Julie Morgan: A Spiritual Housecleaning
CBN.com “I thought that people would think I was crazy. I am just imagining things or just seeing things. But it wasn’t just in my head. It sounded like somebody walking or like something would fall. My dogs would growl and bark at the darkness.”
Haunted houses make spine-chilling entertainment at Halloween, but it’s no fun if it’s your home where things going bump in the night.
When Julie Morgan moved into a new apartment, she thought that she and her two Chihuahuas, Syd and Savannah, would be the only residents. She soon found out otherwise.
“It started off with the smells,” Julie says. “I thought it was just the previous tenants that maybe they had cooked something or maybe the plumbing in the bathroom. It smelled like sulfur. The bedroom smelled like really bad garlic and no matter how hard I cleaned or sprayed, it wouldn’t go away.”
In addition to the strange smells, Julie was having nightmares.
“I wasn’t sleeping very well. Bad nightmares,” she says. “It kind of felt like there was somebody in the room with me, and it wasn’t a good presence.”
Julie’s mother, Jan, experienced the shocking phenomenon too.
“When I would come over to her apartment, her tiny Chihuahua would be cowered underneath her desk,” Jan recalls. “She would be trembling violently, and she had a look of horror in those little eyes. The other thing was I would smell something on occasion very much like sulfur. It had a very pungent odor, but it was never in the same place.”
Julie says, “I started praying, because apparently it’s not just some natural phenomenon. It’s not something that can be explained away. When I started praying, I felt like I needed to rebuke whatever it was. ‘I command you in the name of Jesus to leave my home and never come back.’ Sometimes it would go away for a day, maybe two days, but it would always come back.”
If the strange sounds and smells weren’t enough to instill terror, then there was the light show.
“I started noticing this touch lamp; it’s a globe,” Julie says. “I would leave to go to school or to work, I would come back home, and it would be on. I kept hoping it was a power surge, but how many times can you have a power surge? It would happen several times in a night.”
Watch Julie's testimony online.
After several months, contending with this frightening phenomenon brought Julie to a breaking point.
“I was so weak and so weak spiritually as far as this constant battle that I was just ready to give in,” Julie confides.
Her mother says, “She literally wasn’t sleeping at night. She was sleep deprived. It was affecting her work. It was affecting her home. She couldn’t seem to accomplish anything. She was just almost like a prisoner here.”
“I was just praying for a car accident or that I would just die in my sleep,” Julie says.
“I didn’t know what to tell her,” Jan says, “except that I remembered in II Timothy. The Lord said He had not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. I told Julie, ‘You need to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and through that, I believe that God is going to reveal what you need to do.”
Julie says, “When I got to that part about forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have debts against us or transgressions against us, I stopped. It was not like audibly, but in my head, almost like somebody talking to me said, ‘You have no right to be holding a grudge against a friend of yours.’ It hit me like a ton of bricks. I do, and it had turned into a grudge and to bitterness and unforgiveness. So I went to this friend and repaired the relationship. Whether or not it was going to fix my situation at home, I knew that as a Christian I had to do the right thing.”
When Julie forgave her friend, the spiritual housecleaning began. The demons no longer had safe haven.
“From then on, there was no activity. The dogs weren’t scared. They were sleeping in their beds. It was totally calm and peaceful.”
But several months later, the smells came back.
“I just sat down and cried,” Julie confesses. “I called my mom and said, ‘You are not going to believe it. It’s not as strong, but it’s back.’”
But help to enforce the eviction was on its way.
“I needed some encouragement, so I turned on The 700 Club. Gordon said something to the effect of there’s someone who has a hindering spirit. ‘And we come against any tormenting spirit. We bind you. We cast you from the children of God. You have no right here.’
I said, ‘That is mine. That is mine. I claim it.’ I turned around and said, ‘Do you hear, Satan? You have no right here.’”
Julie knew in her heart that the battle was over.
“I was never going to have this problem again,” she says confidently.
Julie and her dogs are enjoying life again.
Julie says, “I compare demons to spiritual cockroaches. If you turn on the spiritual light, they scatter. They creep you out. They are nasty, but that’s it. That’s all they’ve got is the creepy factor. They have no power, no more than you allow them to have. You need Jesus as the exterminator to come through and get rid of all the cockroaches.”
