Observations placeholder
Heywood, Rosalind - The Infinite Hive - Dealing with hostile entities that could be neither seen nor heard
Identifier
023073
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The house they had rented had turned out to be ‘haunted’.
A description of the experience
Rosalind Heywood – The Infinite Hive
….my husband is never at a loss. 'John,' he said (John was an ardently Christian friend), 'has been talking to me about exorcism. The obvious thing to do is to find a Christian priest and ask him to clean the place up.'
This matter-of-fact attitude cheered me. He might have been saying,' We'll get a maid with a mop and some Jeyes ' Fluid.' I thought too, 'Well, the experience may not be rational but for us it's actual enough. Why, then, be snobbish about people who are willing to try and deal with it, even if their methods are not mine?' So I agreed, and my husband went off exorcist hunting, to return in triumph at teatime with a very mild little priest. He seemed a far from adequate David to cope with the bitter antagonists whose presence we had felt that morning.
After tea the priest asked for salt and water, and I went to fetch these from the kitchen at the far end of the house. Then came a shock. It was a hell's kitchen, a raging whirlpool of hate, dismay and, strongest of all, panic. I felt as if I were being battered by almost physical breakers of panic and was very tempted to turn and bolt. However, although at the time I knew nothing of systematic investigation, the instinct to test the unusual was too strong, and I took some water only, returned to the drawing-room and said casually to my husband, 'Oh dear, I've left the salt. Do get it, will you?'
He went off cheerfully but on his return even he looked taken aback. 'Good gracious,' he said, 'that kitchen'.
After the priest had performed his ritual my husband drove him home. By now it was dark and I knew I had to try and check whether the place had really been cleaned up for the baby; not that I liked the idea for it meant turning out all the lights and sitting in each room, including the kitchen, with inner 'antennae' out.
The result was astonishing.
The raging hate had gone, the terror had gone, and in their place was a quiet shining peace. A greater contrast to the dark whirlpool of an hour earlier could scarcely have been imagined.