1937-1981

As seen on A Haunting - a New Dominion Television production.
Glenn Burnie, Maryland resident Patricia Bean died of a brain hemorrhage a mere ten months after finally moving out of a certifiably haunted house where she, her two sons, her daughter, her husband, her second spouse and her beloved pet all went literally through hell.

For, aside from hearing strange noises in the house, and having witnessed various other alarming manifestations and poltergeist activity, there were very soon indeed far more troubling events there; the husband's behaviour changed almost overnight - he was a gentle, caring man who became overbearing, violent and abusive from one day to the next. He then vanished and never resurfaced again. In that, there is a first parallel with a case I have first-hand knowledge of; the husband was attached to the abode and would impede a move at all costs, for various reasons. And then, he was the first to leave there, too - because he died, from a massive stroke. In the case of Patty Bean's husband, he was also the first to leave the house that he stubbornly insisted his entire family remain in - even though his wife and kids all felt uneasy there from day one - but he left by mysteriously disappearing, not the same as the case I have first-hand knowledge of, at all. One may imagine he simply escaped, relatively unharmed, the cursed abode in question. He had left for a walk one night, after dinner, and simply never returned. His disappearance remains unsolved after all these years and his whereabouts are totally unknown since that night. It is as if the devil took him off the face of the earth...

Patricia Bean remained in the house due to her financial situation afterwards - even though she was terrified of it. She heard footsteps in the house, at day and at night - and so did her two sons. Her daughter had fled the home, getting married at sixteen in order to never have to live there again. In Patty's daughter's own words, "the boyfriend didn't matter - I just wanted to get out of that house." And she did, marrying far too young, the first one that came along... Patty would remain terrified for years, living in that house with her two youngest sons from that point on. One night, the ghost of a horribly scarred man came to her bed and tried to strangle her. She felt the ghostly hands around her neck, as she could no longer breathe. And then it eased its grip on her and let her live. For some unfathomable reason, it had effectively "allowed her to stay" both among the living and in the house, if only for a while longer... One day, though, she felt unwell and her eldest boy called his big sister on the phone, for help. The daughter reluctantly returned to that home to be of any assistance she could be and wound up having to call an ambulance - Patricia Bean had suffered a mild stroke.

From that day onward, Patricia would never again be the same woman she had been before moving into that house. After coming out of the hospital, she didn't listen to her own mother and displayed her own brand of stubbornness now in relation to that home, electing to stay there despite everything that had been happening. Once again, similarities with the case that I am aware of on a first-hand basis arise: after the husband's death, in which case we have the wife becoming "attached" to the abode she had once wanted so ardently to leave forevermore, simply because her husband had lived there for so long. Self-imposed financial restraint also playing a factor, however it was the wish of the widow to simply die where her husband had practically died too. The exact same thing as what happened to Patricia Bean, in a way - only with even more tragic consequences, given that there are two demises instead of one. (And in the Patricia Bean case, we haven
Patricia eventually met a new love interest, a handyman who came to make repairs to the house, and she began a timid relationship with him that quickly blossomed. This man was a believer - and on a particular day that he was working outside the house, he saw the ghost of a woman standing in a window right in front of him. He was so close that he could clearly see that it was not Patricia at all but someone else - so he went back inside to inquire about who she might be. It didn't look to be Patricia's mother either, whom he had met before. Alas, the ghastly looking woman had disappeared when he came into the house to see who was really there... On another occasion, at night, after he had spent the night with Patricia, all seemed well and blissful until the two lovers shook off the cobwebs and truly woke up to find the family pet's fur all over them - but UNDERNEATH THE BEDCOVERS. There was dog fur all over the house too - especially in the bathroom and all over the sink in there. For the next two weeks, neighbors helped look for the family's beloved pet dog - and it was never to be found again either. The dead who resided in that house had claimed a second victim, it seemed. They had their sights set on a third: Patricia herself.

Even when her new man pleaded for her to leave that house, Patricia would have none of it. He managed to convince her to summon a priest's help, in order to bless the house - at least that. It actually made matters worse. The spirits in that house went into a frenzy like never before - this time, the poltergeist activity was such that, as all in the family were in danger of physical injury, Patricia finally agreed to leave that house, on the spot.

Ten months later, she was dead.

Her son, Billy Bean (not to be confused with the gay baseball player nor the actor) is scarred for life - but even he has not added two plus two in that tragic story.

For he hadn't realized that it was that very same evil spirit that resided in the house, who had tried to harm his mother several times and clearly had it against her from the very beginning, the evil spirit that had terrorized them all - it was that spirit that had killed his mother in the end too, despite the move. The evil spirit caused her first stroke and later her fatal brain hemorrhage.
This is exactly what happened to the other case I mentioned, the one I have ''first-hand knowledge'' of - only it happened to the man instead of the woman, in that case.
For the dead can affect the living - in far more insidious ways than merely causing a heart attack when they spook someone through materializing unexpectedly right in front of them. The dead can cause fatalities. One has to realize several more things, too: the dead outnumber the living in such a way that we hardly stand a fighting chance in a haunting case like this; a single evil spirit such as this one, clinging on to a material place, could attract many more spirits, creating a very unhealthy place for the living, especially those that are naturally sensitive to such things, which seemed to be the case for Patricia Bean. She was literally attacked by all sides - and totally blindsided too. The mysterious intricacies of the unseen's effects on the tangible are, alas, not well-documented; the inability of the medical establishment to accurately explain how things such as strokes, aneurysms and similar "accidents" happen imply that unseen factors are at work there indeed... ALL OF THAT and more is already indicative that there is a correlation there and that we do not comprehend what forces are causing all these things. In Patricia Bean's case, as with many others, the evidence points at the true source of these forces and their more than likely nefarious effects upon the living: and this is the revengeful dead, full of bitterness towards the living who occupy their erstwhile living space now, have ample motive there - that is for sure. So much so that they will hasten the living's departure from this world - forcing their victims to effectively join their ranks in the process... Misery loves company, don't you know?

In the Glenn Burnie, MARYLAND case, the evidence is undeniable: for the house was not the only one haunted on the block either. In fact, the whole block was haunted - many residents had gone through very similar frightening experiences, none as tragic as Patricia Bean's but all very traumatic nonetheless. A retired policeman who used to patrol that very neighbourhood before the Beans moved in, mister John Romine, was interested in further researching the subject and publishing a book about it - and he is the one who told Billy what had really gone on there for all these long years... All of these houses had been built on the site of an old military camp - one where many soldiers had died miserably. The ghost Patricia had seen trying to strangle her was identified eventually (because of his scarred face) as being most probably Edward Zipprian, an infantry trooper who had maimed himself while using the faulty equipment at the disposal of the troops back in his day...  Alas for her, Patty was evidently more ''attuned'' to such ethereal things than the rest of the neighbourhood, making her a prime target not only for a troubled soul such as Zipprian's but all the others who were not resting in peace as well.  And it is my personal theory that too many of such ''contacts', can and should cause things such as strokes and the like.

The ghostly woman though, seen by both Patricia's new love interest and her son Billy, remains a total and complete mystery, even as to why she was even there...
My theory is that she was an otherworldly observer; maybe even a past victim of this haunting as well who, just like Patricia Bean did, lost her own life in the process... It is after all more than probable that the victims' spirits "hang around" the material world too - why should it be exclusively the evil disgruntled ones, mad at their own fate and prone to take it out on every innocent that happens to come by down the pike...? 

No - it is not just them who stick around longer than they should - and we can thank God for that.