Safe not spooky

My husband stood in the underground stairway singing “Amazing Grace,” the song echoing off the walls and carrying into the darkness outside. We stood near a set of Harper’s Ferry railroad tracks, just a short walk from where John Brown led his slave revolt in 1859. The last shuttle bus had left the town an hour before. We were stranded—Jonathan, me, and two other friends who had made the long trek down from the lookout point an hour before. We emerged from the stairwell, ready to wander the forsaken town while we waited for another friend to rescue us.

That’s when the ghost hunters showed up. The woman approached us first, holding some kind of electromagnetic detector in her hand. “You guys scared away whatever we were communicating with,” she said.

At first I assumed that she and her companion—a slender man with glasses and a beard—had seen something darting through the brush. An animal, maybe? I apologized for our interruption, but soon it became apparent that these people were seeking to communicate with spirits. Not only that—they assumed we were doing the same. Why else would we linger in the tourist town after all the businesses had closed, the trains departed, and the daytime spirit of the place been buttoned up for the night?

“You know a girl got hit by a train and died right here,” said the man.

We, of course, had not known, but listened closely, offering polite nods and “oh reallys” while we tried to discern the nature of the conversation we had stumbled into.

Assuming we shared their fascination with the undead, the two regaled us with several spooky tales of their own supernatural encounters. They give us tips on where to go in the dark town. “Nothing scary,” said the woman, who between pulls on her cigarette blew large clouds of fruity smoke into my face. “Just friendly things that want to have fun.”

It was then that I started to pray for these two. They wore their interest in ghostliness with visible ardor. I doubted very much that they had been duped into a gigantic falsity. And if they had really been communicating with something in the dark, I felt no surprise at the idea that we would have frightened it away.

I kept thinking of the closing remarks my pastor had made in last Sunday’s sermon, a probing of God’s sovereign and purposeful provision for Ruth. Ruth had taken refuge in the right place: beneath the wings of the God who is spirit and flesh. The pastor said, “Do you realize that when you walk out of here this morning, you walk out under the protection of the Almighty God?”

The night was dark. We were cold, stranded, and standing in the spookiest of spots with true spook-believers. But instead of fear, this idea captivated us: Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. For us the spiritual was not a menace or terror. Because of the spiritual, we were safe—and always, always would be.