Night Haints And Winter Roses
Can you believe yet another newsletter with true tales of woo-woo?
Look at that bowl of sunshine at Vui’s Kitchen, a terrific Vietnamese cafe here in Nashville. You gotta go!
So I’m finished here with the Q Ideas conference, which was really wonderful. Met some great folks from all over. It’s always good for me to meet and spend time with Evangelical thinkers — a tradition with which I’m not familiar. Tonight something really surprising happened. A couple of weeks ago I did a Zoom interview with Michael Durčak, a Czech grad student studying this academic year at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He saw on Twitter that I was going to be in Nashville tonight, just as he and a Czech grad student colleague were going to be passing through the city on a roadtrip. I took Michael and František to dinner at Butchertown Hall, so they could eat some proper American barbecue:
How was it? Very, very tender, but I gotta say, not as good as my hometown Baton Rouge favorite, Hannah Q Smokehouse. I ordered way too much food, and sent the Bohemians off with half a rack of ribs that I couldn’t eat. As I’m here in the hotel room typing, I am just getting a text from Michael and František down on Broadway, the entertainment district main drag here. They love it! “It’s so much fun,” Michael texts. “City with a good heart, where people seriously love music.”
I told him they had to get to New Orleans before they return home in the spring.
OK, I’m off to bed — long drive back to Baton Rouge tomorrow (nine hours). Me and historian Tom Holland. Meanwhile, here’s another installment of your stories about mystical experiences. I’m going to shift them somewhat from positive mystical experiences to negative ones. Here’s one from a Christian reader who explained in prefatory remarks that he is afraid that there will be real violence in this country, and soon. Why? Because of an encounter he had with an unseen being of utter malevolence. Read on:
About ten years ago now I had one of a couple of what I believe to be truly spiritual experiences. This experience was in no way related to anything I had done directly leading up to it. It happened on an otherwise completely normal night, and to this day I have no idea why it happened then or to me at all.
I woke up in the middle of the night very suddenly as if startled by something. I couldn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary, but suddenly I could feel a... presence - a presence that was completely, entirely, single-mindedly malevolent. I tried to sit up in bed, but found I couldn't move at all. I tried harder, but nothing moved. It was like being totally wrapped in something - I was straining my muscles as hard as I could, and nothing would move. I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn't move. The feeling of this presence became completely overwhelming. It was like it focused in on me. Not a mere human focus, either. I can only begin to understand it by referencing what I've heard about hesychasm and the prayer of the heart - although this was the antithesis of that. For us humans, it's extremely difficult to learn to focus absolutely on one thing. For spirits, it's just their nature.
What I can say most overwhelmingly is this - I have never in my life felt, nor even imagined, a hate so utterly implacable and strong as what I felt then. This being - and I knew somehow it was one individual being, a "person" of some kind - hated me and all humans more thoroughly and with a deeper desire for vengeance than anything I could have ever imagined.
At this point I was fighting to move with every ounce of strength I had, but I still couldn't move anything. But then I remembered the monastic Saints and the Jesus prayer, and I began with all my strength to try to speak. After what seemed like an incredibly long struggle (time seemed to stand still during the entire experience), I finally got enough control of my mouth to barely mutter through clenched teeth - it must have sounded completely comical! - "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me!".
At that very instant, everything just vanished. The presence, whatever it was holding me, the feeling of malevolence - everything just vanished like darkness when you flip a light switch. I sat straight up, flexing sore muscles. I was completely covered in sweat from the exertion, but suddenly had an inexplicable feeling of peace. I looked around the room and saw just a peaceful, ordinary room. At that point I almost laughed. It's hard to explain why. I just laid back down and went to sleep, completely exhausted.
I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that what I experienced that night was a demon. They are real. They are individual, particular beings. And they hate us in ways very, very few humans will ever even begin to comprehend. I can't stress this strongly enough. There are not human words for it. Their hate for us is utterly, completely beyond anything you have ever even imagined. And they influence every anti-Christian person in this world today. Remember, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. As a former competitive jiujutsu/sambo practitioner, I can assure you that I have never been as worn out on the mat after a match as I was on that night.
I had an experience far milder than that, but this story brought it to mind. It was back in 1990 or 1991. I was living in an apartment alone in Baton Rouge. At some point, I had the feeling that someone was watching me at night. This went on for weeks. It got to the point where like a little kid, I was keeping the light on in the bathroom, and still it didn’t stop. I wasn’t especially religious then, but I was starting to discover a religious faith, and a friend who had ceased to believe in God had given me his crucifix. I got to the point where I would fall asleep clutching the crucifix to my chest, and this didn’t seem crazy at all to me.
One night, I sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake out of a deep sleep, furious because of the Watcher. I’ll never forget what I saw. It was a small, ugly, rat-faced creature, a kind of imp, with skin like the white of a browned apple core. A look of shock crossed its face, as if it hadn’t expected me to see it. It turned and ran into the bathroom. I was so angry at it that I bounded out of bed and chased it. Of course there was nothing in the bathroom. I felt like an idiot, but to this day, I cannot dismiss the idea that there was something there.
I thought maybe I was losing my mind. Around the same time, I was having scary thoughts about a large, sinister figure wanting to physically harm me. I couldn’t think of any reason why any of it should be happening. My lease was coming up for renewal, and I decided I needed to get out of that apartment. So I did — and none of that ever happened again.
Here’s something similar, but more hopeful. Back in the winter of 1993-94, I was living in the plantation house of a dear friend, deep in the country outside of my hometown in south Louisiana. I had returned to Louisiana after only a year and a half in Washington, DC. I loved my job at the Washington Times newspaper, but the birth of my sister’s first child made me long intensely for home. I wanted to be part of the family. I quit my job and went back to Louisiana to be close to the new baby, and to think about graduate school somewhere. Looking back on it, it was an incredibly foolish thing to do, to give up a Washington journalism job at only age 26, but I cannot begin to describe how strong the pull of home was.
I did not want to live with my mom and dad. My friend kindly offered to let me share her big house. She taught school in the day, and went to her place in New Orleans most weekends to be with her boyfriend (later husband). I liked being alone in that beautiful old house. I claimed one of the four upstairs bedrooms for myself.
It didn’t take long for the same thing to start happening again: this intense feeling of being watched as I slept. This time, I kept a night light on again. I still could not shake the feeling. By now I was a Catholic, and took to sleeping with the same crucifix, just as before. Still! I was so tired, because I wasn’t sleeping well from all the unease. I kept trying to talk myself out of believing that there was something ghostly in that room. Eventually I broke the news one night to my hostess that I was going to have to move to my parents’ house, because I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in that room in ages.
My hostess is not a believer in the supernatural, but her now-husband has always made room in his mind for the woo-woo. He is weirdly sensitive to this stuff like I am. He told me, “You know, I have never been able to sleep in that room either. You should try the one behind it.”
That night I did. Slept like a baby, and moved to that second room for the rest of my time at the country house. I believe that there was a ghost attached to that room, and that it did not like anyone sleeping there.
Now, here’s where the story gets really strange and wonderful.
As I said, I was a Catholic by this time, having been received into the Church on Easter Vigil, 1993. I moved back to Louisiana that autumn. On my long days there alone in the country, I would pray my rosary often. On the night of December 7, 1993, I was out riding on a country road in the truck with my father. He mentioned to me how good it was to have me back home in the parish. He said, almost in passing, “I guess you see now that I was right after all.”
I froze. This is how he interpreted my giving up my budding Washington career to come home to be near family — as my capitulating to his judgment that I ought to be living there, under his dominion?! I was speechless. I had meant my return as an act of sacrificial love, but also an act of faith that we could live in peace. For Daddy, as ever, it was only one of submission.
I didn’t show how rattled I was. I stayed at their house that night, but I couldn’t sleep at all from anxiety. I had ruined my life. I had given up a great job, and a great future, to come back to the country to my family, but now I saw it had been a stupid, stupid mistake. Around three a.m., I got out of bed, got dressed, and drove into Baton Rouge. I sat at Louie’s Cafe near campus drinking coffee until time for the seven a.m. mass at St. Agnes church downtown. December 8 was the Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The sun was barely up, but there I was alone in the church, on my knees at the communion rail, telling the Mother of God that I had seen what I needed to see, and begged her to please get me out of Louisiana.
After Christmas, I flew to Norway to visit a friend. While there, I had a series of remarkable synchronicities and dreams heavy with symbolism. I wrote from my hotel room in Bergen to a DC friend who knew something about Jungian dream interpretation, and asked him to answer me at my Louisiana address, because I would be back home within the next ten days.
When I arrived at home, there was a letter from him, interpreting the dreams. He said that these dreams were telling me that I am being called to leave my family, though they will not be able to understand it — but that is fine, because my destiny is elsewhere. Also in the stack of mail: a letter from the managing editor of The Washington Times, offering me a different job. She said she needed to hear from me by the end of January.
You are thinking: And he phoned the Times straightaway, took the job, and never looked back. Of course not; if there is any overthinking to be done, you can always count on me to do it. I decided I needed to pray the rosary to ask Mary what to do. I wanted a sign.
Nearly three weeks went by, and no sign. Time was running out. I had close of business on the last Friday of the month to accept the newspaper’s offer. Meanwhile, a friend from Baton Rouge came up to the country to visit. She was going through a difficult divorce, and needed to be somewhere quiet for a couple of days. We sat in the kitchen at the country house drinking hot tea that Friday afternoon, talking about her failed marriage, with me trying to be a good, consoling friend.
I looked at my watch and saw that the offices on the East Coast would be closing soon. I excused myself, and told her that I had to make a phone call. She said she would go outside for a walk. It was a gray, overcast day, but not cold. After she left the house, I decided to make a leap of faith, and accept the job, despite not having a sign. I called DC, told them yes, and said I would be reporting for work in a couple of weeks.
Relieved, I decided to offer a rosary of thanksgiving. I went into my hostess’s bedroom (she was out of town that weekend), shut the doors, sat down on a chair and began to pray. I told the Virgin that though I had not received a sign, I had faith that she had helped me with my decision through her prayers, and I wanted to offer this rosary in gratitude. “Also, please hold Kim’s hand through this divorce,” I prayed silently, then began the rosary.
After I began the second or third decade, the room suddenly filled with sunlight and the aroma of roses. It was as if there were big sprays of roses all over the room, like Kentucky Derby Day, or something. I began to inhale deeply, as if to prove that I wasn’t imagining this. Mind you, this was in the dead of winter. Nothing was blooming, certainly not roses. I slowed my prayers down to make it last. But when I got to the end of that decade (ten beads), the sunlight disappeared, and so did the aroma of roses.
I hurriedly finished the rosary, then searched around the room for anything that might have caused the rose smell. There was nothing, of course. This was the sign I had prayed for! But it came after I had made the decision, to confirm that I had done the right thing. It was a lesson for me to walk by faith and reason, and not to be a silly chaser after signs and wonders.
Dazed, I decided to be useful, and went upstairs to make up the bed in my room from the night before. As I was pulling the covers up, I heard my friend come in downstairs from her walk, and walk up the stairs to where I was. She stalked through the doorway with her eyes wide, her left hand gripping her right by the wrist, extending it to me.
“Smell this,” she said, breathless.
I went around the bed to smell. It had a powerful scent of roses on the palm.
Oh my God.
“Did you put perfume on it?”
“No.”
“Did you wash your hand with floral soap or something?”
“No. I just heard you upstairs, and came up to help you make up the beds. I rubbed my nose, and now my hand smells like roses!”
“Kim, I just said a rosary, and I asked the Virgin Mary to hold your hand through this divorce.”
Her jaw dropped, as did her hand, to her side. The aroma of roses was gone. Then I told her what I had experienced in the downstairs bedroom.
Two weeks later, I was back in Washington, on my birthday, February 14. A fellow Catholic convert friend took me to his church in northern Virginia. There I prayed again to Mary, to thank her for bringing me back to Washington after all that.
I’ll never leave here again, I thought. But I was not a man of my word. And don’t you know that eighteen years after I first left the East Coast to return to Louisiana to be part of my family, I did the same thing, for the same reason, this time bringing with me a wife and three children. The end result was similar, but rather more consequential, as you might have read. Almost nothing came up roses this time, though.