It is always a good idea to use sacramentals when visiting a doctor and certainly in the hospital.
Medals. The Crucifix (especially). Holy Water.
For many years now there have been accounts — particularly from nurses (but also regular laity and priests) — about the spiritual dynamics at our health care centers.
People of all sorts die in hospitals and according to some testimonies souls can wander where they have parted from the body — when there has not been adequate prayer and if the person is not inclined to Jesus. There are souls that are earthbound or “purgatorial.” St. Padre Pio spoke of seeing them. So did other saints. If there is an overpowering materialism and profit motive behind the health service (as so often occurs) — or immorality among personnel, not to mention morning-after abortion pills or other illicit practices — darkness from those may also be there. It is said that spirits are attracted to anxiety. They can affect a doctor’s judgment. They can also exacerbate a condition.
Thus is it important to invoke the angels and saints, bring the Eucharist to the infirm, pray for the deceased (sometimes just a few prayers set them free), and spiritually cleanse everywhere we go (casting darkness out). When we do, souls find peace, dark ones scatter, and as one woman saw in a vision, a bubble of protection forms like a glass dome around us.
In fact, there is an entire nurses’ blog — 206 pages worth — filled with accounts of strange happenings in American hospitals.
“I work in an intensive-care facility and we have had numerous reports from patients that they have seen a little boy,” recalls one nurse in the blog, sponsored by one of the nation’s largest nursing organizations. “This boy comes in their rooms, turns their call lights on and off, throws things on the floor. This facility used to be an orphanage! Also there are stories of a old-fashioned nurse in the whole white dress and hat who would be seen going down the hall late at night doing her bed check and would go into someone’s room and stay there for a couple minutes if they were really sick or about to die. Well I guess one aide saw her a while back and refused to go down that hall for a week.”
“I am a director of nursing in Virginia,” wrote one more, summarizing the many reports. “I have worked in several intensive-care facilities and have noted some of the same occurrences in different buildings. I was wondering if any of you could relate to any of these as well: the children — at least half of all of my residents have seen and talk about (ghostly) children; call lights going on and off in certain rooms for no reason; residents’ voices changing and telling you things such as ‘Do not be afraid’; residents who are actively dying and turn their heads slowly to look at you with this look I cannot describe but send chills up your spine; the woman in white; vital signs machines, oxygen concentrators not working in an end-of-life or acute situation; residents seeing ‘the man’ or ‘the dog.’ Any of these things could absolutely be chalked up to hallucinations or dementia — however with so many residents in different places? Or when you have a string of actively dying patients in the building — everything going wrong. I’ve been doing this for twenty years and its always the same. Has anyone experienced any of these before or can anyone perhaps shed some light on these things for me?”
It happened after a serious heart operation — during which doctors thought they had lost him. At one point, he also saw what he claimed was a demon in the form of the classic centaur, battling with a huge angel that was in the room.
“Bob was seeing some things and was getting upset that they didn’t seem to see them too,” wrote Lois in a book called The Spirit of the Soul, recounting the spirits of a young girl and man he seemed to sense. “I took his hand and he began to describe the things he was seeing. I must say he didn’t appear to be ‘talking out of his head’ but he was getting very upset and emotional about what he was seeing, mostly because we did not see it too.
“As he is gripping my hand, he said, ‘Do you see the smoke? Can’t you smell it?’ He then began to cry. This was so unlike Bob, even though we did realize that people who have gone through the kind of experience that he had just gone through tend to be very emotional.
“He then asked again if we could see what was in the room. He said that no one knows what happens in hospitals and there there were spirits all around the place. He then asked us again if we could smell the smoke as he began to cry. He said the little girl is trapped behind the wall and can’t get out. She was trapped and somebody had to help her! He then said that the young man was trapped in his car and didn’t know how to get free. There was fire involved with this car wreck as well. He saw other ‘spirits’ floating around the hospital, but he couldn’t see their faces like he could the young girl and the young man in the car wreck. He kept saying that someone had to set them free.”
In this photo, The Rev. George Winchester, chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said a prayer for Sara Meaney of Topsfield. Winchester said he is often called in to translate “doctor speak’’ for patients. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)
These were Protestants — yet they found themselves praying for souls they came to believe were trapped or doing “purgatory.”
Peace came after prayer for the deceased. But how many die in hospitals with no sacramental anointing, with no prayer?
Of all places that need to be spiritually clean, hospitals rank near the top — for as Jesus showed time and again, spirits can cause illness.
They can also cause unnecessary terror.
Fear is never in order when there is prayer.
“I was directed by the Holy Spirit to Luke 4:18,” said Lois. “I heard in my spirit, ‘There is more to setting the captives free than you know about.'”
It may all sound strange — “superstitious” to many (see 2 Timothy 3:1-7) — but recall also Hosea 4:6, where it says God’s people are destroyed because of lack of knowledge. And particularly during the next month, remember to pray for the deceased.
Many are waiting.
In rooms where there is prayer, the accounts are the opposite: how a heavenly Presence seemed to manifest and the sick or dying saw or heard or felt deceased loved ones and angels or the Lord Himself — even see Him. Upon death, the majority of Christians find the comfort of the Holy Spirit. There is even delight. God is always there for the faithful. There is final mercy. The great danger is rejecting that mercy. Fear is useless. Faith dissolves any darkness. As for Mary: for those who pray, perhaps she is the “woman in white.”
Said another nurse: “My first cousin was a young minister visiting the bedside of a sweet, saintly woman who was terminal with lung cancer. Her bed was cranked up somewhat so she could breathe a little easier. She was in and out, pretty heavily medicated. He was at her bedside holding her hand and praying. She raises herself up, looks at the wall in front of the bed and says. ‘Oh Jesus, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful,’ lays back down, and passes. Sure made an impression on my cousin who went on to have a wonderful ministry.”
[original source]
[resources: The Spirits Around Us]
[see also: “Angels: a sign of God’s care” and “Growing secularism seen as threat to health care workers“]
