He saw the spirit of a woman following her adult son around, obsessing over his well-being and his health. He was shown the spirit of a man that stayed earthbound out of concern for his business. Ritchie watched as the man continued to try to influence the workings of his beloved enterprise in spirit. And tragically, he saw the spirit of a young man who had committed suicide, as he endlessly followed his still living mother begging her for forgiveness. He even saw the spirit of a woman seemingly obsessed with tobacco, hanging around a factory break room trying desperately and fruitlessly to bum a cigarette.

 

He observed that the living had an aura surrounding them, “a faint luminous glow, almost like an electrical field over the surface of their bodies”. This is how he differentiated the living from the dead, for the disembodied including himself, had no such countenance. At one point during his journey, Ritchey is taken to a drinking establishment.

 

Once inside the dingy bar and grill he saw a crowd of people at the bar clamoring for drinks. In his own words Ritchie describes this otherworldly scene:

​

"A crowd of people, many of them sailors, lined the bar three deep, while others jammed wooden booths along the wall.  Though a few were drinking beer, most of them seemed to be belting whiskies as fast as the two perspiring bartenders could pour them. Then I noticed a striking thing.  A number of the men standing at the bar seemed unable to lift their drinks to their lips.  Over and over I watched them clutch at their shot glasses, hands passing through the solid tumblers, through the heavy wooden counter top, through the very arms and bodies of the drinkers around them. And these men, every one of them, lacked the aureole of light that surrounded the others.

 

Then, the cocoon of light must be a property of physical bodies only.  The dead, we who had lost our solidness, had lost this 'second skin' as well. And it was obvious that these living people, the light-surrounded ones, the ones actually drinking, talking, jostling each other, could neither see the desperately thirsty disembodied beings among them, nor feel their frantic pushing to get at those glasses.  (Though it was also clear to me, watching, that the non-solid people could both see and hear each other.  Furious quarrels were constantly breaking out among them over glasses that none could actually get to his lips.)

 

I thought I had seen heavy drinking at fraternity parties in Richmond, but the way civilians and servicemen at this bar were going at it beat everything.  I watched one young sailor rise unsteadily from a stool, take two or three steps, and sag heavily to the floor. Two of his buddies stooped down and started dragging him away from the crush. But that was not what I was looking at.  I was staring in amazement as the bright cocoon around the unconscious sailor simply opened up.  It parted at the very crown of his head and began peeling away from his head, his shoulders.  Instantly, quicker than I'd ever seen anyone move, one of the insubstantial beings who had been standing near him at the bar was on top of him.  He had been hovering like a thirsty shadow at the sailor's side, greedily following every swallow the young man made.  Now he seemed to spring at him like a beast of prey.

 

In the next instant, to my utter mystification, the springing figure had vanished.   It all happened even before the two men had dragged their unconscious load from under the feet of those at the bar.  One minute I'd distinctly seen two individuals; by the time they propped the sailor against the wall, there was only one. Twice more, as I stared, stupefied, the identical scene was repeated.  A man passed out, a crack swiftly opened in the aureole round him, one of the non-solid people vanished as he hurled himself at that opening, almost as if he had scrambled inside the other man. Was that covering of light some kind of shield, then?  Was it a protection against ...  against disembodied beings like myself?  Presumably these substance-less creatures had once had solid bodies, as I myself had had.  Suppose that when they had been in these bodies they had developed a dependence on alcohol that went beyond the physical.  That became mental.  Spiritual, even.  Then when they lost that body, except when they could briefly take possession of another one, they would be cut off for all eternity from the thing they could never stop craving.

 

An eternity like that - the thought sent a chill shuddering through me - surely that would be a form of hell.  I had always thought of hell, when I thought of it at all, as a fiery place somewhere beneath the earth where evil people like Hitler would burn forever.  But what if one level of hell existed right here on the surface - unseen and unsuspected by the living people occupying the same space.  What if it meant remaining on earth but never again able to make contact with it.  I thought of that woman who wanted that cigarette.  To want most, to burn with most desire, where you were most powerless - that would be hell indeed."

​

George Ritchie's experience confirms much of what we have encountered through the ESAT process. We have found that one of the functions of the countenance is protection against oppressing spirits and their negative influence. We have also revealed that certain behaviors like excessive use of drugs or alcohol can open the countenance and in turn the person to spiritual invasion and influence, but what of the human spirit component mentioned in Ritchie's experience? Do humans under certain conditions stay earthbound after death and are these spirits at times used to negatively influence those that are still alive? In that bar Ritchie clearly describes not only encountering these human spirits but he witnessed them attempting to breach the protective countenance of those that were still alive. Do some human spirits actually remain earthbound after death and can they under the right circumstances oppress living humans just as demonic influences do?

 

Sherrie and Lucy

 

Sherrie is a beautiful, 26 year old, married woman with children. She learned about my work by attending one of my presentations at a local health fair. She had come to see me complaining of anger issues and marital problems. During our first ESAT session, we found an oppressing spirit named Lucy. Unlike other spirits that had claimed to have never lived before, this spirit identified as human. The spirit claimed that she lived in Reno, Nevada back in the late 1940’s. She told us that she had three young children under the age of five years old and that her husband was involved in organized crime, working in the casino industry. Lucy was an angry, rebellious young woman that lived a troubled life; a life that ended tragically when she was killed in a car accident. Some of the details of what happened to Lucy after her death are unclear, but at some point she came upon Sherrie. Sherrie was just a girl at the time but Lucy claimed that she reminded her of one of her own little children, so this is why she decided to stay with Sherrie. At some point over the years Lucy successfully joined with Sherrie through a weakness in her countenance.

 

Rather than a negative influence, Lucy believed that her presence with Sherrie had been helpful and supportive throughout her life. In turn, Sherrie had thought that Lucy’s influence and promptings were nothing more than her own “trusted” inner dialogue. The following is a portion of the transcript of that session. Notice the powerful influence an attached oppressing human spirit can have on an individual and their family, and their interactions with others:

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RANDY: Have you helped her (Sherrie) since you joined with her?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: How do you help her? Tell me what you do to help her.

 

LUCY: I help her get things done.

 

RANDY: Tell me more about that. Give me an example of how you motivate her to get things done.

 

LUCY: I don’t let her forget.

 

RANDY: What is it that you’re helping her remember?

 

LUCY: What she needs to do.

 

RANDY: Oh I see. So you’re keeping in her mind all of the things that you think she needs to get accomplished?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: Do you stay on her until she gets them done?

 

LUCY: Yes.

 

RANDY: Are there any other ways that you think you are assisting her and helping her?

 

LUCY: I tell her when she is being taken advantage of. She’s naïve.

 

RANDY: Is she naïve? So you’re “wising her up” to the realities of life?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: Can you give an example of how you might warn her of someone taking advantage of her? Is there someone recently that has tried to do that?

 

LUCY: Her husband.

 

RANDY: What is it that he is doing to try to take advantage of her?

 

LUCY: He’s lazy! (Spoken in a louder, angrier tone)

 

RANDY: You feel like he’s lazy; is that correct?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: Does her husband do anything else that bothers you?

 

LUCY: He eats too much.

 

RANDY: And you don’t like that?

 

LUCY: No! (Another loud, angry reply)

 

RANDY: So do you motivate her to say or do something in that regard?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: What do you tell her to do?

 

LUCY: Don’t cook for him!

 

RANDY: How about the laziness; what do you tell her to tell him?

 

LUCY: Nag!

 

RANDY: Do you prompt her to say things to him?

 

LUCY: If she doesn’t say something to him, he’ll just keep being lazy.

 

RANDY: Do you like him?

 

LUCY: NO! (Even louder and angrier)

 

RANDY: You don’t care for him at all, do you?

 

LUCY: No.

 

RANDY: Tell me other ways that he bothers you?

 

LUCY: He doesn’t play with the kids.

 

RANDY: So do you motivate her to say something concerning that? What do you say through her?

 

LUCY: That they are never going to like him, if he doesn’t play with them.

 

RANDY: Do you get angry about this?

 

LUCY: Yes!

 

RANDY: You get mad?

 

LUCY: Yes! (Again, loud and angry)

 

RANDY: So when he’s acting lazy and won’t do the things she wants him to do, you get quite upset; don’t you?

 

LUCY: Yes.

 

RANDY: Do you express your anger when that happens?

 

LUCY: Yes.

 

RANDY: Well after all, you have been with her for years; he hasn’t been around that long. You have more right; don’t you?

 

LUCY: I have more power.

 

RANDY: Tell me about your power.

 

LUCY: I make her sick…

 

RANDY: Are you talking about physical illness?

 

LUCY: When she drinks [alcohol].

 

RANDY: When she drinks you make her sick?

 

LUCY: She doesn’t need to do that.

 

RANDY: You don’t like drinking?

 

LUCY: NO! (Loud and angry tone)

 

RANDY: So when she drinks you teach her a lesson?

 

LUCY: I make her throw up all day.

 

RANDY: So if she drinks, you make her sick all day to teach her a lesson?

 

LUCY: It doesn’t seem to work.

 

RANDY: Are there any other ways that you have made her physically ill.

 

LUCY: When I don’t want her to do something.

 

RANDY: Give me an example of something you would not want her to do, so you make her sick.

 

LUCY: (Hesitation)

 

RANDY: Was there something you didn’t want her to do today?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

(Sherrie got quite sick the morning of this appointment and almost didn’t come.)

 

RANDY: She was sick today; were you involved in that?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: What didn’t you want her to do today?

 

LUCY: Come here.

 

RANDY: And why didn’t you want her to come here?

 

LUCY: Because I didn’t want to leave.

 

RANDY: You know that I am going to motivate you to leave; don’t you Lucy?

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: How did you know that? Who told you that I was going to make you leave?

 

LUCY: I’ve been listening.

 

RANDY: Did you hear my presentation at the health fair.

 

LUCY: Yes

 

RANDY: And you didn’t like that, did you?

 

LUCY: No

​

It is stunning the level of influence and control this spirit had over her living host. When the spirit Lucy was further interviewed, she claimed to love Sherrie and was only doing these things because she thought they were in Sherrie’s best interest. Like a meddling mother insinuating herself into her adult children’s affairs, Lucy had the hold of a vice on Sherrie’s life.

 

Lucy stayed on Sherrie day and night like a task master, taunting her with a laundry list of things that she (Lucy) thought Sherrie needed to get accomplished. Lucy stayed on her, torturing her with guilt and other negative reinforcements, until they were done.

 

Lucy took it upon herself to determine which people were good for Sherrie and those that were not. Because Lucy deemed Sherrie as naïve, Sherrie could not be trusted with such important decisions.

 

Sherrie’s husband had been singled out as one of those negative influences by this spirit. So in defense of Sherrie, Lucy was carrying on her own little war against Sherrie’s husband, by discouraging her from being loving and supportive of him, while inspiring her to verbally contend with him on a regular basis. She went so far as to point out to Sherrie her husband’s physical shortcomings, specifically the weight he had gained. In short, Lucy despised Sherrie’s husband. As you can see, Lucy was the cause of much of the marital contention.

 

Within this process we see that Lucy was attempting to skew or replace altogether Sherrie’s true priorities with her own. Once she had accomplished this, she then used contention and anger to motivate Sherrie to fight for these false standards. Clearly much of the uncontrollable anger and even rage that Sherrie experienced at times, originated with Lucy.

 

Lucy was not only aware of her influence but also her “power”. If Sherrie did something that Lucy personally did not like, Sherrie might receive a punishment somewhat akin to a physical beating. I don’t know what the exact spiritual process is, but it must take a great deal of rage to empower a spirit like Lucy to be able to make someone violently ill for an entire day.

 

But it wasn’t just Lucy’s attitude of temperance that inspired these physical attacks. In fact, Lucy was quite comfortable with making Sherrie physically ill if she was doing, or going to do anything with which Lucy disagreed. Lucy’s attempt to stop Sherrie from coming to see me seems sufficient proof of that.

 

Sherrie’s trusted inner voice, the voice to which she had listened and had followed most of her life, a voice that at times most likely expressed love and support and seemed a trusted advisor, was nothing more than a hitchhiker or false spirit. This unsolicited spiritual guardian was in great part the cause of discord within Sherrie’s marriage, contention within her home, and unease within her children.

 

After releasing Lucy and other oppressing spirits from Sherrie, her relationship with her husband improved dramatically and her anger was greatly diminished.

 

From this single example of human spirit oppression, we see the sometimes subtle, yet powerful rule a human spirit can take over the living. What compounds the issue is the stealth by which these entities operate. The suffering host mistakenly believes that their issues and problems are solely a result of their own personal weaknesses and failings. As such, they will most likely never get to the root cause of their issues, and will continue to mentally suffer and emotionally deteriorate throughout the rest of their lives.

 

Replace the issues of anger and marital disharmony with the serious problems, and emotional challenges that you or someone you know may be facing, and this condition might just strike a very personal chord.

​

It’s Bad… It’s Really Bad…

 

It is important to understand that human spirit oppression always affects the living host negatively and is in no way or means a helpful condition to the long term spiritual well-being of the living host.

 

I have found instances where human spirits have seemingly helped the living. For example, I found the spirit of a man with an adult woman who was well into her thirties. This spirit claimed to have protected her over her life. As a child this woman’s father had been emotionally and physically abusive. The spirit claimed to have helped her fight back against her father, and to have strengthened her during the abuse. Whether he had actually helped her or not is debatable, but it is clear that his presence throughout her life was destructive, and was an overall negative to her development. Even though his intentions seemed good, his presence likely steered her from her true course and contributed to contention within her personal relationships as an adult.

 

When an earthbound human spirit breaches the countenance, the spirit and the living person become as one. The spirit transfers to the host (consciously or unconsciously) his character traits and emotional make-up. Since this man blended with this woman at a young age, his interests probably began to become her interests, as well as his very male habits and tendencies. She was in fact somewhat masculine and she even commented on how certain features like her hands had become more masculine in appearance as she grew older.

 

This can happen because the condition of human spirit attachment doesn’t end with emotional and mental affect, but sometimes there is a physical component. For instance, often when spirits die and remain, they believe they are still suffering from physical disease and ailments.

 

The strength of this suggestion is powerful when these spirits attach to the living. I have found oppressing human spirits that died from lung cancer that still believe they cannot breathe. In turn they are causing actual breathing difficulties in the living person to whom they are connected.

 

I have encountered spirits that had chronic back pain in life and that are unintentionally, just by their presence, causing back issues in the living host. It seems that the very beliefs held by these spirits, and the suffering energy that surrounds them can overtime inspire not just symptoms, but actual conditions and disease.

 

I have encountered spirits that died in an extreme state of advanced age that still believe that they are tired and worn out. Often this in turn causes a serious lack of energy and lethargy in the living person. It is important to note that the very condition of spirit oppression can cause energy drain. This is because the human body was designed to house and transport just one human spirit, while multiple spirits seem to put an overload on the system.

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A Spiritual Pandemic

 

Whether it is human or non-human or a combination of both, I believe that the great majority of the world’s population is suffering from some level of spirit oppression. In my work I have found as few as one or two oppressing spirits, and as many as 100 or more with one individual, but I rarely find none. As mentioned earlier, no one is perfectly immune. I have found them on very nice people and I have found them with unpleasant people. It could be the criminal up the block or the sweet little old lady that lives next door.

 

As we discussed previously, society was once very aware of this problem but today there is nary a whisper. This is unfortunate because believing in this concept and becoming aware of its influence in your life, is the first step towards combating it.

 

 

Why Do They Stay?

 

An important question that comes to mind when discussing the concept of earthbound human spirits is "Why do they stay?" Throughout Christianity there are various beliefs concerning the afterlife. The most simple of these doctrines is that good believers go to Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell. Unfortunately this belief is in fact a little too simplistic. As a result of his near-death experience, George Ritchie indicates that he believed that "one level of hell existed right here" on Earth, among the living. Our experiences by way of the ESAT process confirms that he was probably correct in this regard. But why do some move on to the next level of existence or Heaven, while others remain seemingly stranded here upon the earth?

 

Well as George Ritchie indicates in his book, some appear to remain by choice, in an attempt to continue to pursue Earthly passions and addictions. I have found spirits with family members or friends that they loved, and did not want to leave. Conversely, I have found some clinging to family, friends or associates in an attempt to enact some form of revenge upon them. This said, the great majority of these connections are made by spirits that had no association with their living host when they were alive.

 

Some remain because of the guilt that they feel, as a result of the manner in which they perceive that they have lived their lives. At times spirits stay earthbound clinging to material things such as a home or piece of property. There have been reports of spirits staying with furniture, clothing or a treasured family heirloom. I even found a human spirit once that had been following his favorite handgun, from one new living owner to another over the decades.

 

The list of reasons why spirits appear to remain earthbound is endless. The pursuit of passions, sex, addictions, the desire to continue to build a business or career, the need to continue to control others, to fight for a cause, or even a misguided attempt to help others, are just a few of the multitude of factors that might keep a person earthbound.

 

While these human spirits appear to be marooned upon this earth due to their earthly needs, desires and addictions, these reasons are merely the bait. The actual hook that keeps them firmly stuck is something else entirely.

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The Next Step: The Inhuman Demonic Spirit Factor

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In our next stop entitled,"The Inhuman Demonic Factor" we uncover the characteristics, motivations and tactics of the legions of demonic spirits that are sent to attack us daily.

 

Please click here to continue, or use the link below to return to the "Spirit Oppression: 101" index.