Spirits can operate at a distance and don’t just attach to a single person.

That was shown with the famous case of a “haunted” house in Gary, Indiana, and an entire family that became possessed.

It was bad enough that LaToya Ammons, her two sons (seven and nine), and a daughter (twelve), were taken over by a spirit or spirits after moving into the house, which has been the subject of major newspaper reports, two national documentaries, and most recently a (not recommended) Netflix movie. [See previous story]

But the spirit or spirits also affected friends, police responding to the situation, and the very priest, Father Michael Maginot, of St. Stephen Church in nearby Merrillville, who was authorized by his bishop to perform a formal exorcism—and it did so even when they weren’t near the family or home.

For spirits don’t just plague a single person or place. And they can orchestrate events from near or afar.

In this case, one officer simply responding to the scene suddenly found his police radio going crazy: losing power even though he’d just charged it.

A friend suffered a headache for two weeks after visiting.

Let’s focus here on Father Maginot and a particularly interesting twist.

As he told us ten years ago for a “Special Report,” his computer acted in a bizarre manner when he was nowhere near the place (doing a search on “demonology”). There were suspicious electrical outages at the rectory.

Then, at one point during the exorcisms, there was the Bicycle Ride, “one of the strangest things in my life,” he said. 

According to the priest, during that ten-mile ride, he noticed that everyone he passed—perhaps as many as fifteen folks on roads and sidewalks—was stopping to smile and wave at him.

Uncannily friendly.

He’d biked for years but never had people react to his bike rides like that before.

He figured the angels were happy with him helping the Ammons family.

Then things turned negative.

Father Maginot was nearly hit head-on by a bicycle speeding in the opposite direction and dodging it, he found himself sprawled on the grass—thrown off the path—and his bicycle seat turned at an odd, 45-degree angle.

A branch had hit his head.

But the priest had remounted, and shortly after, another incident.

This time he was forced to suddenly veer around a little boy and his mother. A near miss.

It could have been very bad.

The priest then entered a dark bike tunnel under a street and suddenly there was a paroxysm of voices, about twenty students shouting and screaming as they dashed and shoved and jumped their way to the sides of the tunnel to avoid being hit by his speeding bike. Another very close call.

One incident, okay. Two, alright.

But three?

On the way home, said Father Maginot, people he passed by were no longer friendly.

Now, everyone—about ten people, including a family—was staring at him, with unforgettable and inexplicable looks of puzzlement. 

His involvement with the house was causing a distant affect. Something was obviously around him. Something was affecting folks on the path.

“It was freaky,” said the priest. “They were just standing there staring at me, all with the same kind of look.”

[resources: “Special Report“]