Carol G. knew that, because of religious reasons, her grandfather did not approved of Jack S. courting her. Grandpa G. had strong convictions that one should marry within one's faith, and it may have been the psychological tension which her grandfather created within her unconscious that led to a flurry of poltergeist activity around the teen-age girl.

For a period a nearly two weeks Jack's visits to the house were accompanied by violent outbursts of psycho kinetic energy. Mrs. G.'s favorite vase shattered as the two young people held hands on the sofa. Invisible hands banged on the piano keyboard, and the piano stool jumped across the living-room floor and struck Carol smartly across the shins. One night as the young lovers had just finished making a tray of cookies and were allowing them to cool, the entire two dozen smoldered into flame. As in most poltergeist attacks, the unconscious energy center of the disturbance received the brunt of its abuse and physical torment. Stigmata like scratches were seen to appear on Carol's upper arms, and on one occasion, teeth marks appeared just below her shoulder blades.

"You're to blame for this," Grandpa G. said one night, advancing upon Jack with his cane." To mix religions is to do the devil's work, and you've brought the devil upon us."

The old man swung his cane and caught Jack stoutly across the forehead. Jack jumped to his feet, dazed, angry, but restrained by his sweetheart. "If you were thirty years younger," Jack said, grimly clenching his fists.

The poltergeist activity eventually spent its psychic energy, and the vortex of paranormal disturbances subsided. In spite of Grandpa G.'s fulmination's, Carol's parents were open-minded toward a religiously mixed marriage and gave their consent for the young people to be wed. Grandpa G. contracted pneumonia before the wedding date and passed away in an oxygen tent in the hospital. In spite of their differences over religion and her choice of a husband, Carol was genuinely sorrowful when the old man died.

A few psychic strands of unconscious guilt over marrying outside her religion and against her grandfather's wishes may have produced the phenomena that visited Carol on her wedding night.

The newlyweds had checked into the nearest possible motel, eager to consummate their marriage. They had no soon gone to bed, however, when they were sharply distracted from the marital rite by a loud knocking on the wall beside them. They tried desperately to ignore the sound, to blame it on a raucous party next door, but the more they listened to the rapping, the more they both realized that it sounded very much like Grandpa G.'s cane.

As they watched in amazement, a glowing orb of light appeared beside their bed. As the illumination grew and took shape, they were astonished to see a wispy outline of Carol's grandfather standing before them.

"He...he's smiling," Carol said, somehow managing to shape functional speech in her fear and surprise.

As the newlyweds lay in each other's arms, they saw the image of Grandpa G. smile, move his cane in the sign of the cross, then in a gesture of farewell. "He's blessed us, Jack," Carol said, tears welling in her eyes as she watched the ethereal form of her grandfather fade away. "He understands now that he's on the other side. Earthly differences don't matter over there."