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First Story<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was the autumn of 1983. The best I can remember, it was September. I don\u2019t know the precise date. It would be neat if it had been this date, the 29th. I didn\u2019t keep a diary. But I didn\u2019t need one to recall the details.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At the time, I was living the \u201cfast track,\u201d the high life, of New York. Although born in Niagara Falls, I had gone to Fordham, a Jesuit university in The Bronx, and had moved to Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side after a brief stint as a newspaper reporter, during which I had been involved in the discovery of a famous toxic waste dump named Love Canal.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This had propelled my career as a writer, and at the time I was working on a book about the Mafia. I wrote about an experience from this the other day (see \u201cA spiritual brush with a mob hitman\u201d).\u00a0 It was one of many such experiences, some of which I will be sharing in days ahead. As I said, it was the fast track, and in addition to my research on organized crime, I had also written books on toxic-waste scandals, and (stupidly enough) on psychic phenomena and haunted houses. In fact I had just \u201cinvestigated\u201d a supposedly \u201chaunted\u201d house (in reality it was demon-infested) in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, I was a 31-year-old writer doing what he had always aspired to doing: writing, appearing on national TV, lecturing at colleges for excessive fees, making enough money to live in a luxury high rise and eat in the ritzy cafes every night of the week. I was what you might call a \u201cswinging bachelor.\u201d I admired people like Hugh Hefner. I\u2019m not proud of it. I wasn\u2019t an evil person, but I certainly wasn\u2019t good, and one Friday night that September after coming home earlier than usual I feel asleep and awoke because of an amazing dream.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the dream I was on a bed that was like a hospital gurney, and it was in my foyer facing the door of my 12th-floor apartment. Around me were three or four spirits with their hands over me, two on each side, as if they were praying. I wasn\u2019t allowed to look straight at them, but I had the impression they were thin pencil-like figures of light who could appear in any form they wanted. They were uttering what seemed like an ancient language. \u201cWho are you?\u201d I asked the one on my left, who seemed to be in charge.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMy\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0name is Michael,\u201d<\/i>\u00a0said this entity (for lack of a better term).\u00a0\u201cNow look!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0He indicated toward the door, and on that door I saw the most frightening thing of my life: the face of the devil or at least a major demon, etched and yet alive, living, sneering, full of a hatred I had never before seen and could not hope to adequately describe.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I woke up in a sweat. I paced a while, probably had a cigarette back then. Looked out the window. Below, the last of the stragglers were leaving the cafes along Third Avenue. It was probably between three and four a.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Finally I got back to sleep, but immediately lapsed into the same dream. It didn\u2019t seem like a dream, but more a vision. It continued where it had left off.\u00a0\u201cI told you, look,\u201d<\/i>\u00a0said the one who had called himself Michael.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNow say, `Vanish!’\u201d<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I could never imitate the power behind those words. Instantly his words had made that awful evil face on the door, the hollowed cheeks, the pointy goatee, disappear.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have the courage or faith to do what he said. Instead I woke up and this time was the most terrified of my life. It was far scarier than anything the Mafia or haunted houses could dish up. I was probably up close to an hour, smoking, wanting to call someone, pacing. But who was I to call? At the time my two best friends were reporters for\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>, which for all practical purposes meant they were atheists.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Finally I forced myself back to sleep and the dream again continued where it had left off. The one who said he was Michael told me again to say,\u00a0\u201cVanish!\u201d<\/i>\u00a0Somehow, I came up with the faith. I came up with the courage! When the awful face materialized, I raised my right hand and shouted \u201cVANISH!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Suddenly and to my amazement the face disappeared and so did the angels and I got up from the \u201cgurney\u201d and walked to the door. As I did I could see that where the face had been was now a set of keys. When I took them and looked at them a tag indicated the address of that haunted house in Chelsea.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had been brushing up against evil in many ways, and now the devil was at my door.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was part of my coming back to Christ. I hadn\u2019t been to church regularly since junior high school, but now went back. Did I! Around this time I became a daily communicant. It was almost instant. There were other experiences. I came back through both Catholicism (a church on 90th Street called Our Lady of Good Counsel), and also through a non-denominational group of pentecostals, evangelicals, and charismatics on the Lower East Side. And I came back in a big way. Although I know there are those who would question the entire experience, there was a reality to it and it wasn\u2019t evil. I believe they were angels \u2014 because right after that I learned that my mother had been invoking Michael and had bought me a statue of him (which to this day is next to the bed).<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I said, this helped lead me back to Christ, and to a journey away from secular journalism and to writing spiritual books. Eventually, it also lead to this website,\u00a0Spirit Daily<\/i>. We have been up and running since May 13, and in that time it has been amazing. We have had many thousands of \u201chits.\u201d We saw a peak on June 26 when by God\u2019s grace we were allowed to get a jump on releasing the third secret of Fatima (there is still a bit of newsman in me).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Today, the feast of the Archangel Michael, we are beginning official operation, and dedicating the site to the greatest of all angels, the one who saved me as he had also helped Daniel (Daniel<\/i>\u00a010:13), the one for whom I had been named, the one who battles Lucifer tirelessly, the one who will cast him down forever in the end (Revelation<\/i>\u00a012:7) \u2014 the one who has no fear as we too must have no fear at a time when we must confront the face of the devil and make him vanish from our culture with the same question, the same insistence, that Michael once spoke, with the same courage and strength as when, casting out Satan, who pretended to the Throne, the angel shouted with a voice I think I also heard,\u00a0 with a voice of overwhelming power, with one that should now \u2014 must now \u2014 resonate around the world:\u00a0\u201cWho is like unto God?\u201d<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Michael H. Brown<\/em><\/p>\n Archangel Michael\u2019s Presence Is Still Felt At Mysterious, Potent Cave In\u00a0Italy<\/b><\/p>\n Second Story<\/b><\/tt><\/p>\n I have been to a number of holy places \u2014 spots where there is an especially powerful presence, the actual feeling of something supernatural. On this list would be the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; the Cathedral of the Holy Shroud; the chapel of the apparitions at Fatima; the Lourdes grotto; and where I am right now, apparition hill in Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina.<\/strong><\/p>\n These are all powerful places and in their midst I would also rank the Cave of the Archangel Michael \u2014 in fact, it is right there are the top. This is a grotto in eastern Italy, and believe me, there is a presence here. There is the real feeling of St. Michael. When I visited the cave in 1990, a man sitting before the statue the statue of Michael was going through a spontaneous deliverance as a demon that had obviously inhabited him screeched and yelled as the Holy Spirit sought to cast it out.\u00a0<\/tt><\/strong><\/p>\n I have a stone from the cave that I treasure as one of my most powerful relics.<\/strong><\/p>\n And a picture of the archangel that I bought at the cave \u2014 yes, a cave, not a church \u2014 is so potent that we have adopted it\u00a0(see below)<\/a>\u00a0as an official devotional for this website.<\/strong><\/p>\n I have heard from others who have told me about encountering angels on the way to the cave or of simply experiencing the kind of feeling that is rare outside of the most famous sites of apparition.<\/strong><\/p>\n But that\u2019s what happens at Monte Gargano\u00a0(where the cave is located): there is a feeling that can only be compared to spots like Mount Krizevac or the Church of the nativity, and it only makes sense when we take a look at the history \u2014 the long history \u2014 of this place.<\/strong><\/p>\n