Beware the Night (31 page)

Evil ghosts can oppress the living in much the same way the demonic do. If they’re the spirits of people who were addicted to drugs or alcohol, practiced witchcraft, or sinned in other ways, they can influence the people they haunt to turn to these vices. While Dr. Edith Fiore writes in her book,
The Unquiet Dead,
that people can even become possessed by wicked ghosts, I have never seen or heard of a case of human spirit possession in all my years in the Work. Instead, my experience is that wicked ghosts serve as magnets for the demonic, so they open a potential pathway for possession by drawing satanic powers to the location they haunt.

Unlike demons, ghosts aren’t subject to exorcism, so it’s difficult to get rid of them. What sometimes helps is having a psychic communicate with the spirit and determine its reason for remaining earthbound. The medium should try to convince the spirit that it is no longer a part of the physical world and should stop scaring people. He or she can then try to send the ghost toward the Light of God, where it will find happiness and peace at last. The trouble is, if a ghost doesn’t want to go, there’s nothing we can do to make it leave, except pray.

Here’s a word of warning for both psychics and anyone who wants to make contact with a deceased loved one. Don’t open that door unless you have the spiritual knowledge to tell what’s on the other side. Unless you’re 100 percent sure you’re dealing with a ghost, not some con man from Hell, you could put yourself in great peril. If there’s any doubt,
don’t talk to the spirit—just command it to leave, in the name of Jesus Christ!
Any other communication with a satanic spirit can be extremely dangerous or even lead to possession.

Another factor that makes it hard to tell at the start of a case whether ghosts or demons are involved is that both have the power to manifest themselves, create strange sounds, and manipulate objects. The key to telling the difference between the two types of spirits is taking a close look at what kind of phenomena are occurring. In some cases a demonic presence is unmistakable from the start, while in others, making a determination is quite tricky.

Like the ADA who was worried about the troubles her aunt was having, one of my fellow cops, Tony, also thought his house was haunted and asked for my help. Many strange things had happened to him and his large Italian family. Lights and household appliances would turn on and off all by themselves. But the phenomena didn’t stop there: Once Tony’s father was awakened by an odd noise. Usually a heavy sleeper, he rubbed his eyes and looked around. At the foot of his bed stood a little girl, watching him sleep. Just as suddenly as he saw her, she disappeared, but not for good. Over the years he and other family members saw the little spirit several times.

When Tony invited his future wife home for dinner one night, the family was regaling her with stories about their ghost. She didn’t believe a word, until a heavy ashtray suddenly slid across the table, as if the spirit were showing off. That was enough for the family—they had their parish priest come and bless the house. But the problem didn’t stop: Tony told me that he’d been awakened by the sound of a baby or small child weeping. I asked if there was anything odd about the cry, since I’ve seen several cases where the supposed cry of a baby was anything but human. He said it sounded perfectly normal—except that it was right there in the room with him.

By now I thought I was dealing with a human spirit, but one thing bothered me. Ghosts don’t normally have the ability to turn appliances on and off or move objects around. Could it be the demonic? During the investigation, I learned that the house was built on a plot of land that was once a Dutch Reformed cemetery. The mystery was solved, since I felt there must be more than one human spirit in that house, intensifying the ghost’s powers. My partner and I went over the house to be sure but found no sign of the demonic. I told Tony to have a mass said for these lost souls, but from time to time, that little girl ghost still appears—or a light flickers on or off when it shouldn’t.

Contrast this situation with another eerie story I heard when I was assigned to what the police call a “fixer post.” Some repairs were being made to an elevator in a dangerous public housing project, so I was sent there to make sure the workmen weren’t robbed of their money or tools. The owner of the repair company told me he was renovating his home and working late into the night. He kept having an unsettling sense of someone—or something—watching him. The feeling was so overwhelming that he turned around every few minutes to make sure he really was alone. He’d stop work when he couldn’t take it any longer, only to return the next night and have the same thing happen all over again.

One night he went downstairs to start work and found his tools missing. He questioned his kids, but they insisted they hadn’t been in the basement. When he returned to the area he was renovating, the tools were back in their usual spot. The kids couldn’t have done it, since they were still upstairs. At this point I knew we were talking about the demonic because ghosts can only move small objects and can’t make things materialize or dematerialize. The contractor’s next words proved that I was right: When he tore down one of the walls in his basement, he found crucifixes behind it, suggesting the former owner had been trying to banish an unholy spirit.

By now I was extremely interested in his case and told him I investigated happenings of this nature. I gave him my card but never heard from him again. I found it very strange that he told me all this stuff, then never contacted me for my help, but in this Work, the strange is common.

However, the ADA’s aunt, whose name was Ginny, was quick to call about her “ghost.” Although she was very frightened, she was also apprehensive about seeking my help. Since she lived in the Bronx, I suggested she get in touch with Father Livanos, a priest I’ve worked with in that borough, and discuss it with him. She did and was relieved when he told her I was a reputable person of faith who was knowledgeable about these matters and had helped others with similar problems.

Still worried about what she might be letting herself in for, she asked the priest if she’d be doing anything against God by working with me. He told her the prayers and sacramentals I use conform to Catholic doctrine, so there was no cause for concern. I wasn’t the least bit offended by her caution—instead, I respected this woman’s meticulous devotion to God.

A week or so later, she was back on the phone. By now it was near Christmas, and as is so common at this time of year, the activity had intensified. Hearing her rapid-fire, obviously nervous voice on the phone convinced me it was urgent to set up a formal investigation as quickly as possible. When I arrived at her home the following day, her first remark was a familiar one: “What I’m going to tell you sounds crazy—and if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Chances are that whatever you have to say I’ve heard before. From my conversation with your niece, I already have some idea of what you’re up against.”

Ginny was a schoolteacher. She’d been teaching for so long that her eyes were permanently set in a steely stare and her mouth in a faint, disapproving frown. You got the feeling that she knew everything naughty you’d ever done—or even
thought
about doing—and was just waiting to get her ruler out and give you a well-deserved smack or two.

Frankly, she reminded me of some of the sterner nuns at my parochial school. Even her clothing had an austere, nunlike appearance, and her face was innocent of makeup. Although she was about fifty and her hair was heavily streaked with gray, she didn’t try to hide it with dye. She was also extremely slim and fit, giving me the impression that her body was so well disciplined that no fat would dare settle on her angular frame.

As we talked, I could see that her daughters were in awe of her. All three of them promptly snapped to attention every time she spoke. While all this may make her sound rather unlikable, a softer side came out when she played and joked with her little grandson. I realized that this doting grandma wasn’t nearly as fierce as I’d thought at first. Her only vice seemed to be coffee, which she drank black and bitter, in large quantities during the interview. Around the living room, which was extremely neat, I saw many pretty little statues, some of them of a religious nature, and numerous family photos in silver frames.

Between sips of coffee, she explained that the problem had begun in October, around the time her oldest daughter, Nancy, who was going through a divorce, moved back into the house with her three-year-old son. The little boy started waking up at 3:00
A.M
., screaming and pointing at the wall. When his mother would ask him what was wrong, the little boy, who had a very limited vocabulary, would say he’d seen a monster. This went on night after night, but the family didn’t believe he’d seen anything and wrote it off to nightmares.

One night the middle daughter was down in the basement, doing her college homework. As she was typing her paper, she heard her younger sister call her name. She turned around, but no one was there. She got back to work, and heard her name called again. It was definitely her sister’s voice. By now she was getting mad, thinking her kid sister was playing silly tricks on her when she had an important paper to write. She stormed upstairs to give Sis a piece of her mind—and discovered that her sister wasn’t home!

A few weeks later Ginny had an odd experience of her own in the basement. She put a load of laundry in the washer and went back upstairs to continue her housework. When she returned to put the clothes in the dryer, the washing machine had turned completely around, so the water hoses were stretched to the breaking point. And this was a three-hundred-pound machine! Even at this point, she didn’t make a connection between all the strange things that were happening in her house. Instead, since the machine was too heavy for her to move back into place by herself, she enlisted the aid of her next-door neighbor, a New York City cop.

He asked her how on earth this had happened and, when she couldn’t explain it, suggested that she get a new washer. “But it
is
a new machine,” she replied. “And it’s never budged an inch before!”

All the bewildered cop could say was, “Pretty weird, if you ask me.”
My sentiments exactly: First we bust two seemingly satanic washing machine salesmen—if that’s what they really were—and then it turns out that the aunt of the ADA assigned to the case has a washing machine with a decidedly supernatural “spin cycle”!

Other than the involvement of this ADA, however, I could discover no connection between the two cases, so I figured it was just a rather peculiar coincidence. Despite being in the Work, I’m
not
inclined to see the demonic under every rock or behind every bizarre circumstance. Still, I felt the Lord had moved in a rather mysterious way by sending this particular pair of cases my way.

Over the next several weeks, other odd events took place, Ginny explained. “It wasn’t one strange thing after another but a gradual buildup,” she said. “One evening when I was in the living room, I heard a baby crying, but it wasn’t a normal cry. I knew it wasn’t my grandson—it sounded like a much younger baby, in great pain or fear. Another disturbing thing about the cry was that I couldn’t tell
where
it was coming from. I even went outside and looked around, but I didn’t see any child or animal that could have made the sound. It sounded horrible and upset me terribly.”

More unsettling incidents followed. After looking at her mother as if asking permission to tell her story, Erica, the youngest daughter, who was a senior in high school, said she’d also gotten a scare one night, when she was alone in the house, or so she thought. “All of sudden, I heard loud footsteps walking from room to room upstairs. I thought someone had broken into our house and was so frightened that I ran next door to get our neighbor, the policeman.”

The cop grabbed his gun and searched the entire house without finding any burglar—or any evidence of a break-in—while Erica stayed at his house. Having been at the house a month earlier to help with the washing machine, the officer now felt that things were more than “pretty weird” and joked that maybe the house was haunted. More terrified than ever, Erica refused to go home until her mom returned.

Although Ginny was still skeptical about the supernatural and tried to laugh off the cop’s theory, it began to make more and more sense to her. Her grandson was still waking up every night at 3:00
A.M
. screaming, and she and her kids were getting increasingly jumpy. Reluctant to call her parish priest with such an outlandish story, she finally decided that it wouldn’t hurt to put up a crucifix in the child’s room, just in case.

He didn’t wake up that night, but in the morning, the cross was lying on the floor, she said, watching me intently for any sign of disbelief. Finding none, she added with great emphasis,
“The nail was still in the wall!”

The eerie phenomena came to a head, she continued, when she was having a holiday party in her home. “I’d received a Christmas tree made of seashells as a gift and put it up on my mantel, over there. Right in front of my guests, family, and friends, the tree flew off the mantel! No one was near it or had touched it in any way. It just sailed clear across the room all by itself, landed on the floor, and didn’t break!”

“And what was the reaction of your guests?” I asked.

“They all witnessed it, but no one said one word. We all just sat there in total silence.” Again her eyes raked over me, daring me to make fun of her or question her truthfulness.

Although I
did
dispute this “ghost” story, I waited a beat to see if she had anything to add. She did. “Now, Ralph, this party was on Friday, and I was planning to call you first thing the next morning, when another peculiar thing happened. I’d put your card on the dining room table, but in the morning, it was gone! None of my daughters had taken it or moved it, my grandson can’t reach the table, and I even checked the garbage, but it was nowhere to be found.” Finally she called her niece, the ADA, who got out the extra card I’d impulsively given her and gave Ginny my number.