The Ghosts of SMM

This morning my server told me that she saw a ghost in the nave while we were celebrating Mass. She said that it was a gray haired man that appeared while the first lesson was being read. I asked whether it could have simply been someone wandering into the church during the service who then left, but she was certain that it was an actual ghost. I did not notice the man, nor did I hear anything (and I'm very attuned to hear people creak and moan across our old pine wood floor). So who knows.

There is, in fact, a famous ghost at St Mary Magdalene's known as "The Gray Lady." My server, the one who saw the old man in the nave, told me that she saw the Gray Lady once a few years ago while dusting torches in the side chapel. Willis Noble, the former director of music here, also told me when I first started about his run in with the Gray Lady. He was practicing the organ late at night and saw the specter glide noiselessly down the South Aisle and disappear. Ever since then he was reluctant to practice at night.

I must say that I've been here many late nights, and though I've occasionally felt as though I wasn't alone, I've never seen anything myself.

Strange to me that the subject of ghosts would suddenly be coming up--Hallie told me that she saw a ghost at Rob Castle's cottage a few weeks ago. She was coming out of the bathroom and swung open the door right into and through a ghostly figure of a man who then disappeared.

It might be easy to dismiss such stories if it weren't for the shear number and credibility of the people that have told them to me over the years. I even had a very no-nonsense theology professor tell me that he didn't believe in ghosts until a poltergeist haunted his family's house for a few months. He said that all you had to do was mention the idea of moving while in the house and a bookshelf would topple, glasses slide off table tops, etc. It was so violent that he felt in danger a few times.

I once asked a priest (Dwight Neglia, in fact, whom some of you from NJ might know) about why more churches weren't haunted. He replied immediately, "I don't think the Holy Spirit would allow it." I was floored. First, that he seemed to be admitting the existence of ghosts and second that he had a theological explanation for how they fit into the church.

My own theory is that whatever we mean when we say "ghost" is a real phenomenon: some kind of psychic echo of powerful events, emotions, or persons. But ghosts, even destructive poltergeists, don't have much real power, spiritual or otherwise, and even most of that is only theirs because we give it to them.

And yet my own experience contradicts my theory. I once lived in a haunted rectory (back on Block Island). I tried to exorcise the spirit(s) myself, but my house blessing/smudging didn't work. All Donatism aside, the spiritual state of the exorcist does seem to matter in this sort of prayer. I'm reminded of Matthew 17:14-21 // Mark 9:14-29 // Luke 9:37-43a. That's the story of the (epileptic?) boy whom the disciples could not heal. Jesus managed the task (with a great show in Mark's version) and the disciples wonder why they could not manage the healing themselves. In Matthew and Luke it's because they have insufficient faith. In Mark's version it's because "This kind can come out only through prayer" (9:29b). But even in Mark's version faith has a prominent role in the healing. This is the origin of the famous line, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24b).

So was my faith insufficient to exorcise the Rectory on Block Island? I'm not sure. Could be that I simply don't have enough ju-ju built up yet. Or it could simply not be my charism to have. Hard to know. Not the sort of thing I'm planning to explore in great depths unless in thrusts itself upon me again (as it did when I lived in that Rectory).

Sigh. I will keep my eyes open for any SMM ghosts...

-t