Encounter with a Mara

Mikk of Estonia knew something was wrong when he looked down and discovered he was floating around his house.

“I knew my body was asleep,” he said. “It was night time but I could see in the dark.”

Mikk often slipped into a lucid dream state, but this time he traveled outside his body – and encountered something terrifying.

“Some bad entity was around my house and my spirit fled,” Mikk said. “I was hovering along the main road from my house, away from the entity who was unpleasant.”

Turning back to see if the dark entity was following him, Mikk looked into the face of horror.

“I passed a house where a neighbor had died of cancer several months ago and with it I passed a shadow of a person,” he said. “It was standing in front of the neighbor’s house and as I sensed it, it was the most awful feeling. It was an unholy terror.”

Mikk stared in horror at the entity that simply stood at the neighbor’s house, seeming not to notice Mikk at all. However, Mikk got close enough to feel it.

“I past by its field, I think, and it was horrible,” Mikk said. “It wasn't evil; it was just inhuman, incompatible with the human mind.”

Mikk, an atheist, isn’t sure why he did this, but he recited the Lord’s Prayer and made the sign of the cross. Then he was back in his room.

“I heard a loud bang, like a car had hit our house or a piano had been dropped into our living room,” he said. “I was awake in a split second and stared into darkness listening. No one in the house had heard it. The sound came from my head.”

The event had ended, but Mikk wanted to know what he had seen.

“I asked a woman I know about it,” he said. “Her grandmother was a healer or seer in the older community here in Estonia. She said, ‘oh yeah, my grandmother told me about those things, they're called the maras.’”

A mara, the woman said, is a negative energy a person who hates or envies someone sends to that person either intentionally, or subconsciously. The mara then slowly drains the person’s happiness because the one who conjured it wants the target to be miserable.

“When I asked how to get rid of the thing she said it doesn't matter if you are religious, just say the Lord's Prayer,” Mikk said. “You have to mean it when you say it.”

That’s the key – conviction. When confronted by a dark spiritual being, she said you have to banish it with authority.

“When the shadow attacks or is menacing you are likely to be afraid and you can't get that much conviction or will power behind what you say so the Lord's Prayer is a healthy alternative,” Mikk said. “It almost doesn't have religious connotations in that context.”

Mikk only recited the first few lines of the Lord’s Prayer, but it seemed to work for him.

“I don't know the rest from heart but I’m planning to print it out and hang it next to my bed,” he said. “Also making the sign of the cross was that way. It was some sort of survivalist reflex. It felt like the right thing to do.”

Although this experience hasn’t changed Mikk’s spiritual beliefs, he thinks negative entities exist.

“To be honest, I’ve done lots of mushrooms and met with various entities there and I never made up my mind if they were hallucinations or something that the drug enables you to interact with,” he said. “If you are afraid, ignorant, negative, etc., the entities can get to you like rats can get into a shabby household and nest there. The evil ones are so bad they don't resemble humanity in any form except shape. They invoke such primal terror you can only scream like a caveman would.”

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.