Poltergeist (The Man In Black) haunts Tucson mom

[Shadow]

'I would see him walking down the hallway'

POLLY HIGGINS
Tucson Citizen


She has four children, five grandchildren, countless ghosts and one poltergeist. Romie Holguin doesn't get much sleep.

The beginning of the Tucsonan's restless nights dates back about 20 years, when she and husband Fernando Holguin started sniffing around an abandoned, 1950s house on the West Side. Actually, it was Romie who had the poised nose, relentlessly researching and fighting for the home.

"My husband said it was a piece of junk," Romie recalls, sitting on an overstuffed loveseat in the living room of that very house. "I persisted. I was just drawn to it."

The water that covered the floors was drained, cracks were repaired, and, eventually, the approximately 1000-square-foot structure in the Silvercroft neighborhood had six new residents. But Romie unwittingly brought more than her family to the revamped adobe.

Romie calls him The Man in Black.

"I would see him walking down the hallway. He never talked to me," she says, adding that she also never saw his face. It was shrouded, like the Grim Reaper's. "I never told my husband or anyone, because I was afraid I was crazy." Instead, when she felt TMIB's chill, she gathered up her family in the cozy living room for a slumber party, so she could keep everyone close.



Romie Holguin  
Romie's story includes a paranormal investigation – concluding her house has an open-door policy for ghosts and a poltergeist of her own creation – and is at the center of "Cursed." One episode of the Discovery Channel's "A Haunting" series, it airs Nov. 18. The series begins tonight with "Hell House," set in a Connecticut farmhouse.

"It's an extraordinarily scary situation," says producer Larry Silverman of "Cursed." "I just can't imagine what she went through all those years, keeping it to herself. Her whole thing was keeping strong for her family."

Occurrences became routine for Romie and, of the children, son Johnny, who at age 4 saw The Man in Black as well as a girl in a pink dress. Sometime during 1993, she estimates, The Man attacked Romie in her sleep, leaving jagged bite marks on her left biceps. In other instances, he tried to suffocate her.

The family would refer to the spirits as The Others, but, beyond that, Romie says, "We never really talked about it."

That was until two years ago, when grandson Alec, then 3, became a target. At first the events were innocuous enough. He saw the girl in the pink dress, and he began communicating with "Michael." Romie hoped he was just an imaginary friend.

"Then things started getting very violent," she says.

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Alec, witnessed by Fernando, Romie says, was pushed down the stairs by some mysterious force. And Romie saw her grandson – "grandbaby," as she calls him – get smacked in the forehead, the force of which sent Alec reeling into glass candleholders.

Scared and concerned, Romie contacted Amy Allan, a local paranormal investigator she had heard on the Johnjay and Rich morning program on KRQ (93.7-FM). Because a child had been threatened, Allan says, she wanted to get to the Holguin house immediately.

Allan approached the home with fellow "sensitives" – a psychic and a medium – and technologies including a temperature gauge and electromagnetic frequency reader. Among the impressions the three sensitives garnered was "this black figure, that was intimidating and aggressive. Yet it didn't have a personality. It was just a menacing force, basically," Allan says. The Man in Black.