The next morning, there were so many dead bugs in the bedroom, Howard had to use a shop vac to get them all. They found that not only were there thousands of dead June bugs, most of them were dry and brittle, like they had been dead for weeks. They also found the bugs were only in the bedroom and nowhere else.

All was quiet for several days and then the voices started. At first, there would be an unidentified voice quietly speaking in a different room, but when Howard or Andy went to investigate, nobody would be there. They could not hear the voices clearly enough to understand what they were saying. This went on for several weeks until one night the bugs came back exactly as before. It was close to September then, long past June bug season, but there they were, again in the thousands and again only in the bedroom shared by Howard and Andy. After that night, the voices became louder. They seemed to resonate from the walls and could be identified as 7 different people known to the family. Sometimes what they said made sense, sometimes it was just gibberish. The problem was that all 7 of the people who were speaking had been dead for several years.

Objects in the house began to be moved. When Andy was at school and John was at her sister's house, Howard would come back inside the house from his shop in the back yard and find the kitchen chairs sitting atop the table or his lounge chair in the living room would be moved to the other side of the room; numerous pictures would have fallen from the walls or the TV and all the radios would be turned on. One time the refrigerator was moved from the kitchen into the bedroom on the other side of the house. One night, the bugs didn't return, but after laying down, Howard felt something moving against his arm. When he turned on the light and pulled back the bed covers, there were dozens of slimy slugs crawling around. They started inspecting the bed every night before crawling in.

One would think a rational person would get out of the house with all of that going on, but Howard had sunk all of the family's savings into the house when they bought it and the housing market was in a downturn. He didn't feel like they could afford to lose their investment so he and Andy stayed. John would sometimes come back for a few days, but for the most part, she stayed away. Kind of. Eventually, another voice joined the original seven - John's. Howard would often have long back and forth conversations with John. He knew for sure it was her because she talked about things, sometimes intimate things, only the two of them would know.  Yet when he called his sister-in-law's home phone, John would be there and her sister would confirm she had been there all day.

Howard told about one particular December night. "It was a Saturday and Andy and I went to bed about 10:30. Something that sounded exactly like fingers drummed lightly on the bed. Although we were under the covers, we could feel whatever it was tugging at the sheets, actually trying to jerk the covers off of us! We would turn on the light and the tugging would stop. There were no bugs that night, but when the lights were off, both Andy and I could feel something on our arms that seemed like small flying bugs bouncing up and down, sort of like gnats will do. We would slap at them, but there was absolutely nothing there. We would turn on the lights and see nothing. We sprayed the air everywhere with insect spray, but it did no good. It felt exactly like someone grabbing the hair on your arms with the thumb and forefinger, not actually pulling very hard at first, but later jerking the hair hard enough to hurt.

While we were laying in the bed with the light on, my work shoes weighing possibly two pounds each, flew right over our heads and landed on the other side of the bed! Andy's house shoes got up from the floor and flung themselves against the blinds. My clothes, which were hanging in the closet with the door closed, got out of there somehow without the door being opened and flew across the room. Finally we turned off the lights again and heard a strange sound we could not identify. It was under the bed and sounded like rollers being turned rapidly with the fingers, but the bed wasn't on rollers. Suddenly, something hit the blinds like a bullet! We turned on the light and found that the handle from the gas jet under the bed had unscrewed itself, and both the bolt and the handle had flung themselves against the blinds. Then the bed started moving away from the wall. We would roll it back again only to have it do the same thing over and over. That was the last thing we could stand that night. It was almost 2 A.M. Sunday. I told Andy to put on his clothes. We went to a motel to spend the rest of the night.

As we were walking down the driveway, after closing and locking the door, a handkerchief still folded hit me in the back of the head. Just as we got in the car, another handkerchief I had left on the bedside table hit me in the back after I had closed the car doors. By the time we arrived at the motel, we were so weary we both fell right asleep and nothing else happened that night." 

For almost 3 years Howard and Andy had endured this nightmare. Then one night, the bugs came back. This time, they were not June bugs, but rather the little crawly bugs that pull themselves into a ball when disturbed. In the south, they are called "pill bugs" and are a favorite for little children to play with. Once again, there were thousands and thousands of them flying through the air slamming into Howard and Andy, the bed, the walls and the window blinds with a force like they had been shot out of a cannon. Upon inspection, the bugs had been dead for so long they would fall apart in the hand like a brittle little shell. The frightening thing - pill bugs move slowly, have no wings and cannot fly or jump.

The next day, Howard returned to the house from his shop and smelled it full of gas. He found the gas line to the kitchen stove had been unscrewed. Things had taken a decided turn to the dangerous side. Depressed housing market or not, this proved to be the final straw as Howard decided to sell. It took a while as word had leaked to the real estate agents about what was happening inside the little house and often, people who came to check it out commented they felt uncomfortable inside it. Howard had to drop the price even lower until finally, even though he lost all of the money they had put into it, he accepted an offer from a young family.

Howard and Andy moved to another house in the Tyler area. John joined them and soon seemed to get better. They now both sleep in the master bedroom and have resumed their lives as a married couple. John says she doesn't really know anything about what happened back then and Howard states they are just scary memories now. Andy graduated high school, attended barber college and is said to be working in a salon giving good haircuts to people somewhere in Texas. There has been no paranormal activity at their new house. The family who purchased their former home has mostly refused to comment, stating that paranormal activity is the devil's doings. They stated they have staunch Christian beliefs and have not experienced anything "of a devilish nature" while living in the house. They do admit there have been a few unsettling things happen which they do not understand and have no explanation for, but refuse to give details. They say they have complete trust and faith in their God to protect them.

Faces

Back when man had to hunt to put meat on the table, there was a man doing just that in the heavily wooded mountains of the American West. After a long day of luckless hunting, he found himself in the middle of the forest as the sun began to set. The trees were so thick he had lost his bearings so he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the forest and could see exactly where he was at.

After several hours and now in the dark of night, he came upon a cabin in a small clearing. Knowing how dangerous it was to stumble around the woods in the dark, he decided to see if he could spend the night with the cabin's occupants. He approached slowly, calling out, "Hello the cabin" as was the custom to ensure he wouldn't be shot. Nobody answered his calling. The woods were eerily quiet as he stepped up onto the small porch and started to knock. He noticed the door was slightly ajar and since there was still no answer to his calls, the hunter decided the cabin was either abandoned or the owner was gone for a while. He decided to spend the night and if the owner came back in the morning, he would just explain the circumstances. With that, he pulled out a slice of jerky for his supper and lay down on the straw bed he had seen by the light of the full moon just before it disappeared behind the clouds.

Laying there in the dark, he thought he heard a slight rustling sound so he lit a match to see what it was. He figured it was just a mouse, but didn't see anything scurrying along the base of the walls. Lighting a second match, the hunter was surprised to see the walls adorned with a number of portraits, all painted in exquisite detail, and every one of them appeared to be staring down at him as he sat on the little bed against the wall. The odd thing about the paintings was that all of the faces were twisted into looks of hatred and malice. In the dying glow of the match, it seemed as though he could feel hatred directed toward him. He wondered what kind of person would create these fearful works of art. With a great effort, the hunter turned over toward the wall away from those hateful faces and eventually fell into a troubled, restless sleep.

The next morning, the hunter awoke to bright sunlight. He turned over and looking up, he discovered the cabin had no portraits, only windows.

Did He Live Before?

Vosges region of France

Marc Liblin, a shy, young boy of 6 years, was busy growing up in the town of his birth, a small village in the foothills of the Vosges in eastern France, when he began having odd dreams. He told his parents that in his dreams, a professor would come and teach him physics and an unknown language. He began speaking in this odd language which nobody in his village had ever heard. Over the course of several months, he began conversing in the words of the unknown language more than the French he had been taught since birth and told people it was his "native" language.

Kids can be cruel, especially to someone not exactly like them, so they made fun of little Marc, physically picking on him, calling him a dunce and weird. He began staying at home more, rarely going out to play. His friends were the books his parents brought home from the library. His schoolwork was not exceptional, but certainly within the normal so he passed each grade with his teachers totally confused as to why he insisted on speaking this foreign language far more than French. People from nearby towns began hearing about this odd boy. Most considered it a passing phase of a youngster who possessed an over-active imagination, but the phase didn't go away.

Marc completed his schooling, but couldn't acquire a job of substance as he continued speaking mostly in a language only he understood. As an adult, he earned money by doing odd jobs here and there and from the occasional handout, living a meager life on the fringes of normal society with few friends and no prospects. 

When Marc was 33, two language professors from the University of Rennes heard about this odd fellow who insisted on speaking a language of gibberish. Intrigued, they located Marc and interviewed him. Rather than the mentally unstable drunk they expected to find, Marc impressed them with his demeanor and his educated manor of speaking. They were totally unaware of the language he spoke so easy and naturally, but it was clear to them it was not gibberish at all. It had a rhythm to it with intonations and inflections which sounded like other languages they were familiar with. For the next 2 years, they fed the strange words and sounds Marc spoke into the database of a giant university computer which ran special programs used to decipher and translate speech into one of the world's known languages. After the 2 years was up, it became apparent their work had been in vain; the computer and every language expert they asked was stumped.

In a last ditch effort, the professors decided to ask the sailors who frequented the harbor bars in Rennes to see if any of them had ever heard this language during their world travels to exotic and out-of-the-way places. After several weeks with no luck, just before giving up, they had Marc speak in his language in another bar to a bunch of Tunisian sailors. The barkeeper, a retired Navy man, interrupted Marc, saying he had heard this tongue before on a very remote Polynesian island. And not only did he recognize the language, he knew a lady who speaks it. The lady, Meretuini Make, was divorced from an army officer and lived in a small cottage in the suburbs.

Rapa Iti

The professors quickly arranged a meeting. All three arrived at her door several days later and when Meretuini opened it, Marc addressed her in his language. Marc's life changed right then and there when she answered him right away in the old Rapa language of her homeland. Only 400 native islanders on Rapa Iti, one of the most remote and almost unknown islands in the world, spoke the language which Marc and Meretuini were excitedly and laughingly talking to each other in.

Not unexpectedly, Marc and Meretuini quickly struck up a friendship. They visited each other often and the friendship turned into love. Marc, a person who had rarely been away from his little village in the French countryside and had never been outside of Europe, married Meretuini and they moved to her little native island. There they settled into a quiet, loving and satisfied life, raising 4 children in a small community in the mountains. Marc became a teacher and taught physics to the native children. He was considered an excellent teacher and his students loved him. He also learned all he could about Rapa Iti; the oral history, the language, and the people. He wrote thousands and thousands of pages of documentation, preserving important stories and history and decoding the Rapa language. 

Marc, Meretuini and 1 of their 4 children

Unfortunately, not all of the natives felt toward him the same way his friends, neighbors and students felt. The mayor, a man known to distrust and not want outsiders on the island, discovered Marc did not have a college degree. He tried to have him fired as a teacher, but the community rose up in defense of Marc and so it was decided he would be reclassified as an Auxiliary Teacher rather than a full teacher. This meant Marc had to repay part of the salary he had been paid over the years. The repayment caused him and his family a lot of financial hardship and he had to take extra jobs to make ends meet. It bothered him that this prevented him from working on his Rapa Iti documentation.

With his documentation work still unfinished, Marc passed away due to cancer at the age of 50 on May 26, 1998. He never tried to financially capitalize on his story, indeed, he seemed to want nothing more than to be left alone to be with his family and to document all he could of "his" island. When he passed, he left behind his wife, Meretuini, the only person who had ever understood him away from the island, their four children, a large, unfinished body of documentation work, and an unsolved, very strange tale.