Beware the Night (9 page)

The next morning when I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. It was faint and off in the distance, but being a cop I thought I should note the time, in case a crime was being committed. Just at that moment something struck me in the neck and slid down my back. There on the floor was a St. Benedict medal. I grabbed my chain to see if the new medal had fallen off, but it was still there. When I realized it wasn’t that medal, the hair on the back of my neck stood up and an ungodly chill ran through my body. I knew then that the demonic was involved: The sound of the gunshot was the evil force sending my medal back into this plane of existence. The spirit that took my medal and sent it back was a very powerful devil, because only the strongest demons can manipulate blessed objects. The medal has never left my neck since.

I was really shaken by what had happened. I went into the bedroom where Jen was sleeping and called her name. Even in sleep, she could sense the distress in my voice and leapt out of bed. I told her what had happened, and she couldn’t come up with any natural explanation for it either. Although neither of us knew it at the time, this was just the start of harassment by the demonic that we’ve endured since I started in the Work.

*   *   *

Although nothing unsettling happened to Jen at the museum at that first visit, she pronounced it “creepy”—saying she was petrified to be around these things and never wanted to return there. I, however, was intrigued by what I’d heard and seen. Soon I became a regular at the Warrens’ Monday night classes for psychic researchers and spent hours soaking up the lore of demonology. During these lectures Ed talked about the hundreds of cases he’s handled over the years and the frightening, violent, and inhumanly cruel phenomena he’d witnessed firsthand. But the best times of all were when Ed and I would get together, just the two of us, and he’d tell me things that weren’t in the books I’d read or relate some of the incredibly fascinating experiences he had in his long life.

I realized that investigating the demonic is a lot like police work: You’ve got to arm yourself, not with a gun and badge but with prayer, holy water, and a crucifix; you’ve got to examine the “crime scene” for clues, assess the credibility of the witnesses, interview terrified victims, keep meticulous case notes, and, finally, try to bust the perp—before he strikes again. This particular perp was more dangerous than any gangbanger, crackhead, or killer I’d ever meet on a slum street: the Devil himself. My work on the Job was ideal preparation for “the Work.”

I also saw that I couldn’t go up against Satan without improving my relationship with God. From the moment I first spoke with Lorraine, then met Joe on the street corner, my faith started to grow, and it continues to get stronger each day. It’s true I found my faith through the Work, but it is my faith that
keeps
me in this work, not the other way around. It just goes to prove what I firmly believe: The Work is about dealing with the most negative force imaginable, but God never lets evil happen without something positive coming out of it. And faith is the ultimate positive: It is in every person—all you have to do is a little searching, and it has the power to change your life.

*   *   *

Through the Work, I became friendly with an extraordinary man of truly awesome faith, Father Malachi Martin. Along with literally writing the book on demonic possession, in his best-seller
Hostage to the Devil,
Father Martin was one of God’s great warriors and had performed exorcisms all over the world long before I was born. Although he was a renowned Jesuit priest who spoke eight languages, had helped translate the Dead Sea Scrolls, and had been a close confidant to Cardinal Bea and Pope John XXXIII in the 1960s, he always treated me like an equal. Like Bishop McKenna, he was so pious that he seemed to have no ego at all, just a profound reverence for God that overshadowed his own brilliance.

Yet, as I discovered the first time we met, over dinner at Sparks, a famous New York City steakhouse, this thin, scholarly Jesuit was a warm and worldly man, with a gift for putting people at ease. When I hesitated about ordering a drink, not sure if it would be proper to indulge in alcohol in the presence of such a holy man, he sensed my dilemma and said, in his thick Irish brogue, “Go ahead, Ralph, have a Jack Daniel’s—on me.” He slapped a five-dollar bill down on the table, and we spent the next two hours chatting away like old friends.

A couple of weeks later I drove him to Connecticut, where he was giving a lecture. For three hours I drove along the dark, winding road, drinking in this great man’s remarkable knowledge about the Work. It was a great experience.

“Tell me, Ralph, what do
you
get out of an exorcism?” he asked. We’d just parked at my favorite rest stop on the Merritt Parkway, where they have the best coffee in the world, and got out to stretch our legs after the long drive from Manhattan.

I was a little confused by his question and replied, “I don’t get anything out of it.” He nodded his head, and I continued, “I am totally drained, physically, mentally, and spiritually.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s exactly what you should be getting out of it.”

More perplexed than ever, I asked what he meant.

“You don’t ever come in such close proximity to evil without losing some of your humanity,” he explained. “The demonic take a piece of that away, because of the hatred they have for you.”

“Will I ever get it back?”

He had a big smile on his face, as he answered, “It’s like money in the bank when you go to your final reward.”

“Father, all I want is a peaceful life.”

He studied me for a moment, then said, “Sorry, Ralph, but that is one thing you’ll never have.”

“Gee, Father, thanks a lot,” I said.

“There’s something important God wants you to do,” he explained. “On what scale, I can’t tell you, but when your time comes, you’ll find out.” His smile was gone, and I saw the sorrow deep inside this man.

Curious about his book, which describes five twentieth-century cases of possession, I asked if he was one of the exorcists in the book. He nodded yes. I longed to know which of these harrowing exorcisms he’d done, but there was such indescribable pain in his eyes that I couldn’t ask.

No longer looking at me, but at something far away, he suddenly spoke in an achingly sad voice. “Ralph, I got my ass handed to me in Cairo.”

We were silent for a while. I waited for him to say more, and when he didn’t, I wondered what fearsome and mysterious peril he’d encountered there. In his book, Father Martin calls exorcism “grisly work … [with] the mordant traits of nightmare … a one-on-one confrontation, personal and bitter, with pure evil … a dreadful and irreparable pillage of [the priest’s] deepest self.” For the first time I realized that this white-haired old exorcist had risked much and lost even more, battling Satan and his forces of doom over the years. Yet through his painful sacrifices, he’d freed many suffering souls from the Devil’s grip and piled up great riches in Heaven.

But this man’s love for God was strong, and it was evident in the way he spoke of his experiences in life, the good and the bad. The lecture he gave later that night was a big success. Every person in the room, including me, was riveted and listening intently to what he related.

When this great man died in July of 1999, at the age of seventy-eight, I deeply mourned his loss but felt sure he was rejoicing to be with God at last. As he wrote in his book, the best epitaph for an exorcist is the loving words of Jesus Himself: “Greater love than this no man hath: that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Piece by painful piece, exorcism by exorcism, Father Martin had done just that. I lift a glass to his memory.

Chapter Four

The House by the Graveyard

A
S GRAVEYARDS GO
, Machpelah is one of my favorites. Located in a sprawling 200-acre cluster of cemeteries not too far from my old apartment in Glendale, Queens, it holds the tomb of the legendary magician Harry Houdini, who died on Halloween in 1926. I’ve visited his grave many times: It has a massive, weathered marble headstone, surrounded by stone benches and a beautiful statue of a weeping woman. There I like to think of the fascinating secrets the master of illusions took to his grave—his amazing and never-duplicated escapes from straitjackets, shackles, and a sealed coffin that was lowered underwater for an hour until he burst free. During his lifetime, Houdini also predicted that he’d pull off the greatest escape of all—and come back from beyond the grave.

Each year on Halloween, devoted fans gather by his cemetery plot, which is guarded by two unfortunate police rookies. These officers have to stand there, freezing their butts off all night long, until dawn breaks and the disappointed crowd disperses. Although Houdini remains locked in his final resting place so far, I don’t hold it against him. Actually, I greatly admire him for his lifelong crusade against spiritual charlatans, whom he gleefully exposed at every opportunity.

This cemetery has also figured in two of my occult cases. In the first one, I conducted an unofficial investigation—not as a policeman, but as a private citizen—after learning that several graves had been desecrated. This wasn’t the usual cemetery crime, where teenaged punks topple tombstones or spray-paint hate graffiti in an ethnic section of the graveyard. Instead, corpses had been disinterred and stripped of their skulls. So brazen were these grave robbers that they had even backed a pickup truck into the cemetery, attached chains to its bumper, and used them to rip the doors off sealed mausoleums, all the better to get at the bones inside.

Given the likely occult overtones of these ghoulish acts, I did some digging of my own—and soon identified the perp, a Brooklyn Palo Mayombe priest. The Palo Mayombe religion, originally from Africa, spread to parts of Brazil, Cuba, and Suriname, and worships spirits of the dead. In Spanish, “palo” means “branch” or “tree” and “mayombe” means “black witch.” In this cult, the priest is called a
ngangelero
(the first “n” is silent) or is frequently known as Tata Nkisi, and is as much feared as Christians fear the Devil. Ngangeleros deal with black magic and destruction, and their satanic practices are known as the left-handed path. In one of its more gruesome rituals, a human skull is put into a caldron called a
nganga,
along with dirt, knives, guns, the cadaver of a black dog, scorpions, herbs, and other objects believed to have mystical powers, then used to conjure up black magic. The spells of this particular priest were in such demand that he was able to pay his accomplices $2,000 a skull—and he may remain active, since he has never been arrested.

*   *   *

This type of magic, which is practiced secretly, sometimes surfaces in New York City police cases, most recently in August of 2000, when one of its practitioners died under bizarre circumstances. When Manhattan cops went to the dead woman’s apartment, they found a ghastly collection of human remains, including the body of a perfectly formed newborn girl floating in a jar of formaldehyde. The baby’s tiny feet had been inked for footprints, presumably at the hospital where she was born, and her umbilical cord still had its medical clamp. A ritual caldron contained the skull of another baby—coated with blood, decomposing flesh, and candle wax—while the floor of the apartment was strewn with human bones and cemetery dirt.

After learning that fellow cops had handled these gruesome occult objects to voucher them as evidence—without taking the proper religious precautions—I became so concerned that I decided to call the Three-Six precinct and offer my help. These men had mixed their auras with dangerous evil and could experience disturbing aftereffects: nightmares, unexplained weight loss or health problems, or even demonic manifestations in their homes.

But even though I’m a cop myself, how was I going to explain all this to someone on the phone? I knew I’d be running the risk of being ridiculed or thought a lunatic for my beliefs. Even knowing this, I felt I had to reach out to these men, who had no understanding of evil incarnate—but didn’t have to believe in it to be affected by it.

When I spoke to the lieutenant at the Three-Six precinct, I could tell he was a real hardass. As soon as I said I was calling about the case and identified myself as Sergeant Sarchie of the Four-Six, he got sarcastic. “I didn’t know you guys in the South Bronx could read,” he jeered.

Well, I hadn’t been a cop all these years without learning how to talk to guys like this, so I joked back, “I was just transferred here, so maybe the illiteracy hasn’t rubbed off yet.” I explained that I’d been involved in investigating the supernatural for many years and wanted to offer my help if any of the cops who’d been in the apartment experienced any problems afterward.

“Are you jerking me around?” he asked. “I’ve been getting prank calls about this case all day.”
Great,
I thought,
this guy thinks I’m off my rocker!

“I’m very serious,” I emphasized. “I don’t want cops to get hurt by something they don’t understand.”

There are guys on the New York City police force who have heard about what I do and think I’m nuts. I just tell them, “Think what you like, but if you’re home and objects start flying around the room, the first call you’ll make is to me!” Once these people get to know me, however, they realize I’m
not
a nut job, and start asking questions like “What is this stuff you do? How did you get into that Work?” Other cops will say “I believe in the Devil, but you’re crazy to get involved with that shit. It’s dangerous!”

Hearing the sincerity in my voice, the lieutenant changed his tone. I could tell he was starting to wonder, just a little bit, if there
was
some danger. He thanked me for calling and took down my number, saying he’d like to have it on hand, “just in case.”

*   *   *

My other investigation took place in a beautiful two-family house right next to Machpelah cemetery. It had been vacant for some time before Angelo, the owner of an Italian delicatessen in my old neighborhood, rented the basement apartment. A couple of weeks later I ran into Angelo’s dad, Sal, who told me in a low voice that his son was scared in his new home. “He thinks it’s haunted,” the old man whispered, looking around anxiously to make sure no gossipy neighbors had overheard this. I asked what had been going on. “I don’t like to talk about that spirit stuff you’re involved in,” Sal said, quickly making the sign of the cross over himself. “But Angelo believes it might be something like that.”