Mrs. Hendricks Farm – pt. 1

Hello dear readers.

My mum is still on a decluttering frenzy and we spent every free hour of last week going through papers, books and other rubbish my dad left behind. I had to hurry my search for his journals, afraid she would throw them away.

I am very pleased to have found a certain journal I've been looking for.
I remember my dad telling me this story, it was always interesting but as I read his diary I found out how deep an impact it had on all involved, including my father.
In his diary he writes about learning to cope with the weight of your decisions and the effect they might have on someone else's life that is out of your control.

Here's what he wrote, and again, I edited slightly to make it easier to read. It's a long read, so I'll post it in two parts. No surprise there :-)

"It's almost spring now. We've been through another cold week, winter's last breath before the warmth arrives. Had a busy season with investigations, plus there was a new collection to catalogue at work that kept me off the field for a couple of weeks.
Received a phone call from Mrs Hendricks, she sounded quite desperate. She's been trying to reach me for months, I apologised for missing all of her calls and blamed on work, I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't want to have an investigation on a farm in the middle of winter. To my surprise, their haunting problem was still going on. I agreed to spend a long weekend over at theirs next week and was puzzled at her reaction when I sent my regards to her husband, Harold. She simply grunted and said she would be expecting me the following week."

"This is my first night at Mrs Hendricks' farm. I arrived shortly after lunch, she offered me some food, but I had stopped on the road to eat at a roadside restaurant. I got a strange feeling as I got there and her attitude to me did not help dissuade that idea. My heart sunk as I asked her about Harold, and she bluntly turned around and said he was dead. I did not know what to say and whatever I said would not change the feeling in my heart that I had something to do with their current predicament.
She showed me to my room and I settled my things and started to set up my equipment. I asked Mrs Hendricks to have a chat about all that had happened after a few sentences I could tell they had a poltergeist, an entity that wanted to cause trouble and wreak havoc in their lives. What can I say? It was doing a great job. Harold could not just leave it alone and refrain from visiting the farm, he wanted answers and he wanted peace to enjoy his property. After a few close encounters he suffered a heart attack and did not recover from it. I feel somewhat responsible for his fate as I refused to investigate their problem. I know of persistent entities and even of cases where you can feel the fear in the air as the entity projects their hate, like in that hotel in Cornwall, but I never heard of an entity scaring someone so bad their heart stops.
Well, on with work. I started to gather baseline readings throughout the place and the outside, which according to her there was always something going on. I recorded the drop on temperature for this night, hoping that will tell me something tomorrow, as I got quite a lot of blurs and strange dots on my photographs and my reading got a couple of spikes throughout the night. It is very late and morning approaches, I am going to bed. More work tomorrow."

"Second night. Temperature readings outside being different at every couple of meters and twice more spikes on my reader convinced me this spot was popular. I heard noises but that’s hard to differentiate from the animals and insects around me, so I paid no attention to them. I decided to try and contact the entity and was received badly, with something suddenly moving nearby, a piece of branch by the sound of it. I stayed quiet for a minute and tried again. Nothing. I would feel this sudden sensation someone just pushed me, but there was nothing but air. This happened thrice in a very short time, which made me feel very silly and defenseless. I did not want to upset the entity any further by trying to fight it, that's not why I'm here. I changed positions slightly in an attempt to understand the reason behind the supposed attack. I soon realised one specific location was not the problem, this lost soul did not want me out here. On a first instinct I started to look around the area surrounding the house, trying to find clues to such an intense presence. The more I looked the more I got shivers, whispers and things moving around me. There was someone around, all my instruments proved that beyond all I could feel, but every time I try and establish contact I would either get nothing or just something moving, sometimes in my direction.
Tomorrow I'll have to rethink my approach to this investigation."

OK, that's it for part 1. I'll type and post the second part on Monday.
Did anyone spot the Jamaica Inn mention?

Miles.