Anthony DeStefano - The Invisible World: Understanding Angels, Demons, and the Spiritual Realities That Surround Us

A Travel Guide to Heaven

Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To:
Divine Answers to Lifes Most Difficult Problems

DOUBLEDAY
Copyright 2011 by Anthony DeStefano

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Doubleday Religion, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

www.doubledayreligion.com

DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-72080-1

Cover design by Andy Schmalen / Schmalen Design, Inc.

v3.1

This book is dedicated to my grandmothers,

Elisa Pesiri DeStefano (19001956)
and
Vita Simone (19091984)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5., 16667

verybody has one. The Reverend Frank Pavone used to call it the Haunt Detector. What is it?

Very simply, its the little alarm that goes off in our heads whenever we detect that something mysterious or supernatural has occurred. Science fiction and horror writers have referred to it by other namesthe sixth sense, the shining. But for some reason, Ive always liked haunt detector best.

We actually have all kinds of detecting mechanisms built into our nervous systems. They dont have fancy scientific names, but they exist nonetheless. For instance, we all have lie detectors. When someone whos not very slick tries to scam us, were usually able to tell just from their body language and their voice. We all have love detectors. We can just feel it in our bones when someone has deep feelings of attachment for usor when they dont. We all have right and wrong detectorsbetter known as consciences. When we do something not quite right, we know it because we feel an unmistakable pang of guilt. And, of course, we all have sex detectors, which let us know pretty quickly when were physically attracted to another person.

Well, we all have haunt detectors, too. And they let us know whenever something especially eerie or out of the ordinary is happening around us. You know the kind of thing. You could be sitting around relaxing one day at home, and for no special reason you start thinking about someone. Maybe you havent thought about this particular person in years. Then the phone rings; you pick it up, and, amazingly, its that person! Many of us have experienced this phenomenon. What is it?

Ill never forget something that happened to my mother many years ago. It was the middle of the night and she was sleeping soundly. Suddenly she woke up and bolted upright in bed. She had heard the sound of her own mothers voice calling out to her in a thick Italian accent: Laura, Laura, help me. My mother was startled and her heart was racing; she had clearly heard her name spoken. But it couldnt be her mother calling; she lived on the other side of Brooklyn, and it was so late. My mother thought that perhaps it was just a bad dream so she went back to sleep. But the next morning she received a phone call from the hospital. Her mother had gotten up to go to the bathroom during the night and had fallen. She was in the hospital with a broken hip. For hours she had been on the floor, moaning for help. How in the world did my mother hear her? Was it just a coincidence?

Then there are stories that are totally unexplainable. I read a newspaper account a few years ago about a four-year-old girl in upstate New York who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The whole community had been praying fervently for her. All the churches in the neighborhoodLutheran, Evangelical, Catholicwere all united in prayer that a miracle would take place. The little girl had been through so much: shed had more than twenty MRIs, and it was decided that the only remaining course of action was brain surgery. She wasnt even expected to make it through the operation, but it was the only chance she had. The day of the surgery her head was shaved, her blood was taken, she was hooked up to all kinds of machines, and the team of doctors scrubbed and put on their surgical gowns. One final MRI had to be done to determine the exact location of the tumor. Just before the child was wheeled into the testing room, a sweet, pretty young nurse came in and took her hand. She told the little girl not to worry because she was all better, that God had cured her and that she would be going home soon. The little girl later said that the nurse was so nice to her and so beautiful that she felt all warm and peaceful inside.

When the MRI was taken, the lab technicians gasped in disbelief. No matter how hard they searched, they couldnt locate the tumor. They took more tests, but the results were the same. The tumor was gone. No surgery was performed that dayor any daybecause there was nothing to operate on. The little girl was completely healed. What happened? And who was the mysterious woman who came in and told the girl she was cured? None of the other nurses could identify her and no one ever saw her again. Was she an angel, as some in the little girls family believed? No one knows for sure. But everyone, from the doctors to the lab technicians to the parents to the people in the community, was aware that something incredible had taken place. Everyones haunt detectors went off at once.

Of course, not all mysterious experiences are as strange as this. A persons haunt detector can begin registering at any time. You can be listening to a powerful piece of music or watching a spectacular sunset; reading a particularly moving piece of literature or worshipping at church. You can be embracing the person you love most in the world or sitting in your home, cozy and warm by the fire. Or you can just be walking down the street thinking about all the things in your life that have brought you to where you are. You can be doing any of these things, and out of nowhere a tingle will suddenly run up your spine, telling you that something more is going on than meets the eye. Something that transcends understanding.

What is it? No one really knows. But it invariably triggers a feeling deep in your soula feeling of desire, of yearning, of hope; hope that there is something special about life; that there is some hidden meaning and purpose to all the suffering we have to go through; that there is something beyond science, beyond the sensessomething totally invisible yet totally real. In Latin, the experience is called mysterium tremendum et fascinans. And our haunt detectors can sense it.

Of course, we have to be careful when trying to discern the meaning of such feelings and phenomena. Spiritual people are sometimes too quick to attribute the cause of strange occurrences to God; theyre too hasty in coming to the conclusion that just because something seems unexplainable it must have a divine or supernatural origin. That simply isnt the case. Many amazing things that happen in this world arent miraculous at all. Its a fact, for example, that human beings have all kinds of natural abilities that are untapped; abilities that are only now being identified and studied by science. Weve all heard about mothers and fathers who display superhuman strength when trying to rescue their children from harm. Weve all seen examples of people with severe learning disabilities who are able to sit down at a piano without any formal training and play the most complicated pieces of classical music. The human brain is an incredible organ and has many powers that still arent fully understood. Because of this, its extremely difficult for us to tell whats natural, whats supernatural, whats legitimately from God, whats from the devil, and whats just plain old human imagination. Practically everything that happens in life is subject to misinterpretation. Thats why its so dangerous to become fixated on the supernatural. Too often it leads to superstition or belief in the occult or false spirituality or evenin extreme casesinsanity.