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Writtn by LFN contributor Thibault McEnnery

Back in 1998, I was attending a college down south and like most students looked forward to partying on the weekend usually off campus. A member of our crowd had a slightly older friend who had finished school and was about ready to move on to grad school after a year of working hard in order to save up money for tuition. This friend lived in an old apartment building that had a notorious reputation because of some unsavory things that had happened there. I mention this up front because to this day I am not sure if this contributed to what took place in his apartment.

One weekend it was suggested that we visit this friend.

To say this guy was weird would be an understatement and his apartment matched his personality. The whole place was dark and dreary and he was very jittery bordering on manic. His words were full of expletives and he was excited to tell us he had been experimenting with spells and actually had conjured something up from the ‘other side.’ He claimed he had successfully videoed taped a ‘devil’ which had made its entrance from his bedroom closet.

We were all skeptical figuring this guy had used some bad drugs until he showed us the video. Despite the fact that it had been filmed in the darkened bedroom, it clearly showed a satyr like being with horns and cloven hooves emerge from the closet and then disappear. To this day we all  believe the video while "unexplained" to be absolutely authentic and very scary having left a profound psychological effect on the guy and on us.  

I believe that having that experience even though we did not participate had a lasting effect that didn’t end with this particular situation. Being that we were at an experimental age and had a tendency to do crazy things, later on that year in the spring we decided to visit a graveyard and chug a few brews and see what kind of mischief we could procure. After we were satisfactorily under the influence we decided it might be fun to challenge spirits to come out and ‘play.’ One of us took a dare and decided to lay on top of one of the graves. Nothing happened so we stumbled out of the location and went back to our dorm rooms joking that the occult was a bunch of BS.

The next day, the guy who had rested on top of the grave began experiencing strange occurrences in his bedroom in the middle of the night between midnight and 3:00 am. Books and personal objects flew off a dresser while he lie frozen in bed praying for relief.  He found scratches on the wall behind his bed which could not be explained and he was actually tossed from his bed on one occasion. The activity diminished and ceased after a week.

Did it teach us a lesson? You bet it did.

Thibault lives in upstate NY in what he feels is a house occupied by a friendly ghost who makes mischief once in a while. He still ponders about the thing that emerged from the closet in that infamous video and while deep down he thinks something real was captured, he remains skeptical that the film may have been possibly doctored. It remains as mystery as does the whereabouts of elusive friend who filmed it.