Sister of Darkness

by R. H. Stavis

  In this book, I’ll tell you stories about my life and about the exorcisms I’ve performed over the last decade, showing you not just that there’s another world out there, surrounding each and every one of us, but that there’s something you can do to protect yourself from the darker parts of that other realm. You can change your energy—which I also call frequency—to help make a better world. That, in turn, will keep entities from attaching to you—now and for the rest of your life.

  I can’t wait to show you how.

  CHAPTER 1

  Balled-Up Socks and Baby Dolls

  Growing Up with Demons

  My mom’s name isn’t Rosemary, and last I checked I wasn’t growing horns, but I am certainly in a serious relationship with the dark side. I’ve been seeing entities my whole life. Much as your parents’ faces are so familiar that you probably don’t even remember the first moment you saw them, I don’t recall a time when entities weren’t with me. I probably even watched them floating around my crib when I was a baby.

  Entities aren’t beautiful creatures. Some look harmless, like puffs of smoke, but others are absolutely terrifying, with long, gaunt faces and skeletal bodies. They’re sometimes gray, like cigarette ash, and you can see right through them. Some have very energetic figures, and others appear almost human, right down to their color. As scary as they all look, the way they make you feel is far more frightening. Even as an adult there are times I’ll get a visitation, and the sensation of the entity in my room, near me, is so malignant that I won’t get a wink of sleep the rest of the night.

  If I feel that way now and can actually comprehend what I’m seeing, imagine what it was like to be a child experiencing these awful things. At first I’d only feel their negativity near me, but then I began to actually witness them. Some of my earliest memories involve seeing shadowy figures on the walls, under my bed, or in closets. But unlike the shadow puppets that lots of kids like to make, these monsters were real—and they didn’t resemble animals or humans. I’d hide under the sheets, shaking, so I wouldn’t see them, and then I’d cry quietly to myself, worried my mom would scold me if she knew I was still awake.

  When I was about nine, these phantomlike visions became clearer and more well formed, with recognizable features, like I see them now. I think Spirit waited to reveal them fully till I was more mature because it wanted to ease me into my gift. Spirit was trying to give me a psychic recess rather than a final exam. Entities didn’t try to attach to me when I was young, either. I don’t exactly know why, but again, I think Spirit was protecting me somehow. It knew what my life plan was well before I did, so it was slowly introducing me to it.

  Still, being so young, I couldn’t forget what I’d been seeing, and I was petrified. These strange visions weren’t warm or friendly; they were dark, unwelcome strangers in my personal space, and they made me feel nauseated, clammy, and hollow inside. I imagined I’d done something awful to deserve them—even though I couldn’t figure out what—and I felt dirty and ashamed.

  I have two particularly vivid childhood memories of entities—one deeply disturbing and one not so much. I’ll start with the one that won’t make you sleep with the lights on.

  When I was a child, I used to ball my socks up and store them in a drawer. Once, when I was ten or eleven and getting ready for school, I picked out a pair, one wrapped around the other, and threw them on my bed. Then I turned around and walked toward my closet to choose my outfit for the day. After I’d pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, I did a 180 toward my bed, ready to sit down and put on my socks. I looked up and saw something that made me stop in my tracks: lying there, side by side in perfect formation—and not in the ball I’d so carefully rolled them into just a few days before—were my socks.

  I was shocked and scared, of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I wasn’t even out of elementary school, and I was supposed to be picking dandelions in the playground, not getting visitations from ghosts—or whatever it was that had done this. These naughty little tricks started happening more regularly after that, too. I’d walk into my bathroom and see lipstick smeared on the mirror, or I wouldn’t be able to find my set of keys, which I always put in the same place every single day. Entities don’t do these sorts of things to me anymore—possibly because now, in my thirties, I can communicate with them, and they don’t feel the need to dance around to get my attention. But years ago, they happened all the time.

  For every visitation that was silly or spooky, though, there were just as many that were malevolent. One of the worst happened around the same time as the sock incident.

  One night I was sound asleep, and I began dreaming that I was holding something close to me. It was unclear what it was exactly, but it felt like a doll. When I turned it toward me, so I could get a good look, I saw that it was just an average baby doll, with long hair, a pink dress, long eyelashes, and lips pursed in a perfect O.

  I was born in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, but my mom and I moved to South Florida when I was two. I’m a child of the eighties, and my bedroom had one of those large stereo systems with a pair of tape decks, a receiver, a turntable, and massive rectangular speakers. The whole setup was probably four feet high, and the console showed the time in bright sea green, so at night my whole room looked like it had been coated in glow-in-the-dark algae.

  I’m not sure what it was that woke me up, but suddenly, I bolted straight up in my bed. Oh, man. What a weird dream. Why in the world was I sleeping with that strange baby doll? I was never the type of girl who played with dolls, as you may have gathered by now.

  As I cleared my eyes, I looked over, and in the glow of the green light, I saw something next to me. It was the shape and size of the doll, but it was the least innocent thing I’d seen in my life. Instead, it was this creature—a baby creature—but with sharp, exposed teeth. It was grimacing at me. The sweet blond doll of my dreams had morphed into something heinous.

  That’s the first real moment I remember shutting my eyes tight, covering them with my hands, and screaming silently to myself, This is not happening. This is not real. None of this is true because, if it is, I can’t bear to breathe.

  When I finally pulled my hands away from my face and opened my eyes, the doll had disappeared. Somehow, by denying her very existence, I had willed her away. At that very moment, I learned that I had the power to shut out these awful beings, whatever they were, and prevent myself from seeing them.

  The problem was that I wasn’t always successful. I’d tell myself that I was imagining them, or I’d look at the entities directly and silently yell, You are not real! Go away! But when I was done with my tirade, the beasts would sometimes still be there. I was helpless. And worse, I had no hope; there was never, ever, a way for me to make them stop coming to me altogether.

  At first, the entities didn’t visit me every night. Instead, they came every few days, usually showing themselves as shadows that weren’t necessarily human-shaped, but still noticeable. Even though I couldn’t really make out exactly what they were, though, I could feel them. I sensed that they were malevolent and harmful even though I couldn’t exactly tell what they were doing.

  I began to differentiate between types of entities, and I’d see them walking or floating next to total strangers, or attached to a friend of mine. Unfortunately, at times I’d watch an entity I now call a Wraith following children on the playground, their shadows appearing before I could make out their forms. I didn’t understand it then, but Wraiths are attracted to people who’ve suffered sexual abuse. Realizing this now, I’m so sad for these children I once knew.

  The entities I saw attached to other people never tried to spook me like the entities who visited me, and, in fact, I’m not even sure they realized I could see them. For example, when I was about nine, and the shadows I saw were becoming more defined, I was friends with a girl who had a Wraith attached to her. My friend once tried to touch me sexually, and I pulled back, disgusted. What is wrong with her? I thought. I now understand that she w
asn’t in control of herself; she was being sexually abused, a Wraith had attached to her, and it was showing and expressing itself through her, completely oblivious to the fact that I could see it.

  Outside of my room at night, entities were just there. In social situations when I had to focus, like in class, I’d try to tune them out, and soon, it worked. I became skilled at this. I’d will them away, feel the tiniest bit of confidence, and pretend to have a normal life.

  In reality, I was anything but normal.

  People who experience physical or emotional abuse or trauma or witness something unspeakable often retreat into their own minds and detach, so they don’t feel what’s happening. Disconnection and denial can be powerful coping mechanisms, but the problem is, they only work for a short time. They don’t make the problem go away, and worse, they perpetuate it. The longer you keep peeling off a scab rather than letting it fully heal, the worse your scar will become. In order for a person to be able to handle an extreme situation or encounter, they either need to have the emotional and psychological capacity to deal with it—or enlist the help of someone who does.

  Because I was so young, I couldn’t process what was happening to me, or reconcile my reactions. I was innocent and psychologically pure, and being bombarded every single day and night by terrifying things was the equivalent of throwing black paint on a white wall. I needed an adult to help me.

  The most likely candidate would have been my mother, but she was battling other kinds of demons. My mom had kidnapped me from my dad—boarding a plane out of LA without even telling him she was leaving him—and she divorced him when we settled in Florida. I didn’t have much of a relationship with my dad after the split, and the closest family I had was my mother. I first confided in her when I was around seven years old.

  “Mom,” I said, “there are scary monsters in my room. They won’t go away.”

  She was so cold.

  “There are no such things as monsters, Rachel. Stop making things up.”

  Her words cut me then, and each additional time I’d bring up what I was seeing, the pain and shame of her dismissal got worse. She’d shut me down, and I’d feel even more wounded. Why doesn’t she believe me? And as I got older, I grew angry, and my response evolved into, Even if she doesn’t understand me, why won’t she at least be sympathetic to how I’m feeling?

  It took me a long time to come to grips with this, but the fact is that my mother had a lot of mental problems. She was a malignant narcissist, meaning that she wasn’t happy unless she was making someone else unhappy. I’m not even sure why she left my father, and I never asked because she was so vindictive toward both of us that she’d never tell me the full truth. Talking to my mother was always a superficial exercise, so getting to the root of anything emotional or deep was next to impossible.

  I loved my stepdad, whom my mom married when I was eight, but he fell into the role of enabler. He refused to confront her when she was being nasty, and when my mom had tantrums, he would just let her scream. She’d get mad if my stepdad or I didn’t compliment her in a certain way, or she’d lash out if we didn’t perform tasks exactly when she wanted us to, in the exact manner she demanded. She’d even become enraged if she goaded you into fighting with her and you wouldn’t. She’d fly off the handle if she was critical and mean and you didn’t get upset or cry, and she’d melt down if I accomplished something or if someone complimented me in front of her. I used to close my bedroom door because I couldn’t deal with her energy, and eventually she got so angry about this that she made my stepdad take my door of its hinges. She ripped my posters off my walls and broke my things, but my stepdad didn’t intervene because he didn’t want to cross her. He, like everyone, was afraid of her.

  I’m almost positive my mom had Munchausen syndrome. She was always convinced there was something wrong with her, so she’d run to the doctor and come back with either no diagnosis or a set of possible illnesses she’d make a huge fuss about, only to set up another series of appointments with specialists. When those didn’t prove helpful, she’d try an elective surgery or opt for injections of one kind or another. These put her in so much pain that she began popping painkillers, and pretty soon, she was a hard-core opioid addict. She hid her addiction from me and my brother—the child she had with my stepdad—and I didn’t learn about this until I was an adult. But even if I’d known when I was young, nothing would have been different. I didn’t have the maturity to understand or manage a problem that complicated when I was a kid. All I thought was that my mother was a highly selfish, emotionally erratic person who didn’t love me half as much as I needed her to. Now, though, it all makes sense. Mom was under the sway of something bigger than her.

  Mom always had dark clouds around her. I tried to block them out, but they were so obvious I never could. She’d been raped as a child—though she never talked about it—and I now realize she had a terrible Wraith attached to her. It makes me sad to think about this, honestly. On the surface, my mom was a strong person, and if she hadn’t faced so many difficulties she could have been a real force to be reckoned with. But the fact that her issues were so overpowering made her childish, always in need of mothering herself.

  For instance, my stepdad passed away when I was sixteen, and Mom became afraid to go to sleep. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night and beg me to stay up with her until she drifted off, regardless of whether I had school the next day. She also began having panic attacks during this intense period of grief, and I had to talk her through them.

  I got no love or even the smallest bit of kindness in return, though. She once took me to a ballet for a “nice” evening with a friend of hers, and, for no reason at all, I started to panic when I walked inside. I asked Mom to go back outside with me.

  “Suck it up,” she spat at me as she turned away. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  Caretaker was my only role when I was with her, and it forced me to become an adult at a very early age.

  The only time I ever truly felt like a kid was with my grandmother. Because Mom was so needy and incapable of taking care of herself, she’d always insisted that we live close to her parents. Our house was about thirty minutes away from my grandparents, and for my entire life, my grandma was basically a saint to me. She would have done absolutely anything to make me happy, which was the complete opposite of my mother. My grandma would sit with me at dinner and say, “Rach, tell me about your day. Every little bit.” She’d get on her hands and knees and play Legos with me. She taught me empathy and basic human connection, and ultimately, I think she made me into the person I am today.

  My grandma’s only big flaw was that she enabled my mom, too. She was just as afraid of her as everyone else was, so she’d dance around her, worrying that my mom would lash out at her or stop talking to her if she was angry. I was her only comfort against my mom, so she let me stay with her as often as I liked—for as long as I wanted. Unfortunately, because I was forcing myself to believe that what I was seeing was all in my imagination—which my mother reinforced—I never felt brave enough to talk to my grandmother about my experiences with the entities. I thought what I was seeing made me strange. I didn’t want to be judged, even by the person who loved and understood me most in the world, so I thought it was better to keep my mouth shut.

  I’m not sure if my grandmother saw entities. I never asked her, and she passed away when I was in my late twenties, so I never had the chance to talk to her while she was alive. Because she was so dismissive of me when I told her, I’m sure my mother didn’t have this gift. So, when people ask me now where my extrasensory abilities came from, I don’t have an exact answer. I was just born this way, and I deeply believe this is what I’m meant to do in this life.

  There may be other people out there exactly like me, but unfortunately, I’ve never had the chance to meet them. I know individuals who have similar gifts—like oracles, mediums, and shamans—but they work in general energy healing, meaning that they clean the body and
spirit. Demons are what I do, and that involves a very specific type of energy focus. I’ve only met one other person who may have a similar ability to mine, someone I’ll tell you about later in this book. I hope to help this man try to learn his gifts. But if there’s a little girl in Iowa or Japan or Mexico reading this, thinking, Finally, I know I’m not alone, I hope she comes to understand that what she’s seeing might be scary, but there’s a way to use it to help those in need. Your power may feel like too much to bear now, but you will be able to harness it for good.

  I spend a lot of time speaking to Source and all sorts of Higher Beings, including Spirit Guides, Master Teachers, angels, and more, and I’ll describe them in detail later. Just know for now that they are my most trusted guides not just in my life, but in all the exorcisms I do. Most of the time, I don’t even specifically request a particular being from Spirit. I just ask for help, and it responds however it sees fit. Together, Spirit and these Higher Beings form what I consider my belief system: that all things good and bad—or high frequency and low frequency—spring from Spirit, and they cause and direct everything we do in this world. There are no accidents: it’s just Source and all its beings forging a path and affecting all of us. The good news is that if we learn to listen to Spirit, like I have, we can be at peace with that.

  Though Spirit has never out-and-out said it, I believe I was chosen to have this gift because it was known that I could be trusted to bring it out into the world. I never understood that as a child—I didn’t even know what was happening to me—but now, as an adult, I see there’s a method to all of this. Before I was even born, Spirit knew I could manage my powers. After years and years of denial, shame, anger, grief, and frustration, I now grasp what to do with my abilities. My dysfunctional, desperately lonely childhood helped make me strong, and that’s the attitude I use when I face entities. I don’t take shit from them. I go into situations that other people would run away from, even with fifty other people holding their hands and cheering them on. I barge right in alone, fearlessly, and I do my job. I take what I once thought was a curse and turn it into a blessing. It’s a way to help people better their lives.