by R. H. Stavis
Tricksters that appear to adults may take the form of archangels, genies, fortune-tellers, important people in your life who have passed, or anything or anyone that you have an affinity for. If you like unicorns, your Trickster might just grow a horn in the middle of its head. Unlike Clives or Wraiths, people may actually see these entities, but, again, they’re okay with it. It’s their friend, and they have a symbiotic relationship.
When I encounter Tricksters during an exorcism, though, I don’t witness them in the form my client does. They don’t look like a cute ghost or genie to me. They may project to my client whatever the person believes they are, but I see something different. I visualize what the entity actually is and what it’s attempting to do, which is feeding. It’s not protecting or helping, which is what the host believes. I see the real entity, not the disguise.
What I witness is the Trickster trying to appear human, but unable to figure out how to. Their faces constantly shift, as if they’re a character you’re watching on TV as your cable connection repeatedly cuts out. Their faces time out, reappear as a different face, then flicker off like a wisp of smoke.
Trust me, this looks scary as hell. It’s like staring wide-eyed into a dark, gruesome Picasso painting, or a jigsaw puzzle that keeps breaking up into a million pieces. I often compare them to Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, if the character blinked on and off.
To my clients, Tricksters don’t just seem innocent; they feel downright inspiring. They truly love their Tricksters, so choosing to get rid of them is a big deal. I have many clients come to me thinking they’re ready and totally willing to have an exorcism, but deep down, they can’t let go. That symbiosis creates an energy that’s a bit more difficult to untangle, and I may be more exhausted after the exorcism. And, unfortunately, in the back of my mind I know the client might return someday. Even though I get rid of the Trickster, I realize my client might allow another to attach. To them, it will appear to be the same imaginary friend, but in fact, it’s another Trickster disguising itself.
Other clients never return. For example, I exorcised one woman named Jane, whose Trickster had been with her for more than fifty years. Jane first saw the Trickster when she was a little girl, and it appeared to her as a genie, promising to grant all her wishes and make her dreams come true. I know it sounds weird, but this was an actual genie, standing in her room, and she wasn’t afraid because he was so magical and friendly. As a child, Jane was innocent. No one had told her that genies weren’t real. She was giddy with hope and anticipation, and she welcomed him with open arms. But over the course of many years, he fed off her until he destroyed her. Jane’s life was a garbage dump of broken relationships, unemployment, and drug addiction. Yet she still looked to the genie for answers, hoping he’d make her life perfect.
“I can’t keep living this way,” she said to me when I told her that her little genie friend was bad news. “I just won’t be able to move ahead if I have this horrible thing with me.”
She was ready, and her exorcism was successful. A month later, she called me and told me she’d gotten a job, was in the beginnings of her first real adult relationship, and best of all, she’d stopped drinking and was taking steps toward a lifetime of sobriety.
As was the case with Jane, Tricksters typically get between their host and any healthy, normal relationship that person might try to form. The Trickster will separate people from friends and family, even telling them—unconsciously—that other people are dangerous. This alienation will make that individual angry, sad, and lonely, and keep them vibrating at such a low level that the Trickster can continue feeding. As the person grows older, their romantic life will suffer because they’re so afraid of intimacy, and they may struggle with their jobs because they won’t trust their coworkers. Like Jane, this may lead to addiction problems. Alcohol and drugs are comforting; if you’re self-medicating, you never feel as lonely as you really are.
Like Clives, Tricksters are drawn to an energy signature that’s similar to their own. They have their own personalities, so they always look for someone they can really get aggro with. No two Tricksters are alike or want the same things. I’ve had clients with all kinds of issues: subtle, underlying anxiety, deep-seated anger, malignant narcissism, or painful introversion. They were all plagued with Tricksters.
Because a Trickster is attracted to a particular energy signature, it’s unlikely that one would ever hop from one person to another. Sure, two people could exist on exactly the same frequency, making it possible that a Trickster—or any entity—would be interested in both of them, but it’s not something I’ve ever seen.
Most Tricksters follow people from childhood, and they attach after a particularly dark trauma—but not one that’s sexually related. A child who’s abused, loses a parent, or witnesses a violent act against someone they love feels so vulnerable that they may become desperate for something—anything—to protect them, and Tricksters flock to them because of this. The young person will then carry the entity into adulthood, with the Trickster continuing to show itself from time to time.
“It’s the weirdest thing,” my clients tell me, “but I sometimes see an image of a dragon, and it makes me feel good.”
“You’re not crazy,” I’ll respond, “but just know that that dragon is not your friend.”
Remember my first exorcism on my boyfriend, Peter? The one with the Clive? Well, Peter’s comforting ghost was actually a Trickster.
Tricksters won’t cause immediate or direct harm to someone, but, like a Clive, they may amplify negative behavior and cause someone to hurt themselves. If your Trickster leads you toward addiction, for example, you may overdose. Or if you’ve been depressed for years, you might consider suicide. Tricksters push you to the extremes in an attempt to feed, and while I’ve never had a client die because of a Trickster, I know it’s happened. I’ve looked at photos of a dead person in the newspaper or on television and immediately realized, Their Trickster took them over the edge. How do I know? Because I see a genie or fortune-teller right there, next to the dead person’s face. Other times, the Trickster looks like a giant blackness hovering around the person.
Tricksters and Wraiths are the only entities to age. I really can’t say exactly how they’re born—or, for that matter, how any entities come into being—but I’ve seen young Tricksters who are clearly far less sophisticated and malevolent than older Tricksters.
Believe me, these old Tricksters can be incredibly dangerous. There’s even an extra-high-level class of Trickster that I’ve witnessed with some of my most damaged clients. I call them “Ancient Tricksters” because they’ve been around for hundreds—if not thousands—of years. They’ve used more energy, fed off more people, and know more about the world, so they’re far more cunning and malevolent. Ancient Tricksters have spent their entire existence looking for a very specific host that they can damage to the full extent of their powers, and often those are people who can enact real change in society. They may not be seeking world domination, but they might be influential musicians or artists, for example. Ancient Tricksters have spent all the years before that feeding on individuals who’ve grown old with them, then passed away, so the Trickster had no choice but to move on to their next victim. When they finally attach to the host they’ve spent centuries looking for, they try to enact very insidious, deep destruction in the person’s life. They’re not powerful enough to cause widespread, global mayhem, but they sure as hell will turn someone into a mess.
For example, a few years ago I had several musicians come to me—all separately—complaining that they could no longer create music. These were seriously talented stars who wrote complex, hard-hitting songs. They were metal guys and punks who had defined their respective genres. All of them were major influencers, and that led me to believe that their entity was particularly malignant because some high-level entities don’t just want to feed off a host; they want to draw the energy of every person who’s ever flocked to see them perform.
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hese men’s careers were falling apart, and they worried they were done for if something didn’t change. They each explored all the usual means of help: therapists, long vacations, and whatever version of self-care they had, like seeing a spiritual guru or doing yoga. Some took the opposite route and escaped by having a lot of sex or taking drugs.
Each of these guys revealed that, sometimes, they saw an image of Baphomet, an ancient, goat-headed idol whom the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (and tortured and killed because of it). Now, Baphomet is often associated with music and appears in lots of the imagery surrounding heavy metal. For my musician clients, Baphomet always made them feel better.
“I can’t explain it,” one drummer I’ll call Jake said, “but I just feel the music so much more when I think about him.”
It took me a few exorcisms, but I finally figured out that the Baphomet Trickster—who wasn’t Baphomet, but instead chose to “dress” like him—was a subclass of Ancient Tricksters drawn to an energy signature that shows up with musicians. It wasn’t the same entity on each man—as I said, that can’t happen—but it was the identical projection to all of them.
Like most Ancient Tricksters, its energy was very dark, and it was incredibly cunning and wise. It looked old and tattered, like a mummified corpse, but it was anything but frail. The malevolent energy coming off of it was giant, like a nuclear bomb had just dropped into my Spirit Room, blasting fire and radiation from one corner to another.
For each of my clients, I was able to remove the entity, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, one exorcism took me a whopping three hours, and it taxed my body in deep ways. I was achy and sore all over, like I had the flu, and I spent the next day curled in a ball in my room with a fever. Some of my clients felt the same for days and days. But sooner rather than later, all of them were able to make music again.
I hate seeing Tricksters, and luckily, they aren’t incredibly common. Ancient Tricksters even less so. For every hundred exorcisms I do, ten will be Tricksters. Now, I’ve seen thousands upon thousands of entities in my life, so 10 percent still accounts for a healthy number, but they aren’t as common as Clives, whom I see multiple times a day.
Despite how rare they are, they’re the entity who visits me at night most often. I see Ancient Tricksters more often than not, and their energy is so malevolent that you feel like you could cut it with a knife. I’m so removed from the idea of being terrified of entities that I’m not sure you could call what I feel real “Oh my God, I think I’m going to die!” terror, but these visitations do bother me.
Several years ago I was asleep next to my then husband. I woke up at around five in the morning. There was just enough light shining into the room to illuminate a young girl standing near our bed. She looked like a college coed—blond, fresh-faced, all-American. I even thought to myself, She’s kind of pretty. She was pacing back and forth from my dresser to the elliptical we had in the room at the time, taking articles of clothing one by one out of the dresser and placing them on the machine.
When I sat up, she looked at me and pointed.
“I found out there’s a ghost in that ring.”
“What ring?” Then I looked down and saw the white stone on my right hand. Of course, I thought, the ring my husband at the time gave me. We called in Spirit and put an intent of protection on it. This entity wants me to remove it so I’ll be vulnerable to her.
“Who are you?” I demanded, not quite loud enough to wake my husband up. Not two seconds after the words came out of my mouth, she flew over my body, looked right at my face, and tried to enter me through my chest. But she couldn’t. I knew who she was, and she wasn’t going to get me.
Unfortunately, many of my clients aren’t as strong. A medium I work with sometimes carries one that she absolutely refuses to face. This Trickster appears to her as the Archangel Michael, and it feeds off the very volatile, angry energy the medium emits. When I confronted her and said, “Honey, that’s not an angel; it’s an entity,” she blew up and refused to come in for an exorcism. Why? Because she’s convinced that he’s trying to protect her rather than hurt her.
I’ve had clients come in three or four times with the same Trickster. They’ll look at me and say, “Rachel, I promise you that this time I’m ready to get rid of it. I’m absolutely ready.”
“Then, let’s do this,” I’ll respond.
But because I speak to their Spirit Guides, I can usually tell if my clients are really being honest. I’ll know if the circumstances of their lives have become so desperately bleak that they realize there’s no other option than to say goodbye to their Trickster forever. Unfortunately, that’s the case with too many people; they have to hit rock bottom before they can actually break free. They may have lived so long with this entity that they’re doubtful about who they are or what the future will hold because they’ve never known life without it. I’m sure my friend, the medium, probably wonders, If my guardian angel isn’t Michael, who am I? Am I not special anymore?
That’s part of the reason why I can pull a Trickster off a client a hundred times, but they’ll still want them to come back. A client who’s ready to vanquish their Trickster for good doesn’t just have to want them gone; they need to be at a point in their lives when they realize that their problem is caused by that entity. They need to stop making excuses, blaming their unsupportive boyfriend or mean boss, and acknowledge that the thing that’s been as comforting as a baby blanket is actually bad news.
When I encounter a Trickster during an exorcism, it usually tries to fight me. This could be verbal; it might curse or try to engage me in some sort of back-and-forth argument. And yes, it actually speaks. Or it might talk through my client, causing their voice to become gravelly and low, just like you see in the movies.
The entity may engage in physical violence, too, and it’s not uncommon for them to compel their host to reach toward me and grab me hard. I’m used to this, so I’ve never been hurt, but it’s still a shock. The Trickster isn’t just resisting, it’s trying to inflate itself to a higher status so it can inflict actual damage on me or my client. It doesn’t ever want to leave, and that’s why the three days after an exorcism are key to preventing other Tricksters from coming back. I’m always vigilant about telling clients to ignore the little voices in their head that urge them to do harm. They must be extra good to themselves, never judge the up-and-down emotions they’re going to feel, and above all, refuse to remember their Trickster as anything but pure evil.
SANDMAN
There are some entities that don’t attach to people. They either won’t stick with one person, refuse to interact with humans, or come face-to-face with many people but choose not to invade one single individual. In the next chapter I’ll focus on the most dangerous free-floating entities, but for now I want to describe one that has touched almost everyone reading this book.
That entity is the Sandman, and like the song says, he’ll bring you a dream. But instead of it being the cutest you’ve ever seen, it’s always absolutely terrifying.
The Sandman looks like a shadowy figure of a man with an old-fashioned, wide-brimmed hat. He’s like a supercreepy version of the Quaker Oats guy. The Sandman doesn’t target one person; instead, he searches for a large area like a city block, a building, or even an entire small town. After he focuses all of his negative energy on that particular space, he wraps it with an etheric energy that looks like spiderwebbing. When his target is completely covered, he sits back, satisfied, and waits.
It’s never clear how long the Sandman stays around. All I know is that after the sun goes down and people go to bed, he starts his nasty work.
When as many people as possible are asleep, usually in the middle of the night, the Sandman begins to pull energy from the heads of everyone under his web. The less energy each person has, the lower their frequency, and they begin having nightmares. These aren’t your typical nightmares, though; they’re endlessly long, detailed, grap
hic, movie-style dreams that leave you feeling spent when you wake. I know this not just because Spirit’s revealed it to me, but also because of all the many stories my clients have told me—as well as my own experiences. The Sandman’s visited my neighborhood a few times through the years, and I’ve had dreams ranging from discovering I couldn’t walk, then trying for hours to pull myself up to standing, to reliving the weeklong death of my grandfather. I woke up sobbing both times.
I know many of my neighbors did, too. As we all slept under the Sandman’s web, helpless, suffering through terrible, epic dreams, the Sandman lurked above and fed off our fears. Most of the time, everyone under his web will have different nightmares, but all of them will wake up exhausted after a long, restless night.
I’ve also witnessed the Sandman working on buildings and houses while I stood apart from him, unaffected. But, again, I don’t just understand him based on my personal experience. Just like every entity, I’ve learned about him because I commune so deeply with Spirit.
I call entities like the Sandman wanderers. They move from location to location without attaching, so I have no methodology to remove them. The thing that makes the Sandman different from most wanderers, though, is that he isn’t neutral. He doesn’t just pass through a space. He uses it to target individuals and pull out a specific frequency. He wants your negative frequency, and even though he doesn’t attach to you, he draws it out, energetically, from your head.
In the midst of an exorcism, never once have I encountered a Sandman, but that’s not surprising. He’s moved on as of sunrise. It’s just part of his nature. He’s simply an annoyance, an entity who creates discomfort but who is never going to do real, direct harm.
My encounters with the Sandman have been more complex than other people’s, but it’s probably because he knows that I’m onto him. Once, I was having an epic dream that I was pregnant and then, suddenly, lost the baby. As if that wasn’t distressing enough, my house was then destroyed in a fire, and I was left with nothing. My sense of loss was deep and intimate in this dream, and I couldn’t see a way to happiness again. Just when I was feeling my absolute lowest, I woke up. Jesus Christ, did I feel drained! I was more tired than when I’d gotten in bed.