| The Strange Case of Katrina Landrou | |
It started when she was eight years old... with just little, seemingly insignificant things. When she walked into a room, a table lamp would suddenly come on by itself... a book on a table would nudge over a fraction of an inch... the family cat would jump up from a sound sleep and run smack into a wall. As she got older, such events became more frequent, more dramatic, and far more bizarre.
This is the world of Katrina Landrou, a 14-year-old eighth grader from an otherwise quiet and normal Long Island, N.Y. suburb. But for the past six years, Katrina’s world has been anything but quiet and normal. Katrina’s home, which she shares with her parents, two brothers, and a sister, is now plagued with unexplained telekinetic phenomena – poltergeist-like sounds, smells, and movements of inanimate objects – and Katrina seems to be the focus of it all.
"At first, it was things we could live with," says Katrina’s mother, Dorothy. "Rapping on windows, brand new jars of mayonnaise going bad, and ping-pong balls dropping down the chimney, but in the last year or two, it’s gotten really out of control. Whatever it is, it’s driving us nuts."
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| Katrina’s brother snapped this photo of the loaf of bread that followed her around her home for four days in April, 1997. |
By all appearances, Katrina, with her short blond hair and bright blue eyes, is a typical American teenager whose primary interests are going to the mall, scary movies, and The Backstreet Boys. Her effect on objects around her, however, are highly atypical. In November, 1998, Katrina’s bedroom, where many unexplained phenomena have been documented, was the scene of a three-week-long nightmare: a strange, purple, jelly-like substance began oozing from all four walls. "It wasn't just a jelly-like substance," Dorothy confirms. "It was jelly – grape jelly. And it just kept coming. We didn't know what to do with it all. We had jelly sandwiches around here for weeks. Then we got the idea of catching it in jars and selling it. For anyone interested, we still have a few cases left in the basement."
For some unknown reason, poltergeist activity tends to surround girls as they mature into puberty. "I don’t feel any different," Katrina confides. "So I don't know why my shoes tap dance at night, my homework is all written backwards, or why that happened to Goldie." Goldie was a goldfish Katrina had won last summer at a local fair. Shortly after arrival in Katrina’s bedroom, the small fish became crazed, swam around madly in its bowl, and then devoured a plastic mermaid figurine Katrina had placed in there. Goldie soon died.
Katrina's moods seem to affect the power of the anomalies surrounding her. "All I gotta say is, don’t get her mad," says Katrina's 16-year-old brother, Todd. Several weeks ago, the siblings were fighting over who was going to get the last Ring Ding. Being stronger, Todd grabbed the Ring Ding and took a bite out of it. Incensed, Katrina, with a fiery look in her eyes, glared at her brother, whose face promptly broke out into a mass of swollen pimples. "I mean, it could have been from the Ring Ding," says Todd, whose face is still dotted heavily with the blemishes. "But I doubt it. I’ve gone through seven tubes of Clearasil trying to clear this up."
"That's when we called the priest," says Katrina's father, Doug. "Or was it after that smell? For about a week, our upstairs hallway smelled horrible – like a big dead fish or something."
"No, it was more like the cat peed on the carpet for a month," counters Dorothy, "but our Bootsie would never do that." Everyone in the household remembers the odor differently. Todd recalls that it smelled like the boys' locker room at school in June, Katrina thought it smelled like Play Dough, and her younger brother Larry says the foul odor smelled "like Aunt Beatrice when she drives all the way up from Pittsburgh." Soon after, Katrina's parents asked the parish priest to come bless their house in hopes of ridding it of the force that was wreaking so much havoc.
"It was the most frightening moment of my life," says Father Arnold Luccio. "I came to the house with my holy water, and asked the family to wait outside while I walked through the home to bless it." Father Luccio is visibly shaken as he recalls that day. "As I was walking down the hall toward Katrina's bedroom, I felt a deep chill that stopped me dead in my tracks. Then – bless me, it was horrible – I distinctly heard from behind me a deep, rasping, vicious voice whisper, 'Priest! Get... a... haircut!' I'd never been so terrified!" Father Luccio left the home and never returned.
Strange things continue to take place in Katrina's home: a half a loaf of potato bread followed Katrina around her home for four days surrounding her 13th birthday; Tom Jones songs can be heard coming from inside the toilet of the upstairs bathroom; Katrina's father inexplicably woke up one Thursday morning dressed as a mime; during the Thanksgiving meal of 1996, the family's turkey jumped off the table and ran out the front door; and one frightening night last September, Katrina repeated all the dialogue from three episodes of "Laverne and Shirley" – although she had never seen the sitcom!
Katrina's family has recently contacted paranormal experts who they hope can help
them find answers to the perplexing and terrifying mysteries that haunt them.
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