by Gary Jansen
I kept turning the pages back and forth and found entries on telepathy and clairvoyance, the ability to read minds; levitation; bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once, a lot like the New Age and shamanistic belief of astral projection; stigmata, experiencing the physical wounds of Jesus. The Church didn’t deny the existence of any of these things, but saw them as very real occurrences. Sometimes they were signs of angelic influence and sometimes they were signs of demonic activity, discerning which was which was, it turned out, a very real gift of the Holy Spirit.
As I kept reading, my arms became covered in gooseflesh and I felt a chill run up my back. I realized how different that feeling was from what I had been experiencing in Eddie’s room over the last few months. I kept scanning the pages—there were entries for archangels, guardian angels, Satan, Lucifer—all the while hearing faint movements downstairs, which I tried to ignore until the door clicked open.
“Grace?” I called out.
But there was no answer.
I closed the book and made my way to the stairs. I looked down and saw that the attic door was open a crack. I just stared at it for a few moments and then whispered Grace’s name again, but there was no reply. I walked down, turned off the light, closed the door quietly, and stood still, trying to listen to the house. Had I not fully closed the door behind me? Did the wind find its way through the cracks? Something like this, a door opening on its own, had happened a few times before in our house, during a storm, but why now? Why tonight? Had something opened it?
The door to Eddie’s room, which was at the foot of the stairs, was open. Inside, it was dark and quiet and I could see the sharp angles of his bed, his dresser, and toys. I looked in and I felt that something was watching me.
And in a moment of defiance, I stared right back and whispered, “I’m onto you. It may have taken me some time, but I’m onto you.”
I walked back to my bedroom, where both Grace and Eddie were sound asleep. After I placed Hardon’s book on the dresser, I lay in bed, going over his words in my head. Their purpose may be to teach, or warn, or request some favor of the living.
But which one was it?
Chapter 6
On April 2, 1839, a young Catholic seminarian named John Bosco sat in a pew in a church and mourned the death of his dear friend Louis Comollo. Six years earlier, the two had met during Bosco’s last year in secondary school in Piedmont, a mostly mountainous province in northern Italy. They attended the seminary together in Chieri, an important textile town about eleven kilometers from Turin that had once been under the thumb of Napoleon Bonaparte in the late eighteenth century. They had an enduring friendship and the two complemented each other’s dispositions. Comollo had always been quiet, frail, and devout; Bosco, on the other hand, while a sensitive and serious young man in his own right, was also funny, loving, and sociable. Bosco grew up in poverty, but from the age of nine believed he was on a mission from God. He had his first prophetic dream at that age when a vision, possibly of Jesus, told him that it was with charity and gentleness that he must bring people together. The dreams would continue for the rest of his life.
Though devoted to God, he was not without his doubts, and the death of his friend was a painful blow to the young student, whose father had died when he was two years old. While they were attending school together, both Bosco and Comollo were captivated by the lives of the saints and one day they made a pact. After reading about the exploits of the likes of Saint John the prophet, Saint Francis the servant, and Saint Anthony the desert hermit tormented by demons, they agreed that whoever was the first to die would bring back word of life on the other side to the surviving friend. Certainly, at the time they thought they had years before either of them would die, or did they?
That agreement resounded in Bosco’s ears like the church bells that rang through the town that morning. He sat in the church and looked around for a sign from his friend—a light, a vision, a sudden movement, anything. He listened intently to the words of the funeral rite and to the sounds around him. Nothing. But Bosco was patient and vowed to keep vigil of the agreement. The words of an old dream surely passed through his mind: “What seems so impossible you must achieve by being obedient.” He would be obedient and patient. He would wait as long as he had to for a sign.
Bosco didn’t have to wait long. The next night, he was in his dormitory, a large open room that housed twenty other seminarians, preparing to go to sleep. It had been a long couple of days and the death of Louis Comollo was still burning inside of him. He lay in his bed and as his other room-mates drifted off to sleep, Bosco prayed. He was praying to hear from his friend, to have word from heaven, to confirm for him that he was on the right path and that his dreams weren’t deceptions of the mind, but direct messages from the Almighty. He lay in bed and waited when a sign, which he documented in one of the many books he wrote during his lifetime, came to pass.
On the stroke of midnight, a deep rumble was heard at the end of the corridor. The rumble became deeper and louder as it drew nearer. It was like the sound of a large cart, or a railway train, or even artillery fire. I do not know how to describe the sound adequately except to say that it was such a mixture of throbbing and rather violent sounds as to leave the hearer utterly terrified and too frightened for words.
As the rumble drew nearer it made the ceiling, walls, and floor of the hallway vibrate like sheets of metal struck by the hand of some mighty giant. Yet the sound approached so that it was very difficult to pinpoint how close it was, the way one is uncertain where a locomotive is on the track from the jet of steam.
All the seminarians in the dormitory woke up, but no one spoke. I was frozen with fear. The noise came nearer and nearer and grew more frightening. It reached the dormitory; of itself the door slammed open. The roar grew louder, but there was nothing to see except a ghostly multicolored light that seemed to control the sound. Suddenly there was silence, the light intensified, and Comollo’s voice was distinctly heard: “Bosco, Bosco, Bosco—I am saved.”
At that moment the dormitory grew even brighter. The noise erupted again, much longer and louder than before. It was like thunder, so violent that the house seemed about to collapse; then suddenly it stopped and the light vanished.
Bosco, who would go on to found the Society of St. Francis de Sales in 1859, and eventually be canonized a saint in 1934, had received his answer.
I had never heard a story like that when I was going to Catholic school. If I had, I would have paid better attention. And I certainly wasn’t hearing stories like that in my theology classes in the fall of 2007, but a friend of mine loaned me her book on saints, so I, like John Bosco, began reading the lives of the saints on my own. While I had made no pact with my pal about one of us returning to give word of heaven, I was overwhelmed by these stories of faith, love, and charity. A whole new world of Catholicism opened before me. Here were thousands of saints from all walks of life and all parts of the world who had lived extraordinary lives of devotion, and while I was aware of this in an ancillary way, I had never much thought about them. Sure, there were statues of Saint Francis, Saint Jude, and Saint Joseph in our house growing up and in our house now, but I could never tell you more about them than one liked furry woodland creatures, one helped out when it came to lost causes, and the other was the adoptive daddy to Jesus.
But here in this book were Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a queen who had given everything up to serve the poor; Saint Clare, who in the Middle Ages helped defend her convent and the people of Assisi from invaders; Saint Anthony, the hermit whose every breathing moment was given to prayer to God. Their stories of passion were inspiring and I felt guilty for having ignored a whole area of my faith that was so colorful and interesting. But what I found most fascinating were the supernatural events surrounding some of the saints. I had known about Francis’s stigmata, that he suffered the wounds of Christ, but truth be told, I always felt that he had inflicted the wounds on himself with a couple of cigars and a medi
eval-style blow-torch. But I had no idea that Thérèse of Lisieux had kicked demons’ asses or that Teresa of Ávila, Catherine of Siena, and even Saint Ignatius were known to levitate inches and sometimes several feet off the floor during prayer. That’s pretty amazing in itself, but Saint Alphonsus Liguori one-upped them all.
In 1745, the Italian priest was preaching during Mass when a ray of light from a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary shone down on him and raised him off the ground in front of the entire congregation. Twenty-nine years later he would experience bilocation, or being in two places at once, while praying. While in church he appeared a long distance away—the equivalent of a four-hour walk—and sat at the bedside of a then dying Pope Clement XIV, assisting him into the next life. Reports of his being in different places at the same time soon spread and, though there was no logical explanation, all saw it as a sign not only of his holiness, but also of the awe-some power of God.
As I had found out, John Bosco had an encounter with a ghost and for most of his life experienced prophetic dreams; fourth-century John of Egypt was a clairvoyant; Saint John of the Cross, Saint Jerome, Saint Clare of Assisi, and Saint Bernadette had all experienced apparitions and saw visions of Jesus, Mary, or the future. Page after page told stories of amazing feats and daring rescues. In some ways, I felt like a kid again reading the exploits of comic-book superheroes like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern.
Certainly, some of these stories were hagiography and legend. Or were they? Jesus had said that if you had the faith of a teeny, tiny mustard seed you could move mountains. Peter had walked on water until he became conscious of what he was doing and doubted. Doubt, in many ways, defines us in the modern world. If someone with means adopts a number of children, we don’t see it as a humanitarian action, but rather as a selfish act to either have a large family or deal with some emotional scar from growing up without parents. There are relatively few public heroes in the world because the media is constantly finding ways of tearing people down. Certainly, skepticism was, and is, an important part of our world. Even doubting Thomas, who didn’t believe that his friends had seen Jesus after the resurrection, was blessed with his very own encounter with Christ to prove that the miracle was real. But is what we see on TV and on blogs and in newspapers truly skepticism or just bad attitudes?
I started reviewing what I believed and realized that I had used skepticism as a mask for cynicism for most of my life. One was life-affirming, the other was life-threatening. And I was a product of my environment. Maybe the reason miracles don’t seem to happen as much today as they had hundreds of years ago is that none of us can muster a fraction of an ounce of faith in ourselves or in others.
Maybe we need extraordinary things to happen to us to shake us from the sleep of doubt?
LATER THAT FALL, I began visiting old bookstores in downtown New York City searching for anything on Catholicism and the supernatural. Such books were nearly impossible to come by. These shops had plenty of books on the occult—on demonology, witchcraft, and the devil, as well as books on ghosts and the paranormal—but they were mostly New Age testimonials or practice guides. I perused some of them and felt like the proverbial fish out of water. I had spent the last ten years of my life pursuing the intellectual, philosophical, historical, and political aspect of religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, but this was new—and at times dark—terrain. This is not to say that everything I read had a sinister hue. There were interesting books on the history of alchemy and ancient folklore, as well as self-help books on how to develop your psychic skills (which I knew was a no-no in Catholicism, but didn’t some of the saints possess these abilities and weren’t these gifts from God?). And there were plenty of books on angels, yet again, mostly from a New Age perspective. Why weren’t there more publications for Catholics?
Regardless, I was impressed that these books, especially the ones on angels, weren’t forty-eight-page pamphlets, but thick tomes filled with the names and histories of spiritual beings throughout the ages. I knew of the archangels Michael and Gabriel and Raphael (the only three angels named in the Bible), but there were literally thousands and thousands of names—both angelic and demonic—that had existed and, being somewhat eternal, are still living today. Some of these were from literature like John Milton’s Paradise Lost or Dante’s Divine Comedy; others were from apocryphal texts like the book of Enoch or the book of Jubilees (in-between texts that fell somewhere between the writing of the Old and New Testaments). Still others were from kabbalah or gnostic testaments, while many others came from Islam, Buddhism, and the Vedic traditions known in the west as Hinduism. Again, another door to my understanding of faith was opening right before me. And angels were some serious business. These weren’t the rosy-cheeked cherubs and Pre-Raphaelite angels many of us grew up seeing on posters or on greeting cards. These were some serious streetwise individuals whom you could call on in times of danger (angels and demons have no matter, but it is believed by many that they can manifest themselves to us in physical ways . . . how you do that by being pure intelligence, I have no idea). Serious theologians whom I always believed were men of great faith but who were essentially men of logic believed wholeheartedly in the existence of angels—including Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine. Aquinas was even called the “Angelic Doctor” because his major theological treatise, the Summa Theologica, contained vast information about the nature of angels and is where we get most of what we know about them today.
There was Abdiel, “servant of God,” the angel Milton called the “flaming seraph” who kicked the shit out of Satan on the first day of fighting in the war in heaven (this was after Satan chose not to serve God); there was Metatron, who in rabbinic tradition was one of the most powerful of the angels; and Uriel, the counselor, who asked God to spare humankind after the Almighty became fed up with the mysterious angelic Watchers who mated with beautiful women and who in turn gave birth to a creation, the Nephilim, that God had never intended.
These were riveting stories and what fascinated me the most was that all this history and belief had been lost in our modern age. I’m sure I could have asked most of the people I knew and they never would have heard that there were nine angelic orders—the seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels proper (or guardian angels). Granted, knowledge of this wouldn’t get you a job or feed your kids, but wasn’t it true that none of us live by bread alone?
There were also two books written by modern-day exorcists: Interview with an Exorcist by Jose Antonio Fortea, a Roman Catholic priest from Spain, and An Exorcist Tells His Story by Gabriele Amorth, a very famous priest from Rome. Both of these books demonstrated a living, breathing battle being waged in our cities and homes between the forces of good and evil.
My mind would go spinning and I would find myself losing track of time on some nights, and after purchasing a book or two I would rush to Penn Station to catch the train back to Long Island. On the ride home, I would replay in my head what I had seen and read. On many occasions I had to question whether or not I was being led on this pursuit by some strange force—I just didn’t know if it was God or something else holding my hand.
Eventually, mostly by searching on the Internet, I was able to find three out-of-print books that dealt specifically with ghosts. Two were by Catholic priests: Ghosts and Poltergeists by Father Herbert Thurston and Occult Phenomenon by Father Alois Wiesinger. The third book, written by the first cousin of British prime minister Winston Churchill, who became a convert while a student at Cambridge, was titled, strangely enough, Shane Leslie’s Ghost Book. While all three differed in tone and execution, they all agreed that ghosts were very real and very important to understand. Yet what I found most interesting as a Catholic was that each was written before the Second Vatican Council.
Though many people don’t see it, the Catholic Church is constantly going through periods of reevaluating itself. No internal evaluation was more influential
in recent times than the Second Vatican Council, which took place between 1962 and 1965. Though it’s impossible to summarize this event in Church history succinctly, this coming together of bishops and prelates under the guidance of Pope John XXIII and later Pope Paul VI looked to bring the Church into the modern era. With destruction and loss of life from two World Wars, the growing tension between capitalism and communism, and advances in technology, to name just a few of the issues, by mid-century the Church found itself in need of new ways of approaching and dealing with the modern world. There were a number of reforms, including translating the Latin Mass into vernacular languages and the opening of lines of communication with other religions. All in all, these were radical reforms and much-needed changes that allowed the Church to minister to an ever-changing populace.
What many of the faithful thought was lost after these reforms was a sense of the supernatural—of an unseen, invisible world, the world of spirit. This is not to say that spiritual matters were abandoned. Far from it, but as the Church shifted its focus in the latter years of the twentieth century, did belief in angelic and demonic forces have a place in the modern world anymore? Did miracles really happen or could science explain them away? Or, for that matter, was heaven a real place or a state of mind? As these issues were debated over the next few decades, the idea of a spirit world for many people began to lose power. And, many critics believed, so did God.
ONE NIGHT IN EARLY DECEMBER, after Grace and Eddie fell asleep, I was downstairs reading Father Wiesinger’s book on occult phenomena. At some point I fell asleep on the couch and awoke around three o’clock in the morning to see a woman with auburn hair and a floral dress standing in the doorway to Eddie’s toy room. I stared at her for a moment. She didn’t move but appeared to be watching me. I swallowed hard, closed my eyes, and when I opened them she was gone. I was pretty sure I was awake when I saw her, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure—it could have been a strange synapse in my brain, some sort of visual image left over from a dream that I saw upon waking. Nonetheless, whether it was real or dreamt, my heart was racing and I could hear the sound of church bells. For a moment I thought they must be coming from the cathedral, so I sat up and turned my head toward the window. Then, I heard faint music mix with the bells. Having no idea what I was hearing, I got up to look out the window. The parking lot was empty, the streets silent.