I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (21 page)

The lockdown hangover cure is more than just carrying a crystal in your pocket, saying a prayer, or burning some sage. Those types of cures can help a little, but they’re more mental than anything—placebos, really. The only real way to flush out a lockdown hangover is to get home and work it out. I like to go to Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas and let nature cleanse me. It’s a spiritual place that was once home to the Paiute Indians, and I feel that being there rids me of any negative crap I bring home. I don’t really do anything out there; I just stare off into the distance and ask Mother Nature to help me out. It keeps me from going insane sometimes. That and my dog, Gracie.

Gracie has always been there for me, and I’m lucky to have her. I occasionally do work for the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), and one day I went to a shelter and one of the workers said to me, “I think you need to meet somebody.” Suddenly this dog ran toward me from about 40 feet away and gave me the biggest hug ever, like we were old friends and she was glad to see me after a long separation. I immediately felt this energy and power, like she was there for a reason. She’s a pure soul, and I really believe that Gracie was sent to me by a higher power to help get me through tough times. Between her, the canyons, and Mother Nature, the lockdown hangovers don’t stand a chance.

THEY STILL SUCK, BUT I ALWAYS
FIND A WAY TO BEAT THEM.

It’s a state of mind.

I got a question on Twitter one day: “What does it feel like after a possession?” The short answer is that I feel confused. It might be a horrible analogy, but the best thing I can compare it to is being drugged. Being possessed is like being out of control and not wanting to be. I would compare it to coming out of anesthesia (see chapter 19, “Overland Hotel,” on my nasal surgery for the painful details of that ride), but it’s not quite the same.

A possession is unexpected. You lose control of your body, which really sucks. You fight it, but no matter how badly you want the evil spirit gone, it persists until it’s ready to leave on its own or is forced out by an exorcism. You want to regain your consciousness and retake control of your body, mind, and feelings because, trust me, you’re not the one calling the shots in those situations. You know that something bad has entered your system, and while it’s rooting around in your house, the things you see with your eyes are foreign to you. The world you know (or thought you knew) looks and feels totally different. You don’t recognize people. Your personality is no longer yours. The most noticeable part is that others who know you look at you and know that it isn’t you. Everyone stares and asks if you’re okay, like you’re having a serious freak medical problem.

My worst possessions to date occurred at Poveglia Island in Italy and my return to Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Kentucky. At both locations I encountered something strong that got in and took over my body and mind and took a long time to get rid of. They were both painful experiences, but what I felt invade my soul at the Demon House that I own in Indiana was frightfully powerful (see chapter 3 for more on that). I am not keen on the idea of it happening again. That place is evil, and I will have to take massive precautions before I return.

A possession feels like you’re driving down the road with your family and someone tries to grab the wheel and steer you into a tree and kill everyone. But they’re using your hands and you can’t understand what’s happening. You feel like a puppet of the devil, and when the demon leaves and you regain control of yourself, you feel very strange.

You also feel confused and ask yourself a lot of questions.
Why did it happen to me and no one else? What did the demon want? Did it cause permanent damage? Am I going to hell now? How do I make sure I’m clean? How do I keep it from happening again?
All these thoughts fly around in your head, and it takes some people a long time to clear them away and rediscover who they are. A possession can really shake your faith and make you doubt yourself.

The body’s reaction to a possession is indescribable. Some people don’t remember anything about the experience; there are moments I don’t recall even when I see them replayed on film. That’s truly surreal and scary. At other times I was aware of what was going on, but I was just a passenger on a vehicle I couldn’t control. I was outside my body watching the events go down, and there was nothing I could do about it but fight to get my body back. Regaining control is a little like being stuck in a nightmare and fighting your way out of it to wake up. It’s the definition of weird.

After my possession at Bobby Mackey’s, the residual effects stayed with me for months, but at the exact moment I felt the demon leave my body, there was instant relief, and I just wanted to sleep. I was a puppet, and the puppeteer had cut the strings. My energy sapped, my legs gave out, and I nearly collapsed.

Is there a sick part of me that enjoys it? Yes. Because when you’re possessed, time stands still. Nothing matters. You don’t think about your problems or your pain or the world you’re used to. All the things that make me who I am are gone. That release of self and seeing the world through different filters is a bit of a rush. In no way am I saying that a possession is fun, and I spend every minute of it trying to break free, but my mind doesn’t work like everyone else’s. I’ve explored the worst holes on Earth and seem to find beauty and wonder in walking paths that most people disregard as disgusting. Spirits have opened my mind, like a musician with a muse that helps him write better music. They’ve made me a better investigator by repeatedly exposing me to death and the afterlife.

Have you ever had a dream where you did something very bad but secretly enjoyed it a little? I mean a vivid dream in which you are conscious of this bad thing you’re doing, and when you wake up you get a little thrill from the bad thing you did. You shake it off and think,
Oh my God. Why did I just enjoy that a little?
When I was possessed, everything in me was bad, but I didn’t really care. A part of me even liked it, but that part wasn’t me. You don’t accept it, but a part of you wants to, and reconciling those two sides is tough.

During a possession, I have one singular goal: to not be possessed anymore. Maybe what I secretly enjoy, then, is the fight. The struggle against dark forces reinforces my belief that good can prevail in the end. Maybe I like knowing that I truly can make contact with the other side—that even though it’s a dark entity trying to take over, at least it chose me, and I’m still bridging the divide between this world and the next.

I can sit in a chair all day and revisit places I’ve already been and be entertained by the spirits that are still there and call to me. Unlike the guy in the Dos Equis commercials, I’m not the most interesting man in the world, but I feel that I live in a more interesting place than most. It’s not made up only of material things and present-day society. Money, women, houses, cars…those aren’t the things I live for. The more places I investigate, the more spirits I come in contact with, and the more possessions I endure, the more I can just sit and reflect on those experiences and ask myself billions of questions about life and death and how it all works.

Going through a possession doesn’t mean that you’re screwed for life. The boy on whom
The Exorcist
was based went on to lead a successful life long after the demon was cast out of him. Dr. William Bradshaw, one of the most successful and knowledgeable demonologists in the world, believes that demons choose their victims at an early age. They prefer people with great potential who will have an impact on the world, but why? Why do they choose to possess people who are gifted or are destined to do something great? And does this mean that our fate is determined before we’re even born? Have great people been marked from birth? Is there really no free will, and are those who say that God has a plan for everyone correct? Can you see how a seemingly insignificant thing like a possession can lead me to ask the biggest questions in the universe?

Sometimes I feel that a possession can do a person good. While it’s hell to go through (literally), the people who experience a possession go on to live great lives with no recollection of the event. Maybe it makes them stronger in the end, like any traumatic event can make a person more resilient. No one knows what demons are. No one has been able to study or dissect one. I’m not taking the side of demons—I do think they’re evil—but I’m not comfortable making blanket statements about something so difficult to study. Demons make you feel evil, make you want to do violent things, and make you say horrible things. They are nasty and can cause you harm.

But when a demon possesses you, does it really do damage to your body, or does it actually help it? Can a dose of supernatural energy that makes you levitate, speak in Latin, or have superhuman strength make you a better person in the long run? Think about it—a godlike power is entering your body and giving you its power. When it leaves, what does it leave behind? You won’t know what effects it had until years later. Does a spirit entering your body energize your organs or cells? Does it prevent disease? Do demons get diseased? Do they die?

SO MANY QUESTIONS AND SO FEW ANSWERS.

What you don’t know can hurt you.

When we came up with the concept to do a live paranormal investigation at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum on Halloween night, there were a ton of obstacles for us to overcome. How could we examine evidence quickly and thoroughly on the spot? How could we broadcast a live event without the equipment and people getting in the way (because a live event would certainly involve a larger crew)? Could we really sustain a seven-hour event? Was there any place for Aaron to eat in Weston, West Virginia? How many times would Aaron fart on live TV? How would I edit that out? A lot of the variables that are under my control in a regular lockdown would be uncontrollable in a live event, so it was going to take some creative thinking to pull it off.

I saw this as a challenge and took it on as a mission, but my biggest worry was getting a migraine. At the time I was suffering from massive migraines that would last for one to two days and would be triggered by any number of crazy things. A migraine would really slow me down, so I was worried that one would kick in at the exact wrong moment. Four days before the event, we arrived in Weston to get ready for the show, and I remember worrying every day: When will the migraine kick in? At the time they were so bad that I knew I wouldn’t be myself if I got one. I wouldn’t be able to think clearly and talk right. This was a seven-hour live event with millions of people watching, and I had to not just lead it, but make it meaningful and memorable. Doing that would be impossible with a migraine, so the pressure to avoid one was absolutely massive.

We did research and walk-throughs and set up a ton of equipment—I think we had forty remote camera operators and six production trucks. It was like NASA, and I was Snake Pliskin in
Escape from New York.
The pressure was on, and I knew that if I got a migraine, I would be in a fog and wouldn’t be able to speak or work. I wouldn’t be myself. I live in Vegas and see people do live shows on the Strip every night, and I think they must be in perfect health to perform so often.

During the investigation I wore an earpiece the whole time, with our award-winning producer Bruce Kennedy on the other end. Bruce is amazing to work with, and he kept me on a strict time line by telling me when to wrap up a particular segment, when to go to commercial, when to go to the front door of the asylum to bring in new guests, when to go to Dave at the nerve center to talk about new evidence, when any problems arose, etc. All this while leading a live paranormal investigation and maintaining our credibility. I’d never done live TV before, so to jump into it for the first time with a seven-hour show, with several more hours of interviews afterward, was a huge accomplishment for me, Nick, Aaron, the production staff, and everyone else involved.