Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth About Ghosts Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Author's note

  Dedication

  Prologue ‘It puts a scar on your brain’

  1 ‘Are you Sir Thomas Sackville?’

  2 ‘It’s not all coming from the trees’

  3 ‘Strange patterns’

  4 ‘Come back, Rain-On-Face’

  5 ‘Distrust the mystic’

  6 ‘Making things fit’

  7 ‘All I ask is that you put your life in my hands’

  8 ‘Turn the light off, bitch’

  9 ‘I was very upset at what I saw’

  10 ‘Open your eyes’

  11 ‘I promise you, you’ll scare yourself’

  12 ‘They’ll build it up and bugger off home’

  13 ‘We’ve got strangers in the house’

  14 ‘They called me Ghost Girl’

  15 ‘That’s Annie’s room’

  16 ‘And when they die, they’ll get a big surprise’

  17 ‘Some really weird things’

  18 ‘Kangaroo!’

  19 ‘I talk to the devil every day’

  20 ‘I am the ghost’

  21 ‘And that’s God?’

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Will Storr is a feature writer and travel journalist based in south London. He has been voted New Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year and his work has appeared in a wide range of titles including The Times, the Observer, the Mirror, The Face, Arena, High Life, Q and Loaded. To read more of the author’s work, or to contact him, visit www.willstorr.com.

  Author’s Note

  The prologue originally appeared as a feature in Loaded. I am grateful to Andrew Sumner for granting me permission to reprint it.

  Chapter One originally appeared as a feature in The Times Magazine. I am grateful to Simon Hills for granting me permission to reprint it.

  Excerpt from Canon Michael Perry’s Deliverance, published by SPCK, appears by kind permission.

  Excerpt from This House is Haunted appears by kind permission of its author, Guy Lyon Playfair, and Souvenir Press.

  Quotes from the British Journal of Psychiatry appear by kind permission.

  Quotes from Journal of the Society for Psychical Research appear by kind permission.

  The website that appears here is copyright Fujifilm. Thanks to Jenny Hodge for granting me permission to reprint it here.

  The names of some incidental characters have been changed. Some small segments have been relocated.

  For Farrah

  Prologue

  ‘It puts a scar on your brain’

  DON’T FREAK OUT. That’s rule number one. I take a second to absorb this information, before writing it carefully on page one of my reporter’s notebook.

  ‘You got that?’ says the demonologist. He peers at me over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘It’s extremely important.’

  ‘Rule number one, don’t freak out, yes.’ I nod and look down, as if to make sure that I did, in fact, get it. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Good. When I start asking questions, there may be things going on around you. Whatever you do, do not freak out. If you feel that you have to get out, then just walk right out of the house.’

  He pauses and takes a long drag from his freshly lit Kool Mild. The smoke drifts out of his mouth and floats up towards the slow, dirty ceiling fan.

  ‘Just say, “I’ve got to go for a cigarette”, or “I gotta get some air”, something like that. OK?’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  The demonologist takes another sip of his coffee. He looks at me blackly from under his eyebrows.

  ‘Rule number two. When we start the investigation and we turn the lights down, try not to move.’

  ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘Right. Do not move or adjust yourself unless it is absolutely, positively necessary. We’re looking for something in the house that’s paranormal … ’

  ‘And you don’t want to get the sound of paranormal stuff confused with the sound of me adjusting myself?’

  ‘Right,’ he says.

  ‘Um – another coffee?’

  ‘Sure, great,’ he says, and I switch on my best waitress-catching face. ‘We’re gonna need it.’

  I’m in a roadside diner somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia, USA. Everything that just jumped into your head when you read the words ‘roadside diner’ and ‘USA’ is actually here. There’s a run-to-fat waitress with a heart of gold and a hairy chin, chewing gum and taking orders for cawfee. There are little, table-top jukeboxes with slots for quarters and multiple Elvis options. There’s a handsome stubbly man, who looks like he’s on the run from the law, sitting at the counter, chewing a toothpick and considering his next move. Any minute now, he’s probably going to start a fight with the serial killer in the next booth.

  I’m here on a journalistic assignment for Loaded magazine. Two weeks ago I was at my parents’ house, perusing my brother’s Web User. And as I flicked, I noticed that the online home of a real-life ghostbuster had been awarded ‘Website of the Month’. His site looked fantastic. Encyclopaedic, grandiose and full of gothic kitsch and portentous admonitions about divination and devil worship. This, I thought, would make a brilliant story. It’d be fantastic, because it concerns an American eccentric, and American eccentrics are great. They’re more sincere, unabashed and convinced in their madness than any other eccentrics in the world. And they say hilarious things like, ‘Rule number one is don’t freak out.’

  Lou Gentile is thirty-two, married and a proud father of two. He’s eager, open and upbeat, with the Italian looks and confident countenance of a Mafioso gone to seed. By day, he is a central heating engineer. And by night he is the demonologist. An investigator into, and crusader against, the evil forces of the demonic. Amongst other treats, Lou has promised to show me ‘ghost lights’ on his infra-red monitor and play me ‘electronic voice phenomena’ – EVP – on his Dictaphone. These bizarre growling, grunting sounds are, apparently, the noises of spirits trying to communicate from another dimension. When I called on him an hour ago, he was watching Ghostbusters II with his young daughter on his billboard-sized TV. And tonight, he’s driving me to a haunted house that was built on top of a graveyard. So far, as you can see … everything is going exactly to plan.

  ‘Rule number three. Let me know what you see, what you feel and what you hear. If you’re sitting there and you feel extreme coldness coming over you, then something’s going your way. You need to tell me. Some of this stuff can be explained easily, draughts and stuff, but you’ll know. It’s hard to describe, but you’ll know when it happens. And rule number four,’ he says, tipping down the dreggy drips of another cup of coffee, ‘is don’t laugh. It is very important when you’re going through something like this that you don’t laugh. And that can be hard.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. I glance to my left through the window. There have been blizzards all down the eastern seaboard for the last three days. Fat whacks of snow cover the ground everywhere except the freeway. I pause for a second to watch the cars and trucks and monstrous articulated lorries bomb noisily through the night, all exhaust-steam and slipstream and white lights and red. And as I sit and look at the traffic, somewhere deep in my brain, a tiny alarm starts to sound. At this moment, I’m still barely aware of it. But I’ve just begun to sense that something isn’t right.

  We pay our waitress and walk towards the door. As
I zip my coat in preparation for the freezing air, I ask Lou what’ll happen if I don’t follow his rules.

  ‘You could get kicked,’ he says distractedly, as we pace through the car park, ‘or hit by something flying across the room. Anything could happen. It can get extremely bizarre.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. And the tiny alarm in my brain gets just a little more insistent.

  ‘Lou,’ I say when we reach his Lincoln Continental. I open the door and climb into the cold, leather passenger seat. ‘I’m not in any danger, am I?’

  Lou chugs the ignition and turns the heating dial to full. The headlights flash up and hit the wall of the diner in front of us. Large flakes of snow amble in through the beam, from the darkness all around it.

  ‘You’re a Roman Catholic, right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘If anything happens, if you get freaked out, just imagine yourself in what’s called a white Christ light. There’s nothing that can penetrate that light. That’s your faith.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. My eyes flicker down. ‘Right.’

  A problem. I lost my faith in the middle of my R.E. A-level. That’s if I had any in the first place. In theory, with the upbringing I was put through, I should be bloated with glowing, golden faith. My parents, you see, were full-time, professional Catholics. My mum was chairman of the governors at the Catholic comprehensive that I attended and, on top of that, she’d done some sort of course that enabled her to give out communion at Mass. My dad, in his leisure time, was in charge of the choir and organ-playing at church, and used to go on fun Gregorian Chant weekends at a monastery in Belgium. His entire working life was spent in the service of Catholic education. To reward his five-star devotion to the cause, an archbishop presented him with a certificate at a Mass on his retirement. It was signed by the Pope himself. Really. The Pope.

  To me, though, religion never quite added up. I used to be taken to church against my will every Sunday to listen to the terrifying priests with their incense, magic and bad news. And I could never work out how that did me any good whatsoever. More importantly, I couldn’t see what good it did God. He must be quite an insecure fellow, I’d think, if he needs all this reassurance that we like him. I couldn’t understand how He could be merciful and loving on the one hand then send me to hell for doubting his existence the next. And I’d look around the church every Sunday, at all the pursed lips and the hoisted chins, and I’d think, These are God’s people? These are the ones who’ve got it right?

  As I got older, I started to learn more about the contradictions, the baffling rules and the surreal illogicality of the Church. And as I became more questioning of the constant low-level doom, the funny costumes, the weird tales and the rank hypocrisy, increasingly, I’d just think … naaaaah.

  Eventually, I became a proud hard rationalist. I can remember the moment it finally happened, during an A-level R.E. lesson at school. I’d just been taught that the Bible hadn’t, as I’d been led to believe for the past eighteen years, been written by God after all. No. The old bit, we were told, was a collection of stories some ancient nomads used to tell. And the new bit was authored by a group of angry political activists with scores to settle. Everything I’d been taught was a lie. In that instant, I turned my back on every flavour of the supernatural. Religion, the afterlife, ghosts, spirits, the lot. To me, it was all so much superstition. It was absolutely clear – people are desperate to believe in whatever will comfort them through this chaotic, random and, ultimately, pointless life. And if someone wants to convince themselves that there’s an afterlife, either by talking to God or believing in ghosts, then they’re welcome. As far as I was concerned, though, existence was just a happy accident. Up was up, down was down, and when we died we were nothing but a bag of old guts.

  So, when I told Lou that I was a Roman Catholic, just like him, it wasn’t a 100 per cent lie: legally, on paper, I am a Roman Catholic. But if the only thing protecting me from having an evil demon throw a chair at my head is my ‘faith’ …

  ‘You OK, Will?’ Lou asks, clearly noticing the glaze that’s set over my eyes. ‘You worried?’

  ‘No,’ I say. I manage to snap myself out it and look ahead into the freeway. ‘No, just wondering what … what … where are we going?’

  ‘Bishopville, Maryland. These people are suing a property developer because the land he sold them, which they built their house on, used to be a graveyard. And they don’t want to live on top of a graveyard.’

  ‘I don’t blame them.’

  ‘It’s pretty bad, yeah. As you look at the house, you can actually see the pits. All the headstones were found in the river.’

  ‘And they’re having problems with … ?’ I prompt.

  Lou reaches down and pushes the car’s cigarette burner in. ‘The TV turns on and off by itself. Lights go on and off. Doors slam shut at night. The wife says that she has seen these horrific faces in the glass. The son’s had his room dismantled, things have been thrown about, he’s seen a black shadow, an image of an old man in his room, different things like that.’

  I watch as the demonologist picks a Kool Mild box off the dashboard and lights another cigarette, his gaze never flitting from the snowy, rushing road in front of him.

  ‘It’s definitely haunted,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how much activity we’re going to experience tonight, but I know for a fact it’s haunted.’

  ‘What have you experienced there?’ I ask.

  ‘Noises. I got a couple of very odd pictures. Now, tonight, for the first time, we’re going to use the audio recorder and see what we get out of that.’ He takes a long drag on his cigarette and indicates to pull out in front of a red pick-up. ‘You know, I can’t guarantee that you’ll see anything tonight. It just don’t happen like that. You can go five cases without experiencing anything and then, on the next one, see all the shit in the world. And, believe me, you don’t want to see some of the shit I’ve seen. It puts a scar on your brain.’

  We drive on, with our thoughts, as the miles rush behind. Illuminated road signs loom and reach over us. Trees, towns and turn-offs buzz past, all anonymous and alike, obscured by the dark and snow. After a time, Lou begins to talk. As he does, orange and pale light from the road runs over his face and his eyes dart quickly from tarmac to bumper to road sign and back. He tells me that his mission, as a demonologist, is to gather evidence on behalf of people who are suffering from a perceived haunting. He then compiles a dossier, which he’ll present to a priest in order to persuade them to provide the hauntee with an exorcism. As the Church becomes more modern and PR-conscious, its clergy are increasingly reluctant to perform this spooky, retrogressive and secretive rite. They demand cast-iron evidence before they’ll commit. And, since suffering a paranormally troubled childhood, Lou feels he has a ‘calling’ to gather this evidence on behalf of the terrified, helpless and disbelieved.

  ‘I had a recent case, up in this attic,’ he tells me. ‘This was a very, very stale place. A very oppressed place. I went up there and I could hear all this stuff moving around me. And then the smell came. A stench. Standing right in front of me, I saw one of those black shadows, about eight or nine foot high. My back was against the window and it starts breathing heavy and I’m looking at it like, that’s not my breathing, and then – and I don’t know why I said it – but I said, “You know what? You really sound like you should be dead.” With that I got pushed up against the window and I almost went through it. Well, I had to tail-ass it out of there. You know, I’m not Superman.

  ‘I was there when the priest was exorcising that house. He did three, the same night. The first and the second ones went OK. The third one, he started fumbling around with his words. The client started freaking out. Things were starting to vibrate and almost move, just like in the movies. Then the priest, I watched his cross levitate and almost get pulled off. Then he stopped and composed himself and he started to say it again. Everything was real quiet until he said the final word. That’s when this loud growl came
out of nowhere.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say.

  ‘I damn near shit my pants. It sounded like a … I can’t even describe it. Like a lion almost, but it’s something that’s not human or animal. That was a bad one. There were screams and there were three knocks during that. Always three.’

  ‘Why three?’ I ask, as Lou palms the steering wheel right and we pull off the freeway.

  ‘Threes are a blasphemy to the trinity,’ he says. ‘Father, son and holy spirit. When these things come in threes, it’s mocking God. Often, you’ll experience stuff between three and four in the morning – 3.33 a.m. can be a real hot time. Hey Will,’ he says. A new thought has distracted him mid-flow and he turns, quickly, to meet my eye. ‘You live in London, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You must have heard of the Enfield poltergeist, then. Right?’

  ‘No. What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, man,’ says Lou. He shakes his head, rolls his eyes and lets a small smile curl one side of his mouth. ‘The Enfield case was just insane. One of the biggest, best-documented poltergeist cases in history. A real bad demonic case. Man, you should check that one out.’

  We pull up to the driveway of the big, white clapboard house. Two full-sized dogs bound up to shout at the car. I look around. There’s a makeshift skateboard ramp and a basketball hoop and a green hose coiled up on the grass. As he opens his door, Lou tells me that if I want a cigarette, I have to go outside as the Carvens have a no-smoking policy in the house.

  And they really are no-smoking-in-the-house kind of people. Tom and Deborah Carven are a bright, smart and attractive couple in their late thirties. They welcome us in, warmly, as their obediently brought-to-heel dogs leap and lap up around their waists. The worry and embarrassment that they’re obviously feeling at the arrival of a professional demonologist and a British journalist into their otherwise picket-fence perfect lives is almost fully suppressed by their impeccable, smiley manners. They have two cars, two teenage sons, designer stools by their breakfast bar, ‘girl scout cookies’ arranged neatly on a plate and between twenty and thirty bodies buried in their front garden, according to legal depositions from local farmers who once worked the land.