And then without warning, Jeff was startled by something else, "Oooh! A Light! A Light! " Jeff exclaimed as three flashes or pops of light appeared without warning! Then an eerie black mass the size of" three adult men standing side by side," manifested for several seconds before vanishing. Unfortunately, Jeff was unable to photograph these events due to the brevity of their manifestations. It goes without saying, however, that something was amiss and we were plunged into the adventure of a lifetime. Nearly one month later on the evening of September 4th, I received a frantic call from Jackie Hernandez. We recorded it on the answer machine and Jackie sounded about as frightened as anyone could possibly be. Jeff Wheatcraft and another friend, Gary Boehm, ( who both happened to be visiting my apartment at the time) listened to Jackie's desperate pleas via the speakerphone and finally we decided to drive to San Pedro as fast as possible. Jackie, it seems, was experiencing a vicious poltergeist attack! She claimed that a Pepsi can had flung itself at her as doors were slamming open and shut of their own volition. Just one night earlier, Jackie had claimed that an invisible force had held her down on the floor for several minutes and tried to smother her! We finally arrived in San Pedro around 1:00 a.m. At first, all seemed calm inside the bungalow. A trembling Jackie had greeted us outside on the front porch, looking totally disheveled and weary from her supernatural tormentor. She had also moved her two small children, Samantha and Jamie who were both asleep, on to the porch as well. After checking the bedroom and bathroom areas of the home, Jeff and Gary decided to venture into the attic. I decided to play it safe and keep Jackie company down below in the laundry room. It wasn't long, however, that Susan Castaneda, Jackie's neighbor, joined us as we engaged in idle conversation. Those first twenty minutes or so proved to be uneventful...there was nary a sign of our poltergeist. Jeff spent most of the time relating to Gary the traumatic events of the night of our first visit to the home. He was eager to show him the grape box where he'd discovered his camera after having it mysteriously yanked from his hands. At around 1:20 a.m. a very odd event suddenly occurred. Down in the laundry room where the ladies and myself were talking, a bright orange comet of light suddenly flashed before us and flew through a small door which lead outside! Unfortunately, I was unable to get a good look at this light since its visible duration was not more than two or three seconds. Fully alert, I instinctively powered up my video camera and prepared to roll in case anything else should happen. The girls grew more nervous by the second and then suddenly a very loud, distinct trio of snapping sounds echoed through the room. The sounds were so clear that it seemed as if an invisible man were present snapping his fingers. "Snap! Snap! Snap!" Overcome by the sensation that "unseen" eyes were watching me, I rolled the camera. And then before we knew it, we heard a loud moan from above. "OOOOHHHH!" It was Jeff's voice, crying out from the inky void of the attic space. And then there was a silence that seemed to last forever broken by a sudden outburst from Jackie, "Come down! Come down! I told you what this thing was capable of!" Susan berated her from further outbursts with the fear that whatever had happened would only be worse if Jackie didn't calm down. All eyes riveted upon the small attic doorway above. The video camera whirred atop my shoulder, as two flashes from Gary's 35mm shattered the darkness above. And then again, there ensued a period of silence finally broken by the sounds of confused murmurs. "What's happened? What's happened to me?" Jeff's enfeebled voice quavered. And then the shaken figure of Jeff Wheatcraft scrambled on his knees towards the opening, breathing heavily as he climbed down towards the lens of my waiting camera. "I've got to get out of here!" Jeff's voice trembled, "It's definitely raising hell!" "Oh, my God..." Susan Castaneda cupped a hand over her open mouth as her eyes transfixed the opening with disbelief. Jackie stood dumbfounded and in awe as the scene before us crushed every ounce of logic from our minds. "It put something around my neck!" Jeff yelled down to us from above. "I've gotta get outta here!" My heart almost froze with fear as I noticed a weathered clothesline cord dangling from my friend's swollen neck as he stiffly emerged from the hole above. It was at this instant that we all felt the pangs of incredible disbelief. What happened, buddy?" I queried, camera still rolling. "Well, I don't know..." Jeff replied, shaking. "I was telling Gary that there was nothing happening up there and he turned around and was coming this way and all of a sudden, I've got this thing around my neck and it's got me hanging...hanging and it's pulling on my legs!" The impact of those words were perhaps the most startling I'd ever heard in my life. For what started out as a fun little ghostbusting adventure had ended up as one of the most terrifying scenarios in the annals of the paranormal. As I continued rolling videotape, Jeff washed off at the kitchen sink and as the camera zoomed into close-up shots of his neck, it became readily apparent that "something" had indeed attacked Jeff in the darkness of the attic. Pronounced red friction burns encircled his neck as a result of the unknown attack. Upon questioning Gary Boehm who had come to his rescue, we learned that Jeff had been hung on a nail protruding from one of the rafter beams in the attic. "If I had not been there, Jeff would have been strangled in that attic. " Gary later told us. "Because he didn't know what was going on and the cord was wrapped so tightly that it was very difficult to get him down. I had to bend the nail down in order to release him." |