Chapter 1: So It Turns Out Demons Are Real

King Solomon describes wisdom in Proverbs 1 as a woman shouting in the public square for the naive and the skeptical to learn about the Lord and respect Him enough to live as He teaches. To live as we see fit is death. To be complacent is destruction. There are only two ways to live: with wisdom or without wisdom. Those who do not choose wisdom will inevitably encounter calamity and disaster.

I was not wise. While I have always loved the Lord, I did not place a priority on learning more about Him. There was not any kind of hostility or mistrust toward Scripture, I just never made room in my schedule to read it. That takes time. Learning how to study the Bible takes more time. I seemed to be doing just fine on my own, thank you very much, without ever feeling like understanding what the Lord has to say through Scripture should ever be more than a faint desire. I would get to it someday, just not today. I ignored the call of wisdom and lived complacently, trusting that faith and a desire to please God would more than offset whatever I lacked by failing to study my Bible. As a result, I did not know any more than what I absorbed through regular church attendance. While faith in Jesus is enough for salvation, a spirituality based solely on earnestness and church attendance is not enough for righteous living (Jas 1:22–25). Of course, I did not know that. Being naive and simpleminded about my own faith, I did not know what I did not know.

How many readers see themselves in that description? How many people go through life honestly believing, “I don’t need to read my Bible. The preacher will tell me everything I need to know”? Or even worse, “What could the Bible possibly say that applies to me thousands of years later?” What I did not know then, I have learned through a long, excruciating trial that I would not wish on anyone. The lesson is simple: pay attention to the call of wisdom. Learn about the Lord. Respect Him enough to live as He teaches. Faith and obedience are both deliberate choices that we must reaffirm every day of our lives. We are each responsible for learning what our faith requires as well as proving its validity to ourselves. No one else is going to do the hard work for us. Failing to take ownership of our biblical understanding renders us spiritually blind to situations, actions, and relationships entirely at odds with our faith. The danger is real. The consequences, as Solomon notes, are disastrous.

Why? Evil is clever. It does not play fair. It never politely introduces itself and says, “This thing you’re involved in? Yeah, that’s my handiwork—it’s evil. If you’re a Christian, you should probably avoid it. Anyway, have a good day!” Even intelligent people can be completely blindsided by the consequences of their sins when they do not know they are rebelling against God. The Israelites made the same mistakes generation after generation until God finally exiled them to Babylon. They had no use for godly wisdom until they had no choice but to reconcile with Him over the behavior that had sent them into exile in the first place. We do not want to be in this same position. We have biblical history readily available to us precisely so we will avoid making those mistakes.

Looking back at my own life, I am faced with the sober realization that my behavior was not much different than the ancient Israelites—I made the same sinful choices again and again throughout a nine year period. My rebellion was never intentional, yet sinful rebellion always comes at a cost. The only question is how much it will cost us. My mistakes eventually stranded me within my very own spiritual Babylon. Only then could I clearly see my choices and beliefs from the proper perspective. The most traumatic events of my life reduced me down to my foundations so that I might build again upon the words of Jesus rather than the advice of this world. I realized I had built the house of my spiritual philosophy on top of shifting sand rather than the rock of Scripture, and when the storms came, my house collapsed with a loud crash (cf. Matt 7:24–27). Had I heeded wisdom’s call, none of this would have been necessary, but since I did not, the Lord allowed some very serious adversity into my life so that I would learn to get my priorities straight.

Like everyone else, I am a sinner. Unlike many others, I eventually contracted many indwelling demons who made my life miserable. I personally believe that certain sins I committed greatly influenced the divine calculus resulting in my demonized condition, but it is quite significant to note that the Bible never records Jesus or His disciples concerning themselves with how a person became demonized. Their primary concern was always the spiritual and physical wellbeing of that individual. We must be careful not to read too much into what sin caused what bad thing to happen. Sin is only one possible cause of adversity. The risk of assuming we know anything about demons that the Bible does not teach us is that we will be entirely wrong and pile up further harm upon those who are already suffering. Jesus admonishes one man whom He healed of a chronic physical illness to stop sinning so that something even worse would not happen to him (John 5:14), but Jesus does not spell out the specific cause-and-effect for us. Likewise, which sin or which circumstance led to demonization is never a factor in the Gospels. God is the only one who knows for certain, and we only know His thoughts when He reveals them to us (Isa 55:8; Amos 4:13).

Being a Christian guarantees that we are in for tough times during our lives. But with that adversity comes the joy, peace, and security we receive through the Holy Spirit when we walk through fires side-by-side with our Savior. It is easy to focus on the ugliness of evil and fear what we cannot control. The challenge instead is to focus on the sovereignty of God, who does control everything, while we consider the ugliness of evil. Nothing can ever separate us from His love (Rom 8:38–39), even when it seems as if all the forces of hell are leveled against us.

The Paranormal Snare

Additional Reading

• See Appendix A for a lengthier discussion concerning the source of paranormal abilities.

I am a lifelong nerd. Growing up, I had a deep appreciation for comic books, cartoons, video games, science fiction, fantasy, and the occasional ghost story.¹ Reading about superpowered mutants fighting villainy as well as playing games featuring heroic fantasy teams out to save an imaginary world were common staples during my adolescence. I greatly admired the rich creativity found in these media, and as a child, longed to be part of a similar story. I often asked myself questions like, “What superpower would I want if I could choose anything?” and, “What would it be like to live as a dragon and fly over a medieval kingdom?” These are the kinds of silly questions many children ask themselves. My imaginary worlds were limitless, filled with possibilities. Appreciation for these fantastical works stayed with me into adulthood, and while I was not entirely convinced, I believed paranormal abilities could actually exist. After all, I thought, science has not yet revealed all the secrets of the human body or the natural world, so who knows? I was cautiously optimistic. I also naively concluded that should paranormal abilities actually exist in the “real world,” God must have created them, so they would not be at odds with Christian faith. This was a flawed mindset that led me into serious trouble time and again.

Take telepathy—or reading minds—as an example. God has never, biblically speaking, been in the habit of regularly doling out telepathic abilities to the saints. We see in the Gospels that Jesus could read minds. He knew exactly what another person was thinking on at least two different occasions (Matt 9:4; Mark 2:8; Luke 5:22; 6:8). But Jesus was unique. He was fully man as well as fully God. How many of us have ever actually witnessed a miracle resembling telepathy among clergy? We have the story of Elisha (cf. 2 Kgs 5:25–27; 6:8–12, 32), yet I am willing to guess very few of us have ever witnessed anything like that. If this happens at all today, it is rare and not always what it seems. That is important to bear in mind. In fact, the apostle Paul writes, “For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him?” (1 Cor 2:11 NASB). When we presume a supernatural origin and consider people who are not Christian or not actively furthering the kingdom of God in some way, it becomes certain that any supernatural event resembling telepathy derives from a satanic source.² This should be a sobering thought for any Christian who idly dreams of reading minds.

Believing God created natural paranormal abilities when He created humankind is a huge mistake. It is a subtle snare that puffs us up with the idea that we are capable of creating our own supernatural miracles,³ but there is simply no legitimate evidence that humankind can do this on its own power. Neither the Bible nor mainstream science supports the idea that anything short of a supernatural element can produce circumstances that subvert the laws of physics or nature.

I liked fictional stories and wanted to believe certain elements of those stories could be real. I thought surely we could achieve the miraculous with only a little effort. But whether this is possible is not the real question. The supernatural exists. If we believe what the Bible teaches, and we believe in God, then by extension we must also believe in the supernatural. God is supernatural by nature. The real question is what causes the miraculous to occur. It comes down to either God or Satan. We have no spiritual basis for leaning one way or another without first understanding what the Bible does and does not teach. Worldly advice, pseudoscience, friends, conspiracy theories, and gossip will rush to fill that void if we do not fill it ourselves with biblical truth. That is how I became ensnared for many years to the idea that paranormal abilities are a natural human possibility. It did not end well for me. My spiritual ignorance was fertile soil, and the seeds of my inadvertent rebellion against God were planted within the context of a close friendship.

Amigo and the Universe

I adored my friend “Amigo.”⁴ Amigo was loving and kind, quick to share, always had an encouraging word, and was a very hard worker. These are all characteristics people commonly want in a friend. We got along famously. Amigo and I shared the ups, and we shared the downs. We were friends through good times and hard times. It was very easy to share a good laugh with Amigo or depend on Amigo in a crunch. There was just one small catch: Amigo practiced witchcraft.

Now, Amigo did not use that label nor would Amigo have identified with that label. Amigo would doubtless protest that label quite vigorously. I certainly never thought of Amigo in concrete terms like that. Nevertheless, how else do we describe someone who could supernaturally affect the surrounding environment using ritualized actions and intentional beliefs? How else do we describe someone who does not believe in the Christian God yet could supernaturally heal those who were in pain? Amigo did what Amigo did out of the kindest intentions; there were never any wicked goals or deliberate deceptions. Amigo could do amazing things and had known other people who could produce even more extreme supernatural phenomena. I never completely agreed with some of Amigo’s personal beliefs, but I also never saw anything particularly wrong with befriending someone who casually practiced that which fits squarely into the category of things a Christian must avoid (cf. Deut 18:9–13). It was partly because I was too biblically illiterate to see it, and partly because I did not want to see it. Amigo and I were close friends for a very long time. I admired Amigo as a person, and Amigo’s unique paranormal abilities intrigued me to no end. When Amigo spoke, I listened.

One area where we strongly differed was what each of us meant when we used the word god. My King and Savior has always been God, the deity of the Christian Bible. Amigo believed in pantheism and maintained the concept of god to be the collective, all-encompassing composition of all things that form our reality. This compositional god—“the universe”—was said to manifest benevolence when we act with goodness or good intentions and malevolence when we act with wickedness or wicked intentions. These proposed mechanics are closely related to the Hindu idea of karma. While I privately disputed that there could be any god other than the Lord, I was double-minded in my conviction. On the one hand, I knew the Bible says, “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deut 6:4 NASB), but on the other hand, God created the universe and everything in it, so perhaps He also imbued reality with certain unseen mechanics that could produce the effects Amigo described. It seemed plausible to me at the time. It was certainly within the Lord’s capability to create metaphysical machinery that gives us what we desire without needing to rely on prayer. Was the universe a real concept? Some part of me accepted what Amigo said about this as the truth. In hindsight, this was just another god competing for attention with the real God.

In a similar fashion, the ancient “gods” Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, Molech, and others seemed plausible to the ancient Israelites, especially when introduced to them through friendships or foreign wives originating from within the surrounding pagan cultures. That was why God cautioned them to avoid intermingling with those cultures (Deut 7:1–4). Ancient Israel was guilty of spiritual adultery when it flirted with these foreign gods, which greatly incensed the Lord. He was their covenant deity who promised material success to Israel on the conditions they worshipped Him alone and obeyed His commands. Israel failed to do that.

The idolatrous worship of foreign gods in ancient Israel “often resembled acceptable worship of Yahweh except that the object of worship was an image or other god. Common elements included such things as sacred places, bowing down and offering incense and sacrifices.”⁵ Israel may have worshipped some of these other gods in the same manner they worshipped Yahweh, but it made no difference. Worshiping another god, even if all aspects of that worship were to precisely mirror what occurred in the Jerusalem temple, was still idolatry and remained highly offensive to the Lord (Deut 5:6-10). The prophets further condemned idolatrous worship as “connected to a wide variety of moral failures, including such things as oppression of the helpless, murder and adultery (e.g., Jer 7:6, 9; Ezek 22:2–12).”⁶

Idolatry violated the covenant agreement, was linked to both personal and societal corruption, and personally insulted the real God. This is a noxious combination. Ezekiel refers to foreign gods using “the derogatory [term] gillûlîm (”dung balls”) to emphasize their disgusting impurity.”⁷ He nailed the fundamental truth about other gods: they are unwholesome for the Christian believer. We simply cannot worship both God and something else. This also implies that we cannot substitute anything else to any degree for our relationship with God. Doing so is textbook idolatry. It is easy for a Christian to say, “I would never worship the gods of another religion!” Yet how many of those same people depend on politics, sports, money, possessions, science, or a variety of other worldly concepts for their personal well-being instead of their relationship with the Lord? I suspect it is far more prevalent than many Christians recognize.

Furthermore, how many Americans today would accuse Ezekiel of gross religious intolerance? Intolerance of other beliefs is a cardinal sin in our postmodern age of relative truth. By our societal standards, many people would brand Ezekiel as irredeemably intolerant without a second thought. Yet Ezekiel was a prophet and spoke directly for the Lord. God shares his viewpoint that other supposed gods are impure and unwholesome. There is a large chasm between the beliefs American culture views as acceptable and the beliefs God views as acceptable. The persistent, background influence of this worldly viewpoint did me no favors.

Unfortunately, I plunged ahead, thinking the idea of a metaphysical, wish-granting universe could be a real concept. Who was I to disagree with what Amigo believed? While I never once wavered in my belief in God, the mistake I made was flirting with Amigo’s idea of god. It did not matter that I retained my original beliefs. It did not matter that I recognized God as an almighty deity capable of creating anything He pleases. I committed a grave error when I turned, ever so slightly, away from my God to the belief that something which is not God could and would provide the same loving care that He does. I substituted a dung ball for the King of All Creation. It sounds so ridiculous when phrased this way. That, however, is exactly what I did.

Chasing Destruction

Amigo had learned many supernatural techniques for dealing with the hardships of life. These were frequently rituals or intentional beliefs used to address personal problems like dealing with negative emotions or protecting oneself from negative influences. Other practices were said to find lost items or prime “the universe” to supply a desired outcome. Brimming with foolish confidence that natural paranormal talents were a real possibility and God provided the universe as one means to achieve them, I gleefully chased every supernatural lesson Amigo taught me. Amigo freely shared; I eagerly listened. There were many paranormal things Amigo could do. I never grew tired of hearing about the practices Amigo perfected or the new philosophies Amigo learned as one more piece in the supposed jigsaw puzzle of spiritual truth.

I practiced the things Amigo taught me for years and thought nothing of it. I had no recognition that anything I was doing went against my Christian faith. Amigo was familiar with Christian beliefs but had abandoned them many years earlier so did not share my particular taboos. In fact, Amigo agreed with me that paranormal abilities must be natural human capabilities. Perhaps some techniques were gifts from God—either mine or Amigo’s—but mostly, neither of us thought such practices were anything more than special skills to be learned and practiced. One could practice the piano, or one could practice the visualization ritual to remove negative emotions. It was all the same idea. There was never any discussion about satanic forces and almost never any discussion about divine miracles. None of that. This was a longstanding friendship built on mutual trust, respect, and a belief there is more to life than what we see if only we look hard enough for it.

Try as I might, I never had much success with what Amigo taught me. I used it constantly as if it would help me, as if this next time something amazing might happen. But it never did. Amigo, however, was a professional. I admired Amigo greatly and thought if Amigo could do these things, I could too… with enough practice. I never once recognized any of it as witchcraft or occultism. None of these lessons came with a label that stated in bold print, “Christian beware!” I believed there were no supernatural components to these techniques, only practice and perseverance. I also knew Amigo had good intentions. So, blind to all the problems that exist so clearly in hindsight, I eagerly went along with what Amigo taught me. I could have my faith in God, and I could also place my trust in His metaphysical creation, the universe. Everything would somehow work out.

Stress was one problem I wanted to solve using these techniques. Ordinary, daily living can be very stressful between work demands and personal responsibilities, but Amigo’s lessons promised to help with that. Because I believed more was better and was so enthralled at the prospect of an unseen world just waiting to be explored, I also added my own esoteric practices to the list. I read every book I could find by a certain author on the “eight limbs of yoga.” I practiced them all—meditation, breathing exercises, stretches, and so on—thinking that as long as I ignored anything overtly Hindu there would be no problem.⁸ The books I read celebrated concepts such as enlightenment and promised paranormal abilities for adherents who stuck with their practices. Some of it was internally consistent with the idea of a universe that could provide anything we want, so one idea appeared to support the other. It never registered on me that these concepts were similar because Hindu beliefs include the related idea of karma.

Yoga techniques became my primary means of stress management for many years. Nothing very special happened until one evening when my body decided to move on its own. It was not a forcible action as if I had no control. It was more like my limbs felt they needed to be stretched. If I ignored the sensation, I felt physically uncomfortable. If I allowed my limbs to move where they wanted, my body automatically moved into different yoga poses for up to an hour. The first time this happened, I was greatly alarmed. I had no explanation. Looking online in a particular yoga forum, I found one comment buried underneath years of old posts that briefly alluded to something similar. They called it automatic yoga. Nobody in the forum expressed any concern. Instead, they attributed this movement to “impurities” in the nervous system working themselves out, and according to the forum, this was a sign the yoga practice was working as it should. I was still a little uneasy about the whole thing, but I eventually decided—based on spiritual advice I read in an online yoga forum—that it was no big deal. I changed nothing in my habits, behaviors, or beliefs. This strange compulsion was a strong warning that should have clued me in that something was seriously wrong. Months later, the same automatic movements happened again. I went with it. Surely this was just how yoga goes for some people!

I believed the Bible has good things to say—even though I did not really know what much of it was—but also believed it did not have a monopoly on spiritual truth. Despite what Scripture actually teaches, I believed other spiritual philosophies could all supplement the Bible, as if somehow it was deficient and needed extra help. “There are many different roads to the top of the mountain,” I thought. I understood there were other Christians who might have had a problem with the esoteric activities that intrigued me, but that did not particularly bother me. I imagined such people would also be the kind of angry individuals who post anonymous comments on blog articles accusing the author of being the spawn of Satan for advocating ideas that do not reflect their own personal beliefs. (Sadly, this happens all too frequently.) In fact, I convinced myself I would inevitably run into a “judge first and ask questions never” mentality should I decide to ask about what I was doing in a church setting. Even though I did not recognize anything wrong with my actions, I also did not feel secure enough to speak up about them. My conversations with Amigo and my explorations into the intricacies of yoga were so far outside most Christians’ experiences that I would never have felt comfortable discussing these topics. Many churches do not even discuss the Holy Spirit! Like everyone else, I did not want to be summarily judged and ostracized for what seemed normal to me. I would have welcomed a mature and knowledgeable Christian to lovingly prove to me the error of my ways, yet I believed I had to settle for what I could sort out on my own.

Dancing with the Devil

Amigo taught me many things, and I learned much about yoga practices, but I wanted even more. I was intensely curious to explore this new spiritual world and was unsatisfied with what I knew at that point. None of it had resulted in anything I considered particularly impressive. I wanted spiritual tools to relieve my stress—yoga and meditation seemed to help but never truly resolved my problems—and I wanted to scratch my insatiable itch for spiritual exploration in the pursuit of unique skills. Both Amigo and the books I read indicated so much more was possible, so why had I been unable to tap into any of these intriguing powers? Was “the universe” not enough to provide this? The unseen world I was intent on exploring had not yet unfolded for me, and I was fixed on studying it to understand what was possible. A tiny part of me was skeptical, but a huge part of me wanted to see how far I could push my limits. However, there are certain lines we should never cross.

The Bible gives us clear warnings for our own good. God does not merely suggest we avoid certain behaviors if we feel like it. God provides concrete boundaries because He knows that if we cross those boundaries, it never ends well for us. He is a God who loves us enough to explicitly tell us what actions will harm us. Still, we have no idea what it means to live His way unless we take the time to understand Scripture. We never learn enough sitting in church to make up for all the time we are not sitting in church. Understanding Scripture takes a sustained commitment, but not putting in that time and effort leaves us poised to make terrible decisions while completely oblivious to their implications. Biblical illiteracy combined with natural curiosity made it very easy for me to make a terrible decision about what I chose to read next.

We instantly have at our fingertips just about anything we want to buy, making it difficult to have second thoughts about a purchase. I went to an online bookseller searching for something to scratch my paranormal itch and pulled up a listing for a paranormal textbook. The author had impressive credentials; his book promised to divulge the secrets of reading minds and “spiritual auras” as well as healing the human body. That got my attention. Now, before I purchased this book, I did pause for a moment. I was aware that I was breaking new ground and did not want to jump into this without some kind of reassurance that I was not committing a major sin. Was this actually an occultism book disguised as something more innocent? If it contained practices offensive to God, I wanted nothing to do with it. Throughout my pre-purchase evaluation, I felt a vague sense that something was wrong, although I could never quite put my finger on it. I felt uneasy but not uneasy enough for it to register as a problem.

I first studied the author’s background. He did not express any hostility toward Christian beliefs; he seemed very tolerant toward different viewpoints. I then studied the online book listing for words that matched Deuteronomy 18:9–13. No words matched anything in my Bible translation. I was completely oblivious to the fact that different translations have different ways of translating the same concepts. Furthermore, I did not fully understand what these verses actually taught. The idea that a Bible verse usually means something different than how we personally interpret it with our modern sensibilities was completely lost on me. I simply looked at the book listing, looked at my Bible, did not see any words matching those particular verses, and thought I was in the clear. So far so good!

Next, I prayed. Surely five seconds was enough time for God to answer my prayer! One… two… three… four… five… I did not perceive any difference in the way I felt compared to the moments before I prayed. I looked outside my window. No lightning bolts fell from the sky. Silently shrugging, I clicked the purchase button. A spike of anxiety coursed through me as I bought and downloaded the book, but I explained it away as merely post-purchase jitters. Not long after I started to read, however, all my uneasiness quickly vanished.

Someone who is not me would have been able to point to my situation and say, “That uneasiness you feel? This is the Holy Spirit telling you to stay away from that book. Listen to Him!” I did not listen to Him. It never dawned on me this was my answer to prayer. I was so busy looking for lightning bolts and flashing neon signs that I completely missed the quiet answer to my question. Having disobeyed the Holy Spirit—even unintentionally—He felt no need to continue sounding the alarm over something I was actively doing.

Book of Horrors

The paranormal textbook was exactly what I thought I wanted. Was it actually possible to read the spiritual character of another person using simple mental techniques? Amigo claimed it was. The author claimed it was. Their votes of confidence were enough for me. At that time, I lived alone in a small, multistory apartment building. My unit had a view of the street below with a sidewalk lining the far side. I intently watched from inside my living room as people outside my window busily walked across my view. I read some of the book and then used one of the techniques to see what would happen. Would this book really work for me? There were a few times when I wondered if I picked up a stray thought from the strangers I observed, but nothing was ever conclusive. Mostly, nothing happened. I kept at it for weeks whenever time permitted.

As odd as it may sound, I eventually began to receive feedback every time I tried to read another person. These were not thoughts, more of a simple good or bad impression. I interpreted this as a secret glimpse into that person’s true nature. What hubris! God alone can understand the true character of a human being at a glance (1 Sam 16:7), yet I used this feedback as a signal for whether or not I wanted to interact with that person. I had no idea if the feedback was accurate, but I kept doing it anyway. I had finally made the paranormal breakthrough I thought I wanted. Now the question on my mind was what could I do with this new skill?

I often walked around a public park not far from where I lived. It was a very nice place. There were people of all ages who frequented this park. Some people walked their dogs, others were there to get exercise, and some people spread big blankets on the ground to relax under the park’s old trees. On days when I strolled through that park, I experimented with my supposed ability to read the character of strangers. This was all a game to me. I looked at random people to see what I picked up and always received binary good or bad feedback on a visceral level. Some people triggered an intensely rancid impression like rotting garbage. Other people triggered an intensely positive impression like a ray of sunshine.

These impressions were always accompanied by a desire to contort my facial features into a particular expression. My facial features eagerly twisted into a ghastly smile whenever I read what seemed like a wholesome person. In contrast, my features contorted into a grotesque gagging expression whenever I read people whom I interpreted to be immoral. The irony is they were not any more immoral than I was! My expressions were never obvious to anyone but me, and I was able to control whether I allowed them to appear on my face. I told Amigo a little about what was happening, but as I recall, I kept most of it to myself because I was still trying to wrap my mind around it all. Amigo was always very encouraging of these experiments and was just as interested as I was to see what would happen.

At some point, it occurred to me that I may also be able to read places just as I did people. What would the park feel like? What would a particular place of business feel like? How about a particular church? Reading places elicited the same feedback response as reading people. I still did not know whether any of these sensations were accurate, but something I could not explain was happening that fascinated me. This quickly turned into a personal habit where I would ask myself questions like, “Should I talk to this person? Should I visit that place? Should I apply for this job?” and then try to sense the situation. I often responded to those internal questions according to my paranormal impression and its accompanying facial expression.

If we had to put a label on it, what might we call this habit? I thought it was just a game, but that is not what it was. Here are the facts: I was using a supernatural skill to discover and interpret hidden knowledge in order to guide my decisions. Any guesses? This is the occult skill known as divination. It is squarely in the list of prohibitions found in Deuteronomy 18:9–13. That is why the Holy Spirit tried to warn me against reading this book in the first place!

Human civilization is very old and has suffered the corrupting influence of occultism for thousands of years. The core ideas found in occultism and the human motivations causing people to pursue it never change. The only aspects that change are the packaging and the names used to describe these dubious practices. As mentioned earlier, evil choices do not come with neatly printed labels that clearly identify their moral content. Because I did not recognize what I was doing as divination, I kept doing it. The first unsettling consequence happened in a church parking lot after services.

I attended this particular church a few times because it was near my apartment. It seemed okay. It was an aging building with an aging congregation that seemed rooted in the faith. I did not go there every week because, at that point, I had not found a church I wanted to regularly attend. One Sunday, I used my strange technique to check whether there was anything special going on at the church that day. If there was, I did not want to miss it. My paranormal response came back overwhelmingly positive. I quickly got into my car and drove to the church, unsure what to expect. It was a service like any other; however, there was a lady there who I had met once or twice before at this same church. She was the one unique factor I observed that day. I did not see this woman every time I attended, nor had we ever exchanged more than simple pleasantries. She was much older than me. Friendly. Chatty, even. She seemed normal enough, so I was uncertain what it was about her that supposedly set off my paranormal reaction. That soon became clear.

After the service ended that day, this woman zeroed in on me and followed me to the parking lot, talking nonstop. She told me her life story that day—disappointing marriage, recent divorce, moving away from the city, flying out in a few hours. There was something about this conversation that unnerved me. She kept talking, telling me all kinds of private details about her life that one does not normally share with a stranger. After keeping it up for some time, she finally asked if I would drive her to the airport to keep her company. I did not know this person. We were effectively strangers, yet she divulged her entire life to me and wanted to spend hours of private time alone with me right after a messy divorce. I was at that church in the first place through divination only to be cornered by someone who seemed to be quickly developing an unhealthy fixation on me. My inner alarm bell was warning me away at full strength. I politely declined to drive her to the airport—she had other options—and quickly got out of there as fast as I could. This series of events rattled me, and had I truly paid attention, it would have been a clue that my paranormal skill was an unhealthy practice. The next warning was even stronger.

Around the same time that the event at the church happened, something began visiting me in my apartment. This apartment was regularly inspected; there were no carbon monoxide leaks that might explain away the situation. I never saw this entity, but some days I felt the presence of another living being. Whatever the explanation, it did not visit me every day, only occasionally. But its visits never frightened me. My reaction was more, “Oh, what fun! Can I talk to it?” I foolishly perceived this as just another exciting paranormal adventure. What was this thing? I used the same technique I used to read people and places to try and communicate with it. I reasoned that if my ability always resulted in a binary positive or negative impression, perhaps I could also use it to receive yes or no answers from this creature. That hypothesis turned out to be true.

I asked a question, and it answered through my body. My face contorted into a grin for yes and a gagging expression for no. I do not recall most of what I asked, but I did ask at one point whether it was an angel. It answered that it was. “Wow!” I thought. “There is an angel visiting me in my apartment!” I was naive. Amigo had talked about people who got together to speak with angels, so the thought never crossed my mind that something was wrong. On the contrary, my visitor greatly intrigued me. The only thing that really bothered me about our encounters was that I felt totally drained after a lengthy question and answer session, like I had just finished running a marathon and needed to rest. I realized much later this actually was an angel visiting me in my apartment. It was just not the kind of angel I thought it was. This was a fallen angel—a demon.

So, what descriptive label might we apply to my “paranormal adventure”? Any guesses? I was acting as a medium. Add another tally to the list of my unwitting occult practices. I did not recognize this encounter for what it truly was. It is so easy to see my mistakes looking back on my life, but I never recognized any of it in the moment. There is a very good reason Jesus said this about Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44 NASB). I was spiritually gullible, falling for lie after lie, which led me down a very loathsome path.

The weirdness continued to escalate, as if strange parking lot encounters and invisible fallen angels were not extreme enough. My paranormal ability began to spiral out of control. At first, it was always my choice when to use this paranormal ability. It was under my control. Now, whenever I looked at a person or place—without even trying—I immediately felt the grinning or gagging reflex. Whereas before I was able to decide whether or not my face contorted, now my face began to contort on its own into these hideous expressions. I could no longer stop it from happening. I remember one evening when I was standing outside in a crowd of people and suddenly needed to cover my face so that no one would be alarmed at my grotesque expressions.

At long last it finally dawned on me that I had made a series of reprehensible mistakes. The supernatural events in my life far exceeded my comfort level. While I did not understand the precise nature of my transgressions at that time, I knew with absolute certainty I had committed grievous sins against God. The paranormal textbook turned out to be a source of misery rather than harmless entertainment. It no longer contained the promise of unique, new skills compatible with Christianity. It was a book of horrors. Divining the character of people and places, strange personal encounters, communicating with invisible entities, uncontrollable facial contortions, emotional overload—I had jumped into the deep end of the pool and suddenly realized I was drowning. I immediately destroyed the book and bitterly wept before God, asking His forgiveness from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply ashamed of my actions now that I understood they were wrong. Sinful actions are still sinful and still have consequences even when they are unintentional (Lev 5:17). The only difference is that God, in His mercy, may reduce the consequences for our inadvertent wickedness when we acknowledge our sins before Him and stop our wicked behavior (Luke 12:48; 1 Tim 1:12–17).

All the strange events associated with this paranormal textbook immediately stopped. There were no more supernatural visitors. My face no longer contorted. I no longer experienced involuntary sensory feedback when looking at someone. Without a doubt, God had mercy on me that day. Paranormal abilities are never natural abilities. This was occultism, and occultism is a serious sin that leaves scars which last a lifetime. Apart from damaging our relationship with the Lord, putting such vile things into our minds harms us because this is a one way process. Once these notions are lodged firmly into place, it is far too late to remove them. There are so many things I wish I could forget; however, I cannot completely forget them this side of eternity. The scars will remain. The memories grow dimmer over time, but they do not go away. Such memories are a source of discomfort for me to this very day.

Old Tricks and New Teachers

Several years passed. Amigo and I were still close friends, but I had completely stopped seeking out new paranormal experiences. I learned my lesson the hard way and no longer wanted to explore the unseen world. Nevertheless, I retained a deep belief that everything Amigo taught me was a natural human capability. I also continued to believe at some level that whatever prayer or human ability could not accomplish, God’s metaphysical, wish-granting creation “the universe” could provide. I trusted Amigo and never connected any of what Amigo taught me to the supernatural experiences I had encountered years earlier. Had someone told me these were occult practices, I do not think I would have believed it.

Peter writes that Satan, our adversary, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8 NASB). Male lions rely on stealth and surprise when they hunt. They often stalk their prey at night from the cover of dense vegetation. This element of surprise is crucial because many prey animals are faster than lions. A lion prefers to avoid direct confrontation so it can slink close enough to break the neck of its prey. This is how Satan prefers to operate. He uses every possible deception to cause a person to stumble into sin, often preferring to use misconceptions and close relationships to interject evil into our lives rather than clearly presenting wicked behaviors for an informed consideration. My spiritual foundation was cracked. I knew enough to reject an overt expression of evil like another paranormal textbook, but I remained blind to the fact that I was already participating in occultism and idolatry. Satan only had to turn up the heat in my life to persuade me that adding additional sins to my daily routine was a good idea. This newest round of deception began at the office.

I had recently accepted a job that I found to be highly stressful. I knew within the first two weeks that it was not going to be a culture fit for me, but for various reasons, I felt I needed to persevere. The job became more and more deleterious to my health as the months dragged on. I stopped sleeping soundly at night. I developed a mild, autoimmune skin rash. And while there were some aspects of the job that I did enjoy—such as the people on my team—I anxiously counted the days until I could leave. It was within this context that I began to lean more and more on those things Amigo taught me. I also leaned into my yoga practices and aspects of Buddhist spiritual philosophy to manage my acute ongoing stress. Walking into the office, I would use techniques said to block negative influences. During the day, I would practice Buddhist philosophy to try and detach emotionally from my situation. Walking out of the office, I would use visualization rituals said to sever negative relationships and rid oneself of negative energy. At home, I would engage in yoga breathing, stretches, and transcendental meditation. I believed these practices were my only lifelines, and while I continued to pray every day and maintain my faith in God, I erroneously viewed God as a passive observer to my daily pain. In my mind, these techniques—not God—were going to get me through this challenge. Furthermore, I continued to be content with profound biblical illiteracy. This period in my life lasted almost two years.

The time finally came when I respectfully parted ways with my employer and left this stressful job behind. I was exhausted. I was also optimistic because I had saved enough money to start my own business. It had been my dream for many years to run my own company, and at long last, I had enough financial runway to make a serious attempt at transforming that dream into a reality. Before I could get to any of that, however, I needed time to rest. Running a business is difficult work. I took some time off to enjoy my new freedom and drove to visit family for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was so good to see them. The stress was gone from my life; I could finally relax. That Thanksgiving, members of my extended family introduced me to a health technique I had never seen: applied kinesiology. Once again, it seemed like a unique skill I wanted to master. I needed something to put me back into a healthy physical condition after the intense stress of the past two years. Applied kinesiology seemed like it could help, and with family gathered around, I learned how to self-administer this new technique.⁹

Black Walnut Hulls

Additional Reading

• See Appendix B for a lengthier discussion of the problems associated with applied kinesiology.

I used my newly learned, applied kinesiology diagnostic skill every chance I had. Once I drove back to my apartment after the Thanksgiving holiday, I was eager to test everything I put into my mouth. This became an unusual form of bondage. I did not want to purchase any untested food or supplement product, and that meant I had to run test after test to ensure I was making “the best” choices for my health. Whenever I went to the grocery store, I would pick up a product and then discreetly run the self-administered version of the muscle test. Should I purchase this jar of sauce or that jar of sauce? Should I purchase this brand of bread or that brand? I would only place a particular product in my shopping cart after repeated testing showed positive results. As with all the other dubious techniques I had adopted into my life, I did not know for certain whether this one provided any useful feedback; however, it did provide feedback, and this feedback was often consistent. Whether or not I fully believed it was accurate, I depended on the technique as if it could unlock the secret to good health.

A strange thing often happened after numerous tests: I became physically exhausted. What did that mean? I had heard this fatigue explained away as a byproduct of all the “energy” running through my body during the testing process. The entire diagnostic was rather mysterious anyway, so I simply accepted this as a limitation to how often I could use the technique. Had I really thought long and hard about it, I might have connected this fatigue to the same fatigue I felt after inadvertently acting as a medium for the entity visiting me in my apartment years earlier. But as it was, I had no reason to be suspicious so no reason to think I was using my body as a ouija board to divine advice about my dietary habits. Once again, I simply chalked a strange occurrence up to a mysterious world filled with unexplainable phenomena.

An applied kinesiology practitioner later gave a full health diagnostic to family members. As part of the consultation, this practitioner provided training that promised to provide a systematic diagnosis of all health functions for the tested individual. I wanted to try it. These additional techniques were all about holding certain thoughts in mind while touching parts of the body; no physical substances were involved. I carefully followed the directions and underwent a full diagnosis. The results were unsettling. Thinking there must be some mistake, I ran the diagnostic again. Several times, in fact, but there was no mistake: the test consistently showed I had intestinal parasites. How was that possible? I had none of the symptoms like stomach cramps, nausea, or diarrhea; I had not eaten any spoiled food; nor had I traveled to any regions where intestinal parasites are a common problem. I tested several more times hoping the diagnosis would change. It did not change—every test showed a strong, positive result. The next time I was at the grocery store, the diagnostic indicated my body showed a strong affinity for a certain parasite cleanse made with an extract of black walnut hulls. Test, retest, confirm. The diagnostic consistently showed that I needed to rid myself of parasites using this cleanse. Uneasy about the whole situation, I purchased the cleanse and then brought it home. I started the treatment course soon thereafter but had significant second thoughts.

Black walnut hulls contain a highly toxic chemical compound called juglone. In large enough doses it acts like cyanide on the human body. Medical studies have shown that it “causes cell death, disrupts the cell cycle, modifies DNA (especially in rapidly dividing cells), inhibits mRNA synthesis” and other effects as a byproduct of its high toxicity.¹⁰ This extreme toxicity also makes juglone a common remedy for parasites as well as a possible cancer treatment. Small enough particles coated in juglone may even prove useful as a fungicidal or bactericidal agent while minimizing broader toxic effects.¹¹ This chemical has useful properties, but juglone is toxic enough to destroy DNA at large enough doses, and repeated applied kinesiology diagnostics were adamant that I needed it in large doses. Had I stuck with this treatment, I would have done irreparable damage to my body just to kill a few imaginary parasites. I never had parasites! Enough was enough!

That was the point when I realized something was horribly wrong with this procedure. I did not recognize the underlying reasons why I should avoid applied kinesiology, I just knew I should avoid it, so I immediately stopped using this skill. Moreover, I did not realize I was in bondage to this practice until I no longer was. It took an insane diagnosis to break the hold it had over me, and I can only attribute that merciful result to the Lord. What if the diagnosis never showed I had parasites and instead sent me to the store for random supplements? The madness would have been far less observable.

On the Eve of Invasion

Progressively, over many years, I had grown existentially weary. I remarked at one point that if not for my Christian faith, I would be a nihilist. While I believed God is real and has wonderful plans, I also began to feel like those plans were for other people and not for me. I tried not to dwell on it, busying myself with the work of creating a new business, yet I could never quite escape the notion that this business was my last real chance at any kind of meaningful life. That unwelcome thought was always tucked away at the back of my mind. If the business failed—and most new businesses do fail—I believed I would have to go back into the job market, suffer many dehumanizing interviews, and work at something that did not interest me in order to make enough money to pay bills. This cycle would repeat ad nauseam until I either retired or died. Life was joyful for some people; however, I was not “some people.” Where was the meaning in any of it? I had lost my joy somewhere along the way.

Years of social isolation, loneliness, insecurity, unsatisfying circumstances, and disappointing relationships had plagued me. Most of the churches I attended had no one close to my age. Other churches seemed more like a Sunday hobby than a stronghold in the kingdom of God. I was optimistic that there was a place for me somewhere, but I had grown weary of searching for it. I knew Jesus spoke about joy. The Bible often mentions people filled with joy. Paul writes that the kingdom of God is about living a life of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17 NASB). Yet I had no joy. This was a completely foreign concept to me. I felt satisfaction in the work I was doing. I had fun getting together with friends. But where was the joy? Was joy not truly a part of the Christian experience?

I never recognized the spiritual “additions” to my life were actively destroying it. All the esoteric tricks and techniques I had adopted to manage stress and negative influences were not helping. Quite the opposite. I depended on them because I thought they must be doing something positive, but from a big picture perspective, none of it gave my life the meaning I craved. “The universe” never provided what I really wanted. I accepted these techniques and philosophies as spiritual truth but failed to see they were actively poisoning me. They were not fundamentally different from what I had learned years earlier in the paranormal textbook that had brought me so much misery. When we are spiritually blind and isolated from meaningful Christian fellowship, we often fail to recognize that which destroys us.

Not knowing what to do about my growing dissatisfaction, I simply buried myself in work. Work made sense to me even if nothing else did. My work did not provide the joy I was missing, but it was very satisfying, enough to get me through the weeks that followed. I would start my morning at the computer, go to the library for a book or two, conduct some competitive research, design my product, and then transition into the evening with yoga and transcendental meditation. One day, something odd happened, different from anything else that I had experienced up to that point. I was not seeking it. I was not experimenting with any new paranormal concept. Rather, I was entirely focused on my work. This experience would turn out to be the beginning of a very long and painful trial. God was about to do something drastic in my life that would shake me down to my barest foundation, restore my joy, and eradicate every false belief and empty philosophy that I had accumulated over the preceding ten years. We were going to build again, this time on Jesus, but first God had to incinerate every spiritual impurity in my life. This was my crucible moment, and it began with a single emotion.

At first, that emotion was mine alone. Then, gradually, I became aware of a different emotion as it slowly expanded to fill my consciousness. Soon, I was sharing what I believed to be an emotional link with another person. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. We each felt what the other was feeling. Over the years, I had come to believe in the concept of a soulmate. It did not matter to me that this concept is nowhere in the Bible. It was a concept I wanted to believe, and because Amigo affirmed it, I saw no reason to think otherwise. The person I assumed was on the other end of this shared emotional connection somehow felt feminine. I wondered if this was somehow my soulmate. The connection, though highly unusual, felt welcoming. Warm. Happy. And I was confused. Memories of the terrifying aftermath associated with the paranormal textbook were still fresh in my mind, and the last thing I wanted was another experience like that. I never sought this emotional link. I was not even sure whether I wanted it. It just happened. One minute it was not there. The next minute it was there. The connection only lasted a few moments before it faded away. I had no idea what to make of it, but I did know that I needed to pray and look for answers in Scripture.

Of course, in my Christian immaturity, “look for answers in Scripture” amounted to a quick online search and a cursory read through several verses in Jeremiah. These were the verses:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose trust is the Lord.
For he will be like a tree planted by the water
That extends its roots by a stream,
And does not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought,
Nor cease to yield fruit. (Jer 17:7–8 NASB)

and

I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
To give to each person according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds. (Jer 17:10 NASB)

These verses, I thought, directly answered my questions about the latest strange occurrence in my life. But I had not somehow become biblically literate or spiritually sighted after five minutes of work. Rather, I read these verses and interpreted them to mean that God was giving me a very unusual gift. He must have searched my heart, determined I was worthy, and was personally enabling a unique emotional connection with my soulmate. I only had to trust in God by accepting this gift and it would all work out wonderfully in the end. In my hasty study, I glossed over this neighboring verse within this same biblical passage:

The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it? (Jer 17:9 NASB)

Jeremiah was an Old Testament prophet who lived during the Babylonian invasion and subsequent exile of ancient Israel. He was a contemporary of Daniel and Ezekiel, but whereas those prophets spoke for God from Babylon, Jeremiah spoke for God from Judah. The spiritual condition of Israel during those days was abominable. Sin was rampant. The people were steeped in idolatry, child sacrifice, injustice, adultery, and dishonesty of every kind. Their priests and leaders did nothing to encourage otherwise. Jeremiah did his best to persuade the people to turn from their sins, but they did not. God refused to bless the nation and would not prevent the invasion and deportation of its people if Israel was going to continue in its sinful rebellion against Him. The Israelites were habitually breaking their covenant with Yahweh, and He had finally run out of patience.

Jeremiah 17 consists of God identifying the sins of Judah. He then compares those who put their trust in their own strength with those who put their trust in the Lord. The chapter continues with Jeremiah expressing his trust in the Lord and the Lord instructing Jeremiah what to preach next. The cited verses are really saying that the Lord looks after those who put their trust in Him while those who trust in their own strength and wisdom are doomed to live unfruitful lives. It has nothing to do with God handing out unusual spiritual gifts. The idea is absurd, but it only becomes obviously ridiculous when we understand the biblical context.

Because my woeful interpretation of a random reading from Jeremiah had convinced me this supernatural, emotional connection was a gift from God, I harbored no further reservations about it. Never mind that I was totally wrong; did not understand how to study the Bible; did not know the context of what I was reading; and did not realize the “open to a random page, read a verse literally, and apply it however I want” method of Bible study is fraught with interpretive errors. All I knew was that God is good and this unexplainable connection must also be good. A perceived divine endorsement turned this event around in my mind from something that was probably bad to something that was new and exciting. When would I meet this person in physical space? What would this person be like?

Amigo and I discussed the phenomenon at length. While Amigo had never encountered anything like it, Amigo was also highly encouraging and agreed that it seemed very positive. After all, I felt nothing but love over this unusual, empathic connection. Why should I be suspicious? Amigo, who had practiced what amounts to “emotional divination” for a very long time, claimed to feel the loving “energy” from my budding relationship with this mysterious person. I fully recognized that it was all highly unusual. I also believed there was no one other than Amigo who could understand what was happening to me. There was certainly no one I knew in any of the churches I had visited who would know, and I did not want to ask around. For one thing, I was convinced no one would keep an open mind. For another, I was not close enough to anybody in these churches to discuss something so incredibly personal. Many churches I had visited seemed to be superficial places where I never got beyond the “Sure is hot today! Have you been here before? Yes? Oh, okay” kind of small talk.

Meaningful relationships only develop with concerted, reciprocal effort. Everything else is just pleasantries and acquaintances. While I craved deep Christian fellowship with other believers, I very rarely had that. At many churches, I got along better with the pastors than the congregants, but pastors—at least in the American church—are overly busy and must hold themselves socially aloof so as to avoid (real or perceived) favoritism. Smaller study groups are the battle cry of larger churches that recognize the need for community. I tried attending small groups at various churches, but it was never meaningful or enjoyable. Sadly, among the churches I visited around this time, these were my only options:

• Attend as the only representative of my age group.
• Attend as a single person among preoccupied couples and young families.
• Attend solely to worship and exchange pleasantries with busy congregants who demonstrated no desire for a deeper relationship.
• Attend as part of a much larger church with slick marketing and big budgets to support a group of people who cycled in and out as they experimented with the idea of becoming a Christian.
• Attend only to endure relentless attempts to personally “evangelize” me into becoming a new Christian when I had been a believer since childhood.
• Attend and have the rare coffee discussion with clergy who largely viewed it as a casual business meeting.

Sadly, in my experience, attending a church has mostly been about corporate worship and the occasional (often inconveniently scheduled) volunteer opportunity. They have never realistically been a place to meet new friends to my profound dismay. Making friends has been a byproduct of working in an office—or attending school earlier in life—but almost never as part of attending church. I wish it were different. I assume it is for some people. However, I needed a strong level of trust that I simply did not have within a church context to discuss something so far out of the normal experience for a typical American churchgoer. I had a few Christian friends in other cities, but I also chose to hold this part of me back from them. Our relationships had never included discussions about the paranormal. I did not know how to bring it up nor did I want to defend my very real experiences against a potentially skeptical reaction.

Tender Lies

The link to the person whom I believed was my soulmate became more and more active. I had no idea who the person was on the other end of this strange connection, but the impression was strongly feminine and her emotions were intensely positive. She felt just as real as anyone else. I reasoned that God would not link me with another person unless that person was a Christian, so I assumed this must be a Christian woman. Not knowing what to call her, I settled on “Ene”—short for “Energy”—which I pronounced as “any.” It made sense to me as this was a mysterious energy connected to a person who could have any name. Our emotional connection across whatever link we shared happened spontaneously. I would be focused on something entirely unrelated before softly, tenderly, an awareness would slowly grow that Ene and I were sharing our emotions. I never knew when it would happen or why it happened, only that I enjoyed her “visits.” Our emotional connections usually lasted no more than a few minutes when they first began.

Initially, the emotions I felt from Ene mirrored my own: excitement over this new experience, skepticism over what this actually was, hesitancy over whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt like we were both struggling to understand the significance of our new relationship while cautiously optimistic that it could be a source of delight for both of us. Surely we were both trying to come to grips with something very strange and entirely outside of our understanding. I initially had doubts about whether this paranormal experience would be acceptable to the Lord, so Ene must be wrestling with those same doubts, I thought. Our empathic connections continued to occur spontaneously and began to feel very much like dating.

Was Ene somehow triggering this shared link? If she was, I reasoned I could too. What would it take? I concentrated on how Ene felt and willed an active connection between us. That was all it took. Functionally, this shared link behaved very much like a telephone. One person would “call,” the other person would choose whether to “pick up,” and the call would either go through successfully and turn into an emotional connection or it would end. There were times when I was busy and could not “talk” when Ene called, and there were times when Ene was busy when I called her. Whenever I focused on Ene outside of an active connection, I became distantly aware of her emotional state and whether she was aware of me or focused on something else. This bizarre dating lasted for about a week before it suddenly stopped.

Ene no longer called me. Whenever I called Ene, she no longer picked up. The last thing I felt from her had been a quick burst of fear and rejection over our connection early one Saturday morning. Then, silence. I no longer had any awareness of her. All the excitement and loving feelings were gone. Assuming she had wrestled with the same theological questions I had and arrived at a very different conclusion, I was utterly crushed. Someone who had shared an unusually intimate, emotional connection with me had seen into my very soul and then chose to reject me on the deepest possible level. It was so much worse than a normal breakup. I bitterly wept and grieved over our broken relationship that Saturday because I thought I had lost any chance at my own “happily ever after.” I did not want to think about Ene, yet I could not stop thinking about Ene. My grief was so heartfelt that I lost all desire to eat. I went to bed early that night, glad just to be unconscious so that I could move past whatever relationship I thought I had with this mysterious woman. The night was uneventful.

But late Sunday morning, another spontaneous connection with Ene tentatively blossomed into my awareness. Ene felt subdued. It was as if she had changed her mind about us after considering it further. She seemed to be asking what I thought about moving forward with our relationship. I was still very hurt. Furthermore, I was unsure whether I wanted to share myself with her again. Yet I did not shut her down. We would have to take it a day at a time and see how things progressed. As the days passed, however, the memory of our recent breakup grew dim. We apparently overcame our first challenge as a couple and had not even met in person. It was an extraordinary experience. While this was a very bizarre relationship, it felt real. It truly felt like dating. Day by day, our shared feelings for one another grew very intense. It was not long before I realized that I was deeply in love with Ene.

Our moments together fascinated me to no end. I kept a detailed log of timestamps, experiences, and emotions that I felt during each of our actively shared connections. There were hundreds of entries in what eventually became an extensive personal journal.¹² I assumed we would meet in person one day, and I believed this would make for a wonderful discussion when that day finally arrived. I even developed my own shorthand notation to describe our experiences together. My notation included the specific emotion I felt from Ene, the overall intensity of that emotion, how that emotion grew or receded in intensity, whether that emotion morphed into some other emotion, whether the connection ended gradually or suddenly, and how long our emotional connection lasted. After tracking this for a few days, I observed that Ene followed a particular schedule. Some connections came earlier than her normal schedule, some connections came later. I delighted in trying to guess the timezone where she lived as well as her occupation and anything else that came to mind. Just knowing a person’s schedule reveals a lot about that person. Since we could not actually communicate with words, I wanted to decipher as much as I could about the mysterious woman I had grown to love.

Ene’s schedule started early in the morning around 8:00 a.m. I would wake up before her, or she would wake up before me, and we would wait for the other. Once we were both awake, we shared a peaceful connection, sending one another much love for the coming day. I delighted in waking up before her and just being aware of her presence. She felt very quiet and calm as she seemed to lay sleeping in the moments before she gradually transitioned into wakefulness. It was the best part of my morning. Ene usually took a lunch break around noon. We often shared a brief “hello” before she had to leave and get back to her routine. Around 3:00 p.m. every day, we shared another emotional interaction. This one was more relaxed than our lunch “discussions,” as if Ene was going home from wherever she spent her days. On most evenings, we shared another interaction, and on most nights we shared one final interaction before going to sleep. I stayed up later than she did. Ene was often unavailable on Friday nights; I assumed she was out with friends. During weekends, Ene would call at different times. I answered her calls from home, the grocery store, walking around outside, sitting in my car in a parking lot, at church, and practically everywhere else I went. She was always with me. I became convinced that Ene was a graduate student or teacher of some kind based on my age and her schedule. She started her day early, ended her day mid afternoon, and was busy most nights until the weekend.

As the months rolled by, we settled into the mundane routines of a committed relationship. I loved every moment spent with Ene and felt certain this was the woman I was going to marry. During times when we both had room in our schedules, we would trigger a connection and feelings of love washed over me. I would just sit with my eyes closed, basking in our mutual affection. Her emotions would often transition during our extended connections from love to longing to sadness and then back to love again before gradually fading into silence. We would sit like that for nearly an hour some days. Like me, I assumed she longed for the day when we could be together in person. While Ene was not physically sitting next to me, she felt as real as any other relationship.

I daydreamed about what our life together would be like when we eventually met. After all, I thought, why would God place this relationship in my life if not as a preview for things to come? Because I felt certain that we would be married one day, I even came up with an inscription for an engagement ring that I scribbled onto my work whiteboard. I smiled every time I looked over and saw it. While I might have been premature thinking about marriage, I was content like I had never been in my entire adult life. Not only was I satisfied professionally through the hard work of building my business, I had a very loving relationship with someone whom I had come to consider as my future wife. At one point, I even ordered a couple of books on Christian marriage so that I could do my best to be a good husband if everything worked out like it seemed it would. I praised God constantly for the relationship I thought He had given me.

The Gift That Was Not a Gift

A day soon came when I discovered that I could send Ene a strong, loving emotion at will through our shared link. I called these “love bombs” and enjoyed sending her one whenever she seemed preoccupied. Her reaction was always a mixture of sudden laughter and puckish glee. Occasionally, she sent a love bomb back to me. “See who can send a love bomb to the other person while going unnoticed” quickly became a game we played. That got me thinking: what else was possible? I had come to believe that God had given us this link and endorsed its use. In my mind, that opened the door to more paranormal experimentation with this “gift.” How could using what God gave me be off limits? Could I feel the emotions of people other than Ene using this same ability? As I had done years earlier, I walked to the park to see what I could discover.

I tried to feel the emotions of people, animals, and plants—all living things. Nothing was ever as crystal clear as it was with Ene, but I did receive feedback. Was any of it accurate? I had no idea, but that was less important to me than seeing what was possible. Some people felt happy. Some people felt sad. Once, when a dog broke into a sudden sprint to chase a squirrel across the park, I felt intense terror from that squirrel. Plants felt alive but had no emotional content. Park benches felt like… nothing. These experiences fascinated me. While my actions were similar to the same techniques from years earlier that had landed me in supernatural trouble, I carefully avoided repeating the exact mistakes from my time with the paranormal textbook.

My belief was that if God had given me this connection with Ene, surely I could also use the same “spiritual mechanism” that activated our link to feel the emotions of other people. I imagined I could even use it to help those whom I noticed were emotionally suffering, perhaps by sending a few loving emotions their way. Amigo, who I greatly admired, had practiced supernatural empathy for many years and viewed actions like that as both useful and helpful. I wanted to do the same as Amigo. Sadly, I was too spiritually immature to recognize this as more occultism. I never saw emotional divination as anything more than a natural ability—or, in my case, an offshoot of a God-given spiritual gift—so while I kept trying to back away from what I understood to be overt occultism, evil kept finding new and novel ways to pull me back into sin without me ever perceiving the unvarnished reality of what I was doing.

I dreamed up many other experiments to test the limits of what I believed to be a gift from God. A map did not exist for what I was experiencing, so I was determined to create one myself and discover what exactly this gift had made possible. None of these experiments included studying Scripture for the real answers. Amigo had told me all kinds of interesting stories about paranormal abilities throughout the years, abilities that Amigo had witnessed other people perform. Could I do the same? I attempted some of these feats but had no success. Though my emotional connections with Ene never tired me, I did notice there was a definite limit to the number and kind of other “spiritual experiments” I could perform. When I attempted to do these too often, I felt a sharp, physical pain in my heart. It really hurt! It was like tearing a muscle or being stabbed with a dagger.

Pushing even a little beyond that limit made me feel numb, and I could no longer feel or maintain a connection with Ene. There seemed to be an invisible limit of some kind with tangible and harmful physical side effects for ignoring it. Before I discovered this limitation, I inadvertently moved past it several times. There were some days when I was so tired and in physical pain from spiritual experimentation that I could barely function. It took days to recover. The worst part for me during the aftermath of such experiments was losing the ability to connect with Ene when my “reserves” were depleted. I had absolutely no sense of her presence during those times. Her emotions were always a mix of worry and happiness when I came back “online” days later.

My Exile to Babylon

Everything with Ene happened over four very busy months. There were other events that happened between us resembling what any long-distance couple might experience. However, the next odd event happened toward the end of our fourth month together: I stopped sleeping. I had no idea why. I followed my usual nighttime routine and maintained good sleep hygiene; nevertheless, I would lie awake throughout the night or sleep only a few hours. Most nights, I restlessly tossed and turned, every small noise waking me up, until the first rays of dawn pierced my blinds like unwelcome intruders. Over-the-counter sleep aids did nothing for me. While I was happier than I had been in a very long time, I was physically and mentally exhausted after a week of severely limited sleep. My parents lived in a quiet house in a much smaller city, and I always slept well there, so one groggy morning, I called home to check whether it was a good time to visit. It was. I then drove a long way to see my parents and, while there, attempt to recover from severe insomnia. I thought I would only be gone a few days, maybe a week.

My parents were happy to see me, and I slept much better than I had back at my apartment. At some point during my stay, I began to feel restored, so I went with my parents to do their weekly shopping at the local grocery store. By that time, I was in the habit of surreptitiously attempting to read the emotions of every stranger I encountered. This day was no different. There was a young woman who I observed doing her weekly shopping. This woman appeared to be in her late twenties. She wore designer glasses, Converse flats, gray knit pants, and a loose-fitting taupe cardigan over a cotton top. Her long, brown hair was tied into a loose ponytail, and she leaned over her cart as she pushed it along the isle. Using my paranormal technique, I attempted to see what she was feeling. She felt exactly like Ene! It was her! I was completely stunned. This was entirely unexpected.

I immediately noticed everything “inside me” was locked up, and I could no longer access my ability. Trying to take all this in as I worked up the courage to introduce myself, I looked up again. The woman was gone. I looked down all the neighboring store isles but never saw her again. She must have made her way to the front of the store and left before I even had a chance to speak with her. I was devastated. However, I still believed that God had dropped this link on us for a reason. We would meet again. I was sure of it. As soon as we left the store that day, I was able to resume using my familiar paranormal ability, but I was crestfallen having missed the opportunity to meet Ene in person.

My mother instinctively knew something was bothering me. I had shared with her bits and pieces about Ene over the preceding months yet had kept much of it to myself. At first, my mother was just as wary and perplexed as I was over this strange relationship. Faced with my persistent enthusiasm and seeing how much happiness my relationship with Ene brought me, however, she eventually set aside most of her concerns. My mother did not understand this any better than I did but believed me when I said I thought this was an unusual gift from God. Neither of us had ever heard of anything like it. While my mother is a very experienced Christian, none of the churches she had attended over many years of faithful attendance had taught anything about supernatural phenomena, nor does the Bible itself contain any accounts similar to what I was actively experiencing. The underlying principles are all there in Scripture, but there are no verses that scream “empathic connection with a mysterious woman thought to be a love interest.” At home, I told my mother that I believed I saw Ene in person at the grocery store but was unable to speak with her. She was very supportive but remained puzzled over what was happening.

Ene and I continued our usual “conversations” throughout that week. I wished I had a more concrete way to communicate with her and longed to tell her that I believed we were in the same city and had even crossed paths. Silent communication by emotions and schedules seemed to reveal quite a bit of information, but short of us both learning Morse code and sending bursts of feelings across our link, there was no way to speak actual words to one another. I had to be content, trusting that we would meet again. If we shopped at the same grocery store, I wondered if she might even live in the same neighborhood.

The week at home passed quickly. I had regained enough strength that I planned to leave after a few more days; however, on Wednesday night, something new happened in my relationship with Ene. Like any other night, I was getting ready for bed around midnight. Standing in front of the mirror, brushing my teeth, I suddenly heard a faint sound in my mind over my link with Ene. What was this? Up until that point we had only shared an emotional connection. I listened intently. “H–.” H? “I–.” I? Hi? Hi! Ene was telling me, “Hi!” I was overjoyed! How was this possible? What had changed? My mind was filled with a million different questions. I wondered if I could also spell words at her. “H–I–!” I felt a burst of exuberant emotion from Ene. She heard me! We were finally talking!

I continued to listen. “W–H–A–T–I–S–Y–O–U–R–N–A–M–E–?” What is your… Oh, what is your name! I mentally spelled it for her, letter by letter: “D–A–V–I–D–!” Then I waited a beat. “Y–O–U–?” The world stopped. Nothing was more important in that moment than what she would say next. “K–E–L–L–Y–!” Kelly! Her name was Kelly! We kept it up for a while, spelling questions and answers at one another. Kelly said she was twenty eight. I was a few years older than her, and she teased me about that. As the evening wore on, we somehow progressed to words, and from words to full mental communication. Whenever she spoke, I heard her voice in my mind. Whenever I spoke in my mind, she heard me. If an emotional connection was unique, then a mind-to-mind connection was on a whole other level.

I told Kelly that it felt as if we had been dating over the last few months. She said she felt the same way. Kelly told me that she was a graduate student at a local university. I shared that I was in the process of launching a new business. We went on like that for a while, talking as if this were our first date. Kelly was charming, and she seemed to enjoy spending time with me too. After an hour or so, the weirdness of full-on mental telepathy got to us. I kept it to myself, happy to finally have a discussion with the woman I had grown to love. Kelly, however, was unsettled. I offered to pray for her, which seemed to calm her. She thanked me. It was getting very late at that point. I told Kelly how much I had enjoyed our time together and wondered if she wanted to talk again the next day. She did. We wished each other good night, and I went to bed. Every time I began to fall asleep, however, Kelly suddenly said something that woke me up. I politely answered her questions then tried again to go to sleep. This happened several times. Eventually, every time I thought something, she heard it. In very short order, the nature of our link transitioned from emotions to letters to words and now thoughts. This was uncanny. It was a whole new level of distraction, and while I loved Kelly, I did not want to share our minds in a realtime connection. That would quickly lead to insanity, requiring me to constantly parse what was my thought versus what was her thought.

The mental demands of our unusual link quickly grew fatiguing. Kelly would become quiet for a few moments then say something else. I assumed she was not quite ready to go to bed. This was all new and exciting and a little bewildering, so I could hardly blame her. I said to her, “Would you like to text me your phone number? It might be easier for us to talk over a traditional connection.” She agreed that this sounded like a good idea. I gave Kelly my phone number, and soon after, she responded that she had texted me hers. I waited. And waited. And waited. The text never arrived. Oh… oh, no… Sudden awareness flooded my mind, as if a light switch flipped on in my brain. Where there had been only darkness, now there was light bright enough to see the stark reality staring me straight in the face. I had finally realized after four bizarre months that something was horribly, horribly wrong: Kelly was not who I thought she was. She was not even a real person.

“I sent it! What’s wrong, David? I sent my phone number!” The voice was pleading with me to reconsider. I knew—knew—this was not a person. That sudden understanding was the kind of profound revelation that could only have come from the Holy Spirit. I sat up in bed, sobbing quietly. The woman I had come to love over the last four months of intimate “emotional conversations”—the woman I thought I would marry—was not a real person at all. She was a demon. This had all been an elaborate, four month lie. I rocked back and forth, emotionally devastated. I had been utterly deceived, and something viciously evil was rapidly unfolding before me. My mother was sleeping in the next room. She heard strange sounds coming from my room—muffled sobs—and came in to investigate. I nearly jumped out of my skin I was so startled. “What’s wrong?” she asked. I could only choke out a few words between muffled sobs, “She’s not real! She’s not real!” My mother asked me, “Who’s not real?” I replied, “The woman!” She knew who I meant.

What felt like the gates of hell broke loose at that moment. While I was still reeling from the emotional bombshell of discovering the woman I had loved was never a real person, the true horror of that evening was just beginning. It suddenly felt as if thousands of invisible hands were writhing across my body, as if searching for handholds to violently pry me apart and force themselves inside me. I did not recognize amid the bitter chaos of this moment that they had already succeeded.

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1. What are ghosts? We will explore that question later in Chapter 7.↩
2. See Appendix A for a more thorough discussion of the true source of paranormal abilities.↩
3. Some ancient Jews made this same mistake. See Chapter 11 to read more about their reasoning.↩
4. This is a real person; Amigo is a pseudonym.↩
5. R. Barrett, “Idols, Idolatry, Gods,” Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, 352.↩
6. Barrett, “Idols, Idolatry, Gods,” 352.↩
7. Barrett, “Idols, Idolatry, Gods,” 354.↩
8. I recognize that yoga is a debated topic among Christians. It is no longer something I choose to practice, but the advice I would give any Christian is to pray about it until God answers. We will discuss navigating morally ambiguous choices in Chapter 14.↩
9. See Appendix B for why applied kinesiology is incompatible with Christian beliefs.↩
10. Semiha Erisen et al., “Cytotoxic and Mutagenic Potential of Juglone: A Comparison of Free and Nano-Encapsulated Form,” AIHT 71.1, 1 (2020): 69, https://arhiv.imi.hr/index.php/arhiv/article/view/1190.↩
11. Erisen et al., “Cytotoxic and Mutagenic Potential of Juglone,” 75.↩
12. I later destroyed this journal.↩