Exorcisms, Cleansing + Spiritual Authority

The farmhouse was built in 1797, and the nearby cottage that served as its springhouse and summer kitchen may have been built either slighly before that, as the original dwelling, or slightly after that, as a luxury; no one knows anymore. No one knows either, what may have happened within their walls in the past 220+ years. At some point, the two houses were subdivided from each other, and owned separately.

In 1997, the cottage was sold to an investor-landlady who rented it to a single man we will call Danny. Danny, according to his family, had suffered mild brain damage from a high fever brought on by a complicated illness. The brain damage had left Danny with depression. In addition, Danny’s occupation, in his own words, was “killing fish” at some type of lab or fishery. We are not sure what type of job would include the duty of killing fish daily, but that is what Danny said that he did for a living.

For whatever reason, Danny fell behind on his bills, including his rent. When the landlady called, Danny would not answer the phone. The landlady stopped by the house and knocked on the door, and although Danny’s car was in the driveway, he did not answer the door. The landlady persisted knocking and saying, “Danny, please answer. We can work it out,” but to no avail. The landlady did not realize it, but she may have been in a dangerous situation: Danny wrote in his suicide note, “I am afraid I am going to hurt someone.”

The next morning, Danny was found by a neighbor, slumped over in his car in the driveway. Sometime before dawn, he had put a vacuum cleaner hose over the exhaust, piped it back into the car, and had taken his own life.. insead of lives of fish, instead of the life of someone else.

Time went by, and the cottage was rented a few more times. One set of tenants were the Maypior’s, Gene and Joan. They started describing to the landlord some paranormal activity that included a “ghost” playing tricks on them, such as hiding the last roll of toilet paper, only to find it on top of the refrigerator where they definitely had not put it. Foul spirits often start out doing things that can be labeled as pranks, but it usually escalates into more sinister manifestations. A few times, at night, Gene and Joan thought they saw a shadowy figure that they described as an old woman, but the vision was fleeting, and it was always, “out of the corner of our eye.” Joan was becoming a bit unnerved, but Gene was taking it all with a grain of salt. One night, while getting ready for bed, Gene said “good night” to the ghost. Joan said, “I told you not to talk to it!” And as Joan was finishing that sentence, her eyeglasses flew off the night stand, and landed on the floor across the room.

Luckily for Gene and Joan, they moved shortly thereafter, not because of the ghost, but because their new home was finished being built. At that point, the landlady, Cindy, was interested in downsizing and moving into the cottage herself. But beforehand, it would need a thorough cleansing. Prayer, declarations, and spiritual warfare pictures were used. While the house was vacant the week prior to moving in, a radio was tuned to the local station that played hymns, and played 24/7. The thought was “if it can stand to hear God be praised constantly, then it’s not an evil spirit.” The tactics worked. The spirit left. But perhaps it just moved into the farmhouse behind the cottage…

Just about the time that Cindy moved into the cottage, the farmhouse was newly inhabited by a master contractor who was living there while restoring its antique log walls, and repointing the stone masonry. Coincidentally, he was a single man and his name was “Danny,” just like the former tenant of the cottage who had killed himself. This new Danny was the best at what he did; his work was exquisite, and the neighbors liked to admire his progress from time to time. Danny was friendly, and in casual conversation, mentioned that the farmhouse was haunted by two ghosts, with whom he had both seen and conversed. The ghosts had even given Danny permission to take their photograph. The picture showed the living room of the farmhouse under renovation, in perfect focus, and also the blurry white-shadow figures of the two “women ghosts” who had chatted with Danny.

Danny’s cordial exterior cloaked his inner struggles: He suffered with problems in his personal relationships, and had fallen into addiction. After missing a family member’s birthday party, and not answering his phone, a relative went to look for Danny. Heartbreakingly, Danny was found on his kitchen floor, with a plastic bag over his head: He had died the day before, from huffing his contractor chemicals.

Did the spirits that were allowed to inhabit the house contribute to Danny’s death? Is it strange that both the cottage and the farmhouse had tenants that were single men named Danny that killed themselves? Is it a coincidence that as soon as Cindy, who is a strong Christian, expelled the spirit from the cottage and moved into it herself, it seemed as though the spirit moved into the farmhouse and targeted the second Danny?

The farmhouse sat vacant for a while, and because of the close proximity of the cottage to the farmhouse (after all, the cottage had been the summer kitchen), it made sense for Cindy to buy the farmhouse from it’s current landlord. But after all that had happened, she was taking no chances. The farmhouse was cleansed, and there has been zero evidence of any ghosts or spirits of any kind in neither the farmhouse nor the cottage, ever since. It was made clear that Jesus was in charge of those properties now, and no evil spirits would be tolerated.

Dogs are often a good barometer of whether there are evil spirits present. In this case, Cindy’s dog showed no hesitation whatsoever in being in either house. Ironically, one of Cindy’s new tenants in the farmhouse was a single man named Danny. This third Danny never had any reason to believe that ghosts or spirits of any kind were present.