List of Exercises & Rituals … xi Introduction

Ritual: Performing an Exorcism … 172 Ritual: The Removal of an Attached Entity … 181 Ritual: The Banishment of an Attached Entity … 185 Ritual: Dark Moon Black Drawing Candles … 189 Ritual: White Light Candles … 190 Ritual: Blessed Salt … 192 Ritual: Blessed Water … 192 Ritual: Blessed Nails … 193 Ritual: Setting a Hard Boundary … 197 Ritual: The Circle of Fire … 198 Ritual: Setting a Boundary from a Distance … 199 Ritual: Fiery Wall of Protection Spell … 200 Ritual: Cleansing Novena … 201 Ritual: Saint Michael Novena … 202 Ritual: Witch Bottle … 204 Ritual: Spirit Bottle Trap … 205 Exercise: The Floating Ward … 206 Exercise: Pillars of Light … 207 Exercise: Binding a Spirit … 208 Exercise: Creating a Seal … 217 Exercise: Closing a Portal … 219 Exercise: Reversing the Current … 221 Exercise: One-Way Cap … 222 Exercise: Opening a Portal … 223 Exercise: Bypassing a Spirit Highway … 224

Introduction

Everybody’s got a ghost story. Just ask around. Even you have probably had an experience that could be classified as “paranormal.” It’s probably why you picked up this book in the first place. A great deal of folks involved in this work grew up in a haunted home, myself included. In fact, the sheer volume of paranormal disturbances happening across the globe is what prompted me to write this book. There is simply too much work to be done and too few of us doing it.

When I first joined the world of paranormal investigation, I believed that the lessons held in this book were known ubiquitously throughout the community. I thought it must be mandatory for every paranormal investigator to have had a thorough education on all things spiritual that may assist both them and the spirits they study. I was very wrong. I began to realize this when folks started contacting me from out of state, asking for assistance. My initial response would be to look up their local paranormal investigation team online and then try to get in contact with them. A startling majority of the time, the response—if any—was, “We can’t do anything to help, but we’d love to come take pictures.” And that’s just not helpful. The paranormal community needs witches, and I’m going to teach you how to do what I do.

Within the pages of this book, I will attempt to guide you through three separate but irrevocably intertwined worlds. First will be the world of haunted homes and paranormal investigation. We will

discuss the four major categories of haunting: residual, earthbound human, poltergeist, and inhuman entity. We will briefly touch on investigative equipment, protocol, and interpersonal skills for handling clients. Second, we’ll enter the world of psychic senses and mediumship. I’ll be providing tips for tapping into these abilities and utilizing them throughout an investigation. Third, we’ll be discussing the nature of matter and energy as we cross into the world of witchcraft, and I’ll supply spiritual techniques to assist you in defending a family from attack and resolving a haunting. These three worlds will be presented to you both separately and together throughout this book, just the way you may find them in the wild. I encourage you to keep an open mind, as some of this work will require you to stray into territory that might be unfamiliar or uncomfortable for some of you. You’ll find in some instances that it really is necessary to put aside your personal hang-ups in order to accomplish what needs to be done.

Now, I’m going to say the thing you’re not supposed to say: this work is not for everyone. If you are the type of person who has to watch paranormal-activity movies through their fingers or who jumps every time the toast pops up, you may want to reconsider making this your path. This work requires you to have nerves of steel and a cool head under pressure. Even if you don’t want to do this work for others, I still welcome you to read through this book. Hauntings are extremely common, and you may experience your own one day—and it’s good to be prepared. Some of you may even be reading this because you are experiencing a haunting in your home at this very moment. If this is the case, I’m glad that I can be here with you during this time.

If you feel like you are right to take on this work, then you’ll want to hold on to this book. This will be your guide and something you’ll refer to over and over. These pages cover the bulk of what you will need to know, but I urge you to study everything you can find

and speak with other professionals in this field. I’ve learned some of my most valuable lessons and techniques from other folks participating in this work. Learn something from them, and teach them something too if you can. We all need to work together and know that we are on the same team. Also, listen to their stories. I’ve been doing this for nearly half of my life, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that truth is always stranger than fiction. The world is a vast and mysterious place, and we really are connecting with only a small portion of what is out there in our short lives as humans. The spirit world is close, and things do indeed spill over.

So, if you’re ready, let’s begin.

Witches and the Paranormal

The worlds of paranormal investigation and witchcraft have long been parallel but decidedly separate. We don’t really commingle that often, and I think the prejudice comes from both sides. The investigators often like to keep their work “scientific,” and that usually means attempting to handle the paranormal with as little supernatural nonsense as possible. On the other hand, witches are often focused on other pursuits and honestly tend to feel they are far beyond the silly ghost hunters they see on television. Despite this, I think that witches and paranormal investigators are meant to work together and that witches have something to offer the world of paranormal investigation that can’t be found elsewhere.

Witches work in the realm of vibration. We speak the language of energy, and we know how to move it, mold it, change it, speed it up, and slow it down. This means we can work in the world of spirits and therefore affect them in a way that other folks can’t. This makes us particularly good at being able not just to fight off paranormal activity, but to understand it and heal it as well.

For too long, witches have sat on the sidelines of paranormal investigation work. The time has come to enter the fray. The hard part is, you can’t just jump from witchcraft to paranormal investigation without the proper education. You must understand the mechanics of a haunting and what exactly it is you are facing. Otherwise, you’ll be in over your head in two seconds flat. That’s where this book comes in. I will guide you through the finer points of how these phenomena seem to work and give you my tried-andtrue methods for dealing with them. Once you have a firm grasp on the mechanics, you can branch out and develop some of your own techniques and add to the tradition of this work.

The Truth

Every single person engaged in paranormal work around the world shares one very important commonality: we are all searching for the truth. Some think they’ll find the truth in scientific data. Others think it resides in human experience. Some aren’t looking at all, and instead claim to have found it already. They’ll give exact answers when they really have no idea, or no evidence to support their claims. Usually, they are easy to believe, because they speak with such confidence it’s sometimes hard to catch what’s missing. So, the question is, who knows the truth? Who has all the answers?

No one.

No one really knows how any of this works.

Does that startle you? Does it make you second-guess this work? It shouldn’t. This is, after all, the only long-held truth in paranormal work. No one really knows what is going on. Now, we’ve been able to hypothesize about the “other side” and the nature of hauntings based on our interactions with the phenomena. This means that our interpretations may be very close to the real truth, but we will

never know for sure. Until we can create some special phone that lets us talk with the other side and get our questions answered clearly, in real time and without any interference, we will never know. Yes, even if we are psychic and can communicate with the dead, our perception is still colored by our conscious mind. Our fleeting personal experiences with the other side are all we have available to try to piece together an accurate depiction. It’s a little like if you stuck your hand in a dark box and felt something prickly. Some will confidently say, “That’s a hedgehog,” and others will declare, “It’s a pincushion!” While the object in the box was really a hairbrush, both statements accurately described the experience of the object. That last part is the most important: “accurately described.” In modern-day spiritual work, it’s common for folks to hear statements like “No one really knows” and take that as license to make up whatever they want, but that’s not how this works. We should strive for as close to accurate as we can, based on our experiences in the field.

This idea that no one knows the exact truth—myself included— needs to be gripped firmly during this work. It is this understanding that keeps us grounded, curious, and open to the infinite possibilities. It will also help protect you from being taken for a ride by a paranormal know-it-all with bad info. The moment you think you know everything is the moment you should quit this work.