Christopher Case – A Tale of Predictions and Shadows

On April 18, 1999, police entered Christopher Case‘s apartment, and they discovered his body. The coroner came in and was able to determine in relative short order that Christopher had died of natural causes.

However, when friends and family got a hold of the coroner’s report, they turned to the police and said, “Wait, have you not heard what was happening to Chris in the week leading up to his death?”

So, police began interviewing the friends and family of Chris, and they unraveled this totally insane story that, to this day, baffles investigators.

By early 1999, Christopher Case was living his best life. He was 35 years old, had moved out to Seattle to pursue a career in music, and had landed a job at a music company in Seattle. He had risen to the rank of executive at that company.

Christopher Case was incredibly fit, known for being at the gym seven days a week, took vitamins, took his health very seriously. He had loads of friends, people really liked him. He was very close with his family. Despite all that popularity and success, he had been single for years.

Even though he was not actively seeking a companion, his friends and family were continuously trying to set him up on dates. But Chris would prefer to stay home by himself and listen to music because Chris had an obsession with a very specific type of music.

Christopher Case loved music from ancient times, specifically from Egypt. So, he would stay home instead of going out on dates and crush ancient Egyptian music. That was like his idea of a great night.

On April 11th of 1999, Chris was on a business trip. Part of his job required a ton of travel, and he was on a trip with a couple of his co-workers who were also friends of his. They go out to San Francisco, and on the 11th, they decided to go out for dinner that night.

One of his co-workers decides to bring along a friend who lived in the area. So, they get to dinner, and one of them has their friend, an older woman, very attractive, intense-looking woman. She was about 20 years older than Chris.

She sits down, and the four of them are having a nice conversation. At some point, the older woman takes a keen interest in Chris, and Chris takes an interest in her because it turns out they had a lot in common. She admitted to him that she was really into music from ancient times and had a specific interest in music from ancient Egypt. To Chris, this was like, “How can this be?” This was his passion. He loved that type of music, and they really hit it off.

Christopher Case was not looking for any romantic involvement with this woman. He was just excited to talk about something he loved. All night, Chris and this older woman are chatting it up and are super into each other.

He was looking at her purely from a platonic sense, but it became clear by the end of the night, at least Chris was realizing this, that she was looking at him with a romantic angle. She was interested in Chris.

In fact, right as he’s kind of realizing this, she asks him if he wants to leave with her and go back to her place. He politely declines because he’s not interested. He loved chatting with her about music and other things they had in common, but he wasn’t interested in her romantically.

She became a bit more aggressive and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve got a place right down the road. We can go listen to music and hang out at my place.” He felt really uncomfortable and kept saying no, but she wouldn’t let it go. Finally, as she’s literally trying to get him to say yes, he says, “Hey, you know what? I’ve had a long night. I’m gonna go.”

So, he stands up to leave, and the woman goes from being very flirtatious and friendly to very angry at Chris. She looks at him and abruptly says to him, “I’m actually a witch, and I’m going to put a curse on you. You’re gonna be dead within a week.” He just leaves.

The next morning, on April 12th, Christopher Case gets up and heads to the airport. He flies back to Seattle. When he lands in Seattle, he calls his friend Sammy, who was one of his very close friends back when he lived on the East Coast. He just wanted to share this weird experience with a close friend.

They’re laughing about the whole thing. Neither of them is taking the curse seriously at all. It’s like, “You really dodged a bullet. It’s good you did not go home with her.” In good spirits, Chris hangs up the phone with Sammy.

For the next 24 hours, Chris falls right back into his regular daily life in Seattle. Nothing out of the ordinary happens, but all that would change starting the night of April 13th, which would have been 48 hours after his encounter with this woman in San Francisco.

Christopher Case lives alone, doesn’t have pets, and he gets into bed that night. Before he falls asleep, he hears whispering coming from outside of his bedroom in the kitchen area, near the front door.

He’s thinking to himself, “I didn’t just hear whispering. No one’s in here. What’s going on?” He hears the whispering, and then it stops. Before he gets up to investigate, he thinks, “Okay, I probably was just hearing things. That wasn’t real.” He’s just kind of laying there, trying to go to sleep. Then he hears it again, except now it’s not coming from the kitchen area. It’s coming from a separate area in his apartment outside of the room he’s in.

Now he’s wondering, “Did someone sneak into my house? Is there a burglar in my house right now?” He quietly gets out of bed, walks over to his door, opens it up, and can still hear the whispering. It’s coming from his laundry room a little ways away. As soon as he opens the door and pokes his head out, the whispering stops. He’s just standing there, looking around, hoping that there isn’t anything in his apartment.

Out of the corner of his eye, near the front door, he sees something dash across his periphery like a shadowy figure. It darts across the room. He looks over, immediately afraid that it’s a burglar in his room. As he’s looking, turning the light on next to him, looking around, he starts hearing the whispering again, and now it’s coming from another section of his house.

Christopher Case starts turning on all the lights, looking around to make sure no one’s in his apartment. He’s not even thinking about the whispering. He’s just looking for the shadowy figure that he saw run past him. He’s looking all over his apartment. All the lights are on. It’s a small apartment.

As soon as he feels comfortable that the door is locked still, everything’s locked, and there’s nobody here, that’s when he realizes that the whispering is still happening. He turns back around, and now the whispering’s coming from his bedroom where he was.

Christopher Case walks over to his bedroom and looks inside. He can’t pinpoint the whispering. He keeps hearing it and walking to wherever it’s coming from, and as soon as he gets near it, the whispering stops. He’s thinking to himself, “Am I dreaming? Is this a dream? Am I losing my mind? Did somebody slip me something last night? What’s wrong with me?”

Christopher Case has this horrible night where he’s up all night chasing down whispers in his apartment that keep vanishing and then seeing shadowy figures running around and lurking in corners. But he can’t ever see them when he looks at them.

The next morning, on April 14th, when the sun comes up, he hasn’t slept. The first phone call he makes is to Sammy, his friend. We know about this phone call because Sammy would tell the police about all her interactions with Chris over the course of this week.

She would say that he was totally panicked. She even thought, as she’s taking this phone call, that it’s just so weird that Chris is scared of noises in his apartment and figures moving around in his apartment because it’s so unlike Chris. He’s definitely a skeptic.

He’s a no-BS kind of guy. The idea that he would suddenly be terrified of something paranormal running around his apartment just seemed so unlike him. As she’s listening to him, he was so scared about what was in his apartment. He knew it wasn’t a person because he looked everywhere.

There was no people. That’s the only reason he didn’t call the police is because he didn’t want to tell the police that some shadow figure that’s whispering in my apartment is harassing me. What are the police gonna do? Sammy hangs up the phone with Chris after trying to reassure him and just hopes that whatever that was doesn’t happen again.

Unfortunately for Christopher Case, the night of the 14th, now he’s going to bed again, and he starts hearing the whispers. Immediately, he’s out there, looking, lights on, looking for these whispers that keep disappearing. He can’t find the source.

He’s getting frustrated. He’s scared. He keeps seeing that thing dart around his apartment. Except this night, he also notices that he would look, and he could get close enough to where he could break out the silhouette of what looked like a person lingering in the corner of his apartment.

He’d go closer to it; it would disappear. It was like the manifestations of what he was seeing, the whispers and this figure running around his apartment, were becoming more vivid. But he’s also thinking, “I didn’t sleep the night before. This could be my imagination. I don’t know if this is happening.”

But he’s spiraling, and he knows it. So, the next day, on the 15th, he doesn’t call Sammy, but he calls a couple of his other friends that are anonymous, and they would all tell police that they got a similar story that Sammy had gotten that first night after the 14th.

No matter what was happening, Chris believed it was happening, and Chris was terrified. But this wasn’t even the worst of it yet.

That night, on the 15th, Chris gets in bed. Now he’s barely slept for two consecutive nights, and he’s determined to just go to sleep, telling himself that everything he’s experienced the past couple nights is probably brought on by stress, brought on by now certainly a lack of sleep.

He’s telling himself, “Just go to sleep. Just get in bed and go to sleep.” He gets in bed, lays there, falls asleep, wakes up in the middle of the night. He can’t move his body. He’s paralyzed, can’t move. He’s totally awake. He starts hearing whispering.

Now, his level of fear is so high because now he’s immobile, but the past two nights, he’s heard that whispering in his apartment, and he’s seen that figure moving around his apartment. He’s laying there in darkness because he went to bed in darkness, and he starts hearing whispering outside his room.

Then it stops. He starts hearing whispering inside of his closet. Then it stops. Then he hears whispering right underneath his bed. He can’t move, just laying there, praying that nothing horrible is going to happen, that this is just a dream.

Then, out from underneath his bed, right next to him, this black figure, this shadowy black figure emerges right next to his bed. He can only turn his eyes. This figure is hovering over him, reaching down, puts his hands around his neck, begins to throttle him.

Christopher Case is gagging, can’t breathe, but can’t move. At some point, the thing begins to lift him off his bed by his neck, then throws him back down, and the figure vanishes. Chris still can’t move. He’s choking to breathe, but he can’t move. He’s just waiting for this thing to come back, and he knows that more than likely, whatever this is, is probably going to kill him this night.

He’s laying there, thinking, “Oh my God, I’m about to die. I’m about to die.” But the thing doesn’t come back, and Chris can’t move. At some point, Chris, probably out of just pure adrenaline crash or something, falls asleep. When Chris wakes up and can move again, he notices there’s blood inside of his bed on his sheets. He looks at his hands, and at the tips of all ten fingers are these incisions, like someone had intentionally cut open the top of every finger, something he certainly didn’t do.

His bed is covered in blood from these ten cuts on his hands. Then he feels his neck, and it feels tender. It turns out he had marks on his neck. It was all bruised up from this thing choking him out. It brought him back to like, “That really happened.” He’s now actually in fear for his life.

Chris immediately calls Sammy and tells Sammy everything that happened. Sammy can’t believe any of it; she feels helpless because she’s on the other side of the country.

She can’t help him, and Chris is just petrified. He can barely speak; he’s unable to articulate what’s happening. He describes cuts on his hand and his neck, but there’s no one in his apartment.

Sammy’s trying to get him to call the police, but Chris is like, “I can’t call the police. What am I gonna tell them? That a shadowy figure is coming into my apartment and choking me? They’re gonna think I’m crazy.”

Chris decides he’s gonna approach this head-on. Maybe that woman in San Francisco did put some curse on him. He needs to at least research it. So, there was a religious bookstore right near his house that he figured might have some things on demonic possession, demons, the occult.

Christopher Case goes in there and awkwardly approaches the store owner, saying, “I’m looking for books about demons and witchcraft and how to protect yourself against that.” The guy points him towards a section of the store, and Chris goes over there, scoops up a whole bunch of books.

He also buys a whole bundle of crucifixes, at least ten. He’s got all these crucifixes, all these books about demonic possession and witchcraft. He leaves and goes back to his apartment.

After doing some research, he ends up putting these crucifixes all over his apartment, in every room. He takes salt and draws a line all through his apartment against the baseboard of every wall and at every corner.

He piles up little piles of salt; he’s going to do everything that people say to do if you’re dealing with demons or ghosts or anything through witchcraft. He’s grasping at straws a little bit.

That night, which was April 16th, we don’t know what happened to Chris, but something scared him so badly that in the middle of the night, in a full panic, he runs out of his apartment and checks into a hotel. He does not stay at his apartment.

The next morning, April 17th, when Sammy called Chris to check on him, there’s no answer because he’s not there; he’s at the hotel.

Sammy, who’s been speaking to Chris and other friends that have been speaking to Chris, and everyone’s concerned about his mental health, when she doesn’t get Chris to pick up his phone, she calls the police. She says, “Hey, I’m concerned about my friend. Can you do a welfare check on this guy?”

They go over to his apartment; it’s locked. They look in the windows; everything seems quiet. They leave, telling Sammy, “Hey, it’s locked; we can’t really do anything. Let us know if you don’t hear from him in the next couple of days.”

Sammy’s super concerned, so she goes to work on the 17th. When she gets back, she has a voicemail from Chris, who had called her at some point during the day while she was out. On the voicemail, Chris tells her, in a voice different from the past few days when he was scared, now he is defeated.

He is resigned to whatever is going on. He says to Sammy on the voicemail, “I’m under attack, and tonight, they’re gonna kill me. There’s nothing I can do.”

As soon as she’s done listening to the message, Sammy calls Chris, but she can’t get in touch with him. She knows she just talked to the police who were there at his apartment that day. They’re probably just gonna tell her, “Hey, wait until tomorrow; we just told you earlier. Just give it a couple of days.” So, she decides she’s gonna go to bed and try calling him again on April 18.

On the morning of April 18th, Chris didn’t show up for work, and word got back to Sammy. She calls Chris; he’s not picking up from his landline. Now she calls the police back and says, “Hey, you were there yesterday. I know it was locked, but he hasn’t shown up for work today; everybody’s concerned about him. Can you please go over and check?” The police go back over to Chris’s apartment, and this time, the front door is unlocked.

They go inside and are met with this very strange scene. All these crucifixes are on the wall, salt lines every room in the house, burned-down candles, scraps of paper with handwritten messages that Chris left all over the house warding off spirits and demons. It looked like out of a Hollywood set for some demonic movie. They search the house; there’s no sign of Chris. They make their way into the bathroom, where they discover Chris’s body.

Christopher Case was in his bathtub, fully clothed, no water in the bathtub. There are candles around the outside of this bathtub, crucifixes, and weird relics. He’s on his knees, slouched up against the wall, with his hands tucked against his chest. He had no external injuries; he was just dead. The police take Chris’s body, and the coroner comes in and does a report. It comes out that Chris died of natural causes, a heart attack.

When friends and family saw that that was his cause of death, they didn’t buy it. Chris went from this happy, healthy, successful guy to a complete, raving paranoid lunatic in the past seven days.

No one knows why. It’s certainly possible that it was just a very poorly timed heart attack mixed in with someone having a psychotic break. Some people say he really was cursed by that woman in San Francisco, and that was the result.

She said, “You’re gonna die within the week,” and he literally died within the week. He described regularly over the phone to his friends and family, as this was happening, these horrible experiences at night with these shadow beings in his room and attacking him. It’s just this crazy story that, to this day, leaves friends, family, and investigators baffled.

I’d love to hear in the comments what you think happened to Christopher Case. Was this a natural death, or was this something else? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to go through and respond to as many as I possibly can.