Cherry Cake Haunting

Cherry Cake Haunting
By T. Stokes

I am often asked what is the most extraordinary happening I experienced in 40 years as an exorcist and looking back over my diaries, the main thing that stands out is the changes in the fashion in exorcisms themselves.

For instance back then the 2 main experts had very different working methods, Dom. Robert Petit-Pierre would simply touch an afflicted persons head while asking for Gods assistance, and prayed with them for release. This very holy monk had a simple but effective system which seemed to work for him.

While the famous Rev. Christopher Neil-Smith who accomplished between 2 and 3 thousand exorcisms, had a technique for drawing out and challenging the entities, and fight him they often would.

I remember watching him in a little Essex church on a bitter winter’s day,
put his hands on a woman’s head and a minute later he would be struggling and running in sweat. Yet parapsychologists are divided over statistically the percentage of necessary exorcisms, and the percentages of successful releases, they claim that only 20% contain the ingredients to claim success, while church ratios claim that only 30 % are successful with one shot.

Nowadays when everyone you meet is some sort of psychic expert, there are many different varieties of technique, and many churchmen seem quite ignorant, others insist on obtaining preliminary opinions from social workers and psychiatrists. I have seen some social workers statements, and it really is just not their province of expertise.

There was a particular case back in the seventies, when a woman aged 20
contacted me in some distress and demanded help, she had been told by a
social worker that she should be locked away for psychiatric help for where she lived in London’s Hackney Rd. She came and said she was being haunted by the spirit of a long haired old man, who would cause the electrics to cut out, move her stuff at night and just really frighten her witless.

On going to see where she lived, I always stop across the road and take in
as many details as possible before entering, and I had evolved a useful
technique of hanging around and looking suspicious, this always brings at
least one person to their window to peep out at you, and sure enough I had an old grey haired lady watching me through the nets. This is a handy way to know who knows about what.

The front door had marks in the paint where several doorbells had been
removed. The house was shabby, and when I asked to see the kitchen, it was obviously a student H.M.O (House in Multiple Occupation) with all the usual signs, washing up piled high in the sink, the drinking glasses had names of the various pubs in the locality, and a road sign hung above the window. Other youngsters in the house seemed mainly to be the usual disturbed pot smokers, lager drinkers and football addicts.

Believe me, however untidy your kids are at home in student accommodation they are 10 times worse, the electrics looked almost dangerous, and suspiciously, the only recently decorated room was the one occupied by the young woman.

On a hunch I went to the window and saw that the original Victorian glass, with the imperfections and ripples had been renewed, so scraping the wooden frame paint with my door-key, found that underneath were signs of a fire.

The story of a long haired old man haunting the girl did not sit with what I had at all, and I wondered when seeing her belongings if this was a case of multiple personalities that really can be the bane of spiritual researchers and paranormalists alike.

So sitting quietly in the room and opening up my senses I saw the shade of a guitar and roller skates against a wall and smelt burning, and that was all I could pick up. So going to see the grey haired old lady who had seen me through the net curtains, I said I was a social worker, and rarely tell people what I do during enquiries.

So over a cup of tea and a delicious slice of home made cherry cake, I asked about the young people in the house, she quickly told me about the day of the fire, and the long haired lad who would wave to her at her window as he roller skated to college in his bell bottomed trousers with his guitar on his back, dying in the fire, and how the fireman were the first people she spoke to in ages.

She then took from an old leather suitcase from under her bed a load
of old newspapers, where she had kept the cuttings of the tragedy.
The newspapers said the fire had started in the T.V set, and the lad had
died of smoke inhalation in a small room fire. Thanking my new friend, and I felt sad and guilty about her loneliness, I checked her story with the regular postman, who remembered the fire well.

Back at the house, to jump start things as time was short, I asked the girl
to sit with me and hold hands, on asking for the troubled spirit of the
deceased to come to us, the shadow of a very lost young man with shoulder length hair told us he had played his guitar and lit some joss sticks and put one of those candles in a metal container on the
T V set, and as it burnt down the heat meant it dropped through the plastic case and into the set and set the wires alight, which went to the curtains, and student paperwork.

The spirit did not mean to frighten the girl but wondered why she was in his room? It is usually the case that when a spirit is asked to leave it does, there was no way this boy would harm anyone. The flashing electrical phenomena was easily explained by the poor D.I.Y. installations.

The girl slept a lot better in the room after this was explained to her, and in exchange I asked her to occasionally pay a visit to the lonely old lady who made the best cherry cake in town. The best exorcisms, are like this one, are when none is needed at all.

T Stokes

This article is kindly provided by T Stokes - Lecturer in Paranormal Studies - and remains the property of the author.

T.Stokes in an English lecturer in paranormal studies and a world wide known consultant palmist. He is available for palm readings by post or email: palmist@fsmail.net