© Samantha E. Harris
About the Author
Samantha Harris was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now lives with her two English Bulldogs (Jack and Annabelle) and pet snake (Sir Hiss) in rural Michigan. Samantha started her own mini farm with nine hens, one rooster (Rufio), and four dwarf dairy goats that now contribute to a milk-share farm.
She established her award-winning videography company during her senior year at Michigan State University and enjoys spending her free time creating art and jewelry. Samantha loves growing organic food and supports sustainable and green alternatives. As an advocate for Native American civil rights, she produced a short documentary to bring awareness to contemporary indigenous and environmental issues.
Samantha enjoys teaching others how to help and protect themselves spiritually and feels that everyone should be entitled to such knowledge no matter their religious beliefs. She continues her work in the metaphysical field with house blessings, writing, public speaking, and television appearances about the paranormal. Samantha’s retirement dream is to open a charming metaphysical store one day.
Llewellyn Publications
Woodbury, Minnesota
Copyright Information
Fighting Malevolent Spirits: A Demonologist’s Darkest Encounters © 2014 by Samantha E. Harris.
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E-book ISBN: 9780738739403
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Llewellyn Publications
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Manufactured in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to our Creator,
my family, friends, and loved ones.
I would also like to thank the skeptics and critics
for the motivation you have instilled in me. I love you all.
Contents
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
CHAPTER 1: My First Confrontation
CHAPTER 2: Novi, Michigan Case
CHAPTER 3: Grosse Pointe, Michigan Case—Poltergeist
CHAPTER 4: Flint, Michigan Case
CHAPTER 5: Lansing, Michigan Case
CHAPTER 6: Taylor, Michigan Case—Incubus/Succubus
CHAPTER 7: New Baltimore, Michigan Case
CHAPTER 8: My Mother’s Encounter
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX A: Warfare Prayer
APPENDIX B: Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel
APPENDIX C: Preparing to Cast Out a Demon
APPENDIX D: The House Blessing/Cleansing Ceremony
PREFACE
I became interested in the paranormal at a young age—a result of numerous enigmatic experiences. Preceding my discovery of dark entities, I grew up in rural Michigan with a loving, normal family (or as normal as families can get!).
The only thing unusual about my family is that every generation on my mother’s side of the family seems to possess a psychic gift of some sort (some view it as a burden). A few years ago we discovered home videos from when I was about three years old, making predictions about what was inside a wrapped Christmas present. I excitedly claimed “I’m psychic!” after opening the predicted item. I later began having “death premonitions” in the form of dreams, and within hours or days the prediction would sadly come true.
On one particular occasion I dreamt I was in my bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed when the phone rang. The green caller ID light glowed and my grandmother’s name flashed across the screen. I picked up the phone and my grandma was sobbing on the other end of the line. “Cody is dying.” Cody was her much-loved Golden Retriever who had also belonged to her late husband. I awoke from the dream, completely forgetting about the vision until later in the afternoon. A sense of déjà vu came over me as I stood at the foot of the bed. The phone rang. I instantly remembered the dream I had earlier that morning and cringed as the exact scene unfolded before me in real time. Grandma was hysterically crying, “Cody has cancer.” Everything was identical to my dream but the wording had slightly changed.
Months later I was in my morning art class in high school when I suddenly became overwhelmed with sadness and grief. I excused myself into the art supply closet and inexplicably cried. I felt confused and wondered if I was bipolar or why I had been overcome with such extreme emotions.
I called my mother to ask if everything was okay; by this age I was just starting to learn that when these “emotions” occurred, something was likely happening to someone dear to me. My mother informed me that only two or three minutes before they had euthanized Cody.
I believe I had felt my grandma’s emotions and pain through some sort of unseen connection or telepathy. I had no previous knowledge that Cody was to be put down that day and at what time.
Then, weird events happened just before my beloved grandpa died from an overdose of chemotherapy at the University of Michigan. Even my sibling was witness to the strange occurrences of shadows sinking through the floor and disembodied voices.
In no way do I consider myself a “psychic” or a “medium”—I believe that everyone is born with a sixth sense; however, in Western and industrialized cultures, we learn to tune out this gift. I have psychic experiences, as demonstrated in this book, but have not harnessed my personal abilities to the level that many psychics and mediums have.
Like many children, I had felt the presence of darker things in my bedroom at night but never had a name for them and didn’t understand. Once in a blue moon I would see spirits in the form of shadows and hear incorporeal voices; some of them were nice, others were not.
When I was about nine years old I was taking a shower and heard a serpentlike voice hiss out my name in the bathroom, “Ssssamantttttha.” I closed my eyes and waited for it to leave. It felt dark but soon departed; this gave me a brief glimpse of what I would battle in the future.
In seventh grade I attended a summer camp in northern Michigan. While I was there I had been busy taking pictures on a cheap Kodak disposable camera. At night around the campfire the usual ghost stories were told and claims that the camp was haunted were overlooked in my mind. Every camp seems to claim that it is haunted, and I took it all in with a grain of salt. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention to it and forgot about the ghostly side of the grounds.
One late afternoon my friends Melissa and Angela and I were walking around the camp with some other girls and decided to visit the old theater building. Inside was a stage, some back rooms, and an old couch in front of a corkboard. I took a couple of pictures of the girls goofing off when I began to feel an odd sensation. The air became dense. I felt like I was being watched. None of the other girls seemed to notice, so I ignored it the best I could. As the girls sat on the lone couch, Angela kicked her legs out in a comical way and I snapped a photograph.
Weeks passed. One day, as I sat in my room at home, I felt overwhelmingly compelled to look through the pictures of my time at camp. I had previously glanced at the pictures briefly, but this time I found myself looking for something—I didn’t even know what! I turned the page of the album and saw what my intuition was guiding me towards: A full apparition of a woman stood behind the girls on the couch in the photograph. The spirit seemed to be resting her head upon her hand and smirking as if enjoying Angela’s ridiculous pose in the picture.
I ran into the kitchen to show my mother and she was taken aback.
We wanted explanations and soon headed to the local camera store in town. One of the men, a professional photographer and lab technician who had worked there for over thirty years, examined the photograph. He said it was not a double exposure, nor a reflection of any light or of me. The corkboard was not laminated or surrounded by Plexiglas at that time and the image of the woman looked nothing like me—I was the only person there could be a reflection of! The ghostly woman even appeared in the photograph’s negative.
My mother and I didn’t know what to think, but we were extremely excited about the discovery.
The camp picture is available on the Michigan Paranormal Research Association’s website, www.MichiganPRA.com. The website also has other possible evidence I have gathered from cases and investigations, as mentioned in this book.
After the camp episode, I was hungry for more answers, knowledge, truth, and experiences. I began researching case studies and reading many books—more than my bookshelves could hold!
My research and training has always been a solo experience for me. I am constantly learning and my education is never complete. In my college years I began looking for mentors to help guide me. I found few advisors and finally accepted that spiritual warfare was a path I would walk alone on this earth, but with spiritual guidance directing me.
Each experience has taught me something new and I always welcome fresh opportunities to discuss or demonstrate the paranormal with the public. Teaching and lecturing is something I also thoroughly enjoy and I have presented at various conferences, universities, and venues in Michigan after fourteen years, and counting, of research.
After racking up cases under my belt and going public with Michigan Paranormal Research Association’s (M.P.R.A.) endeavors, Hollywood began sniffing us out and we were soon faced with reality TV.
In 2009 I was offered a television series contract for the direct sequel to Paranormal State for the A&E Network, featured on the Travel Channel’s Most Terrifying Places in America in 2010, and in 2012 one of our cases debuted on A Haunting (a Discovery Channel series that aired on the Destination America network). I have been contacted over the years by William Shatner’s Weird or What, A&E’s My Ghost Story, SyFy’s School Spirits and Paranormal Witness, and more.
Reality is not what happens on “reality TV,” in fact, many reality series are staged, prompted, and guided at the hands of the producers. I do not mean to imply that all reality TV shows are artificial but an unfortunate number are misleading. Ironically, many of my paranormal encounters happened off-camera while filming for television and were more interesting than the intended plot!
One such incident happened while filming our pilot at the Holly Hotel for the direct sequel to Paranormal State on A&E (long before The New Class run-off was produced). I remember saying out loud, “Commencing blackout time” before we cut out the lights. (We were asked to create a variation of “Dead-Time” for our sequel; Paranormal State fans will understand this.)
Shortly after the darkness filled the room, I heard the cameraman, Bob, blurt out a startled phrase. “What the hell?” One of the spirits had apparently walked up to Bob and blatantly kicked his camera while he was trying to film an eerie shot from an angle on the floor. In the recording, we heard the boom microphone being struck. No one was near Bob at the time of the event and the incident could not be mistaken.
My former partner Carl O’Toole and I knew it was going to be an interesting night of filming at the Holly Hotel. Bob had been a disbeliever but now seemed to have an unspoken respect for the Holly Hotel and the paranormal.
Later that evening one of the decorative dishes hanging in the parlor area disappeared on its own accord. The owner of the Holly Hotel questioned the staff—no one had removed the item and it hung nearly eight or ten feet from the ground. Bringing in a ladder would have been noticeable and the parlor bartender stated that no one had been in the room during her shift. Strange things were always happening at the Holly Hotel.
The production company we were working with had produced Paranormal State, Laguna Beach, and The Hills, in addition to a possible upcoming show about “hot girls” investigating the paranormal. I was concerned about their ability to respect the paranormal and hesitant to sign a contract with them. I became more concerned when they discussed the possibility of bringing in another paranormal investigator and having us pretend she was originally from M.P.R.A. I am not one to fabricate things or to play “pretend,” but it also did not seem terribly harmful … just artificial. Right before heading to Connecticut to film our first actual episode, the producers slipped us a thirteen-episode contract agreement.
Mick, the producer, tried coaxing me into signing the document with a few days’ notice. I wanted more time to review the contract. I wasn’t willing to sell my soul for some TV show to gain publicity, to lower my personal and ethical standards, and I certainly was not going to accept the idea of fabricating evidence or reenacting paranormal events for the show as stated in the contract. However, I was willing to cooperate on several things.
Everything came to a halt when I asked the producers how negotiable the contract was, seeing as the first page stated “negotiable contract.” I learned that negotiable doesn’t really mean negotiable. We had jumped through so many hoops that I started to feel like Echo the Dolphin from the Sega Genesis video game.
I remember sitting at the International Center on campus with Carl during a lunch break. We were watching CNN news on one of the TV monitors in the lounge area. I had been begging God to give me a “sign” about whether I should continue with this TV series idea or call it quits. I didn’t want to be a sellout, and I took our work very seriously. We wanted to help people and perhaps viewers could learn to help themselves and others through watching our show.
I glanced up at the TV after taking another bite of my Chinese food when I read “Call Mick” on the ticker tagline of the monitor. It kept passing over the screen: “Call Mick.” I thought it was odd and pointed it out to Carl. We both laughed. “That’s really weird … Well, maybe you should,” Carl suggested.
Later that day, I feverishly searched CNN’s website for a show or news blip titled “Call Mick” and never found anything. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways, so I called Mick.
Something that bothered me about the controversial contract was that it was “effective throughout this universe.” I couldn’t help
but laugh. What if I wanted to participate in a different show in a separate galaxy … would that still violate the terms? Finally, I decided it was more important to protect my group members than become confined to a TV show.
I was somewhat heartbroken that the show wouldn’t pan out; I wanted to share our solutions to hauntings with the world so people could help themselves, but at the same time I was learning about the troubles with Hollywood.
Fast-forward a year or two and we were dealing with another set of producers. My chemistry with Carl worked great through the medium of TV, and we were happy to be filming again. We found ourselves back at the Holly Hotel working with this new production company for the Travel Channel’s Most Terrifying Places in America. It was also an interesting experience.
Again, we jumped through more hoops. I began scouting for actors for the show’s reenactment segment weeks prior to the filming and volunteered to do the makeup for one of the actors. I always went out of my way to help with filming. Being a videographer and producer myself, I understood the process and hard work involved in productions. But alas, Hollywood is Hollywood, and like an infectious disease it will corrupt anything that is “trendy,” such as the paranormal, even if it requires compromising ethics and respect.
For example, prior to filming, one of my honorary group members, Lisa, was suffering from severe fibromyalgia and had just recently undergone a mastectomy. After begging her doctor, she received permission to come with us to film at the Holly Hotel for the episode. I remember she was heavily medicated and was dozing in and out of consciousness—she amazed me and was such a strong woman.
I was absolutely distraught watching the final airing of the episode, realizing that she and all the other group members had been completely cut out of the episode! Instead, one of the producers pretended to be a visitor at the hotel and during his segment of the episode he included a false story about an experience at the Holly Hotel. Again, Hollywood is a strange and indifferent world.
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