You never know how a story might start. We were sitting outside with a friend Saturday evening, the wind blowing so hard the Tiki lamps would not stay lit, when I mentioned the biography of St. Faustina that I had just read: “She went to pray for a man who was dying, and saw him surrounded by all manner of hostile demons. She was able to dissipate them with her prayers, and so save the soul. She then asked Jesus (she had a direct line of communication, saint as she would become) where those demons had come from. ‘From the dark hearts of Man’ he had replied.” I brought this up to underscore the nastiness we see on the internet – how impossibly mean people can be when anonymous.
Instead, though, we ended up with demons. It turned out that our friend had had more than a few bouts with haunted houses, which she attributed to having played with the Ouija Board as a youth. I have my doubts about that, but it is then that the stories came out.
The first she told began, innocently enough, in a “Sears Catalogue” house, the kind that one could buy and have delivered in the early 20th century, in a small city in northern Minnesota. It was, she said, a cute house, and it seemed perfect for her and her two kids. But things began to happen. She came home one night with a “wheat blessing” fan and as soon as she took it out of its bag, several light bulbs burst in the kitchen, so many and so quickly that she and the kids dropped to the floor. At other times, she heard the heavy sound of running down the steps; at others, the collapsing uphill of books along the staircase. After she began redoing a room downstairs, the dog could not turn into a doorway without his back legs being forcibly shoved against the hall wall. And one night, her daughter came into her bedroom where she was reading and told her that she had felt that someone was in her room. A few moments later, her son came into the same room dripping wet with a towel wrapped around him. He asked if someone had come to visit, for he had heard someone come into the bathroom, and then had seen his feet and lower legs. As our guest said, “that night all of us – the kids, me and the dog - slept in my bed.”
There were many other encounters not mentioned here, and she discovered from the neighbors that a woman had lived here for decades along with her husband and only child, a son. The son had died when 16, then the husband had died. She was known to be a perfectionist, and our friend, “P”, reasoned that the woman was upset that she was not keeping the house “just so” and that the son was being a teen-aged brat.
She moved from that place, “thank God,” a year later without telling the new buyer of the hauntings. Smart.
Some years earlier, she had moved with her then-husband to Japan, where he was enlisted in the Navy. Her children were toddlers, and her husband gone for long periods because of his work. The apartment she had was surprisingly large, for the place was outside the big city in what P described as a beautiful area. The trouble was, things started to be moved around the house. Talking toys would roll across the floor and then emit their recordings, “cow” or “pig.” Utensils were moved about the kitchen, as were various knickknacks about the apartment. She was bottle feeding the youngest, and she would sometimes find in the morning that the daily bottle liners – five – had been lined up neatly on the kitchen table.
In Japan, they don’t have central heating, so when winter came, she got a portable propane heater like everyone else. The first night that she had it working, the door to her room began to shake. When she finally touched it to stop it (she had reasoned that it was the wind, even though it was an interior door), the door forcibly pushed back. She then thought that maybe some upper open-air panels beyond the door had been left ajar and were letting air in. She found that they were not, but that the air in the house was chokingly stuffy. She opened the panels to fresh air, and the door stopped shaking and everything was fine. The next day, she found out from her Japanese neighbors that the panels were exactly in place for this reason, to ventilate, and that without them open, one could die.
Over time, she told the neighbors of the mysterious happenings. They nodded, saying only (in broken English) “grandmother knows best.” She was to discover that the Japanese believe spirits of people often hang around their old homes, particularly the older women who had cared for them. The neighbors told her to simply do as the grandmother wanted things done, and all would be OK. So she left the toys where they were rolled, left the knickknacks where they were replaced, let the kitchen be reordered and so on – and the movements and knockings and all those things ceased. Grandmother indeed had known best.
Ghosts and demons and wee people and aliens: what are they? I have read a ton on them, from anthropological literature to campy Ufology, and in sum, it seems this: that these entities from another world are varied, with varying reasons for appearing and doing things, often beyond our own reasoning. Some certainly are evil, as were those seen around the dying man. But I think many religions often conflate all that is supernatural into two categories: good and from God, and evil and from Satan. From what I have read, most apparitions, fairies, and so on are incongruous – that is, are beyond our manner of thinking, neither evil nor good. The Japanese grandmother was pretty straightforward, but most are not. Oftentimes, they, an alien or leprechaun or goblin, simply pop up, do something strange, and then go. Sometimes they leave curses or sickness, but usually not. Nowadays, they might take us into operating rooms to do uncomfortable things, although this is only nowadays and obviously a reflection of our own times. Is this good or evil (and how and why do they change to reflect our times)? Some merely pop up to join in a party, or appear as humans in strange places for no apparent reason. It seems, indeed, that there are simply many other realities that sometimes coincide with ours, bringing in that element of strangeness.
Of course, their very existence tells us how strange our reality really is, and how incomplete is out knowledge. It is as if we were frogs who live in a small puddle where all seems knowable, and then, oops!, a demon or ghost or something (let us say a human) steps into the puddle and upsets every known fact. And then disappears again, leaving the frogs to either speculate on what they cannot possibly ever know, or simply dismiss that human step or whatever as a hallucination.
As for my research - with such things I have hit a wall, just like the frogs. Because of that, I read less and think less about such things. But that does not mean they do not exist, and in that, tell us something sublime about the complexity of the real reality. Worth investigating, if one thinks they can take one more step out of the frog pond into that larger someplace. FK
Instead, though, we ended up with demons. It turned out that our friend had had more than a few bouts with haunted houses, which she attributed to having played with the Ouija Board as a youth. I have my doubts about that, but it is then that the stories came out.
The first she told began, innocently enough, in a “Sears Catalogue” house, the kind that one could buy and have delivered in the early 20th century, in a small city in northern Minnesota. It was, she said, a cute house, and it seemed perfect for her and her two kids. But things began to happen. She came home one night with a “wheat blessing” fan and as soon as she took it out of its bag, several light bulbs burst in the kitchen, so many and so quickly that she and the kids dropped to the floor. At other times, she heard the heavy sound of running down the steps; at others, the collapsing uphill of books along the staircase. After she began redoing a room downstairs, the dog could not turn into a doorway without his back legs being forcibly shoved against the hall wall. And one night, her daughter came into her bedroom where she was reading and told her that she had felt that someone was in her room. A few moments later, her son came into the same room dripping wet with a towel wrapped around him. He asked if someone had come to visit, for he had heard someone come into the bathroom, and then had seen his feet and lower legs. As our guest said, “that night all of us – the kids, me and the dog - slept in my bed.”
There were many other encounters not mentioned here, and she discovered from the neighbors that a woman had lived here for decades along with her husband and only child, a son. The son had died when 16, then the husband had died. She was known to be a perfectionist, and our friend, “P”, reasoned that the woman was upset that she was not keeping the house “just so” and that the son was being a teen-aged brat.
She moved from that place, “thank God,” a year later without telling the new buyer of the hauntings. Smart.
Some years earlier, she had moved with her then-husband to Japan, where he was enlisted in the Navy. Her children were toddlers, and her husband gone for long periods because of his work. The apartment she had was surprisingly large, for the place was outside the big city in what P described as a beautiful area. The trouble was, things started to be moved around the house. Talking toys would roll across the floor and then emit their recordings, “cow” or “pig.” Utensils were moved about the kitchen, as were various knickknacks about the apartment. She was bottle feeding the youngest, and she would sometimes find in the morning that the daily bottle liners – five – had been lined up neatly on the kitchen table.
In Japan, they don’t have central heating, so when winter came, she got a portable propane heater like everyone else. The first night that she had it working, the door to her room began to shake. When she finally touched it to stop it (she had reasoned that it was the wind, even though it was an interior door), the door forcibly pushed back. She then thought that maybe some upper open-air panels beyond the door had been left ajar and were letting air in. She found that they were not, but that the air in the house was chokingly stuffy. She opened the panels to fresh air, and the door stopped shaking and everything was fine. The next day, she found out from her Japanese neighbors that the panels were exactly in place for this reason, to ventilate, and that without them open, one could die.
Over time, she told the neighbors of the mysterious happenings. They nodded, saying only (in broken English) “grandmother knows best.” She was to discover that the Japanese believe spirits of people often hang around their old homes, particularly the older women who had cared for them. The neighbors told her to simply do as the grandmother wanted things done, and all would be OK. So she left the toys where they were rolled, left the knickknacks where they were replaced, let the kitchen be reordered and so on – and the movements and knockings and all those things ceased. Grandmother indeed had known best.
Ghosts and demons and wee people and aliens: what are they? I have read a ton on them, from anthropological literature to campy Ufology, and in sum, it seems this: that these entities from another world are varied, with varying reasons for appearing and doing things, often beyond our own reasoning. Some certainly are evil, as were those seen around the dying man. But I think many religions often conflate all that is supernatural into two categories: good and from God, and evil and from Satan. From what I have read, most apparitions, fairies, and so on are incongruous – that is, are beyond our manner of thinking, neither evil nor good. The Japanese grandmother was pretty straightforward, but most are not. Oftentimes, they, an alien or leprechaun or goblin, simply pop up, do something strange, and then go. Sometimes they leave curses or sickness, but usually not. Nowadays, they might take us into operating rooms to do uncomfortable things, although this is only nowadays and obviously a reflection of our own times. Is this good or evil (and how and why do they change to reflect our times)? Some merely pop up to join in a party, or appear as humans in strange places for no apparent reason. It seems, indeed, that there are simply many other realities that sometimes coincide with ours, bringing in that element of strangeness.
Of course, their very existence tells us how strange our reality really is, and how incomplete is out knowledge. It is as if we were frogs who live in a small puddle where all seems knowable, and then, oops!, a demon or ghost or something (let us say a human) steps into the puddle and upsets every known fact. And then disappears again, leaving the frogs to either speculate on what they cannot possibly ever know, or simply dismiss that human step or whatever as a hallucination.
As for my research - with such things I have hit a wall, just like the frogs. Because of that, I read less and think less about such things. But that does not mean they do not exist, and in that, tell us something sublime about the complexity of the real reality. Worth investigating, if one thinks they can take one more step out of the frog pond into that larger someplace. FK
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