The Child of Harper House
[Archivists note: The following is an excerpt from a rare interview with Madeline Harper. She is well known amongst paranormal and true crime communities as the sole survivor of the infamous “Child of Harper House Haunting” (or “Massacre” depending on who you ask). This interview was filmed for an unaired docuseries on the incident. The series was reportedly axed during post-production after three separate editors and one sound designer committed suicide. Original footage is not available to the public.
A planned book on the incident also fell through after two separate ghost writers reportedly died; one a suicide, the other from suspected foul play. An anonymous source close to both projects told Paranormal Obsession Magazine that this document, which leaked in 2013, was transcribed from partially edited footage.
The original document was laser printed on 8x11 paper in Helvetica font. Any capitalization of “Child” was scribbled in after the fact by an unknown person. The lower case “Child” being crossed out and replaced with a handwritten “Child” above or below. We have opted to use the capitalization for this transcript, partially for the sake of simplicity, but also due to the belief that intentionally refusing to capitalize the Child’s title is the fastest way to meet her in person. Based on the plethora of documented death and misery surrounding this case, we figure it’s better to avoid taking chances.
Madeline Harper was 64 years old at the time of this interview, and according to those who have seen the footage, she occasionally seems “possessed” while telling the story, especially when reciting the voice of the Child. The Child, real or not, isn’t thought to be a possession entity, so perhaps Madeline is simply an effective actor, and/or the memories are so vivid they consume her to this day.]
Madeline Harper:
I was the first in my family to speak with the Child.
She talked to me from outside my open bedroom window, silhouetted by an orange street lamp. I was six at the time, but I still remember the way the shadows hid her face, an inky black oval framed by orange glow, frizzy strands of white hair catching glints of the light. I remember being half awake thinking a Child shouldn’t have white hair. I know I should’ve been scared, or at least worried, a strange child had been watching me in my sleep, but… her hair was the only thing I could think about. It looked… off. Not just the white color… it looked like… like she was wearing a wig at just the wrong angle. I remember the way the light framed the shape of her shoulders, shoulders that looked just a little too narrow below her head… She was wearing a white shirt, with lots of holes in the fabric, and it looked far too big on her, like… maybe she stole it from somebody…
Then it finally dawned on me: my room was on the second floor, how was a Child peering at me through a second floor window? The fear should’ve hit me then, but I felt calm, like everything was perfectly normal. Maybe, I thought, maybe she was standing on a ladder, as if that would make things fine… I don’t know if I was in shock or… if the Child was somehow making me think these things. I’d heard about this cave scorpion, in the Amazon, they inject their prey with a venom that makes them calm, so they don’t fight or try to run away… Maybe this Child had done something like that?
Then the Child shifted her weight, a small movement, but the way she moved made me think that maybe her legs reached all the way down to the yard. That maybe she had two pairs of knees. And then the fear finally started to rise, ran cold over the sheets and up onto my arms, I opened my mouth to scream for Mom and Dad, but… the Child started to shake her head. It was a strange movement, too quick, too quiet, it almost looked like… after a cartoon character gets hit with a hammer? I don’t know if that makes sense, but… she just kept shaking like that, and…
My mouth slammed shut. And I remember thinking at the time that I chose to shut my mouth, chose to stay quiet, to not scream out for my parents, but looking back… I think the Child only made me think it was my choice… Sometimes I still wonder if I actually have free will? Or if something is just making me feel that way? Do you ever think that? I’m sorry, I’ll stay on topic.
The instant my mouth slams shut, the Child’s head stops shaking. It was quiet then for a long while. The fear started coming back, that thought to scream for Mom and Dad. But right then, the Child’s hands rose from below and slid soundless onto the window frame and the fear just… inexplicably melted away again.
The Child was wearing mittens, yellow knitted mittens, but they looked a little too big. And the thumbs were empty—when her hands slid forward, the thumbs caught on the window frame, limp and flat. I remember it all so well, like… like it’s still happening right now…
“Madeline,” the Child said, “please don’t be afraid.” Her voice, it was so calm… so gentle. Singing without singing, like… a lullaby, but every syllable was the same note. Full of emotion, and… completely emotionless at the same time. I know that doesn’t make sense either, but… I’ve never heard a sound more beautiful than that voice. Sometimes I cry just thinking about it…
“Madeline,” she said, “if you get too scared, something terrible might happen.”
The fear, I could feel it again, prickling just beneath my skin like… like a sleeping limb slowly waking up. Something terrible? I remember wondering what the Child meant by that, and the Child answered, as if I’d said it out loud.
“My last family,” she said, “they got too scared of me… and then they tried to, they tried to hurt me,” the Child broke into stuttering sobs, and I remember thinking it sounded fake, and the second that thought had entered my mind, the sobs started to sound real. Too real. Like… the wailing animal sounds my mother made at her father’s funeral… I felt bad for this thing, even though I was scared, I felt responsible for it’s feelings, I remember thinking, please don’t cry, and as soon as I thought it, the Child stopped crying—too fast, like it had been pretending all along…
The Child looked down, her face still hidden by the shadows. But… I could see the glint of her eyes now. Eyes that… eyes that were far too low on her face, eyes where her mouth should have been. Maybe, I thought, maybe her mouth was wide open, and her eyes were inside of it…
The Child sniffed dryly, “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
I remember whispering a shaky “No,” but it wasn’t out of kindness, it was out of fear. And again I started to think about screaming for Mom and Dad, but the thought seemed ridiculous now, absurd… like screaming for a lifeguard when… after you’ve already drowned…
“I know you wouldn’t hurt me,” said the Child, almost whispering now too, “but… your father might… and your mother and your older brother and your little sister and even your new dog friend. They might hurt me.”
My throat had gone dry, like all the moisture had been leeched from my body. It was hard to speak, but I think I told her my family wouldn’t hurt her and she… I heard a wet sound like cracked lips moving. I still couldn’t see her face, only the pinprick glint of her eyes, but I knew she was smiling now, and, I knew it wasn’t a good smile. I remember squinting at that pitch dark silhouette and… I swore I could see the corners of her mouth stretching just past the sides of her face, stretching past where her ears should have been, and then I thought maybe she wasn’t smiling, maybe she, maybe she was frowning, a big fake frown like… pretending to be sad…
The fear then, it jolted awake and rushed into my head and buzzed around my skull like a bunch of hornets. And from the Child there was another sound, those wet moving lips cut short by a hollow click like large teeth clenching together—I remember that sound so clearly like, like two cueballs striking… And I knew she’d stopped frowning. My fear reached its peak and turned numb. That warm, almost blissful feeling when things just, when things are too much.
Then, the Child tilted her head, and her wispy white hair slipped slightly, as if her scalp was loose. “I need you to tell me something,” she said. “It’s only a small thing, nothing to worry about…”
Again I felt my head nod a reluctant yes…
“You…” she paused. “You’re not thinking about calling for your parents right now, are you?” Her head straightened up, but her hair remained slightly off kilter. “…Madeline?” she said. “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
The word “No” slipped up my throat and came out like a little squeak, a whining dog sound…
“Oh that’s wonderful,” the Child said in her flat lullaby voice. “I’m so relieved… It really is just, wonderful…”
Then I heard a door click open in the hallway outside. My older brother’s footsteps creaking on the floorboards toward my room. I looked back to the Child, expecting her to slip away… that’s what monsters do, right? They hide from parents, they hide from older brothers, but… she just stayed in the window, that shadowed mask of a face staring at my shut bedroom door. I remember thinking she… she looked excited, even though I couldn’t see her face, she looked… eager…
My brother, he stopped outside my door and flicked on a hallway light. I could see the shadows of his feet beneath the crack now. And I remember the light spreading across my floor in a wedge shape and, in the furthest corner of my eye, dimly splashing up onto the Child’s face. A blurry image, still shadowy, more felt than seen… I didn’t turn my head to look, because I knew if I saw too much of the Child I might never stop screaming. The only thing I could make out for certain was… was a bruised pinkish color, like… like its face was the color of a skinned cow. Like the ones you see hanging up at the deli on those hooks…
My brother, he asked if I was okay, he thought he heard me talking to someone. He never let himself in my room without knocking first and asking permission… I still didn’t look directly at the Child, but I could almost feel her thoughts, telling me to tell my brother everything was okay… “I’m alright,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he asked if I was sure.
I said I was.
My brother lingered there. And I wanted to scream at him to run, to go get Mom and Dad, but…
In the corner of my eye the Child moved, and when I turned my head to look, only her hands were on the window sill now—holding there for a second before slipping down too. Then I heard footsteps outside, running around the house, onto our porch and… the front door slammed open so loud it jolted me, and the footsteps, no… they sounded more like bare hands, slapping against hardwood… rushed up the stairs toward my brother and, and…
… I’m sorry, I haven’t, I haven’t talked about this in a while, I… Can we… can we, pause for a moment?
[Archivists note: This portion of the transcript ends here. We are in communication with an anonymous source to procure more pages, but it may be a while.]