I once had to walk through a pitch-black forest around midnight immediately after experiencing what was almost certainly a paranormal, and likely malevolent, event.
I was in high school. This girl-space-friend (Cheri) and I were talking in her room after a night hike up the mountain behind her family’s home. It wasn’t a romantic moment - we had tried that and it had just been weird. However, she did light a single candle and put on some music while we chatted.
On our hike, she had pointed out an abandoned house nestled just off the trail. Its broken windows and crooked porch slats looked exactly like a giant, hulking skull in the bright starlight. I don’t remember the details of her story, probably because what happened next fairly scrubbed my memory for three decades, but the gist of it involved murder, suicide, and alleged spectral sightings for years afterward.
Right at the denouement of her story, (“You can still hear screams from up there…”) three things happened simultaneously:
We heard a loud CLAP in the hallway outside of her room.
The candle blew out even though there was no breeze in the room.
The stereo shut off. It wasn’t a power outage - her alarm clock still glowed in the dark.
Cheri jumped from her bed and ran through the curtain providing a minimal amount of privacy between her room and the living room. “Mom?” I heard her say. She sounded scared, like maybe she felt guilty for letting a boy into the house after 9:00 PM, even though things had been as innocent as they could be.
She returned a minute later. “Mom is in her bed sleeping.”
“That’s weird,” I said as I lit the candle again. “It sounded like someone clapped. I thought we were in trouble.”
“What do you mean ‘someone clapped?’” Cheri asked. She was incredulous.
“What do you mean ‘what do I mean?’” I asked back. “I swear that sounded like someone clapping. Like, ‘Time’s up! Go home, kid!’”
“I heard a voice. It said my name.”
Time sloooooowed doooooown…
Something horrific might have just passed through the home and back into the night…
The Blair Witch Project wouldn’t be a thing for another decade, but every scene in that film reminded me of what happened next.
I had to walk about a quarter of a mile through dark woods on a moonless night. I sort of knew the trail, but it wouldn’t take much to accidentally leave it. Staying overnight at her place was a non-starter. Neither her mom nor my parents were cool enough to say, “Oh, sure, have a teenage, mixed-sex sleepover.” My only choice was to walk up the mountainside, alone, in the dark, toward the “haunted house,” incidentally, right after an undoubtedly paranormal event had just occurred.
Long before I ever heard the words, “positive affirmation,” I just sucked it up, said goodbye, and marched toward my ’68 el Camino with a will and determination I’d rarely had before or since. I pushed through skeletal, low-hanging branches. I didn’t stop, start, or jump whenever I heard forest sounds just feet away from me in the ink. Intellectually, I knew that it was probably squirrels or bunnies rustling through the underbrush, not spectral squirrels or bunnies. I also knew that if I stopped - or if I ran wildly toward my car - I would definitively lose it and get myself hurt. It was a very close thing.
Or worse, if I ran, panicked or showed the malevolences watching me that I was in any way perturbed, I might get lost, wander through the forest for half the night, and then, just before dawn, emerge into a clearing with a dilapidated and crumbling old house brooding in the center of it. And that’s when I’d hear the throaty chuckling behind me…
Every step was a conscious decision. Every glance was a decision. My legs wobbled and I was sure they were going to give out at any moment. I have rarely been so terrified in my life. Maybe never.
I made it to the car. I fumbled with my keys, as one does in horror movies, and even got in and got started. This moment, I knew, according to the library of horror movies suddenly playing in my conscious mind, would be the one where the creature/corpse of the missing homecoming queen,/alien brain-sucker/IRS auditor threw it/him/herself onto the hood of my car as I futilely tried to get the engine to turn over.
It started, though. Nothing hitched a ride on my hood. I made it home, and eventually, to therapy. My friend Cheri? She later became an honest-to-Satan witch. I think I might have really dodged a possession there.
I’ve been thinking about courage quite a bit lately. I’ve had plenty of reason to “deploy it,” as the goo-roos say. One of the readings at Divine Liturgy the other Sunday really drove it home the necessity of courage. Sure, it’s good in and of itself, but it’s also quite possible you’ll be damned without it. I’ve always hated those bits of wisdom: “You NEED this, it’s GOOD FOR YOU, and if you don’t TAKE IT, you will lose your soul…”
I mean, sheesh. Fine. Okay. Give me the temperance, chastity and fortitude already. I was going to take them anyway…
One of the readings at DL was Matthew 25:14, the Parable of the Talents. You know the one - a man goes on a journey and gives three of his servants certain measures of money, “talents,” and two of the three invest and increase their allotment, while the third takes his one, single talent and buries it.
“Master…I was afraid and hid your talent in the ground. Here you go.” (Paraphrase, obviously). He was condemned to “the outer darkness…where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
I always thought that was a terrible story. I mean, the guy was afraid. Maybe he had no idea how compounding interest worked. Maybe he thought CDs were just musical devices and couldn’t figure out how those made money for you. Whatever the case, shouldn’t someone have taken him aside and mentored him? “Accompanied him on his journey?” “Met him where he was at?”
No - he was condemned for his fear. Yikes.
It just didn’t seem fair.
I’ve also been ruminating on Proverbs 28:1 quite a bit over the last 111 days. “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as lions.”
Then, of course, you add Joshua 1:9 into the mix, and it’s pretty clear that courage isn’t just a good idea, it’s mandatory. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
If you grow up on a certain side of the tracks, you hear these things all your life, but it seems to take trial-by-fire to make them real. I’m half-convinced that we shouldn’t teach our kids anything spiritual at all in their early years because it seems that familiarity inoculates them from wisdom. (Obviously I know this is a bad take…)
So, if you’ve been fearful all your life, how do you just…”be courageous?” That’s actually easier than it seems. You know that thing you’re afraid of? Just do it. That thing you’ve been putting off because it’s hard? Do it. You know you need to do X, Y, and Z to become a saint? Yup, you know what to do.
This is obviously easier said than done. If that thing you’re afraid of is talking to that girl, and your face stops working when you try to talk to her, yeah, that might be a challenge. Maybe just start with talking instead of going for the marriage proposal. Baby steps. Just saying.
The thing you’re afraid of is almost always not as bad/scary/threatening as you think. Sure, we’re commanded to be courageous or else we’ll be damned forever, but maybe that’s what it takes to shake us out of this delusion that failure and ruin are behind every challenge. It’s a corrosive element, fear. It’s totally engrossing. It has foreboding answer for every possible “What if?” “Fear World” is vast and apparently without borders. What do you think it would take to escape it?
As I approach my fifth decade on this planet, my “fears” are kind of hilarious. I can’t believe I gave so much time to them. Age and experience, (not wisdom, regrettably), have finally revealed The Secret. That Secret is this: nobody really knows what they’re doing.
That, and you are well-cared for.
It’s not as bad as you think. So, be courageous. Do the hard thing. Or, you know, go to Hell. Lol.
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