Black Fly Haunting in New York

In 1999, my husband and I needed to move in a hurry after experiencing e-coli in a contaminated well where we were leasing a log cabin. I became seriously ill and we were told by our attorney to vacate the premises immediately. Our whole lives were turned upside down. We were forced to move so fast that our choice of homes was limited to a particular area in Western New York.

Looking for what seemed weeks, was in fact only a few days of riding up and down streets, calling home owners where properties were vacant or for sale. It was exhausting. A friend of ours happened to stop at a garage sale and entered into a conversation with the owner who was now back from Florida to clear out some of the old furniture and belongings from a family who lived there years ago. Her family, she happily told us were in Florida and enjoying their lives. My friend recognized that the house was vacant and told her our plight of the e-coli. The homeowner was all to eager to talk to us about renting and even offered with a purchase to buy. We didn't notice at the time that this in itself might have warned us. She was all to eager to get rid of the house.

Within two weeks of agreeing with a contract were moving into our three (3)-bedroom ranch near Lake Erie. Our friend, a paralegal, had decided to write the contract in an effort to protect us from any legal snags that may come up for the future. We were all happy to have a home and be safe. At least that is what we thought.

The house never seemed right. The house was dark, cold and we had incredible electrical problems from the start. Bulbs were always blowing out. My computers crashed their hard drives twice and we used back up battery boosters and surge protectors to prevent future power surges. Nothing helped. Our VCR burned out in the bedroom. Our electrical outlet started on fire in the living room. My brand new hot water tank turned on the over flow valve all by itself.and it wouldn't shut off. This would be only the beginning. We thought we had a chimney fire and the house filled with smoke. Yet nothing was found to be wrong by the inspectors the next day.

While these physical things in our house occurred, our lives began to take a turn for the worse. I purchased a flower shop to generate income for my family. The hours were strenuous and the labor was tedious, but no one thinks a flower shop can be hard to handle. The shop looked so pretty. I received custody of my two grand children by surprise to help my daughter through a chemical addiction problem she was having. The younger child, my grand daughter who was eight years old at the time, reacted immediately when coming to this house. She had explosive outbursts that we couldn't understand. Went into violent rages for no apparent reason. She refused to go to school and stayed awake all night long. Her mood swings were incredible and she turned very dark and then violent

It wasn't long after that that we started hearing music playing in the bedroom, like an old cheap radio. I thought the girls had been playing a radio and they both thought I was playing a radio. Neither of us was playing a radio and we couldn't quite locate the room or place it was coming from, but you could hear it with regular ears. I also heard my name called several times.

One night my grand daughter woke up in the middle of the night that she saw a woman walk out of her closet and walk over to a sink and start washing dishes. The other grand daughter said she saw a man walk in her bedroom wearing sandals. Both girls hated the little bedroom and would not go in it.

At least four years of this went on before I started to ask questions about the previous owners and occupants of the house to see the history. When we moved in, a complete house of furniture was left including canned foods and towels and it just looked like someone walked out leaving everything. It was then that I found a military funeral flag. I was still finding nooks and cranny's with things hidden in them. Little closets and boxes left in the attic exposed clues of the past of the house. I contacted the owner we were buying from who now started to give us a tough time. The funeral flag was her ex-husband's. They had to get divorced in this house because he became an alcoholic. Her husband became violent doing all sorts of things to her and the kids. When I asked her if she would like me to send her the flag, she said, "no, burn it, I don't want anything to do with that son-of-a-bitch". The neighbors told me the people before her also had troubles in the house. Nobody was ever happy in this house.

We did have a problem finally buying the house too, as the house was not officially owned by the woman we signed a contract with. It was actually her mother's house and a phone call to her house proved that her own brother never knew we were even living in the house. Then she refused to sell us the house and it took us a few more years before we could settle the deal. Something was trying to tell us not to buy but my husband at the time was stubborn about moving. We hired a lawyer, had to fight her and the family. We were served with eviction papers to move. Then the woman's mother died, confusing the entire deal, as it was legally an estate from the father to the mother and now to the daughter who leased us the house. Nothing went right. Finally we managed to fight it out. I am wondering why now. We weren't supposed to buy the house.

I tried to renovate the house, painting it, changing colors, putting in new floors, making it bright, opening up the dark shutters that were covering all windows. The two front bay windows lightened and improved the living room 400%. It was brighter, bigger, airy and nice. That's when other things really started happening. My one grand daughter that was the youngest went into over drive with full blown disorders and I spent many hours in counseling offices, hospitals, working with psychologists, pins officers, respite workers, wrap around services to help her.

This was only the beginning of the end. My business went into litigation when the building owner refused to appear for the closing and sign the building over to me as agreed in our contract. I had to take the last bit of money and hire not just a lawyer, a whole legal team to go after her.

Then my husband's father came down with brain cancer. He passed away. My mother became ill and passed away. My husband then lost his job of 10 years.

It was then that I walked into our living room and saw thousands of black flies all over the two bay windows I had. They were nowhere else in the house, except on the bay windows and the side window in the entryway of our house. Thousands upon thousands of black flies were on my bay windows. My grand daughter and I armed ourselves with Windex and paper towels and commenced to spraying all that we could see. They dropped to the bottoms of the window sills. We scraped them up. My grand daughter was visibly upset by the whole thing. Then she turned to me and asked me what it meant. I told her the truth. A witch is around. This is extreme bad luck.

The very next day we got up, walked into our living room and the flies were back again, by the thousands! Covering only the bay windows and the entryway of our home, flying nowhere else in the house. Once again my grand daughter and I tackled the flies. I knew it was a warning.

It was shortly after that that my diagnosis came back Breast Cancer and I had to have biopsies, surgery, chemo and radiation treatments that almost took my life. Our life was falling apart. My husband unbeknown to me started drinking and doing drugs with a coworker. He became violent and strange. He threatened to cut the heads off our horses. Tried to run into me with his work truck. Threatened to blow his brains out and that I would find his brains sliding down the wall. Left the rifle out of the safe, out of the sleeve next to the dresser by our bed. I never even noticed it until we got up in the morning. We were now losing our house, our vehicles and my husband would make no effort to work with creditors and blamed it all on me, saying I was spending the money. Even though I was sick for almost a year, lying on the couch most of the time bald from the chemo. Yet he wasn't giving me enough each week to cover the bills. It was a nightmare. The counselor at Roswell Park Canner Institute told me that I was far too sick to put up with his nonsense and convinced me to file an order of protection, removing him from the household. I filed, had him removed and he filed for divorce. Our lives were shattered. It was a nightmare.

My husband also came down with the Shingles in his head. At first I thought it was a drug reaction that he was having and made him go to the emergency room.

It actually got worse from there as he refused to pay the utilities and phone and my grand daughter and I were sitting in the dark for Christmas without a tree. Then my lawyer advised that my husband would have to turn the house over to me. The house went into foreclosure. It was a Countrywide mortgage. My husband was court ordered to pay utilities and mortgage. He did not. Countrywide came and evicted me, smashing my things. The Erie County Sheriff's came and then forcefully removed me. Countrywide's lawyer hired welfare workers to smash my house and they took my cancer meds and spilled them inside garbage bags.

It was a nightmare. My husband also came down with the Shingles in his head. At first I thought it was a drug reaction that he was having and made him go to the emergency room. He looked like something out of Star Trek. They put him on Valtrex. This is when he lost control.

My grand daughter was diagnosed with Bi Polar and was going into violent rages in this house. We could not control her. We had to continually call the police and have her hospitalized.

At that point my horses were boarded out and I went to the barn one day to help the kids the best I could, bare head and all and the barn owner came roaring over on his garden tractor screaming at me, F this and F that. Here I look like a cancer poster child and he is screaming in my face. This I found out was my husband's doing. We were now forced to move our horses. The kids were devastated.

At that point I felt like I was being attacked. The black flies were impending doom. Something seemed like it was after my family and me. On Christmas Eve, 2007, I asked the Lord for help and became Born Again. I took two pills to help me sleep, as I was alone on Christmas Eve with no money and no one. Roswell Park bought my grand children gifts. It was all we had. I went to bed weeping uncontrollably carrying the Bible with me.

It was a nightmare. Something you see out of the movies. Our lives were devastated to say the least. The only one that could do anything now was the Lord. There is Evil in the world. It is there waiting for a door to open. Waiting to enter your life. The black flies were very real. We saw them, sprayed them, killed them and they were all back the next day. They didn't fly around the house. We never saw them anywhere but on the windows. The windows were just covered with black flies.

My life has changed since I have moved out of that house. I am happy and well. I road by the house recently, to see who had bought the house from foreclosure. I happened to see them painting inside. They were painting the bricks in the kitchen blood red. Blood red! WOW! Then I saw the cases of beer going in and out and knew that the party had just begun for them.

A few weeks ago I stopped to see the progress on the house and spoke to the next-door neighbor. As I looked at he house, I felt nothing. But then I saw a sinister little cowboy doll standing all by himself on the window ledge of one of the bay windows where the flies had appeared. There was nothing in either window but that sinister little looking cowboy doll with a funny grin on his face, like he was saying, "I am still here".