Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf (21 page)

“After a few paranormal investigations,” said Ray Jay, “Brian decided he wanted to learn more about ‘haunted items.’ He found some rings on eBay purported to be haunted. The one he decided to purchase said it had a djinn attached to it. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a guardian djinn or something. It was advertised as a positive entity.”

Some of the most common haunted items for sale online are rings that have a djinn, or jinn, attached to them. What we know about djinns is based mainly on old literature, although every week newspapers from the Middle East or from parts of Africa post stories of people cursed by them, falling victim to horrible tragedies or being blamed for crimes.

The word “djinn” is the basis of the word genie, but djinns have little to do with beautiful women trapped in lamps. In the West we recognize them from romantic legends such as
The Arabian Nights
, but they have been part of a strong belief system for thousands of years. While there is a kind of neutral supreme level of djinns, most seem to fall into a limbo realm. Some are helpful and can be called on in times of need; others are malicious, demon-like creatures that can cause great suffering when awakened.

According to the mythology surrounding them, they are often trapped in objects, and people can conjure them or fall victim to them depending on the type of djinn. When used to stir up trouble, the old rule of the witches often applies: What you send out comes back to you threefold. While their traditional imprisonment is in the lamp, modern theories hold that anything can be used to contain them. When it comes to demons for sale, rings are the best buy.

The ring with a djinn spirit attached to it.

“On Aug. 14, 2009, Brian found a ring advertised to be haunted by a djinn/genie,” Ray Jay remembered. “He purchased it for $9.85, plus shipping, from an eBay seller. The exact name of the item, according to his PayPal account, [was] ‘Haunted Powerful Ilmu Khodam Spirit Djinn Genie’ ring.”

“Ilmu Khodam” has many meanings to people who study magic. There is a form called conjuring, or necro-slavery, practiced by some. Where djinns are prominent, Ilmu Khodam means a way for practitioners to raise the spirit of djinn and use it to get what they want. That often means causing pain to or taking control of others. Paranormal theories say this curse or negative energy might remain after the hapless practitioner is no longer working his magic.

“The instructions that came with the ring told the new owner to light a candle and meditate with the ring, inviting the new owner to make friends with the djinn attached to it. So Brian lit a white candle and meditated with the ring, inviting the guardian djinn to be friends.

“The ring was made for a woman’s finger, so Brian couldn’t put it on, but he took EMF readings of the ring, took pictures of it, and conducted an EVP session with it. He got no results at all—not so much as a dust orb in a photograph. He also e-mailed the seller, asking about the previous owner of the ring, but got no response back.”

Things did not go as the brothers planned. It’s sometimes a gamble to buy items online, but the stakes are higher when you’re shopping for the paranormal. Your new purchase might be a complete dud and you might live a long and happy life, though this is rare in the world of online ghosts. As often happens when you dabble in things you don’t understand, the supernatural had a mind of its own for the brothers.

Not long after Brian had the ring, he experienced a run of bad luck.

“Over the course of the next three to four weeks, Brian’s luck seemed to worsen inexplicably. Our living room TV stopped working, the communal PC, the best one in the house at that time, died, and the ‘check engine’ light in Brian’s car came on and could not be deactivated,” Ray Jay said. “On top of these things, perhaps related, perhaps not, Brian was meditating one day when an image popped into his mind of a silhouette of his hand, and it was surrounded by this red glow. It didn’t feel like a reassuring image.” The brothers were amazed by all of this unusual activity.

Many investigators rely on new scientific methods to study the paranormal, to confirm whether or not ghosts exist. The ring rang no paranormal bells.

“Now, when we investigate the paranormal, we rely on verifiable facts, and a random string of unfortunate events, combined with a random mental image, is clearly nowhere close to evidence of paranormal activity. To this day, Brian considers the story of his ‘haunted’ ring a non-story—not one shred of empirical data to link his ‘bad luck’ with the ring, which is too small for him to wear.”

Not all djinns are helpful in times of need. Some are malicious demons hellbent on causing great suffering to those who unleash them, as depicted in the horror movie,
Wishmaster
.

But not all supernatural activity can be explained away. When asked if Brian puts any faith in a haunted or cursed ring, Ray Jay was hesitant to answer. “He is still undecided,” he said. “Neither of us is comfortable declaring this ring to truly be ‘haunted.’ It’s a coincidental string of bad luck, coupled with a random mental image that popped up once right after he closed his eyes, when our brains always throw up random images and colors.”

Regardless of his words, Brian’s actions lean toward superstition. “One day Brian informed me that he bought some sea salt, and I’m welcome to as much of it as I like,” Ray Jay said. “And then he tells me why he bought it. He points out that the computer, his car, the TV all happened after he received the ring. Unfortunate things happen and often happen in succession, but it just sort of seemed that they were happening a lot more lately. So Brian decided to surround the ring within a protective circle of salt (he had read that sea salt is supposed to be a better conductor for subtle energies than regular salt) and see if the bad luck stopped.

A protective circle of sea salt surrounds the ring.

“About a month or so later, I noticed the ring: It was still on a kitchen counter and still encircled by sea salt,” Ray Jay said. “I asked him if he now thought the misfortunes had been caused by the ring. Brian hadn’t won the lottery or anything, and at that time he was really undecided as to whether the ring had caused the string of bad luck or if it had just been coincidence. But neither of us has broken the protective circle around it, either.”

It has been three years since the ring was surrounded by salt, and no new supernatural activity has occurred since then. The Edwards continue to study the paranormal, keeping ghosts at arm’s length, and collecting EVPs and EMF readings. The paranormal is a bit easier to understand that way. It becomes less manageable when spirits have the ability to control and influence your life. Haunted items have a habit of breaking the rules.

For Ray Jay, the mystery of the ring might not make a good tale, mainly because it doesn’t sound like a traditional ghost story.

“I guess you could look at it as a paranormal investigator buys a haunted ring to study, then after a really inconvenient run of bad luck, he takes off the ring and is no longer interested in studying haunted objects.”

Rocks of Love

Alyssa had been ill for quite some time. During hospital visits, she met another young woman named Erica, who shared the same disease. They were close in age and had so much in common they became nearly inseparable. Alyssa was heartbroken when her friend took a turn for the worse and died unexpectedly.

One of Alyssa’s hobbies was creating beaded jewelry, which kept her mind off the physical pain of her illness and the emotional pain of her loss.

One day not long after her friend’s death, Alyssa went into her bead drawer and found an amethyst stone, one of her favorites. It was too wide and thick to be used for jewelry, so it shouldn’t have been in the drawer. In fact, Alyssa couldn’t remember putting it there in the first place. Perfectly heart shaped, the amethyst seemed like a message of love when she needed it most.

Soon after, whenever she was downhearted or when her illness intensified, she would find smooth heart-shaped stones in various places. One might appear in her bead drawer, like the amethyst, or under her pillow.

Alyssa believes Erica is looking down on her and sending her these stones to remind her of the strength of their friendship, even though one of them has passed on to a place where pain and illness do not exist.

Raphael on the Headstone

Love can be eternal and take different forms. One of the strongest is the passion we have for our family, and through the generations, that emotion can intensify and change.

As the family grows, the love of a grandparent also grows, due to less involvement in the day-to-day busyness of child rearing and more quality time spent with the grandkids. Someone once said a grandparent and a grandchild understand each other because they share a common foe, but it is more than that. A small sign can travel the distance of years and life experience to tell one generation that another generation is still thinking about it.

Stephany DeSantiago has loved four men in her life, and she has lived to see all of them leave her. When she was 17, her brother disappeared. Then her husband left her before their son was born and never kept in contact with his family.

But Stephany’s two greatest loves were her father and her son, and she has buried both. She has stood at their graves and left flowers and said prayers. She leaves other mementos of love, too—or at least she used to. In death, the two boys she has never stopped loving or believing in have found each other, and she believes they talk to each other on some plane she cannot reach. Their connection doesn’t stop there. If you believe this story, they’ve exchanged a gold chain, too.

The gold chain and Saint Raphael medal were not expensive, but Stephany’s father, Gus, thought they were a sign from heaven, so he bought them. He had been traveling by bus nearly every night to see his sick uncle in the hospital. He got off the bus one day and found a $20 bill in the street. As he bent down to pick it up, the wind blew it onto the window of a pawn shop. Like a sign from God, it landed right above a display case containing the medal of Saint Raphael, the patron saint of the sick.