Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [53]
I unpacked my bags and unhappily sat on my bed. All of a sudden, I had an urge to walk to the other end of the hallway. Halfway down, I passed a room and felt something strange. I looked in. Immediately, I heard that same piercing scream I had heard when I arrived. This time I could make out some words. Please…help him…you’re killing him…stop! The voice got so loud that I had to bend down and cover my ears.
This was not a good way to start school. I was very impressionable, and this impression would last until I left the seminary. The room contained five beds and seemed normal enough except that it was circular. There was a balcony that had been converted into a fire escape. The sign on the balcony read, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS THIS TO BE OPEN. I wondered whether that included when there was a fire as well.
I returned to my bed to unpack the rest of my things. I knew that I was in a strange and uneasy setting, and deep down I also knew that there was a ghost (or ghosts) haunting this place and that whoever it was didn’t seem to be very nice. To top it off, I had a horrible sense that someone was watching me because he knew I could see him.
The next morning I woke up and felt something touch my neck. I screamed, “Aaaahhh!” I reached up and felt what seemed to be strands of hair and began to cry. Suddenly a roar of laughter filled the room. I opened my eyes and saw a stringy mop lying next to me. I was a victim of a not-very-amusing practical joke. These kids who were supposedly going to be future priests acted more like inmates in a reform school. Then it dawned on me. These kids weren’t holy. They were problem kids whose parents sent them to this seminary hoping the brothers could reform them and make them into good Catholic young men.
After that incident, my feelings of isolation and insecurity increased. I always had an uneasy sense that someone’s eyes were trailing my every step, and this menacing energy seemed to be getting stronger. I could feel that this ghost was on the verge of making itself known.
After several weeks, a rumor began to go around that someone was breaking into the wine cellar and destroying the wine bottles. One day during morning Mass we all heard the sound of shattering glass. A few priests jumped to attention and ran behind the altar. Mass concluded about a half hour later, and as we silently walked toward the dining room the sound of a siren broke the quietness. During breakfast, Brother Robert came to tell us that Father John, one of the priests who had run to investigate the sounds behind the altar, had experienced chest pains and been taken to the hospital. When we asked him about the crashing sound, he said, “Some mice got into the wine.” I thought to myself, They must have been some pretty strong mice.
When Father John returned to the seminary, he never spoke about the time he went to investigate the sound behind the altar. Looking back at that experience, and at all the other odd things that happened in the seminary, I realized that the brothers and priests knew the place was haunted. In fact, one evening when I walked by the priests’ dining room and overheard them arguing, one of the older priests was saying, “They can get the hell out. It isn’t their home anymore!” Of course, no one ever talked about ghosts. It was a sin for Catholics to believe in such things.
Several times throughout my first year there were a series of accidents and close calls. One kid almost overdosed in the basement on water purification tablets. Several seminarians were expelled for violent attacks that seemed to be over nothing. School was becoming an extremely tense place to be, at least for me.
As more things happened, my dreams got more vivid. In one dream, the sound of whimpering and coughing was coming from one of the far bedrooms. I entered the room and saw a man dressed in an old pair of overalls and a dirty white shirt. A young boy about seven years old was lying on the floor coughing and looking extremely pale. I noticed that there was something