The Haunted House

The house sat in the parking lot, somehow still standing, in the domain of the new, palatial, magnificent Kroger. This store gave us, the kids of the neighborhood, free hotdogs, free ice cream, free everything or so it seemed. Yet the house loomed there enduring, haunted we were told.

How could it endure against gleaming chrome of the Kroger? We wondered, because wondering is what kids do. We were afraid, because the house was dark where Krogers was bright.

Why did we think this old house haunted? I am not sure. The neighborhood know-it-all said it was haunted and nobody questioned her, though I am not sure why. Rumor spreads on not-sure.

We were afraid, but Dad heard the rumors. He took me to the house and showed me both floors. The place was more interesting in the sunlight than scary and Dad deflated my fears. We discussed real estate and why houses kept sitting there. I learned something.

That was good of Dad to do. He pointed out that one need not be afraid and that what was real was more important than rumor. So far this is like a secularist Scooby Doo lesson: the scary things are all fake. That was not Dad’s lesson, however. He lived a real life in the actual world and so knew that reality is complicated than a 1970’s cartoon.

Metaphysical evil happens, but not so often as people claim. Demons do not dance to our demands. They have no desire to prove their own existence. Fear. Confusion. Despair.

That’s their grift.

Dad lived in a pastoral world where real people faced cosmic issues. My brother and I saw the grifters, the fakers, and also inexplicable things. I saw his desk dented by a demonized man. I watched a man run away and drop when the name of Jesus was invoked. He did not fall down, but was blocked, flying up in the air. Dad dealt with people full of pain that needed relief from spiritual oppression and when exorcised got needed relief. He also met mentally ill people who pretended metaphysical pain, because they would not admit to physical problems. He sent those folks to doctors and also prayed with them.

This was hard, complicated, but good.

We learned from this, as boys, my brother and me, that somethings that seem scary, diabolical, are just scams. In fact, if you held to my Dad’s hard standard to truth, most putative marvels were scams, except those that were not. Dad prayed for me and I got better. My brother and I saw that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in Isaac Asimov’s philosophy.

None of this was “proof” to a skeptic. Why would it be? Demons do not wish to prove anything. Proof is good and no demon does the dialectic.

Confusion, lack of surety, is how devils live. They do what they do giving us nothing if they can. That local house was not haunted, but Dad did not pretend he knew that no house, anywhere, was haunted. We once lived in a house that needed a good exorcism, after all.

Thanks Dad.