Paranormal Investigation Files

October 27, 2001

We were all of us very young the day that we formed the PRD. I was newly twenty-one, that April 29th, earlier in the year. Allen and Amy were nineteen, and Michael had just turned twenty-one earlier in the month of October. In those days, we excluded the word "society" from our burgeoning organization. It was just after 5:30 PM when Michael and I sped down McKinley to Allen's restaurant (well his father's restaurant), and met in the parking lot.

The manner in which the day had gone came in a long series of inauspicious and frightening events that seemed to reopen old wounds for all of us each, separately, and all together. For me and Michael, a visit to my childhood home in Corona, California yielded an hours long visit with the family that then occupied the home. We arrived there roughly around 1:00 PM.

"Did anything strange ever happen when you lived here?"

The questions she asked me unfolded into a conversation of comparative notes on a haunting that effectively ended for me ten years prior, when I was eleven years old... and here I was again, back where it all started. If you've ever experienced anything like that, where the impression wasn't just that you were familiar with a property or a place, but that place was familiar with you, you'll understand. If you haven't, good on you. I hope you never have to.

The visit was peaceable enough, with three of the four occupants of the property sharing their experiences in that hateful place; that house that hates; that spacious three bedroom house that was never quite home to me, but where once I lived with my broken family; that somehow looming malicious and malevolent darkness that occupied the walls of that American Craftsman Home built in 1916; our experiences there were not too far removed in their similarity, and while I was largely uncomfortable being back inside it, I felt vindicated (and a little guilty) that Michael was noticeably pale, and equally as uncomfortable. Frightened, even.

By 2:30PM, we were departed from the property, and drove in a tense silence for a while before we ended up outside Corona, California's limits and into Norco, and while there, we ended up on California Street. I had an aunt who lived there, once removed from my father's side, who I hadn't seen since before my father died. We dropped in, and she was receptive to our company. We wandered her ranch a while, and it allowed us the time to compare notes and decompress from the oppressive presence that the house on West Grand Boulevard bore down on us. It was there, during that downtime, that I summarized my childhood in that home to Michael.

It was 3:45 when we left my aunt's house, and continued cruising, finally shrugging off the intense anxiety we carried from that visit with the family now living in my childhood home. We drove and talked, listening to rockabilly CDs, and some psychobilly CDs, and it was only happenstance when we turned down McKinley, crossing at Pierce Street, and with no explicable reason for haste, drove perhaps too hurried into the parking lot. It was 5:25PM and much of the afternoon escaped us through our misadventures. Simultaneously to our arrival, Allen too drove hurried into the lot. We all parked at the same time; we were all out of our respective cars at  the same time.

We all began talking at once, exchanging conversation in a manner which made our humble four sound like a crowded conversation, unveiling the strange events of the day, and its bizarre occurrences that led to the moment now; this moment where we were sharing this space, at this time, under a dusky Autumn Sky on October 27th, 2001. It was here that we formed our paranormal group, the PRD. Paranormal Research and Development.