Verification called for in 'diabolical obsession'
| • | Spooked at the seminary |
Advertiser Staff
Discerning fact from fiction in ghost stories makes for difficult research. On top of the common human tendency to exaggerate, sometimes the witnesses are dead.
That is the major problem with confirming the strange occurrence, termed a "diabolical obsession" by Catholic clergy, at St. Stephen's Seminary in October 1946.
Seminarians have long talked of attacks by levitating pencils, of doors that would stick on one side but not the other, of pots that rattled without cause when someone walked by. Even lay people who work at the religious institution now talk of feeling a presence, hearing a voice, having something press against them.
But since those who witnessed the so-called diabolical obsession in 1946 are either unidentified or, more likely, dead, there is only second-hand information. Yet the sources are distinguished men of the cloth, credible sources not given to exaggeration, ranging from well-regarded priests to Catholic lay people, even to a retired bishop of Honolulu.
Joseph Ferrario, the retired bishop of Honolulu, heard the story firsthand from a priest who witnessed it — the rector, the Rev. John Linn.
What he heard of the night was corroborated by Patrick Downes, a former seminarian who had heard whisperings of ghost stories and once asked the Rev. Richard Cullinen to tell him what happened.
"Whatever happened happened. There's no question of that," said Ferrario, classifying it as a devil "obsession," rather than "possession." "It was real, because Father Cullinen did say that he was so excited, or ..." he paused, searching for the right word, "... so (filled with) adrenaline that when he got up in the morning, his chest was sore from his heart pounding so hard."
Eva Simmons, who works in an office St. Stephen's for the Hawaii Catholic Conference, is researching a book on the seminary. She has her theories on what happened that night.
"I would think that this particular seminary student had some kind of supernatural stuff around him, and brought it with him," said Simmons, whose research has not turned up the name of the student. Yet she said she doesn't believe the place is haunted.
Ferrario said he did not know who the boy was. If he was a 14-year-old freshman in 1946, he'd be about 70 now. Simmons heard he was from 'Aiea, but said she hasn't confirmed that.
