April 13, 1986, Alan and Debby Tallman, along with their three children, moved into their dream house in Horicon, Wisconsin. Horicon is a small farming town, and as of the 2010 census, had a population of only 3,665. Alan was a shift supervisor at a manufacturing plan, and Debby was a stay-at-home mom. They were a churchgoing family, and were enjoying life.
In early February 1987, they purchased a bunk bed at a second-hand shop. They assembled it and stored it in their basement. Within weeks, their children, who had rarely been sick, suddenly were sick all the time. They were in the doctor’s office regularly, sometimes even all three at the same time. That May, they decided to move the bed upstairs, a decision they would later come to regret.
The first night the bed was upstairs, the Tallman’s son slept in the room next door. His parents had given him their old clock radio, and after his parents said their goodnight’s, the radio seemed to come alive. It turned itself on, and began randomly changing channels on its own. Back then, radios had a visible station indicator, and he witnessed it moving from one side to the other by itself. He ran from his room and told his parents, who were still up in the living room, but they didn’t believe him. In fact, they told him if he was going to make a fuss, they would take the clock radio away.
Just a few weeks later, Alan was painting the walls in his basement. His wife called him upstairs for lunch, so he laid his paintbrush on the pan, knowing he would return after he ate. When he did return, however, the paintbrush was not where he left it. Instead it was inside the paint bucket – handle down and bristles up. Although unexplained, he brushed it away, not willing to accept the idea that there was something in his home.
The Tallman’s 2 year old daughter was sleeping in the bunk bed, and began to see things. She told her mother about a witch with red eyes, and then about a fire in her room. A month later, their son saw an old lady standing by his door. He said she glowed like fire. It was then that she began to think her house was haunted.
They turned to their pastor. They invited him over and that’s when he told them he felt the presence of evil in the house, and thought they might be the victims of the Devil. He encouraged them to ward off the evil by regularly attending church.
Their time of peace in the home had ended. Doors banged open and shut. Voices could be heard calling out from nowhere. They could still see ghostly visions and the children were being terrorized.
A week before Christmas, Danny saw something that horrified him, and told his mother he wanted to leave. Alan had had enough, and decided to challenge the entity. He told it to leave his children alone, to fight with him instead.
Three weeks later, after working a late shift, Alan returned home around 2am. He exited his car, and could hear an eerie howling sound that started soft, then grew louder and louder. It was like a howling wind, except it was quiet outside. He heard a voice come out of the howling that said, “Come here.”
He followed the sound around the back of the house to see if someone was there, but there was no one. When he returned to the front, he saw that the garage was on fire. Scared, he ran into the house, setting his lunch box on the floor and taking a second to collect himself. He ran back outside, but the fire was gone. There was no signs of damage whatsoever. He returned to the house, closed and locked the door and deadbolt. He reached down, grabbed his lunch box, only to have it ripped from his hand and thrown across the room.
Alan began sleeping on the floor of his daughters’ room every night. They were scared and having great difficulty trying to sleep. One night, he watched as a fog rolled in all around him, and then a voice came from the fog, saying, “You’re dead.”
Alan came out of the bedroom, his skin pale and his lips were blue. He had tears running from his eyes, but he wouldn’t speak. Debby called the pastor as Alan was terrified and visibly shaking.
Just days later, Alan was working late and asked one of his relatives to watch over the girls until they fell asleep. This relative was a skeptic, a complete non-believer. As he lay on the floor of the girls’ room, the same figure seen by the kids appeared to him. He let out a loud scream and ran from the room. Debby heard him, and asked what happened. He was visibly scared, and that was the final straw. Debby told him to help get the kids together, that they were leaving the house and never returning.
Two weeks later, Alan and Debby had the bunk beds destroyed. They moved to another city and have not had another paranormal experience since.
A new family moved into the Tallman’s old home, and they too, have not experienced anything out of the ordinary.
Paul Kurtz, of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal, based in Buffalo New York, said that they haunting claims by the Tallman family were similar to many cases in which people misinterpret normal events. Some of the claims could be explained by something as simple as a gas leak, causing hallucinations. A year after the Tallman’s moved out of their home, Wisconsin Power & Light Co. (now Alliant Energy), went through and replaced faulty gas fittings at several of the homes in Horicon, however it has been noted that the Tallman home was not one of them.
The Tallman family had to leave their home to escape the evils that plagued it. I suppose it’s good they didn’t live in California, and flee to the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
