The Old Man
By Anonymous

I heard about this story from a religion teacher I had in middle school and high school. Interestingly enough, the story is about the husband of an art teacher we also had. It's actually a big coincidence how the telling of this story unfolded. The religion teacher heard the story from a priest, and then several years later, he heard the story from the art teacher who it had happened to. The story sounded a lot like the Bible story of Jesus getting tempted by the devil while in the desert, but I have no doubt that this story is true.

The story starts out on the art teacher's honeymoon. While in the middle of the night, her husband grabbed her by the neck and started choking her. In the morning, the husband woke up and found his wife huddled in a corner. He asked her what was wrong and she told him what had happened. Her husband didn't remember a thing. They dismissed the event as a sleep walking thing and forgot about it. Nothing else weird happened for awhile.

The husband was a paramedic or firefighter. He had a weird shift where he would work for like three days, then get four off. One day, at a particular time in the middle of the night - for argument's sake I will say 3 a.m. though I don't remember the exact time... the event happened at the same time each night - the smoke alarm went off. The wife woke up alarmed, but then realized there was no fire. The alarm eventually shut off and she went back to bed. The next night, at the same time, the smoke alarm went off again. Again, no fire. This continued to happen for several nights and would only happen when her husband was not in the house, but at work. She discussed this with her husband and they came to an agreement that it must have been an electrical problem with the smoke alarm. It just needed to be replaced. So, her husband took the batteries out of the smoke alarm. The next time he went to work, the alarm went off. Frightened, his wife destroyed the smoke alarm with a hammer or bat and threw it into the trash. The next night, the smoke alarm went off while still in the trash can. As weird as that was, they eventually forgot about it and nothing else happened for awhile.

One night, while the two were sleeping, the husband woke up to a burglar in their room looking through their drawers to see what he could steal. The husband grabbed a bat that he kept by the bed and chased the burglar. The burglar made a mad dash to the front door, then went right "through" the door. At some point in the chase, the husband realized that the burglar seemed to have no face - almost like he was a shadow. The husband described the shadow as dressed in a black or dark hood. He analyzed the event, then dismissed it as a dream of some kind. He didn't tell his wife anything in fear that she would think he was crazy.

Awhile passed, then one day, the husband was sitting in his living room by himself reading the newspaper when he noticed a man in the room. He described the man as in his 60's, graying hair, dressed in a suit and very friendly looking. The husband was surprised and asked the man who he was. The old man replied, "I just want to be your friend", then he disappeared. The husband thought he really was crazy and told his wife what had happened. The wife went to a priest for help - the same priest that told my religion teacher the story. The priest listened to the wife's story, but dismissed it as some kind of a dream where the husband was half asleep and started seeing things. The priest told the wife not to worry about it and to just pray.

Awhile passed, and again, the old man appeared while the husband was alone. Again, the old man told him, "I just want to be your friend. Is it money that you want?" Instantly, the husband said, the room was filled with money, gold bars and jewels. He said he saw them as clear as day. The old man then repeated, "I just want to be your friend" and disappeared. The husband told his wife and they went together to see the priest.

The priest started to think that there might have been something weird going on in their house, so he gave them a picture of "The Sacred Heart of Jesus" - a famous painting or drawing of Jesus. He told the husband to hang the painting in the living room where the apparitions had been occurring and he gave him some instructions to follow if the old man ever appeared again.

Sure enough, the old man came again. "Is it women that you want?" The room filled with naked women - beautiful naked women. The old man said again, "All I want is to be your friend." The husband told the old man, "I want you to kneel before that picture on the wall." The husband said that the old man took one look at the picture on the wall and his friendly demeanor changed completely to a hateful and scary one. The old man said, "I will never kneel before Him!" At this point, the husband said that the old man started chasing him around the room and that he was really in fear for his life. He said the old man was screaming and his eyes were red as fire. Eventually, the old man disappeared. The couple went back to the priest with the news. The priest was certain then that something evil was in the house. He decided to go to the house to bless it and pray with the couple.

The day of the blessing, the priest arrived and began to get everything ready. As the priest was getting ready, the husband felt uneasy and went outside for fresh air. He was then called in to join in the prayer, which he did. The priest began to pray, and the husband (telling this story to my religion teacher who had already heard it from the priest) remembered getting a feeling of hatefulness toward the priest. He didn't know why, but at that very moment, he hated the priest and wanted to kill him. The husband stood up from where he was sitting and threw himself at the priest. The priest saw him coming right before the husband threw himself at him and said, "In the name of Jesus, I command you to stop!" The husband stopped in his tracks, and in retelling his story, said that he felt someone or something holding him back and he couldn't move although he wanted to hurt the priest. Something had stopped him from doing so.

The priest continued to pray and bless the home. The husband calmed down and the priest asked him if he had ever been involved in anything dealing with the occult. The husband said no. The priest continued to question him about anything he had ever been a part of that was occult-like. Eventually, the husband told the priest that he practiced Karate and was a 2nd degree or 3rd degree black belt. The priest found the connection with the Karate and the possession. The priest, when telling the story to my religion teacher, told him that the martial arts deals with a lot of meditation and that it is a path demons and other evil things can use to sometimes influence humans.

The priest instructed the husband to get rid of anything and everything that he had in his possession that dealt with the martial arts and to put it all in a trash bag and throw it out. Old uniforms, trophies, etc. Everything was put in a bag, and as the bag was taken to the front of the house with the rest of the trash, the things inside the bag began to explode and make loud noises. The priest prayed some more and blessed the house.

After this, the couple looked into the history of the house and somehow found out that the previous owner was into Brujeria and had done some sort of ceremony in the house involving animals and other weird things in order to help him sell the house which he'd tried to sell and couldn't. After that, I think they sold the house and moved somewhere else. Nothing else ever happened.

The weird part was that my religion teacher had heard the story from the priest first, and then years later became good friends with the art teacher and her husband who one day shared the story with him when they felt comfortable enough. When my religion teacher saw the similarity between the two stories, he mentioned the name of the priest and the art teacher said it was the same priest.

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