Traumatic events can sometimes trigger poltergeist activity, but for one young girl, the torment seemed to have no end

It is currently theorized that poltergeist activity arises out of the subconscious of a living person, called an agent. This agent, very often a young girl, usually is known to be under some kind of stress, whether it is emotional, physical or psychological. By some mechanism that is still unknown to science (and paranormal researchers), this inner stress can manifest as phenomena outside the agent. Turmoil inside the body and mind of the agent becomes a physical reality in the form of knocks on the walls, lights and other electrics flicking off and on by themselves, objects thrown about, and more.

The case of Laura B. might very well qualify her as a poltergeist agent. As a young girl she suffered the anguish of an alcoholic father, who often lashed out in violent anger. It's not surprising, then, that Laura was terrified of her home's basement at night, since that is where her parents' bedroom was. "The creepy feeling in my basement intensified as his alcoholism and addictions grew worse," Laura says, "and I would refuse to go into my parents' room for any reason. There was always a negative feeling in the room, but I always attributed that to my dad."

Evil in itself is not paranormal, and we can easily understand why Laura would get negative feelings from that room. About five years ago, however, her parents divorced, and that's when the line began to be crossed into the unexplained -- when the poltergeist activity began.

RED AND GREEN LIGHTS

"All of the negative feelings that had been in my parents' room suddenly moved into my room and intensified," Laura says. Now on one level this could be understood as a psychological reaction. Many children feel responsible or guilty for their parents' divorces, and Laura might have been transferring the negative feelings she once had about her parents' room (her father) and brought them into her own room (her unjustified guilt).

But now that she was directing this fear and trauma inward, it began to manifest in outward phenomena.

"I had taken the TV from downstairs into my room but always had to sleep with it on or with me facing the other direction," Laura says in explaining how the phenomena began. "If I looked around my room at night, I would always see a tiny red orb zip across my room. I would watch it zoom from one side of my room to another, almost like the red dot from a laser pointer. Shortly after I would see this red light, if I looked at my TV there would be a small green square flashing at the center of the screen. This square would get larger with each flash and looked like it was an image, but I was way too scared to look at it. The flashing TV sent me extremely bad vibes and I would always turn on the lights or the TV afterward so I wouldn't be in the dark, terrible, silent dark."

If this happened just once we might dismiss this experience as a hallucination, but the phenomenon repeated night after night for Laura. "Each night I would see the screen flash once and be too terrified to even consider looking at it. I realized that the red light was a sign that the TV would flash, so I would always turn on the TV or slam my eyes shut when I saw it. I got so scared of the red light and green flash that I stopped sleeping in my room altogether."

THE SLEEPOVER

Fast forward to a year after Laura's parents divorced. It was the end of the school year and Laura decided to have a sleepover party with a few close friends to celebrate. Laura planned for them to sleep in the living room, making the excuse that her bedroom was too small. "I had other reasons for saying that, she says."

One girl was intent on sneaking into Laura's room, however, and when she did so, Laura had a disturbing vision. "What I saw made me go cold," she recalls. "Black, smog-like gunk was oozing out from the crack under my door into the hallway. It was one of the most disgusting looking things I have ever seen."

Laura was at her wit's end. She asked another trusted friend, who happened to have an interest in the paranormal, to investigate her room. She went in and came out a while later looking white-faced. "Whatever is in your room is the most evil thing I have ever encountered," she told Laura. "It is not human."

To be objective, we don't know whether or not Laura's friend is a suitable judge of such matters, but she did perhaps feel the same negativity that Laura was dealing with. Laura believes this was a turning point.

ALL HELL UNLEASHED

"After she investigated my room, it was as if Hell had been unleashed," Laura says. "I believe that acknowledging the entity for what it was gave it power. The negative feeling in my room spread to the entire house and made being there feel oppressive. I no longer felt safe in my house."

It all seemed to come to a head one summer night when Laura and this friend were in the house alone. "Even though it was the summer, my entire house was cold," she says. "A heavy, malevolent feeling seemed to creep ever closer to us. We were cold, so we decided to make some soup. As we were in my kitchen, we heard a scratching noise come from the inside the microwave. We opened it up to see where it could be coming from and the noise stopped. We couldn't find the source so we shut the door... and the scratching started up again."

Laura's dog began to act strangely. He would stand, look nervously at the TV, whine with discomfort, then sit down again with his ears pinned back submissively. The two girls decided to put on a movie to calm their escalating fears.

"I was sitting on my couch with my feet tucked under me when I felt something cold, thick and pointed brush from my heel to the arch of my foot," says Laura. "It was very deliberate and the worst sensation I have ever felt. I screamed and jumped up, and my friend and I ran outside and got onto my trampoline and just held each other in the semi darkness.

"I looked toward my room and I could see a shape in my window, even though no one else was home. My dog started to freak out again and there was a rustling noise in the grass. I saw what looked like a black cloak being dragged across the grass. The shape circled the trampoline several times and then disappeared."

GUARDIAN SPIRITS

The disturbing activity continued for Laura until she got some advice from an online friend. "He said he had two guardian spirits that he would send to me to take care of the creature, one light and one dark," Laura says. "I was desperate for any kind of help, so I agreed."

Most of us probably would not have taken that solution very seriously, but Laura insists that she witnessed a phenomenon that she interpreted as those two guardian spirits.

"That night I stayed up all night watching three orbs of light fly frantically around my house," she says. "One was an inky black color that seemed to ooze and drip. The others were a large black ball and a smaller white ball. The white and black ball were chasing and bumping in to the inky blot as I watched wide-eyed. The black and white spirits forced it out of my house, and for a while I thought everything would be alright."

Things were not alright, however. Laura continued to be haunted by menacing shadows and experienced one particularly terrifying illusion. "A couple of houses down the street there is a family that has large Rottweilers," she says. "One night I was walking home when I looked at that dog. It was staring at me with inky black eyes. It also looked like its jaw had been ripped off and its tongue was just lolling out of its mouth. I ran to my house and in front of my driveway was a cat with the same ripped out jaw, but its eyes were normal. It was strange and disturbing, but luckily I only saw that phenomenon once."

Today the phenomena have subsided, but Laura admits that her faith has been shaken by this ordeal. "I'm not sure what I believe anymore," she says, "but all that I know for sure is that there is true Evil in this world."