The Fairy Thief of the Wilderness

The Johnson’s were second generation missionaries to Thailand.

Mrs. Johnsons’ parents were missionaries in the southern province of Chon Buri and although she spent most of her childhood away in boarding school, she felt a very real affinity for the country and its people. So she was thrilled after graduating Bible College in the late 1950s to be assigned with her husband to the northern province of Chiang Mai.

Mrs. Johnson had heard many strange stories while growing up with national children while on summer breaks. It seemed wherever there were jungle in Thailand there were strange stories of strange animals. This mystique of the unknown along with the unexplored in Thai jungles continues to this day but in the late 50s Mrs. Johnson relates that there seemed to be a much more romantic feel to such expeditions into the wilderness.

With their residence set up in a small village near the Ping river this mystique of the unknown must have been great indeed for they were almost 100 kilometers away from any other missionary and any western influence. But they preferred it that way since they could then immerse themselves in the surrounding culture while meeting the needs of the people. Mrs. Johnson was a nurse and Mr. Johnson busied himself with teaching and helping build permanent structures for those in need of shelter.

Sometimes odd things happen when you are hundreds of miles away from civilization. The Western mind almost automatically tries to categorize it in our rational way. But sometimes some things happen that just defies all known logic and previous experiences.

Mrs. Johnson was always eager to share these odd bits of the unexplained in her missionary talks while on furlough back in the states, and one of the more fascinating stories she told was of the Naang Maai Paa, or the little fairy of the wild forest.

The Naang Maai Paa lived deep in the forest and hated human beings. They looked like humans but were not, the villagers considered then to be spirits who took shape to guard the forest. They were as small as a child, but unlike our Western idea of fairies these spirit beings of the wilderness were little hairy people who lived in the earth underneath large trees.

Mrs. Johnson had always thought the creature a superstitious legend until a series of mysterious happenings in the early 60s.

In some of the new houses erected by her husband and other members of the local church, food began to disappear in the middle of the night. These houses were built in newly cleared land at the edge of the forest on a mountainside. The thieves never struck the same house twice in a row, but seemed to make a route going back and forth along the base of the mountain. It was not long after exchanging stories that they deduced the thieves pattern and set up a trap for the perpetrator. Mrs. Johnson’s husband joined them as they lay wait for the thief to make his move.

So they kept armed vigil around the house and waited. It was not until, morning was almost upon them that the criminal showed up. But curiously they did not see him enter the house, but only as he exited. It was a little Naang Maai Paa with it’s arms full of fruit and dried meat. It quickly waddled towards the woods when one of the national pastors, thinking it was a child jumped in front of it and raised his flashlight to its face.

From Mrs. Johnson’s account there were two screams heard by all the watchmen, that of the national pastor and the other of the fairy thief. When the others came to his aid the thief was gone, less some pieces of plunder to be sure, but he was long gone into the forest. However they found the pastor shaking on the ground, for he was sure he had seen a demon.

The three foot tall creature was covered in thick reddish fur and had black skin with yellow eyes. Its teeth were fangs and when it screamed there came a stench from its mouth that smelled like rotting flesh. The pastor was sure he had seen a Naang Maii Paa, and he was sure it was a demon from hell.

There were searches the next few days but they turned up nothing but some possible footprints that had been partially washed away by rain. The midnight food runs ceased from that point on however.

Mr. Johnson was sure that the pastor had seen a monkey of some kind, but the nationals were sure that it was a fairy of the wild forest. The stories of their trickery had been passed down from generation to generation, and every once in a while there would be a sighting when someone ventured deep into the wood.

What was the creature that raided those lonely houses almost half a century ago? Was it a monkey, demonic being, or something else? Whatever it was it had a definite taste for Western foods since almost all the perishables stolen were not normal Thai food.

The local Buddhists told the Christians it was the Naang Maii Paa demanding an offering for encroaching on its land.

Today the rainforests of Chaing Mai Province are vanishing at an alarming rate.

And what of the Naang Maii Paa?

Although retired from the mission field for many years she still keeps in contact with local friends she made long ago.

The forests are silent as they are burned into oblivion.

Until Next Time,

Pastor Swope

The Lake Erie 'Storm Hag', demonic siren of the Great Lakes

Since first explored in the 1600’s the Great Lakes have earned a reputation as being a treacherous and unforgiving waterway. Extremely violent storms seem to appear out of nowhere taking both vessel and crew to a watery grave.

In 1977 author Jay Gourley’s “The Great Lakes Triangle” proposed there were some sinister forces behind all of these mysterious disappearances. But many sailors on Lake Erie at least, have had a theory for centuries on the unexplainable storms and the shipwrecks that plague the fresh water lake.

The Storm Hag.

According to legend the Storm Hag lives at the bottom of the lake, close to Presque Isle Peninsula . She is a hideous she demon, her yellow eyes shine in the dark like those of a cat, her skin is a pale shade green. Her teeth are sharp and pointed as a shark, able to tear the skin off of her victims. They are also green, which gives her another less common name, Jenny Greenteeth. Her hands have long pointed nails like talons that have a poison with which she can paralyze a poor soul with just one small prick. Her arms are long and strong, and they wrap around her victims making it impossible for them to escape her flesh hungry attack.

The old legend tells that like a siren before she attacks she sings a quiet song over the waves that few have survived to retell. Traditionally the song she sings is:

“Come into the water, love,
Dance beneath the waves,
Where dwell the bones of sailor lads
Inside my saffron caves.”

And as soon as the seafarer hears this song the Storm Hag attacks. She calls up a violent storm that tosses the crew of the vessel around so she can lurch up from the water and grab them with her long arms. Others tell that she waits the storm out and when the sailors believe all is calm she rises from the waves, spitting lightning and winds with such force the entire vessel sinks in a few seconds.

Local history has it that on a fall evening in 1782 an owler ship was caught in a bad storm on the lake and desperately tried to make it back to port at Presque Isle. It was tossed to and fro violently for more than an hour and when it was in site of land the storm abruptly stopped.

The clouds dissipated and the moonlight from the full moon illuminated the water, and the sailors could see they were less than a mile from the northern edge of the Peninsula and home.

Without warning the water next to the boat foamed and the Storm Hag burst forth from the surface. She spewed venom and attacked the crew unleashing her fury upon them.

Within seconds the ship and its crew were taken beneath the waves to their doom.

Witnesses on shore apparently heard the screams of the sailors echoing across the lake just before the vessel disappeared.

To this day some of those who sail the lake near Presque Isle claim to hear phantom screams of the victims who were taken long ago.

Now these legends seem the work of over imaginative sailors until one looks at some very disturbing incidents documented within the last century...

Read the whole article on the Examiner here:

The Storm Hag in the 20th Century?

The Ghost Boy of Six Mile Creek

Read my article in the current issue of Fate Magazine:


Buy it here:
http://www.fatemag.com/issues/2000s/2009-03-04.html

Weird Miracles

When approaching the topic of miracles

in a Christian context you are bombarded with stories of miraculous healings.

Aside from that you also get a fair share of miraculous intervention stories where angelic beings rescue an unfortunate soul from one dread fate or the other.

Once in a while you hear a very oddball story of the miraculous that the sheer oddness of it makes you stand up, take notice and wonder what type of medication the person has been taking. Yet the stories are delivered with such sincerity that you have to believe the teller, if not the tale itself.

This Easter season I thought I’d relay to you a few of the oddest I have heard.

Ben was a typical teenage farm boy of 1950s America. Corn fed, hard working and loyal to a fault. While school was on he dutifully did his chores before and after his classes and when summer rolled around he devoted himself whole heartedly to laboring hard all day on the family farm. He had a knack for mechanics and when others gave up on a broken down piece of machinery and designated it to the rust yard to be turned into salvage metal, Ben would inevitably spend some extra time with the malfunctioning unit and within a short time it seemed like he would breath back life into a forsaken piece of equipment. By the time he reached driving age neighboring farms would ask Ben’s father if they could borrow their son for a few evenings so he could work his mechanical magic on a few of their own broken down equipment. The neighbors were grateful for a few extra years on an old piece of equipment instead of spending a small fortune on a new model and rewarded Ben handsomely for his talents.

And of course as a family centered young lad of the times he gave his money to the family so that the cash flow between seasons was adequate enough to help the farm stay afloat.

It was on one of these nights that Ben was away working on a neighboring farm that a very odd experience happened to his mother.

Elsie was making pies out of self canned rhubarb and strawberries when the house dog became restless. Thinking it needed to go outside to relieve itself she wiped her hands off on her apron and opened the back door for the dog to go outside.

But the dog just stood there and whimpered.

Disturbed the mother closed the door and looked at the dogs food and water dish, and since both were full she shook her head and mumbling to the creature she went back to folding the dough for the pie crust.

But the dog’s anxiety grew stronger and stronger. It would rub against her legs, whimpering and when she shooed it away with a bump it would bark loudly, demanding her attention. After a few moments of this Elsie had enough and grabbing the dog by its collar she shoved it out the screen door to the backyard and was about to close the wooden inner door when the dog pressed its face hard against the screen and Elsie heard something that she swore to until her dying day.

“Ma, it’s Ben. He’s hurt and nobody knows. If we don’t get him to a doctor he will die”

She was the only one on the farm at the time. He husband was off with some friends and the other children were in town. But she heard the voice clear as day, a voice that was deep and gravely that she had never heard before.

And it seemed to have come from the dog.

It was not like she had seen the dogs lips form the human words, in fact she wasn’t even looking at the dog’s face when she heard the words. But to her there was no mistake no matter how incredible.

She slowly pulled the wooden door wide open and squatted down to look at the dog as the nervous animal continuted to press against the steel screen.

“Did you just say that?” She asked. The dog barked. Confused and thinking she was losing her mind she once again talked to the Old Joe the Golden Retriever that Ben had raised from a puppy, “Ben. Ben is hurt?” she asked. With that the dog barked frantically and popped a hole in the lower part of the screen door.

Standing dizzily up, Elsie opened the door and with a whimper the faithful dog loosed its head and ran inside the house. It ran to the wall that held the phone and stood on its hind legs as if it were trying to use the human device.

Then for Elsie everything was clear. She called to the neighboring farm where Ben was to work on an old harvesting device and asked if they could check on her son for she felt like something was wrong.

Within a few minutes the frantic voice of her neighbor’s daughter came back on the line. Ben had mangled his hand in the equipment and had lost a lot of blood. Her father and mother were rushing him to the hospital.

They made it to the hospital just in time; the doctors told Elsie and her husband when they arrived a short time later. Ben had lost a few fingers and his had was irreversibly mangled, but thanks to her curious call Ben was found before he had bled to death alone in the barn.

I know what you are thinking.

I thought it as well when I first heard the story over twenty years ago.

I just nodded with interest and listened in the narthex of the church where the story was told to me. The teller of the tale was Ben’s nephew, then a church Elder. I chocked it up as a tall tale until a few days after I met Ben. He was in his late forties at the time and he did have a mangled right hand. With curiosity and obviously no sensitivity whatsoever on my part I asked him about his crippled hand. It had been a farm accident. So with more cocky arrogance than inquisitiveness I told him with a chuckle the story his nephew had told me. He just said a simple folksy, “Yep.” Still not believing I asked him directly if he was pulling my leg. He told me with all sincerity, “It’s what Ma held to as truth till her deathbed. But old Joe never did talk to me none. Guess I never needed to listen.”

In reflection all I can think is if God can talk to a prophet through a donkey according to scripture, it seems more than right a boy’s dog could talk to his mother and save a life.

Personally, if my animals ever talk to me, I am sure they will be condescending.

Another odd ‘miracle’ story was also relayed to me by a Pastoral mentor of mine when I had just left Seminary and took my first church position.

The Denomination that I belonged to at the time, The Christian and Missionary Alliance to this day holds the old fashioned ‘tent revivals’ every summer in the form of camp meetings. Depending on the speaker and the music they can get quite lively, although at the time seeing even an acoustic guitar at one of these worship services was not only unique some of the older revivalists would have even considered it mildly heretical.

But if the music came from any other stringed instrument, piano or organ, then of course it could be used in all holiness.

After a ‘rousing’ period of praise and worship with century old hymns coming from an out of tune piano at the camp meeting, I bemoaned the archaic worship style to my mentor. He patiently listened and then encouraged me to appreciate the old fashioned music. For in the past God had worked miracles with this type of service.

At the turn of the 19^th century during the charismatic outbreak within evangelical Christianity there were day long revivals where people would prostate themselves before God, pour out there hearts and souls and God would work miracles. Along with the common signs of the movement such as speaking in tongues and being ‘slain in the spirit’ there were numerous other miraculous instances as well.

People were healed of terminal illness, there were many prophecies spoken that inevitably came true, the deaf began to hear and the blind began to see. Oh, and there was a couple of instances of people floating around the altar in mid air.

Did you ever have a seminal experience in your life where you thought for an instant that the people you have looked up to and admired most in your life are absolutely bonkers?

For a few fleeting moments back then in 1992 that was me. I was a little dazed. Now I had experienced a multitude of unexplained and miraculous things first hand in a variety of churches. Sometimes people do get healing-dynamic and miraculous. But most of the time there are no dynamic interventions from God. People get sick and die. Miracles do not happen all the time, or else they would cease to be miraculous, they would be common place. I have met people who have claimed to have been once deaf or blind and God restored their sight or hearing. And I have heard some strange portents of the future exclaimed to only see it creepily come true with stunning exactness.

People floating in air? I had to have him repeat himself.

“Yes they were so filled with the Holy Spirit that there were actually documented instances in California of some people actually lifting off the ground.” He told me in a quiet hushed voice that warm July night. “The denomination does not like to talk about it anymore. Many of the leadership today believe that because of all the fasting and prayer people became delusional, but there are many folks today who swear this took place.”

And he later in the day introduced me to some others who had heard the same stories.

I still do not know what to make of it, but of course I’ve seen and heard of a lot more stranger things. And truly I do believe that nothing is impossible with God. But I never really did get why God would make his people float in the first place. And nobody could every tell me what the purpose was as well. It was just a strange experience of the unexplained.

So this Easter Sunday if you are the type that does go to church on this holiday, when the off tune organ or piano drones on and the choir crackles you out of your unconscious stupor that was induced by the ministers meandering message, just be reflect on the talking dog and the floating revivalists.

If it was not for the everyday mundane, such dramatic oddities would not be as so…well…weird!

Until Next Time,

Pastor Swope

From my Examiner Report:
Click to see Easter's Dark Secret

The Vampire's Crypt of Erie Cemetery

Erie County Pa has its fair share of paranormal places.

From hauntings , close encounters to UFOs, Bigfoot sightings and Bessie the lake monster, the county is full of high strangeness.

But one of the most mysterious places of supernatural legend in the county is the Vampire's Crypt that lies in The Erie Cemetery between 26th and 19th streets.

Now the cemetery has its share of unique tombs, Erie was a chief industrial town in the 1800s and the wealth of the city is evident in the many lavish personal mausoleums the cemetery holds.

But the Vampire's Crypt stands out from even the most lavish of tombs.

It is not because it is the most ornate, no on the contrary its fairly sparse-it even lacks a family name. But over the doorway is an ornate "V", that has given it its infamous name.

There are many stories of supernatural and odd experiences at the Crypt, and with this entry I am going to try something a little different, an animated video blog.

For more info on the Vampire's Crypt, it's background and other stories about the supernatural occurrences there read this article of mine on the Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/article/what-lurks-the-vampire-s-crypt  and the full story in my book "Eerie Erie: Tales of the Unexplained from Northwestern Pennsylania" due August 2011 from The History Press!


Until Next Time,

Pastor Swope

The Unexpected Demon

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

How to prefrom a Blessing or Consecration to cleanse a building from malevolent entities

Since I have started this blog there does not a week pass when I am not contacted by 3 to 4 people who desperately need the intercession of an Exorcist with a problem entity that has been giving their family problems.

Last year we tried to form an alliance of people trained in such encounters to help in such situations, unfortunately only a handful have replied. So in a vast portion of the US I have no one to send to help. Therefore I have come up with a few rites to help those who face such situations. This is a very simple ceremony, and it is blatantly Christian. It is for the novice. I will also be publishing within the next few months a more advanced rite that includes Cleansing and building Exorcism rituals in a book called "An Exorcist's Field Guide". This is also for the novice and it fully explains in a step by step process how to do these rites with a flexible form that can be tailored for various situations.

But for now here is a simple Blessing or Consecration ceremony, it is at my Examiner page here:
The Rite

Hope this helps. It will either calm things down or increase the activity dramatically. If it increases contact me at the Paranormal Narthex in the sidebar.


Until Next Time,
Pastor Swope
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