If you ever are attacked by the wrath of a dark spirit, or demon, just stay calm, and don’t panic, or you may be consumed. Pray for Jesus and instantly you will be free. Please remember my words because I know first hand. Even if you can’t move or speak… as long as you believe in him, he will save you. I recall the first and only time I was attacked, I was so afraid… I tried to call out for my mother, but it just got worse. I couldn’t scream and I was totally paralysed. The next person I thought of was Jesus and thank God I did.
A&E’s spooky new reality series “Paranormal State” could make believers out of the staunchest skeptic. It certainly did for network executives and show producers, who say they witnessed paranormal activity firsthand while shooting the series.
“I was a skeptic’s skeptic,” says Robert Sharenow, head of nonfiction and alternative programming at A&E. “I didn’t buy into this stuff at all. But I gotta say, after what I’ve seen on the show, I totally re-evaluated my feelings (about the paranormal).”
“State,” which debuted last week as A&E’s most-watched series premiere in three years, follows the Paranormal Research Society, a group founded in 2001 by Ryan Buell consisting of Penn State University students who balance college life while investigating cases involving ghosts, hauntings, demonic possession and other paranormal phenomena.
“Almost everybody on the production team experienced something — from being pushed or feeling cold to other really weird things that happened,” says Gary Auerbach of Go Go Luckey Prods. (MTV’s “Laguna Beach”), which produces the show with Four Seasons Prods. Intl.
For example, while dealing with a case that involved demonic possession, every time anyone would make a phone call — be it from a cell phone or from a land line in Go Go Luckey’s offices — the phones would “go in and out of reception,” he says. In another instance, Auerbach was talking to a youngster who could have walked straight out of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense.”
“He said he was experiencing different phenomena, this dark mist, and could see dead people all the time,” Auerbach says. “I asked him if he could see someone right then, and he said yes and pointed right behind me. I got chills, and when I turned around, I saw a black mist roll past, light as a wisp.”
They say they also experienced electronic voice phenomena — said to be the voices of ghosts or spirits heard through static — when cutting the episodes.
“It’s really kind of freaky — if we weren’t believers, we are now,” Auerbach says, noting that the crew all wore St. Benedict medals dipped in holy water while shooting and had been briefed by Buell beforehand about what to do and how to act “in front of a spirit.” (Buell is still a student at Penn State, working on another degree.)
“State” came about after Betsy Schechter brought the idea to A&E through her Four Seasons banner, which then partnered with Go Go Luckey. A&E executives were so encouraged by what they saw early in production that they increased the episode order from 14 half-hours (including the pilot) to 20 before the show even premiered. Sharenow says what makes the series such a good fit for A&E is that it deals with more than just paranormal phenomena.
“The purpose isn’t to prove there are ghosts out there but to show these dramatic, very real confrontations and help these people in distress. The ghost element is almost incidental sometimes,” he says. “The high-impact human drama in every episode makes the show accessible to a mass audience. It’s very emotional and compelling and real.”
I have always been able to sense a persons essence, now more-so than ever. I can pick up things and know things even before actually knowing them… it’s very odd at times. Picture having the answers before knowing the questions. It’s unsettling when I find out that my feelings have actual validity behind them. I can simply look at a person to feel them and know what they are about. I am totally repulsed by those touched by darkness or those with bad intentions. I do see good people that glow too, but they are few and far between. The average don’t really stand out.. they are those caught up in the motions of a mundane world, consumed by their daily duties and responsibilities. This is just too hard to write about now. I will delve further when I’m not so tired, but due to my own tedious life tasks, I am unable to at this time. Picture having to greet hundreds of people, for a work luncheon, while picking up so much at once.. it’s exhausting. Even taking the TTC is much at times because we are packed in there like sardines during rush hour and it’s hard not to have your body filled up with these intense feelings. It’s even more uncomfortable and awkward being so close to people that you automatically repel from. It’s not something that you can get used to.
Toronto Reverend Charged With Assaults In Bizarre Alleged Exorcisms
Monday December 10, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff
A Toronto holy man stands charged with behaviour hardly becoming of one.
The congregation at the Mount Zion Revival Church of the Apostles has long called Reverend Frank Lawrence their spiritual leader, which likely means many were stunned at the news he’ll stand trial for alleged sex assaults and threatening death reportedly in connection with what police allege were bizarre exorcisms.
Lawrence is charged with the sexual assaults of two women, including one of his former parishioners who claims she was promised a spiritual healing in a ritual of baths that involved alcohol, onions and oils. The woman ended up pregnant, and now has a little one-year-old girl.
A second woman alleges the reverend went through a special ritual with her that involved meeting over a fresh grave where he actually pushed her down and sex with her. She believes that’s when she also conceived a child.
Lawrence reportedly founded the church, which ran out of a strip plaza location at Oakwood Avenue and Rogers Road for 25 years. The bizarre trial also includes allegations Lawrence threatened to kill one of the victims as well as the church treasurer.
