Authors: Ralph Sarchie
One of my most harrowing supernatural investigations began on Halloween, 1991. My partner in the Work, Joe Forrester, was putting out candy for trick-or-treaters when he got a call about a haunted house. The caller was Father Hayes, the exorcist for a Catholic diocese in a nearby state. He wanted us to investigate a report of demonic activity in Westchester County, a wealthy county just north of New York City. While this priest had discerned some signs of a diabolical presence when he spoke to the family over the phone, he didn’t give Joe any specifics about the problems they were having. Since my partner and I knew Father Hayes from other investigations, we trusted that he wouldn’t send us out on a case unless it had merit.
* * *
Like me, Joe comes from a law enforcement background, but he works on the other side of the fence, as a polygraph examiner for the Legal Aid Society. Although he looks like a middle-aged monk, with his round, untroubled face and his fringe of brown hair around a balding head, he’s actually an extremely adept demonologist. Not only is he a walking encyclopedia of the occult—definitely the man to call for a quick rundown on Nigerian crocodile cults or Brazilian black magic rituals—but as a decorated Vietnam vet, Joe has more than enough guts to face down supernatural terror. Combine that with the built-in bullshit meter he’s developed from years of administering lie detector tests to con men and crooks of every other description and to the wrongly accused, and you have an ace investigator.
When Joe and I handle cases as demonologists in our off-duty hours, we don’t charge a cent for our services. Helping people who have spiritual problems isn’t a career for us—it’s a calling. As devout Catholics, we take Jesus Christ’s biblical injunction to “cast out demons in My name” literally.
Before going out on a case, I put aside my gun and police badge and arm myself with holy water and a relic of the True Cross.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a religious fanatic and I’m anything but holy, as any of the guys who work with me at the Four-Six Precinct can tell you. I am a cop, and I would rather kick down doors and arrest ten armed robbers with my bare hands than take on the demonic. Plain and simple, the Devil frightens me much more than anything I’d ever seen on street patrol—and in all my years on the force, I’ve seen just about every horror one person can inflict on another: I’ve responded to countless shootings and stabbings; I’ve put the cuffs on people who commit rape or murder as if these crimes meant nothing at all.
I’ve had to tell people that their loved ones have died in car crashes or have been the victim of every terrible crime you could imagine. I’ve seen the broken bodies of little kids hurt in senseless accidents because their parents were too busy getting high to watch them. I’ve arrested drug dealers who turn their fellow human beings into the living dead with their poison—and a mother who sold her ten-year-old daughter for sex, all for a vial of crack. Recently I was called to a house where I found a woman stoned out her mind on drugs. That wouldn’t be particularly unusual in the places I patrol, except that she was stumbling around with a newborn baby dragging between her legs—still attached to its umbilical cord—and she didn’t even know she’d given birth. It turned out that this was her tenth kid: Child Protective Services had already taken all the others because of her crack addiction.
This has been my reality night after night. Dealing with the tragedy and devastation that crime causes has helped prepare me for the Work, to a certain degree. It’s certainly taught me to recognize evil when I see it. When cops I work with find out that I help with exorcisms and investigate demonic activity, a lot of them ask, “What gives an aggressive and sometimes nasty guy like you the right to do this pious stuff?” I tell them, “Don’t you see the beauty of God using a sinner like me to fight evil?” The truth is that I like to help people. When I joined the police force I took an oath to get bad guys off the street, and I have made over three hundred arrests to that end. As a committed Christian, I have a different mission: to bust the Devil and his demons.
I’ve never investigated cases officially for the Roman Catholic Church, but I have worked on official church cases for individual priests. Much of my work is with Bishop Robert McKenna, a Traditionalist Catholic priest and exorcist who has never shied away from doing battle with Satan and his forces of darkness. (Traditionalist churches use the Pre–Vatican II Latin mass.) From assisting him with nearly two dozen exorcisms over the past ten years, I’ve developed the utmost respect for this saintly man of God. If he ever needed me to walk into the depths of Hell with him, I’d go without a second thought.
Most major religions have ceremonies to expel evil spirits. The Roman Ritual of Exorcism dates back almost four hundred years. Years ago Catholic priests were given the minor order of Exorcist, and with the permission of their diocesan bishops were ready to undertake the tasks associated with that order. The problem today is that many priests, clergy of other faiths, and even bishops of the Catholic Church don’t believe in the Devil, even though Jesus Himself performed exorcisms. When a priest friend of mine spoke of Satan during one of his sermons, he actually said to the congregation, “The Devil does exist. Sorry, folks.” My wife said I looked as if I were about to jump out of my pew. If it were me, I’d make no apologies for telling people the Devil is real because I’ve seen his satanic fiends at work.
Most of the people who call Joe and me for help don’t believe in the Devil either—until they are tormented and terrorized by bizarre, otherwise inexplicable events. Since neither of us has ever sought publicity for our involvement in the Work, our cases come to us through word of mouth. We both believe that if God wants people to get help, He’ll see to it that they get it, either from us or from someone else. Asking for the help of a demonologist isn’t the first impulse of the families who contact us: It’s usually a last resort, after they have exhausted every logical explanation for the horrifying phenomena they’re experiencing and may even have begun questioning their sanity. By the time they dial my number or Joe’s, they’re at their wit’s end and have nowhere else to go. Or they may have turned to one of the many priests we know and been referred to us that way, as happened in our Halloween case.
* * *
After the call from Father Hayes, Joe and I arranged to visit the Villanova family on November 2, All Souls’ Day on the Catholic calendar, where priests recite the Office of the Dead and the faithful pray that the suffering of souls in Purgatory will be eased. Because we had no idea of what we would be up against, we made some dangerous mistakes. First, since we’d only been asked to videotape an interview for the exorcist to evaluate—and were told that the parish priest would join us afterward—Joe and I went to the house alone, without our usual team of investigators. Not expecting to perform any religious rituals ourselves, we packed a minimal supply of holy water and other sacramentals. In retrospect, this was a lot like patrolling a high-crime area with a gun loaded with only one bullet. Fortunately, as it turned out, I also armed myself with my most potent relic, a splinter of the True Cross.
As we parked outside Dominick Villanova’s modest two-family house in Yonkers, I noticed a Catholic chapel down the street. Ed Warren, a well-known demonologist I’ve worked with, always says that the Devil likes to operate in the shadow of a church, and I’ve found that he’s right. It’s amazing how many of my cases take place within sight of a house of worship. Don’t get me wrong: Having a church close by doesn’t automatically make you a target for the demonic. Lots of people live near religious centers and
never
have a problem. But if something else, like a curse or satanic rituals, happens to draw an evil power your way, having a holy place nearby can
heighten
the spirit’s hatred and fury.
Although I have a firm rule against getting emotionally involved with the people I help, I nearly lost it as soon as Dominick answered the door with his five-year-old son at his side. The first thing I noticed was how frightened the little guy looked. He had that blank, bewildered stare kids get right after they scream themselves awake from a nightmare—except this child had no soothing reality to wake up to and no escape from fear could be found in his mother or father’s arms. Looking at his skinny body and unexpectedly big feet, I thought,
This kid should be out kicking a soccer ball around, not feeling scared out his mind in his own home!
His father also wore a shellshocked expression. He was a tall, bald man of about forty-five and wore thick glasses. With his slumped shoulders and air of defeat, he reminded me of a dazed prizefighter stumbling around the ring, waiting for the next blow to land. Seeing how confused and upset he was, I immediately sympathized. As a man, I could only guess at how utterly impotent he must have felt having to stand by and watch his family being assaulted by some nameless horror.
He led us to a living room that looked like a refugee camp. Not only was it packed with sad, somber people who all appeared ill and exhausted, but along each wall were haphazard piles of clothing and rolled-up bedding.
Was the entire family sleeping in here?
I’d seen that in other cases, where people became so unnerved by supernatural events that they ceased to exist as individuals and refused to go anywhere in their house alone, even to the bathroom. A home is supposed to be a safe haven where you relax at the end of the day, a place of peace and comfort, but that clearly wasn’t true in any room of this house. And as I was soon to discover, the basement held a special kind of fear.
“Sorry about the mess,” Dominick said. Struggling for the right words to explain the inexplicable, he added, “There’s been a lot of, uh, trouble here.”
Knowing how important it is to establish rapport and get people to confide in us when we go into their homes as complete strangers, Joe took control of the interview in a friendly but businesslike manner instead of letting the father ramble on. From his long experience as a polygraph examiner, he’s become very skillful at reading people, defusing volatile emotions, and getting to the truth. “Mr. Villanova, I’m Joe Forrester and this is my partner, Ralph Sarchie. As you know, we’re here at Father Hayes’s request to investigate the problems you’re having. You have agreed to have us here, and know we don’t charge anything for our services.”
“Call me Dominick,” the father replied, sounding steadier, then introduced us to his wife, Gabby, a striking woman in her early forties. She had thick black hair with streaks of pure white on each side of her face and such strongly defined features that she resembled a figurehead engraved on a coin. Although overweight, she had a flamboyant style: Her dress was a vivid red, printed with colorful birds, and several large, silver bracelets jangled on each of her wrists. In younger, happier days, she was probably the life of the party, but right now, despite the exuberance of her clothing, she seemed very nervous, lighting cigarette after cigarette with trembling hands. Before asking this couple, their four children, and three friends who were gathered here to relate their stories, we gave each of them a St. Benedict medal to wear around their neck. This saint performed many miracles and had great power against demons.
After I put a medal on DJ (Dominick Junior), the little boy, something very peculiar happened. Just seconds later, the medal tumbled to the ground, even though the string it was on hadn’t broken. I carefully checked the string and replaced the medal—only to find it on the floor a second time, and then a third.
This was one bold demon to fling around a saint’s medal that had been personally blessed by the Bishop right in front of our eyes!
Most evil spirits are cowardly and hide from holy water, religious medals, and relics. Only the most powerful satanic forces, the true devils, can manipulate sacred objects.
During the interview, we gradually discovered just how dangerous this devil really was. Initially, it attacked with stealth, appearing in Gabby and Dominick’s bedroom one autumn evening in its own hellishly inspired Halloween disguise. “My room got very cold, but it wasn’t a cold night,” Gabby said, gesturing so emphatically that her bracelets clanked. “In the corner of the room I saw white smoke, and out of this smoke came a woman. I could see her from the waist up. I was staring and screamed for my friend, who came running in with my husband. ‘Do you see her?’ I asked, and they said no, they didn’t. She said her name was Virginia Taylor. That’s all I remember.”
Dominick, however, remembered a little more. “For about three minutes, my wife was in a trance and Virginia spoke through her. ‘No harm, no fear,’ she said—in other words, we shouldn’t be scared. ‘I just want your help,’ she said, but she didn’t say
why
she wanted help. I shook my wife awake, and the last thing she said before she came to herself was ‘help, parents.’”
Despite “Virginia’s” reassuring remark, Joe and I already recognized her for what she was—a demon operating under an alias. But there was one mistake in this masquerade that revealed the supposed human spirit was literally blowing smoke: It took the form of a woman only from the waist up. That’s typical of the demonic; they always give themselves away with some abnormality of appearance when they try to manifest themselves as human beings.
Also characteristic of an infernal force was the demon’s divide-and-conquer strategy. By showing itself to only one person, it sowed the seeds of panic, confusion, and self-doubt.
Is this really happening—or am I just imagining it?
victims in such cases will ask themselves. Often they are reluctant to tell their friends or family what’s happening to them, fearing that people will think they’ve lost their mind. Instead, they withdraw into themselves, feeling more and more alone in their bizarre ordeal. This, of course, is the goal of the demonic, since self-doubt and emotional turmoil eat away at their prey’s will, paving the way for possession.
So far, this is all standard operating procedure for the demonic—but there was an unusual twist in this case. Rather than wear at Gabby’s nerves with the unsettling ploys of
infestation
—the first stage of diabolical activity in most cases, marked by such unnerving events as midnight knockings, peculiar phone calls, or tormented animal cries—the satanic spirit was hellbent on full-blown oppression from the start. Oppression is the second stage of diabolical activity, and involves terrifying mental and physical attacks on the victim. The way it behaved in Gabby’s bedroom reminded me a little of police calls I’ve responded to where people are actually held prisoner in their own home, because they invited someone to stay with them for a short time, then had their guest take over their house.