A Sinister Belief

By Phillip D. Skitt Jr.

Follow Sawyer Cobb and his family as he recounts the terrifying events that took place during the summer of 2012. Fear is grasped and nerves are tested when someone or something begins to terrorize the Cobb family in their home located in Simpsonville, South Carolina. With the help of his lifelong friend, pastor, and an expert in the paranormal, Sawyer begins to hypothesize what is tormenting his family. I urge you to read this book with an open mind. The events that took place could possibly lead to a revelation that leaves even the top skeptics skeptical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524572341

Phillip D. Skitt Jr.

Phil Skitt is a family man who resides in South Carolina. With a passion for the paranormal and a belief that every conspiracy theory deserves at least a little investigation, Phil loves to research and discuss the “what if’s” in life. When he’s not too busy being the general manager of a major commercial swimming pool management company, he enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife and two sons. He urges all readers to research the unknown and to question everything!

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Prologue

My name is Sawyer Cobb. The narrative that is to follow is a recollection of events that took place within a three-week period during the summer of 2012. I call these, shall we say happenings, events because they truly were singular, individual events that I will remember for the rest of my life. I wish I could tell you that I thought these revulsions up using the imaginative center of my brain. Or that these events were scenes from science fiction films that became jumbled up in my mind and then thrown out as words while mindlessly typing on my computer. I wish them to be anything but real.

Unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of ignoring the phenomena that occurred that summer. They were frightening, eye-opening, and, most importantly, they were real. The events that I will be describing will probably make you question your belief systems. I encourage you to read this with an open mind and allow for certain questions to flood your subconscious. Don’t be afraid of these questions. As you will see when reading about my experiences, I was deathly afraid of what was happening to me. But it opened my mind and allowed me to acquire answers to questions I previously wasn’t able to comprehend. There are things in this world that science will never be able to explain. I can’t say that I understood everything that happened to me back in 2012, but I can tell you that I now understand that true fear originates from somewhere other than in our minds. It comes from a realm of the physical world that only a few have had the unlucky privilege to experience.

It is said that fear is one of the strongest emotions a human being can experience. That it drives us to do things we would otherwise never even consider. I once believed that fear was something that was conjured up in our subconscious by shadows and noises that our mind couldn’t explain. Or that fear could be defined when you turn around in the grocery store to find your son is no longer there. I thought I knew what fear was. While yes, those previously mentioned ideas can be frightening, they no longer qualify as true fear to me. While remembering and documenting these events, I will do my absolute best to describe the true nature of fear—the same fear that gripped me during those three unforgettable weeks.

Facts

Eighty million Americans believe that UFOs are a real phenomenon.

Sixty-six percent of Americans believe that demons are real and are actively affecting human beings every day.

1

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

—Plato

Before I begin this brief lesson into what I have found to be the true nature of fear, I feel that I must give you some more information about who I am. Due to the events that took place and the manner in which they occurred, a look into my past is not only relevant, it’s necessary. As I mentioned earlier, my name is Sawyer Cobb. I live in Simpsonville, South Carolina, which is part of the greater Greenville County, with my amazingly beautiful wife Emily and our son Tripp.

I work for a swimming pool company and manage several different community pools in the surrounding upstate area. During the summers, which was when these events occurred, my time is very valuable and is mostly taken up by the swimming pools and their never-ending list of problems. My larger frame helps drastically in my very physical demanding job, but I wouldn’t call myself fat. Let’s just say that when I was a kid, I had to shop in the Husky section at JCPenny. My thick, brownish-red beard helps cover any indication of a double chin. So I’ve grown accustomed to wearing one at all times.

A quick glance into my personal life would show that my hobbies include improving things around my house, college football, and being entertained by the silver screen. That’s it. I consider myself to be a pretty boring guy, and if you ask anyone who might know me, they would most likely agree with that assumption. I have my close friends, who also turn out to be my coworkers; but other than that, I don’t usually communicate with too many people besides my wife and my son.

I grew up in a typical two-story suburban home. My father worked constantly to provide for my mom, my two older sisters, and me. We would go to church—not religiously, but we would attend on the major holidays, Christmas and Easter, and maybe a couple of extra Sundays throughout the year. Our attendance mainly depended on how tired my father was from his sixty-plus-hour work week. I wouldn’t consider myself a biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I did like to read when I was in high school. And since my family wasn’t rich by any sense of the word, I found myself reading the same book over and over—the family Bible.

I found the Bible to be interesting enough. It was filled with love, hate, jealousy, revenge, murder, and, of course sex. All aspects of a great read. I can’t say that I read the book in its entirety, but I did read several stories a number of times. I preferred the stories where good prevailed over evil. Where the innocent was found righteous and the guilty were cast into the lake of fire. The stories that helped me make sense of a hectic world. But of course, the Bible is filled with stories that made me doubt the validity of this so-called all-gracious God.

For example, the tale where the wise men came to King Herod and told him that a new king was born and they were on a long journey, bringing him gifts, to meet him and worship him. Long story short, Herod was prideful and did not like the idea of a new king, so he had all the male babies in the land killed. Stories like that did something to me. They made me doubt that the God of the Bible was real. If the Bible says that God is gracious, then what am I supposed to believe when I read a story like that? How can I guarantee that God will be gracious when it comes to my life and my family? Being young and dealing with these kinds of thoughts was not congruent with my current belief system. So that is why I preferred to stick to the stories that made sense to me—the ones where good overcame evil.

Because of the recent events in my life, I feel that I must mention some other ideas and beliefs that I read about in the Bible. Many people on this earth believe that the Bible is 100 percent accurate. That every line of every verse is the divine word of God, and that in being so, the Bible is infallible. If so, then that must hold true for the passages and verses that deal with things we can’t explain. Things that we can’t see, or currently lack the ability to observe.

When reading the Bible, I came across Ephesians 6:12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. I distinctly remember reading this verse for the first time. It scared me. It made me feel as though I didn’t have control over my life. And let’s not forget the story of Job. Even if you have never read the Bible, I’m sure the story of Job has passed through your ears before.

My brief summary is as follows: Job is a man of God. Satan comes to God and tells God that he has been walking around on earth. God mentions Job to Satan. He says that Job is an upright man and that Satan won’t be able to turn him away from God. God then gives Satan permission throughout the book to basically torture Job. Satan does everything from killing off his family to personally attacking Job with boils over his entire body. Job never blames God and is rewarded greatly for his faith.

Now, if the Bible is 100 percent accurate, then this story should scare you. It scared me to death. God gives Satan and the demons the ability to test us and to torture us? God gives these unearthly beings the ability to physically hurt us? These questions alone frightened me and slowly turned me away from reading the Bible altogether.

Several years went by, and nothing close to a demonic interaction ever took place in my life, so I began to think that either I wasn’t special enough for God to test me or that it was all a big lie—the Bible that is—and I was leaning toward that latter. But then something happened.

Without giving away too many secrets about my personal life, I guess the next best thing to do would be to start describing the events that started taking place. It began on the evening of June 2. I followed my normal routine of coming home from work to find myself sitting on the couch watching another episode of Bones. Tripp, who was currently potty training, switched between running around the living room with nothing on but a smile and sitting on the toilet watching Polar Express. I know what you’re thinking, Polar Express? Isn’t it June? Yes, but he loved that movie, and it was a must-see when sitting on the potty, not matter what time of year it may be.

After fighting with him tooth and nail, my wife and I put Tripp to bed and said our prayers with him, which went something like this: Dear Jesus, thank you for the food. Amen. I then went back downstairs to get a glass of water, take my two Tylenol PMs, and make sure the house was locked up. Our house is nothing special—just a simple two-story house nestled in a modest, middle-income family neighborhood. From the outside, the only difference between our house and the rest of the neighborhood was the type of single tree planted in the front yard and our siding color. We were fortunate enough to have a simple river birch and a light-yellow tint for the siding. I proceeded with my walk-though to turn off the lights and lock the doors. About a week earlier, the lightbulbs in the front hallway that led to the front door had burned out. So when I rounded the corner from the kitchen, I was startled when a bright light from above the door turned on and shone directly into my eyes.

The motion sensor light that I had attached above the door several days earlier never failed to scare me at night. I locked the door, turned the porch light on, and went upstairs. Once again, the second motion sensor light that I put up directly over the door to our master bedroom blinded me as I came up the stairs. I chalked this one up to my son’s inability to stay in his room at night for more than two hours at a time. After a scare a couple of weeks earlier when we woke up to the loud crashing sound of our son falling down the stairs, I found it a good idea for him to have a little extra light in the hallway at night, in case he felt the urge to go exploring during the blackness of night.

I entered the room to find one of the most glorious sights a husband can ever feast his eyes upon. My beautiful wife had candles lit, Barry White on the radio, and was wearing one of the sexiest pieces of lingerie that even Victoria would want to keep a secret. You see, it was our anniversary that night, and that is one of the reasons why I remember this night so well. I will spare you the boring, yet entertaining, details; but we proceeded to make love, talk about how fortunate we were to have Tripp, and then fall mindlessly asleep.

The next memory I have is being startled awake. I woke up to an extremely loud noise. I looked over at Emily to find her fast asleep with the covers up to her chin. I could see her face faintly illuminated by the light given off by her alarm clock, which read exactly 2:30 AM. She was in a deep sleep. I thought, What the hell was that noise? I specifically remember thinking that exact phrase. It’s almost as if I remember screaming it, but that would have been impossible due to the fact that Emily was still passed out. The sound I heard reminded me of two metal objects crashing into each other. Almost exactly like the sound of two stainless steel balls hitting each other, much like the popular desk ornament found in offices around the country.

My first thought went directly to Tripp. Even though he was now three and would be turning four in a month, we still had the baby monitor hooked up in his room. It hung on the wall facing his bed and the window. His bed rested against the far wall of the room with the headboard about four feet away from the window. The camera view showed his bed in the foreground with the window in the background. As I reached over my unconscious wife to turn the monitor on, I found the image to be quite disturbing. Tripp was standing directly in front of the camera staring straight back at me. His head took up the entire screen so that all I could see was from his chin to the top of his head. The image was very clear, and I was most definitely awake. As soon as I locked eyes with him on the screen, he slowly turned back around, paused for several seconds, and then, without warning, ran to his window at a very quick speed. These movements alone sent chills down my spine and made me second-guess what I was observing. The blinds on his window were closed, but he proceeded to stare out of his window as if the blinds were open. His window faced our backyard, which was bordered by a small wooded area. With our back porch lights off, it was completely dark in our backyard. From my vantage point, all I could see was his back, his arms down at his side. He motionlessly stood there for what seemed like an eternity, but ended up being about two minutes. He then slowly turned back around, got in his bed, and tucked himself back in. This event lasted approximately three minutes.

This obviously made me feel very uncomfortable, to say the least. I woke Emily up and told her what I had just witnessed. She insisted that I go into Tripp’s room to ensure that everything was OK. Even though I was hesitant after what I had just seen, I opened our bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. The motion light came on and illuminated my way. Tripp’s room was directly to my left. To the right was our laundry room and guest bedroom, and across the hall was a guest bathroom. When I entered my Tripp’s room, I found him fast asleep on his bed. After searching his room for anything that looked out of the ordinary and finding nothing to be amiss, I returned to bed, but found that I could not fall back asleep.

I could not remove the image of my son’s face from my mind. His eyes were wide and emotionless. He never blinked throughout the entire time I looked into his face. But the most disturbing part of that incident was when his eyes locked with mine. As soon as they did, it was as if he knew I was looking at him. His eyes moved ever so slightly, like when someone is studying an image and then catches a discrepancy that they want to make sure is really there. For the first time in my life, I felt afraid . . . afraid of my own son.

The next morning, I felt tired. My muscles were tight as well. I felt as if the night before I had run ten miles, followed by doing one hundred push-ups. After taking a shower and getting dressed for work, I went downstairs to find Emily and Tripp at the table eating breakfast. While Tripp seemed perfectly normal eating his Cheerios and bananas and watching some show about dancing animals, by wife was looking at me with concern. She was no longer wearing the sexy lingerie from last night. She had on an old pair of sweatpants and a shirt that read, Old time country across the chest.

She asked me what I had done that night. I looked at her with some confusion and asked, Don’t you remember?

She replied, What I remember is you waking me up and telling me that our son was walking around his room. You then disappeared downstairs to do God knows what!

I brushed off her comment by saying, I never even went downstairs last night.

Then how come I heard glasses clinging together in the middle of the night with you nowhere to be found? she asked.

With anger in my voice, I demanded, What, do you think I was drinking?

She responded with equal anger. It wouldn’t surprise me, with the way you were acting last night!

I should mention here that I am a recovering alcoholic. Like most of the alcoholics I have met, my fight with the strong drink started after a personal tragedy. Right after Tripp was born, my father was found dead inside his Florida condo. My mother had gone down to her daily water aerobics routine, where all the crazy old women of the building group together in the condo pool to gossip about why Ms. Shirley didn’t show up for the Christmas party, all while flapping their arms back and forth to the beat of the great ’80s hair bands. When she returned to their tenth-floor condo, which overlooks the beautiful Florida coastline, she found my father unconscious on the kitchen floor.

The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy could find no reason for his death. There were no clogs in the arteries that surround the heart, or any other sign of heart trauma. No clots were found in any area of his body, and the doctor pronounced him to be in extremely good shape. I find that ironic since when he made this statement, my father was lying on a cold, hard slab with a tag attached to his toe. Comically enough, the cause of my father’s death was determined to be undetermined.

The normal investigations ensued, which of course left all fingers pointing toward my mother. You see, my mother stood to inherit a very large sum of money due to a large life insurance policy that my father had taken out on himself. Without any shred of evidence, nothing ever came of those investigations, and my mother was left to grieve the death of her husband of thirty-eight years. She sold the condo and now lives happily with my sister in DC.

Unfortunately, my father’s death really hit hard on my personal life. I began to drink heavily. Every day after work, I would find myself talking to the same bartender about life’s many mysteries, thinking that I could find the answer to them by searching the bottom of every Jack Daniel’s bottle behind the bar. This behavior lasted for about four months. During that time, I ignored my family, slacked off at work, and came very close to losing my job.

If it wasn’t for Emily’s love and compassion, I would most likely be lying in a ditch somewhere. At the time of this first incident, I had been alcohol free for roughly three years.

After she basically just accused me of falling off the wagon, I lost my temper and yelled something to the effect of You wouldn’t understand anyway! Get the hell out of here! She then went back upstairs to the master bathroom to take a bath. An extremely hot bath seems to be the only thing that can calm her down after an argument. I was more than happy to see her leave the room and was well aware that when she came back down, she would see my point of view in the argument, at which point we could come to an understanding. I was left to watch Tripp until she got back downstairs. The following conversation that took place between me and my son is one I will not soon forget.

As he sat at the kitchen table eating his cereal and bananas, I noticed a mark on his face. It was about one and half inches long and looked similar to a scratch. It was located just below his right ear, running vertically starting below his ear and ending where his earlobe met his face. The thing that drew my attention to this mark was that it looked as if it had been healing for days, similar to a week-old wound made by a knife or any sharp object. My wife and I are very protective of our son, and we would have known if he had been injured in such a way to receive a mark like this. Since we hadn’t noticed it earlier, my only conclusion was that it must have occurred the previous night.

I sat down at the table across from him and asked him, How was your night-night? Did you sleep well?

His response was simple. Yes.

I then asked him, Did you dream about Mama or Dada? This question was not uncommon for Emily and me to ask him. He would frequently tell us that he dreamed about us the night before. Usually, it included us making him sit on the potty for long periods of time.

His response, on the other hand, was uncommon. It was so unexpected that I asked him to repeat it to make sure I had heard him correctly. He told me that God said ‘Hi’ last night.

I was following in my father’s footsteps by keeping the tradition of only attending church during the major holidays. So God wasn’t someone we usually spoke of. I know Tripp had heard us talking about God before, but never had he said the word God to anyone.

I then asked him, Why did God say hi to you?

He replied, "He said to tell Dada not to be