r/TrueScaryStories • u/Defiant_Image5372 • 1h ago
Spooky! An attachment and my experiences of getting rid of it
So this happened to me when I (39M) was around 18 or 19 years old. I had had a difficult childhood, and standard therapy was going nowhere. I turned to my eldest sister (we'll call her Jane) for spiritual advice. She has always been a believer that there is a higher wisdom to the universe. When we talked, I mentioned hearing of a book I had seen on the news about the afterlife.
She knew the title immediately but first pointed me in the direction of a local spiritualist church. They had a guided meditation evening and she said she'd been there before to help calm her mind when she needed it. I was - and remain - very anxious socially, especially in new places with new people, but for some reason I felt compelled to go one evening on my own.
When I arrived, I tried to mask my anxiety with a polite smile and the usual introductions. The many people there seemed to be between their 20s and 70s. One person stopped me as I approached him to say hello. An older man who raised a palm and told me to stay back. He said that his spirit guides had told him that I had an 'attachment', and that it would be dangerous for his spiritual well-being to allow me closer. I had no idea what this meant and I was a skeptic so I put this all down to him just being a little eccentric.
After the session, Jane asked how my first experience meditating was. I said that even guided, I could never quiet my mind long enough to peacefully relinquish control. I had stayed fully awake, but just sat quietly. She reassured me, consoled my failed efforts, and I mentioned the eccentric man, paraphrasing his declaration that I was a danger to him and his spirit guides because I had an attachment. It made me feel like an anxious email.
She was immediately infuriated. She said he was irresponsible to bring that subject to someone who had little to no experience with spiritual matters. She then explained that an attachment is when a spirit can essentially haunt a person, rather than a place. She said they tend to find it easier to attach to people with darker emotions dwelling, because positivity makes a person more whole and there is no gap to hang onto. She said she would speak with her spiritual adviser Georgina for guidance.
A few days later she told me her adviser had been just as angry at the man as Jane had been, and said it was incredibly cruel to put this new anxiety onto such a young fragile person. She said she would visit in the next few days and we could perform a ritual to rid me of the attachment.
I won't go into the specifics, partly because it's been over 20 years and my feeble mind can't hold onto the specific wording too well, but the events of that evening are burned into my memory. I remember exactly where we sat. It was in the hallway of the family home. I was sat with my back to the staircase, and my sister sat opposite me. The lights were off and a candle lit between us. The doors were closed and only the family cat was there in the house.
Side note, our cat used to love going upstairs and getting into the Divan drawers of our middle sister's bed and taking dumps, so she had been banned from going upstairs years earlier. She would even run downstairs when one of us relented and wanted to show her the upstairs again.
Along with repeating some words, we also had to mentally paint the spirit out of the house room by room. I struggled with this element because I have a mild aphantasia and can only imagine what equates to a chalk outline, nothing vivid or even with depth. We imagined the attic together, then each of the bedrooms. I struggled on some of these because I just couldn't picture them.
We were sat on the carpet floor next to an old wardrobe with a translucent side. In there was a drawing of Simba (from the Lion King) and in my peripheral vision I remember it growing into a contorted face of angered screaming. I mentioned it and Jane said these images were reflective of the attachment growing desperate, and we should continue. We finished the bathroom and the only part of the upstairs left was the staircase and landing we were sat at the bottom of. Without prompt, she said insistently, "Do not look behind you!"
I couldn't help it when I was finding it hard to concentrate on the repetition, so I looked. I have always been accustomed to the dark. I see well in it. I was able to see the wallpaper, carpet, hand rail, and the doorway to the bathroom which was directly at the top of the stairs. But in front of this was a shifting darkness I cannot fully describe. It didn't look like anything. Like there was a void. I could see the things in the dark, but I couldn't see this one spot about the shape of an adult person standing up, and it emanated a fury I can still remember. I know it wasn't my shadow or the phantom retinal burn of the candle flame either. I checked.
I turned away and my sister said not to be scared. That was what it was trying to make me feel so it could cement itself to me even harder than before. I took a deep breath and continued the repetition as I mentally painted the hallway white. When we finally managed to get to this mental point, it was only the downstairs left, and the Simba drawing now appeared pleasant and smiling. Our cat in the living room had been spooked by something and was yowling at us and clawing at the door to the hallway.
It freaked me out because she knew she was not allowed upstairs. She never went near that door for years! Not long after, our mum arrived home and we had to yell to her not to come inside yet. She pleaded because she'd just come home from a long day at work and needed to use the bathroom. We quickly finished our ritual and the cat immediately calmed down and settled back where she had been sitting. We explained it all to our mum and she was more upset that she couldn't urinate immediately.
This was a long story with a lot of context, so I know if you've read this far you might have some questions. Well, for one, a back ache which had plagued me for years evaporated. I did return to the spiritualist church and had other uncanny experiences which I won't explain yet. The cat had often looked at corners and been freaked out in that house, but never so much as that night, and never since. She passed years ago and I miss booping her tortoise shell nose. I am still a skeptic and, although I'm confirmed Catholic, I am agnostic too. Happy to answer any other queries too.
Peace