As dinner concluded, Sherry ran up to her room to finish the homework she had been given which left me downstairs with her mother. Since I had her alone, I tried to pry and get some more information on the happenings in the house. She began to tell me that her new partner would periodically get up in the middle of the night and walk around the house. I told her that sleepwalking was a condition suffered by many, but doesn’t indicate a haunting. She told me that it has been happening for so long that she doesn’t really get up anymore when he does this. Though, she did mention that she always feels really heavy headed and foggy when she notices he’s gone. She has been taking anxiety medication ever since her husband died and that makes her pretty drowsy. She swears though that she can hear whimpering and faint crying from within the walls. When she is lucid enough she checks on Sherry and she’s always sound asleep. Some nights it feels as though there is something else in the house besides the three of them. After an hour or so of talk, I left them for the night and returned to my hotel. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sherry. Something seemed so off with her. I made it my mission the next day to try and get her to talk to me.
When I arrived the next evening, Sherry was outside swinging on her swing set in the back yard. it looked as if she was talking to someone. I slowly approached and accidentally startled her. She denied having been talking to anyone, but admitted that sometimes she talks to herself. I asked her how things have been around the house since she lost her father. She began to cry and told me that she misses him dearly. Trying to get her off the subject I asked her if she had any friends. She answered no, and informed me that right before her dad died, they had just moved here to Butte, so she hadn’t had a lot of time to make new friends. As we continued to talk, I took a look around the yard and noticed her mother and partner staring at us from inside the house. Once they saw me notice them, they scurried away. At this moment, I asked Sherry if there has been anything weird happening with her mom or her boyfriend. Sherry became quiet. She said that sometimes her moms boyfriend comes into her room and stares at her at night. "He doesn't say anything, but he just stares at me for a while and then walks away". She proceeded to tell me that sometimes she hears both of them arguing from up in her room. She gets so scared that she hides in her closet. Dishes shatter and loud bangs keep her from going downstairs to investigate.
I left Sherry out by the swings. It was time to talk to her mother's boyfriend. As I approached the house I encountered the most rotten smell. If death had a smell, that would have been it. I walked through the back door to find the boyfriend on the couch six beers in. I wasn't going to get any useful information out of him in this state so I decided to make sure that Sherry and her mother were ok for the night and headed back to my hotel room.
When I arrived, I sat on the bed to pray. I asked my Father to give me the strength to find out exactly what is happening here. Nothing makes sense. I gathered my thoughts to review what evidence I had accumulated. Sherry is just a normal girl grieving her father. It sounds like talking to herself is a coping mechanism she developed to help her deal with the loss and to deal with the arguments that her mother and boyfriend have. She doesn't have many friends because she and her mother moved here shortly before her father passed. Sherry's mother is a struggling widow that is filling the void left by her late husband with someone else. She tries to provide what she can for her daughter, but falls short often due to preoccupations with her new boyfriend. This guy seems to just be a reject, but sleepwalks and still has a bit of a drinking problem. I don't see any signs of abuse beside the arguing. This just seems like a struggling family looking for some form of closure. I report my findings to my team. They instruct me to conclude my search with the family and return to them for a debrief.
Before I could hang up the phone a strange figure appeared in the room. It wasn't malevolent, but seemed bright and welcoming. Being a man of God I asked this entity who or what it was and demanded that it reveal its purpose. This grey figure just stared at me for a while and then dissolved into nothing. This jogged my memory. Sherry said that her Mother's boyfriend would just stare at her for a while and then walk away. Maybe she thought she was seeing her mother's boyfriend, but it was this spirit instead. As I made this revelation, my phone started to ring. It was Sherry's mother. She was audibly out of breath and there were loud banging noises in the background. The line was fuzzy but all I made out was, "Help..... Sherry... Not Normal..."
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