Holy Ghost - Classic

When evil takes hold, some people duck and cover, some people run for their lives, but others pick up a cross and fight back.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Glynn Washington?

  Some people say, if you believe something strong enough, it will come to pass. Maybe. Maybe. But what if the problem is, you don't know what to believe? From Snap Judgment's Underground Layer, you're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:13Glynn Washington?

  When I was eight years old, my brother refused to get out of bed. He lay moaning on top of our sheet, sweat pouring from his brown body. My parents had long told us that the doctors were the devil. Instead, they called the pastor. The pastor came. My mother led him to our shared room, the open door revealing my brother, contorted in pain. And then, from a small leather folder, the pastor removed a vial of olive oil and a clean, white square of linen.

• 1:52Glynn Washington?

  He pressed several drops of the oil onto the cloth, then he pushed it hard onto my brother's abdomen. My brother screamed. Then the pastor and my parents knelt down to pray. They prayed to Lord Jesus to heal my brother. Heal him, Lord Jesus! Heal your servant's child! Reclaim your bounty, Almighty God, in Jesus's name! In Jesus's name!

• 2:24Glynn Washington?

  And I became angry. So angry because I knew they were doing it wrong. My grandmother had long told me that the more sick you are, the more power you need. My grandmother could even use her own spit, her saliva, to turn away a blister or a headache. But for bigger things, she struck matches, set fire, lit dandelion powder, burned High John the Conqueror root. Hiss of thyme, nettle, each made their own smoke and each smoke had power. Born of fire.

• 3:13Glynn Washington?

  For things that mattered, things that had to be, my grandmother said, "Never mess around." And that's why her fingers were lined with crosshatches. She would take my grandfather's razor strap and slice her own skin, harvest her own blood if she had to. That's real power, baby.

• 3:36Glynn Washington?

  That's what she told me. So I was angry as a pastor pressed into my baby brother with olive oil from a glass jar.

• 3:48Glynn Washington?

  There was no power there. No smoke,

• 3:55Glynn Washington?

  no fire,

• 3:58Glynn Washington?

  and no blood.

• 4:34Glynn Washington?

  Now then, our first story comes to us from three very special women. A daughter, a mother, and a grandmother. We begin with the daughter, Sarah Finerty Spoot.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  It was October, I was 14, and I just started high school. And then, I don't know what happened. My mom and grandma remember.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  I think it was fall. It wasn't cold enough for coats, heavy coats. Oh boy, it was a while ago and I don't even like thinking about it, remembering.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  She didn't get out of the bed. And she was a bigger girl, bigger than me, much bigger. And I said, "Well, you don't get up. You remember who you was? You know, you don't remember that time? I'm surprised."

• 5:54Speaker 02

  I don't remember it. It's like a hole in my memory.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Boy, I went in all the time and sometimes she would relent a little bit and talk and sit up. But most of the time it was, "Could you just let me rest? What are you gonna scream? Pull her out of bed? Dress her? You know, she's as big as I am."

• 6:21Speaker 04

  She had long legs, they're beautiful. And I said to her, "Look, you're strong. You can walk." "I don't feel my leg," she said. "I pinch her with a needle." She didn't feel. Something strange. She was alive. She didn't feel the pinch in her leg. It's ridiculous.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  I think it was at that time that Sarah even used aluminum foil to block out light.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  And I said, "Oh, my God, this is like Bobby Fischer pulling out his fillings, you know, not wanting any..." I don't know what I was thinking, but she was very, very despondent.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  You wasn't sick, Sarah. You wasn't sick. You acted like a bull. I'm 93 years old. I have very strong mind. I remember everything. You was possessed, okay?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  My grandmother thought the only thing that could explain my state was that I was possessed by a demon or someone had put a curse on me.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  We're from a very small town in Italy, and we immigrated when I was a child. And they had beliefs that were primitive in a lot of cases. So, anything was possible to help save, you know, one of your own. And she came up with interesting solutions.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  The first thing my grandma did to try to make me feel better was to get a priest to come to our house.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  I called the priest. Was a priest from Italy, missionary, un missionario scalablino dall'Italia veniva a dire la messa qua. He came over here, and he went to every room. And then I bring him upstairs and Sarah's room.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  This is one of the only things I remember.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Is a priest standing in my bedroom door and throwing holy water around my room.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  My grandmother probably arranged it so the priest came while my mother was at work, so she wouldn't have to tell my mom.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  She denied what she was doing. You know, when I discovered stuff, she would flat out deny it. And then when it was undeniable, she'd worm her way around it, saying, "It's not a big deal. I'm not paying for it. It's just a little thing. My friend told me to do it. You know, she's depressed. We have to do something."

• 10:06Speaker 02

  But nothing changed after the priest. So my grandma contacted people in Italy who she thought could help. They were witches.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Of course, somebody put a curse on you. Sarah, a healthy person. Sarah, that was the devil. The devil it was. I think so.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  I absolutely demanded that you not do anything nutty, that I didn't want you even hearing anything like that. That that would be bad. It would be damaging. No talk about witchcraft. No talk about that crap. None. I absolutely forbid it.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  And, you know, we fought. We argued.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  What could come of that? No sane person would have allowed that.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And I sure the hell wasn't gonna allow it. She got that kakamini idea.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I want to take you to Italy. But your mother don't let me. I want to take Sarah to Italy because I want to do anything.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  My mother says that she watched my grandma take my birth certificate out of her drawer, put it behind her back, and run down the stairs. When my mom confronted her and asked her what she was doing, they ended up getting into a big screaming match.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  I'm not going to allow her to go there. You know, it's not like they're going to visit the Mona Lisa there. You know, they're going for voodoo crap. No way. It's never going to happen. Forget about it.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  So the witches had wanted my grandmother to take me to Italy so they could perform an exorcism. But my mom refused, so they came up with a compromise.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  She called it a paraprofessional, or I don't know what. They had all kinds of names to make it seem better, but that they contacted someone in Italy.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So Grandma, what exactly did the witches want to do?

• 12:28Speaker 04

  It's his job. I don't know what it is. I don't know nothing. I'm not a witch. I just pray God. And maybe with him and me pray God. I don't know if I help him make a miracle. I send the money.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  So my grandmother, without telling my mother, of course, sent the witch $3,000. In exchange, he promised to cast a spell that would break this curse that was put on me.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  I discovered it after the fact. After all this money had been sent. That was a long time ago, so that was a lot of money.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  You know, and here I am, working, sole support, going to work every day, you know, knocking myself out. And you're doing what? You're spending what? It's preposterous. It's out of the question. Because, you know, we were very frugal people. I often say, you know, until I was able to get a job myself, buy my own clothes, my mother sewed everything I ever wore.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  My grandparents had the most decrepit, dirty, old, falling apart Buick you could ever imagine. There were parts falling off of it onto the street. The ceiling was falling onto the seats.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  They never spent money on anything. $3,000 was a huge amount of money for them.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  That guy, the $3,000, was worth, pay me $3 million.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  So one day, my grandma called the witch in Italy because she was scared the anti-curse he was concocting wouldn't work.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  I was crying. And he said, "Don't cry. Don't do anything. Just take care of her. I didn't know what to do with you. You know, I love you so much. I didn't know what to do with her. I didn't know what to do." And he assured me, "I don't know what was gonna work."

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Anyway, Matriarch does what she wants.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  So the witch and his coven cast a spell that would travel over the Atlantic Ocean. I think he told my grandma it would take three weeks to arrive. Meanwhile, he mailed her a card, told her to put it on my bed, so the spell would know where to go.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  So they sent this card, this ridiculous card. I remember it was a gold, like a gold American Express. It looked something like that, weird. And it was placed in a strategic place to be, you know, leaning up. That would be, I guess, a channel of some kind for the spirit that they were sending over. And they said it would take three weeks.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  And the uncanny thing is that three weeks to the day, Sarah got up and announced she was going to school. It was a Thursday, I remember that, a Thursday morning. And I said, this is fucking unbelievable, you know? This is nuts, but she's going, so I'm ecstatic.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  That's why I believe she got up the bed the day after she went to school.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  She take a shower, she become like a miracle.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  It's uncanny. The timing was uncanny, and it did happen.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  So is there a part of you that thinks the witches actually helped me?

• 16:52Speaker 03

  I won't allow myself to believe stuff like that.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  I think the allow says it all. My mom could have said that she doesn't believe in it, but instead she says she doesn't allow herself. Like, the impulse to believe is there, but she's forcing herself not to.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  And I've had periods of very intense depression, but there's never been such a large chunk of time that I have no memory of whatsoever. There was some kind of dark energy that kept me in that bed. And one day it was there, and the next day it was gone.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  And I don't know what to call that dark energy, but I know it exists.

• 18:00Glynn Washington?

  Big love to Sarah and her family for sharing that story. In return, what you don't know can hurt you. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 18:55Glynn Washington?

  Now, over the years of producing this show, we've learned that the supernatural doesn't just obey commands. You can't just take this stuff and make it do your bidding. But see, our next storyteller, Paul, well, Paul, he doesn't know that yet. Spooked.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  To this day, I'll still sit there and think of what it all meant.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  It was inexplicable and otherworldly.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  So I was a pretty active kid, in fact, an extremely active kid. But as time went by, in my early teens, I started having problems with, I'd get really bad backache and I'd get really lethargic. I'd get achy and complain about just not feeling up for it, which was unusual for me because I was usually up for pretty much anything.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  And on a routine checkup with a doctor, they ran some tests and my blood pressure really freaked them out. It was sky high.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  And when I started going to the bathroom, there was a lot of protein and a lot of blood in my urine.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  When you grow up in Africa, you spend a lot of time in and around dams and rivers and lakes and what have you. And there's a parasite there. And just about everyone gets it and it's fairly easy to treat. And for some reason or other, it had taken root inside of my kidneys.

• 20:49Speaker 05

  And so it evolved into something that, essentially, my kidneys started shutting down.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  By that time, my urine was pretty close to pure blood. This kind of icky, brownish-red colour. My blood pressure was just obscenely high. We were trying to treat it, having biopsies and looking at what was going on. My condition was deteriorating pretty rapidly. And we didn't really seem to have a solution.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  So I was in hospital and had been for a couple of months at this point. I was bedridden. I wasn't allowed out of bed.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  And I was so frustrated and so scared and so tired of it all. There'd been a lot of movement around me that day that my test results, I guess, weren't doing so well and what have you. And this other kid with diabetes came into my ward.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  It was lights out, everyone went to sleep and stuff. And myself and this buddy of mine, we had this cunning plan. So, kind of like on the TV shows where you stuff sheets in your bed so it looks like you're there. We did that and then we hopped out of the window and there was this hamburger joint down the road. And we went down there and we grabbed a burger and it was next to this bar. And we were fifteen, sixteen at the time. We thought we were so clever.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  We thought it was awesome. We went and got some food. We were on restricted diets. When we were breaking back into the hospital, we went through the bathroom window. Sitting in the bathroom was a priest waiting for me because my test results had come back. And Sister Sally, she was one of the nurses there, was just beside herself. She was so pissed at me. I was like, "What's the big deal?" And she just couldn't contain herself. She goes, "Paul, the big deal is you're dying."

• 22:54Speaker 05

  And so, I kind of went back to my bed, got into my bed, and the priest was standing there. And it was time for last rites.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  I made it through that 24, 48 hours. I'm lying in my hospital bed. And in walks this 40-something-year-old woman with just an incredibly peaceful demeanor about herself. She came and sat down next to my bed, introduced herself. "Hi, Paul. My name's Anne, and your mom asked me to come and say hi."

• 23:41Speaker 05

  At this stage, I was an incredibly cranky, scared young guy. And I wasn't going to be rude, but I certainly wasn't going to be friendly. But she sat there and she talked. And then she asked me if I minded if she would pray with me. Then I was a little pissed because I didn't see that God was really doing me that many favors at that time. And the beautiful thing with Anne was, she asked that, and then she, I think she almost tricked me because we just started having a chat. And we got to know each other a little better. We laughed a little bit. And I felt myself relaxing and unwinding and connecting with her. And then she got back to, "Did I mind if she prayed with me?"

• 24:26Speaker 05

  I said, "Sure."

• 24:30Speaker 05

  She said, "I'm gonna put my hands here, if that's okay." And she kind of held her hands maybe an inch above where my kidneys were.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  I remember laying there, being fairly skeptical, but by the same token, there was just that little sliver of light, that little sliver of hope.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  As she sat there, I felt this, at first, this sense of warmth. And I thought, "Ah, okay, it's because her hands are near." But then it started growing, and it wasn't just a superficial surface warmth. It was this warmth that was kind of growing, growing, growing from within, and I could feel, whereas my back had been really sore, that was inexplicably easing up.

• 25:22Speaker 05

  Not only was the pain going away, but there was a level of peace that was coming in. My chest didn't feel so constricted, I didn't feel quite so panicked.

• 25:34Speaker 05

  It was the most incredible sense of peace that I'd felt in a very, very long time. It was bizarre.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  And I've experienced, I've experienced true, deep love with a child, with a partner, with a friend, but nothing comes even close to that peace.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  I'd kind of closed my eyes, because I thought, "That's what you're supposed to do when you're praying." And then I opened them, and I saw Anne was sitting there, her eyes more or less closed, but she just had this look of complete peace on her.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  And then she opened her eyes, and she smiled, and she said, "It was great meeting me, and would it be okay if she came and saw me again?" I was like, "Sure, that would be great."

• 26:25Speaker 05

  So she left, and they came, they were doing rounds on a fairly regular basis. They came, and when they did a urine test, filled the cup, it was clear, there was no blood in it.

• 26:42Speaker 05

  So it had gone from being looked like pure blood to no blood. When they tested my blood pressure, my blood pressure was lower than it had been since I got into hospital. I remember the nurse, it was Sister Agatha. She was like, you could see on her face, this does not compute.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  A few hours later, sure enough, same result.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  So then there was this mad scurrying of doctors and nurses. Because they've done all these tests, I've been in hospital this time and I'm supposed to be like not good. Part of the protocol in finding out what the heck was going on was I flew to England to the fairly renowned hospital for that kind of thing. Went through a battery of tests there. They came to the same conclusion that the doctors in Zimbabwe had come up with, which was, it makes no sense.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  It was inexplicable and otherworldly.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  Couldn't explain it, but I was okay with not explaining it.

• 27:52Speaker 05

  Fast forward the tape, almost 20 years later. And I'd just got home from the hospital where my daughter Erin had just had surgery for a brain tumor. She was four months old at the time and the surgery hadn't gone well.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  It was not a good time. It had been a terrible day.

• 28:20Speaker 05

  Erin had been in about eight hours of surgery. And it was taking bits and pieces of her brain out and it was, would she survive the surgery? And then we get to the end of the surgery and they tell us it wasn't successful.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  Carrie stayed in the hospital with her overnight at the infant ICU. Carrie was my wife at the time. And left her little body on all these life support systems and drove home because I had another child at home. And then I had this big pile of mail. So I went and sat at the kitchen table and I'm going through the mail. And I noticed this piece from a tamwa. It's a, it's a lapa colony that I'd done some work with. There was this note and it said, and we'd like to welcome Anne Lander to our board. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. A day that was so filled with despair was suddenly there was a ray of light.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  There was an element of hope. I was like, oh my, this is awesome. Anne's going to heal her. Anne is totally going to heal her. She's going to fix Erin. I think Erin's going to be okay.

• 29:37Speaker 05

  So I reached out to Anne right away and I'm like, hey Anne, I'm just confirming you're the Anne. It's Paul Templer, blah, blah, blah. Do you remember me? And she's like, sure, I remember you. How are you? So I give her a quick update on what's going on with Erin. And I'm like, Anne, you have to help me. You have to heal Erin. And she's like, Paul, I don't heal anyone. I remember getting really pissed. I'm like, but you did me. And she goes, I didn't heal you. It felt like a cruel trick. I was very pointed and made clear as politely as I could that what I was looking for was nothing short of a miracle. But Anne wasn't budging.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  We had a conversation and rather than focusing on what she couldn't do, we looked at what she could do. She proposed we form a prayer circle. Whilst less than delighted, I think I still felt a very glimmer of hope.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  At the time, I was living in this little bungalow. And I was in this little apex upstairs. Roof was pretty low. You had to duck your head in some areas. And Erin was just laying there.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  My job was to sit next to Erin and to hold my hand just above her head. I remember wiping my eyes. And I had my hand there. Tick, tick, tick.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  And I thought I was going crazy because I could feel this incredible warmth.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  This energy starting to build. I do remember giggling a little because I was absolutely convinced this is gonna work. This was gonna work.

• 31:42Speaker 05

  But then it dissipated. And as hard as I tried, I couldn't bring it back.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  I'm just slouching there with my hand above her. And I couldn't regenerate what I had experienced.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  I just lay there and I watched her sleep.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  I thought I knew what the miracle was that we needed.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  And then I realised I couldn't predict the future. But I could shift the focus. I could look for a different unfolding.

• 32:31Speaker 05

  Erin's 13 now. And my daughter has profound special needs. She's medically fragile. But Erin is still alive.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  The thing is, she has this big smile. And she smiles from her eyes. When I pull up at home, she will run out and give me the biggest hug. And then she wants to hop into the back of my truck to go wherever I'm going.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  The more I try to control the supernatural, the inexplicable, the less conducive the environment I'm producing for anything to happen inside of it.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  To me, the acceptance of what is, acceptance with possibilities, that's what creates the portal, if you want, for the supernatural.

• 33:40Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Paul Tempa, for sharing your story with Spooked. Now, if you want to hear more from Paul and his life as an adventure guide on the Zambezi River, it's a story that is incredible. It involves hippos. You've got to hear it on the amazing Snap Judgment Podcast, storytelling with a different flavor. That's a snapjudgment.org. Now, Paul has a memoir called What's Left of Me, and I'm going to have a link at spookpodcast.org.

• 34:13Glynn Washington?

  Spooked was produced by a tiny team of intrepid researchers that goes into dark places, that walks unlit paths, that ask questions other people dare not explore. And if you appreciate their sacrifice in search of this truth, let somebody know. Send holy water, or incense, or sage, or something to help this team that always carries a flashlight. Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Katia Apakina, Sarah Affinity, Erica Lance, Jody Colley, Taylor Decott. The Spook theme song was written and performed by Pat Macidi Miller,

• 34:54Glynn Washington?

  and your original soundstake through this journey was created, written, performed, and produced by the amazing team of Renzo Goria, Leon Morimoto, and Pat Macidi Miller.

• 35:10Glynn Washington?

  And remember, creatures of the dark, they wrap themselves in illusion. They appear as brothers, sisters, lovers, all the while hiding an ulterior unholy motive. There is only one, one surefire way to expose their evil plans, friends. Never, ever, no matter how much they beg and plead and weep, never, ever, never, never, ever, never, never turn out the lies.