Holy Ghosts

In this remarkable true story the haunting of a Long Island household forces a respected writer and editor to reevaluate the mysteries of life and death as he struggles with the frightening truths of his childhood home and his town''s past. . Growing up in Rockville Center Long Island Gary Jansen never believed in ghosts. His mother-a devoutly Catholic woman with a keen sense for the uncanny-claimed that their family house was haunted. But Jansen never found anything inexplicable in how their doorbell would sometimes ring of its own accord; or in the mysterious sounds of footsteps or breaking glass that occasionally would fill their home; or even in his mother''s sometimes unsettlingly accurate visions of future events and tragedies. Though he once experienced a supernatural encounter in a Prague church as a young man Jansen grew up into a rationalist as well as a noted writer and editor. . Decades later in 2001 Jansen moved back into the very same house where he had once grown up to raise a family with his wife. One day in 2007 he encountered a strange physical sensation in his toddler son''s bedroom: . As I reached into his dresser drawer I felt something very strange behind me. Startled I quickly turned around but there was nothing there. I shrugged it off grabbed the socks and as I was walking to the doorway experienced an odd phenomenon-sort of like an electrical hand rubbing the length of my back. I stopped and stood transfixed. What the hell is that? I said to myself. The pressure then seemed to break apart and for a brief moment I felt like I had a million little bugs crawling all over my back. Within seconds however the sensation was gone. . This became the first step in uncovering a frightening fullblown haunting in his home-a phenomenon that lasted an entire year and eventually included unveiling the identities of the spirits who occupied his house; discovering the chilling story of a century-old murder in his hometown; encountering mind-boggling coincidences between local history and events in his own family; and finally engaging in a climactic exorcism with the help of Mary Ann Winkowski the real-life inspiration for TV''s The Ghost Whisperer. The events of that year-in which Jansen''s family was terrified of and terrorized by ghosts in their own home-forever changed how he viewed the mysteries of life and death. . Holy Ghosts is not only a gripping true-life ghost story but a funny and touching memoir as well as a meditation on the relationship between religion and the paranormal which are often considered at odds with each other but which the author shows are intimately linked.