Beware, for the Dead Do Not Speak

One of the things I’ve always had a healthy fear of, even though I have been guilty of it, is using psychics, mediums, and card readers. Once, going through a Dundalk farmer’s market, I was walking aimlessly, just browsing about. For a reason I didn’t understand at the time, I got to a spot where I stopped walking. I wasn’t looking at anything; I just stopped and seemed to have no idea of what surrounded me. I can’t say that it was dissociative, as I have extensive experience with that. All I can tell you is that I drew a complete blank. I don’t know how long it lasted, either. I have no idea at all.

All I can say is that when I became aware again, I was looking at a beautiful woman seated at a table. An older woman was on the edge of my vision but distanced herself because whatever brought it on, I was being seduced by the beauty of the one seated at the table. She was definitely of Mediterranean or an Eastern European descent. She had me under some kind of enchantment or spell, and it was mildly unpleasant. I was being drawn to her against my will. I didn’t notice that all sounds in the busy market had been silenced until she asked, “Would you like a reading ?”

I knew better than to have anything to do with divination. The Bible warns that such things are an abomination to God. My sister had once had a terrifying experience with two friends and an ouija bqoard. I never saw those friends of hers again. But she never told me what happened. She did get our father to throw it away. Trash collection day arrived, and while the truck was passed, she screamed. Our parents ran to her room. She was hysterical. The board was back in its place, on the shelf in her closet. Next, our father broke the board in two and smashed the pointer, or planchette. But the next collection day saw it back on her shelf in one piece. She screamed again, and even I saw it. But this time the old man had had enough. See, he didn’t like being scared. He hated showing fear even more, as if it threatened his position as head of the house. Or his “manhood.”

So on that night, a cold autumn evening, he built a nice fire in the fireplace. Again, the board “showed” its unwillingness to go. Now I can’t remember what color the flames were, but they were either blue or green, and in my mind, I seem to remember green flames consuming the thing. He even fed the box and the planchette to the fire.

It would be easy for me to add detail, but my memory only goes this far, and beyond that, it’s unreliable, and I’d be lying. I won’t do that.

What I can tell you is that evil wasn’t new to the house, but after that night, everything got worse.

Sexual abuse by both parents. Terrible abuse. Beatings no child should ever get. Verbal abuse and conditioning. I can’t speak for my 7 siblings, but I know none were left untouched. How it affected them, I can’t say. But my life has been quite messy.

I learned a lesson from those 3 screaming girls who ran screaming out of my sister’s bedroom on that dark fall afternoon. You don’t mess with the ouija. Over the years, researching the paranormal, that lesson was repeatedly reinforced.

Therefore, I have no excuse to offer as to why I sat down across from the beautiful woman and paid money for a card reading. But one thing I sensed was that the older woman was exercising power of some kind over me. I felt it, but I also knew it. It was knowledge. Intuition didn’t play any part in it. And that was scary. Really scary.

The cards came up. I was going to travel to a place I would not want to go. I was going to meet someone who would make me never want to be without her. I don’t remember anything else.

Except for the curse. Someone, she said, was very jealous of me. They had placed a curse on me. It would take 80 bucks for her to (privately) light candles and “say a few words” to break the curse.

I didn’t pay. Except, I did. Just consulting her was a grave sin. Bad things did happen, as if trouble hadn’t already dogged me enough in my life.

This is when I had my first heart attack at age 38. There’s a long list. But the point is, I’d done something, among other somethings, that brought the wrath of God and allowed demons an open door policy to harass me, which they absolutely did.

My sins were too much for me to think about. Sick things, mean things, perverted things. I’d occasionally say a prayer asking for forgiveness, but coming from a sinner who intends to keep sinning, it could only anger the Lord more. Only I didn’t see it that way. I blame no one except myself, but I have never encountered again the power I felt drawing me to that woman. And I think that the old woman had much to do with it. She was strong. But she didn’t get her power naturally. It was pure evil.

Talking to the dead

This is especially offensive to God. We’re warned not to try, yet it has become a profession. TV shows glamorize it. YouTube channels specialize in it. Foolish people go to cemeteries at night equipped with spirit boards or are accompanied by mediums. You are forbidden this, but people unaware of how evil it is,do it anyway. Some feel a thrill and fear, especially teenagers and young adults. They even do it at 03:00, an hour best spent far away from such actions and deeds. In fact, even offering gifts like flowers to the dead is a sin. Once a person is passed away, they do not hear or see you. Flowers are money wasted. The effort and the visit are not just useless, but the places of the dead hold spiritual dangers you can’t possibly know until it’s too late. When we die, there’s no way to interact with the living. People who die and have out-of-body experiences are always sure to say that they rise from their body and can even look down and see it. None ever say that they spoke to a loved one and were heard. They all say that they’re helpless to communicate. That is, until they reach their destination: heaven or hell. When they are spared, this is something the experiencer always says. Most even say that they feel their detachment and lack emotional reactions to whatever is happening.

That’s a very clear indication that you shouldn’t try talking to the departed. Should you ever get an answer when you attempt it, you will not be in contact with anything human. You have in fact opened a door to the spiritual world. If you keep going, something will come through that door. Something just for you. And you’re not going to like it.

After decades of study, I can’t cite source material, nor would I reveal the identity of anyone who may have told me a personal story. Take my words to heart. People report being attacked both spiritually and physically by unseen or shadow beings, and even atheists have felt the need to seek a priest. A spiritual attachment happens when a demon is not allowed to possess you but does have permission to attack and harass. Sometimes, this attachment is as difficult to break as an actual exorcism.

What the demons could be are lifelong followers assigned just for you or a loved one. They can briefly look like a lost loved one, and they may, in extreme cases, talk to you through a spirit board and convince you by what it knows about the departed. That demon had followed the dead person around in life, unseen. It knows things. It will hook you into asking it more, which doesn’t end well if you tell it to show itself. It will not be who you’re expecting.

Instead of the dead, concentrate on the living, who you can help through prayer, faith, and a loving heart.

I used to wonder and worry about where my children went when they died. I would pray for their souls.

This was to no avail. It’s clear that they have gone to the places they earned during life. I must accept that and not dwell on things I can’t change.

Leave the dead alone. They are far beyond your reach. Except for funerals, stay away from cemeteries and other places of the dead. Because while you live, you can make a difference in the life or lives of the living. That’s a high calling and far more worthy of your time.

The Devil Makes Deals, But Man, Don’t You Know His Price?

“All the devil asks is acquiescence; not conflict, not struggle. Acquiescence.”

Years ago, I read a story that Katy Perry had sold her soul to Satan, so that he would make her a star.

If I doubt the writer’s veracity, it’s because on the internet, stories like this are everywhere. Yet the theme, deals made with Satan, have been around forever. They go so far back that it was rumored a pope had made such a pact. Actually you could say that about almost any of the more antiquated papacies but the theme has been applied to many people from all around the world, usually famous, or of some association with historic events and medical or scientific breakthroughs.

The obvious question here is, are any of them true?

The proper answer is, I don’t know. Nor can anyone else unless they have proof. Of the deceased who had made contracts with the devil, it has been said that they are in Hell for eternity. I say, “prove it”.

But is there proof?

Many who have had near-death experiences have, if you are willing to believe them, indeed brought back proof. A notorious gangster went there and saw someone he knew, an old colleague and friend, and then more appeared. They screamed at him to go back; for him not to cross to where they were. He knew all of them to actually have died, and when he was revived, he completely changed in every way.

We’ve all heard or read stories like this. One of the more well-known concerns a pastor who had formerly been a very evil man. In a hospital in Europe, his long-suffering wife at his bedside, he awaited surgery for a perforated stomach, a condition made worse by the lining largely separating from the stomach. In other words, his stomach lining was being sloughed, much like a crab making room to grow sloughs its shell. The condition was fatal. He looked at his wife and said, “It’s time we said goodbye”.

He said two nurses appeared at the door and they told him that they were taking him to surgery. But not with a gurney; he was on his feet. He followed them into the hallway and through double doors. On the other side there was no man-made structure, just a rocky cave tunnel. The floor declined, leading down. The nurses turned into horrible demons that couldn’t wait to start tormenting him. Others moved in and surrounded him, clawing him, screaming, laughing. Finally he, an atheist, called out to God for help.

He found himself back in the hospital, on his back, being wheeled to emergency surgery. He reconciled with his wife, changed everything, and became a Christian pastor.

What are we to make of such stories, and how do some people react to it differently than others? Why would someone ignore such a horrific account and still deny that God is real?

And, if so many deny His existence, why then do they not deny Satan’s?

The proper answer is, I don’t know.

Back to the original question then: do people make deals with the devil, and can their meteoric rise in power and fame honestly be caused by an unseen entity?

I am not even mentioning Robert Johnson and the “Crossroads demon” as, naturally, everyone knows it or can easily look it up, but there is one thing worth saying, and it is the obvious: though he played guitar like he was born to it, things did not turn out well for him. The story has been adapted and retold ever since, and perhaps the most memorable version of the Crossroads demon was in the series Supernatural.

Fiction aside, there is a running theme with humanity, and it is that always, gods or God have been worshipped, sacrificed to, and prayed to. We seek a spiritual higher power and it is natural, much as the drive to procreate and continue our species.

There have always been unbelievers no matter what form of religion the society in which they lived held to be real. They usually pose no threat so long as they do not use their denial of higher power as an excuse to commit evil actions. No matter; they were, harmless though they may have been, often tortured and executed. Today in Islamic countries, especially Pakistan, mobs will kill anyone accused of blasphemy or apostasy, and they obviously don’t know the difference, or do they care to know.

Lately, as in the past, there has been a highly popular movement to deny others the right to their own beliefs. In my country not everyone is fine with advocating for the rights of Muslims and Eastern religious practitioners, but mention being a Christian and belief in the holy trinity, and the atheists will bare fangs and foam at the mouth.

As I have long said, certain sects, even cults, shine a spotlight on twisted Christian beliefs. Of course it overwhelms any particular spectator and causes them to see every Christian in the same light; it is the same for Muslim and any other extremist: evildoers using religious superstition to gain everything from money to earthly power and indulgences. All justified by the misuse of the Bible.

Often I use Joel Osteen as an example of a charlatan and a grifter because if you listen to him speak, you’ll notice his almost hypnotic ability to get you sentimental and therefore get your money. TV evangelical “preachers” always come around to money: they need it.

The most shameful example I can think of is when Oral Roberts wept atop his dais and said God had issued an ultimatum to him. Raise x amount of dollars, or die. I’ve looked for this video clip, and found way too many things for me to catch up on before I can write more specifically on the subject.

What strikes me is that it hit the news like any scandal should, and what a scandal it was, too: here was a man crying openly and lying his ass off. The godly ultimatum was so disgusting that some students at his “university” migrated to other places or even lost their faith.

Then something strange happened: the press pulled back.

Why the fuck would they do that?

Oh, he made the money, all right. And then some, and bragged about it just to rub it in. Like all of his kind do, from Osteen hawking his motivational CDs to Pat Robertson having telethon episodes and offering “gold’ memberships, he made money his god. His master.

Yeshua of Nazareth once said, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He also said that a man can never serve two masters, God and money.

Now, if you belive in the truest sense of Christ, you take that on faith, but you should also have seen it made apparent right in front of you that gaining wealth changes a person. If it has happened to a friend, then they either aren’t your friend any longer, or there is a gulf between you, and sometimes you, being a genuine friend to him, end up being kept around as an emotional sounding board or worse. This is why Jesus likened a camel passing through the eye of a needle to a rich man gaining the Kingdom of God. The eye he was talking about was a gate in the wall around a town or city. The walls weren’t effective against an attack from a military force. But they could help keep out predators like wolves, lions, large cats and whatever else was lurking at night.

The city’s gates were often small and kept attacking cavalry in a cataract to be easily picked off by defending soldiers. But against infantry, once a gate was opened, there was little defense.

Gates would be integrated in walls or a gap topped by heavy lintels. Camels were too tall to get in under most lintels.

For the rich, it is not the money itself that’s evil. It is always the lust for more, for power, for fame that goes with it so naturally. That’s where the devil comes in, preying on our imperfections, our weaknesses. All he needs now is the handshake.

This agreement may have been in place before the acquisition of money, but whichever order they take, where there is one, the other is there as well. Anyone who follows the true teachings of Jesus will immediately get rid of the money. The poor only need so much, then they share. Give to the poor, shelter the children, feed the hungry. This has always been our highest obligation as humans, and yet it is far too rare.

Where we see unprecedented numbers of people suffering from malnutrition and death by hunger, unprecedented numbers of homeless people, and a breakdown of society from healthcare to invasive animals, and from disease, the government only makes everything worse because of an influence of wealth.

Powerful men have the money and political clout to make mass extinction a probability, not a mere possibility. It will happen. We will never be free of fossil fuel burning. Electric cars don’t burn gasoline, but the electric power to charge them is hardly green; that comes from coal-fired electrical power plants and there is no plan in place to build any more nuclear power plants. And big money continues to fight wind farms; our climate change will progress as the most dire predictions have warned. And even if every single carbon-producing source were stopped this very minute, temperatures would still climb because of what is already in our atmosphere. And yes, I believe the line, that temperature point beyond which there is no stopping widespread disaster, has been crossed. Anyone claiming otherwise is living in a different world. It is delusional to believe that we are not in serious danger. And what do some experts say will happen after the climate reaches maximum temperatures and atmospheric carbon particles (along with a wide range of poisonous chemicals which exist above the altitudes where rain can wash them back to earth)?

An ice age. One so deep that all surviving life on Earth will perish. The oceans would freeze all the way to the sea floors. We would become a glowing white marble in the vast universe. Devoid of life and hostile to anything living.

Back to the original question then: have the rich and famous made deals with the devil?

I’ll ask another: is it not possible that, in gaining fame, fortune and everything most people want, they have given up their soul to Satan, because one cannot serve two masters, God and money?

The proper answer is, Almost certainly, they have.

It is the only answer that I can give with any honesty at all. But there are plenty of things that need to be considered.

There are, for one thing, more than campfire stories that prove the existence of evil.

Let us delve into the darkness in our quest.

People have little problem with the dark side of the supernatural. I’m talking about demons, malevolent ghosts, curses, inexplicable phenomena and behavior, and all the trimmings. Frightening stuff to be sure. But what was relegated to books when I was younger has now gained major audiences online and in movies and television, and yes, music, too. Music, I might add, that cannot be disputed as to its nature. It makes all but the most jaded of us cringe indescribably.

With reality shows, everything has gotten worse. It is an age of lies, fabrications that people eat because they love to be scared in the controllable medium of theater as opposed to real life (and in cases like Big Brother, our weakness to voyeurism). Reality TV does not exist. All shows are scripted, directed. Even the most trusted news channels have all turned to ratings-raising, fear-mongering, salacious content. It’s a show, a competition to see who can get away with what. Money, remember, is always involved, at the top of the pyramid. Lots of it. Selling time for commercial ads is an industry and has been, and will be until the last transmitter goes dark. It’s about what sells. Always.

Somewhere underneath all the beer commercials, fast food, car insurance and whatever you might wish to reference, lies a truth. It is there, however smothered or massacred it may be.

What do insurance ads really do? Sure, some are funny. But they’re there to remind you of the more terrible things life holds in store for you. Injury, death. “…and if you have cut-rate insurance, you could be paying for this yourself. So get Allstate and be better protected from Mayhem like me.”

The ads are effective. The revenue says so.

Then we have part of our answer. Irregardless of the risk, a greater fear propels us to do or say or commit to something.

Even atheists fear Hell, but cannot admit it. People are less motivated to behave a certain way in life in spite of the risks. Because nothing hurts like hunger, not being able to get medicine, watching your child suffer, when there is another way. And it may be evil, this other way, but that can be put out of mind.

Pray to God, but without faith, expecting a grand miracle, and when nothing changes, curse Him. Now you’re on the dark side and whether you mean to or not, it is possible — and easy — to invoke “help” from another source.

And that source is the devil. Only, where God asks for nothing but an answer to the call for repentance and for earnest faith and prayer, the devil will stop at nothing to destroy everything you love, everything you own, and with it all, take your health and your life.

Let us choose another topic then, one we all know at least something about: summoning spirits such as a Crossroads demon, using spirit or ouija boards, engaging in seances or black summons rituals.

It’s real. All of it. When I was very young, a child, my older sister and two friends got together in her room. It was after school on an autumn day, the time of year when darkness falls too quickly. With the darkness, her door shut and locked, the three girls used a ouija board. I don’t recall how much time passed, but of a sudden, they screamed and the two friends fled the house, squealing and sobbing. I’ll never be able to get it out of my head.

The conversations that followed between my sister and my parents were exclusive. But it was decided to get rid of the ouija board. My parents, in particular my father, read widely on esoteric subjects, and so for him to get down with trashing the board, he was rattled. And that means not just the board, but the box and all.

In the 1960s I never saw a plastic trash can. Nor wheels on a bin. They were galvanized steel and heavy. We had a tall one with a handle on each side which I could not carry. We had a shorter one though with a harp handle like a bucket has, and it locked down the lid when it was raised. I don’t know if I can say which one the board was in, but it doesn’t matter. I had to help my mother take the cans to the street. I know the bloody board was in there because I saw it.

Early next morning there was a loud scream. My sister was in tears and everyone rushed in, even I. On the top shelf of her closet, a stack of board games including Green Ghost, Candyland and others. Sandwiched between them, the ouija board, box and all.

My father was not one for hysterics; he had a more hands-on approach. When frightened or angered, he got physical. With us. This wasn’t one of those times. This was bigger than him. He broke the board in half, crushed the planchette, and even tore the box in half. Back to the trash can and out to the street it went. Next morning, it was whole again, back on the shelf, and by now, after all the time gone by, I feel sympathy towards them. I was too young to get what was going on, and although scared, I couldn’t fully understand why.

After that, my father decided to burn the board. Some say that if a board comes back, a foul spirit is actively attached but trying to get away from the board, so burning the board releases the demon.

Someone should have told my parents that.

I was with him when he did it. Our house got cold quickly on autumn nights, and when fuel oil for the furnace was low, a fire was a big deal. I’d sit on the hearth until my back was dangerously hot. Ah, to be warm again.

He broke the board, tore the box, threw them into a roaring fire, and the plastic went, too. And it worked. The ashes did not reform into a board. But the flames as it burned were remarkable: green or blue, I don’t remember which, but I asked what it meant. I know now. Now, I know.

My sister never said what happened that night, refused to speak of it. Her friend Sherry never visited again. The other friend’s family moved clear across the country.

Things began to turn really nightmarish in the house. A younger brother, years later, said he’d had a vivid nightmare and got up to seek comfort from our parents only to be confronted by a “midget” who terrified him. As he tells the story of that night now, it was not a midget (what little people were called back then) but a child-size shadow person, black with shining red eyes. The shining eyes, he says, were like an animal’s at night when facing headlights.

A younger sister saw what she described as the Frankenstein monster walk past her door in the middle of the night. The abuse intensified. The shadow thing I’d been so terrorized by seemed to influence mother, and I occasionally saw a much larger shadow, in the shape of a man, outside my parents’ bedroom door.

In the literature of theology this epic timeline indicates a small, weak demon being fed by fear and anger it caused and growing stronger and larger.

Our father had a story he told: he’d once been in business with a partner, building and landscaping somewhere in Northern North Carolina or Southern Virginia. He said the partner double-crossed him, and he killed his partner and disposed of the body. It is probably a lie, but he was every bit as capable of it as any other sociopath who’s violent and has a bad temper.

He had, by then, moved on to his third wife. First came Janey, whom I cannot find any information on. It is not known if they had any children. Then came the second wife whose name I guard with my life. She is my step-mother, as is Janey. I’d love to meet them both.

But what happened between or before wives, I don’t know. Bad things, to be very honest. He was troubled, but intelligent. He was also a schemer, a pervert and an abuser very early on. Two wives had to run away from him.

By the time he married my mother, and I was born, he had come into some money and moved two years later to the new house in Maryland. Some would find my guess that he made a deal with the devil to be a bit fantastic, but is it?

There is very scant evidence of the dead partner story, but in that business, the two evidently did some of the manual labor themselves. Father had masonry tools like a flat shovel and a hoe that concrete had been allowed to dry on. Had he laid concrete over the grave site and tossed the tools in his car to make his hasty getaway?

This is why I printed silly versions of conspiracy theories before this essay. It is so tempting to play detective even without evidence. What really happened, I don’t know. But all the events that followed made one thing obvious; he had come into a large amount of money, and would continue doing so into the 1970s. Then, by 1980, he began to lose business. By 1981, his warehouse business went bankrupt, and two years later, the trucking company became what’s known as a “fallen flag”: it was no more.

I cannot help but believe that his early adult years and strict upbringing (it was a violent one), as well as his interest in the occult, somehow led to him making an unholy vow, a deal with the devil.

Then came the house in Pasadena, Maryland. It would soon be filled with screams, sobbing and foulness.

What I believe is that so much evil dwelt there that the suffering would never stop, only get worse, and it did. A younger sister was sexually abused with such harrowing perversity that I still cannot print a description of it. Another younger sister ran away, eloped, and infuriated our parents because they had lost control. My father held a .357 magnum, loaded and cocked, to my head and told me that if I had broken the code of silence, he would find out, and kill me (I had indeed broken The Code of Silence, but the law did not handle it well).

I also, after many years of contemplation, believe that the evil entity in my room had been attached to either or both parents, and came with them to their new house in 1962. It soon picked me as a target to terrorize, and became more powerful.

My parents had mental issues, obviously, but that doesn’t account for everything. What happened, what I’ve told you, was all real.

Their handshake with the devil was done long before they got a new house, a truly new one, bought a business, built it up, had a large family, and I was there when it began to fall apart. I was in the courtroom when they were placed in handcuffs and leg irons with belly chains and sent to prison. Any and all remorse I ever felt for giving testimony is misplaced. Evil was dealt with accordingly.

I often sense the deep fear they had that day, of going to prison, and I do pray for their souls. I am not without pity.

Any conversation about deals with the devil would be incomplete without a recap of the subject of corruption in Christian churches, because there’s one more deal with the devil to consider, involving power, leverage, manipulation and a cult.

The rise of Christian nationalism is an unholy terror which is a clear and present danger to the people and the government, as we know it, of the United States of America. And that, my friends, means it is a global threat.

In this article from Time, I find a better detail than I can lay out for you. White, Christian Nationalism is everything that everybody should hate: white supremacy, intolerance of the freedom of choice, intolerance of healthcare and social security services, disability insurance, the freedom of women to wear what they want to (it was decided that in chambers that women must cover their arms) and to choose for themselves whether to carry a fetus or not, or even to use birth control measures. The republican party fully accommodates and panders to the church, the far-right church.

It’s a mistake. It seals the doom for democracy. Canada and Mexico will have hostiles across their borders, and not just the Texas and Minnesota gun nuts. Now, it will be a government which would gladly fire on anyone suspicious. Just as it does already with its own citizens.

Republicans cheer Russia’s war, applaud demagogues, worship at the altar of threats, wars, ethnic slaughter, forced religion, a police state, nazism, fanaticism of every shape and shade, and they are the lovers of death.

The U.K. will once again stand alone. After Brexit and with the United States under a regime, they will have no help. The conservatives there will have every excuse to stage a coup, and they’re already trying.

If you believe none of this can happen, good for you. You’ve passed your first test to qualify as one who will sit back and let it happen without dissent, without resistance, without remorse, until it’s too late. The left does push back, but in all the wrong ways, making the opposition more resolved. Who can oppose them if not you? Even the Feds are compromised. The best agents of the FBI and Secret Service are leaving, burned out because of the Trump presidency. If we all give up, we all, by our failure to resist alone, make a deal with the devil. No handshake is necessary. No promises to be asked for nor given. All he needs is for you to either not believe he’s real, or to believe but not see the dangers he brings.

My advice is, for what it’s worth, that you never seek these dark beings out. Don’t tempt them. Don’t even look for them. Stay away from Paranormal television and films, never use EVPs, never invite a spirit to write or speak through you. If dealing with the devil is possible, don’t find that out. You will not like what happens next. Stay out of the darkness. Avoid gossip the same way you avoid fire. Treat others with respect and dignity.

And when you miss the marks that define honor, make up for it. Admit that you are wrong, make amends if you can, pray and meditate on it. A sincere apology can greatly lessen the pain of a wound made by words.

Does the devil make deals?

Yes, “it” does. But he hates you. He hates everyone. And if you promise him, whatever he is, anything at all and do not regret it, you won’t like what happens. And the solution? Pray. Give yourself back to God. The time for that just might be running out.

Thanks for your visit here, and be well.

HER Again! I Tried To Kill Her, But She Just Laughed.

Hold up. Let me explain. I’ve written about “her” before. I don’t like the post because it took too long for me to get to the point and then I barely touched it. But the “her” I refer to is not a real person. She comes to me in nightmares so disgusting, terrifying and drawn-out that I never forget a single one. Friday or Saturday night was the worst.

I’ve been sleeping at night for about two weeks now. That’s very unusual. But it’s been okay. Then I was awake for over 40 hours because the pain in my spine was too intense. I couldn’t walk, stand, sit or lie down for long because it hurt, and I always had to move, shift or whatever.

When the time came to go to sleep, when exhaustion took me down, I slept nearly around the clock. I got out of bed after 16:00 and was only awake until 02:00. That’s all it takes. A period of long sleep, restful and restorative, followed by sleeping again within 12 hours. That’s when She comes.

But–

She is not merely a dream figure. Not a real person, either. I’ve long since concluded that demons, or, if you will, evil spirits, can get into our dreams where they are much more free to torment us. In dreams we are defenseless. We do not use our senses of sight and sound. Our brains remain active, but our bodies are shut down. So if God can give people messages through dreams, then certainly, so can the Evil One. But his message is madness, relentless torture and terror.

The demon in my worst nightmares is always a woman and she is always different in appearance. Last night, like most, she was a petite brunette who tapped into my need for female companionship and my loneliness. It began, as always, with her in charge, but this time kissing me passionately. I was immediately revolted and pulled away. I knew that it was Her.

I’ve never seen the house I was in before, and I believe it to have been She who put me in it. Sometomes our minds cooperate by partially rebuilding places we’ve been or seen. She did the rest. I guess, after she left, it filled in more, but was never complete.

She arrived at the door and knocked but I would not let her in. She got in anyway. Sweet, acting innocent and more desperate romantically than ever, she tried to touch me. I backed away, got a sword and ran her through. Twice. She vanished, only to show up at the door again. This time I let her in so I could use the sword again. She laughed at me, “you can’t kill me.”

When She was gone, I found myself living with my father, the most evil man I’ve ever known, even to this day. He gave me a handgun. It was a small caliber revolver that held five rounds. I shot her with it without any effect except for her leaving again. My older brother took me to his garage workshop and quickly assembled a .357 magnum. The same kind my father held to my head in real life. Back then I wish I’d demanded that he shoot me.

The magnum did not work either. I shot her six times in the center of mass and she laughed at me. Somehow she came back with help. Another woman, posing as her mother. Two demons in one dream. People, I’ve long suspected, die during such harrowing nightmares: we often hear of fatal strokes and heart attacks in sleep and say, “At least he or she died in peace.” How arrogant are we, making such a conclusion like that? Because, of course, we cannot know. What if they were tormented in a nightmare so terrifying that a cardiac event was triggered?

Demons are not amusing. They’re nothing to underestimate. They hate us, they’re jealous of us and they have one mission: bring us down, hurt us, get us to renounce God, blame him for our pain. Our losses. Our loneliness. To turn us away from the light.

In movies and books and paranormal TV shows, they’re portrayed in an over-the-top fashion. In the real world they come in where we’re vulnerable, like cat burglars, quiet, unassuming at times. They know how to do it. They know what we like, what we don’t like. If working one side doesn’t get them in, they just change their approach. If they can’t get you to give in to your vices, or to dark emotions such as hate, lust, anger and sadness, then they will try something more direct. And resistance only gains more testing. They use every trick in the book. To them, there are no boundaries and faith itself is their lone enemy, their sole target. They will attack it relentlessly.

I believe that is why She keeps at me. She appears as a beautiful woman, with lust and false love. Of all the women I have loved, most never knew, even if they suspected. My condition, unknown to me in its true nature, kept me insecure and unfit for romantic relationships. I was certainly afraid of rejection and, sometimes, even had to consider just how much I really loved them. If I found that I did actually love a woman, I was objective; I was not the right man for her. I respected her.

Out of loneliness and guilt and bitterness at not being loved and feeling “dirty” because I had been/was being raped by my own parents, I guess She was born. Sorrow, anger, hate directed at myself were things I believe Satan knew about very well. And if anything, he’s good at using such things as weapons.

I do not remember how the dream ended. That part was lost as I was coming awake. But I know it ended in stalemate as usual. And She has returned.

Last night She appeared as an ex-girlfriend. The “mother” from the last dream was with her. They were making me relive the dark days which ended my second attempt at fleeing my father.

They kicked me out on the street. Then wherever I was living vanished. I was looking for things I owned to put in my car. They mocked me in disgusting ways. Then my car disappeared along with both of them; her mother had it towed away. I was somehow told where to look for my car and it was not a safe or easy trip. Drawn out, full of choices on this street or that. Once again into a labyrinth.

The dream ended with me paying men in a shop a few dollars to get the car back. They were Muslim men who felt pity for me. They offered food and drink, tried to calm me down. Never got the car back but the significance of those kind men were ultimately the end of the dream. The car did not matter; the kindness and respect shown by the men did. God knows us all as His children. No one is loved more than another, and all people of real faith serve Him. They kept me busy, looking on this lot and that, looking for my car. They were protecting me. She was not going to get past them. Perhaps they were angels.

She will return. I’m on a drug that’s known to help PTSD nightmares. She is immune to it. But my faith is stronger every time I am granted the miracle of waking up and living another day. I went back to Twitter to get quick news updates, especially about the criminal invasion of Ukraine. How I pray for those poor, yet courageous men and women, protecting civilians and dying in the attempt. They have exceeded all the world’s best hopes. The evil they have faced with honor is unspeakable evil.

On Twitter, a site I once called toxic, I had my faith in people restored. I’ve never felt that I mattered, not to strangers. Now I do. You know my fight for them. You know my desire to help is an honest one. I won’t post a link here; it’s on a previous blog already. It’s easy to find in my archives. But for now, this post is about renewed faith. There are wonderful people in this world. Amazing people who want to help save us from extinction and offer up great strategies. There are compassionate people who you’d never think would offer help. There’s love. There is still decency and true faith. And I’m grateful to be able to see that.

Evil will be with us to the death. How you think of this post is up to you; it’s here to offer you something to think about. What I know is that racial and religious bigotry keeps half the world out of our lives. I’ve worked with Muslims and I’ll never forget them. They were so good to me. On Twitter, I left comments on Joel Osteen and Franklin Graham’ posts: “Go and sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, then take up your cross and follow Christ. Then, I will listen to you. The eye of a needle, sir.”

I was not being harsh. There’s no hatred or enmity. But our jobs as Christians is to keep loving and supporting one another as Yeshua did. He left us an example to live by. Tall orders, but ones that must be adhered to. Will we sin anyway?

Yes. But if our hearts feel true repentance, we escape the furnace. We escape our personal demons.

That is what Easter is all about, is it not?

If you have strange dreams, recurrent ones in which you are tormented by an enemy who comes to you like a lover, only to leave you in a shambles, you’re not alone. Just leave a like or a comment. I’ll pray for the demon to let you go. We have each other, and Yaweh has our backs, always.

Please enjoy the rest of your holidays. And may God bless!

This post is dedicated to Abba, the Holy Father, to His Son, with gratitude and humble praise.

It is dedicated to the suffering, the poor, the haunted.

It is dedicated to all the women I’ve loved in my life, especially those who never knew, and didn’t know how much it hurt me to love them from a distance.

It is for Margaret, Jane and Kevin, and my friends, wherever they may be. Last but not least, for Jerry, his wife and his family, without whom, this post would have been impossible to end with hope. He allowed the Spirit to work through him to open my eyes. I couldn’t be more grateful for his help. And to Jack Flacco: thanks for all that you do.

Amen.

Goodbye my loves. I’ve always wanted the best for you.

Simply the best. Goodnight everyone. God bless.

The Supernatural Is Real and it’s Damn Scary

The following post is a compilation of my most memorable clashes with the supernatural. They really happened, but I honestly wish they hadn’t. While I continue my vacation, take a look. Be warned, these posts are disturbing in places and do contain some triggers.

In my first post, the story of abuse and a demonic entity in my bedroom is told. The House of Pain is still the setting for some of my nightmares, and what happened there led to an infamous criminal trial.

Did you ever wonder if the Angel of Death is real? I don’t. Not anymore.

But I’ll never ghost hunt again because if you go looking for something, you might just find it.

But experiences like visions of the past, those can be argued over, but has not something like that happened also to you?

Then there was the cat who knew too much . It provided a story that to this day I cannot remember without getting chills. Animals certainly know spirits, and sometimes they seem to want to introduce you to them.

In Bolero Hats and Thunder and Nightmares That Come True, the story is told of a woman most unusual, who affected me profoundly and is impossible to forget, but the contents of a precognitive nightmare and what happened next is extraordinary and left me chilled to the bone. Pay attention to dreams. They might just come true.

In Attacked! I paid a price for involving myself in a demon’s affairs. I may never sleep again.

The supernatural is real. Be careful with it. As it is a part of the natural world but a part we understand very little, be very careful. Pray before attempting spiritual warfare. Don’t use ouija boards. Don’t do seances. Leave the dead be. Don’t ghost hunt, go to flea markets or garage sales and leave antiques alone. Much better to stay in and have a cup of tea by the fire and curl up with a good book than courting disaster.

Thanks for reading and for letting me be a part of your day.

Be well.

Of Bolero Hats And Thunder, And Nightmares That Come True

In the fall of 1993, something that has plagued me ever since happened. It started when I worked at a convenience store in Dundalk. Working swing shift, it was getting dark early and one day around rush hour, I had a line at the register. I saw a woman further back in the line, and something I can’t explain happened.

When I saw her, I felt a bit off. When she got to the counter I asked if I could help her. She said solicitously, “Yes you can.”

There wasn’t anything I could see that was remarkable about her. She was pretty but not beautiful. She had brown eyes and I had never liked many women with brown eyes. When I looked into brown eyes, I saw my father, no matter who I was really looking at. To this day I get triggered by brown eyes, which I find to be just one more pathetic thing that makes me an extraordinary asshole.

Yet, this woman did something to me. I would have followed her anywhere she asked me to go. I’d have done anything she asked me to do.

It was not physical attraction. Not infatuation. And it certainly was not love. What drew me to her I’ve never been able to understand. I actually had the thought that I would crawl inside her and let her devour my soul. All she had to do was beckon to me with a finger.

It was strange; she worked next door to the store for her father, who owned a pest control business. Yet I would rarely see her. One day she came in and asked if I could let her owe me for a pack of cigarettes. I was completely out of character when I joked that we could take it out in trade. But she didn’t bat an eye and said casually, “Okay.”

Months passed. I didn’t see her.

One night my wife and I went to the 7-eleven for a late snack. I’ll never forget it. I had a can of Vienna sausages in barbecue sauce. I would later blame this shit for the nightmare that followed, but whatever brought it on had nothing to do with mush made from pork and beef parts like cow lips and tongues. This was something else altogether, a dream so torturous and vividly detailed that, to this day, I remember it clearly.

The dream began weird and got worse. At some point in the midst of it I saw my boss’s van parked in front of the house. The woman, whose soul seemed to draw me to her so strongly, was loading my belongings into it. She had come to move me out. I felt as if I was supposed to be moving in with her, but then, the scene changed. Now it was dark and I was standing in the side yard. I was alone. A movement in the street caught my eye. A figure walked into the driveway. He was what I can, for whatever reason, only describe as a Mardi Gras clown. No funny makeup here; this was like something straight out of a New Orleans graveyard. It had dark clothing, Clown White covered his face, and a wig of red-orange hair, long and straight at shoulder length, came down from a black bolero hat. In his right hand was a sickle. When he knew that I had spotted him, he bent low to his right and made a deceptive motion as if cutting a patch of tall grass beside the driveway. I could feel that he knew I sensed his deception, but by then I was frozen in place with terror. He easily crossed the yard and approached me. His right arm drew back and as he got to me he swung forward, cutting my head off with the sickle.

At first the scream was silent even though I was suddenly awake. They call that sleep paralysis.

Then, after moaning through a closed mouth, I sat up and gave full vent to my horror with a primeval scream that woke up everyone in the house and, for all I know, a few neighbors as well.

That was no clown. It was a demon.

Within a few months, I was really kicked out of the house by my soon to be ex-wife. I remembered the nightmare. Was it prophetic?

Well, I didn’t really know. The woman with the brown eyes was gone. Her father had retired and closed his shop. Now I never even saw her white Camaro up there. When I looked for it I felt empty, a sense of loss.

I forgot the dream while trying to survive on the street. I still had my job but was homeless. And the brown-eyed woman was gone. She had not been the cause of the end of my marriage. That was up to my flirting around with another woman. Why I did that, I guess, was a search for genuine affection that I knew was not part of my marriage anymore. I was a broken and dysfunctional man who, since I was a boy, only wanted affection. But there had been so little of it…

The months turned into the hot dry summer of 1994. I was ghost hunting, working at the store, and staying with friends.

Then, everything upended again when my car was totaled. That was January 5, 1995.

That summer, one evening out of the blue, the brown-eyed woman showed up and asked if I was ready for my part of our “trade”, which I had forgotten about because I was being a sexist pig when I’d said it and only joking. Which wasn’t like me at all. But as she asked, I remembered and said, “Sure.”

She picked me up the next day for lunch. She took me to a waterfront restaurant in Miller’s Island which isn’t the island, but a peninsula ending in a place called Cuckold Point. Which was wildly appropriate, when I look back.

On a hot summer day, we sat at an outside deck table. There was no lunch, just a round of drinks. We chatted, but I began to get a grip on how scary this woman was. Her eyes never seemed to focus. She wasn’t there to initiate a sexual relationship. She would do it, but it was going to take time. I was mystified and mesmerized. Suddenly I wanted to be in bed with her. But it wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. Again, looking back, I realized she was on something. Not heavy, like heroin, but something. She looked at me and said, “I see the sea in your eyes. You’re a pirate.”

What the hell that meant, I didn’t ask. It was ridiculously stupid. I called her “Gypsy” just to make it even. She really didn’t see into me at all. I am not and never have been a fucking pirate. Hell, I was scared of deep water.

She took me to work afterward. In the parked car, I kissed her. I really felt it then: I would have followed her to Hell just for one night with her.

But at the exact second our lips made contact, a loud peal of thunder cracked the sky directly above us. There was no storm coming in. The sky was brilliant, cloudless, blue. A kid who lived nearby named Scott saw this, heard it, and burst into laughter. He was on the sidewalk in front of the car, walking toward the store’s entrance.

When I got inside, Scott was still laughing. He said, “That’s not a good sign, Mike.”

No shit. I didn’t take it as one, either. Rather, because of so many experiences with the supernatural, and given the hold this woman had on my soul, I saw it as a warning. Yep, I really did. Straight from God. That’s what I thought. That’s what I felt. But I was helpless before her. I wanted her. I’m sad to say, there was nothing magical about the kiss. This is a true story, not some B-movie. I cannot say what it felt like exactly; I just know I liked it.

And if the story ended here, I guess it would still be decent campfire faire. But it doesn’t end yet. It actually gets worse.

Because I was an asshole.

I was seeing a married woman. It was sexually intense and full of drama. And, still unmedicated, I was getting worse all the time and didn’t know why. We’d break up. She would stalk me. I’d awake at 3:00 am and have a sudden urge to look out of my bedroom window, and she would be in the alley below, parked, a cigarette glowing inside. Whether she or the brown-eyed woman was the more evil, I didn’t know. But the stalker I viewed as a mortal threat. She was a nutter, following me everywhere I went. Sometimes I got back with her just because I was too scared not to. She often involved her grown sons, and they chased, threatened me and convinced me that madness, the lethal kind, ran in her family. I feared for my life.

In October of 1995, I bought a used car. It was in the shop getting work to pass inspection. And one very cold night, the brown-eyed woman showed up. Wanted more “trade”. It had been so long since I had seen her that I was quite excited to go out with her. She said she would pick me up after I closed the store. But when I locked up she wasn’t in the parking lot.

Thinking I’d been stood up, I prepared for the cold walk home. Then I spotted her white Camaro on the hill where her father’s business had been. What was she doing up there? Oh, hell. I was adrift in a sea of insanity. Why question anything anymore?

I walked up to the car, saw her slouching very low in her seat and something finally hit me: she was married, just like my stalker! She was hiding inside her own car. In case anyone she knew drove by.

Of course she didn’t want to be seen!

It was dark on the parking lot. It was late on a Saturday night. Everything made sense. She was married. Took drugs. Was nutty. But I opened the passenger door anyway and slid in.

My heart immediately took a hammer blow. I couldn’t breathe. I was terrified that I would die that very night.

She was wearing a bolero hat!

The same hat the clown from my dream had worn when he decapitated me with a hand sickle!

And I should say right now that I had never seen a bolero hat in real life, only on TV. I’ve never seen one in real life since that night, either.

She barely sat up to start the car. There was no greeting, no small talk. No kiss.

She headed out of Dundalk, through the winding, wooded road to Miller’s Island Road. We found the restaurant closed for the winter. A pair of high beams lit the interior of the car as we headed back to Dundalk. I said, “We’re being followed,” and I knew who it was without looking. The stalker. The one I had been having sex with.

The brown-eyed woman knew how to drive that Z-28; she jammed the shifter down and gassed it, executing a perfect drifting U-turn straight out of a Burt Reynolds film. I told her who it was. She said “You’re mine, and she’s not gonna get you.”

She left the stalker in a cloud of smoke from peeled rubber and I was wrenched sideways in the seat.

That’s when I’d had enough.

While the stalker was still out of sight on that lonely road, I said, “Let me out. She’ll see I’m not with you and leave you alone.” She was almost emotionless as she stopped. I got out and ran far enough into the woods that despite the lack of foliage, no one could see me. I waited in the frigid dark until I felt safe enough to walk the road.

I never saw the brown-eyed woman again. Never.

As time passes, I don’t forget her. Or the dream. Or the bolero hat. And I’ve been convinced that something terrible would have happened had I remained in that car. The words “You’re mine” echo across decades.

I don’t know what that meant. She was married. I wonder if she meant something more sinister, if she really had wanted my soul. If she was married then she wasn’t a demon. A demon represented her in my nightmare though; I think it likely that one was attached to her. Drug use can facilitate such attachments.

Not long after that eerie night, something strange occurred to me:

I had never known her name. I know only that I courted evil. And death.

Sometimes dreams are a warning by a higher power. If the dream is especially disturbing. If it is particularly vivid and detailed. If a demon is in the dream.

And you’ll be wise to take it seriously. Do what your gut feeling says.

And if you see a woman with brown eyes, wearing a bolero hat?

Run like hell.

Demons In The Rearview Mirror

In late summer 1988 I was training to drive a truck. I had a class A learner’s permit. My trainer was my brother-in-law.

One sunny day we were going through Hanover Pennsylvania, on our way to Quaker Oats, when I got a sick feeling in my gut. I was passing a large gravel lot on my left. Billy didn’t notice it from the passenger seat. It was old, with dirt mixed in. On the lot was an old produce market. The kind mostly made of plywood, only bigger than most. Enclosed, not open.

I snapped as if going back in time, seeing the inside strung with rows of naked lightbulbs and wooden bins on 2×4 legs. I saw two men, and suddenly the lights were off, the building dark. The two men were dressed in overalls and one even had something like a straw hat. One was tall and stout, the other shorter and thin. While both were menacing, I can’t tell you which was worse. But both were dead long ago; I knew that much. They were drawing me, aware of my presence out on the road. As if they knew me and wanted to draw me to my death.

I also felt as if I had known them. I forced myself to snap out of it and drive on.

On the return trip, I looked, and could not find the lot again. Several more trips later, I still have never seen it.

And this is a weird enough story, but one thing makes it worse.

I didn’t mind small, open produce stands by the road, but had never, since I was a child, liked big, enclosed produce markets. A coincidence?

I can’t buy that.

Almost ten years later, after a few fruitless trips fishing at Liberty Reservoir, I bought a fishing map. I was looking for prime spots to angle for catfish. It was a funny place, and although beautiful, I always felt unsettled there. Kind of like I didn’t belong, and when you feel that way, you don’t catch anything. You can’t get comfortable enough to let yourself go and read the terrain. Choosing points where steep dropoffs were, after a slight shelf where bait fish would be, is impossible. You can’t tell the difference between those or sheer drops. Depending on water and air temperature and sunlight, it makes a big difference.

I bought the map out of desperation. I was looking to catch some prime catfish. The four pound range. But on previous visits I’d had some weird images, and worse, bad feelings, wash over me for no reason. Still very unaware of how sensitive I was, I had no frame of reference to reconcile these experiences with. Therefore I tried to ignore them. But one image kept hitting me: an old car, very old, driving on a dirt road, raising dust. There was a river beside this road. The car travelled with the river on its left, then turned right, into an unpaved driveway. The house had a screened in porch. It was an old house, with not much else along the road, but it was hardly alone. I saw other places, but none so clearly. There was emotion attached to the scene, very negative, feelings that I knew were not my own. Anger, misery, fear.

On the map, nothing remarkable stood out. I saw only that I had acres of ground to cover, multiple access points, and that locating likely spots was going to be a long process. Bank fishing where crowds seem to gather wasn’t a thing I liked at all. Those are high-pressure spots where fish can be caught in short stretches of time and then nothing remains. People making noise, eating and drinking, leaving a bunch of trash, taking illegal fish, that’s what happens on crowded banks. I wanted solitude. Quiet.

On the reverse side of the map there was another one. In this, the image was ghosted and overlaid with aerial photos like a Google Earth display. No gaps that I recall, although that’s not impossible. It made up an intricate view of the area before Liberty Dam existed. And sure enough, I found that same car parked in the driveway of a house that I was sure I’d seen in the vision of the car turning into the driveway. I’m sure I could look all of this up online, and refresh my memory, and give you more details. I’m not up for that. The impression I got was that people in the area were happy where they were, and had been forced to leave. Before the Patapsco River was dammed, it must have run through a beautiful, lush valley. It took years for the reservoir to fill. I had the impression that many people in the 1940s had resisted vacating homes, because the car I saw was definitely from the earlier part of that decade. I’ve seen cars like it in newsreel footage of the time around World War Two. It’s haunted or cursed ground beneath that water and I never cared which; I never went back.

I’d fished lots of places in Baltimore County, and had been on chartered boats out of Severna Park and Annapolis, trolling for rockfish (striped bass) on Chesapeake Bay. There’s nothing like it. A bad day on the water can sometimes be the best therapy; even going home with an empty cooler is fine with me.

But it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see into the past. And I hated it every time it happened. I thought I was going crazy.

One afternoon I was driving south on Belair Road, U.S. Route1. I passed a very old house that reached into my mind, and I don’t know how I kept driving without being in an accident. I was in someone else’s body, looking through a window. The sky was darkening either by dusk or overcast. I’m not sure which, as the details fade with time.

A woman I loved was outside getting into an open carriage pulled by two horses. She was leaving me. It wasn’t her choice, though. A big man in very old clothing, I suppose eighteenth century, with a hat not unlike a tricorn, and a long coat, climbed in beside her and took the reins. He had a smug look on his face and sneered at me. He had pulled some kind of trick to get her to go with him. I felt bullied and very frightened of him. He turned the carriage around in the half-circle driveway and left. And I felt so broken of heart that I didn’t want to live another second.

Actually, this happened more than once in the northern parts of Baltimore and Harford counties.

Seeing into the past always had a negative aspect in emotion, very intense emotion, always of anger or loss. It was never positive or particularly revealing, as I never gained knowledge of names or nailed down any specifics. There was no reason for the these events. They just left me sick, drained and depressed.

But I had not learned my lesson. I had no idea that I was a sensitive. I didn’t even know what a sensitive was. I had no idea why this shit was happening to me. I felt like I was just nuts. I had no idea what I was doing when one night, after reading a book on psychic abilities, I decided to do an experiment. The book had a chapter on astral projection. It instructed me to meditate to the point where I went into a trance. I was a skeptic but wanted to try. It said I should pray and ask for permission and an angelic guide, then go wherever I wanted. While deep in a meditative state, I would find myself “walking” down a long hallway. At the end would be a door. I would kick it open and be exactly where I’d asked.

I was vague and just asked for a visit to the past. That was a big mistake which followed the bigger mistake of doing this crazy shit in the first place.

It was freezing. I was on a dirt road that gave way to a brick pavement encircling a brick building surrounded by black wrought iron fencing perhaps 7 feet tall. It was a Colonial period government building, not huge, perhaps a town or city hall. I looked to my right and saw a dirt road running parallel to the direction my body faced, but behind the building. On the other side of the road there were big houses with big yards and big shade trees. What I could see of the homes told me it was all antebellum. I was definitely far into the past. The trees were green and full, but it still felt cold, like winter, and the sky was unusual. I saw sunlight hitting the ground, but the sky was a weird color.

I became aware that I was not alone. To my left there was a spirit but I couldn’t look at it. It said, “Do you want a closer look?” I nodded. Without walking we were suddenly next to the fence, looking through it at large wooden crates stacked around the back. As I stared, a pair of feet on the ground in shiny black shoes with the toes pointed down, resting on the ground, caught my attention. The socks were really stockings. The legs were between rows of crates and I couldn’t see them.

Then something happened in the space of a second or less. Just a blur of movement. But the shoes were now toes-up, and I could see the knees of the legs. The body, obviously dead, had beige knee-length leggings and were bloody. The voice beside me said, “See what you have done!”

Well that was it for me. Whether it was my imagination or a real astral event, I wanted out. I was back on the sofa, wide awake.

At the time I was staying with my daughter for a few weeks. Her son Antony was almost a year old. And all of the sudden, he began waking up at night crying.

One other thing. The book had a bunch of stuff about colors and what they did. I think orange was energy, green was healing…and so on. I’d learned psychic self defense, which one used when in the presence of people who drained you, like psychic vampires, something I believed in then (but thank God for medication).

Somehow I was brought to the idea that envisioned energy coming from Heaven, going through me, and then to whomever I was trying to help, could calm down Antony and help him sleep. And somehow I remember thinking the color blue was calming. It made everything worse. Soon his room was full of flies. He would only go in there to pull toys into the living room. He couldn’t fall asleep in there. He was scared silly of his room.

Only later did I realize after earnest prayer that something I did was behind it. I asked God to show me the problem. Mind you, I prayed in the living room, but after asking the question and meditating quietly, I saw Antony’s room. Two walls were on the outer corner of the house. A longer and a shorter wall. The longer wall had two huge, jagged, gaping holes through which a hippo could enter. The shorter wall had one hole. With my experiment I had brought back a demon. It was my guide. I realized that God doesn’t loan his angels out for evil things we’re forbidden to do. The occult is forbidden, so what went with me was demonic. And it came back with me. It allowed him to blow holes in Antony’s walls so other demons could torment him. Demons love tormenting children; as I had done when I was a child, Antony could see these things but not yet describe them. He couldn’t even voice his fear except to cry desperately. Now of course these holes and what came through them weren’t part of the visible world, but they were revealed as I had asked. I then repented the stupid act and asked for the holes to be fixed and for Antony to be protected. In another vision I saw that the damage was not repaired. The holes remained. Instead, three angels stood in them, facing the outside, so I could see only their backs. These didn’t glow. I imagine that if physically manifested, they may have. But I was seeing the spiritual, and they looked like men. Possibly because seeing an angel in its true form is dangerous to mortals?

Anyway, they wore long robes, white but dirty, as if they had been fighting. They were serious beings, guarding my grandson’s room from further attacks.

I found out the hard way that a book, no matter how beautifully illustrated, can be dangerous. I found out that you don’t need a Ouija board to bring true evil into your home. And I learned that irresponsible actions can hurt the innocent even if you have good intentions.

That was 2004. I’ve never meditated once since then.

Today I talked to a very nice lady at FiOS customer service. She was patient and sorted out my problem. Her name was Lee Ann. I swore she had a Pasadena (MD) accent. She reminded me of the girl I knew in third grade. The one I fell in love with at first sight. The one I’ve loved ever since.

Customer Service Lee Ann reminded me of good things in life. That there’s still kindness and decency. She reminded me of a girl I haven’t seen since 1972, who still has my heart. And even though I never told her, it doesn’t hurt. It’s perhaps the most positive and decent thing I have left.

Seeing into the past, whether you want to or not, will happen. We have to deal with it. But today, thinking about Lee Ann, I discovered that sometimes, yes. There are demons in the rearview mirror.

But there are angels back there, too.

Note-

I can’t say where flashes of the past come from, nor can anyone else. Scholars would have us believe that there’s some sort of misfire happening in some area of the brain. But that doesn’t explain accurately placing a house and a car on a map long before you see the map. It utterly fails to account for the emotions you feel in close proximity to certain places. Or seeing people in period dress appropriate to a carriage and feeling as if you’re in someone else’s body.

There’s much to guess with here. Much to debate. Are we seeing bits of past lives?

I’ve never been one to fully believe in reincarnation. I have had stray “memories” not triggered when traveling, and one that’s haunted me since I was a child is a fragment, a bit of memory of walking up to a single-story house, not a large one, at dusk. The temperature suggests a cool but not cold evening in late spring. I “remember” approaching the place on a small road with thick woods close on both sides. I could see a light in the distance, shimmering through the trees as a light breeze blew branches. Up close, it is impossible to see the house as I’m suddenly at the front door. What bothers me the most is the window set in the door. Square but with diamond shaped panes and frosted or textured amber glass. The glow of light on the inside is bright but I have a feeling I don’t want to go in. I don’t want the door to open. A random thing, for sure. So what’s behind all this?

I have an idea, and you won’t like it. I said in another post that since I was very little, there was a shadow on my walls that I could see moving. I could feel its malevolence. It terrified me.

I know it was a demon. These come or appear in many forms, from black smudges in the air without form to shadow snakes to shadow “people” to “ghosts” of dead relatives to fully manifested animals and people. Since demons have been here longer than us they have interacted with billions of people. And since they are spirits, we can easily be influenced by them. We suddenly feel angry or afraid. Remember those scenes from Blue Bloods, Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch where the family all sit down and eat supper together? Well that’s how families took their evening meals, not merely here but the world over. But did you ever notice that, TV aside, sometimes arguments break out suddenly over small things, and quickly escalate? Demons love to interrupt and interfere in everything we do, and take particular delight in causing division in families, business, even church. They can pass into your dining room without being seen. Their presence is extremely disruptive. They may not stay. They may not claim your home as theirs but they can certainly visit.

If they can do that, and given that we know their numbers are great, imagine what happens when they are accidentally too close. Like when you pass a house where one has a claim to the territory. The spiritual can, purposely or otherwise, see and feel us, our memories and likewise, even have their memories transfer to us.

And it’s not just them. They retain memories and emotions from everyone they’ve ever come into contact with. That’s why these flashes are almost universally negative and come with emotions you otherwise wouldn’t be feeling. This is what I believe is happening. American families who eat dinner together are growing rare. Communication is always a problem. The demonic divide us, making a whole into weak fragments. God is left behind, making the demons more powerful and influential. It can even cause them to take up residence in your home. Some people never experience these things. Some do but don’t think about it because it’s too frightening. Everyone is a potential target.