Personal experiences: Part 4 – The Lord’s Prayer or Reyarp s’droL ehT

This is a six part story about a paranormal event that occurred in January 1980. As usual, it’s told without any embellishments and according to a document that I had written after the event.

It was later that day, after Shawn claimed he suddenly felt weak and dizzy on the staircase, that I heard a story that he and another friend of his were in the dorm.

Shawn had a tennis ball and racket in his hands and he claimed to have heard a voice tell him to throw the ball at his friend, Terry. He hesitated for a moment, and then served the ball right at him with all his might. Fortunately, it just missed him. He excused his actions by claiming that he couldn’t control himself. Terry, himself, was stunned.

At dinner that evening, he was looking flushed and his hands were shaking. Whenever he looked at him, he would just shake his head. During practice, I noticed that he was looking at everyone in a strange way, and his face was white. Many there also noticed this, and made comments about it. Even for Shawn, this was odd behaviour.

After dinner, he came up to me and said there was going to be another séance that night and I had to come to it. I knew this would be a bad idea, so I told him no.

I believed in demons and possession back then, and I was now starting to feel like I was in over my head.

So I discussed what was happening with, I believe two of the boys, David and Terry and David (who was a student there) suggested we should go visit one of the resident Christian brothers in the hope that they could help or at least tell us what to do. 

So, during a break, we went to visit one of them, and ended up having a long talk with him. To his credit, he didn’t just disbelieve us, and let us tell our story. In the end, he suggested that it could be some sort of mental telepathy and said that you should assume that there are no evil spirits around until you proved that there were.

It does sound strange that he pretty much dismissed any spirits but spoke about telepathy in the same breath. In any case, he did give some advise that we were able to use.

He said that if I really felt the need for protection, I could make an imaginary cross and call for God’s help by saying The Lord’s Prayer. So we decided to do  just that.

We went to the stairs and we all felt the presence  there, though it was not as strong as it had previously been.

We made the imaginary cross, said The Lord’s Prayer together and asked for help.  The presence then left and did not return until the final days of the camp, only then very weakly.

You would have thought this would be the end of it all, and really, it should have been, but you’d be wrong there.

The next day, we went swimming to a local pool as it was a hot summer’s day. Everyone was throwing a tennis ball around to each other. Shawn got hold of it and threw it right at me. He managed to hit the side of my face, though, being a tennis ball, it didn’t actually do any damage. I was still shocked, though. Later he told me that he didn’t want to throw it at me, and that he couldn’t even throw straight. He said that every time he looked at me, he would hear a voice saying ‘get him!’ and he was being instructed to stay close to me.

Later on, he told me that he was going to have the séance that night, and that I must come to it. I said I wouldn’t, but he seemed confident that I would come.

Then  someone mentioned that if you said The Lord’s Prayer backwards while looking in a mirror, you would see the Devil.  Well, this was too much for Shawn to resist doing, and so, before he planned to have the séance, he took a group of people down to the shower area and he had someone read the words while he repeated them back while looking in the mirror.

I stayed away, no longer wishing to be part of it. If I had gone, I might have witnessed what many others said they saw happen.  He said the first five words, then his cheeks went white and his eyelids went red, taking on a glow. I did note, however, that when everyone came up the stairs, they all had bloodshot eyes, and looked exhausted.

However, once, apparently wasn’t enough for they went downstairs and did it a second time, and this time, he had his friend, Terry, join him.

Shawn told me that he saw his hair, which was blond, go dark and his eyes appeared to glow and Terry said that a shadow passed over his face.  They both claimed to have stuttered one a word at one point, and then went into a trance. They said they could hear themselves speaking, but they couldn’t feel themselves doing it.

Interestingly enough, Shawn chose to not have the séance. He said he felt it was too dangerous.

That night, we were once again swarmed by the flying black beetles, entering into the dorm in plague proportions.

Interestingly enough, all the bugs fell on Shawn and Terry’s bed, but missed mine. They even bit Terry three times and they were also crawling towards Shawn and biting him. These bugs do not bite to the best of my knowledge.

A voice in my mind said: They won’t get you because you didn’t attend the Lord’s Prayer in the mirror business.

This time the bugs were also swarming in the shower area where they had said the prayer and soon there was a carpet of crunchy black beetles lying dead on the floor.

At that point, I found that one of the teens named Glenn had a cross necklace so I asked if I could borrow it. He agreed. Back in those days, I still believed in the Devil, and that was what I was starting to fear we were dealing with.  I hoped the cross would help protect me. 

Well, fear would be too strong a word, really. I can’t say I ever was scared or fearful. I was continually fascinated, though.

The bugs kept on crawling toward Shawn, so I decided to give the cross to him to see if it would help. The bugs stopped crawling towards him and attacking him.

Shawn told me he was hearing a voice saying that it was going to get me. I denied that it would but he insisted that it would.

In the morning, he took off the cross and said he didn’t need it any more. When it touched me, I felt a jolt, as though something had left me. I put it back on and it as though it did give me some protection. Indeed it was a quiet day and I hoped that whatever it was that was happening was over.

Once again, the timing of events is interesting. While I don’t believe in a Biblical Devil, I have seen evidence to suggest that there are demon type entities out there and most certainly, doing something like what they did in the mirror was just foolhardy.

Next: Q&A with the devil!