I know you don’t tell other people that you’ve had that experience, that one singular time when you were alone in your house and it happened: something inexplicable. Maybe it was when your parents first thought you were old enough to be left alone without a babysitter and told you that they would only be out for a little while. You’d had the drill – don’t open the door to strangers, don’t try to use the stove, keep the door locked and just be good – everything would be okay and they would be back before you knew it. You remember, don’t you, that time? It was nighttime in the autumn and you were glad to have the house to yourself, even excited by the prospect. But as the minutes turn into an hour and then another hour, you begin to feel the weight of the evening growing on your shoulders and soon enough, it begins to dawn on you that, no, it can’t be, you know it’s impossible, but you could swear that you’re not alone in the house. First you just feel it, the way you feel it when you know you’re being watched. Then, you think you hear it, think you hear it because you’re not sure and you strain to listen and finally, you think you hear it again: that soft, clicking sound, that squeak from the loose floorboard upstairs, and your heart begins to pound like a hammer in your chest. Somehow, you’re not alone in the house. You know it. You begin to panic, but at the same time to tell yourself over and over, “No, it can’t be, I know no one has come in since my parents left.” You almost convince yourself and then, like a clock striking midnight, you see something from the corner of your eye and the darkness grows and you…yes, you…know that you are no longer safe. Something wants to get you. It’s almost at your throat. I know you remember. I do. Most of us have the moment of terror etched into our memory like a tattoo on a biker’s arm. We’re addicted to the memory because, though we never actually made true contact with that thing that came after us, we remember the sheer terror as we ran to the door when we heard our parent’s car turn into the driveway and we knew that somehow, Mom and Dad would send the evil away and we would miraculously be saved from…what? Saved from the monster in the dark? Saved from the ghost who seeks revenge? Or perhaps, we were saved from a spirit who didn’t wish to harm us at all. Perhaps we were frightened by something that didn’t mean to frighten us at all. Ghosts might just be that part of our imagination that reminds us of our own soul. Real or not, they haunt our thoughts, especially on dark, cold nights when we’re alone. We all have our ghosts. Strangely enough, there are times we will even invite the ghost in to stay awhile, so we can bask in the truth that there is life after death. Perhaps our ghosts are only memories we can see, after all, but real enough for all of that. The northern city of Brewer, Maine has a ghost. All old towns do, especially ones like Brewer. This was a mill town, full of working men and women and their families. The folks of Brewer made ships that sailed the seven seas, bricks that built the cities of Boston and New York, and fine paper that filled the offices of senators and Wall Street magnates. Brewer was a town of workers, but on the weekend, it was a town of worshipers. It wasn’t so long ago that one man in particular led his flock like Moses through the desert: Father Thomas Moriarty of St. Joseph’s Parish. A former hammer-thrower at Boston College, this great mountain of a man was a worker, too – doing God’s work, keeping his parishioners on the straight and narrow, guiding his sheep with a stern but loving hand. In the mid 1920s, Father Moriarty was the kind of priest you rarely see today, a warrior of the Lord, a man of great stature and even larger personality. He impacted the lives of his parishion