When my little sister was very young, around three years old, she had nightmares every night. Really scary nightmares. My mom didn’t know what to do to help her, but after many weeks of interrupted sleep for everyone, eventually she told my sister, “ok Margaret, let’s pray and ask God to take away your nightmares.”
So they prayed, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Dear God, please protect Margaret from these scary nightmares. Let Margaret have peaceful sleep, without any scary dreams. Thank you God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
And her nightmares went away. Completely.
In fact, my sister Margaret claims that, ever since saying that prayer when she was little, she barely even dreams at all. I remember being amazed by that story. I was in middle school at the time, and by now I already believed in a God who answered my superficial, silly, selfish little prayers (because he did!). But this seemed like a pretty extreme and miraculous answer to a little girl’s prayer. No more nightmares? No more dreams?
At the same time, my brother, who was only two years younger than me, had always been afraid to sleep at night. Instead of having scary dreams, he swore that things moved in his room.
Of course, my parents kept telling him, “don’t worry Shane, you’re just having bad dreams.” And “don’t worry Shane, you’re just seeing shadows from the headlights and the trees through the window.” And “don’t worry Shane, it’s just your imagination.” But he insisted, no, things are moving! The pictures are moving! The truck is moving! In fact, to this day, he swears that there was a doll in my room that came to life and turned its head to stare at him.
But around 1999, when the movie The Sixth Sense came out, my mom actually started wondering… wait…. Is it possible that my poor son is actually seeing… ghosts? Like… is it possible that he isn’t making it up?
Percocet Gargoyle Demon
In our previous house, when my mom had just given birth to my brother, and they were newly home from the hospital, my mom was given Percocet for the pain. (“They gave out Percocet like candy. I didn’t know how strong it was!”)
One afternoon, while they were both napping, she had an experience that could be explained away as just a percocet hallucination… except in this hallucination, she was paralyzed and unable to move. She woke up from her nap to a loud static through the baby monitor in Shane’s room, and then heard footsteps coming through the monitor. Then, creepiest of all… she heard a loud cow moo. And she realized she couldn’t move. Next, she heard the footsteps get softer on the monitor, until she heard them in the hallway, and the footsteps came into her room. And into her room walked a little…. demon goblin creature. She describes it as “a gargoyle.” And she still couldn’t move. The creature walked up onto the edge of the bed and she screamed, “I belong to Jesus Christ! You must leave now in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit!” And she could move again. She got up and ran into Shane’s room and scooped him up and brought him into her room with her. (Does that sleep paralysis story sound familiar? My friend had a similar experience I wrote about here.)
Suffice it to say, she stopped taking the Percocet after that. But she would often tell that story once we were teenagers, still spooked by it, trying to make sense of it. Surely it was just some kind of drug induced hallucination. But… maybe not? It did feel real. And calling on God made it go away...
I talked to her recently about this story, asking her for the details again. I told her it was fascinating that she instinctively knew to call on Jesus, even though she was in a very questioning, agnostic period in her life. She said “Well, that’s always what the nuns told us to do back in Catholic School.” She also said that she always had a weird feeling about Shane’s room after that. There were blood stains on the rug when they moved in. And strangely, a friend of mine from school’s father came to pick her up after a playdate, and said, “woa, this is the house I used to party in. I was best friends with the kid who lived here. If these walls could talk…”
Shane was always scared to sleep in his room, as he became a toddler he started being able to explain to us that “he was afraid something was going to move.” He spent almost every night sleeping on my parent’s floor. Normal kid fears right? Kids are afraid of the dark, right?
Fast forward then to 1999, and my mom still had a 9 year old son who was easily spooked by things. And she thought, shoot, can my son actually see ghosts?!?!?! So she started doing research. She was able to use the new internet, to try and research whether Shane could see ghosts like the little boy in the Sixth Sense.
I was around 11, and she eventually told me she had done this ‘ghost research,’ and had come to the conclusion that he probably could not see ghosts. I sat there in shock. What do you mean, you were wondering if Shane can see ghosts? How is this real life? I thought scary stories weren’t real? I thought that …ghosts weren’t real!!!!
I’d actually seen The Sixth Sense at a friend’s house, and it temporarily ruined my life. I never watched scary movies, (and I pretty much never have since). But after watching that movie I spent the only night of my whole life sleeping on my parents’ floor. I joined my brother, who slept on my parent’s floor in a sleeping bag, and slept there next to him in my own sleeping bag, terrified of ghosts, still trying to assure myself they were not real. So then, six months later, hearing my mom tell me that she was doing research to make sure Shane wasn’t seeing real ghosts?!?!?! WHAT?
What she told me, was that she learned that the supernatural world works on legalities and “permission.” You needed to give permission to ghosts in order to see or interact with them. You needed to “open the door,” so to speak, and keep the door open. Which means that on the flip side, if we didn’t want to see ghosts, we just had to say NO, and ask God to close that door.
Witchcraft in Central America
Our childhood babysitter from El Salvador, Maria, actually told my mom that legality aspect of ghosts. That you could ask God to close the door for you. She personally was inundated with creepy supernatural experiences, and God had been her only refuge. And, around this time in 1999, She had moved into an apartment that she felt was haunted. She demanded the ghost leave and go be with God, and the door slammed, and the apartment was not haunted after that. She had many strange and impossible sounding stories of witchcraft from El Salvador. Things she told us sounded like scary stories. I recall something about a witch woman who lived in the woods and could turn into a chicken (probably more likely, inhabiting the chicken, or having a demon inhabit it...)
I thought she was just telling a made up story, she had to be, but I remember… her sincerity was compelling. She was not telling us this in glee or for fun. She hated it. But she swore it was real. She swore that in her country, the dark supernatural was real, and rampant.
She also had a personal experience with an angry ex of her husband’s going to a vodou-type doctor and putting a curse on her that, seemingly, ended her marriage in a fit of violence. A needle in the stomach of the doll. She was stabbed in the stomach. I remember listening to these stories and thinking… no. It can’t be. But there was a seed planted. Could it be? How?
She also had an experience in the college behind our house, when she was visiting the college with her daughter. She used to walk our dog on that campus every day. And she would often see a woman dressed in old fashioned clothes walking around. Sometimes she would talk to her. She cryptically told her: “a lot of spanish people will come to this school one day soon.” Fast forward to the tour of the school with her daughter, and she saw a large portrait of this woman in the school’s library, in similarly old fashioned clothing. She asked the guide about her… who was that woman? The guide responded. “Have you seen her on campus? Many people have. She died over a hundred years ago, but still, people have seen her.” She didn’t let her daughter go to the school after that. Maria had many experiences with the supernatural. But she hated it. She didn’t want it. And she would always pray for it to go away, and/or pray for the souls or the ghosts or whatever she was experiencing. She wasn’t sure. But praying always helped.
Praying to “Close the Door”
If this was true, that you had to give permission to spirits to continue contacting you, and that praying for protection could help? Well then there was no time to waste. If there was even a CHANCE that any of this was real, I had to make sure I never saw ghosts. Ever. I did NOT give permission. No no no.
So I prayed: “Dear God, please. Please. Please I really do not want to see ghosts. I never, ever want to see ghosts. Or anything. I do not give permission. Please protect me. Thank you God. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.” I probably prayed that a few times over the next few weeks, just to make sure.
And I will tell you, I have never seen a ghost. Or any sort of entity. No matter how deep into many questionable spiritual practices I eventually went.
So… thank God.
Back then, for better or for worse, these experiences became the basis of my theology and my spiritual beliefs. My mom was still reckoning with her secret agnosticism, rocked by the church scandals. And I was left to piece together my beliefs about God through the donuts at CCD and confusing Catholic masses — who is Paul? Who are these Thessalonians? I didn’t know, and furthermore, I didn’t care.
For the first 34 years of my life, God was about getting my prayers answered and protecting me from ghosts, and I was very thankful for that, but that was it. That was as far as it went.
If you’re new around here, read New Age Demons, and you’ll get an idea of where my journey eventually took me: after years of dabbling in trendy witchy things, I came around to really truly believing that the dark supernatural is real. And dangerous. And that God is the only answer.
Are ghosts demons?
There are bigger theological questions here about ghosts and demons, and if all ghosts are demons, or if there is some delineation between deceased human spirits and demons.
In my experience, Protestants have a harder line: ghosts aren’t real. Ghosts are just demons, tricking you. I believe Catholicism is more open to the possibility that deceased spirits can be trapped here, but the warning is the same: Do not mess with them. Do not invite them in. Do not go looking for them. Do not be fooled by seances and mediums. Do not interact with them.
Do not be fooled by any of it — they may be demons. It is not for us to mess with.
I’d say praying for them is safe. But pray for protection for sure. Pray for God to protect and deliver you from darkness and deception.
Spooky, dark demonic things are real.
For me, at this point, Halloween is all about pumpkins and apple cider, man. Maybe a jack - o - lantern here or there. Maybe. But miss me with that scary spooky stuff. Because I know now… it’s real.