Even the most devoted parapsychologist eventually desires to just lay back and take a break or vacation from his research. I was presented with just such an opportunity in the summer of 1987 when an old friend made me an offer I could not refuse.

It had been a long time since I last heard from my friend Roger, a writer/producer living in Studio City, California with his new wife Robbie. I was quite startled getting an out-of-the-blue call from him asking if I would care to house sit as he and Robbie were going on a honeymoon to Europe for several weeks.

Visiting Roger at his new home for the first time I had little difficulty in deciding whether to accept his offer. His luxurious home was situated in a rustic neighborhood within the San Fernando Valley and had a large, heated pool for swimming away the hot summer days and nights, a large built-in barbecue, a master bedroom most people would slave years for, and an immense screening room with a large projection TV and surround sound system most people only dream about.

My responsibilities were to feed Roger’s two dogs, Cognac and Jennifer, and to keep the house clean and safe. The latter two requirements were a piece of cake as they had a housecleaner who came once a week and a sophisticated security system.

Little did I know the real reason Roger wanted me to house sits. A reason that would drive any normal person running in fear. The house was haunted. A fact, I only learned later, that Robbie would not even discuss with Roger as just the thought was disturbing to her. Equally unknown to me was that several weeks earlier, a huge magnum of champagne that was resting on the kitchen table was mysteriously propelled across that expanse into the area just below the sinks over ten feet away. The resulting impact shattered the magnum into tiny pieces, showering the entire kitchen in glass shards and bubbly liquid.

If I had prior knowledge as to the fact that this beautiful house was haunted, I wonder if I would have been so quick to take Roger up on his offer? Remember, I was there to simply relax and enjoy, not to continue my never-ending search for phenomena. But then again, most, if not all of my adult life has been dedicated to such investigations and given the unique opportunity of actually getting to live in a haunted house which in research in very rare, could I have turned it down in all good faith? But then again, you know what they say. No rest for the wicked!

I arrived at the house on the evening of August 28, 1987, and began put my duffel bag on the bed. After leaving the room and returning sometime later, I found my duffel to be sitting on the floor. Scratching my head, I tried to remember just how far onto the middle of the bed I place my duffel. I was certain that I did not leave it close to the edge. Even if I did, the duffel was several feet away from the bed, not right next to it as it would be if it simply fell off. Later that first night at around 10 P.M., I noticed that small items of furniture also seemed to have a mind of their own and moved about spontaneously.

One of the nightstands in the master bedroom found its way into the center of the hallway connecting the rear living room to the master bath and bedroom. I returned it to its correct location only to later (about an hour) discover that it was again moved back into the center of the hallway.

As I was alone in the house and the security system was on, I really did not know what to think. Not for one moment did I even consider the possibility that the house was haunted. I incorrectly assumed that my unfamiliarity with the house had tricked my memory and I had forgotten to place the nightstand in its proper location or that I was somehow distracted.

However, when another piece of furniture, the portable mini-music system in the bedroom, moved itself to the hallway from across the room, I became very suspicious that perhaps someone had broken into the house unnoticed and was attempting to terrorize me.

This was certainly a possibility. Perhaps I did not correctly activate the security system as it was my first day in the house. A quick search of the house and the garage combined with a check of the security system proved me wrong on both counts.

The rest of that first night was quite peaceful and I went to bed at about 1 A.M. to what I thought would be an extremely restful night’s sleep due to the remote location of the house. Again, I was wrong. Dead wrong to be exact.

At exactly 6:08 A.M. of the next morning, August 29th, something suddenly woke me from a sound sleep. To this day I swear that I was pinched on my side. Upon awakening in an already well lit room and looking at the large digital clock to my left, I attempted to return to sleep. However, before I could do so I felt and saw the bedspread and covers to my left rise up and the bed beneath them depress as if an invisible person was actually entering the bed.

Whatever was entering the bed, it casually approached and actually cuddled against my body. The phantom form appeared to be breathing, was lukewarm, had a definite fragrance or odor to it, one that was immediately recognizable as feminine. The ghostly form now pushed up tight against my body and was unquestionably female as I could feel its large breasts pressing firmly against my left side, its long hair falling on my left cheek and its head resting on my chest.

Whatever this thing was, its motions resembled that of someone taking their clothes off for lack of a better explanation. The bedspread lifted in seeming response to each apparent movement of this invisible presence. Finally, I decided to reach out and touch what I could not see. As I extended my arm to make contact with it, the presence rapidly departed the bed, throwing the bedsheets and covers into the air and the mattress rebounding.

The only quasi-sensory impression I had other than the tactile and olfactory ones was the thought the female entity had long, thick, black hair. Even after more than thirty years and more than 3,500 investigated cases of hauntings, poltergeists and the like, this experience was quite unsettling.

Over the twelve years since my encounter with this particular entity, I have often wondered why I was not the least bit terrified, or even startled somewhat by this experience. Perhaps my being acclimated to phenomena in general may have had something to do with it. However, as the phenomena did not present any form of threat or clear and present danger to me, my fight or flight reaction never kicked in, in fact, from my perspective, the entire event was quite intriguing.

Another particularly interesting aspect of the phenomena, which was present from the moment I first set foot in the house, was the feeling of being at around 2.5 atmospheres of pressure--like being underwater in a deep pool or scuba diving. The subtle pain accompanying this sensation of overpressure was primarily in the sinuses, the frontal and temporal lobes of the head. This unusual feeling persisted without interruption through the end of my second house-sitting episode, although the intensity of overpressure did vary over time and seemingly correlated with the onset of phenomena. Interestingly, virtually everyone entering the house felt the same type of physical sensation without ever knowing of the phenomena transpiring within.

As I settled in the house, so did the phenomena. On numerous occasions, the electrical power would go into a brown-out mode causing the digital clocks and other appliances to blink the all-too-common “12:00." Similarly, the houses sophisticated security system was repeatedly triggered (mostly late at night or early in the morning) for no apparent reason.

While it’s possible that these transient electrical upsets could be the result of faulty wiring or power transmission problems that likelihood was eliminated by professional examination of the houses wiring and a call to the local power company. The high repetition rates associated with the electrical malfunction combined with the fact that such events supposedly never happened before, lead me to speculate that the cause may have been paranormal in nature. Further reinforcing this belief was the security system’s diagnostic mode, which indicated that there were no problems with it or its current feed.

The next weekend, I invited several close friends over for a dinner party; Frank, Larry, Marshall, Barbara and Laurie to name a few. We enjoyed a delicious barbecue that balmy summer night. After the main coarse was consumed, Frank brought out a fantastic ice cream cake he had brought for dessert.

Pieces were cut for everyone, but I found myself too full from the main coarse to ingest that much sugar. I told Laurie, who cut the cake, that I would hold off temporarily on the cake and eat a piece later.

Laurie left what remained of the cake on the kitchen table while all of us retired to the rear living room, which is in full view of the kitchen. The dogs, as usual, were locked outside the house in the yard. However, their behavior was peculiar (even considering the presence of strangers unfamiliar to them in the house) as they were extremely nervous and restless given their normal laid back nature. As all of us sat in the glass-walled livingroom talking, both Jennifer and Cognac continuously walked around the outside of the glass walls as if they were watching and stalking something other than the people inside, quite intensely.

About ninety minutes later, Laurie asked if I would now care for a piece of cake. I nodded “yes” and she went to bring it bring it out to me from the kitchen. Suddenly, we all heard Laurie scream from the kitchen and ran to see what happened.

The remainder of the ice cream cake had completely disappeared from the plate it was on (yes, the air conditioning in the house was on). As none of us had left the living room and the dogs were still outside, there was no explanation for the cake’s vanishing. This was the first incident of apport phenomena within the house, but far from the last.

Later that evening the security system again began acting up as it kept triggering then resetting itself. When its loud sirens began to howl at 2 A.M., it sounded like the diving klaxon of a Trident nuclear missile submarine. It was sufficiently loud to wake the neighbors across the street who came out yelling for me to shut it off. You could say that it was literally loud enough to wake the dead, which in this case was probably an accurate estimate.

If that were not enough, the numerous smoke detectors within the house would intermittently go off throughout the night and early morning. Eventually, I was forced to dismantle them, either by pulling out their wires and/or batteries. Finally, I was able to sleep for an extended duration.

Several days later, my girlfriend, Jodi, came over to the house. She arrived with enough clothes and luggage to spend several weeks as opposed to a couple of days. After placing her prescription pill bottle on the master bedroom nightstand, it somehow found its way to the rear bathroom. As we had both observed the bottle on the now infamous nightstand, then its absence, I was positive that neither of us accidentally or unconsciously moved it.

Shortly after this incident, the pill bottle again moved. This time from the bathroom back onto the bedroom nightstand. Jodi was becoming a little concerned. It was one thing to talk about such events in the second or third person, quite another to be right in the middle of them. After numerous other such apports her hypersensitivity to the ever-constant overpressure, her stay at the house lasted less that one full day.

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