Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (23 page)

More on possession in a minute. First let’s finish the story of Poveglia. I don’t remember everything that happened to me that night. I know we were in the main hospital of Poveglia trying to lure the spirits out. Nick was chanting over and over,
Risotta lo mia energia
, which means “Use my energy” in Italian.

Next thing I know, I felt different. And not just a little different. I felt like someone else was looking through my eyes. Nothing looked familiar to me. I froze. My body wouldn’t move. I looked at Aaron and suddenly felt a rage build up in me to do him harm. I saw myself tearing him apart. I wanted to peel his skin off and gouge out his eyes.

“Get out of here!” I yelled, lashing out for no apparent reason. I squeezed the camera in my hands until it snapped. For a second I thought I might be having a stroke or some sort of super-bad reaction to shellfish, but there was no way this was anything like that. An anger took me over and the fight was on. I fought to get whatever it was in me out. It was a struggle between good and evil that I eventually won, but not before going through a traumatic battle. I had to keep reminding myself who I was, and that I wasn’t weak enough to be taken over or evil enough to hurt my friends. I had to concentrate on all the good things in my life until the darkness left me.

After I shouted at Aaron, he wisely left me alone. Nick also moved away from me and went behind a wall until it was over. What was really dangerous was that I had a machete on my hip at the time. We had been using it to get through some of the thick over grown weeds on the island. Luckily the evil trying to take me over didn’t realize it. If it had . . .

I had a hard time watching the footage when we got home. Afterward I didn’t want the entire episode to air because I didn’t want my niece and nephew to see me like that. It was scary. It just wasn’t me. I grabbed at Aaron and yelled at him more than what was shown on the episode. I didn’t speak in audible words, but garbled and mumbly tones instead. It lasted a lot longer than you would think too. It was about an hour between the time I first felt strange until I got back to my senses. All I really remember is doing a cleansing afterward with a sacred chrism on my forehead and feeling like it was hot grease burning the evil energy away.

What I learned from that incident was to pay attention to the warning signs. Several things happened before I was taken over. There were footsteps echoing down the hallways. Aaron got a sudden and massive headache. We’d had an unusually high EMF reading, and I just wasn’t feeling like myself. Looking back on it, it all added up, but I still didn’t expect anything like that to happen. I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. In my right mind I would never treat Aaron that way. He’s one of my best friends, and I apologized to him later—a few times.

In a sick way I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it. My mission in life is to make contact with the souls of the deceased, whether they’re the nice, innocent kind or the smelly, evil ones. It’s my job to understand these spirits, find out what makes them tick, and come up with ways to communicate with them. So I have to accept it as a hazard of the job when I come across a bad apple, even if he wants to harm me. I have to get into their world and come up with answers, no matter what their intentions are.

It wasn’t my first profound experience with a demon, but it was a significant one that left me wanting to know more. When our time in Poveglia was done, I went down to another room and avoided leaving. But today the encounter still haunts me a little. Someday I’ll go back there. Someday.

Hell’s Gate

Only one other place infiltrates me like Poveglia Island, and for good reason. If there’s a portal to another dimension of dark, malevolent energy in this world, it is undoubtedly the former abandoned slaughterhouse on the banks of the Licking River in Wilder, Kentucky, called Bobby Mackey’s Music World. I’ve investigated it three times and each time I discover a new layer of hell. I first went there in 2008 and was shocked by the ominous warning over the front door that cannot be avoided.

“This place is reportedly haunted. Enter at your own risk. Not responsible for demon attacks.”

Oh mama. The bar was ordered to display this sign by the local courts after Bobby Mackey’s was sued for an attack by an evil spirit on a patron. Yes, this really happened. This place is no bullshit.

Paranormal activity didn’t start the minute I walked through the door of Mackey’s, but it didn’t take long for the ghouls to get stirred up. It seemed that everywhere we went voices whispered and the sounds of movement echoed throughout the establishment—behind the stage, around the corner from the bar, under the tables. It was like elves were scurrying about in the shadows watching us and laughing at us for wanting to be there alone and at night. This was their world, and we were the guests. We were minnows in a shark tank, but that’s also the way we like it, because this is where the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I was threatened on all sides, and like any human who believes in self-preservation, I was on edge. These are the moments where people have to make the tough decision between standing and running. There was no way I was going to run.

When you hear the history of Mackey’s it’s easy to see why people pray to an almighty God before stepping across its threshold. I love what I do and I voluntarily go into the places most won’t, but Mackey’s is different. Since its opening as a country music bar, twenty-nine affidavits of demonic events have been filed against the establishment and hundreds more undocumented incidents have occurred to those too scared to talk about it. Bobby Mackey’s own wife hated the place and refused to set foot in it after having her head mysteriously shoved into a sink as she washed dishes and then being thrown down a set of stairs. When Mackey’s wife reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up, she saw the face of her assailant and later matched it to an old drawing of Alonzo Walling.

Walling and his cohort, Scott Jackson, were convicted of the murder of Jackson’s girlfriend, Pearl Bryan in 1896. After killing Pearl they decapitated her, performed a satanic ritual in the bowels of the building (which was then a slaughterhouse), and discarded Pearl’s head in the well that carried animal blood to the Licking River. On the gallows, Alonzo Walling and Scott Jackson swore they’d haunt the building forever. It seems they kept that promise.

But that’s just the beginning of the establishment’s dark history. Before Mackey converted it to a country and western nightclub, it was a speakeasy during the time of prohibition, a roadhouse for the transients and travelers of Kentucky’s byways, a casino run by organized crime, and a nightclub that was shut down because of several fatal shootings. During its days as a casino, one of the establishment’s singers, Robert Randall, got his girlfriend, Johanna, pregnant. When her mobster father found out, he killed Randall and in a fit of emotional retribution, Johanna poisoned her father before taking her own life.

There are many more stories that would take up a lot more pages, but I think you get the point. The building has a long and comfortable relationship with violence, death, and darkness, and it even got bad enough that an exorcism was performed on the entire place in 1994. Three years prior to that a personal exorcism was performed on the one man who was nearly killed by the evil inside Bobby Mackey’s, Carl Lawson.

Carl never intended to be possessed (and who does really?). He was the caretaker of Bobby Mackey’s who lived in an apartment above the bar and was charged with managing the building and repairing anything that needed fixing. Even a short stay in Bobby Mackey’s is enough to drive good men bad, so living in the place full time is enough to get you a custom-fitted straightjacket.

Carl had heard all the tales. He knew the well had once been used for satanic rituals. Some of the local folks referred to it as “Hell’s Gate.” Although he wasn’t very religious, Carl decided to sprinkle some holy water on the old well one night, thinking that it might bring some relief from the spirits. Bad idea. Instead, it seemed to awaken them and the paranormal activity in the building suddenly went off the charts. It’s like a page right out of the movie
The Ring.

After living in the building for several months, Carl Lawson was fully possessed by demonic forces in 1991. There are entire books written about Carl’s possession that are truly terrifying. I’m not sure how long the possession lasted but Carl was only released after a six-hour exorcism by Reverend Glen Cole in 1991. If you’ve ever seen the video of the exorcism, it’s disturbing. To this day Carl has the thousand-yard stare of someone who has stood on the edge of the abyss and somehow lived to tell about it.

That night we entered the Gates of Hell.

During the first investigation, I went upstairs to spend time in Johanna’s former room. I was attempting to connect with the dancer’s spirit when I heard a very loud thud downstairs. Aaron, who was on the main level at the time, and I rushed to the sound to find Nick out of breath and scared. It turned out that while Nick was in the men’s room something slammed against the wall, sending him running out of the room. Whether the spirit threw an object against the wall or just used his energy to cause the sound, we were unsure, so we did what all good investigators do—we went to the site of the incident and challenged the spirit to do it again. This was also the site where a man was violently attacked by an evil spirit and later sued the establishment, causing the famous liability sign as you enter the building to be put up.

We did not get another thud, but we got a growl so demonic Nick instantly bolted for the door, which I was standing in at the time. Now, I was just as spooked as the guys were, but one thing I can’t do is run. It’s just not me. “Stop running!” I yelled at Nick as he tried to get past me. I wasn’t trying to exert my control over Nick, but I think this kind of behavior is not what paranormal investigators should ever exhibit. It not only discredits us in front of the world, but also in front of the spirits we’re trying to contact. If they see us running away, then why would they want to talk to us? Why would they respect us? We ran from something once before and I will never run again.