Demons are everywhere.  This is not a figurative statement. Demons, foul, creeping things,  unclean, shadowy beings are nearby.

I believe you too may have witnessed an encounter as well. My first experience was during a summer night growing  up in a small rural township in Ohio. I was 21 and working 60 plus hours a week.  My younger sister had her trifecta of friends overnight. I was trying to sleep during their ruckus in the adjacent room. Then I heard the grumbling  growl of our little dachshund. I patted the edge of the bed, half asleep, thinking he wanted an invitation. What I heard next wasn’t from the dog. It was a gravelly  growling language.  I tried to wake up. It was sleep paralysis and I caught the thing out from underneath my struggle  to raise my eyelids. It was a small, three foot long by a foot high dark gray black – thing, like a smudge. It was speaking to me and I couldn’t wake up! When I was finally  able to  wake, of course nothing was there. I eventually  went back to sleep and went to work as usual.

The only change I experienced  was an immense  desire to get back to Mass. I had lapsed and hadn’t went to church in several months. Sometime during the next day I had the overwhelming need to go to Mass -asap. And I did.

Flash forward 6 years later and I’m down in Southern  Ohio for part of the July 4th weekend.  I’m meeting a friends mother, who describes to me her born again experience. She was a heavy drinker and one night, after coming home from work late she immediately  started drinking. Sometime around 1 am she grabbed  a beer from the fridge, set it on her nightstand and had in her words “a vision.”

A tall dark shadow figure stood before and started speaking in a growling, garbled way. This caught my attention! Just like the way I heard it, we both knew it was speaking  to us. Then and only then, did I realize what I witnessed. She said it a “demon.” She too had to bring herself to herculean  efforts to snap out of it. When she did, her beer, still cold was right where she had left it. Then and there, she vowed to stop drinking,  reform and return to God and her church.  It was then, too that I remembered  my urge to go to Mass. Before her story I had forgotten about my encounter.

Now incensed by this new development, I couldn’t  wait to tell my sister in law. I had our family  function  to go to that Sunday and I knew I could tell her. I had never told my story beforehand. When the time came, I told her all about what had happened.  It could not prepare me for she had to say. My sister in law was a recent  convert to Catholicism. I had assumed  we just rubbed off on her. Not so. One night she was awakened by what she described as a black animal that was running circles under and around her bed. My brother  was sleeping  next to her but she couldn’t  wake him. The ‘animal’ was growling as it scurried around her bed. Once she was able to wake my brother  it ceased.  She vow ed the next day to become  Catholic.

So all three of us had encounters, all three of us as a result, returned to God. I’ve had several instances since and each time I know to get to Mass. Now I’m seasoned enough to call out “Mary mother of God” and they ( I’ve had two next to me before ) flee.

But those encounters are for another post.

 

 

When my childhood friend called me late night September, she was winded and said: “I didn’t think you knew, but I’ve been diagnosed  with cancer.”  No, I didn’t know and I was shocked by it.

As we talked over the next weeks and months I was at a loss over what to say. She was a hard-headed woman, as the saying goes, and she called the shots. She always did. She was Electra Woman and I was Dyna Girl.  She became angry, complications arose, she was sent to a nursing home for ‘rehabilitation. ‘

We were good Catholic girls from the cradle. We leaned on our faith. Her anger, my work schedule, my derth of words- kept me away.

And then I had the dream.  An old white farmhouse resting on shaggy green grass, in a midsummer afternoon. It was deserted, and I didn’t wanted enter it but she did. So as dreams work, suddenly we were inside. We were in the white walled hallway, doorways staggered on both sides. She was leading the way, I wanted out with a twinge of foreboding. I wasn’t in danger, but I just didn’t want to be there. She said: “I’ll get you out.” We went into a room. I’m very short and the sole window was extremely  high up. She was super tall and with a swoop holstered my foot and out the window I went.

As dreams fudge and smudge, I was safely outdoors and I turned to help her out. She leaned out the window  and said: “I’m gonna stay here.”  I wasn’t worried and simply went about my way.

When I woke, I knew I needed to make time to visit her. She was about an hour away, but I needed to go. I called her right away, she answered. By now treatment, medication and strokes, had left conversations to her random mutterings. She was giving up. To combat this I called in my secret weapon…Mom! Tough love, ‘God’ll get you!’ Mom! She gave her the what for and told her to fight.

I promised myself  to visit asap. And then a week later…the text. My sister offered me condolences on her passing. I was astounded! My brother in law has heard just that moment from a parishoner. I was in disbelief, stunned. Immediately  I sent a text to her ex-husband.  We talked. He too believed until four days prior that she would beat it.

Stunned, I attended calling hours, but with closed casket, there just wasn’t any proof! Only until the funeral mass, with her family escorting her casket did I realize that I would see her no more.

I called her cell and got her voice mail message. I left her some private thoughts.

I had been praying everyday for two years for her recovery, now I pray for her soul. I feared that she was in purgatory, I made it my business to try and get her released. I light votive candles for her at the church shrine. I had masses said for her, monks pray for her and sisters remember  her in their prayers.

And then I had the dream. I was outside an off white building, a huge building. As dreams blur..inside people were rushing passed me making a dash for the door outside. I was looking for her and found her sitting patiently in a white cell. I opened the gate and told her it was time to go!

Outside a murky gray sky above, on a sidewalk, I carefully zipped up her hoodie and asked her where to. She replied mundanely: ” I’m going to see my family.” I knew she meant her mom, brother and sister who had all died within the past five years!

I woke up feeling the dread that she was still in purgatory, but not in the bowels.

She and I had discussed after her brother died, that the death pattern would end. Three of her family; mother, brother, sister was enough. Death only comes in threes. She was safe. Yet, just over a year after the sudden death of her brother, she was gone.

I’ve had two other dreams of her and talked with a mystic about her and I plan to write those in another post. I pray for her soul everyday and beg God for her release.