She was hell-bent on figuring out who or what was responsible for the scratches on her daughter’s body, so she set up a night vision camera.
But she captured would turn her quaint little house into a terrifying nightmare. The footage was blurry but she could still see the shadow. Her heart pounded as she watched him roam around her little girl’s room.
Joshua Higgins and Heather Brough had been living in Joshua’s mother’s guesthouse for over a year now with their one-year-old child Lily. They loved the house, until one day, they suddenly wanted to run from it.
It all began when Heather took her baby out of the crib one morning and found scratches on her face and arms.
At first, she didn’t think much of the scratches. She knew babies had a tendency to scratch themselves while sleeping.
However, when the first set of scratches healed and another set of fresh marks and scratches were found on her daughter’s body, she had a feeling something was wrong. The marks didn’t look like something her baby could have accidentally done on her own.
For many who knew Heather and Joshua, they were seen as living the dream. Their relationship was steady and caring. They lived in a nice home and had a super adorable baby girl. But one day, everything changed.
Heather showed her husband the scratches on their baby. She asked him what he thought it was. He speculated that it was just her scratching herself. But Heather didn’t buy it.
Then one night while Heather slept, she heard weird noises around the house; the squealing of a door, footsteps in the kitchen, and thumps of the floorboards. She presumed it was her husband and went back to bed. But it wasn’t.
The next day, Heather asked Joshua if he got up last night. She asked him did he go to check on Lily at her nursery. He said he didn’t. But she didn’t believe him.
She asked him if he was sleepwalking again and tentatively questioned him about the scratches on his daughter.
In Joshua’s mind, she was accusing him of hurting his own daughter. He immediately resented her for asking such a horrible question and stormed out of the room. But Heather was convinced that something weird was happening so she kept digging, unaware that she was about to discover something so much worse.
Paranoia took over as she thought that her husband could be hiding something. But no, she knew him. He wouldn’t lie to her. So, if it really wasn’t him, then what was it? It couldn’t be an animal because she always made sure that all the doors and windows were locked at night.
The strange scratches and noises could only mean one thing; someone or something was already inside their home.
Things had become tense between her and Joshua since the accusations were made at him sleepwalking. She apologized and instead of speculating further, she purchased a baby monitor to overlook the baby’s crib.
Joshua was still convinced that Lily was scratching herself. But Heather knew that something was wrong. She always made sure that her baby’s nails were well-trimmed, so it couldn’t have been her. Then the CCTV revealed the truth neither of them was ready for.
Setting up the night vision camera, she had one mission; to find out who was responsible for the scratches on her daughter’s body. She was hell-bent on figuring this out.
When she finally watched the video, their quaint little house turned into a nightmare. She saw a figure of a man in Lily’s nursery. She couldn’t make out who it was through the blurry footage but she was certain this shadow was a man.
Heather’s mind went straight to Joshua. He was sleepwalking after all! It was just as she thought! But wait, why hadn’t he told her about it? Why was he keeping it a secret?
She continued to watch the rest of the footage to find out more. But what she saw next sent a shiver down her spine. What was she looking at?
In the grainy video, an adult male walks past her daughter’s crib. Lily, aware that someone was in the room, pulls herself up and looks around the room out of curiosity.
When the man turned his face toward the camera, Heather finally saw that it was not the man she thought it was. Her heart thudded louder and louder at the realization that this man was a complete stranger.
She continued to watch the terrifying recording. The stranger continued to roam around Lily’s room. Heather’s stomach knotted. Who was this man?
She replayed the clip over and over again, especially the part where the man becomes completely transparent as he moves past Lily. An icy chill ran through her body as she thought, “ghost”. She pulled Lily closer. She had to tell Joshua. They had to get out.
After Joshua viewed the footage he said, “It was chilling… It was literally a chill down your spine, like that ‘what if’ factor — Is this what I just saw?”.
“Seeing Lily’s face with the scratches was so bizarre and frightening,” Heather said. “I was crying, ‘What happened to you?’. I grabbed her jacket and ran over to my mother-in-law’s house. Nobody knew what happened. We wondered if she’d scratched herself, but when we put her hands up to the scratches it did not match up.”
After watching the video, Joshua’s stomach knotted in fear, his face pale. He had to get his family out of there as soon as possible. He was completely terrified.
Gasping, he ran out the door with Lily and Heather and immediately called the police, who referred him to the Scientific Paranormal Investigations of Michigan. And what they found rattled him even more.
Mike Priest, co-owner of Scientific Paranormal Investigations of Michigan, immediately sent out a team to investigate the highland home. But what they discovered only made Heather and Joshua more determined than ever to leave.
After reviewing the evidence, they concluded that the main house, and indeed the guest house attached to it, could really be haunted.
This wasn’t the first strange occurrence in that house. “I woke up to get ready for work one morning and it felt like someone was choking me,” Heather said in an interview. “It shook me to the point where I decided to buy our camera.”
She hadn’t told Joshua about this incident because she knew he wouldn’t believe her. “There have been times where me and my fiancé would wake up in the morning and I would hear an angry male voice – like someone had stubbed their toe,” she added.
Mike Priest and his team are set to return to the house soon to continue with their paranormal investigation. He hopes to find exactly what was recorded in Lily’s room that night. He explains that their goal will be to replicate the recording or find a logical explanation for the video before calling it paranormal activity.
But Joshua’s mother, Kris, who has owned the house for 11 years, may be able to shed some light on who could be haunting the family.
“I was told when we bought the houses 11 years ago the lady who owned the property died in the main house,” Kris said.
“It’s an old farmhouse and according to her niece… she fell down the stairs, broke her hips and laid there for a very long time before she passed away. She said that the guesthouse was built for the lady’s brother who was schizophrenic.” But Joshua’s father, Jim, has another theory.
Jim is convinced that the man who is terrorizing Heather and Joshua is a previous tenant of the guesthouse. “The gentleman that lived here originally… (jumped) out this window, which is one story down,” he explained.
Although Heather and Joshua are no closer to finding out who is roaming around their baby’s room at night, they know what to do about it.
“It scares us that it could do something else,” Heather said. “It’s not physically just going after her, it feels like it’s going after myself too… This has made us want to leave as soon as possible…
“This is a spirit. I don’t know what its intentions are, but at this point, it’s becoming physically harmful.” But not everyone agrees.
Although the video, released by Heather and Joshua on social media, has become a viral sensation overnight and has chilled many viewers to the bone, there are also some skeptics.
Some people do not believe that the figure in the video is an apparition at all and say that what was captured on film is far more likely to have a very simple explanation.
Kenny Biddle, a paranormal investigator writes, “I would surmise either (Heather) and/or (Joshua) had been watching television and had reason to get up out of bed,
“perhaps go down to the kitchen for a drink/food or a visit to the bathroom, paused the video and walked across the room not realizing they were being recorded”. He continued…
“At a later, unspecified time, they reviewed the footage, and due to a lack of understanding of video cameras, concluded the distorted figure was a ghost.” But how does he explain the scratches on Lily?
“Aside from the technical issues, it is not uncommon for babies to scratch themselves. We know from her statements that (Heather) discovered the scratches after waking the baby up from a nap,” Kenny wrote. Then after digging deeper into the story, Kenny discovered something interesting.
“I’m not sure exactly what the motivation behind these claims is, but I do have my suspicions”, he wrote.
“I went to Heather Brough’s Facebook page earlier today and noticed that she posted her first public post since November of 2018; it was a link to a GoFundMe account she had created that day (March 26, 2019) with a goal of $5,000”. What was this for?
Kenny explained, “She was asking for this amount to help her move out of the guest house, citing her daughter’s safety from all the paranormal activity as the main reason for the fundraising.”
Then, with his suspicions alarming, Kenny reached out to Heather directly with a Facebook message. He wanted to find out more about this incident, directly from her.
He wrote, “Hello, my name is Kenny Biddle, and I’ve been investigating paranormal claims for the last 20+ years. Your video of what is believed to be a ghost walking in your house was brought to my attention by several paranormal groups.
“After taking a look at it, I was wondering if there was a longer clip – perhaps footage showing the few minutes leading up to (and including) the clip that was shared on ABC Action News. The clip that has been shared starts with the figure already in motion, and I was hoping to see where it originates”. We wonder what her response will be, but what do you think?
