Contractors working on the former home of notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, who was executed in 1989 after being connected to the murder of 36 women, say strange things are happening in the house in spite of it being blessed by two pastors.
The News Tribune is reporting on the 1400 square foot house located in Tacoma, Washington, which is currently being renovated.
Contractor Casey Clopton remembers the first time he visited the house after being hired by the new owner, David Truong, to renovate the 1949 house. His 11 year-old daughter was with him, as she often is, taking notes for him as he walks through a house and notes what work needs to be done.
“My daughter started crying,” Copton told the Tribune. “She said she felt weird. She didn’t like it there.”
She was so uncomfortable, in fact, they quickly left.
Clopton returned a week later with a demolition crew and one member had the same bad feeling his daughter experienced. Something just didn’t’ feel right in the house.
But then things started to happen, such as the time he entered the house, which had been locked, and found every door and cabinet drawer open.
Another time a worker who was cleaning up the basement spotted the words “help me” written on the glass. Because there was a screen protector screwed onto the window, it would have been very difficult for someone to write those words from the outside.
Then there was the time a heavy dresser inset in the upstairs hallway wall somehow pulled itself out and landed face-down on the floor while the crew was downstairs.
“Workers said it takes at least one strong man to pull it out and there was no way it could have fallen on its own,” the Tribune reports.
They also experienced cell phones and other electronics suddenly unplug or die.
One day workers found the word “leave” written in sheetrock dust on a bedroom floor with no footprints nearby.
Clopton started asking the neighbors about the house, which is when he learned that it had once been the home of serial killer Ted Bundy.
Bundy was an illegitimate child born to 22 year-old Eleanor Cowell on November 24, 1949 in Burlington, Vermont. In order to hide his illegitimacy, she moved in with her parents who pretended to have adopted the boy, saying that Eleanor was his sister.
But Eleanor remarried in 1951 to a man Johnnie Bundy and the two had several children together after they relocated to Tacoma. Bundy is said to have grown up in a good, working-class family, but he had a dark side that began to develop in his teenage years, such as peering in people’s windows and stealing.
Later, while a student at the University of Washington, he fell in love with a beautiful, wealthy woman with long dark hair, and was devastated when she ended the relationship. Many of Bundy’s victims would resemble this college girlfriend.
No one knows when exactly he began to kill but authorities believe it was shortly after he graduated from college in 1972. It was around this time that many women started to go missing in the Seattle area and in nearby Oregon. Witnesses described seeing the victims with a young, dark-haired man named “Ted.” He would often pretend to be injured, then lure the women into his car. They were never seen alive again.
When Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school in the fall of 1974, women began missing there as well. In 1975, he was pulled over by the police who found a crowbar, face mask, rope, and handcuffs in his car. He was arrested for possession of these items, which is when the police began to link him to more serious crimes.
The same year, he was arrested and convicted in the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, one of the few women to escape his clutches. Other murder charges followed.
By now, police knew they had a serial killer on their hands. But in December 1977, Bundy escaped from custody and made his way to Tallahassee, Florida where he broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. He attacked four of the young female residents, killing two of them. One of the girls later testified that she was awake and praying the rosary when Bundy opened the door of her room. However, he stopped, turned and fled. He later confessed that some invisible force prevented him from entering the room.
A few weeks later, just before being caught by police, he kidnapped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach.
Bundy received several death sentences and died in the electric chair in 1989.
When Clopton learned who had lived in the house, he passed the information on to both Truong and James Pitts II, the real estate broker, then sought help. He enlisted the aid of two pastors who came to the home and blessed each room while reading Scripture. They encouraged the work crew to play Christian music while they worked and to write Bible verses on the walls before painting them.
“Everything in that house fought us, and I was kind of weird about it,” Clopton said. “But I go to church and I have God with me.”
Is it possible that Bundy is haunting his old house? No, but the “entity” that he described as possessing him and driving him to kill may still be there.
In this article by Katharine Ramsland, Ph.D., Bundy had confessed to interviewers that a malignant being emerged from him whenever he was tense or drunk. One investigator named Joe Aloi claimed to have seen Bundy’s face and body contort and a foul odor suddenly emanate from him.
Only time will tell if more than a simple house blessing will be needed to banish the unspeakable evil that drove this man to kill what some believe is close to 100 women – or if a full-blown exorcism of the premises will be needed.