Out of the Darkness, Out of the Night

A True Story

I had felt that presence before. When I had first arrived at Croughton in 1982, more than a year earlier, I had become interested in the occult. I searched the base library for books about witchcraft, Satanism, anything I could find, and devoured it all. I wanted to learn enough to be able to fight against the forces of the supernatural. Visions of Sir Lancelot, Conan, Superman filled my head, keeping alive my boyhood dream of being a hero. I was going to clear out haunted houses, and help people get rid of poltergeists, demons, whatever was troubling them. I was learning to be a spiritual exterminator. I ended up learning more than I expected.

A few weeks after I began my studies I began to feel as though I were being watched. As the weeks grew into months the feeling grew stronger. Around every corner something waited. In every bush something hid, watching, waiting to strike. In the daytime I would laugh and tell myself it was all my imagination. I was letting the things I was reading get to me. But every night it was back. I would lay awake at night staring into the shadows of my room, knowing that something I could not see was staring back. Just as I could feel the wind, even though I could not see it, so I felt the presence of something else unseen, just as tangible as the wind and just as real.

Three times I awoke in the middle of the night unable to move, my heart racing as if it were about to explode, unable to do anything but wait for a touch from behind that never came. At other times I would lay in the dark, wanting desperately to turn on the light but terrified of what it might show. Fear was not a feeling for me, but a presence that I could have touched had I but dared to reach out my hand.

Fear was with me that night as I walked the half mile from my barracks to the comm center. I was watched as I passed the darkened buildings. In every shadow something waited to strike. For the thousandth time I glanced over my shoulder, only to find nothing there. I tried to walk silently, as I had done as a child. Back then I had been just playing. Sneaking up to surprise my brother. Now I wished I could hide for real.

I knew that a crisis was approaching. I had felt it coming for weeks. And I knew that I had one weapon, if I could bring myself to use it. You can't make a serious study of demonology for very long without encountering the name of Jesus Christ. In the literature of the occult; the real sources, not the chain bookstore imitations, his name shows up everywhere as a charm against evil. In some ways it sounded silly. I knew who Jesus was supposed to be, and had recently found out just what, precisely, it was he was supposed to have done. I could even say I halfway believed it. But only halfway. In the daylight I would have dismissed instantly the thought of using the name of Jesus as some sort of magic spell. Alone, in the dark, I wasn't so sure.

The path I had to take went along the street for a short distance, then cut through a field behind some buildings. As I reached the place where it started to cross the field I stopped. Beside the last building was a wooden loading platform. Underneath it was a pool of blackness. Something was under that loading platform. Something cold and malignant, waiting for me to get close enough to strike. I looked around. There was nobody else in sight, and I was on duty in just a few minutes. I could not go back, and there wasn't time to go around. My heart hammered furiously. I fought to keep my breath quiet, concentrating on taking one step, then a second, then a third, Walking past the platform took every bit of self-control I had. Even though the night was chilly, I was drenched with sweat.

Then I was past, walking through the field, breathing hard and trying not to run. At the end of the field I had to pass one more building; the bank. Just around the corner I would be in almost total darkness. But having gotten past the loading platform I knew the corner would be easy. I was wrong.

As I approached the center of the field I expected the fear to decrease. Instead it increased. I stopped and stood in the middle of the field, trapped, unable to move any closer to either the platform or the corner that was blocking the only path to the lighted communications building. And in a moment even standing was no longer a refuge. Whatever had watched me for all those months was through watching. I felt it as clearly as I would have felt the touch of icy fingers. Something was coming toward me from the dark corner. Something else was coming from under the platform. Everything I had ever read was worthless to me in that moment. Had I known an actual magic spell I could not have employed it. Even speaking the name of Jesus was beyond me; my mouth refused to open. Everything was lost. I was about to die. In terror I clutched at the only straw I could think of. Without uttering a word I prayed. In utter desperation I begged God, in the name of Jesus Christ, to help me.

Like a bubble popping, instantly the malignance that had shadowed me for the past year was gone. And the fear I had known increased a thousand fold, changing its very nature in the process. No longer a dark stalking presence, in an instant it was as though I were in the presence of a power totally beyond my comprehension. In that same mixture of fear and awe that men feel at the sight of a volcanic eruption, or perhaps an earthquake, I felt that the sky was about to open and the world about to end. But it was more than just power. Just as I had felt the presence of something wicked pursuing me, so now I could feel the presence of something, or rather of someone, very different.

The only word that I have for it is holy. But what I felt in that moment went so far beyond what I thought of as holy, what any of us think of as holy, that the word simply fails. All words fail. I stood in the presence of a holy God, and knew that I had never once been worthy of him. If he had chosen to kill me at that moment every fiber of my being would have affirmed the rightness of it. I didn't know what he wanted from me, but whatever it was I knew without question that I did not have it. My mind formed just one prayer; I don't think I was even capable of anything else. "Lord, whatever you want to do is right," was my only thought. "Do it."

Eternity lasted for the space of five, perhaps ten heartbeats. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the fear that had held me was gone. The feeling of power was still there, but muted. Diminished enough for me to continue on to the communications building and my duty station.

Neither the fear nor the presence returned the next night, or on any night since. As time has passed I've stopped expecting it to. But my prayer on that night was honest, and God's response was equally so. I told him that he could do whatever he wanted. What he wanted to do was to forgive all the ways in which I am not worthy of him, and adopt me as his child. All this he has done, and more besides. Gradually he is teaching me to draw my strength from Him, leaning on Him so that the old fears can never return. Gradually he is teaching me what it means to be free.

© 1986, Joe Jefferson. All rights reserved.