Proximity To The Occult Brings With It Anguish, Bad 'Luck,' And Actual Spirits

By Michael H. Brown

When we brush up against evil, it leaves a taint. This is especially true of the occult -- whether a dabbling with mediums, astrology, fortune telling, pendants, New Age, psychic phenomena, or false visionaries. Real spirits hover over those who are involved with what the Bible calls witchcraft.

It's not something to trifle with. Case in point: movies. Films based on the dark side often carry a dark spirit. Take a look at what happened behind the scenes of the Exorcist movies. Recent news accounts have accented the strange happenings on the sets of those films. Spooky apparitions were reported. Buildings spontaneously combusted. People succumbed in mysterious fashion. During the most recent Exorcist movie, the director quit and then died unexpectedly during a routine back operation. One of the stars, Liam Neeson, also dropped out. The new director was fired. The third director, Renny Harlin, was struck by a car while on location in Rome (yes, Rome) and hospitalized with a broken leg.

The same thing has happened during the filming of other movies with a preternatural theme. Most recently, the cameraman in the Blair Witch Project died a shocking death in a plane crash. Accidents can be an indicator of evil. Manifestations even occurred during the shooting of Close Encounters. The director, Steven Spielberg, reported "poltergeist" phenomena in the crew's hotel rooms. It was a movie with certain New Age innuendos.

When there is the blatant use of the occult, the examples become extreme. Nations that harbor occult religions also harbor bizarre outbreaks. In India are periodic, frenzied accounts of "monkey" men and other creatures, with entire villages terrified. Hysteria? Or a manifestation? Such circumstances also haunt schoolgirls in voodoo-ridden regions of Africa -- regions where schools have been closed because students claim they have been cursed by rituals and are seeing animal-like apparitions. In Limpopo, South Africa, a woman has been plagued by a hail of stones that follow her wherever she goes. "She believes a Zimbabwean trader has cast an evil spell on her," one news account explained.

The culture of  witch doctors and curses has spawned many strange events -- from an entire soccer team being struck by lightning to "haunted" schools in Kenya and neighboring countries. In Nigeria police recently arrested thirty witch doctors in a raid on occult shrines where over fifty decomposing bodies and twenty human skulls were found. In Haiti it's as if the entire nation is afflicted. Or take Namibia, where the Council of Churches has prayed to chase away demons causing strange fires. The same has occurred in Sicily.

Down in Florida, it's intriguing how strange events seem to happen around a spiritualistic hamlet near a place called Deland. There are similar events in and around places like New Orleans, Savannah, and San Francisco.  An occult connection?

These are extreme manifestations, but they point up the dangers attendant to such involvement, which brings actual demons with it. When we touch the occult, or are proximate to it, it touches us -- sometimes for years. Confession and the Eucharist are one antidote, and must be done with a fervent, sincere renunciation of all such past practices (lest we be affected without even knowing it).

Anxiety. Depression. Division. Even suicidal tendencies (as at Columbine).

Show me a stubborn problem, especially a difficult emotional problem, and there is often a connection to dabbling in (or reading) something the afflicted person should not have been dabbling with. Do you have hidden little occult taints? Do you or did you have some involvement? And can you spot the residue?

If so, it's time to cleanse -- and that comes only with the cleansing Blood of Jesus.

Sept 2004