Horrific Hauntings : Haunted in Slanesville Part I

 Brian Kendall worked as a carpenter in Baltimore, Maryland and lived there along with his wife and two kids. As the buzzy city life did not suit the family well, they decided to move back to the state of West Virginia which was the place Brian and his wife Belinda grew up. After doing a thorough search, Brian stumbled upon a house in Slanesville, West Virginia. This house was an isolated single-storey house present in the middle of the woods. The family liked the house and the solitude it bought with it and ended up moving into it in 1991. To protect the house, Brian bought an adorable black labrador retriever and named her Coco. Coco slowly became a part of the family because of her friendliness and she protected the kids ferociously.

An Eerie Balloon

 After moving into the new house, Belinda decided to invite her brother and his family and throw them a party. Belinda’s brother had a small girl named Jordan who had her birthday just a few days back and Belinda decided to throw her a surprise birthday party. So, her brother’s family reached her house and the surprise birthday party commenced. After the cake-cutting, the adults went to the kitchen to have coffee and the kids were playing in the living room. As they kept sipping on the coffee, they noticed something unnatural happen right in front of their eyes.

 They saw a helium balloon slowly descend from the ceiling with a stiffened thread. It appeared as if someone was pulling the balloon down but, they were not able to see anyone at the end of its thread. This balloon slowly drifted across the room until its thread reached Jordan. The balloon immediately caught Jordan’s resistance and Jordan turned around and told “Thank you” looking at an empty space. She reached out trying to hold the balloon and when she almost got hold of the balloon, it ascended back onto the ceiling. Jordan got hold of the balloon’s thread and continued playing like nothing happened.

 Belinda and the other adults were startled by this event and asked Jordan whom she thanked while getting hold of the balloon. The three-year-old pointed to an empty corner and told them, “It was him”. Although petrified, they convinced themselves saying that there was a leak in the balloon that made it drift across the room and the invisible man that Jordan pointed to was her imaginary friend which was pretty normal for the children of her age. But deep down, they knew that something unexplainable was behind this event.

A Burnt Vehicle

 A few days later, Brian’s daughter Blaire asked him if he could accompany her for a walk through the forest on the backside of their property. Brian readily agreed and along with his daughter walked into the thick forest. After a few minutes of walking, the duo stumbled upon an odd sight. They saw a burnt vehicle right in the middle of the forest. It appeared someone had intentionally put the vehicle on fire sometime before. The vehicle was completely charred and it emitted an uncanny vibe. Brian asked Blaire to stand back and walked towards this vehicle to get a closer look. The burnt vehicle was filled with burnt kid toys and a half-burnt spring mattress.

 Brian loitered around the van trying to find a path for the vehicle to have moved in but he was not able to find any. The strangeness started to get on his nerves and Brian decided he had to leave the place at once. On returning home, Brian informed Belinda about this vehicle hoping to get a rational explanation but upon hearing this, she was as confused as Brian.

The First Real Sighting

 Brian was still working in Maryland and this meant he had to travel multiple hours every day. This was extremely tiring and Brian was not even getting enough sleep due to the number of hours lost in travel. After doing it for two months, Brian concluded that commuting so many hours was not working well and he decided to stay at his mom’s house in Maryland during the weekdays to work. Thus, the next Monday, Brian drove to Maryland for his work and stayed at his mom’s house until Friday for work and then returned to Slainesville on the evening of Friday to stay with his family. Seeing this was better, Brian made this a routine but this meant that Belinda had to stay alone at the house during the work days without a car. 

 Belinda was used to being alone in a house in the middle of a forest since her childhood and she was not bothered much by this but this separation was new to the kids and they were finding it hard to cope. With Blaire constantly asking Belinda to spend a night at their RV camper, she decided to let her camp for a night to get her used to their new life. So, that night, Belinda sent Blaire along with Coco into the camper, locked the door, asked her not to open the door again and left back to the house.

 The camper had two windows, one big one with curtains on Blaire’s right and one small one on the door on the left. After gazing at the forest for some time through the window on her right, Blaire turned off the lantern and went to sleep. Her slumber did not last long as a couple of hours later, she was woken up by coco’s strange behaviour. Coco was barking looking at the window on the door and acting as if she was petrified by something. As Blaire looked through this window with her sleepy eyes, she noticed a figure move past the door. She thought that it was her mother who turned up to check on her but coco just didn’t calm down and now, she was looking at the bigger window while barking.

 To make sure it was her mom, Blaire walked out of the camper but she couldn’t find anyone around the camper. Also, all the lights of the house were turned off and it appeared as if the figure that had passed the door previously was not her mom. Blaire was creeped out by this thought and shut the door after running back into the camper. While Koko was about to get back on her bed, Coco started to act as if someone was standing near the window covered with curtains. So, Blaire slowly walked towards this window, pulled away the curtains and anxiously peeked through it to see what was bothering Coco. The moment she laid her eyes on the bare window, she saw a silhouette of a man on the window and it appeared to be staring at her. Blaire jumped right back onto the bed leaving the curtains and covered herself in the covers in horror. Eventually, she fell asleep.

 While Blaire was going through this in the camper, her younger brother Shaun was going through something similar. After locking the door of the camper, Belinda returned home and put Shaun to sleep. Shaun was a three-year-old who never woke up in the middle of the night after being put to sleep but that day, he walked up to Belinda’s room claiming that there was a monster looking at him through the window in his room. Since their house only had one floor, Belinda thought that he was getting scared by seeing a wild animal loiter around and put him back to sleep but he kept coming back to her room complaining of this monster and the cycle continued. Little did Belinda know that it was not an animal but something more paranormal. Continued...