Deliver Us from Evil

by Ralph Sarchie

  “Do you think the ghost took the card?” she asked.

  No, I definitely didn’t! “Ginny, you don’t have a ghost,” I said. The schoolteacher gave me a withering glare of hurt and betrayal tinged with scorn. I’d promised to believe her, listened to her whole story, and now I had the nerve to argue with her? I felt like I was about to be sent to the principal’s office!

  “Let me explain your problem,” I quickly added. “Your home has been invaded by a demonic spirit, which is causing the phenomena you’ve described. Only a demon can inexplicably move something as heavy as a washing machine or make an object disappear. No human spirit, or ghost, can do that.”

  As Joe unpacked the items we’d need for our ritual, I moved to the final phase of the investigation. Now that we’d established the what, we wanted to find out why a demon was here. Since Ginny had lived in this house for over twenty years but only had trouble after her grown daughter had moved back in, I questioned Nancy—and the rest of the family—about occult practices. All of them denied, very convincingly, any dabbling in magic, tarot cards, Ouija boards, table-turning, or other types of séances. Nor had they consulted mediums or psychics.

  I then inquired about a practice Father Martin considered particularly insidious: the Enneagram method, which was developed by a now-deceased Asian spiritual leader, who claimed to have learned it from the Sufi masters of Islam. In this method, a nine-pointed figure is inscribed inside a circle to represent the nine supposed variations of human personality. Each type is given special spiritual exercises that purport to perfect the person’s character—a form of heresy, the father explains, since humans are born in sin and ascend to Heaven only after God, in His grace, has cleansed and perfected their souls. This family, however, insisted that they knew nothing of this evil method.

  My interrogation turned to a new tack. Knowing that Nancy was recently divorced, I asked if she’d had a bitter breakup, speculating that perhaps her ex had cursed her. No, she replied: She and her former spouse had parted amicably, without acrimony over custody or child support. As she explained that she knew of no one, including her former husband, who harbored ill will toward her or her family, I could see that Ginny had something on her mind.

  Rather defensively, the starchy schoolteacher confessed that she hadn’t been the best of Catholics. “I had all my children baptized and confirmed, but I don’t go to church all that often. But I do believe in God!”

  I didn’t consider these lapses the explanation. I wondered if, like the two Santeria-practicing kidnappers I’d left in a police holding cell, Nancy might know more than she was letting on. Or could her former husband be the problem? But I was unable to find out what, if anything, she’d done—or whether her ex or some unknown enemy had done this to her—so Joe and I decided it was time to move on to the exorcism.

  We asked the family to stay in their living room, no matter what they saw or heard, then began the Pope Leo XIII prayer. As I’d anticipated, this demon, which had only progressed to low-level infestation, made no noticeable protest when we filled the house with fragrant smoke, holy water, and blessed salt. We gave the family their own supply of these items and several blessed candles to use after we left, so the house would continue to be repellent to the demonic.

  “It’s now up to you to keep evil spirits out of your home,” I explained. “The way to do this is to bring God back into your life with prayer and church attendance.” The schoolteacher and her family promised to be more conscientious about practicing their faith. We concluded the ritual by putting blessed oil on the walls in the shape of a cross.

  As mysteriously as it had arrived, the demon slipped silently away without so much as a bang or whimper. Although we weren’t positive at the time that it really was gone, Ginny later thanked us for giving her the best gift of all: a peaceful, demon-free Christmas with her family. Joe and I felt that we were able to close the case so quickly because Ginny had called us promptly, before the evil spirit had time to get seriously entrenched in her home.

  And as for the two bloodthirsty sorcerers who got me started on this case, the ADA solved that one herself. Thanks to her zealous prosecution, both were convicted of their bizarre crimes and spent their holidays, and the rest of that year, in that infamous New York hellhole: Rikers Island jail.

  13

  A DEADLY SIN

  Last year I got a call from a woman named JoAnn, who had read an article about me in The New York Post. She was a very articulate woman from Brooklyn—I later learned she was a schoolteacher—but the stress in her voice was obvious. “I think my husband is possessed,” she said.

  I’ve gotten many calls like this over the years and always start by looking at the facts in a neutral way, just as I would if I were taking a crime report at work. To be perfectly honest, many people who claim that they or their loved ones are possessed are actually suffering from a mental disorder or simply an overactive imagination. Even when I realize that the demonic is not involved, I always take the time to speak to these people at length and try to help them as best I can. If I feel they are emotionally ill, I’ll refer them to a doctor or, if their difficulties are in the spiritual realm, to a clergyman.

  JoAnn started off by telling me that her husband, Frank, who was in the dry-cleaning business, had just started seeing a psychiatrist. I didn’t want to interfere with this because the doctor was going to prescribe medication. Since some mental illnesses can mimic possession, I felt it was best to wait and see if the drug helped. A mentally ill person will respond to medication, at least to some extent, while the demonic spirit inside a possessed person is totally unaffected by it.

  Two weeks later, JoAnn was back on the phone, reporting that the psychiatric drugs hadn’t done a thing. That’s when the real obstacle arose: It turned out that this man not only wasn’t a Catholic, but he’d spent years in a religious movement, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, that holds a very low opinion of my faith. While he’d left this group a long time ago, he still hung on to this prejudice.

  At that point, I had to back off—if Frank refused to let a Catholic help him, then there was nothing more I could do. “You can’t force someone to get an exorcism he doesn’t want,” I told JoAnn. “It’s like dealing with a drug problem: A person has to decide he wants to kick the habit and get into rehab. Your husband must seek an exorcism of his own free will or the ritual wouldn’t work. In fact, it shouldn’t even be attempted under these circumstances.”

  The schoolteacher burst into tears, saying she didn’t know where else to turn. I told her I’d run into this problem before, since demons can target anyone, regardless of his or her religion. That’s why the bishop, though a staunch Catholic Traditionalist, is willing to perform exorcisms on non-Catholics, feeling that God’s help should be given to anyone who sincerely asks for it. Since Frank wasn’t willing, however, we couldn’t proceed any further.

  Not surprisingly, since the demonic will seize on anything to stop an exorcism from taking place, when I finally got to speak to Frank on the phone, he was extremely hostile. “I’m only talking to you because my wife wants me to,” he announced in a belligerent tone. “I’m not going crawling to any Catholic for help! It’s a false religion and I don’t want any part of it! Why do you people talk about a Holy Trinity when there’s only one God? It’s blasphemy!”

  Although I was getting mad, I had to bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him, because I wanted to determine what I was dealing with. Was this just prejudice—or could this man be genuinely possessed?

  I didn’t want to make the same mistake I did in another recent case, that of a man named Pete who had a bizarre complaint: Every time he looked in a mirror, he saw the face of a boa constrictor where his head was supposed to be. After Joe and I did an extensive interview with this man and his father—who was extremely upset by his son’s strange behavior—we concluded that Pete was possessed, possibly by a demon named Leviathan, which is said to be represented by a snake.

  When we sug
gested an exorcism with Bishop McKenna, Pete, who was a Baptist, immediately asked us to arrange it for him. When I called the night before the ceremony to confirm, Pete’s attitude had turned around completely. He’d developed qualms about getting help from Catholics and no longer wanted the ritual. Remembering how desperate he and his father were during the interview, I spent over an hour trying to change Pete’s mind, as he made increasingly insulting remarks about my faith.

  At one point during the conversation, the father picked up the phone and implored me to hold the ritual no matter what Pete said. “Please, don’t listen to him, Ralph,” the older man said. “My son needs help, and you’re his only hope. You have no idea how bad things are with him.”

  Pete, however, was adamant. “No fucking way am I going to let any Catholic put holy water on me,” he insisted. “You people are the scourge of this earth!”

  By now I was boiling mad. “That’s it,” I said firmly. “I’m going to terminate this conversation right now. I’m not going to handcuff you and drag you to a Catholic church. If you decide you want God’s help, let me know. If not, I have nothing more to say to you.”

  I could hear his father still pleading with him as Pete slammed down the phone. Still angry and more than a little baffled by the man’s abrupt refusal to get the help he so desperately needed, I called Joe and told him the whole story.

  “Ralph, don’t you realize you were talking to the demon?” my partner asked. Of course! How could I have been so blind? The demonic always have a list of bullshit reasons why an exorcism is a bad idea and cunningly exploit their victims’ fears and biases. While they have no power over someone’s free will, their attack is so strong and intricate that they know the best way to exert their sinister influence. The person may even know that what the demon urges is the wrong decision but feels powerless to resist. Until he or she realizes that the evil force is an alien, unwelcome presence—and consciously decides to reject it—the possession will progress deeper and deeper, as the demon’s influence grows stronger and stronger. That’s what happened to Pete, and it might be the problem with Frank as well.

  Infuriating as Frank’s anti-Catholic diatribe was, I listened to him ramble on about the supposed “errors” of my faith. “The cross is a false symbol,” he proclaimed in an extremely deep, rumbling baritone. “Jesus died on a pole or a stake. Have you not read in Deuteronomy 7:26 that ‘You shall not bring an abominable thing into your house, lest you be doomed with it; loathe and abhor it utterly as a thing that is doomed’? And what about I Corinthians 10:14: ‘I am telling you, whom I love, to shun the worship of idols’? Your cross is nothing but idolatry!”

  While neither of these biblical passages actually refers to the cross at all, I said that I had no intention of debating theology. “We both worship the same God, Frank, but here’s something you should think about: What kind of religion preaches hate? Like it or not, I’m a Catholic and I’m staying one. If you have a problem with that, then good-bye.”

  I put the phone down but later called JoAnn to say that I couldn’t take the case. She was beside herself and couldn’t stop apologizing for the way her husband had spoken to me. “This isn’t him,” she insisted. “He’s not a bad person.”

  “I can’t be sure at this point whether the problem is hatred for Catholics or demonic possession,” I told her. “I’ve dealt with this stuff before, and if it is demonic possession, the attacks will step up now, because the evil spirit will be angry that Frank talked to me. Wait a few weeks and see what happens. Your husband knows where to get help if he wants it, so if he changes his mind, give me a call.”

  Sobbing with frustration, she said she would. A month later she was back on the phone. “Frank wants your help now.”

  Somewhat skeptically, I told her to put him on the phone. When he spoke, I was amazed by the transformation in both his voice and his attitude. I now had a very cooperative Frank on the line. Nor was I treated to any tirades about the evils of Catholicism or any biblical quotes on idolatry. I gathered from his remarks that he was being attacked more intensely than ever, just as I’d predicted. “It’s gotten so bad that I can’t take it anymore,” he admitted. “My wife says that if I don’t get help, she’s leaving.”

  While that’s not the reason for which I would have wanted him to seek help, it was a start and I was ready to proceed, now that Frank was. My next step was to set up an interview at the couple’s Brooklyn apartment. Surprisingly, JoAnn was extremely resistant to this idea, saying their home was too “messy” for a meeting. “Couldn’t we get together at a coffee shop or something?” she asked.

  I said no. I need to interview people in their home, so I can gather impressions about their problem. Sometimes I’ve seen things in people’s houses that have given me clues about the kind of demon I’m up against or what might have brought it to this particular location. I also want to get an idea of what the people’s lifestyle is like, check for signs of occult activity, and observe their facial expressions as they describe the supernatural events that have taken place.

  “Mess doesn’t bother me,” I assured her. As a cop, I’ve been in homes—if you want to call them that—that are more disgusting than you could ever imagine. The other night I was called to a public housing project when officers responding to an unrelated 911 call were told that small children were alone in the apartment next door. Although it was 2:00 A.M. when I got there and their home was in one of New York’s most dangerous slums, the door was open. Inside, hundreds of cockroaches swarmed on every surface: on the filthy, broken furniture; on the piles of reeking garbage; and on the stained mattress where I found three little girls—twins age nine and a one-year-old baby—sleeping together. On the floor, right next to their bed, was an overflowing ashtray and a cigarette lighter.

  Naturally, we followed procedure. We woke the girls up and immediately got them out of the apartment and to a hospital. Their health checked out okay, so we notified Children’s Services so they could be placed in foster care. The so-called mother showed up at the Four-Six around 6:00 A.M. screaming that she wanted her kids. We promptly arrested her for endangering the welfare of a minor, three counts.

  And then there was the first DOA case I responded to as a rookie. Apparently this man didn’t have a friend in the world, because he’d been dead in his apartment for a month by the time his neighbors got around to reporting a foul odor. Although the man was Caucasian, the body had turned black and was moving in an odd way. Nudging one of the other officers at the scene, I asked, “What’s that?”

  “Flies,” he said. After that, I must have looked pretty comical to the other cops, the way I started leaping around and frantically shooing away any fly that came near me, thinking it might have touched the dead man.

  Far worse than the flies was the overpoweringly fetid stench. I didn’t see how anyone could stand it for a second, but I’d been ordered to remain in the apartment until the medical examiner arrived, which turned out to be all day. To keep from vomiting, I’d get a deep breath of fresh air in the hallway, then run into the apartment and throw coffee grounds on the burner of the stove. This made the smell barely tolerable for a few minutes, then I’d burn some more coffee grounds. To this day, whenever I smell burnt coffee, I think of my first DOA. The worst part, however, was when the officers lifted the dead man into a body bag. The gases inside the corpse exploded, and the man actually split open.

  If I could survive my first DOA, I was pretty sure I could handle whatever mess Frank and JoAnn were harboring in their home. I asked Keith, a cop I’d worked with briefly in East New York, to come along as backup, since Joe was taking a sabbatical from the Work. I could understand why: You can’t go balls to the walls against the demonic year after year without taking an occasional break to recharge your spiritual batteries.

  This was Keith’s first investigation, and I could sense his excitement. A year earlier I’d run into him at Brooklyn Central Booking, when he was bringing in a female prisoner. I recognize
d him from PSA (Police Service Area) #2 and said hello. After securing the prisoner, he came over and said, “Don’t think I’m crazy, but…” I figured he was going to tell me he had a ghost in his home, but I was wrong.

  “I’ve been taking courses in parapsychology,” he continued. I couldn’t help but wince, since I hate that word—and the supposedly “scientific” approach to the demonic. Keith seemed to recognize that he wasn’t striking quite the right chord, because he quickly added. “What I’m really saying is, can you teach me about this stuff?”

  I immediately tried to discourage him. “You have no idea of what you’d be getting into. Lots of people think the Work sounds exciting, but this isn’t a scary movie, where it’s fun to be afraid because it’s all make-believe. This is reality—and anyone who tries it pays a spiritual price. I’ve known people who were so frightened on their first case that they were never quite the same again. That’s what happened to one of my students a few years ago.”

  Keith insisted that he was more than tough enough for the Work. He’s Italian, in his late thirties, with dark hair and a powerful build. He’s a very aggressive street cop, so I knew that he wasn’t going to give up and go away just because I said the Work was scary. Hell, that probably heightened his interest, because this was a macho, action-oriented guy. But the factor that made me decide to take him on was his devout Catholic faith. I felt he might have the makings of a good investigator.

  Once I accepted him as a student, I let him know exactly what I expected. “On this investigation, your job is to watch my back. If you have questions during the interview, go ahead and ask them. I’ll do most of the talking, but feel free to jump in if something’s not clear. However, if this man is possessed, and you assist with his exorcism, you’re not to open your mouth and speak to him during the ritual—no matter what. And if things get rough, no slugging it out with the possessed! Just take him down if you have to, but no punches. Those are my rules—and if you break them, it’s the last exorcism you’ll ever be at!”