Transgirl discovers the demon that haunted her as a child was her mother all along.

Until 2 months ago, I believed in ghosts.

I grew up in a haunted house from the time I was 5 until I was in 7th grade. The following things happened:

-Furniture rearranged by itself

-Smell of my dead father’s cologne wafting through house

-The phone cord to my room was chewed/severed (and it couldn’t have been by rats, i was assured)

-rocking chair moved up to my sister’s bed in the night as if someone sat watching her

-something answering our phone when we were out

-vase shattered/being watched by life size barbie doll as we cleaned

-step father’s head slammed into the wall

-step father’s arm wrenched behind love seat and re-emerging with fresh human bite marks near the elbow (where it would be impossible for him to have bit himself!)

-a hunting knife we didn’t own was stabbed into my mattress

-& several other things

This has always been my story. This has always been a part of me. People would say, “Wow! I’d never have taken you for someone who believes in that stuff” and I’d reply, “Yeah, well, I’d rather not have gone through it, but I believe it alright”

So, in August of last year, I came out as Transgender to my nmom. She was not in any way supportive. Told me that if my dad was alive he would have killed me. That she’ll never be okay with this, etc. etc. So, she and I haven’t spoken in almost a year now. (Very good decision, btw)

Now I’m in therapy and I’m trying to make sense of things now that I know that she was, to put it nicely, an “untrustworthy narrator” in my early story. I was trying to grapple with this memory:

Years after the haunting, every so often, my Mom would start teasing me about this TLC tape. During the haunting years, we had the church come and exorcise the house. They told us it would be a good idea to get rid of the “secular things” in our house that might be drawing the spirit or demon. They suggested we get rid of my favorite stuffed animal, My Pet Monster. I did. Without question. I was more afraid than I was attached to that toy. Then I went to my room. On my bed was TLC’s Crazy Sexy Cool. “Oh no!” I thought, “The word ‘sexy’ is surely secular. Is that what’s drawing it? Is that why my bed was stabbed with a hunting knife?” So, I brought it to my mom to ask her if she thought we should get rid of it.

FOR YEARS, she would tease me about this. “oooo! TLC is gonna come get you!!” Which I always found hurtful and odd. Like, yeah, I was a child. I was scared. I did the only thing I could think of to feel less scared. Mom never relented and would tease me until I’d get to the point of tears.

My therapist then presented the idea, and this, let’s be clear, HAD NEVER OCCURRED TO ME, that Mom might have been the one behind the hauntings.

She told me that the number of instances were like way beyond a normal haunted house in America. She asked me if I’d ever seen any evidence of the supernatural myself, instead of just being told about it or shown it second hand. I’d never seen it. I just trusted my mom.

She was with a guy, my first step dad Ron, and he was who I’d always kind of suspected COULD have done SOME of the stuff, but definitely not all of it, so that was a dead end. Mom said he didn’t do it. Why would she lie?

So now I’m like, but how’d he get that bite mark on his arm I saw in the picture they took? She made such a big deal to me privately how this couldn’t have been him, because it’s impossible to bite yourself on the arm where his bite mark was. It never occurred to me that she bit him and posed him for that picture.

The phone cord being bit by a ghost happened suspiciously after I got in trouble for calling a nintendo hotline 1-900 number too, so….

This is also why, when I later confided in her about Ron’s non-ghost related abuse, that it was bad and I couldn’t take it anymore, she told me to shut up and never bring it up again. We ended up having a big family meeting about her and him at that time, and all that happened was that made mom and Ron mad, and we didn’t get to see my Granny for a while for talking about them behind their backs. Of course she told me to shut up. Ron was in on the haunting! If she threatened to leave, he’d tell us what she did!

So, now I’m spinning. Kinda freaking out. Free falling. Who am I? What is real? Do I believe in ghosts at all anymore? Does this change how I feel about believing in God? Can I really not believe a single thing she ever told me?

Now I understand why she mocked me for the TLC tape. If I was still bothered by it, then maybe what she did fucked me up. She can’t have that, that would make her a bad mom. Best course of action is to mercilessly mock me until I get over it and she doesn’t have to feel bad.

When my sister and I have tried to talk to her about this time in the past, she has literally run from the room with her fingers in her ears screaming. She claims to not remember anything. She’ll never give me any closure.

I filed a police report with my therapist, but I’m fairly sure nothing will happen. I just feel like I’m going to have to restart my life from the ground up, knowing that everything she ever told me is suspect, from stories about my real father that don’t cast him in a favorable light and cast her as the victim, to the fact that she told me when I was five that I sucked at drawing, and I believed that ever since. Way less painful than believing she was cruel, was believing that she’s just helping me not waste my time by gently breaking it to me that I have no talent.

Coming out as transgender is the best thing I ever did. It’s throwing a bright light on the darkness and making it truly easy to tell who are the people who love me, and to whom my coming out is more about how that affects them.

I don’t really have a point here. I don’t know what to do with know this. Just didn’t want to have to keep harboring this alone.

TL/DR: My mom, and later with the help of my step dad, pretended to be a demon haunting my house for my entire childhood.