Dark forces surround us just as the bright ones do.

They can be deceptive. Scripture tells us that they can even come as “an angel of light.”

They may masquerade as a deceased acquaintance, and, too, if a revenant, we must also realize that the spirit of a deceased person will have the same personality as the person—until that spirit has been purified by going into Christ’s Light.

A strange drain in energy—fatigue—can be a sign that a spirit is drawing from you and we don’t want that. We also look for anxiety, confusion, and contention as first signs that what’s around is negative.

Sudden withdrawal, bad habits, unexplained changes of mind, drinking, hoarding, compulsive eating, sloth, ill temper, and foul language can be indicators. Certain cases of autism have been cured through deliverance, as have allergies.

“The ‘hidden’ evil spirits at large in the world can manifest themselves by God’s permissive Will—if not by their actual appearance, at least by their power—as happened twice in the case of Job (1:12 and 2:6),” wrote an expert, Father John Hampsch of California. “The Old Testament indicates that God’s chosen
people, the Israelites, had no difficulty in believing in the manifestation of deceased persons as living, even though the word ‘ghost’ wasn’t part of their daily vocabulary.

“This belief is clear from the story about Maccabeus’s otherworld visitors, Onias and Jeremiah (2 Maccabees 15:12-16); and Samuel’s ghostly posthumous admonishment of Saul from the abode of the dead (1 Samuel 28). And in Sirach 46:20 Samuel prophesies from the grave. Other direct or indirect biblical allusions to ‘ghosts’: Job 4:15: ‘A spirit glided by my face and the hair on my body stood on end.’ This ‘spirit’ may have been an angel; but it does give us a hint of even a tactile human experience of meeting a spiritual entity. Leviticus 19:31 tells us that there are dangerous spirits to be eschewed. From the insights and wisdom of doctors of the Church like St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as modern spiritual writers, plus the anecdotal testimony from credible people, the existence and activity of the spirit world is fairly well known. That it is possible for spirits to communicate in dreams and in wakeful states and to experience a possible bodily reaction to the visitation, see Job 4:15.

“In the spirit world are many evil entities, unseen but only occasionally manifested,” continues the esteemed priest. “Only when certain very restricted conditions are fulfilled can these entities become externally manifest.

“Some of these disconcerting spirit-entities are ‘poltergeists’ and others are ‘ghosts.’ Poltergeists are not humans but devilishly mischievous evil spirits; they’re mostly rather stupid, and in the hierarchy of the nefarious, they’re the underlings of the underworld. However, they sometimes seem to act in partnership with deceased human persons—often persons who have died recently in a state of bitterness, hatred, or unforgiveness of their enemies (especially refusing to forgive hurtful relatives or associates).”

Haunted homes?

“Spirits may act through or with disembodied human souls who formerly lived in the locale where the poltergeist event occurs—near cemeteries, above curse-infected burial spots, in their former homes that have become ‘haunted’ houses or victims of evil actions like murder, torture, abortion, incest, pedophilia, or where occultic practices occurred—by psychics, palm readers, fortune-tellers, and especially places of Satanic covens. The name poltergeist comes from the German word poltern, which means to knock, and geist, which means spirit. Typically they disturb by knocking or noise-making, but also by more pernicious acts of  object moving, stone-throwing, fire-igniting, etcetera. They are more difficult to expel than ghosts.”

We may disagree with Father Hampsch on certain things (I’m not sure a poltergeist is necessarily so dumb, nor that it is always a demon, for a deceased human can also be loud and mischievous; some argue that most negative entities are revenants), but there’s no doubt spirits infest people and rooms and homes and entire communities.

[resources: The Spirits Around Us]