The Demons Upstairs
When I decided I felt like God was telling me He wanted me to be a minister, I envisioned a simple world of preaching sermons and baptizing people.
I might have to do a funeral or conduct a wedding.
But most of my time would be spent reading the Bible and studying theology books and public speaking.
I was sorely mistaken.
I was about 17 years old and I really believed I felt some kind of calling on my life. And raised in a church environment, if God was “calling" you, that meant only one thing.
You were supposed to be a pastor.
And at 17, I wanted to be a youth pastor because I was young and still wanted to do all the young people things.
I interned in my church and then went to college for ministry.
While in college, I landed a job as a youth pastor at a small church near campus. So I started doing the things I thought a pastor did.
After a time at this church, a young family started attending and they were present for just about everything.
And then they stopped coming for a few weeks.
We made some contacts and eventually they showed up again. And told the pastor and myself a story of how they believed their house had demons in it and that they had left a few days before and not gone back since.
They wanted our pastor to come to their house and pray the demons out.
Translation: at nine o’clock at night I would be exorcising demons from a house.
Myself and another family from the church went to the house and were standing in the back yard and the man who owned the house began telling us the story.
They lived next door to the local psychic. She ran a palm reading business from her home. This man and her husband had built a friendship and she was not happy about it. She told the man of the house that there was something in their basement which would be of interest to him, especially considering his new found spirituality.
Later that day, he went into the basement where he found a Ouija board. He had no interest in it and so he broke it and burned it in his back yard.
And that is when things got scary and they left their house and did not come back.
I said ok and I walked in the back door, which led right in to the dining room/kitchen.
The room was freezing. You could see your breath. Food was left on the table from dinner the evening they had gotten out there. I checked the thermostat and it was turned to the hottest setting and yet nothing but bitingly cold air came from the vents.
Since it is what I had been asked to do, I began to pray. I do not remember my exact words, but I asked that whatever was present in the house be banished and not allowed to return.
Suddenly, hot air began to blow from the vents in the kitchen and the gentleman who had come with me and I heard a faint scratching sound in the ceiling.
We walked from room to room. We said the same prayer over and over again. Each room we entered had cold air blowing from the vents.
We would pray and the air would turn hot and we would hear that scratching in the ceiling.
Each time we left a room, the scratching would become progressively louder.
We wound up in the living room and the scratching was out of control. It sounded like hundreds of tiny nails scratching on a hard wood floor.
And the snarling.
I have never heard anything like that sound in my life and I have never heard it again.
I cannot say that I am disappointed.
Fear was overtaking my senses. This room was freezing cold.
Refrigerator cold.
Each breath came out in a cloud.
I wanted to leave.
To give up.
But I had come this far. I had to finish.
So I said the prayer one last time.
The scratching and snarling became frantic. Like whatever was in the attic was scared and trapped and unsure where to go.
There was a shriek and then silence.
A deafening kind of silence.
And the room began to warm as the cold air stopped blowing into the room.
We brought the family back into the home and said a prayer with them and then I went back out the way I had come in.
I walked back to the church full of questions and confusion.
Questions and confusion that follow me around to this day.
