Beware the Night

by Ralph Sarchie

  Soon after we began the Pope Leo XIII prayer, a minor form of exorcism we use in the Work, all the dogs in the neighborhood—including the Villanovas’ pet, who had been following us around from room to room, with his St. Benedict medal jingling on his collar—became extremely agitated. Joe and I had never heard such deafening barking and howling in our lives, and asked the family if this had ever happened before. The answer was no, so we knew that at that very moment, demons were fleeing the house.

  The most powerful spirit, however, wouldn’t be banished so easily. It knew it was close to a full possession, so it chose to stay and fight, while the lesser forces ran from our relics and holy water. While we were in the basement, near the doors I’d backed away from earlier that night, it brazenly attacked again.

  Carl came racing down the stairs. “Come quick! Something’s happening to Gabby!”

  In the living room, we found the mother trembling uncontrollably, as if she were having a seizure. The demon was trying to possess her—right then and there. In a breathless, gasping voice, she told us she could feel it entering her body. Then she went completely rigid. Her mouth opened stiffly, like a marionette’s jaw, and she stammered, “H-h-holy ones, begone! H-h-harm will come to all!”

  We couldn’t believe our eyes—we’d seen possessed people before, but never had a diabolic power invaded someone while we were standing there with holy water in hand, conducting an exorcism. We knew we were in the presence of one of Hell’s more dangerous devils.

  We weren’t about to be chased off by some demon, no matter how terrible its powers might be, so we came on strong, our guns blazing. Holding up our two relics of the True Cross, Joe’s and mine, we touched the precious slivers to Gabby’s head and used the most potent weapon of all—the name of Jesus Christ—to command the evil force to depart and leave this woman in peace. Powerful as this spirit was, it couldn’t withstand the ultimate torment, and grudgingly released its grasp on Gabby. She slowly returned to her senses, as if waking up from a dream, and had no memory of what had occurred.

  There was still dreadful danger in this room, so we checked that everyone was still wearing a St. Benedict medal, and then anointed each person with blessed oil. Now that the family was secure, we resumed the ritual, reading the Pope Leo XIII prayer numerous times throughout the house until we were practically hoarse. All that wasn’t enough to bring the case to a close: We knew that we’d managed to weaken this demon and halt its attempts at possession, but to get rid of it entirely, we’d either need a full team of investigators or an ordained clergyman, trained as an exorcist.

  We were still reluctant to leave the family, knowing that phenomena would still take place, though to a lesser degree. But we took comfort in knowing that they now had the means to fight back. We’d exposed the demonic charade and put an end to any communication with the foul spirit. We’d also given the family weapons: holy water, blessed salt, and, most of all, the name of Jesus Christ on their lips.

  We continued our prayers until Father Williams, the parish priest, arrived. After we brought him up to speed on our investigation, he agreed that the family would now come under his guidance, until Father Hayes was able to perform an exorcism. As we packed up our equipment, the look on the little boy’s face was like a kick in the gut to me. “Daddy,” he cried. “Don’t let these people leave!”

  We hated to go but were sure the family was in good hands. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Several months later we got a call from the Villanovas: They were still under supernatural siege. To his credit, the local priest had followed through with what he promised, but due to health problems, the exorcist wasn’t able to come after all.

  Joe and I had learned a lesson or two from our first visit, and after intense spiritual preparation, we returned on a Saturday afternoon with three investigators and enough supplies to exorcise an entire city block. Sadly, Dominick was now in terrible financial straits: Because of the problems his family was having, he’d missed too many days of work and had lost his job as a bookkeeper. Unless he found new employment soon, the bank would foreclose on his house. Hearing this news fired us up with even more determination to expel the demon and allow this good man to get on with his life.

  First, we sent the women and children to a nearby church with Chris, one of our investigators, for their protection, then got a quick update on the situation from Dominick. After our first exorcism, the spirit left the family alone a day or two: a normal M.O. for the demonic, who love psychological warfare. Just as the Villanovas thought they were safe, the attacks resumed. Shoes, books, and jars began flying around again but rarely hit anyone. Doors inexplicably slammed, and the imprint of a face appeared on the dining room ceiling.

  While the violence toward Luciana had dwindled—she still suffered an occasional scratch—the demon had now taken to venting its wrath on religious articles. Holy water we’d left on our last visit mysteriously turned brown in its bottle, and the figure of Jesus Christ was torn off one of the children’s rosaries. After two priests blessed the house, the imprint of an animal skull appeared on the basement mirror. In one of the stranger manifestations I’ve heard of, a pale, disembodied arm grabbed at the bride-to-be when she was sitting on the living room loveseat; and a featureless black shape was seen drifting down the stairs.

  You may be wondering why Father Williams, the parish priest, didn’t conduct an exorcism himself. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get his bishop’s permission to do this—a requirement in the Catholic Church before a priest can perform the ritual. However, he did his utmost to help and support the family, not just with spiritual guidance, but by spending an entire night in their house, along with another priest. I admire both priests’ guts for this: It couldn’t have been easy for them to spend so much time in a demonically oppressed home. In fact, during their stay, they actually witnessed a terrifying phenomenon, when a bedroom bureau began jumping around right in front of them.

  For two hours, we fought the Devil room by room. Armed with blessed incense, holy water, blessed salt, and the most potent weapon of all, our relics of the True Cross, we stationed investigators on each floor to hold simultaneous rituals, thus attacking the demon from above and below. We worked in pairs, so one person could focus on conducting the ritual, while the other was alert for any sign of demonic activity. And more important still, the backup investigator kept a close watch on his partner—to make sure that the person doing the exorcism wasn’t being attacked himself. External phenomena don’t need to be taking place: The attack also can be psychological, like the stark terror that seized me in the basement of this house on our previous visit. If an investigator has any psychic abilities, he or she could be assailed through those powers. Since an attack could come at any time, to either partner, everyone must be constantly on guard.

  We began by opening every closet, cabinet, and drawer in the room we were exorcising, leaving no dark, enclosed space for the demonic to hide. Because they are spirit and have no physical bodies, malignant beings can conceal themselves anywhere. Next, we lit blessed incense, which helps dispel negative vibrations and repel evil spirits, since they are tormented by anything holy or blessed. As always, we started the ritual with the St. Michael prayer, one of two prayers that were divinely revealed to Pope Leo XIII. While celebrating mass in 1884, the Holy Father was suddenly seized by such a profound rapture that he fell to the floor as if dead. When he woke, he told his cardinals of a terrible vision he’d had, in which the Devil taunted Jesus by saying that, given enough time and power, he could destroy mankind. Our Savior gave Satan permission to test humanity over the decades to come. No sooner did the Pontiff finish relating this prophecy than he asked for pen and paper and wrote prayers to help defeat Satan.

  Pope Leo XIII directed that the first of these prayers, officially titled “Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel,” be added to the official Catholic mass. It calls upon the archangel to “be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil” and “by the power of Go
d thrust into hell Satan and the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” This prayer was said at the end of mass until 1968, when it was eliminated as part of the changes of Vatican II. It continues to be recited in Traditionalist Catholic churches, and Pope John Paul II recently urged it be restored to the modern Catholic mass, feeling that the grave evils of this world mean that we need St. Michael’s intervention more than ever before.

  Pope Leo XIII’s second prayer, “Exorcism Against Satan and the Rebellious Angels,” which we call the Pope Leo XIII prayer for short, is extremely powerful against the demonic. The Holy Father exhorted priests to say this prayer as often as possible to curb the Devil’s power and prevent him from doing harm. He gave the faithful permission to say it in their own name, as they would any approved prayer, “whenever action of the Devil is suspected, causing malice in men, violent temptations, and even storms and various calamities.” That’s exactly what we did in the Villanovas’ home, moving from room to room as we prayed. We sprinkled all four corners of each room and the interior of every closet with holy water to consecrate the area, then repeated the process with blessed salt, which has the same effect, except that it has the virtue of lasting longer.

  As we performed the ritual, we burned so much blessed incense that the place looked like it was on fire. Ironically, this case, which had begun with a figure who rose from a cloud of smoke, was ended in the swirling, sweet-smelling fumes of holy incense and the sound of fervent prayers, which made the house so hostile to the demonic that “the lady” was forced to disappear, this time for good. A feeling of peace pervaded the home, signaling that we’d succeeded in evicting the spirit. When the women and children returned from the church with Chris, they rejoiced that their ordeal was over.

  The family’s gratitude was humbling because we knew it wasn’t us who should be thanked, but God, whose Son gave us authority over evil in His name, and all praise should be given to Him. We led the Villanovas in a prayer of thanksgiving to Him who is above all.

  Chapter Three

  Cops and Soul Robbers

  EVEN IN MY wildest boyhood fantasies, I never imagined I’d grow up to be a cop—or a demonologist. Actually, I considered both occupations pretty scary, though I loved to read about them. One of my earliest memories was going into the Queens Center Mall and seeing the book The Exorcist. I talked my mother into buying it for me and couldn’t wait to get home and start reading it. I found the story extremely frightening. When the movie came out, I begged my parents to take me. Because of all the hype about it being the scariest film ever made, they debated if I was too young to see it but relented after quite a bit of pleading from me. They knew how much I loved horror movies.

  Standing in line outside the Utopia Movie Theater on Union Turnpike, in Queens, I was filled with a mix of excitement and apprehension. I was the only kid my age in line, and that added to my fear. Throughout the film, I was riveted to my seat, but what sticks out in my mind and terrified me the most was when the eyes rolled back in the girl’s head and only the whites were showing. I’m sure that most people’s vision of what demonology is all about came from that movie: Mine certainly did—until I participated in real exorcisms, years later, and learned that only in the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters do people’s heads spin around. And although I’ve heard of people levitating during the ritual, I have yet to see it happen myself. All that revolting green vomit was more Hollywood hype, but I know of cases where possessed people have vomited stranger things than that—such as worms or nails—during an exorcism.

  That night, after seeing the movie I lay in bed with the lights turned out, scared shitless being all by myself, and remember my father calling to see if I was all right. When he heard the sound of my voice, he knew I wasn’t, and told me to come and sleep with him. What a relief! I particularly appreciated that kindness from my father because he was a strict disciplinarian with a quick temper—a trait I’ve inherited myself, and struggle to control. My dad and I also have the same name, so my mother, Lillian, called him “big Ralph” and me “little Ralph,” even after I reached my full size of five foot ten and 200 pounds.

  My mom was an easygoing woman who always had a smile on her face and liked to laugh and joke around. That made her popular as a beautician, and customers flocked to our kitchen in Flushing, Queens, every Saturday to get haircuts. I would eat my oatmeal surrounded by the cloying smell of hair spray, which I hated, and wish she’d get some other job.

  Although we lived in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, my parents were Catholics. I wasn’t a particularly devout kid myself, even though I was an altar boy. I trembled throughout the first mass I served, terrified I’d somehow screw up and embarrass my mom and dad. Over the years my parents never pushed me to go to mass, saying they didn’t want to pressure me into religion, but thought I should make up my own mind. I got a good feeling from the old-fashioned church we attended, and sometimes went there at lunchtime to sit in a pew and enjoy the silence and warm protection I felt there. That church was a refuge during turbulent times in my youth—and I got quite angry when I went back there a few years ago and saw its beauty had been destroyed by an ugly, misguided renovation.

  While my dad didn’t push God on me, his fondest dream was that I would become a professional baseball player. By the time I was three, he was putting a bat in my hand and teaching me how to hit. I quickly came to share this passion, and devoted every spare second to the game. I attended Queen of Peace Parochial School and played baseball for the Catholic Youth Organization every April. The rest of the time I played in pickup games after school; in the summer, I was out on the field with my bat from sunup to sundown, just for the fun of it.

  As I got a little older, I got involved with a street gang, the Falcon Boys. Compared to the gangs I see now as a cop, ours was almost laughably tame. We never shot or stabbed anybody—and didn’t even carry weapons. Sometimes we’d get drunk and have fistfights with another local gang or get into some minor mischief around the neighborhood. I was afraid to take it any further than that, because my dad took me aside one day and said, “If the cops ever bring you home, I’ll break both your legs!” Being the kind of guy he was, I saw no reason to doubt him. His guidance was more powerful than any peer pressure, so even though my friends and I were a bunch of obnoxious little punks, I never got in any real trouble. In fact, thanks to my father’s warning, I was scared witless every time I saw a policeman!

  Although I wasn’t much of a student—and certainly was no intellectual—I was an avid reader. When I was thirteen, I found a bookstore where I could get used books for a quarter apiece, and I eagerly devoured everything I could get my hands on about police work and the occult. When I heard the owner of the store telling another customer that he was going to the police academy, I thought he was incredibly lucky to be a cop chasing bad guys, just as I’d seen in the movies. At night I’d sit in front of the TV and watch cop shows, but every Saturday night it was Creature Feature and Thriller Theater for me. While I couldn’t get enough of these shows, they frightened my little sister Lisa, who always left the room when they were on. Though my young mind didn’t understand everything I was reading and seeing, I knew that some of the horror stories must be true.

  My favorite books were about a pair of real-life psychic researchers named Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have been investigating the supernatural since the late 1940s. This couple, founders of the New England Society for Psychic Research in Connecticut, became internationally famous in 1972, when they were asked to investigate bizarre phenomena at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. An Army major there complained that a general’s residence on the property appeared to be haunted: His family often found that someone—or something—had rifled through their belongings or stolen valuable objects, yet no intruder could be found. A wet spot on a kitchen cutting board refused to dry, no matter what was done about the dampness; and an invisible force kept tearing the sheets off one of the beds.

&
nbsp; Using her psychic ability, Lorraine inspected the building and detected several spirits. In one bedroom, she clairvoyantly felt the presence of President John F. Kennedy, to the amazement of onlookers who knew that he had slept there. In another room, her mind’s eye saw a bossy female ghost that she identified as the culprit in these mysterious happenings. She learned later that General MacArthur’s mother, well known for her extremely dictatorial personality, had ruled as lady of the house between the general’s marriages.

  She also got a mental picture of someone else, a very angry African American man in a nineteenth-century Army uniform, strangely bare of military braid and emblems. This struck the major and his aides as improbable, since they knew of no black man at West Point during that era. The general, however, did some digging and discovered that an African American soldier was tried for murder at West Point around the turn of the century. Although he was acquitted, Lorraine felt sure that his anger and guilt over the trial was what made his ghost linger at West Point.

  That was exciting stuff to me, but I was even more mesmerized by another of the Warrens’ cases, which took place in a Long Island suburb. Around Christmas of 1975, a young couple, George and Kathy Lutz, and their three small children, moved into a house they’d just bought. This house had a lurid history, since the oldest son of the previous owner had gotten up one night, grabbed his .35-caliber rifle, and slaughtered his mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters in their sleep. Within a month of moving in, the Lutzes fled their new home in abject terror, describing a savage supernatural assault that later became infamous as The Amityville Horror.

  Although I would have been content to while away my time playing baseball and reading these hair-raising but incredibly fascinating books, when I got to the third year of high school, my dad told me I should think about what to do with my life, should I not become a pro ballplayer. I said, “That’s easy, I’ll become a cop.” My picture of what police work was all about came mainly from cop shows on TV: I imagined nonstop action as I saved lives, solved mysteries, and made one spectacular arrest after another. After my high school graduation, I enrolled in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, mainly to play baseball for the college. If the major leagues somehow decided they could live without me, I’d at least be learning about law enforcement. And since I’m now wearing a badge, not a baseball mitt, it’s not hard to guess how things ended up.