Post Exorcism/Release
After the exorcism, channeling became a way of life for Brittany. The first week or so afterward, she channeled five or six times a day. For several days I’d wake her up in the morning to discover she displayed the characteristics of and sounded like someone else. Often the new entity seemed disoriented and confused as to where they were or why they had come to that place. After realizing Brittany had awoken as someone else, I would comfort her and hold the entity. They were usually terrified to be in a place they were totally unfamiliar with. Basing my approach on ways I had seen Laurel react to the disembodied entities possessing my daughter, I would assure the new arrival that I loved it. I would ask who it was, and sometimes engage in brief conversations. After a few minutes, it would leave and Britt would return and go downstairs to eat breakfast.
One never knew when these channeling incidents would occur. There was usually little or no warning. She’d be having a conversation with you, maybe get a bit glassy-eyed for a brief moment, and then roll her head to one side as if she were passing out. Then bam, she was someone else. I always hoped and prayed that she’d be sitting down whenever the channeling would begin, because if she was standing when the trance state took over, down she’d go. If I wasn’t standing right next to her, she’d invariably slump down, plopping to the ground. Mima wasn’t strong enough to hold her up, so during that period I really felt like I had to be with Brittany at all times.
The intensive channeling lasted for about two months. It happened in every room of the house and on a number of occasions when we were in the car. It almost never occurred while out in public—with the exception of Mima’s birthday party at a restaurant, which I’ll get to later.
I was very grateful during this time that I was able to stay at home with Brittany. Her mother had to work full time, so there was no way Britt could have stayed at her mother’s house while these channeling episodes were going on.
The medical professionals at the juvenile psych ward we’d dealt with said that some of the tests they ran on Brittany indicated she apparently had long-standing and deep-seated emotional conflicts with her mother, and she had expressed a desire to return home with me. We’d been through her turning her back on one parent in favor of the other before, and we’d go through it again.
Britt’s and Sheila’s emotional conflicts were probably no worse than in many mother-daughter relationships. But after Britt’s experiences of possession, her trauma of being in a juvenile psych ward, and to keep things as peaceful as possible—we decided it would be best if she stayed with me full time, at least for a while. Understandably, Sheila was quite upset by this turn of events, but nevertheless Brittany moved in my house on a permanent basis for about six months.
She also began counseling with Agape, a Christian-oriented counseling service group, once a week. I felt like Brittany needed a counselor experienced in parapsychology but was unable to find a parapsychologist in our area. The nearest center for the study of parapsychology was in Lexington, Kentucky, several hundred miles away—much too far to commute on a regular basis. And the hospital tests seemed to indicate that long-term therapy was in order.
The hospital counselors saw therapy as a means of helping Brittany deal with her conflicts with her mother. But her psychiatrist saw these sessions as ways to help her overcome her predisposition for “having hallucinations.” Hallucinations were, of course, the official explanations for the ghosts, spirits, and demons Brittany had seen all her life and still saw on a regular basis.
I did know of a therapist in Nashville whom I had used a few times back in 1996 for job counseling. I picked Dr. Warren because I had seen an advertisement he’d run in a local magazine, in which he expressed an interest and belief in the metaphysical world. I only saw Dr. Warren for three or four sessions but came to highly respect his abilities as a therapist. And I knew from my own encounter with him that he would not dismiss Brittany’s God-given talents as hallucinations and would be open-minded to her recent possession and the subsequent channeling.
But after much wrangling with the insurance company, we learned they were just not going to cover sessions with Dr. Warren. The Agape agency was the only group they’d cover. I didn’t think using Agape was necessarily a bad thing, but I didn’t expect them to be of much help counseling Brittany with her psychic abilities in the channeling realm.
Nevertheless, I hoped they could help her iron out her differences with her mother. That had to be a good thing and should hasten a return to some normalcy in all our lives.
Brittany was also not attending school at this time. While in the hospital, she had been taught in the unit’s school, and for a week after coming home, she was still expected to attend this school. Sheila would come by and pick Britt up to take her to the hospital’s juvenile psych ward in downtown Nashville every day on her way to work. Then she’d bring her home every evening.
After the sessions in the hospital, we didn’t think it wise to throw her back into her previous environment at the Nashville School of the Arts, which may have contributed to her emotional instability in the first place. The breakup with her boyfriend may have actually triggered part of the emotional turmoil causing her receptivity to paranormal influences. The psychiatrist agreed, but his take on it was that the breakup might have contributed to Britt’s “psychotic episodes.”
So she just stayed home with me. I personally felt her emotional well-being was more important than academics at this time. We applied for home schooling status through the Metro Nashville school system.
But regardless of what was going on in our lives, the channeling continued. On average, Brittany settled into channeling mostly in the morning or from dinnertime until bedtime. She seemed to sense that I was the only one who could truly take care of her when the episodes would happen, so she followed me around the house like a puppy. She was still quite shaken and frankly scared by the events of the previous few weeks.
She didn’t like being alone in the house—in fact, leaving her alone anywhere just wasn’t an option. She also started leaving her bedroom door open while she slept at night.
Channeling Examples
For two months, Brittany and I were practically inseparable. If I had to go to the newspaper, to the bank, or any other errand, she came along. On many of these trips, she’d channel while we were in the car. Caring for her during this time was a full-time job.
We never knew when she was going to lose her grip on this reality, let someone else in, and start channeling. My mother simply couldn’t handle the drastic changes in Britt’s personality. Mima was more than willing to be there and help in any way she could—cooking, cleaning, or conversation. But I didn’t feel I could leave her alone with Brittany.
Once when we were at home, Brittany channeled a boy she described as a “druggie”—a not very pleasant fellow who used street slang that was not part of Britt’s vocabulary. He also said he could play the guitar, but when he picked up a guitar I’d gotten for the kids to learn on, he couldn’t seem to manage it, saying: “What’s up with her fingers?”—referring to his inability to manipulate Britt’s hands into playing. She couldn’t play, so perhaps his spirit could only manipulate the knowledge and abilities of the host. And maybe the druggie boy wasn’t a separate entity at all. He talked about how he died as the result of a “bad trip” he’d been taking with his girlfriend, whom he didn’t think was dead yet.
But he wasn’t sure, because he said he was being kept in a dark, cold place where he couldn’t see anything. And “they” only talked to him occasionally. He also stated that he hated cats, and when our cat Spot came up to him, he shouted and tried to scare it—something Brittany wouldn’t do. She loves cats. He said he’d lived a bad life and wasn’t proud of the things he’d done. I asked if he’d learned anything and wanted to correct his mistakes. He replied that no, he didn’t plan to make any major changes. Then he said, “They’re calling me. I have to go.” At the time of his departure, we were sitting on the stairs. Britt slumped over and seemed unconscious for several seconds. Then she came back.
One evening as Mima was finishing dinner and Britt was sitting at the table, she channeled a young German Jewish girl who died in a concentration camp. She only spoke German, so I couldn’t understand her. Britt had just taken a year and a half of German in high school, but she really wasn’t by any measure proficient. I wish I had recorded the encounter, but sadly I did not. The girl was speaking in complete sentences without hesitation. I don’t speak German myself, but it sounded authentic to my theatrically trained ear. Who knows? It could have been gibberish with German dialectic touches. But I’d never heard Brittany do a German accent before.
I truly wish now that I’d approached my observations of Brittany’s channeling more scientifically. Video equipment at the time was quite expensive, so I didn’t have any. I did have a tape recorder, and I should have recorded things—but there was never time for preparation. The channeling sessions happened out of the blue, so unless I’d been set up to record in every room, twenty-four hours a day, at less than a moment’s notice, it really would have been out of the question.
I was much more concerned with making sure Brittany was physically and emotionally safe than whether anything got recorded for posterity.
But back to our little German guest: Unlike most of the entities who’d appeared at that point, this girl wouldn’t let me hug her or even get very close. A quick hug always seemed to comfort the other entities who would pop in—even the druggie. But the German girl seemed afraid of me. So in order to communicate better, I gave her a pen and paper. She drew several swastikas, and a series of numbers. When I quizzically pointed to the numbers, she pointed to her wrist—supposedly indicating that these numbers were right there. I finally deduced that she meant this was the prison number the Nazis had branded on her wrist. She then stood up and started marching in time, saying “loft, writ” over and over again. Now it might seem obvious this was German for “left, right” but I didn’t catch on at the time. She drew more pictures of swastikas and what looked like barbed wire, looked at me as though to say she had explained everything, then slumped over in her chair—and Britt returned. She explained to me that she could feel what the girl was feeling and could remember things from the girl’s perspective. She said her father had been killed in a temple bombing, and her mother had died in a concentration camp. She had met the same fate.
The Fire Demon
Aside from the rather numerous incidents of channeling in the first two months after Britt got home from the hospital, there were four incidents in which demons tried to return. The first was the fire demon.
One morning Britt sat at the kitchen table with her grandmother while I was running errands. Britt had a candle lit and was passing her hand across the flame. She has always been fascinated with candles and, by association, fire. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, my mother told me later it looked to her like Britt was intentionally burning her wrist by heating a bobby pin over the flame and then holding the searing pin to her wrist. As soon as she noticed Mima had seen her, she quickly removed the bobby pin from her wrist, hid it and pretended nothing had happened. After I returned, Mima told me about the incident. Without appearing obvious, I later took a look at Britt’s wrist. There was a burned or cut place on her wrist about an inch long running parallel to her arm. When I asked her about it, she claimed she didn’t know where the mark came from. As a result, I hid the cigarette lighter she had been keeping up in her room. The next time she wanted to light a candle, she couldn’t find the lighter and asked me about it. I told her I’d hid it for her own protection. She didn’t argue and actually seemed to understand. So every time she wanted to light one of her candles during the next few days, she’d come to me and ask for the lighter. I’d go to my hiding place, bring it to her, and watch her while she lit the candle. Then I’d take the lighter and hide it again.
A few nights later, Britt and I were in the kitchen. It was almost bedtime. We were joking and kidding around as we often did. I finally said, “It’s bedtime,” and started walking toward the door to the living room.
She looked up at me, and out of the blue asked, “Where’s my lighter?”
I replied that she knew where it was and knew why. I said this lightly and thought maybe she was going to make a joke out of this. Then I said, “You know, actually it’s my lighter. I bought it.”
Then she got that devilish expression on her face I’d seen during all the demon busting. She said, “No, actually it’s my lighter, and I want it back.” She sailed past me, rushing through the living room and toward the stairs. I asked where she was going, and she said she was going upstairs to find it. I told her to come back, and she replied: “You can’t stop me.”
The tone in her voice told me this was not Brittany talking to me. I grabbed her wrist and turned her back to me. The face that looked into my eyes was the face of a demon. She tilted her head considerably too far to one side and gave me an evil grin.
“I’m going to burn her,” she hissed. She pulled away from me and rushed away, but I caught up and stopped her at the base of the stairs. I held her by the wrists to keep her from striking herself or me.
My heart was pounding and my voice quivered, but I wasn’t going to let this thing have my daughter. “You’re not doing this,” I stammered, “not again.”
“I’ll do whatever I want to,” it replied. “And you’re scared. I can feel it.”
“Maybe so, but not too scared to stop you.” We struggled, and then she broke away and darted back into the kitchen. She was frantically looking for the lighter. This time I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her down to the floor. I’d learned at Laurel’s exorcism that if you have to hold a demon down, the best technique is to pin them to the floor if you can. By now, my mother had heard the ruckus. She came in and was helping me hold Brittany’s legs down. After about five minutes of this, I heard the Irish accent of Spence telling me he had everything under control and to get up off him. Now channeling Spence, I could see Brittany was out of immediate danger.
Spence, through Brittany, proceeded to tell me that we were now dealing with a fire demon—a being composed of and attracted to fire. He said he was fighting it off, and then that “its own god” totally obliterated it—because fire demons are strictly forbidden to harm human beings as it had Brittany.
As was usually his way, Spence felt inclined to linger and socialize. He mostly wanted to talk about Brittany and her progress. She had been begging me for a hamster for some reason, so he kept prodding me to go ahead and buy it for her. He usually tried to include Mima in these little discourses, and she was always a good sport and tried to be pleasant—though I’m not sure if she believed in the concept of Spence as a channeled guardian angel for Brittany or simply that this was actually just Brittany pretending (in her weakened state) to be Spence.
Finally I told Spence that we all needed to get to bed and asked if Brittany could return. He replied that she was too weak to climb the stairs, so he’d make the walk for her and let her assume her body once upstairs. So off he bounded up the stairs, showing a good deal more energy and speed than Brittany normally would have.
Spence climbed into bed for Britt and lay back telling me that she’d return soon to tell me goodnight. She seemed to pass out, and then returned to herself within a few seconds.
“Hi, Daddy, how’d I get here? What happened?” she asked innocently.
I filled my daughter in on the entire incident with the fire demon and then of Spence’s subsequent nocturnal visit. But after another fifteen minutes or so, she became very sleepy and dozed off.
A Blind Date Gone Bad
Since her hospital stay, Brittany had been in close phone communication with a friend she made in the psych ward, a girl named Jeane. She lived on the other side of town. I had allowed Jeane to spend the night with us, because I thought it would be good for Brittany to have friends at this traumatic time in her life—even though it was hospital policy for former patients not to contact each other after leaving the facility. Britt and Jeane had been planning a double date to the movies. Jeane had a steady boyfriend, and she had promised Brittany she would set her up with a date too. Britt was very excited about the prospects of having a date. It would be her first real date since she and Chase broke up in October.
Jeane and Britt were bosom buddies for a while. They even talked about going off to New York together and “doing art” when they were old enough. Brittany had been very excited about this movie date for days. But the night before the date, Britt’s date fell through. Jeane told her over the phone, and after Britt got off the phone she was despondent.
I tried to cheer her up and told her how she didn’t need a boyfriend to validate herself. I used my own example of how I’d been single for eight years and felt that I’d gotten to know myself a lot better, and now I felt I didn’t have to have someone else to be complete. She listened, but I didn’t feel like she was really in agreement and still seemed very depressed.
Then suddenly she began having convulsions and shaking uncontrollably—as if she were having a seizure. After all we’d been through, this was something new. I’d been so accustomed to foreign personalities taking over Britt’s body, I held her down, thinking something of that sort was about to happen. A demon or something started coming through, but after only a few moments of the old familiar hissing and growling, Spence came through and seemed to get everything under control. But just when everything seemed back to normal, the demon came out again and the convulsions resumed. Suddenly Spence came out and said, “Call Laurel. Call Laurel. I can’t hold this one down.” I called Laurel and luckily she was home.
Here’s a transcript of the recording Laurel made later explaining what had happened to Brittany that night:
“When she feels low self-esteem, she’s more of an easy mark for an entity who would like to take over,” Laurel said. “That’s true of virtually anybody. It loosens her sense of self-control, her sense of ‘I’m in charge here.’ When there’s a window open for an entity to enter or a certain vulnerability for that—it’s also a way for Brittany to allow some of her anger, frustration, disappointment, tumultuous emotions, etc., to be released, without taking responsibility for them. It allows her to feel, ‘This is happening to me’ as opposed to, ‘It’s my emotions out of control.’ It’s a distancing mechanism that allows her to separate herself from her own negative feelings, desires, and emotions. One of the things she needs is an acceptable way to express her emotions, including her anger—rather than letting another entity come in and be assertive.
“She draws in negative entities who are in the neighborhood. Maybe they’re not full-fledged demons. They may just be floating around up there. This is a vulnerability. It’s really hard for her to own her own anger, to say: ‘I earned it, by God. It’s mine.’ She may need lessons in expressing her own anger. She may need to be encouraged to shout and scream and fling her arms—talk about her anger and get it out, because she needs a way to get it out other than turning to a surrogate.”
McCartney Meets Spence
McCartney’s first experience with Spence came soon after Brittany returned from the hospital. Britt, Mac, and I were talking about plans for the day, and suddenly Britt’s head flopped to the side. As she looked up, we heard Spence’s Irish brogue. I had cautioned Mac this might happen, so he was ready. I introduced Spence as a fallen angel, but he corrected me with: “I’ve amended me evil ways.”
Mac proceeded to ask him questions, and treated Brittany as Spence like a major celebrity.
Spence, though, didn’t seem to be that fond of children, and gave me a sideways look as if to say, “Why doesn’t this kid just shut up?” But Mac was full of questions.
“Is there a heaven?” Mac asked.
“Not really,” Spence answered with irritation.
“Is there a hell?” Mac asked.
“Absolutely not,” Spence replied forcefully.
“Have I ever been an angel?” Mac innocently asked.
“No, no, no, that’s not the way it works,” Spence said with an edge.
There were lots of other questions that would only interest an eight-year-old, and Spence was rapidly growing weary of this game. Abruptly, he bid us adieu as Brittany returned.
Britt and the “Haunted House”
The next afternoon, after we’d gone to church, Brittany wanted to drive the car. She’d be turning sixteen pretty soon, so I was letting her practice driving. I was a bit concerned about her possibly falling into one of her trances, though. I expressed my concern to Spence upon one of his visits. But he said not to worry—when driving, Britt was so keenly focused on the physical reality of driving she wouldn’t slip into channeling. He also said it was actually good for her at this crazy time in her life in that it forced her to stay focused on this physical reality.
So, we drove around in a subdivision behind the middle school she’d attended. Everything was going fine until we approached this one house, a split-level in a nice middle-class neighborhood. The house was probably only twenty years old or so, but it had a history. About a year earlier, the man who lived there had gone berserk and murdered his family then killed himself. Because of all the news coverage, Brittany was very familiar with the bizarre murders and the history of the house.
As we drove past the “murder house,” she just stopped the car dead still in front of it.
“Brittany, what’s the matter?” I asked. “Now come on, we can’t just sit here in the middle of the road.” She ignored me and stared blankly at the house. I shook her a little. “Britt, come on now. Just drive the car.” McCartney, of course, wanted to know what was wrong with his sister. I just told him to keep quiet—that everything would be fine.
“They’re still in there,” she said. I was starting to become concerned that she might want to leave the car in the street and walk up to the house. Probably, I thought, the disturbed spirits associated with the house recognized that they could communicate with someone on Brittany’s frequency and were calling to her. That couldn’t be a good thing.
I firmly took her by the shoulders and turned her toward me. “We have to drive on,” I said. “There’s nothing in that house we need to associate with. Tell them you’re not interested in talking with them.”
She pretty much ignored me and looked back to the house.
“If you’re not going to drive us out of here, I will. You decide,” I said.
“Leave me alone!” she said.
It was a rather violent suggestion, which I’m not sure was directed at me or at the entities in the house. But a second later she did come to her senses enough to drive the car past the house. By now, I really thought it’d be better if she let me drive. She suddenly seemed to have gotten more reckless and less cautious. However, she still insisted on driving the car.
“Okay, we’ll drive around the subdivision one more time, but then we really need to drive home.” She agreed, but then we came to the intersection that would lead us back to the apparently haunted house. She got that glazed look again and seemed to automatically want to head the car off in that direction; however, I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Brittany, don’t turn that way,” I said. “Let’s go left.”
“I’m alright,” she assured me.
“Well maybe so, but let’s go left anyway.” So she turned away from the house and we returned home without further incident.
Spence Crashes the Birthday Party
About a week after Brittany got out of the hospital, we went to a restaurant one Sunday afternoon to celebrate Mima’s eightieth birthday. I was driving, Mac and Mima were in the backseat, and Britt was in the passenger seat. We stopped at a traffic light and Britt’s head fell over to one side. Then Spence announced himself. Okay, Spence I could handle, but demons weren’t invited to the party.
He asked us where we were going, and when I told him, he wished Mima a happy birthday. Mima chatted just a bit with Spence, but she never seemed to know just quite how to take him. She probably felt Spence was just some kind of projection of Brittany’s emotional state. She would sometimes talk to Spence as if she were still talking to Brittany, e.g., telling Spence/Brittany: “I love you.” Then Spence would shake his head and reply, “Well, isn’t that nice?” and look at her like she was the crazy one. So we rode along, with Mima humoring Brittany/Spence, McCartney asking him a million questions about the true nature of the cosmos as seen through the eyes of an eight-year-old, and I mostly just hoping he’d let Britt come back out soon.
But he didn’t. We arrived at the restaurant, and Spence was still having a grand old time. I then asked Spence point-blank if he didn’t think he should let Brittany come back for our birthday luncheon.
“Oh, no! I asked her,” he replied, “and she said it’d be fine for me to stay. Don’t worry, Bill. Everything’s grand.”
We were seated and began examining the menu. I had to explain much of it to Spence as he didn’t seem to understand what the names of American dishes represented. He finally settled on fish and chips, a dish Brittany didn’t like. So here we were, this little family—father, son, grandma, and who else? The waitress seemed more than a little puzzled by Spence/Brittany’s Irish accent and often had to ask for clarification. This seemed to irritate Spence considerably. I just smiled, nodded toward Spence, and said, “Foreign student.”
The food was late, and Spence had several cryptic remarks for the waitress concerning punctuality. Then he didn’t like his fish: “Not yet cooked then, is it?” He demanded it be sent back till it was to his liking. Brittany wouldn’t have done that in a million years, but Spence loudly decreed that he get first class service.
All in all, though, Spence was humorous and fun to be with, and the birthday celebration was quite pleasurable—but also quite strange. Definitely the oddest birthday bash Mima ever had.
McCartney wanted to stop by the restroom on the way out.
“I’ll take him,” Spence volunteered and started marching toward the men’s room with Mac.
“You can’t go in there,” I said just in time. “You have to go in that one,” pointing to the ladies’ room.
“Oh yes, sorry. Well, this’ll be odd, won’t it?” he said as he went into the women’s restroom.
Finally back at home, I asked Spence if he didn’t think he should let Brittany return so we could open Mima’s presents. He reluctantly agreed, but like a proper Irish gentleman, thanked us for having him over. Then I held Britt’s head as she changed gears.
When she learned she’d missed lunch she was more than a little upset.
“Oh, man! Why does he do that?”
“He told us you said it was okay,” I said.
“Yeah, just to pop in and say hello—not to eat my lunch!” She didn’t remember what anything tasted like. Just as well, since it was fish.
The Aphrodite Episode
One of our more interesting channeling incidents was the time Brittany channeled the ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite. This might be an example of channeling an entity to express her fears rather than feeling them too deeply.
Brittany was still very depressed about not having a boyfriend. Since she was being kept home from school since her stay in the hospital a few weeks earlier, she wasn’t in contact with kids her own age. She still felt pretty isolated.
As we sat together on the sofa one day, making small talk, we discussed the possibility of when and where she might return to school, when her friend Jeane might come over, and other mundane issues. Then she got that glazed, starry look in her eyes. Her head lolled over to one side, and she passed out for a moment. When she came to, she had a frightened look. She then physically pulled away from me on the couch as if she were afraid of me. By now, I knew the drill.
I told her not to be afraid, that I loved her, and I wanted to help. She still seemed more than a bit apprehensive. I asked who she was.
“Aphrodite,” she said in a tiny little voice much smaller than Brittany’s own.
“As in the Greek goddess Aphrodite?” I asked, a bit incredulous.
“Yes.”
I told her that this was indeed an honor and was curious as to why she’d come to visit.
“I’m worried about her,” she said.
Things were going so much better than they had been a few weeks earlier, I told my new visitor there was nothing to worry about. Everything seemed to be under control for a change.
“No, it’s not. Unless some important changes are made, she won’t be here past the age of seventeen.”
I asked Aphrodite if this gloomy forecast could be averted. She said yes, but she didn’t know how. She was very evasive about just what changes needed to be made to ensure that Brittany would not meet with such a premature demise, but she was adamant about me seeing to Britt’s welfare or bad things could be expected. As I did all the other entities Britt channeled, I tried to hug her to show a degree of compassion. The great majority of them responded positively to this; however, Aphrodite would have none of it. She pulled away and simply said, “Take care of her. I have to go.” Britt slumped over for a few seconds then came back as herself. And that was the end of my encounter with a Greek goddess.
As I look back over everything that has happened over the last eighteen years, I can see that there was a great deal of merit in what Aphrodite was predicting. At the time, I thought the worst of it was over and that we were out of the woods. The goddess was inaccurate in predicting that Britt wouldn’t make it past seventeen, but she was correct in foreseeing that there would be abundant perils ahead.