It was difficult to follow her. Not only was she stressed, but a funny static on the line interfered with the conversation. I attributed it to some effect caused by my cell phone on speaker-mode, but something should have cleared at some point during the fifteen-minute drive.
At first it seemed to me that she was doing a lot of projecting. She constructed messages, omens, and assaults out of the kitchen sink of effects common to haunted houses. But she was sincerely troubled, and I asked some more pointed questions.
The house she was calling from was a new building on a plot of reservation land. Her son’s girlfriend had inherited the land from her Seneca grandfather. His former house still stood next door. The woman I talked to admitted readily that they were holding some sacred and ritual objects taken from the girl’s grandfather’s home after his death, including a couple of False Faces.
“The rez has elders and healers. Why don’t you talk to one of them?”
She answered without a pause. “That’s who’s causing the trouble.”
In spite of the situation, I laughed. “What do you expect me to do about it? A white guy with a laptop? How did you get them mad at you?”
“We’re not Native American, and they want the items back.”
“You have to go to the elders and make your peace,” I said. “Right or wrong, that’s the way to handle this.”
She didn’t take my advice. She turned to different sources of off-reservation help. She called people all over the western New York paranormal community, many of them friends of mine who knew nothing about the extent of her outreach. Among them was Spiritualist minister Tim Shaw. He did three phone interviews with the occupants of the house, at first thinking the matter pretty basic: garden-variety effects in an active house. Each time, though, Reverend Shaw noticed the strange static I had. It seemed that something was acting up on any phone call made from that house.
The young father reported potentially psychic activity that included sounds, moving objects, and shadows. He described feelings that ranged from sudden, quickpanics in the household’s residents to an atmospheric heaviness detected by visitors and guests. He was afraid things would escalate and that his children might be targeted.
The situation was causing earthly conflicts, too. The reservation side of the young woman’s family was not convinced that she deserved the land. No one was persuaded by her explanations of how some of her grandfather’s belongings ended up with her. This sort of thing is not unique to reservation families.
In his last conversation with the family, Reverend Shaw heard banging in the background loud enough to make him ask about it. The young father told him that the couple’s kids were talking to whatever was in the house, and that it was responding, as it often did, with clamor.
Reverend Shaw knows plenty about Iroquois tradition. He visited the family and asked detailed questions. He focused on the False Faces. No one remembered when they had last been honored with ceremonies.
Alarmingly, between his visits, one of the valuable masks had disappeared. Even to the uninitiated, this doesn’t sound like the work of an ordinary thief. Why take only one? A reservation healer told the couple that their problems would continue until the missing mask was found or the others returned.
While deciding what to do, Reverend Shaw started to suffer himself, at first with flu-like symptoms then a depression that he attributed to the coming winter. He and his wife experienced psychic activity in their house: whispers, footsteps, and dragging sounds. Guests saw shadow people. It was as if the reservation matter had followed him home.
The reverend had studied a lot of cases. This had never happened before. He called for help.
Buffalo Bishop James Lagona is an expert on cross-cultural spirituality. Bishop Lagona felt that there was a human “sender” somewhere, possibly one of the medicine people, shooting energy at the house, which had in turn attached itself to Reverend Shaw. Michael Bastine agreed about the concept of the sender, undoubtedly a power person, but sensed that the False Faces were adding energy to the mix. They were acting on the people in the home. Michael brought in an Onondaga member of the False Face Society at about the time the family was willing to call a truce. Reverend Shaw closed the book on the matter. Presumablythe masks are where they belong, with the culture-keepers of one of the Iroquois nations.
Things were soon at peace in the reverend’s home, and he felt more like himself. He later learned through some back channels that a power person, “a specialist,” from the Allegany Reservation may have been recruited to send energy into this situation to ensure an outcome that would be favorable to the Cattaraugus Seneca. This force was going to be incrementally toxic to anyone who got in its way. He also reached the conclusion I did: If you are a non–Native American occultist called to help with a Native American case, feel as free as you like to be flattered. More than that, though, be on guard, especially when one of these masks may be involved.
The Song of the Faces
In the past, every Iroquois settlement of even moderate size would have had visits from a local group of False Faces. While moving to, from, and during a healing service, the False Faces would have made a number of distinctive sounds. Magnified and distorted through their masks, their snorts at the thresholds of sufferers’ homes sounded like the demon bear. Other trademarks—such as their distant, high-pitched, two-toned calls—were surreal like those of marsh birds. These cries could be signals to members of the Society, calling them to gather. Others might have alerted the village that the False Faces were on their way. They could have been warnings to the workers in black magic and to the bearers of pestilence.
These healers had holy areas and vision sites to which they convened from far parts
