Paranormal Witness: "A Brooklyn Haunting" Ep. 202 Recap

“A family’s scary experiences in a Brooklyn townhouse are detailed.” 

The Mercado family, which consists of mother and wife Elaine, her husband and her two daughters (Christine and Karen) lived in a tiny, cramped apartment when they decided it was time to move into a bigger home that would allow space and also would be within their budget. The Mercados finally discover a classic Townhouse home in Brooklyn, NY and the family fell in love with it immediately. When the family was looking at the house, Elaine’s brother, Joe was with them and all the sudden, experiences  a disturbing, eerie feeling about the house. He tries to bring it up to Elaine but the girls are too ecstatic about the home and immediately purchase it and move in. When the family settled, the whole family was overjoyed that they had a much more spacious house to live in and Elaine’s daughters were thrilled to finally have their own rooms; Karen had her room in the basement while Christine had her own bedroom upstairs. 

The haunted townhouse in Brooklyn, NY

Karen’s basement bedroom also contained a washer and dryer where Elaine did the laundry. When Elaine started doing the laundry, she immediately noticed a pair of doors that were located about five feet above the floor. Immediately, she felt uncomfortable about the doors and recalls that whenever she was around those doors, she felt that something was just behind her back. Elaine knew that upon purchasing the house, there was a “dirt room” behind the basement but ignored it. She warned the girls, however, that they must not go in “the dirt room”. However, curiosity got the best of Karen (the eldest daughter) and Christine so one day, when Elaine was in the kitchen doing the dishes, Christine and Karen go downstairs to the basement to explore. Karen shows Christine the doors and dares her to open the door.  Christine, while hesitant, climbed on the cupboards nearby and opened the doors and climbed through “the dirt room’. Christine immediately was spooked and remembered distinctly the smell of the room. “It smelled earthly, musty…old and decayed…” Christine never crawled toward the back end of the room but the eerie, spooky sensation that overcame her in the room was enough to convince her that she shouldn’t be there. Christine crawls out and the girls go upstairs in the kitchen. Elaine, seeing Christine covered in dirt, is very irritated at the girls that they disobeyed her orders and demands the girls never open the mysterious doors. 

One evening, Elaine is in the house by herself and in the kitchen when all the sudden, she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Knowing she was alone, Elaine walks to the foot of the stairway to look up and sees nothing. Elaine is confused but goes back to the kitchen when the basement door opens….and she hears what sounds like footsteps going downstairs into the basement. A nervous Elaine took at peek downstairs into the basement but didn’t proceed further. She felt something was there and didn’t want to entertain the thought of what could be down there. 

On another occasion, Elaine was in the living room when she heard “mysterious voices”; she figured maybe it was Christine calling her from upstairs. Elaine gets up and calls out Christine…..at the same time, Christine comes downstairs, thinking her mother called her name. Elaine and Christine then realized neither of them was calling Christine’s name. From the basement door, Elaine and Christine heard a maniacal, menacing laugh, along with this “voice” calling out Christine’s name. At this point, Elaine and Christine are terrified at what they are hearing but Elaine and Christine find themselves slowing moving towards the door. “It sounded evil and scary….like it sounded mocking and mean,” Christina says as she recalls the incident. “I felt fear. I felt frozen. We were both extremely frightened.” At that point, Elaine began feeling more uncomfortable in the house. 

Elaine was in bed and woke up one night and felt something push her, as if a heavy weight was on her chest and her whole weight was pushing into the bed. Elaine recalls that the pressure on her body was so intense, she felt the mattress springs from her bed and couldn’t even open up her mouth to scream for help. Once the pressure immediately  lifted, Elaine would struggle for air and assumed it was a form of a nightmare or night terror she was experiencing. These “suffering nightmares” were becoming more frequent. At the time, Elaine was an ER nurse and would sometimes go into work with absolutely no sleep at all. But she also felt that she couldn’t tell anyone at work with what she was experiencing and began questioning her emotional stability. 

Elaine and Christine wondering who...or what....was calling for Christine

On another night, Elaine was in the kitchen one night when she heard Karen scream for her. Elaine rushed to the basement in her room and Karen is sitting on her bed, terror stricken. They both saw her quilt being pulled off the bed. Christina checks downstairs to the basement to see what is going on and all the women saw the quilt perfectly placed on the floor. After that incident, Karen spent many nights sleeping on the couch. The phenomena kept building up to the point where the family couldn't ignore it anymore. They knew something was happening beyond a logical explanation and Elaine confesses she needed to open up her mind to understand that some sort of paranormal phenomena was occurring in her once-dream home. Another night passed and Elaine was awakened by a loud bang. Elaine and the girls leave their beds and check to see if something fell or dropped. Elaine describes it as a sound of "someone going from the back to the house to the front of the house, stomping, this angry stomping". The strange banging noise sounded like it was coming from upstairs. No one was there and they knew it. The girls were absolutely terrified so Elaine calls her husband to come home from work. Elaine and the girls decide to sit outside the stairs of their house to wait for Elaine’s husband. Her husband comes home, wondering what was happening and after Elaine explained what was going on, he dismissed it as "nonsense" and assumed it was probably just the plumbing in the house. He goes upstairs to check it out, the women trailing behind him. The husband says nothing is in the house and expressed his irritation at Elaine’s “nonsense”. As the husband and Elaine walk downstairs, they heard the banging noise again. The husband still dismisses it and goes back to work. After that, Elaine’s marriage began dissolving. Elaine’s husband just didn’t either want to know or didn’t know what kind of activity was going on in the house and since he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t find a logical explanation behind it all.

Elaine decided to change the house around and began redecorating it, painting over the walls and making it so the house felt more settled and peaceful. During this time, Karen was moving up to the attic so she and Christine were up there cleaning when they found a little door in the attic. They opened it and discovered items in the attic. They were exploring inside when they discovered a box sitting in the corner. They discovered inside was a beautiful white wedding dress fit for a petite woman; the dress was wrapped in newspaper that dated to 1952. Excited at their discovery, they go downstairs to show Elaine. Elaine was puzzled that that an item like a wedding dress was packed and put away the way it was. She decided then that she wanted nothing to do with it and actually threw the whole box, with the dress in it, inside the trash can. 

Was the entity a haunted bride that wasn't ready to go on the other side?

About a year later, a newly divorced Elaine was sitting in the living room with the girls when a strange phenomenon happened. They described that the house seem to “shutter” and “come alive”. There were noises and feelings of being watched. One again, the familiar menacing laughter began and this time, it was calling the girls’ names. A frantic Elaine calls her new boyfriend Matthew and asks him to come over. Matthew immediately rushes to the house. When Matthew arrives, Elaine confesses to Matthew about the activity that had been going down in the house. Even though Matthew is startled and mind-blown over what she was staying, he decided to stay in the house for the night. When Elaine and the girls went to bed, Matthew was sitting in a chair dozing off while watching TV when a phenomenon began to happen to him. He recalls having a dream that he's picturing himself trying to open the door to the same room but couldn't open it. Matthew finally opens the door and sees a flash of a picture and saw a skeletal man on the dirt floor. During this dream, Matthew also recalls feeling the same, familiar pressure and suffocating dream that Elaine had previously had. He explained that he was going in and out of sleep enough to feel the pressure but was also envisioning the dream. But the phenomenon didn’t end there with Matthew. On another night, Christine was in the bedroom when she heard something and went to the bend of the staircase to look below to see her mother sitting on the first few steps below. She calls out to her mother but then as she takes a closer look, she realizes that it wasn’t her mother. Terrified, she calls out to Elaine.

Halloween came and Elaine was throwing a Halloween party. During the party, she noticed a colleague of hers, Lisa, was getting a drink and mingling when Elaine realized that Lisa was walking towards the staircase. Elaine continued to observe Lisa, who just stood there facing the stairway where according to Elaine, she looked “ill”. Elaine goes over to her and Lisa asks Elaine about a little lady in a white dress. Elaine immediately has a flashback to the white wedding dress she threw away. Lisa then informs Elaine that her house is haunted and suggests calling up someone to cleanse the house immediately. That same night, Christine and Karen decide to share Christine’s bed. In the middle of the night, Christine wakes up, looks at her sister, and she sees a shadowy, long figure, a "dark cloud" hover over Karen. Christine describes that it felt like a "figure". Christine rolls over wanting to ignore it and try to get back to sleep. In the meantime, Elaine once again felt a presence in her room. Elaine feels her head and shoulders pushed down. It got so intense, that she felt it was a female presence/energy pushing down on her and growing heavier. She felt it was an angry woman pushing in on her. After the sensation stopped, Elaine looked for places to sleep and she was just crying, holding her pillow and searching for a room to sleep in. She couldn’t go back in the bedroom, she couldn’t sleep downstairs and she couldn’t sleep on the couch.  At this point, Elaine feels like she was slowly going out of her mind. The next day, Elaine calls her brother Joe and confesses that she wants to consider selling the house because she couldn’t take the life she was living in the house anymore. 

A picture example showing a "shadow ghost", probably like the one Christine saw hover over Karen. These "shadow ghosts" frequent homes and other historic locations. Some say they are negative energies and possibly demonic but other circumstances disagree with that theory. There are many theories as to what can produce such phenomena.

During the day when Elaine goes out to take the trash, Elaine spots a neighbor and decides to talk to him. She asks him if there’s anything strange that’s ever gone on in the house. The neighbor proceeds to tell her that he used to babysit the kids of the couple who sold Elaine the house. He remembers that the couple had a son and that the son married his bride. The son and the bride were both young so they decided to live up in the attic. Because the house was so large, the couple decided if they needed help, they would bang on the heater so it could be heard throughout the house. One day, the bride slipped and fell, hitting her head and she died immediately. The neighbor goes on to describe the bride as a “beautiful, tiny woman” and recalls her looking extremely beautiful in the white dress. Elaine begins piecing the puzzle together in her mind. It was February 1995 when Elaine decides to call up a medium. Upon arrival, the medium goes straight to the basement, opens up the mysterious doors and peeks her head in. She then begins saying “You are dead, you don’t belong here anymore, go onto the light”. The medium repeats this quite a few times.

The whole ordeal had left the family emotionally drained; however, the morning after the medium came in to “cleanse” the house, Elaine and the rest of the family noticed a different atmosphere in the house; it was more peaceful and relaxing. Joe describes it as opening the window and letting sunshine and fresh air inside the house. The family had never experienced any phenomenon in the house after that. However, Elaine concludes that whatever it was that was haunting her house, it wasn’t of this world and was open-minded to the possibilities of an existence of “unworldly phenomenon” that we have yet to fully understand. 

JANE'S NOTES: Yet another thrilling episode and in Brooklyn, of all places! I browsed around the internet to look for more information on the house and what came of the haunting. It turns out Elaine Mercado wrote a book about her experiences called “The Grave’s End”. According to Amazon.com, the book has an overall 4/5 star rating. Further information on the book description reveals that the Mercados bought their home in 1982 and this phenomenon had haunted them for 13 years.

Elaine Mercado posing with her book for the NY Daily

But unlike last week’s episode, this one had me raise eyebrows a few times and I felt important pieces of the story were missing. First off, why did Elaine feel the need to throw away a wedding dress that was obviously an antique discovery? Why didn’t she go to the neighbors to see if they knew anything about it and could possibly relay it to a living family member? Personally, if I discovered something as beautiful as that dress wrapped in paper from the 50s, I sure as hell wouldn’t throw it away in the trash. The medium...who or what was she talking to? Was it the bride or the "skeletal man" Matthew saw in his dream? Also, what about that “dirt room” that spooked Christine....what was THAT about and did anyone ever crawl back in the dirt room to see if remains were there? Upon further search, I’ve seen a couple news articles that talked about the haunted townhouse, the first result being from the New York Daily where you can find it by clicking here. There’s another article by The New York Post where you can find it by clicking here. The article from the NY Daily not only shows the house but also shows Elaine Mercado posing with her book. Both articles are very vague in their content, unlike last week’s episode where the LA Times went into great detail about what happened to Jackie Hernandez in her San Pedro Bungalow Home. While I do believe that the hauntings of the home were genuine, I also feel the lack of history and conclusion presented in the show makes me think that Elaine Mercado didn’t necessarily use “Paranormal Witness” just to share her story but to discretely market her own book. I can’t lie, as a paranormal enthusiast, it’s pretty disappointing when someone tells a story but won’t go into further detail unless there’s a profit out of it. These are just my own opinions. Your thoughts? 

Picture Credit: Syfy.com, The NY Daily, GhostStudy.com

You can follow me on Twitter @janedoemessage

Paranormal Witness: "Man In The Attic" Ep. 201 Recap

Chiara and Mob Mistress have asked me to post about a TV show of my choice. Having that I have a variety of shows on my DVR and since they are covering MW with Carmela covering “Big Ang”, I decided to branch out a bit and cover SyFy's“Paranormal Witness” since I’m a fan of paranormal shows and PW just started it’s second season this past Wednesday. I’m very glad to be part of the M.O.B Wives Team! - Jane Doe

PARANORMAL WITNESS: The Man In The Attic (EP. 201)

"A young mother rents a California bungalow with strange noises coming from overhead, unseen hands moving objects, glowing lights, phantom blood and a reoccurring apparition of an old man."

Jackie Hernandez, an expecting mother, has recently separated from her husband, Al Hernandez due to marital troubles and decides to rent a bungalow house in San Pedro, CA. Jackie fell in love with the bungalow house right away and felt it was the perfect place to start a new life with her 2-year-old son Jamie and expecting daughter, Samantha. Jackie went to school to earn a degree so she could provide for her family. She felt that all was going to be well in her new humble abode. But it wasn’t until about a month later when Jackie began hearing strange noises in the house. One night when she was watching TV, she heard a sound  that sounded like “someone dropped a handful of pebble form the top of the wall and fell to the bottom”. It was a distinct sound that sent shivers up her spine. On another night, she heard a particularly strange, high-pitched sound where she described it as almost hurting your ears. She walked around the house and discovered it came from above the house. She went to the attic door and saw the trap door was wide open. She had never been up the attic. She closed the trap door and realized that she wasn’t alone in the house. 

Picture of the infamous haunted house

The source of what would become Jackie's living nightmare

During these nightly ordeals, Jackie began inviting her friend Susan over to stay the house. Jackie confides to Susan what’s been going on in the house when suddenly, they both here a big “bang” coming from the kitchen. They walk in the kitchen and notice a picture that was hanging on the wall was propped up against the sink; the nails holding the picture were on the table, standing up perfectly on the head. Jackie knew that it wasn’t normal and someone or something had done that.

The paranormal phenomena continued when one of the neighbors, a 16-year-old named Tina, would come over and babysit little Jamie. Tina and Jackie bonded and would spend time talking even when Tina wasn’t babysitting. One night when Jackie was out, Tina was watching TV when she decided to check on Jamie in his bedroom. As Tina walked down the hallway to the bedroom, she noticed the door to the bedroom opened immediately. She pushed the door closed behind her and checked on Jamie. When she went to walk out, the door once again latched open by itself. Tina thought maybe it was the house and the floor was uneven and when she stepped on a certain part of the floor, the door would open. But the incident didn’t leave Tina’s mind.  One day, Tina and Jackie were in the kitchen making food when they turned around and see “glowing lights” in the upper corner of the kitchen floating in front of them. Bewildered at this sight, Jackie grabs the camera and while she’s taking pictures, the camera stops working. Jackie gives the camera to Tina and suggests she takes a random picture facing the kitchen window and away from the lights. When Tina looks through the lens, Tina claims to have seen the face of an old man, describing it as “skeleton-like”. Tina screams, drops the camera and both her and Jackie run out of the house, stricken with fear.

Jackie capturing the "floating lights"

One afternoon, ex-husband Al was over to visit Jamie. Jackie was telling Al what was happening in the house. Al dismisses her claims and thought she was exaggerating and making it all up for attention because she was alone in the house. So Al suggests that Jackie challenge the mysterious entity. Jackie refused to challenge it and was horrified when Al began challenging it, demanding that whatever it was, it would show himself. Nothing happened. When AL left, Jackie walks to the closet, opens the door and sees the word “AL” was written multiple times across the closet wall, the “A” in blue and the “L” in red. Once again, Jackie was terrified and knew that whatever it was, it responded to Al’s challenge. 

A frustrated and scared Jackie couldn’t afford to relocate so once again, she consoled Susan. Susan suggests to Jackie that she tells the landlords about these incidents because it was their house.  Jackie was hesitant to tell the landlords because she didn’t want the landlords to think she was crazy. A few weeks later, Susan and Jackie are out on a walk when coincidentally, they bump into the landlord and his wife. Susan then talks to the landlord about what’s been going on with Jackie and the activity in the house. The landlord looks concerned so Jackie figured if he looked concerned, she would be taken seriously. The landlord suggests bringing in a priest. 

Two priests arrived at Jackie’s house one night and upon their arrival, Jackie immediately felt uncomfortable. She says they seemed very cynical and judgmental. They investigate the house and point out of a couple things in the house that caught their attention: Al’s horror movie collection, a skull decoration in the fish aquarium and a doll from Jackie’s doll collection that the priests claimed was a voodoo doll. The priests told Jackie that she was bringing death into the house and she was initiating the activity; Jackie was stunned. She then heard Jamie cry from his bedroom so she went to get him. Jamie would not stop crying and screaming. The priests then said Jamie’s behavior wasn’t “normal” and claimed that Jamie was possessed. So the priests then blessed Jamie and Jackie’s unborn son. The whole ordeal shook up Jackie but it wasn’t over. The next morning, someone rang the doorbell and Jackie answered to see a woman in a business suit: social services were called out in response the priests’ reports of what had happened. In a shocking turn, the priests reported that Jackie was on hallucinogenic drugs and pregnant. Jackie then swore that things were better left unsaid and she would never tell anyone about what was going on in the house. 

Jackie explaining the unknown terror that plagued her home

Shortly after, Jackie gave birth to her daughter Samantha. Time went by and one day, Jackie came home from grocery shopping and had bags in her arms when she walked in the kitchen. She was horror-stricken to find that the refrigerator alphabet magnets she had on there read “GET THE HELL OUT”. Jackie ran out of the room. Jackie was also losing more and more sleep and wanted to stay up and watch her children. Jackie was sleeping on a daybed, with Jamie sleeping in another daybed and Samantha sleeping in a bassinet next to Jackie. One night, Jackie was resting when she heard distinct, loud breathing. Jackie gets up to investigate and walks down the hallway. She goes to peek into Jamie’s room and sees an old man sitting on the bed. Jackie ran out to the living room and immediately, every window shade in the house opened up. Jackie couldn’t describe how scared she felt when all of this occurred. 

Actual photographic evidence from the investigation of the mysterious "Phantom Blood". Internet research pulls up multiple articles on how the investigators sent a sample of the blood to a lab in UCLA and the blood tested back as having amounts of human plasma blood.

One night, Susan talks to Jackie and tells her she can’t go on like that and begs her to get help. She gave her the number of a parapsychologist. Jackie, still traumatized by the last time she asked for help, refused but Susan insisted she take the number and call when she’s ready. Jackie puts the number in the drawer. Later on, she was watching dishes with dish gloves and noticed the gloves had been covered in blood; thinking she cut herself, she took her gloves off and saw no cuts but instead, saw that blood was pouring out of the walls of the kitchen and on the kitchen table. She immediately rushes to the telephone, gets out the number to the parapsychologist and calls him. The night the team arrived, Jackie was bewildered because she expected it to just be the parapsychologist coming over. Barry, lead investigator and cameraman, sets up an interview with Jackie. The crew came in with a game plan without consulting Jackie. Jackie didn’t want to document anything, she just wanted whatever was haunting her out of the house. However, Jackie was interviewed and when she was explaining on camera what was happening, the lights went off. She immediately knew it was the entity and she had sense whatever it was felt angry that the crew was there. The lights turned back on. She explains to the team about the noises in the attic. Barry asked his friend, Jeff, a still photographer, to take photos and goes to the attic to take photos. Before going up to the attic, Jeff said it'd be a cold day in hell before he'd see a ghost and bravely proceeds up to the attic.

The team and Jackie trying to make sense of what is going on in the bungalow home

Meanwhile, Al came over to visit Jamie and was occupying the kids while the team investigated and was listening to what was going on. All the sudden, he heard a distinct whisper in his ear clearly say “Tell them to get the hell out of there.” All of the sudden, Al hears a yell in the attic. Jeff comes down screaming and claims that something grabbed his camera. Realizing his livelihood depends his camera, Jeff  bravely goes back in and the crew follows him. Barry follows with his camera and only shot a minute of footage before the camera neutralized. Barry changed the battery and used his camera again, but it wouldn’t work. But fortunately, they found the body of the missing camera in a little crate; the lens was found behind the trap door. The team goes downstairs when they hear sounds of someone walking above the attic. No one was up there. The team proceeds to do a quick interview with Jackie before the team run out of the house. Jackie was shocked and outraged at them leaving. Meanwhile, the team goes over footage of evidence and Barry caught the sound of footsteps coming from the attic on his camera. 

Actual video still of Jackie Hernandez keeping an ear out as team members investigate the attic

One night, Jackie heard noises coming from the bedroom and it sounded to her like someone was playing with the kids’ toys. She then sees the kids’ beach ball come from out of the bedroom like it was thrown out. Jackie decides she won’t sleep for the rest of the night but does close her eyes to rest. When she woke up, she felt someone holding her down and she couldn’t breathe. She tried to get up but couldn’t and began fearing for her life and for her kids. All the sudden, it let go. Enraged by this entity, Jackie finally snapped and grabbed a nearby baseball bat, yelling that she had enough. She turned around each corner, expecting to see the old man but saw nothing. She then goes up to the attic and challenges the entity; she wanted to reclaim her home and her life. Jackie acknowledges it wasn't a smart move but she was driven by anger at the fact that she was terrorized daily in her own home. She was pushed out of the attic and immediately, grabbed her kids, and ran out of the house with the phone. She called Barry immediately and Barry knew something went terribly wrong; but the phone call is cut in the middle of the conversation. A concerned Barry and his team immediately rush to the house with their equipment. When they couldn’t find anything in the house, the two investigators Gary and Jeff went up to the attic with a flashlight and a camera; Barry, Jackie and the rest of the team waited. All the sudden, the team and Jackie heard a “snapping” sound. Panicked, Jackie and the team yelled at the two team members in the attic to come down. The two team members look down at the team to ask what’s wrong. All the sudden, Jeff gets thrown back. Gary, only having a camera as a source of light, takes pictures of what’s going on. There was a picture taken where Jeff was standing strangely, his head lopsided, his arm supporting a board and his legs barely off the ground. He yells at the team to help him.  Gary goes up to him and notices his eyes are blank and that there’s what looks like a noose around his neck. He unloosens the noose and they both ran out of the house screaming. When they came down the attic, a petrified Jeff was struggling for air. Everyone saw the red marks on his neck and the noose. Jackie and the team immediately ran out of the house. 

Jeff and the noose that nearly strangled him

That was the last night that Jackie and her kids spent at the house. Jackie took action and moved away from the nightmare. The bungalow was rented to other tenants, but very few have stayed longer than a couple months. To this day, everyone involved in this case is still haunted by what was in that bungalow. 

JANES NOTES: I did some searching around to see if I could find any articles about it and came across this 3-page article in the Los Angeles Times that dates back to March 23, 1993.The article goes into much more depth about how Jackie was terrorized by not one, but TWO entities and even though “Paranormal Witness” stated that Jackie never experienced the paranormal phenomena again, many articles have shown different and have shown that Jackie continued to 

be haunted. Here is the link to the article: "Tangled Tales From The Crypt" L.A. Times

Tune into SyFy's "Paranormal Witness" every Wednesday @ 10/9c

Picture Credit: SyFy.com and "Phantoms & Monsters" @naturalplane.blogspot.com

You can follow me on Twitter at: @janedoemessage