Several years ago I read a disturbing report about a haunted house in Long Island where the owner believes an evil presence was banished from the home during a pagan ritual and say the home is now being "haunted" by her dead husband.

In a story appearing on the season three premier of Paranormal Witness, the now 63 year-old Jeanette Meyran tells about the loss of her firefighter husband in the "Black Sunday" fire of 2005 and how she moved her grief-stricken family to a new home on Long Island to start afresh.

The home was located on an acre of forested land in Suffolk County and needed some renovations. During construction, to protect themselves from looters, they installed cameras to guard the property.

While viewing one of these films in 2006, Meyran saw a man appear in the middle of the woods.

"Right in the middle of the frame I saw what appeared to be a man," Meyran said. "It made no sense."

Then other paranormal activities began to occur. Starting in 2007, her two teenaged daughters, Danine and Angela, claimed to hear thumps and knocking in the walls during the night. They also heard voices whispering their names.

One day, while Jeanette was vacuuming, the floor started to shake as it would during an earthquake. She thought it might be a problem with the oil burner and went into the basement to check. The burner was fine, but she became suddenly overcome by a sensation of intense evil and quickly fled upstairs. Later, while fixing up the basement, workers found a pentagram etched into the concrete floor.

Also found during renovations was an 86 year-old diary describing satanic rituals with animal sacrifices. The pages were written by a young girl named Christina who lived in the house.

Meyran described the contents of the diary as "an incredibly dark story".

"She [Christina] would talk about her father. There were sacrifices. 'He hurt me again' or 'He hurts the animals. They're bleeding and I bleed like they bleed.  . . These people were sick. This is what went on in this house'."

Things appear to have gone from bad to worse. One night when Angela was home alone, she was terrified to discover the kitchen had been ransacked.

"My mom had left me alone in the house. She had given me instructions when she left that she wanted to clean up," Angela explained on the show. "And I just remember feeling like I wasn't alone. I looked back behind me a couple of times and there was nobody there. I couldn't shake this feeling of having somebody watching me and it was really starting to bother me."

Later, when Meyran returned home, she saw every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen thrown open.

"The place looked like it had been ransacked," she said. "Was someone trying to hurt us? Was someone physically here?"

Another time Angela saw a horrifying figure appear in her bedroom mirror.

“This figure, 8 feet tall with horns and a tail, bent down and stepped out . . . I saw its claws. [It was] walking towards me. He smelled like rotting, dead flesh.”

In 2008, a priest gave them holy water to sprinkle in the house but the family claimed it didn't work. (Usually infestations as serious as this one require much more than just holy water.)

Finally, in 2011, the family turned to a paranormal investigator and a psychic to get rid of the spirit. The investigator claimed that the work on the house disturbed a demon who was lurking in the basement.

She is said to have used sage and kosher salt along with a blessing to cleanse the house and command the spirit to leave.

Here's where this story made my blood run cold.

All of the newspapers end this story on the seemingly happy note that the ritual "worked" and they now "cleanse" the house every three months to keep the demon away.

However, "sometimes they still see ghosts" the papers report. The teens believe it's the ghost of their dead father watching over them.

“I see my dad in this house walking through the hallways checking on us. It’s nice to know he’s watching,” Angela says.

In a photo appearing in the New York Post coverage of this story, Mrs. Meyran holds up a cell phone showing a photo of who she believes is her late husband who is now inhabiting the home. As anyone with any knowledge of the occult will say, Mr. Meyran has long since gone to his eternal reward or punishment, and this "ghost" is none other than the same demon who harassed them before, only now he's appearing in a much more likeable guise. Why? So he can get into the family's good graces and win their trust. For what, we can only guess.

Please join me in praying for protection for this family that they may find the help they need to rid their lives of the evil that is plaguing them.

This blog will help you to better understand the spiritual realm and why experts believe hauntings are infestations by evil spirits.

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