Holy Ghosts

by Gary Jansen

  There had been other instances, too. A few days after that time in the kitchen, she was in the bathroom putting away towels when she saw something move near the shower curtain. She walked over, thinking it was a big moth, pulled the curtain to the side, but saw nothing. On other occasions she noticed that one of Eddie’s stuffed animals had started talking on its own, but as with the Kermit the Frog doll incident, she didn’t give it much thought. She said none of this frightened her, though she had thought it was all odd. And like me, she said nothing. They all seemed like nonevents.

  She asked me if I thought it was all related and I said I didn’t know.

  “Maybe it’s my dad,” she said.

  Since he had passed away, Grace believed her father had become her guardian angel. From time to time she felt his presence and could smell the cigarettes he smoked when he was alive. She admitted that millions of people smoked Parliaments, but what was strange was that she often experienced the smell in our house, where none of us smoked. Grace didn’t believe in ghosts. She did, however, believe in her father, whom she trusted more than anyone in her life. She knew that he would protect her and her family whether in this life or in the afterlife.

  But she quickly discarded what she said. Whatever she had felt didn’t feel like her dad. In fact, she said, it hadn’t felt like anything at all.

  I brought up what just happened with Eddie after his bath, about how he refused to go into his room and asked if she didn’t think it was odd.

  “That’s what three-year-olds do. They don’t want to sleep by themselves. I don’t blame them,” she had said. “The dark can be scary for a little kid.”

  She looked at me, expecting a reply, but I didn’t say anything. After a few moments she answered my silence by saying, “It’s nothing. I think it’s all just a coincidence. It’s been a stressful time. Think of all the times non-weird stuff happens. That’s most of our lives. I think you’re just reading into things.”

  I thought about what she said and quickly replayed the events of the last several months in my mind. I tried to convince myself that she was right, that I was making something out of nothing. Maybe it was all just coincidence. But since I had started researching Saint Ignatius—and other great Christian mystics—I had begun to believe, as they did, that everything was connected to everything else. For a long time, I had understood this intellectually. Though I was no scientist, it made the most sense to me when I would think of the big bang theory.

  It was Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, who in 1931 first proposed before the British Science Association the theory that the creation of the universe began with a tremendous cosmological event, an explosion that originated from a dense hot spot. This “exploding cosmic egg,” as he called it, essentially spewed matter into the universe, effectively leading to the development of stars, suns, moons, planets, animals, and people. If all things originated from one point, that means that all things today can trace their ancestry back to that single moment. That meant that physically we were made of stars and stars were made of us and that regardless of where we, as humans, came from—whether it be Africa or Mexico—or who our parents were, we all had the same blood running through our bodies, whether I was O negative and another person was A positive.

  Now something was stirring inside me, and I began to move past believing in the almost clichéd idea that we are all connected in a physical sense to seeing it for the first time in a spiritual context. Though it was still unclear to me exactly what that was, I could feel something bubbling within. Maybe I was reading into things, as Grace said. Or maybe, just maybe, God was trying to tell me something.

  All of this began to move around inside my head as I sat there with Grace until I finally said to her, “You’re probably right, but what if we are supposed to read into things?”

  PART II

  Discernment of Spirits

  There are two truths which people today have almost completely forgotten. The first is that man is a fallen creature, which means that he once possessed certain spiritual powers that can now only be present in him in weakened state; they can thus only become effective under certain exceptional conditions, and even then only in an imperfect way. The second truth is that, although it is connected with the body, the soul is a spirit which may sometimes loosen that connection and may thus be able to achieve things that would ordinarily be impossible.

  —Father Alois Weisinger

  Chapter 5

  In September 2007, I enrolled in the Pastoral Formation Institute (PFI) through the Diocese of Rockville Centre. PFI was a three-year program designed for Catholic laypeople as a means of seeking out a vocation within the Church and offered studies in the Bible, Christian spirituality, Church history, and human sexuality, to name just a few. For years, I had been thinking about becoming a deacon, a minister who assists priests in preaching and administering the sacraments. I had prayed and discerned about it for a long time, but I still wasn’t sure if it was a good fit for my personality. A deacon’s job was to be at the disposal of the bishop—an honorable job, but one that I felt I might have a teeny, tiny problem with since I had always had a problem with authority figures. Nonetheless, after talking to a couple of priest friends and speaking with a spiritual adviser, I decided that this program might do me some good and lend some structure to my religious pursuits.

  That fall was a busy time. The publishing industry always went a little crazy in the months leading up to Christmas, and this year was no exception. Grace was in her second trimester and nervous about her pregnancy after what had happened earlier in the year. Eddie, who was about to turn four, was still a rambunctious and growing little boy, a three-and-a-half-foot nucleus with a never-ending supply of energy. Add to that mix school, which I attended in the evenings, and the book I was researching and writing and there was little time left for anything else.

  Yet after my conversation with Grace about the unexplained things happening in our house, I found myself in need of answers, not necessarily about the incidents themselves (although that was part of it), but what all of this meant to me spiritually. Since God created all things, then all things had a spiritual component no matter how great or how small. Grace was convinced that it was all nothing—and she may have been right—but the fact that she had been experiencing similar incidents within the same time frame was enough to tip the scales for me. I kept thinking about what Peggy had said about our house having a ghost. In the back of my mind, I think I always thought so too but had been afraid to articulate it. Almost overnight I found myself filled with questions as if I were a little kid. Were ghosts and spirits real and, if so, what did my faith have to say about it? Did Catholicism even include a belief in ghosts? I was pretty sure it didn’t, but I didn’t really know.

  In all my years, in all my reading, in all the spiritual retreats I had attended, I had never heard of someone even mentioning the word ghost except as an archaic term for the Holy Spirit. If the Church did believe ghosts existed, why were these things rarely discussed? And if there really was a ghost in the house, was it a good ghost or bad ghost? Was it an angel or was it a devil? What was a demon? The Bible talked about people being possessed by demons, but I always thought it was just an ancient people’s misdiagnosis of epilepsy or some kind of multiple personality disorder. What did demons look like? What did they do? I had heard of exorcisms and, like most people, had seen and been frightened by the movie The Exorcist. I had even read a book for work written by Malachi Martin called Hostage to the Devil. It was published in the 1970s and was supposed to be a nonfiction account of twentieth-century exorcisms, but it seemed more fiction than fact. Was any of this real? Could a ghost be a demon or a devil?

  I had made friends with a few people in PFI who never talked about ghosts but talked about the “enemy,” the devil, in real terms, as if he were a living person. They had said the closer you get to God, the more the devil will try to tempt you. Was my research for a book on prayer attracting some demonic force
in an attempt to derail me from the project? All these questions sounded so superstitious and so medieval to me that I could see why the Church might keep a tight lid on such things. It was more than easy, with a little imagination, to get carried away by frightening thoughts and images and lose sight of God.

  My curiosity, however, had been piqued, to say the least. I didn’t know if I was about to walk down the same snooping path that killed the cat, but there was something bubbling in me and I needed to figure it out. I realized that in the last six months, except for that one time in my office after my lunch with Peggy, I had not prayed about any of this since it started happening. So I did just that, I prayed, but I also discerned.

  DISCERNMENT IS A FANCY WORD for a decision-making process, and one most favored by Saint Ignatius. In a nutshell, a person enters into spiritual discernment when he or she has come to some sort of crossroads. Should I take this new job or stay where I am? Should I get married or stay single? Should I help someone who has repeatedly let me down or not? You propose the question to God, you pray, and then you listen. Sometimes the listening takes a long time, sometimes not. If an answer comes and it brings peace, then it’s the right thing to do. If not, keep on praying.

  Saint Ignatius also believed that when you enter into discernment you need to be aware of what it is you’re resisting in your life. If, for example, someone has mistreated you and you hold a grudge and are unable to forgive that person, Ignatius would want you to become very conscious of where the resistance is coming from. Is it a bruised ego? Is it out of fear? Is it out of a need for revenge? Whatever it is, it’s a signal that something is out of alignment and you need prayer, guidance, and assistance to help you arrive at a place where there is no resistance, just forgiveness. Essentially, one key that unlocks the door leading to spiritual growth can be found in that which you reject. (This, of course, presupposes that what you’re rejecting is contrary to the golden rule—love God and love your neighbor as yourself. If someone tells you to kill another person and you resist, well, that’s a good thing because you’re not supposed to kill anyone. Duh.)

  For months I had been resisting my gut feeling that whatever I was experiencing was something supernatural. I thought back to how I dug in my heels when Peggy suggested there might be a ghost in my house and then again when Grace suggested there wasn’t. Why was I resisting both belief and nonbelief?

  I must admit that both ideas in some ways frightened me. I had tried to ignore a number of feelings over the last few months, but now I wanted to take action. But what to do? I had no idea, really. I wasn’t ready to call the number Peggy had given me and I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else about this either. So I put the matter before God. I prayed and asked what I should do.

  And I didn’t get an answer.

  I prayed on it for a week and nothing. Activity was still happening in the house. I continued to see shadows out of the corners of my eyes. Ed’s toys continued to talk on their own. I had no idea that he had so many cars and stuffed animals that made noise. We changed the batteries on some and it still kept happening. And then one night, while Grace and I were watching TV, we heard what sounded like a window breaking right in the middle of the room, as if someone were standing in front of us with a pane of glass and whacked it with a hammer. Grace was startled. I jumped up off the couch and ran outside, thinking that someone had tried to break one of our windows, but there was no one around. I searched all around the house, inside, outside and found nothing. No broken glass. It wasn’t until the next day that I remembered this used to go on in our house when I was a kid. Sometimes my dad thought I was responsible since I had a tendency to throw baseballs around the house (I know, I was an idiot), but after inspecting everything he never found even the smallest sliver of glass anywhere.

  At this point I had had enough and even though the process of discernment seemingly hadn’t worked for me, I had made a decision to finally do something. I wish I could say it was something dramatic, but the first thing I did is what most nerdy people in publishing do when they want an answer: read.

  Having worked with books for over ten years, I had seen peripherally a number of them that engaged the whole ghost debate—were spirits and phantoms real or just stories meant to scare schoolchildren? On one side were the rationalists, who believed in a very modern view that all that’s real in the world is that which can be seen and touched and examined by science. If science couldn’t prove it, or at least give a pretty decent, logical theory, then it was nonsense. Then there were the believers, who were adamant that there was a spirit world regardless of the lack of physical evidence or the mostly inaccurate predictions, or obvious observations, of mediums or psychics. While I would eventually make my way to both types of books and arguments over the course of several months, I was most interested in knowing what the Catholic Church had to say about all this, if they had anything to say at all. So I started with the place I have visited a number of times over the years when I was looking for answers to questions of faith. No, not the Bible, but John Hardon.

  John Hardon was a Jesuit priest who had studied philosophy at Loyola University and theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. He taught for some years at St. John’s University in Queens. He was a brilliant, devout, faithful, and levelheaded man who wrote a number of intelligent but accessible works on Catholic theology, including The Catholic Catechism in 1975,1 which was the first time a book brought together the teachings of the Church in one single volume. He was also the author of the Modern Catholic Dictionary. Those two books had taught me more about the foundations of my faith than any other, and Hardon had become my go-to author whenever I needed information. Though he wasn’t the official spokesperson for the Catholic Church, he was pretty darn close. If there were any Church teachings on ghosts, Hardon would know about it.

  By this time it was early October and Eddie had become a permanent fixture in our bed. Grace, who still didn’t believe that anything weird was going on, had tried on a couple of occasions to have him return to his room. But he was adamant about not going back. Grace was growing more and more tired as her pregnancy progressed and refused to press the issue. This was fine by me. I had come to believe that there was something in the house and that Eddie’s room was a hot spot of sorts, so I didn’t object. Still, I found myself vacillating between belief and nonbelief. Though I had made the agreement with myself to start my own personal investigation into the supernatural, it was another week before I made any attempt to see what Hardon might know about ghosts.

  On a warm, windy night after Grace and Eddie were asleep I rolled out of bed and made my way to the attic, where the bulk of my books were. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but every step I took seemed to echo throughout the hall. The attic, like the basement, had never been my favorite part of the house, probably because its low ceiling and exposed walls made me feel claustrophobic. I opened the door, closed it behind me, and made my way up the stairs. I moved some boxes of summer clothes that Grace had recently put up there and made my way to the bookshelf that held my books on the Catholic Church. I found Hardon’s dictionary pretty quickly.

  As I took the book down, a burst of doubt went off in my head. Just about anything that was of any importance to the Catholic Church could be found in this book—from the definition of ad majorem Dei gloriam (for the greater glory of God) to the explanation of who Zephaniah was (author of the ninth book of the minor prophets)—and I was certain at that moment that none of what had been going on inside my head was important. I sat on the floor and as I began flipping through the pages I was pretty sure that there would be no entry for ghost.

  I heard something moving downstairs and stopped to listen, but it quickly went away. I thought that I might have been too loud moving boxes and stirred Grace or Eddie from sleep. I waited a few moments and when I didn’t hear anything else, I turned to the Gs and started running my finger down the page and, just as I suspected, there was no entry. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointme
nt and wasn’t sure what to do next. If Hardon had nothing to say on the subject it probably wasn’t worth exploring. I closed the book and as I was about to put it away, something made me open the book again. I did so, went back over the Gs, and I don’t know how I missed it the first time, but on the bottom of page 229, was this:

  Ghost. A disembodied spirit. Christianity believes that God may, and sometimes does, permit a departed soul to appear in some visible form to people on earth. Allowing for legend and illusion, there is enough authentic evidence, for example in the lives of the saints, to indicate that such apparitions occur. Their purpose may be to teach, or warn, or request some favor of the living.

  “Get out,” I said to myself.

  Did this really mean that the Church actually believed in the existence of ghosts? Hell, if Hardon said it, that was enough for me. I quickly flipped through the book, looking up words like phantom and poltergeist, but I didn’t find any of those. I did, however, find entries on angels and demons. To my surprise, it seemed that the Church didn’t consider these to be literary conceits, metaphors, or remnants from a superstitious age, but living—and very powerful—presences in our world today.

  At creation, God created the angels. They were unlike humans in that they were pure intelligence and invisible with no bodies. But they did share one thing in common with mankind: free will. They had the ability to decide on whether to stay with God or break free. The angels kept with God, the ones that didn’t, by their act of defiance, became demons. Both could, and did, have influence on humanity.