A GHOST TOUR OF JERUSALEM (believe it, or not!)

A GHOST STORY

FROM JERUSALEM

By Dr. Reginald (Reggie) K. Lisemby

Executive Director, CHRISTIAN MINISTRY TO ISRAEL
© Copyright 2001 Crumbs from the Jewish Table

Around campfires late in the night are stories stirred and tales told of things that go bump in the night; yarns of strange experiences, sightings of goblins, buggers, and ghosts are all uttered as though they were actually true. Humbug! Let me tell you a real ghost-story. A Ghost Story from Jerusalem!

The story begins many, many years ago in the mid 10 Century B.C. an age where book learning, song, and poetic drama were flourishing. The psalms were the central feature of music, Hebrew literature was increasing, and architecture was accomplishing one of its greatest feats, a magnificent colossal building of some forty acres, its massive stones decorated with dazzling art work in ivory, wood, and gold. It is with this building that our story grows mysterious. This ‘house’ was haunted, or, should I say possessed?

On the day that this skyscraping edifice was completed, a gold coffin-like box was carried inside, and soon a dark foggy apparition penetrated the new structure as though it claimed residence. There was no objection, of course, from anyone watching. After all, what could the people do? How does one serve an eviction to a ghost? I tell you, the place was haunted, or, should I say possessed? Strange things happened in this bizarre domicile. Separating the rear barracks from the frontage, was a thick, heavy, dark curtain that hung from ceiling to floor, interwoven with images of celestial creatures with multiple wings and multiple heads. The Spirit lived beyond this veil in the posterior berth, and should any man dare to cross the threshold and enter His dark lodge without a brazen bowl of fresh, chaste, aromatic blood, and without an invitation to 'have a peek,' that fool feel dead. Perhaps, the sight and/or smell of the vital juices appeased Him, the Spirit. A legend even spun that a rope came to be tied to the leg of the brave souls who entered His place, so that, if the man collapsed lifeless, his fellows could pull him out of that house that was haunted, or, should I say possessed. 

There were spine-chilling tales of men who had witnessed the sound of this phantom breathing “ruuuaaacchh,” and eyewitness accounts of the massive hand-thick veil floating as a pendulum from the breath of the ghost behind the curtain. There was much suspicion, conjecture, and puzzlement among the community about the dark ways of this obscure “spook” and His display of aura, but well known and accurate was the insight to this ghost’s status in the spirit world. This Spirit was indeed the chieftain, the ‘granddaddy’ of them all. He was the heavy. For hundreds of centuries, this haint confined Himself to His habitation in the back room, or, so it seemed to the generations who lived and died passing on the yarns to their posterity.

There was also, however, a paradox. This ghost seemingly wanted to make contact with the people although He was unapproachable and remote because of the blood thing He demanded.

Once upon a day, it was early spring, a man appeared in the village of the possessed house. He was in some ways an ordinary man, medium height, sun-wrinkled skin, a pleasant fellow, yet, He was extra-ordinary, too. He was magnificent in humility, modest in condescendence, heavenly in demeanor, and so very kind. He was a holy man, and He was wonderfully exceptional. Yet this man was for some reason ostracized from the community, grossly tortured, condemned to die, was nailed to a horribly ugly tree, speared in His side, and, of all places, He was hung high in the sky upon that cross atop a mount called skull hill! At first, no one saw it. There was not a hint of suspicion concerning this man and skull hill which was just north of the gate to the haunted domicile, or, should I say possessed?

Whoever that man was, dying upon that cruel, lofty, and lonely hill, He had a supernatural link to the ghost of the forty-acre shrine in the city. Simultaneously, with the shriek of that man’s death on skull hill as His soul was ripped from His body, the five- inch thick heavy drape hanging in the haunted house was completely shredded from top to bottom, and the earthquake had collapsed the house. And, that house was never haunted again, or, should I say it was never again possessed?

More ghoulish than that forty-acre building being despoiled in concert with the man’s death, that man’s corpse soon came to be missing parallel with the Spirit’s dearth from the haunted house. His grave was as vacant as the once-upon-a-time haunted house. Yarns, legends, stories, and theories began to spin. Some said the man sat up in the grave, got up, and walked out, yet only after he had meticulously folded his funeral garb. Others said He had been seen with his family and friends displaying His violent wounds about His head and hands along with the hole in his chest. Some said that He had appeared to his companions after walking through a wall, and that He had spoken to them. Still others said they would never believe such a spook story unless they saw themselves the holes in his hands and feet.

For forty-nine days people whispered tales, and on the fiftieth day, it was a holiday in Jerusalem, followers of the martyred man gathered in memorial of the One Who had been betrayed, beaten, spiked to a tree, taken down with tender hands, wrapped in linens, and buried in a borrowed tomb, but was now missing. The saga goes, that on this festive day while one hundred and twenty followers of the man were singing and mostly praying, lights suddenly appeared flickering about the room, in accompaniment with sounds that were suddenly heard, roaring like a mighty wind. More audacious was that uneducated fellows from the north who lived near a lake called the Galil began to speak the oracles of Elohim in languages they did not know, in tongues they had never spoken!

In a papyrus-leafed book an account was written of this ghost story by one of the locals, a physician, and doctors do not lie, don’t you know. Dr. Lukos recorded that the delightful holy man who had been tortured, buried, and who had disappeared was linked to the Spirit of the former possessed house, and this same ghost was the one who had blown in, hovered above the one hundred and twenty, and had fallen upon them, and had occupied them. Or, should I say, possessed? They were possessed!

No longer did the Spirit of the former forty-acre domicile possess that house of wood and precious stones. He had taken up residence in every single soul present in that room, the upper room in Jerusalem.

Doctor Lukos reported in his book (and his book is still being printed after two- thousand years, so it must be true) that the ghost and the man were interfaced. What? Yes! They were clones. Ohhh! That is spine chilling, isn’t it? They were clones!

Well, no one has seen that majestic man for over two-thousand years, though many of His fellows chronicled His promises that they would be forever possessed by Him, sealed as His possession. And, not only they, but anyone who wanted Him to abide with them and in them, if they would ask Him, He would breathe upon them!

The city of Jerusalem rebuilt the former haunted or should I say once possessed house, but there have been no marks or indications that the Spirit ever returned. His presence is gone, forever gone from that house, but not gone from a presence somewhere! The followers of that Man were told by Him after His resurrection, and then were told by His ghost after His ascension, not to fear. Never fear! Fear not man! Fear not ghostly troll! Fear not demon or phantom or apparition or spook! His blood had satisfied or propitiated the Spirit’s requirement for blood, and that the Spirit of the former shrine now wished to befriend mankind.

This Ghost still roams the earth, and He is seeking and saving those who desire to make their life God’s habitation. And, after two-thousand years, dear reader, He wants to make your heart His final abode!

© Copyright 20015  Crumbs from the Jewish Table