Bumps in the night: Newton couple experiences scary entities

Gayla Hastings of Newton stands near some gravestones in Greenwood Cemetery. Hastings says she's sensitive to seeing, feeling and hearing ghosts and other entities. She even saw something in the cemetery following her interview on Monday. Wendy Nugent/Harvey County Now

By Wendy Nugent, Harvey County Now

NEWTON—Gayla Hastings turned around in her vehicle to take one last look at her and fiancé Kim Friesen’s rental house in Newton as they left after moving out recently and saw something in a bedroom window–something with eyes.

That something wasn’t human. She believes it was a negative entity that had returned after they left.

It was grayish black, had pointy ears, an evil grin with jagged teeth, was tall and skinny with long arms and claws, two horns and big black eyes—pretty much what one would imagine such an entity looks like.

“He was waiting for the next family,” Hastings said.

Hastings has had many encounters with the paranormal.

“I’ve had too many,” the Newton resident said. “You could write a book on mine.”

With the help of Hastings’ daughter, they were able to get rid of the creature until they moved out. When they initially moved in, they didn’t know there were otherworldly entities there, which also included ghosts, some friendly and some not so friendly. Hastings said the negative entity was keeping them there.

Hastings’ daughter Amber told the negative entity to leave, telling it to go until her moms had moved out.

Things started to go downhill for the engaged couple when they moved in.

“As soon as we moved in, I lost my job, Kim got hurt, I got COVID twice,” Hastings said.

Friesen got COVID-19 once and Hastings was injured badly at her new job. They lost a lot of money because of what happened.

The atmosphere between and within them changed for the negative. They got depressed and sad.

“We’re never like that,” Hastings said.

When their water was turned off Friesen went “berserk,” and Hastings had a mental breakdown at one point.

The negative entity was removed from the house two weeks before they moved and returned after they left. Amber and Amber’s daughter could see it.

“There were times I could smell cigarette smoke, sulfur smells,” Hastings said. “When I would go down to the basement, I would feel uneasy, nauseous.”

Friesen said she felt uneasy down there, too.

When Hastings used to get up for work at 4:30 a.m., she’d have to walk past the basement door and would see something move down there.

“I would hear things down there,” she said. “Banging, like loud banging.”

She also heard a man’s voice growling.

“That’s when I knew there was something bad down there,” she said.

They also had a variety of ghosts living there, so to speak, which included four women from the 1800s, a little boy and a black man named Daniel. When they left, Hastings said the little boy wanted to go with them, but she told him he needed to stay with his family.

“They came with the land and not with the house,” Friesen said.

Hastings also used to hear women humming and a little boy laughing.

The last day they were at the house, Hastings was on the stairs and had nothing in her hands when something pulled her back by the hair.

“I caught myself,” she said.

They learned one of the ghost women trapped there had fallen down the stairs, which were steep, and she died.

“I felt her, but Amber saw her,” Hastings said.

She used to smell apple pies baking and saw a ghost woman in their kitchen wearing a white dress and apron with her hair in a bun. She thinks she’s the one who made the pies.

Two more spirits in the attic were upset the couple was leaving the home, Hastings said.

“They stomped really loud,” she said. “It was loud as hell.”

“And I heard that one,” Friesen said.

They used to hear pans rattling in the kitchen as though someone was going through them, used to hear loud knocks on the kitchen wall like someone hit it and have seen shadow figures in the kitchen.

Hastings has been sensitive to these things most, if not all of her life, she said.

“There’s a lot of things I didn’t want to tell Kim because I didn’t want to scare her,” Hastings said.

Even more happened in the house, as Hastings used to hear someone call her name and heard “someone” pacing the floor in the dining room that sounded like he or she was wearing cowboy boots. Things used to disappear, too.

“Every house I’ve lived in, it seems something is there,” Hastings said.

The place they have now isn’t haunted, she said.

“Yet,” Friesen added.

When a person or people move into a haunted home, everything seems normal at first, but then things pick up after residents start cleaning and rearranging things, Hastings said.

“We woke up a lot of them toward the end, but they had always been there,” Hastings said, adding a few of the ghosts weren’t good, making them sick and causing chaos.

Looking back now, Friesen said just about everything that could go wrong did and their relationship almost was destroyed.

They also tried to help another Newton resident who had similar things going on at her house. The woman, Hastings said, had a negative entity clown.

“When I drove by her house, I saw a white clown face looking at me,” Hastings said. “Kinda looked like it with fangs.”

The couple “cleaned” the house of the spirit.

“It took every ounce of energy I had in my body and I got physically sick,” Hastings said.

Also in Newton, the couple did a short ghost hunt of an old Victorian house to which Hastings was drawn. A friend who went along captured an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) saying in a voice that belonged to no humans there, “I am here.”

One time when the couple visited the house, Friesen sat curbside in the car while Hastings went near the house. Although there was no wind, Friesen felt the car get jerked and at the same time, Hastings ran back to the car, telling Friesen they needed to get out of there because she saw a large black shadow by a door.

“As we were driving away, there was a little boy standing on the porch waving bye,” Hastings said, adding he looked to be dressed in 1800s clothing and had a bowl haircut.

“I knew there was something different about me when I was 3 years old,” Hastings said, adding that’s when she could hear voices. “I could feel stuff. I would feel like I was lying in bed something would touch me. It was cold.”

She also said an entity followed her around when she was 8.

Friesen said Hastings can tell which houses are haunted and which aren’t when they’re driving down the street.

“She has that much sensitivity,” Friesen said.

Hastings also has had things happen at work, like getting her hair pulled when no one was around and having a large metal object fall behind her, almost bashing her head in, again when no one else was there.

“That place is haunted,” Hastings said.

Now that they’ve moved, the couple is feeling lighter and happier.

“We are getting along better now,” Hastings said.

“It does feel better being out of that house,” Friesen added.

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