Life After Paranormals: Season 3, Episode 5

Lana Hunt talks about what it was like to grow up in a house with a demon as seen in "Deliver Us From Evil."

Did you ever have any paranormal experiences before moving into the new home?
Yes, I had a paranormal experience as a three year old, along with my twin sister, when we first moved to Indiana. For a brief time, we lived in a house for a couple of months until we bought the house on Armstrong St, and my sister and I had thought we had shared a dream. We're twins, and so you know, for a good portion of our lives we had talked about this dream that we had shared, and then we later determined that it couldn't have been a dream. It was something that we had actually witnessed or saw. So, at that time, we kind of realized that we might be a little sensitive to something like that. You know, being able to see things like that.

What were your feelings when you first moved into the new house? Did you ever feel anything off about it?
I remember feeling that the house was dark. It seemed dark and stuffy, and it had a feeling of pressure. It caused a pressure, and it was feeling that never went away. I mean, I always felt it when I was there.

When you first saw the frost on your bedroom wall, what did you think caused it?
The first thing that I did was feel compelled to touch it. And, you know to prove to myself that it was frost, and I scraped the wall with my fingernails and saw the frost in my nails. It was June and it was too warm for frost to be on the walls in Indiana. We have humidity. So, the first thing I thought was that it was a fluke. It was some kind of a weather fluke. That was the first thing I thought. And then when other members of my family started seeing it on other days, then I knew it was something more. I just didn't know what it was.

It was a regularly occurring pattern?
Yes. I would see it in my room and then my brother would see it on the same wall but in the room next to it. It would share the wall. It was just a reoccurring thing. It did happen all year round, like in the winter, but it should never happen in June or July.

Could you describe the face of the figure you saw in the window?
I saw what looked like a man. His face was pressed to the window so it deformed his face a little, and it looked wet, like there was water dripping off of his face. He was exposing his teeth— like a grimace.  And he had bright green eyes. There was red in his eyes, and I only saw that for a second because I couldn't look at him.

And it vanished?
No, I turned my head and I screamed.  I turned my head, and I screamed, and so I didn't see when he vanished. I screamed for my dad, and he came into the room, and they saw there was nothing there when they looked.

What did you think when your father first admitted that he thought there was a demon in the house?
My father didn't want to admit there was a demon in the house, but he would say that we weren't to talk about it in the house, and that suggested to me that he believed there was something there, and he didn't want us to talk about it because it felt like we were inviting it to continue. He later on admitted that he saw that entity, and he would later, when he was not really in the house anymore, he admitted that that's what it was. But when we were living in the house, he would tell us not to talk about it. Not to mention it or the things would reoccur; they would continue. And he believed that, and he would continue reading his bible and praying on whatever was happening.

After coming to the realization that there was some sort of entity in the house, did your parents consider moving the family out?
My parents couldn't move. They were not in the position financially to move out of that house. My father was like a protector to us. That's how I saw him, and he never let us see his weakness and his inability to take care of a situation. But that did come through.  You know, seeing that he was unable to take care of it or control it. There wasn't anything that he could really do about it. Whatever was occurring was occurring there, and we couldn't do anything, and moving out- yeah, would have been a great idea, but it wasn't at that time for my parents to just up and move with five kids.

Did you tell your parents about the scissors in the ceiling? How did they react?
We always told our parents about the incidents that would happen in the house, and as I was saying earlier, my father did not want us to embellish about the incidents that were happening in the house, so we really couldn't go into great detail when we were talking to him about it. A lot of times we would go outside the house and sit in the car with my mother, and we talk to her about it. We would let her know this is what's happening and she would shake her head... she knew that she had to acknowledge what was happening, but she would say, "You know, there's not really anything that we can do." She'd try to be mom and try to nurture us and help us look to at something else. Help us to focus on something else rather than that.

Were experts called in to investigate an earthly explanation to why the ceiling caved in (ex. water damage)?
I don't remember. I don't know. My father was an expert at building things. He was an expert himself at construction and putting in walls, putting in carpet. He could remodel a house, and he was always tinkering with our house. He was always putting in walls and diving a room and making it into two rooms. You know, he was like that. So, I would doubt that he called anyone, and I think the only person that he told about the incidents was a preacher - a pastor of a church.

How long did the attack in your bed last? Can you describe what the creature was like?
Yes, okay I was in my room, and I had just laid down to go to sleep, and I was alone in there. I heard a clicking noise on the wall, and I really couldn't tell where it was coming from because it sounded like it could be coming from all around me, and it's very bright in one of the windows- there's a light outside the window. So, it wasn't completely dark in my bedroom, and there should not be an area above me that's totally blackness because the light should be shining in the window, and I saw this mass of something solid black on top of me, and it was just above me.  And, I thought it was on the ceiling, but it wasn't. It was actually coming close to me. It was moving down from the ceiling. And oh, I did see that it had eyes. It had like yellow eyes, with red outlining the eyes, and it didn't have a discernible face. It started moving down and I covered up my face with my blanket, and I held it there. I believe it was about thirty minutes to forty-five minutes. I'm not really sure how long it was, and I know it was a really long time because I was frozen in fear there, and I felt the entity move on my chest. It moved down on my chest, and I could feel my body, you know, sinking into the mattress in my bed, and it was very frightening experience. I was engaged to be married at that time, and I'll tell you, I was very happy to get out of the house. That was the experience- I couldn't understand why it waited for so long to show itself like that to me until I was getting ready to leave.

Do you have any thoughts on what brought the entity forth in the house?
I don't know why. I know whatever was there, we always sensed it. I always sensed something was there. I believe that we goaded it. We somehow – the fact that we were a close-knit family, and we were, you know, bonded with each other. We were closer together as these things were happening, you know? And the fact that we brought in a pastor in our house may have caused it to escalate. Maybe we infuriated it. I don't know.

Have you spoken to any other residents of the home to see if they experienced the same level of paranormal activity as your family?
My sister, Mary … spoke with the residents who lived there after us, and they had dogs, which broke out of the same window that our dog did.

We know that they experienced something. They were gone out of that house after a year. 

How has this experience shaped your religious beliefs?
I'm a spiritual person, not religious. Religion is a thing that people try to follow; spiritual is a deeper meaning. So religious – I would say yes, we were brought up in a very religious atmosphere. We went to church. We read our bibles. We prayed. My church did not teach, nor did they encourage a belief in the paranormal, and so we did not believe in ghosts. We were discouraged to ever believe that way or talk about things like that. Our church believed in demons, and they did not really teach us how to appropriately deal with something like that. They, you know, would admit that something like that exists, but they wouldn't teach us how to deal with it. And, you know, my father did what I believe a Christian would do, which is pray. Pray and read their bible and hope there would be answers. For my own personal beliefs, I believe that whatever happened in that house, it did effect me, but not in a religious way, okay? It didn't amplify or dissuade me to be spiritual or religious in any way. But it did encourage me to find out what it was, you know? And find out if there, you know, were more out there, and so I joined a paranormal group to find out if there are people out there who experience things like I do. Like I have.

When you're with your group do you use your experiences to help others?
Well, I'm no longer with the group. I left the group because I had too much going on in my life.

Yes, I started with this group because they saw my story that I had written online… they wanted to interview me, much like you are. So I did that, and after doing that, they were very interested to have me with their group. So I joined and went to several places to investigate, and some places I didn't feel anything was there, and I would say out of all the places that I investigated, I found one place that I could sense and feel and hear something was there. It was a residence in Indianapolis - an empty house. When I heard the sound of what sounded like a loud groaning male voice – it wasn't human, it didn't sound human. When I heard that sound, it reminded me of the things I heard in my own house when I was growing up. So, I did talk to the residents. I would try to lend my own experiences and how to move on from it, and also how to use it as a way to pull closer to your family rather than apart. You know, something that is in your house it's attempting – and I believe, I don't believe in ghosts, I never have. I believe in demons, and I believe that they have always been here, and they can use whatever. They can use the energy of a person that has died to manifest, and I will talk to people that I know and who have experienced similar hauntings – I will talk to them and, you know, just lend them my thoughts on it and try to at least give them some kind of hope that they don't have to let that control them. They don't have to let that tear their family apart, and you don't have to move out of your house. You can become stronger, and you can be empowered to control your house. You don't have to be controlled by something like that.

Have you looked into the history of the home since moving out?
Yes, I did. First of all, the house was burned by a serial arsonist who lived two houses away, and we didn't know this man. He moved into his little house after we moved out. He burned our house, and he was caught because he was calling the police or calling the fire department to report a fire, and he was caught and charged with Serial Arson because he had done it to many houses. But with our house, he had told a reporter- it was either the police and the police told the reporters- that he had heard something from the back of the house telling him to burn it, and he burned it. And when I found this article in the Kokomo Tribune, I looked up the history of our house. I began looking through newspaper articles and anything that I could find. The only thing that I could find that was concrete, was a fact, was that it was built in 1925 by I believe it was called Southside Lumber, and they were a company. They were building this as part of their company. This was just a tiny little house. It wasn't even meant to be a house. It was built in the back of the property, and it was going to be the business, and they were going to build a residence in the front, and so that's the reason why the yard was so big and so massive and so fun to play in. But the house was small and tiny sitting in the back, and they of course never used it as a company – at least they didn't stay there very long – and it became a residence later.

Later on, we were told in 1980, I believe it was 1980 or '81, we were having a rummage sale at our house, and a woman who lived two blocks away, which we never knew she came to that garage sale, and she was talking to my mother, and she pointed to the back of our house and said, "That is where she was killed." And she says, "That was where my sister was killed," and we didn't know if this was a true story or not. We asked older residents around on our block if they had known someone who lived there who had died there, who was killed there. And we did get a story from an elderly couple who said that there was someone there who was killed, and a little girl who was stuffed in a refrigerator. Now I didn't know if that was concrete because I looked in the newspapers. I looked for unsolved murders and everything and couldn't find anything, so that I couldn't back up whether or not the story was concrete. And I'm skeptical about anything like that anyway, so I will just chock that up as somebody's story, but this woman seems pretty adamant that her sister died in our house. It did ignite a lot of talk on our block.