an exorcism

Early last summer I moved my family into a new home closer to our church so we could better engage in the community. Within the first week moving in, things started feeling weird. There was a sense of dread, depression, and anxiety that infused the atmosphere of the place. Everyone felt it and was on edge. 

After a few discoveries while doing deep cleaning, and an informative 1AM visit by the police, we learned that the house had been a renowned heroin den. It was a hub for dealers from two states looking to sell their wares in bulk. A young woman died of an overdose in one of the bedrooms just months before we moved in. Further research via the rabbit hole of Facebook revealed that one of the tenants had been a practicing witch. 

Now a few weeks into our move, our oldest daughter - who always stays up late during the summer as teenagers tend to do - started reporting seeing and hearing odd things. Footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night when she was the only one upstairs; feelings of being watched or with another presence; and occasionally glimpses of what she described as a tall, dark figure with long arms and long fingers that would stand in thresholds and step into other rooms when she jerked her head around. I attributed it to her imagination and detecting patterns in normal house settling sounds (though our middle daughter also heard the footsteps), but I became skeptical of a 'rational' interpretation when I started having experiences of my own. I get up around 4-5A most mornings for coffee, scripture reading, and Zen time - we have little kids, so it's difficult to get this time when they are awake, and by the end of the day I'm beat - and after getting my coffee and retreating to the living room, I would return to the kitchen to find all the cupboards inexplicably opened. This happened a few times, and it started getting under my skin.

My wife - who has always mocked the idea of haunted houses and the like - started getting her own creepy feelings and hearing odd things in the middle of the night, usually around 3AM, for what it's worth. I decided to reach out tot the elders of our church and request a house blessing. Most of our elders came and blessed the home; we prayed, read Psalm 91 (what has been termed an 'exorcism psalm'), and they blessed the house. When we stepped back into the home, the atmosphere was different; everyone in my family reported that it felt more peaceful, like something that was previously there was now gone. My middle daughter, who had been refusing to sleep in her new room and was camping out on the sofa next to our bedroom, told us that night she was ready for her own room. There have been no more footsteps, opened cupboards, or phantasms in the middle of the night. 

I'm not well schooled in exorcisms, or demonology, or spirits, but I am confident that there was a tenant in this home who had not moved out.