Season of the witch

My daughter Isobel climbed into the backseat of our car after school the other day. She was excited.“Dad, our school is haunted!”I smiled. I have a good idea what her school is actually haunted by: superstitious girls.

“Really?” I replied.

“There was a ghost in the hallway, and it controlled my classmates!”

“How did it do that?”

“It made one of my friends move… against her will! It made her walk!”

“Don’t you think she was just faking it?”

“No, Daddy, she wasn’t faking! She was controlled! By a ghost!”

My daughter is seven. I also attended Catholic grade school (for boys), but I don’t remember going through a ghost or white lady phase. The nuns in my school would have easily scared them off the property. Two nuns in particular, Sister Bernadette and Sister Irene, were in charge of patrolling the hallways; their sole task was whacking kids with rolled-up magazines and pointer sticks if they were caught late for class. What kind of ghost is going to stick around for that?

“I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t control people, or move them around like puppets,” I told Isobel. “Demons do that. Maybe it was a demon.”

Isobel pondered this information. She hasn’t come across demons yet in her Christian Living classes.

“No, I think it was a ghost. And you know, I went into the bathroom with my friend? And we were looking at the mirror, and first it made us look small, and then it made us look big…!”

I tried to explain the effect of pressing certain mirrors, how it bends the light, creates a funhouse mirror effect. But come to think of it: warping mirrors. That’s kind of creepy.

“My other friend was also controlled! It made her go up and down the stairs!”

I had flashes of the last time I watched The Exorcist on DVD — the re-released version where Regan crawls down the stairs like a spider — then blocked the memory out. Reasonable explanation for everything, I assured Isobel, blah blah blah. Most likely the kid was just trying to scare you, blah blah blah. Or you kids were just caught up in the hysteria, kids like being scared, it’s an adventure, blah blah blah…

Saying all this seemed to have an effect on Isobel, but it’s not one I intended. It was probably similar to what occurs when kids start pondering the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and reviewing the data. I had planted seeds of doubt, and it made her rethink the incident. Either that, or she was gathering more ammunition.

“But, Daddy… there’s a big teddy bear in our hallway at school, and we were walking past it? And it usually has one big red heart, but this one time I saw it and it had three red hearts!”

This did seem unusual. Creepy, in fact. No one would make up something like that.

Later I spoke with Isobel’s mom and she assured me that this type of stuff happens at girls’ schools all the time. White ladies, ghosts, witches. It occurred to me that we were nearing Halloween season.

But something else was going on here, and I think, in my zeal to be a calm, rational adult, I was overlooking it: Isobel was exploring her imagination, sharing in a communal moment in which kids willingly suspend their disbelief. She wanted to believe in a Catholic school ghost.

In fact, if memory serves, the sight of darkened hallways, abundant (usually unlit) candles, stained glass windows and echoey stairwells is not unlike the Catholic school I attended as a kid. It’s an atmosphere not far removed from the gothic novels and Vincent Price horror movies I enjoyed as a kid, too. And it occurred to me that Catholic rituals and accoutrements are, in large part, about stirring our imagination. Such symbols are meant to surround us in an atmosphere of incredulous belief, whether it’s in a church or in a spooky girl’s school.

And here I was, trying to snuff out her healthy imaginings.

Granted, I’m sure the sisters who serve at Isobel’s school would not like to think that their sacred halls and candles and teddy bears were causing kids to freak out and imagine they are possessed by ghosts. But really, what harm does it do?

It got weirder. She brought home a plastic container, with a little yellow ball of clay inside. She claimed her classmates had “trapped” the ghost inside the plastic container; it was supposed to be inside the ball of clay. I asked if this was a friendly spirit. Isobel nodded. “Then why not let it out? Maybe it needs a little exercise…” Isobel refused.

She told me her classmates were now reciting spells in school, to make the ghosts go home. “Spirito maskeela!” was one of them, I recall; she said it meant, “Ghost, go home!”

“Did it work?”

Isobel shook her head. She said the ghosts had made her feet hurt. I said maybe her shoes were too tight. She said no, the ghost made her feet shake and rattle. I told her we would start worrying when her feet began to roll.

After that, Isobel told me one of her teachers said if you believe in ghosts, you can’t believe in Jesus Christ. Like you had to choose one or the other. I thought that was a little harsh. Wasn’t the Catholic Trinity founded on a Holy Spirit? That may not be, technically, a ghost, but it’s a supernatural being of sorts. I knew what the sisters were up to, though: they were trying to nip this superstition thing in the bud. I told Isobel that if you believe in Jesus Christ, then you probably also believe that He would want those wandering spirits and ghosts to find their way home. So that weird “Spirito maskeela!” incantation didn’t seem so pagan after all.

I began to wonder at what point in the nuns’ and teachers’ development they had let go of the idea of ghosts. Was it when they were little girls, running around Catholic schools like Isobel? Was it in seminary, or in college? Did they just put the notion aside, the way adults are supposed to put away childish things?

I told Isobel to keep us posted on any new sightings, and that she shouldn’t be afraid; if they’re spirits, they’re probably just lost, looking for directions, trying to find the C.R. Just help them out when you can, and have a little faith.

But I added, if you see that teddy bear grow an extra couple of hearts again, let me know. I’ll give Sister Bernadette and Sister Irene a call, if they’re not already retired.