There was such a case in the T Cathedral, when I served there, even before my appointment to Pokrovskoye.
We changed the electrical wiring in the cathedral building. The electricians, two siblings, were non-believers, although non-drinkers and even non-smokers, and very smart craftsmen.
They came to work immediately after the end of the liturgy, and in the cathedral it was served daily, and began quietly, without disturbing anyone, to do their job while prayers, requiems or funeral services were still being served.
So, one day, after the end of the funeral service, I don’t even remember who the deceased was, the youngest of the electrician brothers, Gennady, comes up to me, excited, pale, with frightened eyes.
“Father, there are some ghosts in your temple! I just saw them myself!”
“What did you see, Gena,” I ask, “don’t worry, tell me!”
“Father! I was just changing the junction box on the left wing, in the aisle where you had the funeral service, and from the stepladder I looked a little at the funeral service, just out of curiosity.
I look and can’t understand anything: a dead man is lying in a coffin, at the head of it you are reading your prayers, relatives are standing around, and to your left the same dead man is standing alive! Or how alive! And he looks so sadly at himself, lying in a coffin! But no one sees him, as if he doesn’t exist! But I see! Do you want me to breathe on you, father? Yes, you already know that my brother and I don’t drink at work.
So, I look at him, I can’t understand anything, but he raises his head and looks up over there, into the arch! And suddenly he screams in fear! I hear him, but no one else hears him, everyone stands calmly, you sing “rest with the saints.” I looked where he was looking, I saw, and there, on the iron constriction that tightens the arch, some kind of vile creature is sitting with membranous wings, similar to a pterodactyl from a movie about dinosaurs, only much nastier and scarier.
And suddenly, this creature spreads its shabby wings, probably three meters in span, and dives at the dead man who is standing.
He screams heart-rendingly, my ears are already ringing, he shields himself with his hands, and this reptile grabs him with her claws and flies out the door together with the dead man! And everyone stands calmly, you put something in the hand of the person lying in the coffin, as if nothing had happened!
In general, father, I could hardly wait until you were free to tell you all this. What was that, Father Flavian, I’m not crazy, right? Was that really something?
“I think, Gena, that you are not crazy. Simply, according to His incomprehensible Providence, the Lord temporarily opened your vision of the spiritual world, so that you yourself could see with your own eyes how a demon carries the soul of an unrepentant sinner to hell, despite even church prayer. Apparently, his sins outweighed our prayerful intercession for him.
They carried his body to the cemetery, they will probably erect a monument on the road, judging by the coffin — the deceased was not at all poor. And what happened to his soul — you saw for yourself. This is how it always happens. Either Angels take the souls of the dead to the Lord, or monsters like these drag them into the underworld. This mortal fate will not escape you and me either. As we live, so shall we receive, brother Gennady…»
Gena is now serving at the altar in the same cathedral, and his brother, Leonid, and his wife, Annushka, are singing on the left choir.
Wonderful are the works of the Lord!»
The story is taken from the book
by Archpriest Alexander Torik «Flavian. Life goes on.»
Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Investment in the Soul!
Orthodox stories from life
