Holy Ghosts*

... Or ...

How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night

By

Gary Jansen

 

 

In this extraordinary true story, the haunting of a Long Island household forces a respected writer and editor to reevaluate the mysteries of life and death as he struggles with the frightening truths of his childhood home and his town's past.

Growing up in Rockville Centre, Long Island, Gary Jansen never believed in ghosts. His mother - a devoutly Catholic woman with a keen sense for the uncanny - claimed that their family house was haunted. But Jansen never found anything inexplicable in how their doorbell would sometimes ring of its own accord; or in the mysterious sounds of footsteps or breaking glass that occasionally would fill their home; or even in his mother's sometimes unnervingly accurate visions of future events and tragedies. Though he once experienced a supernatural encounter in a Prague church as a young man, Jansen grew up into a rationalist, as well as a noted writer and editor.

In 2001, Jansen moved back into the very same house where he had once grown up, to raise a family with his wife. One day in 2007 he encountered a weird physical sensation in his toddler son's bedroom - "like an electric hand rubbing the length of my back. I stopped and couldn't move, not because I was stuck but for the simple reason that the feeling was so strange. What the hell is that? Then the pressure seemed to break apart and for a brief moment I felt like I had a million little bugs crawling all over my back and neck."

This became the first step in uncovering a frightening, full-blown haunting in his home-a phenomenon which lasted a full year and eventually included unveiling the identities of the spirits who occupied his house; reliving a tragic murder in his hometown; encountering mind-boggling coincidences between local history and episodes in his household; and finally, with the help of Mary Ann Winkowski, the real-life inspiration for TV's The Ghost Whisperer, ridding his house of these uninvited visitors. The events of that year, in which Jansen's family was terrified by ghosts in their own home, would forever change how he viewed the mysteries of life and death.

Holy Ghosts is not only a gripping true-life ghost story but a wry and touching memoir, as well as a meditation on the relationship between religion and the paranormal, which are often considered at odds with each other, but which the author shows are intimately linked.

 

* To order Holy Ghosts from Amazon.com, click here!

 

Q&A With Gary Jansen

Author of Holy Ghosts

 

 

What do you hope readers take away from Holy Ghosts?

I just hope it's a pleasurable reading experience, that people have fun with the book, and that it touches them emotionally. It is a serious book, but I tried to mix some humor in it.  I really hope the book leads to intelligent discussions about the supernatural and paranormal because these things really are important and point to something greater, something beyond this world. Many of us get way too caught up in the day to day, in material experience, but there is something else besides what we can see with our own eyes or hear with our ears and touch with our own fingers.

 

How did the haunting manifest itself in your home?

It really started with a strange sensation in one of the rooms upstairs in our home. Then, my son's electronic toys would turn on by themselves and make noise.  Then there were problems with our light.  It was classic haunting stuff which I dismissed for some time as nothing, but then everything started to intensify. That is when I started to take notice and think, well, maybe there's something here.

 

Throughout your ordeal, did you ever question your faith?

Absolutely! But I don't think questioning your faith is a bad thing, at least not for me. When you ask a question, you're looking for an answer.  Every faith is filled with so much history and so many perspectives that I think asking questions is part of our duty as human beings. I grew up Catholic, but there is so much more to Catholicism than what you learn in church and school or what you read in the media.  Part of our responsibility should be to seek out the questions in our lives, to paraphrase Rilke, so that some day we may be able to live out the answers. I think true questioning of your faith is embracing your faith.

 

What did you learn researching Catholic lore on the subject of ghosts?

What struck me the most was the amount of apparitions many of the saints had experienced over the course of two thousand years. Maybe I should have known this about my faith, but my pursuits in my religion were intellectually based. I loved the philosophy. I loved the history. I loved the theology. I loved ideas and really didn't give much time to the mystical dimension of my faith until just right before the incidents began in the house and then more fully afterward. I never gave much thought to Saints, but researching this book gave me a new understanding of a part of my faith that I had never explored. Reading the lives of the Saints is like reading about superheroes. Certainly some of it is hagiography, but I think those stories tell us something about the power of belief.

 

How would you characterize Catholic attitudes towards the paranormal?

Well, it really depends on whom you talk to. The Catechism of the Catholic Church doesn't say much about what we would call the paranormal, but it does acknowledge that there are angels and demons and experiences that seem to occur outside the natural order of things. Some of these things are prophecy, clairvoyance, and the world of miracles. Yet, we live in modern times and I think there is apprehension to acknowledge many of these things for fear of looking superstitious and medieval. I can understand that in a very big way and I think in some ways it's prudent.

When the Church investigates a miracle, they do just that; they investigate and approach the miracle from an intellectual perspective, looking for evidence of its authenticity. This sometimes takes generations. But I think most of us in general, including the Church, get ourselves into trouble when we turn away from spiritual matters and focus too much on the materialism of the day. True paranormal experiences are spiritual experiences and point to something greater than ourselves and our temporal existence. They shouldn't be ignored.  

 

Through your research to explain the haunting, what surprised you the most?

Angels and demons! There is so much lore in all world religions, so many names of angels and demons in history and apocryphal texts. All of that is missing in the modern world. Most people don't realize the extent to which angels and demons influenced our ancestors. I couldn't help but feel melancholy as I read through these very thick tomes. So much of this history has been lost in our modern society. There was a sense of wonder in these books I read and the research I did.  The greatest trapping of the modern world is how the machine of the world tries to take the wonder out of all things.

 

Despite being a bit dubious, you eventually consulted ghost whisperer Mary Ann Winkowski. When did you begin to trust her?

I felt really comfortable with Mary Ann from our first conversation. It took me a lot of time to reach out to her, but after I did, there was just something about her that made me feel at ease. Plus, I had read her book and she just seemed down to earth in her approach to the supernatural. For her, it was no big deal and to this day I think she's puzzled by all the fuss people make about ghosts and earthbound spirits. She was really kind and understanding, plus she was extraordinarily accurate in things she told me about my house and personal history. There's no way she could have known details about me or our home in the way that she did.

 

How did friends and family react to your haunting?

Almost everyone I told the story to, except maybe a small handful of skeptics, had had at least one ghost experience in their lives as well. I was amazed at the number of people who came out of the woodwork to tell me their stories when they heard I was writing this book. These are sane, working people, who have friends and families and mortgages and rents to pay and each had had an experience that they had only shared with a couple trusting people because they didn't want to be seen as crazy. I think people talk about these things much more freely today than they ever have, but still there are plenty of people who are, more often than not, puzzled by a certain experience that seemed to be supernatural or paranormal in nature and don't know how to talk about it, but it haunts them.

 

The events in your home were traumatic. Was it difficult to revisit those memories and write the book?

Yes! When I finished it, I was emotionally spent. I still feel drained and will be known to cry at the drop of a hat now. OK, I admit it, I cry! I had to go back and relive my childhood and my teenage years, as well as the events that took place right before, during, and after the haunting. Those were times of great happiness and deep sadness, so writing the book was a deeply emotional experience for me.

 

* To order Holy Ghost! from Amazon.com, click here!