I came upon this site looking for more information about sounds being emitted from a sofa. The Stranges of England were cited today in the Telegraph an on-line paper for expats from England; no, I am not one) as having a sofa from which strange noises were emitting and their fearless Yorkshire Terrier was freaking out. I came from my Google search for the sounds they have apparently put on-line (I never found them) to this place and read the story about the "Strange Occurrences in An Apartment."
I write to you all because of the widespread notion that paranormal experiences are mere curiosities. This is a "politically correct" notion that springs from a social mentality of pandemic secularism. In short, people have massively forgotten God and equally massively deny the reality of the Devil and his hoards and minions.
I had an experience in NYC, NY which was the cause of my conversion to Catholicism. My wife, a cradle Catholic, and I were in show business and had fallen on hard times. She knew about Catholic novenas (9 days of prayer to a particular saint) and suggested we try one which was known to the faithful to be a sure thing, the 54 day Rosary Novena to the Blessed Virgin.
54 days, of course are 3 9-day novenas (in petition) and again 3 9-day novenas (in thanksgiving) for a particular favor. We were destitute at the time, which in NYC is no fun at all, I can assure you. So what did we have to lose?
I knew that there were a lot of performers who were getting quite lucrative jobs in NY law firms as word processors, so I tried going to agencies and taking placement tests. I failed miserably and was virtually laughed out of the offices I went to. It had been over 20 years since I had taken a summer typing course during junior high and I couldn't remember anything.
Undaunted, we proceeded upon this "Irresistible Novena," as it is called (as the Blessed Virgin cannot refuse the request of someone that devoted and trusting who does this discipline through to the end), and I ended up getting a job with a Wall Street law firm, unable to type and having NO idea of how to even turn on a computer (never having worked with one before). It was nip and tuck, but when the firm finally dissolved, I was part of the 20% of the original staff still remaining. I had really come a long way, by the grace of God.
Now, not being satisfied with showing me just how generous, gracious, merciful and loving God really is, He demon-strated to me exactly what my previously licentious, filthy life would have merited had I died in the state of mortal sin I was perpetually living in.
One night, lying in bed and praying the Rosary (which prayer has a list of 15 promises attached to it, one of which is "signal graces" associated with its practice), God permitted the veil of the spiritual world to part and allowed me to hear the voice of a demon which had been (and continues to be) plaguing me since my youth. It was a voice of SATURATED murderous, furious, simultaneously thermonuclear hot and liquid nitrogen cold rage and it hissed straight into my left ear, "I WILL KILL YOU ALL!"
I screamed in terror, ballistically propelled myself off the mattress, and landed on my knees at the foot of the bed, sweating profusely, begging God to spare my wretched soul from that fate. My wife, who had not heard it, was looking at me like I had lost my mind, crying, "What's the matter? WHAT'S THE MATTER?"
This experience led me to research exhaustively what the Catholic Church had to say about Hell, a topic which never is heard from the pulpit anymore. I found story after story, from the dreams of St. Don Bosco http://www.todayscatholicworld.com/bosco_hell.htm, as well as the story of the most heroic woman who ever lived, Sister Josefa Menendez, a young nun chosen by Christ as the most miserable example of a human being He could find in order to use her weakness to save souls, and who was sent into Hell numerous times to witness to it and report back to the Faithful what it really is like http://www.newjerusalem.com/appeal.htm and, especially, http://www.tldm.org/News8/RealityOfHell.htm, and numerous other such saints. They are saints for a grave reason, having shared in the sufferings of Christ in the most exponential manner possible.
There is the story of a damned soul who would not listen to her Catholic friend's admonitions, found here http://www.olrl.org/doctrine/cry.shtml
So, friends, the only reason I try to direct your attention is to try and draw you back into realizing that what you are dealing with in the paranormal experiences you are sharing, may well be something you are ill prepared for, and may be a device of the devil to take advantage of uncatechized folks who find the demonic merely a curiosity. It shall not remain so forever, and I cannot warn you in strong enough terms to consider the Catholic Church, which alone has the Sacraments of Christ to protect us from the snares and traps of the devil. He exists, please believe me.
And, as the lost soul stated, "I hate the devil too. And yet I am pleased about him, because he tries to ruin all of you; he and his satellites, the fallen with him at the beginning of time. There are millions of them. They roam around the earth, as thick as a swarm of flies, and you do not even notice it."
Please pay attention to that last sentence and start your prayer lives and fasting and save your eternal souls. Only the Catholic Church has the answer. God bless you.