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."
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.
