Where would you find an evil spirit?
In a graveyard? Perhaps.
We tend to intrinsically fear the unknown spectre of death and load it up with our most mind chilling fantasies.
Yet the average suburban graveyard is full of ordinary people, who lived ordinary lives and were—mostly—generally good people.
Sure, everyone has their shit, and undoubtedly many of these good people went to their graves with a lifetime’s share of unresolved issues.
However, a restless spirit who is trapped in their guilt over a romantic affair they had in their twenties is quite a long way from being genuinely evil.
Pissed off? Possibly.
Distraught? For sure.
But evil along the line of “I want to suck out your soul” evil? Not a chance.
So where would you go?
A place of genuine human suffering where there is a concentration of malevolence?
Bingo!
I am sure you would at once be able to compile a list: High security prisons, asylums, war zones, etc.
For sure.
Have you ever wondered why this might be so?
Is it a case of like being drawn to like?
Perhaps evil spirits simply like to bask in the atmosphere where they feel most at home.
Or perhaps the toxic emotions and thoughts that we humans project in these horrid places are particularly appealing ...
it could be that evil spirits gather around suffering and malice ...
to feed.
I found my evil spirit in a place that was home to both malevolence and suffering …
across the road from a pub* in Australia.
I'm not sure what time it was when my intruder entered my room.
I only remember awakening to sense its inky presence oozing into my room.
There was no shape as such.
Just a glutinous oppressiveness that poured its way into my temporary haven and descended on my prostrate body.
It was the summer of 1993.
I was staying in a seedy men's hostel just near the CBD of Rockhampton, Australia.
Why, you ask, would a 20-year-old chap have to resort to living alongside much older men who had mostly run out of prospects?
Probably because I was a young man who had mostly run out of prospects;
I had burnt quite a few bridges and was currently fulfilling fifty or so hours of community service for being a “bad boy.”
The hostel itself used to be a pub at some stage in the past …
the hallways still echoed of a hundred years of debauchery.
My tiny room on the second floor, lacking any form of cooling to speak of, opened onto a veranda from which I had a unique view across the road to perhaps the nastiest, foulest pub in the district.
This pub was frequented by the town’s urban aboriginals and many were the night where I was serenaded by a chorus of vulgarity, violence, and the midnight screaming of both police and ambulance sirens.
Only a few nights before the events I am about to relate I had a box office seat to a mini riot which left a stream of blood trickling into the gutters.
I must hastily insert here that I am in no way racially profiling or stereotyping in this.
The facts are just simply the facts—the pub was a popular aboriginal hang out and the violence was real … and very bloody.
It is for people far more educated and culturally experienced than I to lend insight into the generation’s long suffering and fury the traditional owners of Australia carry due to our history of politically inspired atrocities.
On this particularly hot night, that left me gasping in my room like it was a furnace, I had decided to leave ajar the French doors that opened onto the veranda in a vain attempt to catch the non-existent breeze.
After endless minutes of sweltering listlessly, I managed to plunge into the reprieve of sleep.
My first waking instinct, when I was pinned fast to my bed, was of course to panic and scream; but before I could even gasp, an incredible weight had extinguished my speech and severed my very ability to think.
I say "weight,” but it wasn't a physical weight as such … more like a density that tore its way through my mind and sunk its tendrils deep within me to assault the sanctity of my soul… and it was hungry.
I can't say how long I lay there, helpless,
I couldn't even think let alone contemplate the passing of time.
I do know I struggled desperately, but in vain, because every avenue my mind fled down was slammed shut by my unyielding captor.
I was trapped and felt like I was literally being consumed … in the same way someone might suck the marrow from the bones of a chicken.
Or like how the Chinese eat mud crabs;
Well, maybe not all Chinese, but the ones I have dined with will tear off each little leg and suck out every last juicy morsel.
Perhaps I was especially tasty, because the monster that was tearing through me seemed to delight in what it found.
It is important to mention now that I had, for the previous several years, been a student of traditional Chinese martial arts.
The importance of this mentioning lies in the fact that, as part of my training, I had spent quite a bit of time in meditation and practicing “energy work.”
You know, Chi energy and all that jazz.
So, just when the very essence of who I considered to be “me” was snuffed out completely, some unknown part of me surged forth.
My mind was flayed and stripped bare to reveal something deeper, something filled with an incredible raw potency.
I was like the Earth itself with its crust sundered apart to release the primal magma of its core.
In an instant my awareness flew to my lower abdomen (the place where Chi energy is supposed to 'live') … and it erupted in an explosion of pure light.
I felt my adversary convulse above me which gave me my chance for escape.
I surged this pure light out to my hands, and I blasted the full potency of my being into my foe.
It flailed in protest, yet still I sent forth torrents of the unquenchable light.
Finally, my intruder routed, releasing its hold on my mind, and fled back out of the door.
Immediately I was up out of my bed streaming my light before me, nothing could resist my radiant advance. I got to the door and sealed the portal with the light from my hands, creating an impenetrable web of light. With incredible relief coursing through me I turned around ... only to behold my own prostrate body, eyes closed, sweating on my bed, a full fifteen feet from where my awareness 'stood'.
I jolted awake on my bed and snapped upright with a startled cry (OK, perhaps it was more a scream).
Confused I looked around my room, back toward the door where I had only just been 'standing,' but it was eerily normal.
Then I noticed the sensations in my body.
My hands burned furiously, waves of Chi energy were pulsing out of them, my lower abdomen was vibrating violently, and I could still feel the 'little sun' that burned there.
Out of instinct I got up and repeated my cleansing process.
Sending streams of “light” from my hands through my room and out the door and then once again I sealed the entrance way.
For hours I stayed awake, journaling as much as I could remember.
As the dawn broke that morning, I gave sincere and hearty thanks to my teachers and the training methods I had learned up to that point that had helped me win freedom from my midnight intruder.
(SUMMER TIME STORIES)
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