Faith and Fear

  • Easter Monday

    Easter Monday

    The 1949 St. Louis exorcism is one of the most documented and debated cases of possession in American history. It is the case that inspired The Exorcist, but most of what people think they know comes from film, not from the actual accounts. When you go back to Father Bishop’s diary and read what was…

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  • Good Friday

    Good Friday

    I have been thinking about Good Friday. Not just as a day on a calendar, but as a moment that changed the course of the world and history in a way that is hard to fully take in. It is often told quickly, moved through on the way to something else. But when you slow…

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  • A Night of Betrayal

    A Night of Betrayal

    Lately, I have been spending time in some of the most ancient biblical texts we have, not just reading them, but really contemplating them. Looking at what was kept, what was emphasized, and what seems to have been left behind along the way. There is a quiet pattern that starts to emerge when you do…

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  • Twenty Years Later

    Twenty Years Later

    “He turns; I can see his frontal torso in the light. It’s covered in blood. Is he looking at me? The room begins to spin. The sound of his desperation matches the tempo of his hands scrubbing his body. The room keeps spinning and spinning. I still feel his eyes on me. I can’t breathe.…

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  • Thirty Eight Seconds

    Thirty Eight Seconds

    I don’t talk about this very often. It’s not because I’m trying to keep it private. It’s just one of those things that doesn’t come up in normal conversation, and honestly, I’ve never felt the need to turn it into something bigger than what it was. I was on the operating table when I died.…

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  • Haunted Lives, Deserving Humility

    There is something I have been watching happen again and again in paranormal spaces, and it worries me more now than it ever did before. It is not the unexplained that concerns me. It is what people do to one another in the name of explaining it. When people reach out for help, they are…

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  • A Moment for Conscience

    A Moment for Conscience

    I waited until Christmas was over to say this, because some things need room and the right moment to be said. As a son, a father, and a grandfather, I have been sitting with what has unfolded over these past weeks. The continued revelations surrounding the Epstein case, and the effort to minimize or obscure…

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  • A Season for Ghosts

    A Season for Ghosts

    I often think of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol when I think about ghosts this time of year. December has always felt like the most haunted month to me. Not because it is frightening, but because it brings the past closer. Dickens understood that. He tapped into something deeply human when he wrapped a ghost story…

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  • Angels?

    What do I believe? That question has haunted me for years. Angels. Guiding beings. Protectors. Light. Love. The word itself carries a kind of warmth, does it not? But what if we have been looking at them all wrong? During the Screaming House haunting, something strange would happen. The phone would ring, and on the…

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  • We have always told stories to understand fear. Around ancient fires, in the flickering torchlight of castles, and later in the dim glow of movie theaters, humanity shaped its deepest anxieties into creatures. We gave our fears teeth and claws, wings and fangs, scales and shadows. We called them monsters, but really, they were always…

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