Evil Spirits or Inner Demons? Is It All in the Perspective?

Let’s face it, we all have that crazy story we don’t want to share because we might sound like we’re off our rocker.

Imagine, someone who spent so many years working up the courage to come out of the closet…and yet, I still haven’t had the courage to share everything. But, after two recent interviews where the same question came up, I felt it was time to give it up, if for no other reason than to help people understand why I believe what I do.

Here was the question…and it’s a pretty common one, so I’m not sure why it even raised my eyebrow that two different journalists would ask it, but here it is:

“Are you ever afraid you’ll connect with anything evil in the spirit world?”

Come on, you know you’ve wondered the same thing; in fact, when I first started doing this work, the Catholic belief I had been raised with certainly did bring the concern to my attention. And of course, all of the horror movies and scary books I had read throughout the years had added to my plight. The strange thing is, in my early days of doing this work, no matter how many “haunted” houses or buildings I visited with the intention of abolishing evil spirits, I don’t recall encountering anything that actually was evil.

So here’s my truth. When I first realized I should take my abilities more seriously and try to figure out if I was meant to develop them further, I attended a workshop in New York City. The workshop was led by a well-known international medium, and on the second day of the class, this medium led us through a meditation. Before beginning the guided meditation, he let us know he would be wandering the room and offering healing to those he felt guided. The meditation was very relaxing, but several minutes in, with my eyes still closed, I noticed a man standing before me. The man resembled the image of what I was raised to believe Jesus looked like, and he firmly, yet kindly, told me not to worry; he would be with me. My first thought was “Oh my God, is that actually Jesus?” but my mind quickly jumped to “With me for what? What is there to worry about?”. Unfortunately, the presence of the man faded quickly, and I didn’t get my answer. Now, if you knew me back then, you’d have known I lived in a pretty fear-based mindset, so worry immediately took over. I mean, I was alone in New York City, and while I knew The City pretty well due to my time spent there in college, I also knew anything could happen in the Big Apple. I could be mugged or raped or God knows what. So as soon as class was over I headed back to my hotel room and decided to have dinner there and stay put for the night. (Don’t think the fear of a hotel fire hadn’t crossed my mind though!)

All-in-all, I had a good night’s sleep… until around 4:30 a.m. That’s when I started to feel the bed shake; slowly at first, but then with a little more vigor. It woke me and my first thought was “Earthquake!”, but I quickly glanced around and nothing else in the room was moving. I heard some strange noises – almost like a moaning and then noticed a dark, smoky air coming from my mid section, rising toward the ceiling. “What the hell?,” was my first thought, and my second was “HIDE!”, so I pulled the white plush comforter up to cover my head. But the site under the blankets was no better. As I took cover, I noticed the smoky air coming from my stomach was now more of a sticky, gooey, gross, off-colored substance oozing and sticking to the comforter. I quickly pulled the comforter back down and began to say the Lord’s Prayer, repeating it over and over, but the sounds didn’t stop, the bed was still moving side to side and the dark substance was still rising from my mid section. I thought if I prayed louder it will help, so I began reciting my Hail Mary’s. Still it continued, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it all stopped. And when it did, a very kind and refined, elderly, white-haired woman dressed in a periwinkle suit stood beside me with her hand reached out. “You are okay now,” she whispered with an assuring and loving voice. “We were with you the whole time.”

I immediately sat up, grabbed my notebook from the bed-side table and started writing.

I wrote every detail of what I had experienced: the noises; the feelings; the images. Everything. “What the hell was that?” At the time, I had no idea, but I knew I felt completely different, like a weight had been lifted. I went to class that day and was blessed with an amazing mediumistic experience and returned to Charleston where signs pushing me to continue on this new path consistently made themselves evident. One of the most profound things I noticed was my search for self healing had suddenly shifted. After more than 20 years (actually, closer to 30) of deep depression and feeling like there was no end in sight, I could feel a difference. I wanted to get better and I was ready to push further in my work to heal. The experience I had no name for or understanding of that took place that morning had released something dark and heavy within me.

For the next few years, I continued to work to develop my mediumistic ability, still not completely understanding what had happened to me that night. I continued to investigate homes and buildings believed to be haunted, and I kept right on believing if I ever did find an evil spirit, I would be able to purge them from the space. But no matter how many places I visited, I never did find anything evil, so I began to contemplate what happened to me that night.

The answer became very clear. As luck would have it, my work allows me to communicate with some very intelligent souls in the spirit world. My interactions with them helped me understand more. What I had released that early morning was not some evil spirit or dark angel from the spirit world; it was actually what I like to refer to as “my inner demons”. Those demons didn’t come from another realm; they came from within me. The fear that had started to build within me from the time I was a small child. Fear that was instilled in me through family, family friends, religion, school, movies, books and all my experiences. Those fears buried deep down within and growing for more than 40 years needed a way out, and I believe, subconsciously I manifested those fears into a substance I could see, noises I could hear and movement I could feel so my human mind could process the release.

Wow! That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It did to me at first, so I spent a lot of time praying and meditating to come to a better understanding, and now it makes perfect sense to me.

All those years of believing the fearful things were coming from another realm, when in reality, it was always something inside me.

So, it made me think of all the times I had investigated a home or building because someone felt it was haunted. There always seemed to be one of two circumstances that created the feeling of an unknown presence. The most frequent situation I encountered was the spirit was not someone evil, but in fact was often a passed loved one belonging to the person who lived in the home. Again and again, I would find once I started to give evidence from the spirit, the person who had called me for help quickly realized it was a loved one who had been trying to get their attention. “That’s my mom” or “Oh my gosh, my grandfather is here,” (and the list goes on), and once they recognized it was a loved one, they didn’t want me to ask them to leave.

The second reason people felt their place was haunted was because of residual energy in the space. An easy way to explain this is to ask you to imagine going into a room where two people had just been in an argument. They are no longer bickering, but you can still feel the tension in the air — and it doesn’t feel good. That can happen in your home or work place. If there was a situation in the home before you lived there (or even one while you are living there) where there was sadness or anger, arguing, substance abuse or other negative emotions or interactions, the energy of those situations can remain in the space and create a feeling of unease. The important thing is, this un-ease isn’t created by those in the spirit realm, it’s a byproduct of energy and situations created by those in the physical world. 

So what if we’ve been blaming the wrong source for our fear the whole time? 

I know not everyone will agree with the beliefs my experiences have led me to, and that’s okay. I only ask others to consider the possibility that, with a different perspective, the answers may be very contradictory to what we were originally taught. They certainly have been for me, and I’m thankful, with an open heart and mind, I have found answers that resonate with my soul.