Have you ever wondered what exactly it takes to have a malevolent force to manifest itself into our plane of existence and harass those otherwise abiding in peace in our realm of physical reality?
Me too.
Despite many encounters with destructive and malign forces that express themselves in our realm of existence in one form or the other I have often wondered what kind of force is required to unleash this abominable force upon our senses.
Of course there is the usual suspects.
A dark site of archaic unknown evil, long forgotten, but which echoes into our present time; an ancient site of human sacrifice or execution; a place of unjust and generational repeated action which resulted in the death or corruption of the innocent or a site repeated and volatile occultist and satanic rituals preformed in order to illicit a response from the realm of the fallen itself.
All the fun stuff of occultist lore.
But what happens when the most seemingly minuscule of actions actually makes manifest a demonic force that not only presents itself upon our earthly plane but which interacts with others by which it causes physical and dangerous attacks on all who dares to enter its sphere of influence?
Erie Pennsylvania has many Catholic Colleges and this event took place on an off campus housing facility not directly associated with one of these Colleges.
It was a multi bedroom house that was rented a few years ago by four College wrestlers. These four friends were large bulky brutes and were quite bold and fearless.
Hardly afraid of anything.
But events unfolded within their residence that forced all of them out and one refused to even enter the building to retrieve his personal belonging after one particular night of terror.
When they first moved in the apartment it was a quiet and tranquil abode. They studied, relaxed and threw their fair share of rowdy parties. They were there for almost a year before the problems started. And they could trace it back to one particular incident.
It is an incident that has undoubtedly happened millions of times with varying levels of fury and rage. Some will call it sacrilege, others just call it just a natural and innocent act of frustration or disappointment.
One night after studying his assigned theological homework, one of the wrestlers became very frustrated. He was at the school on a scholarship and struggled through most of his subjects. He was barely making a C average on most subjects, but in his Catholic Theology course he was failing
miserably. He just could not comprehend all the complicated concepts and his failure with these courses doomed his G.P.A. That night he was vexed beyond compare by the teachings of Transubstantiation.
Knowing he was doomed to fail the early morning test on the subject and seeing his wresting and Collegiate future slip through his fingers he cursed at God and threw his Bible against the wall.
I have known many who have done the same thing, even Clergymen who were in a crisis of faith.
But something was unleashed that night by that small incident of anger and frustration.
The wrestler eventually worked out a deal with his theology professor but within a week of the incident with the Bible strange things began to happen in the shared apartment.
At first it was just puzzling.
After two of the roommates washed the evenings dishes they stacked them on the right side of the sink and went to bed.
The next morning they were all on the left side of the sink. In perfect order.
Next were the bookcases on the south side of the house.
The bookcases on other walls were not affected. But two of the six rooms had bookcases on the south. One morning the occupants of those rooms woke up to all the books piled up one upon another in perfect form.
Soon the phenomena became more dramatic and increased in intensity with every day.
Books would fly off shelves.
Glasses would shatter in locked cabinets.
One morning they woke up to find their backyard littered with dead rats.
It culminated one evening when one of them young men's fiance had come to visit. They were walking down the back stairs when suddenly the 250 lbs hulk of a wrestler was pushed by some invisible force down the stairs. Ripped from his fiance's arm he tumbled head over heals down the staircase like a rag doll. He fell at the bottom of the stairs and lay motionless.
That what when his fiance saw it.
It was a dark form that lurked at the bottom of the stairs, hovering over her fiance. It raised its shadowy head up to her and leered at her with his glowing red eyes.
Her scream rolled up from an inner terror that she had never before or has never since experienced.
And with that sound her fiance roused and slowly stood up, and the shadow figure faded.
That night he was checked out at the emergency room, and had only a few bruises.
They never returned to the apartment.
His roommates knew of the strange occurrences but tried to shelter themselves by considering that the physical manifestation a mere hallucination from the trauma of seeing her fiance take such a harrowing tumble.
But soon that shelter would be destroyed by a storm of evil.
Within a week they would wake up with scratches across their body, have the house reek with a thick sulfuric smell, and come home from classes to find the living room furniture ripped apart.
The paranormal phenomena peaked when one morning while one of the men was shaving in the bathroom. He saw the shadow take form behind him and saw a face next to his own.
They all moved out and told the campus minister about all of the incidents. He listened with shock and after talking with the local church hierarchy did the only thing he could think to do.
He called the Vatican to find the nearest Catholic exorcist.
The nearest priest trained for the rite was in Buffalo and he came before the week's end.
What exactly happened at the cleansing of the apartment, nobody knows.
In fact nobody is talking about the incident at all. They were told not too.
They did not want to tarnish the reputation of the College.
I found out of this by one a former wrestler who had been best friends with the young men who went through the torment. He himself had a similar incident while living in Pittsburgh. You can read his story here:
The Specter of the Watchers it has some interesting background on this incident and Nephilim.
But whatever happened there seems to be working, other students have lived there in the years since and none of them have experienced anything out of the ordinary. The young girls that live there have no idea what transpired there just a few years ago.
A Bible thrown in rage manifesting a violent demonic presence?
I would suspect there is more to the matter than that.
Either there was more to the background of the person who did the act or the location of the house was in someway predisposed to such a malignant manifestation.
Otherwise for every act of outrage over faith unfulfilled or disdain of dogma such specters of evil would be billowing out from the abyss at every turn. But instead, usually the out come of such acts are either a deepening of faith or its complete loss. And God knows our hearts. He knows our frustrations and our limitations, our disdain for living in a less than perfect world.
Until Next Time,
Pastor Swope
