The Dark Sacrament

by David Kiely

  “It’s interesting about that soldier, though,” he said as they climbed the stairs. “That set me thinking, so it did.”

  Linda turned, startled.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, during the First World War there was an army battalion stationed on this land. My grandfather used to tell me stories about them when I was a wee one.”

  Not surprisingly, this information gave Linda no comfort whatsoever. She knew little about ghosts, had never seen one, and, like many people, only half-believed in them. Ian was a doubting Thomas, but she herself never shut the door on the paranormal. But one thing she knew of ghosts: they were frequently the souls of men who had met violent ends—like some soldiers do. Lucy’s vision was of a battle-scarred veteran; Ian’s words were causing Linda to think that the man might well have suffered a violent death on her property.

  The notion appalled her. She resolved to go and see Father Lawless the following day. Clearly, this was a case of a restless soul—possibly more than one—and surely a Catholic priest was ideally placed to offer help on the plight of souls.

  As it turned out, Father Lawless saw little cause for concern.

  “Oh, we don’t take such things seriously anymore, Mrs. Gillespie,” he said. “Maybe a couple of hundred years ago, but not in these more enlightened times. Children have very active imaginations these days. All that rot they see on TV and the films has a harmful effect. Pray more, and sprinkle some holy water; that’s my advice. I’ll get you a bottle.”

  He left the room and returned a few minutes later with the holy water and a prayer leaflet.

  “Now, I’m giving you this Divine Mercy Chaplet to say. It’s very powerful altogether. It reminds us that God’s love is unlimited and available to all of us. It’s good to get into the habit of regular prayer; that way, you’ll feel God’s protection and won’t be too fearful of these paranormal things. The chaplet affords you great security. Say it every day—and have little Lucy say it also. In no time, all this will clear up. You’ll see.”

  The Divine Mercy Chaplet has an intriguing history, as Linda would learn. Its message and devotion stem from the writings of a Polish nun. Born into poverty as Helen Kowalska, the third of ten children, she would become known as Sister Faustina.

  On February 22, 1931, when Helen was twenty-six, Jesus appeared to her in a most singular vision. He was robed in white. Rays of light, some red and others white, emanated from his heart. An inner voice—she believed it to be the voice of her Savior—explained that the rays represented “the blood and water that gushed forth from the depths of my mercy when my agonizing heart was pierced on the cross. The pale rays symbolize the water, which cleanses and purifies the soul.”

  The vision continued to reappear. Sister Faustina kept a record of these mystical encounters, which would run to over six hundred pages. The message is always the same: that God is merciful, that he is love itself poured out for us, and that he wants us all to turn to him with true repentance while there is still time.

  The nun was given to understand that she was the recipient of a new mystic image of Jesus and its accompanying message, one that would take its place alongside that of the Sacred Heart. This was a momentous revelation, yet it would be many years after Sister Faustina’s death in 1940 before it was recognized and accepted by the Vatican. She herself foresaw its proscription, imposed in 1959 by Pope John XXIII. Apparently, poor and misleading translations of her diary would circulate, whereby the revelation would become corrupted. The Vatican would impose a ban. She wrote that it would remain in place until “suddenly the action of God will come upon the scene with genuine power, to bear witness to the truth.”

  It was not until April 1978 that the ban was lifted. The man responsible was the archbishop of Sister Faustina’s home diocese, Karol Wojtyla. In October of that same year he would become Pope John Paul II. Sister Faustina was canonized in April 2000.

  Linda felt better after her visit to Father Lawless. His words had reassured her. He seemed to believe that regular prayer was the remedy. Perhaps it’s all that’s needed, she told herself: a little more faith and an adherence to the godly.

  Back at the farmhouse, she decided to perform her own “cleansing” using the holy water. She would have the house to herself for the best part of an hour before the children returned from school.

  She went from room to room, downstairs first, then upstairs, sprinkling the water and urging the spirits to go to their eternal rest in the peace of God. She left the girls’ room until last.

  When she entered, she found that the presence of the “lady” was almost palpable. But it was not unpleasant, not threatening in any way. Linda blessed every corner, sprinkling the water more liberally on the spot where she felt the “visitor” to be standing. She knew with near certainty that she was there; it was much the same sensation as that of another person being in the room. She almost felt she could speak to that “other.” And no, there was still nothing threatening about the presence, not even after she had sprinkled the holy water. Nevertheless, Linda resented another encroaching on her private space, her home, her children’s privacy.

  “Go!” she ordered. “Go in the name of God.” Then, feeling more annoyed than courageous, she said: “This is my house, not yours. Whoever you are, you’re not wanted here.”

  Linda fetched her rosary, got down on her knees by Lucy’s bed, and recited the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, gazing all the while at the picture on the prayer leaflet that the priest had given her. To her relief, she felt a change coming over the room. There was the sense of a presence departing.

  There followed a period of peace and quiet. Lucy saw no more phenomena, and Linda inwardly thanked God. Father Lawless’s advice had borne fruit. She berated herself for not putting more trust in him; she prayed each morning and night with the children, hoping that the peace would last.

  It did not. Three weeks following her visit to the priest, Linda’s confidence took a knock when Lucy had her sixth vision. In fact, it was as if the respite had been sent to tease and taunt. Lucy was to experience five more apparitions, a fresh one appearing every other day.

  The first three were of an extraordinary nature, and again all were seen during the day, after Lucy had returned from school.

  The first occurred when she was playing with Sandy and Darren. They were out in the lane jumping rope. Lucy and Darren were holding the rope while Sandy took her turn. On the eleventh stroke, Lucy stopped. She had gone a little pale.

  “Look!” she cried, pointing to the tractor-trailer at the end of the lane. As before, her brother and sister saw nothing.

  But Lucy did, and what she saw astonished her. Laid out on top of the trailer, some twenty feet away, was a youth. She was near enough to see him clearly. He was perhaps sixteen, nude, and his body seemed to be outlined in a shimmering, golden light. His eyes were open and, as the girl watched, he very slowly rose and hovered above the trailer before disappearing. Lucy says that the vision lasted some thirty seconds.

  The next two manifestations did not involve human figures as such. At breakfast one morning, Lucy saw what she describes as a thin “string of smoke” coming in at the kitchen door. She thought it was dust at first, until without warning it grew denser and thicker, as it formed itself into “a rope shape” and turned white. This “rope of smoke” slowly coiled itself about Sandy’s head, then Darren’s, girdling them in a figure-eight shape. Lucy said nothing, but continued watching, perplexed, as it leisurely uncoiled itself again and disappeared back out through the door.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” Linda was observing Lucy as she prepared their lunches. She thought the child might be daydreaming, sitting as she was with her spoon poised above her cereal bowl, staring into space. But then again…

  “I’m fine, Mommy.” Lucy resumed eating. “I thought I saw smoke round their heads, but it’s gone now.”

  “Nonsense. You know Daddy and I don’t smoke.”

  “I know.” Luc
y sensed that it was probably not the right time to tell her mother what it was she had seen. But later that evening she told all. Linda was dismayed. Whatever it was that had been troubling her daughter was back in earnest—despite her prayers and the sprinkling of holy water.

  Lucy’s next experience was the most bizarre of all. We will let her describe it in her own words.

  “I was in the shower one afternoon, and I saw something through the glass door, lying on the floor. I couldn’t see it right because the glass was all steamy, so I cleaned a wee hole and I saw this chest, like a man’s chest, cut off at the waist with no arms or a head. It was all a pale color.”

  If there was blood present, Lucy did not wait around to check. She was terrified; she jumped over the ghastly torso and ran naked and screaming to her mother.

  Linda was desperate. Up until then, Lucy seemed to be coping reasonably well with the phenomena, but the torso had truly frightened her. What on earth might the child see next? Linda decided not to bother Father Lawless again. There was another man of the cloth who might be able to advise her: Dr. Nigel Lomax, the minister attached to Ian’s church. She went to see him that very evening.

  Dr. Lomax was distressed to hear of Lucy’s predicament. She was one of his favorite parishioners, and he was eager to do all he could. Yet he confessed to having very little experience of what he termed “the paranormal.” He did, however, know a man in Belfast who perhaps could help: Canon William H. Lendrum. He gave Linda an address and telephone number, and wished her well.

  That night, little Lucy slept fitfully. Her mind was replaying over and over the horrid shower scene. Sometime close to midnight, she gave up her attempts at sleep; her darkened bedroom, with its shadows and hints of danger, was making her uneasy. She slipped into her parents’ room and roused her mother, who made room for her in the bed. Eventually she drifted off to sleep in the comfort and security of Linda’s arms.

  But at about six o’clock, she found herself wide awake. Light was peeping in at the window and she no longer felt sleepy. She eased herself quietly from the bed and padded to the door.

  She checked on her brother and sister and was disappointed to find them fast asleep. Lucy was at loose ends. She had no wish to return to bed, sensing that she would be unable to sleep. She was hungry but was reluctant to go down to the kitchen. The downstairs bathroom, where she had seen the gruesome body part, lies just off the kitchen, and she was afraid of going near there. Were she to see the torso again, at that hour of the morning, she knew she would scream and wake everyone up. She put on her bunny slippers and went to one of her favorite places: the top of the stairs. Ever since she was a toddler she had liked to sit there, where she could watch people coming and going down below.

  All was quiet, save for the snores coming from the open door of her brother’s bedroom. Through the glass-paneled front door, the dawn sun was gradually filling the hall with a golden light, bringing the house’s interior to life. Lucy felt safe. She rested her chin in her hands and gazed down at the phone table, the coat stand, and the doorjamb of the parlor door at the foot of the stairs, its high-gloss varnish reflecting the light. All those familiar things were real, and therefore comforting. They would not suddenly vanish, to manifest again and upset her.

  It was while Lucy was gazing at the doorjamb of the parlor that something magical occurred. Without warning, a little girl’s head popped out from behind the door, smiled up at her, and disappeared back inside.

  Lucy was not scared—she was fascinated, and wanted to see the little girl again. Her wish was granted; seconds later, the child reappeared. But this time she stepped out from behind the door and came to stand on the bottom step of the stairs.

  “She was like a wee Victorian doll,” Lucy says, “because she had on a pink frilly dress and, like, frilly legging things. Maybe she was about four or five, and”—Lucy giggles at the memory—“she started playing peek-a-boo, jumping off the step and covering her eyes, and popping in and out from behind the door.”

  She was delighted. Since Darren’s room was closest, she called out to him to come and see what she was witnessing. There was no response. Well, then, it was Darren’s tough luck for being a sleepy-head and missing all the magic. Lucy returned her attention to the little girl.

  “But when I looked again,” she recalls, “I saw this big hole, like a big oval shape opened in the wall on the stairs, and it was all filled with fuzzy bright colors. And I saw the wee girl coming up the stairs and standing beside it. Then she just went into a mist, like a smoky thing, and the smoky thing went into the fuzzy hole in the wall, and then everything went away, so it did.”

  Like Alice through the looking glass.

  Lucy was saddened by the disappearance of her spectral playmate. She felt cheated—the little girl was the only apparition that had actually engaged with her in any way.

  Or had it? The ghost appeared to Lucy to have been aware of her, had played peek-a-boo with her. And yet, on consideration, all Lucy had observed was an apparition that seemed to be looking at her, as if the ghost were seeing her too. The question therefore arises: had Lucy not been sitting on the top stair, might the phantom child have appeared in any case and gone through the same motions as she did with Lucy? In other words, there is no good reason to believe that this new apparition was in any way different from the others Lucy had seen.

  Two days later, on the evening of Thursday, October 17, 2002, Canon Lendrum was scheduled to perform his cleansing of the Gillespie farmhouse. On that very morning, Lucy was to see her ninth ghost.

  Unlike the other manifestations, this one appeared to her shortly after she had woken up, at roughly 7:30. Sandy was still asleep in the adjacent bed, but standing behind the bed was a figure.

  “She was like a maid,” Lucy tells us, “because she had on a black dress and a white apron and a frilly cap, and she was carrying a big silver tray with cups on it.”

  While Lucy stared in wonder, the maid began to move. As she did so, a pool of gold appeared to advance before her. Lucy describes the pool as a circle of gold, “like the sun, but you could look at it, because it wasn’t dazzling.”

  “Sandy, Sandy, wake up!” she yelled. “Quick, wake up!”

  Sandy sat up in bed, startled. Her sister was pointing at the wardrobe. It was to be the only time that she would share one of Lucy’s enigmatic experiences. She saw “a black-and-white cloud,” almost like the static seen on a badly tuned television set. It hovered for a moment or two above the wardrobe, then vanished.

  Thus did the final day of phenomena begin.

  We thought we might test Lucy by asking a trick question. Earlier, she had told us that the maid appeared behind her sister’s bed. What, we asked presently, was the maid wearing on her feet? Lucy threw her eyes heavenward and replied immediately: “I told you, didn’t I, that she was standing behind Sandy’s bed, so I couldn’t see her feet.”

  It has to be said that, throughout our conversations with little Lucy, we were impressed by her absolute honesty. She neither embellished nor exaggerated, even when pressed. The most skillful prosecutor would doubtless be no match for her. We came away from the Gillespie farmhouse with the conviction that we had made the acquaintance of a very special young girl.

  “The Gillespie case,” Canon Lendrum says, “was extraordinary because of the number of manifestations, and the fact that they were so unusual. But there was nothing evil about them, thank heavens. One of my less disturbing cases, I’d say.”

  He goes on to explain that little Lucy’s phenomena seemed to conform to what is known in psychical research circles as a “residual” or “mental imprint” haunting. The manifestations generally occur at the site of a highly charged emotional event—for example, a battle or a murder. It is believed that the discharge of enormous amounts of emotional energy by such events can cause the scene to be imprinted on its surroundings. At significant times—for instance, on the anniversary of the death or deaths of those involved—the occurrences ma
y somehow be reenacted. One can think in terms of a three-dimensional film, in effect a moving hologram, the images being projected not onto a flat screen but onto the very air itself.

  A number of other factors seem to bear out the “residual imprint” hypothesis. Such hauntings tend to occur in old houses or historical buildings. The Gillespie farmhouse is over two hundred years old. Lucy’s ghosts tended to hover a few inches off the ground and walk through walls; it might be conjectured, then, that they continued to follow floor plans that existed in earlier times. They seemed oblivious to the presence of the living—even though it could be argued that the little girl on the stairs was attempting to interact with her. It is believed that the psychic energy such apparitions emit can be picked up by individuals who are psychically “sensitive.” Lucy’s mother is of the opinion that her daughter is psychic, and that this gift, or indeed peculiarity, has been passed down the maternal line.

  “Such phenomena usually disappear over time,” Canon Lendrum asserts, “although there is the risk that repeated sightings by the living can revive the psychic energy that keeps them going. There is also the danger that evil entities will use the opportunity to gain access, and cause great distress and upset. So it’s always best to cleanse the site as soon as possible.”

  We are curious to know what, in his opinion, triggered the manifestations in the first place. Prior to Lucy’s experiences, there was no history of sightings. We wonder if it was a case of somebody dabbling in the occult. Over the course of our research and following numerous interviews, we concluded that anything connected with the occult—Ouija boards, horoscopes, seances, tarot cards, fortune-telling, witchcraft, and so on—can sometimes serve as a portal for spirits to enter an individual’s life.

  “I’m glad you asked that,” the canon says. “Yes, something the mother told me set the alarm bells ringing. Two things, in fact.

  “Mrs. Gillespie’s own mother had died in April of the year the manifestations started. They had made a pact, you see. While the mother lay dying, Linda asked that, when she got to the other side, she send her a sign that she was all right. The mother agreed. When a month passed and nothing happened, Linda became anxious and started ringing psychic phone lines, hoping that a fortune-teller could tell her something.