Entry #0049: Searching for Paranormal Activity in the Warehouse

It was December 16th. The time had come for the crew to investigate the haunted warehouse in Victorville.

On 7th Street we arrived at West Coast Merchandise Outlet, around 8:00 pm, which was the expected time when the night shift usually started noticing weird phenomena occurring, although not every night. The quasi-psychic lady whom Chad met was named Molly, and we talked to her mostly, since the night supervisor, Chuck Morrison, was more of a skeptic and had a tendency to explain everything away; people's wild imaginations mostly, he claimed. He said things fell because they weren't set on the pallets securely, or that certain individuals were probably playing pranks - especially the weird noises people heard. Chuck especially accused one young fellow, Billy.

Only five people worked the night shift, primarily stockers and one clerk doing inventory, that being Molly. Chuck usually stayed up front in his cozy little office, but checked up on his people now and then. Chad asked the employees to ignore us and go about their usual routines, but if they observed anything strange to let any member of his crew know. Then he told us the plan was that we spread out across the warehouse floor, to search for any signs of hauntings, using the equipment provided, but especially to use our intuition.

Travis, as usual, had his gadgets ready, especially his EMF meter, along with a temp-meter and shoulder mini-cam strapped to his right shoulder. Chad had his own EMF meter. I didn't care for any of this para-equipment, too high-tech for me. My only piece of equipment was my micro-recorder, just in case there might be any interesting conversations - especially to add in this account. Once Travis tried to explain to me how his EMF meter worked, and I frankly didn't understand much of it, but then I think he purposely used techno-babble jargon that made no sense to the layman. An ego thing.

I felt more inclined to use my intuition -- and since I had seen weird things before, such as shadow people and reality shifts -- I decided that was all I needed. Chad told us to meet him in half an hour in the break room near the front for our reports, so we spread out across the warehouse. I noticed the ceiling was high with long narrow skylights, mainly for the daytime to allow extra light in, to conserve energy, and all the spanning walls were painted eggshell white. The separate showroom of displayed merchandise was up front, and no unusual activity had been observed there by the employees. Mostly this outlet supplied various household goods, mainly for the kitchen and bathroom.

I gingerly strolled down an aisle that looked like most of the other aisles, where multiple pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes of merchandise were stacked in tall metal shelves, sometimes six pallets high. I tried to make my senses acute, listening and focusing. I heard the voices of employees chitchatting, or joking around, particularly about us, or this "idiotic crew of ghost-whackers" as one guy called us.

So for a half an hour we all searched and investigated. At one point I noticed a stack of pallets rocking back and forth -- my neck hairs prickled. What the hell was that? Then I heard a muffled snicker. Damn!

I shot, "Alright, smart aleck!"

It was Billy. The bushy, straw-haired employee scampered away down the aisle he was in, since I could see him between stacks of pallets. I sighed and shook my head.

So in thirty minutes we met in the break room, snacked on vendor machine pop and candy bars or chips as we sat around one of the big rectangular tables. Travis and Chad reported they got nothing on their equipment. Sheila said she sensed something subtle, but couldn't tell what it was, probably just her imagination expecting something to be there. Rick also had nothing to report, but remarked that he was very hopeful, because the night was young and it was too early to tell. I suggested this whole thing could be a series of pranks, perpetrated by certain workers, especially Billy.

Travis smirked, "Starky'll make a great debunker yet. Keep us sane."

I countered, "We'll see. Just realize I've seen weird shit before."

Chad said, "We'll have to spend a few hours here to be sure before we rule anything out. But if we have to debunk it, we definitely will."

So we did two more half hour rounds, each time getting nothing. There was a silly ghost-hooting off somewhere - performed by some goofball. Billy? We heard employees giggling in the background too. The only one that wasn't joking about it was Molly. She talked to us before we went out on our fourth round. She said the weird phenomenon didn't happen every night, sometimes a couple times a week, and sometimes there would be nothing. But she did say that lately weird things have been picking up, especially from the previous week on, that every night little things would occur, weird noises, eerie whispers, objects moving, boxes falling, or she would see a dark figure somewhere in the distance, or up close but at the corner of her eye. She said in spite of the occasional prankster, something definitely abnormal was happening here. But to us abnormal meant paranormal.

Hopeful, we set out once again.

Entry #0050: Taking a Break

It was about 11:30 pm, right after our fifth round, so we took our next break, and the employees were taking their break too. This was their lunch period, so they ate their sandwiches or snacks or whatever as they sat at a separate table, keeping to themselves in their banal chitter-chatter.

We sat around one of the large round tables and snacked on more boring vendor products. I was getting sick of it - or sick from it. A Pepsi and granola bar was all I had.

Chad asked Travis if he had checked all their equipment recently to see if everything was functioning properly. Travis replied that he had, just the other day. He said it wasn't the equipment malfunctioning, but simply that no paranormal activity was brewing yet.

I said, "We should have come here when the place was closed, so we'd have no employees to contend with - especially stupid pranksters."

Rick smiled, "I agree with you, Starky."

Chad remarked, "The problem is they wouldn't let us do this except during working hours. So we gotta deal with it."

I huffed, "That sucks."

Chad added, "And when I say 'they' I basically mean Chuck Morrison, the total skeptic. But Molly convinced him, after several weeks of nagging, that we needed to check this place out."

Travis remarked, "I'm surprised he caved. He seems to be a real asshole."

Chad smirked, "I suspect he likes her. Anyway, we have 'till 2:00 am, then the store closes. Everyone goes home. Chuck made that clear to me."

Rick commented, "That's the time paranormal activity really begins to flair up. This is no good."

Travis grinned, "I say we debunk it now, let the adolescent jokers have their idiotic fun so we can get the hell out of here, stop wasting our time."

Chad decided, "No. We'll stick it out; we have to be sure."

From the other table, Molly told us that sometimes the more intense activity happens after 1:00. Clearly we were all getting impatient, which wasn't good for paranormal investigators. Chad said we would give it till 2:00 then, and go when the employees left.

Suddenly everyone jumped, as we all heard something out in the warehouse, something crashing, and glass breaking.

Everyone dropped what they were doing and ran out to the warehouse floor. In one of the aisles we saw that a box had fallen off its pallet, from about ten feet up on the upper shelf, and it had broken wide open and dozens of glass goblets had shattered all over the cement floor. We had all been together in the break room, workers and investigators alike. Even Billy. This was not the work of a prankster.

Entry #0051: The Spooks Start to Awaken

The employees looked spooked, even Billy the prankster. Who had done this, everyone wondered? Besides, everyone was in the break room -- except Chuck. But soon he came out from the front area and approached the group, seeing the big mess of shattered glass.

"Okay, who's responsible for this?"

One of the employees said, "Nobody."

Molly replied, "It's the spooks again."

Chuck growled, "That's bullshit!" Then he turned to Billy and snapped, "It was you, wasn't it!"

"N-n-n-o, man!" Billy whined.

Chad approached the skeptical supervisor. "We were all in the break room, Chuck. Everyone. Nobody here did it. You definitely have a 'spook' on your hands."

Chuck shook his head and then grumbled, "This is all bullshit! Somebody did it! Get this mess cleaned up now." Then he turned and went back up front to his cozy little office. The employees worked together to clean up the glass shards, large and small. They carefully put the larger pieces in an empty box, and two other employees were sweeping it up with dustpans and brooms.

Chad said to his group, "Okay, breaks over. Let's start out again and everyone keep your eyes and ears peeled wide open."

As we went out, Sheila came up to me and said, "I definitely sense something here, something not just mischievous, but ominous."

I looked at her and asked, "Tell me the truth. You're definitely psychic, aren't you?"

She smiled shyly, "A little bit. It's not something I like to boast about."

"Monica, my girlfriend, is genuinely psychic, and she's the same way. Doesn't like to admit it to others at first."

"What about you, Starky?"

I laughed, "What? Me psychic? Ha! Hardly. I'm about as psychic as a doorknob. Hey, I'm the guy reading those dummies books on how to become psychic."

Sheila assured me, "Everyone is psychic to some degree, some more than others. In many cases it just takes practice and discipline."

"Believe me, I know about that. I've studied mystical traditions and--"

Suddenly we heard an eerie sound, something like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.

We heard Chad somewhere exclaim, "What the hell was that?"

We heard the sound of two EMF meters chirping slowly, then began chirping rapidly. Not only that, but the air around us began growing colder.

Entry #0052: The Psychic Chill Approaches

Travis announced, "Shit! My temp meter is down to 54°."

I called out, "Shouldn't someone check the thermostat in the building? Maybe one of those pranksters is pulling something."

Chad replied, "No. Temps don't fall this fast unless it's something paranormal."

Goosebumps formed on my arms and my neck hairs prickle. And not from the cold either.

Sheila said in a near whisper, "Some kind of a presence is here."

I asked, "Can you be more specific?"

"Something ominous, evil."

A few seconds later I saw a dark figure flashing by at the corner of my right eye.

I whispered, "Did you see that?"

"Yes," she replied softly. "And you say you're not psychic?"

"Well . . . Not on purpose anyway," I grinned weakly.

Travis announced, "Temps down to 49°."

We felt it too. And everyone had gotten real quiet too, even the employees.

The two EMF meters were chirping off the charts. Then Chad hollered, "Everyone get over here! Look at this!"

We all ran to the aisle where Chad was, and right in the middle of it was appearing a strange black dot, and it began widening.

Travis gasped, "What the hell?!"

Entry #0053: The Swirling Psychic Maelstrom

Everyone gathered around, our paranormal crew and the workers together -- except Chuck of course, the diehard skeptic who had no clue what was going on - nor did he care. Talk about a bad case of denial. We saw the black dot expanding slowly and beginning to swirl, and the cement floor around it seemed to be swirling with it. The concrete was transmogrifying into a supernatural liquid substance that easily moved around in the growing circle. Now that was freaking eerie!

Chad flicked off his erratic EMF meter, but Travis's kept chirping steadily. Chad called, "Turn that damned thing off!"

Travis did. Obviously we were past the point of suspecting something -- that something was here! We heard a continuous ominous whooshing sound as the cement floor around the center began swirling, turning into liquidized cement. Everyone stepped away from the expanding circle of swirling gray concrete as the whole freaky thing grew louder.

Chad asked Rick, supposedly an expert on paranormal phenomena, "What do you make of this? Have you read anything about this phenomenon in your books?"

Rick stammered at first, then he said, shaking his head, "To be honest with you, I have no freaking clue what this is."

I had an idea, so I spoke up, "I think it's a manifestation of the dark rift."

Sheila chimed in, "This particular anomaly is not the primary rift itself, which is something beyond physical locality. But something from the Dark Side is penetrating to our side, that's obvious. You could call this a psychic leak, but clearly a manifestation of the dark rift."

The swirling preternaturally liquidized cement expanded to about twelve feet and almost reached the edges of the aisle. But when it did swell further, suddenly pallets in their shelves begin collapsing and falling into the vortex, swirled a few times around it as they were sucked to the center, then disappeared completely. The metal shelves and pallets to either side began collapsing like a fragile house of cards, being sucked into the hideous maelstrom. Everyone jumped back, but Billy was too curious and stupidly reached his hand out to touch the edge of the swirling moving floor, then suddenly he was pulled into it, screaming as he was dragged around the spiraling circle, then he disappeared into the dark center.

"Billy! No-o-o-o-o-o-o! " Molly cried.

Entry #0054: Invoking the Banishing Ritual

The two rows of shelves with pallets in the immediate area continued falling into the eerily whooshing vortex, disappearing at the core.

The frightened employees finally ran the hell out of there, probably hiding in questionably safe places.

Chad nervously hollered, "We've got to do a banishing ritual right now! Rick!"

Rick yanked the backpack from his back, unzipped it, and pulled out a thick volume. He fumbled trying to open it, and it slipped out of his trembling hands. Sheila grabbed it from him. The crew stepped back and stood at least fifteen feet from the edge of the expanding demonic vortex.

Sheila opened the book to a certain page, read something silently, instructions most likely, then called out to the members, "Everyone clear your minds and relax, and focus. Now visualize four tall pillars of white light at the edges of the vortex. Keep the image firmly in your minds, because on the Other Side the pillars are real." Then her voice changed and she began to intone, "I call upon Raphael. . . . I call upon Gabriel. . . I call upon Michael. . . I call upon Uriel, the four cardinal archangels who stand at the four pillars of white light. I accept and know that your energies together as one are strong and powerful and nothing else can surpass it! For at the apex of your joined energies is the Great Christos, the Sacred Logos of the Invisible Sun!"

The swirling vortex was raging and still growing. I kept the four pillars of light strongly imaged not just in the mind, but projecting them at the edge of the ominous phenomenon. I hoped the others were used to this kind of spiritual exercise, because I had practiced similar methods before. Now the hideous maelstrom screamed like raging banshees. In fact, we began seeing dark shadowy figures moving around the circumference of the swirling vortex, reaching their gnarly fingers toward us and clawing at us. They seemed far more ghastly than the shadow people I had seen before - unless they were essentially manifesting more clearly now. Finally, both rows of shelving had been completely sucked into the psychic maelstrom, and it was expanding outward, aiming to engulf more of the tall shelves, and most likely the whole building. Beyond that - I could only speculate.

Entry #0055: Fighting against Evil Forces

Those dark demons began to look more solid and less shadowy now, with glowing red eyes and sharp claws groping at us as they moved around the insane maelstrom as they shrieked heinously. Totally freaked out, I felt tempted to run like the employees did, but I knew this was an important job, that we had to banish this hideous thing - if that was even possible, and before it grew too large.

Sheila continued speaking something loudly, in Latin I'm sure. Then she instructed us to spread out further around the advancing vortex. We did so as best we could. Then she said to hold our hands straight out, palms flat, shooting white light from them, and visualize the vortex shrinking. She reminded us that this manifests as a real action on the Other Side, yet does effect this side as well, though we may not see it physically. We followed her instructions, and as she continued reading in Latin. I felt myself straining. The vortex screamed loudly, but it did not grow any further.

Then Sheila forcefully invoked, "In the name and power of the Great Christos, return from whence you came! Be gone!"

The raging vortex held firm for as the raging demon screams continued as they attempted to strike at us with sharp talons. We kept up visualizing the pillars and pushing white light energy from our palms to suppress the vortex. What else could we do? Something had to work.

Sheila told us to invoke the last phrase in unison, and so we did, forcefully and loudly, "In the name and power of the Great Christos, return from whence you came! Be gone!"

The dark maelstrom resisted, attempting to push further outward, and did so for a few more feet, but we repeated the invocation again. In a minute or two we began noticing the vortex and its swirling demons began shrinking back and becoming more wispy and less dense, but slowly. I even began feeling benevolent presences, perhaps the four archangels Sheila had called upon, who were obviously doing the real work of suppressing the demonic maelstrom from hell. We were simply assisting minions forming a connection from the higher planes to this lowly earthly plane.

By Sheila's instructions, we all repeated the invocation again.

As we stood firm and held our hands out, exerting the force of the white light into the vortex, and sensing the help of the archangels around us, in a few minutes the swirling vortex had shrunk significantly, down to the size of one of the round break room tables. The continuous whooshing sound had decreased to a whine. Finally, the swirling mass had shrunk to a dark spot, then disappeared completely. All was silent and back to normal, as much as possible, at any rate.

We lowered our hands and relaxed. Sheila said a prayer of thanks. The employees came out of hiding, gawking and speechless, and pale faced, as they stared at the spot where our immediate reality had been sucking down into oblivion. But the wide vacant cement floor was solid and intact once again, void of two large rows of pallets.

Chuck came tromping back from the front area into the warehouse and snapped, "Why the hell is everyone standing around? There's work to do!"

Then Chuck noticed that the two rows of metal-framed shelves to either side were gone. "What the hell happened here? Who's responsible for this?"

I replied wryly, "We don't really know. They just disappeared."

Chuck growled, "This is bullshit! Is this some elaborate practical joke?"

Chad approached the supervisor and said, "The truth is, some kind of dark forces have been at work here in your building. But we quelled it -- for now."

Before Chuck had a chance to say anything, Molly blurted, "We lost Billy!"

Chuck snapped, "What do you mean?"

One of the other employees replied, "That -- thing, whatever it was, snatched him up!"

Chuck shook his head and snarled, "Someone's playing some kind of insane game here. Everyone just get back to work!" Facing Chad, he snarled, "And you and your crazy lunatics just get out of here!" He turned and headed up front again.

Sheila mused, "He's really in denial."

I chuckled, "No shit!"

A funny thing about total skeptics is that they have a way of not being around the subject of their skepticism, or preventing an encounter; a kind of reverse magnetism. Whatever they deny, they oddly tend to not be present, even if the opportunity arises. If they deny it long enough, it must not be real. I've seen this from UFO debunkers I've talked to. And they're die-hard idiots. Anyway, Chuck could have easily witnessed this horrific phenomenon as the rest of us did; he had the opportunity, but not the open-mindedness to do so. Too closed, he refused to accept what was blatantly real to us.

The employees basically mulled around directionless, not knowing what to do, except chatter crazily about what just occurred. They saw the hideous paranormal just as we did, and they were flabbergasted. Well, so were we.

Travis walked over to the center of where the vortex had been and turned on his EMF meter, but it chirped almost inaudibly. He checked the temp meter, and reported. "Nothing registers on the EMF, and temperature's 72°. The anomaly has been negated."

Chad said, "Good. Okay, everyone, let's huddle."

Entry #0056: The Psychic Threat Subsided - for Now

Molly was sitting on a box in a corner, crying, the other workers mulled around, still not knowing what to do. What could they do?

Chad and his crew gathered together in the middle of the wide-open cement floor, discussing the violently eerie ordeal. And Travis checked the camcorder he unharnessed from his shoulder, and was griping because at the point the freaky vortex began to manifest, the footage did not record anything - just grey snow filled the little screen. Chad said this had happened before with paranormal activities - something would erase the video for some unknown reason. Rick said he theorized it probably had to do with the interfacing of the two worlds; as the vortex was creating an opening, something like video on camcorders was cancelled out.

Travis said this was rather inconsistent, because at other times, they had acquired good footage of certain ghostly phenomena, as other investigators had too. So why this happened sometimes and not others, didn't make much sense. Chad suggested it might have to do with the extreme intensity of the event, or manifestation of whatever was impinging itself from the Dark Side, and the intensity might disturb the camcorder.

Sheila spoke with great concern, "Listen, guys. We just lost a human being! We've never had that happen on our watch."

Chad said, "He is most likely still alive, just lost in another dimension -- the Dark Side I suppose. But I don't know how we can get him back. This whole event has taken us to a whole new level."

I asked, "I had a feeling this wasn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill paranormal event. You don't just lose people in a vortex like that."

Chad remarked, "We haven't experienced anything of this intense magnitude ever before. That was f#@&ing freaky!"

Rick offered, "I read a science fiction story about huge psychic maelstroms sucking everything into it in sight, but I haven't found anything like this in any of my research books."

Travis joked, "I was afraid my EMF meter was going to explode in my hands when it went off chirping so erratically."

"That crossed my mind," I chuckled. "Actually, I thought that vortex was going to suck it right out of your hands."

Travis asked me "So, what do you think of all this, Starky?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure if those demonic creatures in the vortex we saw were shadow people or what. But if we weren't able to banish that thing, I bet it would have engulfed the whole damn building, and probably keep going, and those demons would most likely be unleashed. Hell's fury unleashed to the physical world."

Rick said, "I sure hope that never happens. It sounds like something out of a Stephen King movie."

Sheila commented, "It's quite possible. I believe you're right, Starky. It was a physical manifestation of the primary rift, and the dark forces were clearly trying to break through to this side. But we still haven't found what has caused the rift, or who might be responsible for opening it."

I asked, "And you think that somebody is doing this intentionally?"

"Yes, I do. Somebody opened the dark rift, which I suspect is opening wider, and what we just witnessed is proof of that. And I strongly sensed that some weighty dark being just tried to manifest right here. There was some kind of ominous presence behind the vortex, some malevolent demonic entity that was trying to come through, not just a dozen lesser demons either. They may have simply been the dark minions of a greater demon. Thankfully, invoking the Christos and the Archangels warded it off - for now. But it might be back."

I suggested, "So you think this big kahuna demon-thing created the rift?"

Sheila replied, "Clearly it had something to do with it. Either it caused it, or somebody else conjured the rift to summons the entity. I'm not sure."

Travis asked, "What's the deal with this rift anyway? Wasn't that it we just witnessed and didn't we just close it once and for all?"

Sheila replied, "We can't be that naïve. We sealed off this particular manifestation of it, which is more of a tangible physical extension of the main rift. But the dark rift I'm referring to is not a physically located rift, but a rift that exists between worlds, which can manifest anywhere, or in many places. It's actually the thinning or weakening of the veil between worlds. You have to stop thinking two-dimensionally."

Chad speculated, "That green whirlwind we saw out in Landers - they were manifestations of the primary rift -- right?"

Sheila replied, "I believe so, and realize that was tame compared to what we just saw. So the rift is getting stronger."

Feeling certain, I commented, "It seems clear to me now, those shadow beings I've been seeing have been coming through this dark rift."

"I'm sure of it, Starky," Sheila verified.

"And whether or not what I was seeing are the same as these demon wraiths, I'm not sure. But they could be, just in a more manifest form than before."

Sheila agreed, "I believe you're right. They were attempting to manifest more solidly into the earth plane, so we began to see them more clearly. Otherwise, they may just seem to be wispy, shadowy figures."

"Like the so-called shadow people."

"Most likely."

But I still suspected that the occasional reality shifts I was experiencing had something to do with this opening rift. It couldn't be a separate phenomenon - that would be counter- coincidental, or contrary to the synchronicity of these unfolding events, On the other hand, I've had these reality shift episodes in the past, before this mysterious rift began to manifest. But an opening rift could cause more obvious shifts in reality and more frequently, I would think. Like Rook's Books appearing temporarily where Fanny's Thrift Shop should be. That was a pretty blatant example of these freaky phenomena.

Chad talked to Molly who was crying over Billy, and said this whole matter wasn't over, that if there was anyway to get Billy back, he'd make a bold attempt. I knew he was just saying that to appease her, because we had no idea what was at stake here or how to retrieve a person who slipped into - who-knows-where. But Sheila later told me that Billy was most likely trapped in the Dark Side.

We filed into the van and took off, and no one spoke for quite a while.