Creepy Mysteries: Monroe Demon House

On Monroe Street in the quiet town of Hartford City, Indiana is a house which on the outside does not look out of the ordinary. It is a Victorian home built in 1892 by the Berger family who immigrated to the area from Belgium. No doubt family patron John Berger had dreams of living a long and happy life with his family in his new home, but those dreams were short lived as he fell dead to tuberculosis. This would be far from the end of their misfortunes while living here. Following his own death; a fire destroyed a large portion of his property and a number of his relatives died horribly or suffered some other gruesome fate.

Seeking a source of income, his widow resorted to renting out space in their large home to others. Her most prominent tenant was the Miars family. The head of the household Ulysses Miars was a well-respected member of the community, but things began to change for him once he moved into the house on Monroe Street. Those who knew him believed he had done a complete about-face in terms of personality as he became prone to fits of rage and insanity, becoming abusive to his once beloved family. This sudden heel turn for Miars led to him losing his job before taking all his money and skipping town with his mistress.

Needless to say with two families having been destroyed while living in this house, rumors began to spread throughout Hartford City. It was not long before this once splendid Victorian home gained the reputation of having a curse. Records showed that the residence passed through a number of owners, a large number of which continued to use it for rental income given it's triplex design. At one point in the late 80's-early 90's rumors circulated of people practicing occult ceremonies in the basement. Tenants and neighbors alike, throughout the years, would give no shortage of reports of paranormal activity in the old place on Monroe Street and none of it was benevolent. The house proved to be a cornucopia of the supernatural with evidence of human spirits as well as inhuman possibly demonic entities lingering in it's halls. The activity seemed to be centered at the top floor, where many have reported a malicious elderly woman in black stalking around, as well as it's decrepit basement.

In recent years the site has become a haven for paranormal investigative teams, both those who know what they are doing as well as those who are amateurish. As someone who has investigated the paranormal for a number of years, I can honestly say, said amateurs who are mostly looking for a thrill have a tendency to make things much worse in a haunted location. Author and veteran paranormal investigator David Weatherly had a particularly eventful night as he continuously heard the voices of children who were not there and had something slam doors shut on him in an attempt to confine him and his team to certain areas. Lending credence to the claims of occult practices in the basement, on an episode of Paranormal Lockdown investigators Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman discovered human remains in a basement crawlspace and had to shut down production shortly thereafter.

It is clear that something evil from beyond our world haunts the place known as the Demon House. From the very start there seemed to be something which made those who lived in the house suffer. The Berger family did knock down an existing structure when they built the home, but what that structure was is now unknown. Perhaps that is the key to figuring out why this property is cursed.