GROWING UP IN A HAUNTED HOUSE

2220 N. Armstrong St. Kokomo Indiana

My childhood home after the burning

by a serial arsonist in July 2001

This is the synopsis idea I sent to Raw Television's Paranormal Witness to later be produced and aired on Syfy Channel on July 10th, 2013.  Understand that this synopsis does not include every story but only touched on some paranormal experiences with Raw Television producers.  It was never intended to be a book here.  The Blog is my synopsis.  Also, remember television chops and edits out everything people say in their interviews and includes only what they want.  If I could have included everything on the 50 minute program in my episode I could have had a full length featured film.  But I wrote this synopsis for a 50 minute program.  It was spliced, chopped up and edited to suit television purposes.  People write me a lot and ask about the inconsistencies.  But what they don't realize is Television has their own agenda and their own purpose.  They don't care about inconsistencies or elaborations.   Everything in my blog or in my book is the complete accurate truth. If you saw something on television but don't see it here it is because this is only the synopsis.  It was just something I wrote to get the idea of my story across to producers.  

It was 2001 when the house (which we had once called home) had been burned by a serial arsonist.  A dark demise had finally come to a house plagued by unsettling paranormal activity.

In 1970 my father and mother Roger & Ann Brock purchased the home on 2220 N. Armstrong st in Kokomo Indiana for their small family of 5.  By 1978 our family had added 2 more members to the family and father had to have the home built on.  We added a living room and another bedroom to the front of the house.  He built a small bedroom in the attic of the original part of the home. 

It was in 1978 that we began to sense & perceive the paranormal activity.  As children we did not know how to go to our parents and tell them of these happenings.  We went to a Baptist church along with our father and mother.  The Independent Fundamental Baptist church did not teach a belief in ghosts.  They did, however, teach demons.  It was frowned upon if one spoke of demon influence in a home as a Baptist might feel they did something to cause the problem.  So my brothers and sisters did not convey our feelings until a little later.  Later, my father had no choice but to believe because these events happened to him as well.

History of the house:

The house began as a 4 room cement block house with a tiny bathroom with a toilet, small sink and shower, enclosed in a closet.  It was white with green awnings and shutters.  Later, my father built a small bedroom in the attic and added a bedroom and living room to the front of the house in 1975.  The house was then sided with mustard aluminum siding and black shutters.  A black American eagle was placed above our door.  My mother had landscaped the big front yard with a cedar from Tennessee, and other trees and plants that simply made it beautiful in spring. A privacy fence was added to extend from the sides to the back of the house where we had a deck and a porch swing and side and back yards.  It was a lovely little bungalow house.  But upon entering it one could only feel heaviness, dampness, mustiness, tightness and darkness loomed continuously even when the sun shined.


All that my family has shared with me and that I have discovered myself are rumors.  There was a rumor by several neighbors who had claimed a young woman was murdered in our house years before we moved there.  These neighbors lived at least 3 blocks apart and did not know one another, as far as we knew.  One neighbor, whom we did not know and who lived 3 blocks away, happened to visit our house, as we had a rummage sale in the summer. I had just turned 13 (1980).  She began to talk to my mother telling her of a story.  To us, my brothers and sisters, she was just a stranger.  Why would be fascinated with her story?  Then to my amazement she pointed to the back of our house (original foundation) and said, “There is where she was murdered.”  The woman had told my mother that a woman was murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator.  We could not verify the story as we never attempted to seek record of this said event.  But we never forgot this foreboding story and had wondered later on in our lives if something dark and ominous dwelt among other residents of that house and had been under an attack or influence of a demonic spirit.  At that time, we did not believe in ghosts and could only point to a Christian’s view of the demonic according to the Bible.  However, it was a shame to even admit these things to other Christians as I knew if my father accepted its presence in our home then he may blame himself for not being a good Christian man and had allowed “the devil” to manipulate his family.  However, I know now.  We probably had the remaining energy of a young woman or girl trapped and also the most evil demonic presence in our home.

Lana, Mary, Lisa

Roger & James

My family by age:

Father – Roger Brock Sr,   

Mother – Ann Brock,
The twins - Lisa and (me) Lana,   
My younger sister – Mary,   
My brother – Roger
My youngest brother – James
My dog - Sam

Experiences:

1978 – 1983

I (Lana) first realized something strange in the house as I sensed a presence and could hear footsteps rustling against the carpet in the back 2 rooms in the back part of the house (on the original foundation).  At that time the back rooms were both bedrooms.  There were also cold spots in both of those rooms.  These are experiences we all experienced but somehow adapted to. 

However, it changed for me when I began to see things I could not explain.  One day I was cleaning the kitchen.  It was 10 in the morning.  No one was at home and I was alone in the kitchen.  The kitchen sits in the middle location of the bungalow house.  It is dark with a wooden shuttered window.  Light only barely seeped in from outside.  I was doing the dishes when suddenly I thought I saw racing flashes of white light zoom passed me.  It appeared to come from behind me and moved to the front of me but I only could see this in my peripheral vision.  When I would look at it I could not see it.  It happened several times.  The light not only traveled from behind me (which apparently was coming down the stairs and flying into the kitchen and dissipating; but it was also coming somewhere from the kitchen ceiling and racing up the stairs.  I saw this many times.  I was very afraid to face it and look at it head on.  I was alone in the house that day.  I tested the wooden shutters to see if any of the light from the blowing trees outside was causing this effect.  And while there was a light effect on the shutters and on the sink in front and on the table, this light did not go to the wall or ceiling.  The light from the shutter was angled downward not upward as I was seeing.  The light was a soft powdery white color.  It was misty yet thick.  It was quick and made no sound.  Later that evening I tested a theory.  I wanted to see if I could see the streaking mists of soft light at night.  I sat in the kitchen at that table and watched those stairs.  I watched and watched and then finally when I almost had given up trying to catch this light, I saw it directly.  It streamed so quickly from the attic and into the kitchen and dissipated into the ceiling of the kitchen.  It was not as misty when looking at it head on.  It was almost like a distorted bit of light, bright.  As the movement of the light was so fast, it made it blurry to my sight as I tried to define it.   

I remember for the first time not only did I believe in God and all the good from above.  But at the ages between 11 & 16 I came to be aware that something was in our home; and it was not a good presence.  It was something evil.  At that time I could not discern between a human spirit and a demon.  All that I knew was our house was dark and seemed to have a heaviness and extreme sadness about it.  What I felt was heavy and weighed heavily upon me emotionally to a point I would doubt my own confidence and sanity.  As alone I thought myself to be in my self-centered world I discovered I was not alone in these experiences.  My sisters and brothers also experienced these things.  However, gloomy the house felt at times, my mother made it beautiful with her feminine touch.  My father helped to build the most pleasant sentimental memories for us there and my brothers and sisters and I bonded very close.  The unfortunate events that happened in the nice little bungalow would only make us stronger and pull us closer as a family.

Our kitchen in the 1990's

The activity began to accelerate when I was 15 years old.  I will list a few of my own experiences as well as others in my family.

Lana (me) age 15 (1982) – I slept in a room with my 2 sisters.  My youngest, Mary, had her own bed and my twin sister Lisa and I shared a bunk bed.  I slept on the bottom because I feared sleeping on the top.  One summer evening I had difficulty sleeping on my bed as it seemed too hot.  So I took my pillow and lay on the floor in front of a boxed fan.  As I tried to go to sleep I began to hear tapping noises on the ceiling or walls.  Then I began to hear a soft rustling of footsteps approaching me.  I could sense a presence nearby.  I began to breathe rapidly and refused to look around for fear I would see my most fearful thought come to life.  Then suddenly I felt a rippling wave affect from under my body as if the floor had moved…or worse yet my body had moved.  Terrified and gasping I jumped on the top bunk bed with my twin sister Lisa holding the blankets over my head, shuttering and shaking.  And when Lisa asked me what was wrong I could not tell her because I was afraid she would think something was wrong with me. 

A few months later also sleeping in the same room with our bunk beds separated I would experience another unexplained event.  As there were 7 people in our household I had come to recognize everyone’s knock at my bedroom door.  One evening around 3 in the morning I had awaken because I heard a knock at my door.  My door was closed and a hallway light could be seen from under the door.  I looked at the light and noticed there was no shadow cast down upon the floor and tried to go back to sleep assuming I must have dreamed the sound.  Then as I lay my head on my pillow I heard the knock again.  This time I knew it was my father.  I got up quickly and opened the door.  He was not there.  I lay back down.  Again I heard the knock.  Realizing that something out of the ordinary or one of my own family members was playing a trick on me unsettled me making me feel sick.  I ran to the door, opened it, and scurried out into an empty hallway, across the kitchen, into the living room and to my parent’s bedroom.  I opened that door.  And my father was asleep snoring.  It wasn’t him.  I ran so fast back to my bed and curling up under my blankets wondering why God would let me hear and see things that would make me feel helpless.  I was scared!  This should not happen to children.  But it does. 

My younger brothers Roger & James

(1983) my dog Sam, a black long haired poodle mix, went insane.  He was a stray dog that had followed me home one day from school.  I would allow him in the gate of our back yard, which had a privacy fence around it just long enough to play with him and feed him and then would push him back out.  But he constantly hung around our gate wanting in.  Finally, one day my father said we could keep him.  We took care of him, bathed him, took him for walks and let him play in our back yard.  He was a fun loving dog and grew close to me especially.  I needed him so much.  Emotionally I was crumbling as I had a difficult childhood dealing with being molested by a neighbor pedophile along with many other children in my neighborhood in the radius of 6 blocks and more.  So I will admit that I had a lot of confusion as a young teenager because of how another man tortured me for many years of my young childhood.  But some of my other siblings, friends and neighbors also went through the same torment and torture.  So we all depended upon one another.  We found much happiness and love bonding close and sticking up for one another as family and friend.  Sam was man’s best friend…well my friend.  And I needed him.

One night as I slept on the bed next to my big old French style windows I heard a loud crash!!  I sat up in bed looking all around me in the darkness to understand what had just happened.  My sisters also woke up.  We turned on the light.  And then we saw it.  A large hole in one of the panes of glass of the French windows had been busted through.  And my dog, whom I loved dearly, was nowhere to be found.  He was gone.  My father had to replace that pane with cheap plastic.  The next day there was no Sam.  We looked for him everywhere and called him but he was gone.  His behavior was not that erratic.  He was an excited dog but he was a more docile creature and trained well to be a home pet.  I took him outside to do his business of an evening several times and in the early morning.  So I knew that could not have been it.  After 2 days he returned to the back gate.  I ran and fetched him.  He had blood all over his leg from breaking through the glass. I took him and cleaned him off and forgot about the incident.  Until, it happened again, not but a week later.  The crash was loud!  This time he jumped through the pane of glass above the one he’d broken the last time.  Why would he jump so high to get out?  How could he jump like that and with enough speed to impact the window to break through it?  My bed was right next to the window!  He need speed and distance to get strength!  I could not understand.  This time my father was awake to hear the glass break.  We all awoke and quickly went to get him.  He was trying to climb the tall privacy fence to get over it!  Why was he doing this?  His body was bleeding near his ribs and his legs and feet bleeding.  Why would he hurt himself?  My father told us he was probably sensing another dog in heat.  My brothers and sisters did not agree.  My beloved pet Sam would venture to break through the other panes of glass in that bedroom 2 more times.  There were now 4 cheap clear plastic panes of glass to replace what Sam had broken.  One day when my brothers and sisters returned home from school, Sam was gone.  But this time it was because my mother called an acquaintance to come to our house and take him to the animal shelter.  It broke our hearts. It broke my heart.  He was my protector, my friend.  He was the one thing that made me feel safe in that dark scary house. 

Friends who attended our home would be frightened away and never return.  We had a girl friend who spent the night with us one evening (1982) called to have her father come and pick her up because she had claimed she had heard a woman yelling “help me” from the ceiling in our bedroom.  She was frantic about what she had heard and never returned to our house.  She remained close to us through our school years and early adult life.  We had other neighbors who spent the night with us who had experiences in our home.  They too, stayed away from our house.  The house had such a dark and unwelcoming atmosphere in the air.

I tried to focus on school and getting my grades up as I convinced myself I was going to be strong and confident in myself and get good grades. I succeeded in getting my grades up and becoming an honor roll student.  I became known as the most studious as I sunk myself into studying science, medical terminology, books of philosophy by well-known political figures, psychology art and music.  I also became heavily involved with a boy-friend, and my friends; typical characteristics of a teenager. 

My twin sister Lisa had claimed one evening in (1983) that she had seen a little girl apparition out of the corner of her eye.  She said the girl continued to reveal herself to her but would not allow her to see her when she looked directly at her. 

Between 1983 – 1985 Many incidents would happen that would begin to include my father and to convince him to believe his children.

My younger sister & brother

Mary & James

One evening, in 1984, I was in bed and had sat up to turn off the light.  However, I had heard a scratching on the French window panes of my window.  This bedroom was the room that once was the old living room and next to the room I once stayed in.  I drew back the curtain and screamed loudly as I had seen a pale white sickly face of what looked like a man.  But not a man.  It had white pale skin, greenish yellow eyes with red on the outside and ugly teeth.  This is what I saw.  I thought someone had broken into our gate of the privacy fence.  My parents came running.  I began to hyperventilate and told my father what I saw.  He called the police.  However, the police could find nothing.  No footprints, no traces anyone had been pressing against the glass and the fence was locked from the inside along with the fence on the side.  This was about the time I began to feel something had to be done.  Because I knew I wasn’t imagining these things. 

I had long since thought it could have been poltergeist activity surrounding me or one of my other siblings because of childhood traumatic experiences with the pedophile who tortured me and or them when for all those years as a small children and because of all the angst of having felt so inhibited by the Baptist church to be all that we could be.  However, as much as I do believe in poltergeists wrapping around a pubescent teenage girl or boy, I know this was NOT a poltergeist.  What I will explain now will show how the activity began to surround my father and brother.  It began to move large objects that even we could not move and while were not even present in our home. 

(1984)

One Sunday, when I and my family came home from church around 1:00 in the afternoon, (I and Lisa were 17 and juniors in high school), we noticed that dad was struggling to get the front door open.  He had unlocked it but could not get it open.  Now my father was well over 250 pounds.  He was a big strong man.  He could not open that door.  My entire family was standing waiting for him to get us in our house.  Dad instructed my brother Roger to go to the back of the house and break in the back window of the house. Roger grabbed hold of the old heavy metal frame of the window and pulled it hard to try to force it open.  This force ended up breaking that window permanently to where the old fixtures would not keep the window locked.  When Roger got the door open he had to climb over 2 huge homemade bookshelves that were crammed up against our door.  These two thick huge book cases were extremely tall and very heavy.  They had been so tall that my father had to literally shove them in place.  Those book cases were stuck there.  They couldn’t have fallen.  They have had to have been pried loose and thrown 10 feet across the room to the opposite wall and then pinned up against the door.  What we found strange was that the books were all tossed to the right side of the room and book shelves tossed to the left side and up against the door.  Also, there were stain streaks from the wood stain of the shelves on the ceiling.  It was 2 medium brown streaks shaped like a crescent moon which proved the shelves had been whisked out of place by a brute force and thrown to the left side of the room.  This was the 1^st my father could not explain to his satisfaction.  By this time, he knew something was wrong.  One day in the car, as a family, as he heard all of us talking about all the things that had happened to us up to that point he simply said, “Don’t talk about these things while at home.”  It was then that dad said, “It’s a demon.  Demons cannot read your mind, but they can hear what you say and see what you do.  They can tell if you’re afraid” He told us not to even talk about it or acknowledge it and it wouldn’t hurt us further. 

The twins

Lana & Lisa

(1985)

This incident involves me, my twin sister Lisa and my youngest brother James.  It was early afternoon on a weekend in the summer.  James had come into the living room where I had been working on a poem I had written.  Lisa had just joined me. Roger was in the kitchen or back room.  James came into the living room (the TV was NOT on) and no one else was home.  James asked Lisa to help him tie up his roller skates.  However, she was upset he had her roller skates on and demanded he take them off.   As she knelt down and began trying to undo the laces and take them off his feet...all of a sudden from under the house we heard a loud grumbling growl.  It was so loud that we could feel the floor vibrate against our feet.  All of us stood up in fear saying, “Did you hear that?  What was that?”  The noise was a loud bellowing growl.  It was a voice...groaning loudly from under the house.  Roger, who was not even in the living room heard the noise and terrified he ran through the living room and out the front door.  The floor shook and vibrated beneath our feet.  We scurried out of the house in shock and ran all the way to the street.  We waited for our parents to come home before going back in.  I wouldn't allow my brothers back in that house until we knew.  We stayed outside for awhile and then was invited to the neighbors to wait for our parents.  When my father came home, the first thing we did was ramble in fear to him. However, dad could not explain what happend to us.  We never found an answer. 

(1987 age 19 just before I married)

I lay in my bed trying to get to sleep.  I was engaged to be married so I knew I wouldn’t have to sleep in this bed for long and have a safe warm bed with my husband.  I was happy about that.  And as much as I loved that little bungalow house on 2220 N. Armstrong set and the good memories we had I will never forget the horrible thing I saw that night.  I lay in bed trying to sleep.  I remember that as I began to try to sleep I felt a presence.  I heard a slight crackling noise and then a huff.  I closed my eyes shut as tight as I could.  I didn’t dare open them.  I grabbed my blanket and pulled the blanket up over my head and pulled it tight.  I knew something was out there.  I knew it was coming closer.  I felt the pressure of something hovering above me.  It did not hurt.  Just knowing I could feel its presence pressing down upon me terrified me.  I wanted to scream.  But I chose not to.  After lying frozen in fear for a while there I decided to look.  And very slowly and cautiously I began to lower the sheet.  I took a gulp of air and held it in.  Then, I squinted my eyes and looked in the darkness above me.  And there I saw it.  It was a dark solid mass darker than the darkness.  I didn’t know what it was and tilted my head a little trying to discern it.  But then I saw the red eyes.  I saw what looked like red lighted up dots in this hovering mass above me.  I yelped and pulled the blanket back over my head and stayed that way until I fell to sleep.  I did not get up.  I did not move.  But I knew I would never sleep in that room alone ever again.  I spent the rest of my days sleeping in a recliner out in the living room with the lights on.  I became a good writer because of constant nights suffering from anxiety over going to sleep.

I do believe my father was right in his judgment that we were being plagued by a demon.  However, not acknowledging it did not help lessen the activity.  The activity continued to manifest itself a couple years even after I left to marry my husband and to leave that place.  I was 19 when I married in 1987.  My twin sister Lisa and younger sister both had already married young to Air Force men and I followed them in the same manner by marrying young to a man who was in the US Air Force. 

My lovely mother Ann Brock

(1987)

My mother called me, while I was temporarily living at Fort Devens Massachusetts to tell me something was happening in the house.  My younger brothers were in high school and still residing with my parents.  My mother stated that there is a ghost in the house.  She was frantic.  She was so overwhelmed by something that had just happened to her in that back bedroom where my dog had gone insane that she just had to call me.  As she began to tell me what had happened I could hear my father say, “Don’t acknowledge it Ann!  Don’t say anything!”  But mom was too upset to ignore it.  She had to tell me.  She told me she was in the back bedroom where their bedroom was now.  She was cleaning, when a very large picture with a heavy frame and glass encasing a photo of a man hunting with his dogs, came crashing upon her head.  Only her head was not touched.  The glass of the huge picture fell straight above her head laying atop of her head and forced downwards.  Glass shattered all around her.  Yet the only thing she could feel was a slight pressure around her.  She could not tell if she was being guarded by an angel or if an angry spirit was trying to hurt her.  This scared her tremendously. 


As she continued telling me of this incident she decided to tell me of other incidents.  She explained that their lights will go on and off constantly flickering.  And if they start talking about the ghost or “demon” as my father called it then the lights would continue to flicker.  She also explained that the ground under the new part of the house was sinking on the right side just underneath the living room.  She said that my father was doing everything he could do keep it from happening by shoving fiberglass insulation under the foundation of the house along with whatever he could find.  She said the house was moving on the left side.  Dad said it could have been a flaw in the construction when the construction workers built on the addition.  However, he really couldn’t explain why it was happening now.  The new part of the house which stood on a foundation 2 feet off the ground was beginning to sink into the ground.  There had been no flooding and there was no explanation why this would be happening.  The house wasn’t settling.  The house was sinking into a hole.  It was only a minor hole and my father kept it filled.

1989

After I had gotten married, my twin sister Lisa had divorced and returned home with her young son Clint who was 1 at that time.  During this time my brother Roger cleaned up the attic and made it into a bedroom again.  He would go up there to relax, play his video games and sleep.  Once in the middle of the day he was laying down on the bed when something terrifying happened to him.  However, as he recalls it to me he calmly recollects it but says with much insistence that he really saw this thing.  He lay on the bed which sat next to a wall that had a cut out in the drywall.  This exposed the old attic to the attic over the new part of the house.   What happened he could not explain except to believe it was something supernatural.  In from the newer attic came a shining flowing light of blue, purple and green.  The light hovered above him.  He saw a shape of something as a human with a face and eyes.  The eyes were bright and not human.  The colors of the entity changed several times right before his eyes.  He began to panic as I had when I saw an entity I could not understand.  Roger has never talked much about this experience but when he does he insists with much urgency that it did occur and that these things do exist. 

My Father

Roger D. Brock Sr.

My father was the last to testify to us (his children) that he saw “this leprechaun thing” He said it came to him several times when he was laying down in the living room.  He had told me that he was laying on the floor and had looked up and saw this green light and something hovering with a face that looked like a creature.  He said it moved fast yet it hovered.  It did not hurt him.  But it did shake him up.  He never denied its existence yet he refused to ever talk about it in great detail because of fear that talking about it would invite it to cause havoc with life.

A couple years had gone by where Roger had sought to communicate with the spirit in the house which still plagued my father, mother, our youngest brother James and himself.  Roger had asked it to move a heavy long padlock.  He hung the padlock on the doorknob of the bedroom where my dog Sam had gone mad.  While sitting with my twin sister Lisa, visiting, they both watched as the padlock moved back and forth as Roger had asked for it to show them that it was present by moving the object.  I believe it’s a mistake to communicate with spirits because we don't really know if we are dealing with a demon.  Most of the paranormal activity out there is demonic, I believe.  But it’s my opinion that it is mostly demonic. 

There is also a photo that my mother took of my brother sitting outside on the steps to the front door.  In the photo we can see my brother Roger sitting in the living room and hovering above his head are what looks to be 2 red eyes. 

There are many more experiences that may have happened that I do not know all the details to as when I left home I was not there to hear about all the experiences. 

My brother Roger and James left home as soon as they graduated and my parents no longer desired to stay in the house.  They had decided to let the house go so as to move into apartments that would fit their budget and their needs.  As much work dad put into rebuilding and remodeling the house, and work mom put into beautifying the interior and exterior, landscaping and yard work, they just felt it was time to let it go.  My parents moved out of the house in the late 1990’s.  The house was rented out to a couple other tenants.  One of the tenants had 2 dogs that also went mad in the house and broke through the same windows that my dog Sam did.  None of these tenants stayed long.  Then…it happened. The house sat alone, quiet and abandoned.

One evening in 2001 a man walked down the alley behind my childhood home.  He lived only 2 houses down.  He began a fire to burn more than 30% of it and left it in ruin.  He made his way to a nearby restaurant where he called the police to report a fire.  It was later discovered that the police had been looking for an arsonist who had burned many structures in that area.  This man had claimed that he heard a voice come from the back of the house telling him to burn it.  And as I believe that the house simply fell victim to a fire lover I still can’t help but wonder about that voice he heard coming from the back of the house.  Was it the spirit influencing him to a criminal deed, as perhaps many years ago, when a young woman was said to have been killed there?  I don’t know.

All I do know is that the house that my wonderful parents made into a home is no longer standing there today.  Now, it looks like a little tiny park in the middle of a neighborhood.  The grass is always mowed and cared for.  The trees bloom purple flowers in spring and the cedar towers high and proud still.  I often go back there and remember my father who is now passed away.  I remember the love we had there.  I remember how much harder we had to pull together as we tried to ignore what was happening to us, and attempted to live a normal life.  We didn’t want to believe in the paranormal.  We didn’t want to accept it or acknowledge it.

But still even when we don’t acknowledge it, it WILL confront us.  ~~Lana J. Hunt