The Case of Rebecca Webb

This casefile was compiled by Alva Keel through witness interviews and interviews with Mr. Callan conducted by SQ.

      One stormy night in Saugerties, New York, Ms. Rebecca Webb was performing work for her newspaper column when she began hearing strange noises in the house she had rented two weeks prior. She had sought solitude while writing her memoires, but this house would not provide it, as something began to rattle at one of the interior doors. The door leading down to her basement rattled in its frame as if something was trying to get out. Ms. Webb investigated, only to find that the noise had ceased; however, she was not satisfied, and so went down into the basement to see if anything was amiss. The door inexplicably slammed shut behind her, startling her so much that she took a tumble down the stairs. Rebecca Webb broke her left leg in the fall.
      Shortly after, Paul Callan was contacted by St. Gregory's Hospital in Sovereignty, New York, about Ms. Webb's accident, as he was still listed as her emergency contact. Mr. Callan and Ms. Webb had been involved in a romantic relationship, which had ended five years ago. In the car ride to hospital, Mr. Callan confessed to Ms. Santos that his relationship with Ms. Webb had brought out a side of him he did "not like," that it made him "a different person." This would become significant later in the case.
      As Ms. Webb had some trouble getting around due to her broken leg, Mr. Callan volunteered to look after her. From the first night in the house, Mr. Callan stated he could feel something odd about it, as if he were being watched, but he did not recognize what this could mean at the time. The stove behaved strangely, only working when it, apparently, "wanted" to do so. This stove had been checked and pronounced in proper working order shortly before Ms. Webb had moved in. That night, while fixing dinner, Mr. Callan accidentally cut himself, the blood dripping on a white onion. He recalls that immeiately after this happened, the lights flickered. It was another stormy night, so he thought nothing of it at the time.
      The feeling of not being alone in the house continued into the next day. Unable to resist, Mr. Callan and Ms. Webb rekindled their romantic relationship, and it did not take long before he was again feeling like a different person in the presence of Rebecca Webb. He dreamt of the typical sort of thing a jealous man would dream of - his lover in bed with another man. This left Mr. Callan treating her with a modicum of hostility. Much of this hostility, he realised in hindsight, came from an outside source he could not resist, that simply allowed him to act on jealous feelings he was prone to feeling around Ms. Webb. Interestingly, she remarked to Mr. Callan that he had begun to smell like smoke, although it was not a regular nor current habit for him to smoke any form of tobacco product.
      It was at this time that Mr. Callan saw his first apparition in the house. While in a bathroom, he closed a medicine cabinet and saw a woman reflected in the mirror; she had two black eyes, an impact mark on her forehead, and blood running down her face. The ghost said, "See what you did?" and then vanished.
      The house grew cold, so Mr. Callan went down into the basement to check on the gas furnace. There he found a workbench full of metal hooks of the type a person would use to pick up and haul old-fashioned blocks of ice. Something about the hooks felt familiar to Mr. Callan. He heard a sound come from the house, twice, that could only be described as a groan, then noticed a substance on a basement wall that looked very much like blood. Once he had touched it, Mr. Callan said it felt like something moved through him, and he heard unintelligible voices whispering to him. It was very likely that at this point, Mr. Callan was fully possessed by the spirit of one of the former owners of the house. The ghost had probably been attempting this possession ever since Mr. Callan arrived, which would explain his over-sensitivity and hostility.
      Upon his arrival back upstairs, Ms. Webb informed him that the hooks did indeed belong to an ice man who had formerly owned the house. (Why they were never removed from the home, we do not know.) Ms. Santos and I became involved at this time, as this is when she contacted Mr. Callan by telephone, wanting to see if everything was going well. Ms. Webb had noticed a marked change in his behaviour and mood; Ms. Santos had no trouble noticing it either, as Mr. Callan had been inexplicably rude to her over the phone. He made a comment that Rebecca was sleeping with "the ice man." The tone of this conversation troubled Ms. Santos enough that she felt we should visit the house as soon as possible.
      Ms. Webb noted later that Mr. Callan seemed to look worse than before, with an angry, tired pallor to his face and eyes, and went unshaven. He did not bother to wash or change his clothes from the day before. He began looking through her photo album and obsessively going over details from their past relationship. Mr. Callan seemed almost mad with jealousy, discussing the two of them as if the relationship had never ended. He had found an old tin of cigarettes in the house (perhaps left behind along with the hooks?) and began defiantly smoking one, to Ms. Webb's amazement. They had a brief argument, then Mr. Callan walked out of the house, staying out all night.
      The next day, Ms. Santos and I arrived at the house; Ms. Webb filled us in on what had happened. Mr. Callan came in and he did look quite unkempt, smelling of cigarettes and alcohol. I noted the onion on the kitchen counter - by the time I saw it, it was covered with a black grime. Mr. Callan said what he could to reassure Ms. Santos and I, so we left. However, I had no intention of staying away, as the condition of that onion revealed to me that the house contained an evil presence, and probably now functioned as a repository for negative energy. The decay of the vegetable did not smell normal, and certainly, onions do not rot that quickly. If I had known at the time about Mr. Callan's blood dripping on it, that would have clarified a great deal for me. Blood is a sacrificial offering, lending power to wells of energy, be they positive or negative. The behaviour of the stove and the flickering of the lights were most likely indicators of this presence in the house, as electrical equipment and gas appliances often have a tendency to behave erratically in areas of paranormal activity. Ms. Santos and I headed off to find out as much as we could about the house's history.
      Once we had left, Mr. Callan's alarming behaviour escalated. First, he struck Ms. Webb, which he had never done before, then he referred to her as "Sunshine," and ripped the phone out of the wall. There was not much Rebecca could do in her condition, as Mr. Callan bound her hands with rope to a radiator, then began boarding up all the windows of the house. He eventually untied her, but kept her securely in the house with the use of a deadbolt lock.
      At approximately the same time, I spoke with a local representative from Brown Realty about the house Rebecca Webb currently occupied. The house was previously owned by the Spencers; the wife lived there until her death at the age of 81. Local rumours said that her husband had run off with another woman; in reaction, Mrs. Spencer had boarded up the house and become a recluse. Because the rent was so cheap, I knew there had to be more to the tale, and persuaded the realtor, Mrs. Brown, to tell me - as it turns out, a man who had rented the house six months before had hung himself in the basement. We were getting to the bottom of this well of negativity.
      Mr. Callan had decided he wanted to have it out with me over the events of the Chad Goodwell case, and the house only further fueled that desire, so he locked Rebecca in the basement and went in search of Ms. Santos. How he found her, not even Mr. Callan is certain; he felt as if an outside force was guiding him. When they arrived back at the house, Ms. Santos asked why the windows were boarded up, to which Mr. Callan replied that it was how "he kept her in the house and away from trouble," possibly referring to Rebecca's alleged relationship with some other man. Knowing Mr. Callan was not in his right mind, Ms. Santos called out for Rebecca, who cried for help from the basement. Ms. Santos attempted to control the situation, but she and Mr. Callan struggled; because she wished not to cause him actual harm, Ms. Santos held back many of the techniques she had learnt at the police academy for subduing unruly suspects. Mr. Callan thus managed to gain the upper hand and locked Ms. Santos in the basement with Ms. Webb.
      Ms. Santos discovered a brick wall at the rear of the basement that appeared to fill in a pre-existing doorway. She worked on taking it apart, hoping it to be a means of escape.
      I arrived at the house, finding the windows boarded up (just like the previous owner, Mrs. Spencer, had done). Mr. Callan was inside, looking worse than ever. The smile on his face could only be described as devilish as he smoked and drank heavily, informing me proudly that he had locked both Ms. Webb and Ms. Santos in the basement. I insisted that we let them out; of course, Mr. Callan refused, and we became embroiled in a physical altercation. It eventually took a glass bowl to be broken over his head to subdue Mr. Callan.
      Luckily, Ms. Santos had reached the center of negative energy at approximately the same time. Behind the brick wall she found a door that led to the ice man's cold storage. Inside this cold storage room was the freezer, and inside this freezer, two long-dead human bodies.
      The energy in the basement became so overwhelming once it was released that it overcame Rebecca, but we would not realize it for several minutes. I brought Ms. Santos and Ms. Webb out of the basement, then called the proper authorities about the bodies. During these events, a pot of cooking oil had been boiling on the stove under the auspices of making dinner; it had been bubbling quite a while and was very hot. Rebecca explained her possession experience thusly: she saw herself as a young Mrs. Spencer, battered and bruised, catching her husband, the ice man, with his mistress. They were dancing in the living room to the 1940 tune You Are My Sunshine. Mr. Callan had been hearing the song in his head all day - it was why he had begun calling Ms. Webb "Sunshine." Rebecca saw Ms. Santos and Mr. Callan as the mistress and the ice man. She approached them with the pot of boiling oil, while seeing what Mrs. Spencer had done. Mrs. Spencer had said, "See what you did?" probably referring to her injuries, and had then thrown boiling oil on her husband and the other woman. Afterward, she had placed the badly burned couple in the basement freezer, where she left them to die.
      This is what the ghost of Mrs. Spencer intended to also have Rebecca do to Ms. Santos and Mr. Callan; or, perhaps Rebecca had tapped into the negative energy left behind by the emotions of the past event, and was simply acting it out again in the present. Either way, she was about to splash them both with the boiling oil, so I intervened, spinning her around as the oil began to spill. The oil landed on the stove. Before we knew it, a significant amount of the kitchen was on fire, so we rushed out of the house, barely escaping with our lives. The house burned down very quickly.
      Rebecca Webb suffered no lasting ill effects from her experience - the negative energy seemed to have dissipated with the house fire. Before she left Saugerties to stay with her sister, she remarked to Mr. Callan that he was really very lucky to have friends like Ms. Santos and I, because we would risk our lives to help him. Mr. Callan told me later that in considering her words, this is the moment he decided to stay with Sodalitas Quaerito.
      This case is closed.

For related cases, please see: Hauntings ; G., Chad

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