The Demonologist's Diary: A House in Hartford
An excerpt from the working notes of a demonologist called to a Hartford row house in 1994. The family has asked that the address never be published.
The following is an excerpt from the working diary of a demonologist — now retired — who was called to a three-story row house in Hartford, Connecticut in the autumn of 1994. The family, who contacted him through their parish, asked that the address never be published. He has honored that request for thirty years.
'Arrived 14:30. Family — mother, father, two children aged 9 and 11 — gathered in the front parlor. The smell is the first thing. Not sulphur, as the books suggest, but wet pennies. Metallic. Wrong. The mother has scratches on her forearm that she says appeared overnight, four parallel lines, too even to be self-inflicted.
'The 11-year-old, a girl, will not speak. She has not spoken in three weeks, since the activity began. The 9-year-old, a boy, speaks freely but describes the entity as 'the tall man' and draws him, repeatedly, as a thin figure with no face. The drawings are identical each time. I have collected seven.
'The father is angry, which is common. He refuses to sleep in the house. The mother is exhausted, which is also common. She has been the primary target.
'I have advised the family to leave the house for a minimum of seventy-two hours while I work. They have agreed. I will not document the procedure here. I will record only what can be observed: at 22:14, the temperature in the second-floor bedroom dropped from 68°F to 41°F in under three minutes. At 22:31, the boy's drawing of the tall man was found on the wall in a room that had been empty and locked. The drawing is in what appears to be soot. There was no source of soot in the house.'
The diary entries continue for eighteen days. The family never returned to the house. It was demolished in 2003. The lot remains vacant.