The Exorcism They Tried to Hide

In 1987, a priest disappeared after performing an unauthorized exorcism inside a condemned monastery in northern Vermont. The Church denied the ritual ever happened. But in 2019, a box of cassette tapes was discovered sealed behind a collapsed wall. The recordings should never have been played. --- The monastery had no name on any modern map. Locals simply called it Saint Dymphna’s House. The building sat deep within the Blackwood Forest, hidden beneath towering pines and constant fog. Travelers avoided the road leading to it. Hunters claimed their compasses spun near the property. Children in nearby towns were warned never to wander into the woods after sunset. But the strangest part wasn’t the abandoned monastery itself. It was the silence around it. No records. No photographs. No official ownership. As though someone had spent decades trying to erase the place from existence. In October of 2019, restoration workers clearing storm damage uncovered a narrow stone chamber buried beneath the eastern wing of the monastery. Inside were six water-damaged cassette tapes wrapped in black cloth. Each tape had a date. October 3rd, 1987. And each carried the same handwritten warning: DO NOT PLAY. Naturally, someone did. --- The first tape began with static. Then breathing. Heavy, nervous breathing. A man finally spoke. “This is Father Marcus Vale. If these recordings are discovered… then we failed.” His voice trembled violently. “There are four of us remaining inside Saint Dymphna’s. Brother Elias, Sister Ruth, Father Conway… and the girl.” A pause followed. Then a faint sound emerged beneath the static. Scratching. Slow. Rhythmic. Like fingernails dragging across wood. Father Marcus continued. “The Vatican denied authorization for the rite. They ordered us to leave the child and burn the monastery entirely. But we could not abandon her.” Another pause. “She is only seventeen.” --- According to fragmented Church records uncovered years later, the girl’s name was Claire Holloway. She had been brought to Saint Dymphna’s after murdering both of her parents in the middle of the night. Police reports described the scene as “ritualistic.” Her father had been found nailed to the bedroom floor. Her mother’s jaw had been removed with surgical precision. Claire herself was discovered sitting calmly in the kitchen, covered in blood, repeatedly whispering: “He came from below the trees.” Psychiatrists diagnosed severe psychosis. Then the hospital staff began quitting. One nurse claimed Claire spoke fluent Latin despite never studying it. Another reported seeing the girl standing motionless outside patient rooms at impossible hours. Then came the deaths. Three orderlies were found hanging inside a locked stairwell. A doctor suffered a violent seizure after attempting hypnosis. Before dying, he clawed his own eyes apart screaming: “Don’t let it wear her skin.” That was when the Church intervened. And that was when the tapes began. --- Tape Two sounded worse. The scratching had grown louder. Somewhere in the background, a woman sobbed uncontrollably. Father Marcus spoke in hurried whispers. “She knows things she shouldn’t. She speaks to people who are not present. Tonight she told Brother Elias the exact day his mother died.” Silence. Then a metallic creaking sound echoed through the recording. “She has not eaten in six days.” Another voice interrupted suddenly. A man. Terrified. “Father… the walls…” Marcus inhaled sharply. “Oh God…” The tape distorted violently. But beneath the static, another sound emerged. Dozens of voices whispering together. Not chanting. Laughing. --- By Tape Three, someone was missing. Brother Elias. Father Marcus explained they discovered him wandering outside in the woods before dawn, barefoot despite freezing temperatures. They found him kneeling in mud beside a dead deer. His teeth had been filed flat against stone. He kept repeating the same sentence over and over: “She showed me the pit beneath the monastery.” When they tried bringing him back inside, Elias attacked Sister Ruth with a rusted shovel. The tape captured her screams. Then silence. Long, unbearable silence. Finally, Father Marcus whispered: “We buried what remained of him before sunset.” The next voice on the tape did not belong to Marcus. It belonged to Claire. Her voice sounded calm. Almost amused. “You shouldn’t have done that.” A low thud echoed somewhere nearby. Then another. Then another. Like something massive moving beneath the floorboards. Claire giggled softly. “He doesn’t like being buried.” --- Tape Four was partially melted. Most of the audio was ruined. But investigators restored several sections. What remained terrified everyone who heard it. The ritual had apparently begun around midnight. Prayers echoed through the monastery. Latin verses. Shouting. Furniture breaking. Then Claire screamed. Not like a human being. The sound resembled multiple voices shrieking through her throat simultaneously. Father Conway began reciting scripture louder and louder. Then suddenly— Every sound stopped. Completely. No voices. No movement. No breathing. For nearly forty seconds, the tape captured absolute silence. Then came a whisper directly beside the microphone. “He found me.” The next seconds were chaos. Men screaming. Glass shattering. A wet snapping noise. Father Marcus yelled: “DON’T LOOK AT HER EYES!” Then the recording ended. --- Tape Five was never fully released to the public. Only fragments leaked online before being removed. People who claimed to hear the full recording described disturbing details. One listener reportedly suffered cardiac arrest. Another vanished after obsessively replaying the audio for days. Authorities dismissed the rumors as internet hysteria. But one surviving transcript still exists. At the very end of the tape, Father Marcus can reportedly be heard crying. Not praying. Begging. “Please… if anyone finds this… do not open the lower chapel.” Then something answered him. Not Claire. Something else. A voice so deep the tape itself distorted around it. “You already opened it.” --- Tape Six contained no human voices. Only sounds. Heavy impacts. Distant screaming. Church bells ringing somewhere underground. Then came the fire alarms. Investigators believe the priests attempted to burn Saint Dymphna’s House from the inside to contain whatever had happened below the monastery. Officially, the fire was blamed on faulty electrical wiring. Four bodies were recovered. Claire Holloway was never found. Neither was Father Marcus. --- The recordings should have disappeared forever. But after excerpts leaked online in late 2020, strange reports began surfacing across forums and paranormal communities. Listeners described nightmares involving forests and underground tunnels. Several claimed they woke with deep scratches across their bedroom walls. One man from Oregon allegedly murdered his wife after weeks of listening obsessively to the tapes. During interrogation, he repeated the same sentence Claire Holloway once spoke in the hospital decades earlier: “He came from below the trees.” The original cassette tapes vanished from police evidence shortly afterward. No suspects were identified. And in 2023, restoration workers returned to Saint Dymphna’s House to continue demolition efforts. The crew entered the lower chapel for the first time since the fire. What they found has never been publicly disclosed. But according to one anonymous worker, there was a single phrase carved repeatedly into the stone walls beneath the monastery. Hundreds of times. As though written by bleeding hands. HE IS STILL HERE.

Author's Note:

This is an imaginary fictional work . None of it is real. Did you like it? Did you think this was real? let me know in the comments.

How about you try my other works as well? something entirely different from this one?