By Allen Johnson, Ph.D.

THIS IS THE STORY of my brush with the devil.

It happened in Algeria. My wife and I were living in a big two-story, stucco house that once sheltered Berber resistance fighters during the country’s war of independence with the French. It was an old house and a little bit haunted. The ghosts of Algerian soldiers held up in the attic at night and made plans for the battle at dawn. I know they were ghosts; I looked.

One cold winter night, my wife nudged me in the ribs.

“Allen, are you awake?” she whispered.

“I am now,” my voice rumbled.

“Listen,” she breathed. “I think there’s someone in the attic.”

“No, it’s just the wind,” I told her. “Go back to sleep. I rolled over on my side and closed my eyes. Then I opened my eyes. What was that? It sounded like someone walking directly overhead. Thump, thump, thump. There was someone in the Attic-or something. I had to find out.

“I’m going up,” I said resolutely.

“You can’t go up there,” my wife gasped. “What if they thump you on the head?”

Good question. Still I had to look. I am like that; I have to see to believe. But more than that, want to see so I can believe. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I got a step ladder from downstairs and set it up under the lid that covered the access to the attic. I climbed silently up the ladder and pushed the lid up and to one side. Then slowly veeerry slowly-I eased my head through the opening, breaking the thin film that separates the real world from ghost country. In one quick movement, my head swiveled 360 degrees. Yep, ghosts all right. Had to be; no one else was there. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If it isn’t organic, it must to be supernatural. (Later I wondered what I would have said if there had been a live person holed up in the attic. “Ah, excuse me. I hope I’m not bothering you, but could you hold it down up here? My wife and I are trying to get a little sleep, if you don’t mind.”)

The scene was set for my visit with the devil. A couple of nights later I was reading a novel that a friend had sent to me from the states, The Exorcist. This is not a happy book and not a volume I recommend to my friends. But in 1974 Time ran a big story on the frenzy generated by the movie. I decided to see for myself what all the hullabaloo was about. That night I read the spooky part about the little girl and the bed that shook and rattled and spun around. That was enough for me. I set the book on the night table, turned off the light and went to sleep.

Then, just before dawn, my bed started shaking, the metal frame chattering on the hardwood floor like a loose shingle in the wind. Every muscle in my body marbleized; you could have used me for a javelin. I kept thinking, “The devil’s after me. That must be it. I don’t know what I said or what I did, but he wants me.” And then I thought, “Wait a minute, maybe God wants me. Yeah, maybe God has this really neat idea, and I’m tangled up in it somehow. So there in the morning light I waited to hear either the voice of God or the voice of the devil.

Waiting . . . until, “Honey!”

Who’s that? “Honey” seemed too casual for God and too affectionate for the devil.

“Honey, we just had an earthquake.”

It was my wife. I knew it was she; I could see her lips moving. And I was still on earth and alive and attached to my soul. Sure, it all made sense now. It was just an earthquake; they had those things in this part of the country. Very logical. And yet just seconds before, I was convinced that I was traded to the devil. How could I have thought that? I’m so rational, so objective about stuff like that. How could I be so quickly swayed? I am not sure how to articulate my spiritual beliefs. But I do know that our cynicism should be carefully checked. I am calling for an openness to truth. Let us not be quick to dismiss our sacred selves. The French theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, may have been profoundly accurate when he said, “We are not human being having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

After all, if we can so quickly believe that there is a ghost in the attic or a devil under the bed, then we can also believe, as I think we do, that there is a source of goodness, there, somewhere, just beyond our sight but well within our reach.