House Sitting & Spiritual Warfare

This story is a first hand account written by a friend of mine, these experiences occurred to him while house sitting for family for a 15 month period in October 2002 to January 2004. This is in essence a continuation of his first story shared here entitled "From Darkness to Light" which also appears on this blog.

Since having become Christian, this was my next significant set of things that occurred and I learned allot by them. I will warn you, I have been brutally honest which is the only effective way to be - include all the facts. There are 2 parts, the first part which was issues that were already present and the second part which was things of my own doing (while living here) and gets a bit personal. If you don't like personal detail then don't read this part  but the truth is, there is no way to dress the truth when recalling these events. I am usually a private person and I only share details in part 2 in the hope someone can relate to, understand and assist them if they have experienced similar things. 

Part 1 

It began when I started house sitting for some of my relatives in Modbury S.A. From memory it just started one night although I had felt a presence in the house since day 1 but I just put it down to the fact that the place was quite dark and run down and smelt like mould from leaks in the walls. 

So, I remember it started one night, I would by laying there and suddenly it was as if something had grabbed me and gone RAAH! which made me jump up. This was more than the natural jerks you can get while falling asleep, I heard the voice and all. So I just ignored it, not being 100% sure if it was spiritual or not and thought maybe I was just being nervous living by myself. I tend to jump at every sound when I am in a place by myself so I just put it down to this.

Strangely though this started happening more regularly to the point where it was starting to get annoying, I would sit up annoyed and just spoke a simple prayer something like, "In Jesus name I command any spirits here to be silent and leave." I did feel a heavy-ness lift temporarily but it was recurring from night to night. 

Then more started to occur. Being in this house by myself I would never go into the opposite end of the house where there was 2 bedrooms and bathroom/toilet and as such,  I would leave the doors closed all the time. One night I heard doors creaking from the other side of the house. Trying to ignore it I then heard a 'thump'. "Shit!" I thought, "Maybe someone's in the house", so I grabbed my hunting knife and mag-light torch and investigated.

I went through the other side of the house and found the door from the dinning to the hall where the 2 bedrooms and bathroom was to be partially open. I never go through that door and it is always closed. At this stage I was more so expecting a burglar so with my hearing concentration maxed out I slowly went through the area. The bathroom and one bedroom doors were open and the bedroom door wide open! so I checked all the doors and windows in the place - all closed and locked. This was when I realized it was something else. So I closed everything up, kind of thinking to myself, "Maybe I did leave the doors open and forgot". So I went back to bed and a while later, noises again! I got up again, quite annoyed as it was now around 2am. I checked the area and the bedroom door was open! Far out, I ruled out the door latch by closing it and giving it a good shake etc. and it was fine. The window was closed so it couldn't be that. 

So I went back to bed after speaking a prayer. 

A few nights later I felt a presence in the room and some force laying next/on me. Not heavy but I was aware it was there then I felt something poke my butt! I jumped up, WTF!!! Ok now this had gone too far, so I started thinking spiritual warfare. Ok, I was not living in sin as far as I was aware, I knew I had not opened any doorways for spirits. I was aware of familiar objects, which are objects that are used in the worship of false gods/spirits/aliens/occult etc. but knew I had nothing of the sort. So I thought well, prayer does not seem to work long term, even only 10 minutes at some times it seemed which was odd to me. So I played worship music in the lounge room with the volume down low so I could fall asleep and this stopped anything from happening. Great I had found something that was working. 

So for the next few nights I played the music, an old Hillsong album, on repeat and I could feel a difference. After I few days I stopped playing the music and the spirit(s) came back hard doing everything they had previously done all in one night! Looks like they were annoyed!

At this stage I was no longer anxious or nervous but quite annoyed. I got up turned the music back on, did a prayer and worship session by myself and went to bed (music on every night from now on).  

So I mentioned what was going on to people at church and spoke to the pastor, Paul London, and he went through why these demons/spirits kept coming back.

Basically something was giving them an open doorway back in. I remember him saying unless I am dabbling in the occult or other negative things, its most likely a common object that is holding the door open. 

So when I got back home I checked the house top to bottom (there was furniture, wall fixtures, etc. still there from my relatives) and I noticed this... I'm not sure what to call it, it had a green monster face in the middle with coloured details and coloured birds feathers in semi-circular rows on the outside, the whole thing about 15cm in diameter. "A-HA!" There was also a wooden mask in the hallway from somewhere overseas, so I took that down too, placed both the mask and the thing in a box and as a laugh, put an old bible in there too and put it out in the tin shed.

From that time on, everything stopped and I sighed in relief. I told people who I had told what was going on and they were pretty impressed as most people have heard of common objects but never known anyone to have experienced something first hand! I did some reading on them and I thought, maybe I can pray over them to close the doorways but they were not mine and I felt bad to throw them away. I also read that some common objects cannot be destroyed. So after a while I thought, well these things are bad so I am doing my relatives a favor. So i tried burning the green feathery mask thing and it burned. So I threw them out with the garbage after damaging them a bit so no one who found them might take them.

This is the end of part one, part 2 was brought about by my own deeds. 

In conclusion to part 1 (Or things I learned with Gods help in isolation - in other words, thing I learned experientially and not taken from any text or person) 

• Spirits cannot stand an atmosphere of worship. I note that the music could even be so low you couldn't hear it from more than a meter away yet it still worked - I guess demons have good hearing! 
• Common objects are real doorways that cause real problems. 
• Demons will get annoyed if you have an open doorway and play worship music, pray and worship and they will not go away until the object is removed. I guess it is the equivalent to opening someone's door to their bedroom and playing music they hate, and them being unable to close the door! 
• I note that I never heard any voice of theirs as God led me to deal with demons the same way Jesus did in the bible - be silent and leave approach, which I was more than fine with. Why communicate with the filth of hell? If Jesus doesn't have time for them, neither should we. 

Part 2 

While I was living at Modbury Heights I had an 'online' girlfriend from Townsville whom I shall call Melissa (not her real name) although at this stage it was an online phone only relationship. I will not give too many details other than she accidentally added me 2 years previously on MSN and we got chatting. Turns out 6 months prior to my living at Modbury heights, she had revealed she had lied about her age and quite a few things. 

There were many warning bells that rung continuously to me but I was so love starved I held onto what would be described as a damaged and twisted version of love but as many people know, sometimes you take bad love over no love. She was a master manipulator and in hindsight I wish I had never gone through it all. So anyhow, after her coming clean about hooking up with other people which almost totally broke my trust in her she wanted to be friends and so we could finally be real with each other and I forgave her for her lies and wanted to move on.

I found out she was in her mid thirties although I did never find out her true age, I think It may have been a few years more than she claimed. I was 23 at the time. So half way through my 'time' at Modbury, she wanted me to come and meet her in person for me to see who she truly is etc. I was reluctant to go after having being hurt big time by living in her game of lies but she reassured me it would be a good thing, even if I never wanted anything to do with her afterwards, she just wanted me to meet her. She paid for my plane ticket and I could stay in the spare room at her place.  (although I was never sure if it was her place or a holiday apartment, Ill never know). I set some ground rules with her, like the fact I was christian and did not want to do anything sexual as I wanted to reserve this for marriage, I also had a backup plan incase things went bad while I was over there. So off I went to see my real fake girlfriend weird cesspool of a friend?!?

So I arrived soon enough and she seemed like a normal lady. We got along ok, had pizza and wine for dinner and she gave me a huge apology. The first night I slept in the spare room. As I still didn't fully trust her I was worried her or someone else might sneak in during the night so I placed a booby trap on the door latch so if the door lever opened at night it would make a decent noise.

Sure enough, about an hour after I hit the sack, Clang! "What on earth was that?" she said as the booby trap was set off. I just said, "oh my stuff is there." and she said she cant sleep and wanted to talk etc, so I said ok. The next thing I know after a while she is suddenly going down on me! I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to stop as it was happening but I just wrote it off as my own conscience. So just after the end I literally gasped for air and felt something go into me, like as if air had been pushed into my lungs, it was a very strange sensation. I gave it no thought at the time, we rolled over and went to sleep in the same bed.

At some stage of the night I rolled over facing her (pitch black, no hugging or anything) and after a few minutes as I was drifting off I felt and heard a 'force' come toward me from her direction with a ghostly, airy, 'Rhhhhhhah!', I actually screamed and somehow strangely initially I could not hear myself scream, and I screamed for a few seconds. After stopping and properly coming our of that half awake half asleep 'twilight zone' state, she exclaimed "What on earth was that?" I tried to laugh it off and told Melissa what happened.. She strangely got the shits with me and stormed out of the room cursing. 'Right?' I thought, 'Bit of an over-reaction!' but didn't worry too much and was just glad to be by myself again. So the rest of the week went by without incident and I headed home.

I noticed over the proceeding weeks, 'thoughts' were appearing in my mind that were not mine nor in line with usual thought patterns. Mostly negative thoughts about people which I didn't 'feel' on par with.

It was mostly very subtle and then one day it was quite heavy and deliberate. I started to think to myself, "Something's not right here" and suspected a spirit was likely injecting thoughts into my mind. So I did a test. I made my demeanour and body language negative - like I was in a bad mood, and was pacing around mumbling names and words. In actual fact on the interior I felt totally fine. Sure enough, some negative thoughts suddenly popped into my mind completely not in sync with my true thoughts and feelings at the time! "A-Ha!" I thought, "I caught you spirit."

At this stage I was not aware that a door had opened that enabled this spirit to be able to have access to my thought life and that doorway was opened by my partaking in sexual sin with Melissa, originally I just thought that there was a bad spirit messing around with me randomly.

So after some prayer I felt lead to get into praise and worship and so I did.  The second night after praising God through music after about an hour or so and being really in 'the zone' and spiritually in tune with God I felt something come out of my chest, the same sensation that I experienced with Melissa when it had entered me, only this time in reverse, I actually stopped and had to catch my breath! "Whoa" I thought. I thanked God for helping me be free of it.

At that point God revealed to me that a spirit had entered me at that point of sexual sin and it had just been expelled! This was the source of the negative thoughts suddenly creeping into my thought life. In hindsight I think that Melissa had these spirit(s) interfering with her as she was incredibly deceived. She would say certain things and later totally deny them, I realise now that the spirit(s) were messing with her mind big time, which I believe was the cause of so much confusion, lies and emotional mess-arounds from her side. A doorway had been opened to me by being sexually open with her, this deceptive and negative spirit then had the ability to start messing with my own thought life, had I listened to it's lies and suggestions who knows what kind of negative path it might have led me down.

I guess this is why God calls us to sexual purity. Not to stop us having fun, but in order to protect us from having doorways open in which evil can infect our lives and affect us in very real and negative ways.

A premise on evil.

I have many spiritual experiences over the years, many good some bad. The good ones are too many to count and they may be touched upon in later posts, as they relate directly to my own personal spiritual beliefs and the various things which form my worldview. 

The 'not so good' ones are what I will touch upon sooner, not because I want to give glory to evil or darkness but because I want to expose what it's true nature is, what it's goal is and how one is to overcome it - and to show it can be overcome.

Horror movies are not usually movies I am into, for various reasons. The first reason being, I don't really like to concentrate or glorify evil. Horror movies may give some a ‘thrill’ or the excitement for a late pyjama party but if anyone has ever been in the presence of evil it is not something fun, it is the furthest thing from fun there is! Secondly evil by its nature is dark, grotesque, horrible, cunning, cold, heartless and above all deceptive; there is no truth in it. It is by its very nature unreliable in everything it conveys because it is entirely deceptive in nature. It lies, it cloak, it hides, and it seeks to warp truth and goodness at every opportunity because at its core it is the very antithesis of good, of right, of love.

Evil is also extremely boastful, proud and arrogant, this is seen in all movie 'bad guys', and every sinister foe of any great tale, follow this back up the chain of command and you will see the antithesis of this - the devil himself. Relating it back to the real world if you look at all the despotic leaders and rulers over the years you will see this vein of evil is in all of them; pride, arrogance and cruelty.

Now what horror movies tend to do is show the great 'power of evil'… It is almost a total power in some movies. There are countless scenes of people calling on ‘higher powers’ typically shakily holding onto a cross or some other relic and whimpering out hopeful prayers only to get whipped across the room like a rag doll. Individuals scream for mercy at the hands of some unearthly Demonic creature to get none. Usually by the climax of the movie some esoteric book or magic is found that manages to subdue the evil, or it is finally overcome (to some degree) by a priest performing an exorcism ritual, but usually only just. So powerful is the evil that it is usually only quelled temporarily, put in some magical box, or is finally just managed to be exorcised only to drift off leaving the viewer with the uneasy impression that it may soon be back… This time in part II no doubt.

I don't believe evil is all powerful, mainly because I have encountered a greater power - Love. Evil does have a power I believe, it has the ability to cause massive destruction, the wiping out of entire races of people, the ability to create serial killers, murderers the list goes on and on.

Evil a lot of the time though is played out by human beings. Most of the evil we see around us is in the world in induced and harboured by humanity. We are the 'conduit' so to speak for this horrible force. We as humans have immense power, we have the ability to either cause peace, freedom and liberty to be spread over all the earth and on the same token we have the ability to spread the exact opposite of this, this is done by nothing more than the greatest gift we have… our free will.

It is debatable but most people will agree that humanity isn't inherently evil to its core, corrupt, messed-up, fallen or skewed maybe but not evil in essence. So logically there must be some realm or sphere where this evil comes from, and this evil (and humanities openness to it) is what causes humans to behave deplorably to one another, to hate, to cause pain and suffering on their fellow man. I believe that our free will is the gateway or ‘portal’ by which evil is made manifest in the world - evil is made apparent through us. It is also the gateway in which love, freedom and kindness can enter our world also, but in either case it all boils down to our free will (what we allow ourselves to think about, concentrate on, feel and subsequently act upon).

In saying this, evil and darkness does have the strange ability to manifest itself in reality without our cooperation or 'want' at times. Since time immemorial, ghostly apparitions, dark presences and evil spirits have been experienced by all cultures, creeds, races and countries across the globe, past and present - with no exception. No matter how 'technologically advanced' or 'educated' a country or region of the world is these occurrences have taken place and continue to do so - even in our post-modern westernised societies that for the most part shy away from the spiritual aspects of life. It only takes a bit of digging to find out how real and common these experiences are. You would be surprised even within your own circle of friends and family how much so. People seem to sweep these kinds of things under the rug for fear of ridicule from others or to avoid the stigma of mental instability. But for those who have experienced them, they are no figment of the imagination, they are very real.

Sometimes though we are unwilling participants in a spiritual drama we may be totally unaware of, like walking through a haunted house with no idea or involvement with what has actually taken place there, but regardless we feel the strangeness of these presences, we get the heebie-jeebies, shivers up the spine and other ethereal feelings. But we walk through the hospital, the cellar (wherever it may be) and the feeling leaves no sooner than we do. Chances are whatever has taken place there in the past has been something dark, something sinister and it is those actions and occurrences that were the doorways for the strangeness and the darkness to enter and all those actions were carried out or acted by humans.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we as individuals are 'the doors' to these manifestations and what we chose to do, to not do, to think or not to think are what gives evil and darkness the ability and power and even the right and grounding to be made manifest in this world.

Some testimonies of people I know personally will be shared here and will give you some examples of how these doors have been opened, and also how these were closed. And the reassuring thing is that the ability to close these doorways and overcome a tangible evil is much simpler than you might have previously believed. There may be a struggle, as evil always wants to dominate, destroy and cause pain but victory is possible because there is a greater power and that is one of love. Love is stronger even than the power of death and will always have the last word... even though horror movies would have you believe differently.

And remember, evil is not the opposite of good, evil is the absence of love.

Have an open mind and enjoy the journey.