Houses are like the families that occupy them. Some are new, freshly built and filled with hope and potential. Stronger houses can survive tragedy and even outlive their memory. But the Berini family, along with the house they occupied were haunted by a past rarely spoken of. But houses too can have a way of bringing back the past. And the Berini family, living and remembering within the house was far larger than either John or Rose suspected.
As John Berini, haunted by the appearance of a phantasmagorical boy dressed in white searching for a lost locket, found himself searching for answers he learned that the name his wife Rose had heard from an invisible little girl was not entirely unfamiliar to the Berini household. Serena, as she introduced herself had lived and died in the house when John’s father, Carlos was very young. Serena had been five when she died. Giorgio, a boy matching the description of the ghostly figure John had seen upstairs also had died in the household.
When Serena’s voice was heard, it was always followed by a life changing tragedy for the family. Giorgio’s appearance seemed benign, but after he appeared to John the hauntings took a sinister turn. One day as John ran across Giorgio standing in his room staring directly at him, the little boy said, “My oldest brother is the only one who can help me.” After that the boy disappeared. He had seemed distressed, as though something urgent were wrong within the house. It would soon become apparent that there was another occupant in the house.
Shortly after those words were spoken, objects began flying across the rooms. Phones would be yanked from hands, doors would slam shut and trap occupants within rooms, or fly open unpredictably when locked, and Rose would be constantly tormented with objects being slapped from her hands by an unseen force. An exorcist was called, and the incidents ceased for a period. Then one day a hunchbacked older gentleman wearing a black cape appeared in the house declaring that he was a “minister of God.” He would appear, throw objects around in the house, knock over bookcases, and even attack the occupants. The second most terrifying event was when Rose, in the middle of the night, was lifted from her bed and suspended in mid-air. Their bed too would lift off the floor and slam around the room destroying furniture and causing a deafening and terrifying boom. When a carving knife flew into the table, the Berinis finally left and summoned a second exorcist to bless the house. As the exorcism went long into the night, the house once again went silent. After those performing it left, it once again returned to normal. The Psychical Research Foundation was called in to investigate the claims of those in the Berini household.
No one ever discovered who the old man was, or why he and the children returned to the house. John’s father never revealed anything further on his childhood, Serena, or his deceased twin brother. The events that transpired there remain an unsolved mystery to this day. And so just as the families that occupy them, sometimes houses too can find some semblance of peace.
