Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [54]
I had most of my visions in the evening, either during Mass or right before bed. During Mass, I would see a ghost priest saying Mass alongside the living priest. The ghost had different vestments, old-fashioned ones from an earlier period in time. Many times during Mass we heard strange sounds, or things would fall over without any rhyme or reason.
I remember one evening very distinctly. It was eight fifteen, and I was on a break. I was walking from the study hall, which was situated below the church, to the floor above. I saw a golden hue behind the muted glass doors of the church entrance. I opened the doors and saw the lady in a gray dress and a little boy push a candle in front of the Virgin Mary statue. The ghostly lady looked at me and started screaming, I’m going to get you! I freaked out and ran to the brother in study hall and explained what I had just seen. He ran up the stairs and grabbed a fire extinguisher. He thought I meant the church was on fire.
Soon other kids had similar weird dreams about a screaming woman, a priest, a man, a noose, and a small child. One night as we all walked into our dorm, Tom, one of our classmates, was in the corner kneeling on the floor, crying, “Don’t kill him.”
Tom told us, “There’s a man putting a rope around a little boy’s neck. He’s going to hang him. We have to stop him.”
That was enough for me. Tom confirmed my belief that the place was indeed haunted.
One afternoon the brothers invited the town historian to speak at a school assembly. All of the students sat in the auditorium eager to hear the gossip. Back in the early 1800s, before the Vanderbilts arrived, there was a family by the name of Smithers. The father, Jonathan, and the mother, Bessie, had a young son, Jules, who was very sick with tuberculosis. Apparently, they were very religious and superstitious people. Bessie called the local priest and told him that her son was possessed. She asked the priest to exorcise the devil from her sick son. The priest did his best to pray for the little boy. Jonathan didn’t like the priest and thought he was only making things worse. As the young boy took a turn for the worse, his parents became despondent. Bessie cursed God for making her baby boy sick. Meanwhile, her husband’s behavior grew more bizarre with each passing day. He stopped doing all his chores and let the farm fall into disarray. Bessie suspected that the priest had released the devil out of her son and into her husband.
Meanwhile, demented Jonathan plotted to get rid of the devil by killing his son and ending his suffering. One day he made a noose, placed it around the boy’s neck, and hung his child out the window. Bessie came into the room and screamed, “Stop!” She pleaded as she grabbed for the rope. The rope snapped, and her little boy hung to death right in front of her eyes. Jonathan was so disturbed that he leaped out the window to his own death.
My guess now is that Bessie haunted the house because she wanted the priests and brothers to leave. She blamed the priest and the church for the deaths of her son and husband.
After that first year, I left the seminary and was happy to be back in public school. The enrollment in the seminary dropped from forty to ten students. After a few more years, the seminary closed its doors forever. Two years ago, I was in