Not long after an old and respected Passionist priest died more than six decades ago, his brother priests at St Joseph’s Passionist Monastery in Irvington were convinced his death did not mark the end of his presence at the monastery.
“After his passing, every night – late – footsteps were heard up and down the corridors,” said Father Michael Roach, retired pastor of St. Bartholomew Parish in Manchester and a longtime professor of Church history at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg.
The community prayed and tried to figure out the unexplainable noises until someone suggested they look through the deceased priest’s trunk. Inside, they discovered a list of Mass stipends for Mass intentions that had not yet been offered.
“Once the promised Masses were offered, peace and serenity returned,” Father Roach said.
The old ghost story – whether one believes it or not – is one of many Father Roach has collected and retold over the decades. Now 80, he said he has “always loved listening to stories, even as a kid.”
Such tales prove nothing, but as Catholics prepare to pray for the dead on All Souls’ Day, they point toward what the Church believes about death: the soul never ceases to exist, the bond between the living and the dead is not broken, and the living can still pray for those who have gone before.
What is a ghost, anyway?
A ghost, in theological terms, refers to a disembodied soul, according to Dr. Matthew J. Dugandzic, academic dean at St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Roland Park and a parishioner of Mount Calvary in Baltimore.
Since souls are meant to be united with bodies, when a soul is without a body, it lives an “incomplete existence,” he explained.
“Revelation tells us that there will be both a resurrection of the just and the unjust. After the second coming of Christ, we all get our bodies back, good and bad alike,” Dugandzic said. “So a ghost being a ghost is not a permanent state; it ends eventually.”
Catholics affirm that every human being has a soul, he said, noting that the soul is created immediately by God and infused into a body. It is immortal, he added, never ceasing to exist.
Some theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Dugandzic said, have considered how a soul might exist apart from the body. St. Thomas believed that a separated soul would require “a lot of extra help to live without a body” from God, and that God “enables the soul to continue knowing things by offering it special assistance.”
Scripture has several references to ghosts.
When Jesus’ disciples were in a storm-tossed boat and saw Jesus walking toward them on the water, they were convinced they were looking at a ghost. After the Resurrection, the disciples again feared they were seeing a ghost until the risen Lord invited them to touch his hands and feet, telling them that a ghost does not have flesh and bones.
The Gospels show that Jesus’ disciples had a category for ghosts and that the risen Christ, body and soul reunited, is something altogether different. Even the Old Testament records the dead appearing, as when the spirit of Samuel is summoned for King Saul.
Father Roach does not present ghost stories as evidence of the supernatural. Instead, he views them as part of a long tradition of storytelling that gives voice to questions people have wrestled with for centuries.
For Father Roach, the appeal of such stories lies not in proving anything but in their ability to explore mysteries that faith itself acknowledges are not fully understood.
“We are heirs of an oral culture. We still love stories, yet sometimes they are a bit edgy – all the more memorable,” Father Roach said.
Lingering souls
Over the decades, Father Roach has collected many stories involving ghosts, spirits and unexplained phenomena. Here are some of his favorites.
Music from the graveyard
One of Father Roach’s most poignant stories concerns Henry Dielman, a 19th-century musician and professor, and his son. After Dielman’s death, the son regularly visited his father’s grave (see photo above) at the cemetery at what is now the St. Anthony Shrine Cemetery in Emmitsburg and played the violin in tribute.
“Tradition claims that on dark and cold nights, one can still hear that hauntingly beautiful music drifting down from the grotto graveyard,” Father Roach said.
The priest who came back
While serving as a young curate at Our Lady of Hope in Dundalk, Father Roach met a priest from Lykens, Pa., who told him that Father Charles Ignatius Kenney, a beloved former pastor there, was still remembered long after his death. According to local lore, Father Kenney loved the Pennsylvania parish so much that he promised to return one day. “And so Father Kenney did,” Father Roach recalled the priest telling him.
Locals claimed they could still hear him “rumbling around the attic.”
The seminarians’ footsteps
At Sacred Heart Basilica in Hanover, Pa., mysterious footsteps were said to travel between the rectory and church. According to the legend, the sounds came from Jesuit seminarians who had been negligent in their required prayers. “Even the apostolic delegate asked about it,” Father Roach said. “The tale was so widespread.”
The candle-bearing nun
Some residents of the Academy Heights neighborhood below Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville told of seeing an “eerie figure of an ancient nun appearing, window to window, holding a candle” during late winter nights, Father Roach said. He described the apparition as “a very haunting sight.”
Email Jenna Mattern at jmattern@CatholicReview.org
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