Featured

THE BLOG!

When I see the word blog it has always scared me a little. You see the word, BLOG whereas I see the word, BLOB or BLAH. It is not because I do not like the idea of blogging and the sharing of ideas. If that were the case, I would not be an author at all. It is the idea of the commitment a blog requires and takes to maintain. The idea of having enough content and will I have enough to say or share with you. Quite frankly that scares the living hell out of me.

All of my social media friends I know at this moment will be taking a huge sigh of relief because now they will not have to read paragraphs upon paragraphs from me on everything from politics, gay rights, the supernatural, and anything else which might strike me at any given moment. They say I do not understand the idea of acceptable social media lengths of posting. Twitter limits the amount of words precisely due to long winded writers like myself. Facebook and TUMBLR on the other hand have not been as wise and it shows at times when I really get on a roll. Well it actually shows a lot. A day does not go by where I start something with one sentence and it turns into a hundred. I always find myself saying during these daily infractions, “Just one more thought to share before I am done.”

Even through my fear of blog commitment is very real and does exist, the time has finally come for me to take the blogging plunge. So here it is, THE BLOG.  You are not always going to agree with what I say here, but I always promise to share the truth about my thoughts and what I might be feeling from this moment to the next. In some ways, I feel like I just might be participating in the recording of history. Surely it is the bloggers in this world who are now the ones documenting the thoughts, events, and actions of the times.

So yes I am ready to take the blog plunge. Here we go. I hope you enjoy it.

jumping-off-cliff

There is no such thing as an Overnight Success.

There is no such thing as being an overnight success. This is a lesson I keep learning. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great moment when all of a sudden your work is recognized. Writing is not easy. It is hard work. Writing is a brief moment of creativity and then a whole lot of rethinking, reconstructing and rewriting. I have been working very hard for years doing what I do and those moments when a spotlight is put upon that work it is a wonderful moment in time. But is nothing more than a fleeting moment. Each success builds upon the last success. Hopefully when all of the years have gone by and you have written your last word people will look at your body of work and say, “Hey that author was really good.” Until then, there are hours of hard work which lead to those fleeting moments of success.
 
So why write? It is a personal journey actually. I write things which I can learn from and in which I can find personal growth. In some ways it is my version of therapy and a way to better understand the world around me. If a reader finds something worthwhile within something I write then that is an amazing thing because it is very hard to write anything that captures the attention of anyone. So you have to first write for yourself and then after that if someone finds it interesting that is just the icing on the cake.
 
When the big news stories in the New York Post and The Sun came out for my new book my mother said something very wise to me, “Was a whole lot of hard work and many years to be an overnight success wasn’t?” She was right. Success of any type does not come easy and does not happen without years of hard work. You have to pay your dues and you have to put the time into it and even then that is sometimes not enough.
 
My best advice for you is to do what you love. No matter what that thing might be. If you are doing what you love then that is the true measure of success. The positive attention, like I said before, is just icing on an already wonderfully baked cake.
 
There are many days when I have to remind myself of this very thing. The New York Post and The Sun were yesterday and yesterday’s accomplishments. My personal focus needs to be on the work which is ahead. If I am lucky that spotlight might come my way once more and if that never happens again, well then, I am doing what I love. That is truly the most important thing.

A Boy is not a Monster: The True Life Story of The Exorcist

In 1949 a young boy came to St. Louis, Missouri experiencing unexplained behavior and disturbances. What followed was an event which went on to inspire the blockbuster book and film The Exorcist.

A lot has been shared through the years about what happened to the 13 year old boy known originally as Roland Doe. Much of what has been written and shared about his experience are the things nightmares and urban legends are made of. But what really happened to Roland Doe?

The most important thing I can tell you is to separate the true story from the fictional telling in William Peter Blatty’s book and film. This was not a monster. This was a boy who was going through something not only unexplainable but profound. He was not the head spinning demon which was so graphically depicted in the film The Exorcist. There is a very human side to this story which has been ignored and quite frankly exaggerated. For years this young boy has been demonized through book, film, and documentary.

My new book Confrontation with Evil tells a very different and complete telling of the events of 1949. This was a boy like any other boy who was going through extraordinary events. At times, it seemed everyone who should have been there to help him let him down in one way or another, including his own mother. This is not a horror story, but a very human story about a boy and the man who would sacrifice his own well being to save him. The best and the worst in humanity is the actual star of this true story and not the focus which has been placed upon the demonic or the devil.

After years of research into this case, I have told what Fox News calls, “The definitive book on the true story which inspired The Exorcist.” I wrote this book for Roland and those who struggled to help him. I also wrote the book for the city of St. Louis. Yes, St. Louis is where the devil played, but St. Louis was also where the devil was defeated.

Read, Confrontation with Evil today and see why people are raving about this book around the world. This book is dedicated to Roland Doe, wherever he may be today, this is for you because it is clear that you were a victim in many different ways. My thanks, my prayers, and my gratitude will always be with you—in this life and in the next.

Get your copy of Confrontation with Evil today.

confrontation-with-evil-5-002

CRAZY A Prayer for the Dead

What is hell and more importantly, how easy is it to end up spending your eternity there?

This was a question which kept going through my mind back in 2012. The idea of the fire and brimstone hell from the bible never sat well with me. What if hell were not an actual place at all? What if hell was the end result of our actions from the lives we are currently living? The idea of a self inflicted hell began haunting me in 2006 when I was called in to investigate a haunted truck stop and diner on old Route 66.

Crazy, A Prayer for the Dead, surrounds a group of misfits who find themselves stuck in their own version of Hell within an old truck stop on Route 66. Years later, paranormal investigators are brought to the location and end up uncovering the truth and horror of the souls damned within.

The book is based upon and inspired by this  actual paranormal case which I led back in 2006. The book weaves the one night of horror and its aftermath using historical fact, police reports, urban legend, actual psychic impressions and findings from the real life paranormal investigation. When put together, these elements profile a story which will terrify and haunt you long after you put it down. This is one you don’t want to read in the dark alone. Sound crazy? Well maybe it is not that crazy after all.

This will always be one of the my favorite and scariest books I have written. In the end I learned what we do to others in this life does, and will, affect what happens to us in the afterlife. Hell is truly other people.

Read Crazy A Prayer for the Dead today.

The Truth Behind The Exorcist

Confrontation with Evil Book Trailer
Confrontation with Evil
The True Story which inspired, The Exorcist.

For Steven A. LaChance, the possession case that inspired The Exorcist has always felt . . . incomplete. In this book, he shows how the official account crumbles under scrutiny, revealing instead a story of familial horror and spiritual corruption that implicates the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Known as the 1949 St. Louis Exorcism, the harrowing story of a possessed child and his terrified family was immortalized in The Exorcist. While theories and rumors about the case abound, none of them explain how a young child could have been possessed to the degree described in Father Raymond Bishop’s infamous diary.

Join Steven A. LaChance―author, investigator, and himself the survivor of a long-term demonic attack―as he shares shocking evidence for how seemingly benign events progressed into a full-blown demonic possession. While the conventional story is that the boy brought the infestation upon himself, this book presents an alternative interpretation and provides new insights into the nature of possession itself. As LaChance gains access to a secret location that plays a crucial role in the story, he sheds new light on how the exorcism’s bizarre aftermath continues to haunt the city of St. Louis and the Catholic Church to this day.

https://www.amazon.com/Confrontation-…

CRAZY A Prayer for the Dead

Book Trailer for Crazy A Prayer for the Dead

Based on his 2010 Truck Stop Hell short story, Steven LaChance delivers one of the scariest stories ever told with the frightening full-length version.

Crazy, A Prayer for the Dead, surrounds a group of misfits who find themselves stuck in their own version of Hell within an old truck stop on Route 66. Years later, paranormal investigators are brought to the location and end up uncovering the truth and horror of the souls damned within.

The book is based upon, and inspired by, an actual paranormal case led by Steven LaChance in 2006.

Steven LaChance weaves the one night of horror and its aftermath using historical fact, police reports, urban legend, actual psychic impressions and findings from the real life paranormal investigation. When put together, these elements profile a story which will terrify and haunt you long after you put it down. This is one you don’t want to read in the dark alone. Sound crazy? Well maybe it is not that crazy after all.

What we do to others in this life does, and will, effect what happens to us in the afterlife. Hell is truly other people. And that is Crazy.

https://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Prayer-D…

Confrontation with Evil the true story which inspired, The Exorcist.

Interview with Steven LaChance on his new book Confrontation with Evil the true story which inspired, The Exorcist.

  1. How did you get involved in researching the supernatural?In 2001, I moved into a house in Union, Missouri which turned out to be very haunted. I was a single Dad with three children, two boys and a girl. Shortly after moving into the house my children started experiencing different type things which I could not explain. My youngest son I would find screaming and terrified whenever he was out of arms reach. I tried to find explanations for everything which was happening to us, but I could not explain it. The only thing I did know at this point for sure was I had three very frightened children on my hands.

 

  1. What happened to make you believe your family was dealing with a haunting? 

    I was a corporate trainer at the time which required me to travel quite a bit. One night before I left town I decided to play a game with the kids. You know some family quality time before I had to leave them for a week? We were sitting in the living room and the kids were getting the game ready to play on the coffee table in front of me. I looked up from where I was sitting. I could see the opening of the kitchen door in the family room and there in the doorway stood a smoky black figure of a man. I looked down immediately thinking it must be my imagination. When I looked back up I really expected it to not be there, but not only was it there but it moved into the family room in front of me and then dissipated away.

 

  1. What did you do?I needed to get out of the house obviously. I needed to wrap my mind around what I had just seen. So, I gathered the kids up and headed to the front door to leave. It was an old house so you had to put the key to lock the front door on the outside. I closed the door and when I put the key into the lock and turned it, an angry agonizing scream came from inside the house.

 

  1. A scream? What did it sound like?It was a man’s scream. Think of someone being hurt and even killed. That would be a good description of what we all heard. I heard it, the kids heard it, the dogs in the neighborhood heard it and were barking. We left at that moment; actually – we ran at that moment to the car and went to my parent’s house so I could figure out what we needed to do.

 

  1. Did you go back?Yes, we did. Really had no choice but to go back. I mean, I was a single Dad and had just spent my entire savings on the move. So, I left on my business trip for a week and the whole time I was gone this was the only thing I could think about. During that week while I was gone I began to rationalize what had happened to us. I told myself it was a one-time thing and would not happen again. I am the man of my house and I am not going to be chased away. I had just paid $4500 for a move and I was a single father where would I get the money to move? Over and over convincing myself it was going to be okay and I could handle it. It was almost as if I spent the entire week building my courage back up so I could give the children the courage they needed to get through this. So when I returned on Friday night we went back into the house once more. This is something which still haunts me today. I promised my children it would be safe and we would be alright but the truth was that was nothing more than a fantasy. We were not going to be alright.

 

  1. What happened?It ended up locking my children into a bedroom and would not let me in to get them. I mean, I was throwing myself against that bedroom door while I heard my daughter screaming on the other side. It was like I was throwing my body against a brick wall. After it was all over, the whole one side of my body was beaten and bruised. The house was shaking and the voice was screaming and at one moment I screamed, “God help me.” That is when the door flew open and I was finally able to get into the room. I sent the boys running out the front door. My daughter was in shock when I reached her. I grabbed her and ran from the room with something behind me. That was the last time the children were in the house. Obviously, we had to move.

 

  1. Is it true that it followed you after moving?That is completely true. It followed us from 2001- 2011. Ten years wherever we went and wherever we lived it followed us. So, I began to research into haunting cases like this to see, at first, if I could find answers about what happened to us. Then the most unexpected thing began to happen. When people heard about our haunting they would come to me with their own haunting problems and I would try to find them help.

 

  1. But who helped you?Actually – I had some of the best help you could possibly hope for. John Zaffis, the late Ed Warren’s nephew was a key player and help. The Catholic Church also helped. I got help from a very good priest with very good connections. As a matter of fact, the Roman Catholic Church issued a 156 – page report in which they called the haunting a demonic infestation, oppression, obsession, and possession. That is what started my supernatural journey. Since that point I have been helping, investigating, and researching searching for answers not only for my family, but for others who have or are experiencing these severe type events. To this date, I have helped way over a thousand people in one form or another. I have also experienced and witnessed exorcisms for myself. I also found that I could help people through my writing and I have written two books dealing with the haunting, The Uninvited and Blessed are the Wicked.

 

  1. That brings us to your new book, Confrontation with Evil, which deals with the 1949 exorcism which inspired the book and film, The Exorcist. Why research this story and this case?Well, I was born and raised in the St. Louis Metro area for one. You cannot grow up in the St. Louis area without hearing about the boy. There are so many urban legends and stories surrounding this case. What started out as looking for personal answers turned into something which I felt strongly needed to be told. Much of what you have seen and heard on this case is based upon urban legend. I began to really take a hard look at the case and its locations in 2005. What shocked me was what could be considered obvious oversights and misleading information which was not being covered correctly. I kept researching and putting the idea of a serious book on the back burner. That changed in 2014.

 

  1. What changed in 2014?In 2014 I moved into a house in the same neighborhood where the hospital is located. The same hospital where the exorcism was completed. You know how you will find inspiration in the smallest of things. Well that is what happened. I went for a walk on my street. At the top of the street stood a huge old Catholic Church with a courtyard to the side. I looked into that courtyard when I walked by and saw in the center of the courtyard a statue of St. Anthony which was to my shock missing his head. Now if you are a fan of the late William Peter Blatty’s work you will remember that religious statues without their heads is always a popular theme. That moment was like the spark which eventually lead to writing the book. Also, I think the young boy who was possessed was either lost in the telling of the case and many times he was made into a monster who somehow deserved what happened to him. I wanted to put the humanity back into the story. What happened to that boy and those involved was very human.

 

  1. What did your research reveal about the case?Many different things. What I found was that a lot of what we considered to be true about the case was surrounded by a whole lot of fabrication and urban legend. It seemed to me that everyone had their own ideas of what happened. Funny enough the young boy was rumored to have stayed in more places than Daniel Boone. So, I set out to find the truth of the story forgetting the rumors and the urban legend.

 

  1. Where did you find the truth?We uncovered a lot through good old fashioned investigation and research. One of the most important facets of that research was Father Bishop who worked on the case. He wrote a diary about the exorcism and circumstances surrounding it. The diary was an internal document within the Church and was not meant for public consumption which if you think about it not only makes it a written history of the event but a telling which can be trusted. The diary is very specific about locations and what happened during the entire span of the event. What surprised me when I got into the diary was how different the telling of the event was from what we have seen in other books, films, tv shows, and yes even documentaries. I find it funny that even when those had the diary they missed some very key points in the case.

 

  1. How did the diary differ from other telling’s?Let’s just start with locations. There have been so many locations which people have claimed to be part of the exorcism in St. Louis. The diary is very clear on where events in the case happened and really narrows it down to three main places. Those three places are the house in suburban St. Louis, the Old Alexian Brothers Hospital in South St. Louis, and finally St. Xavier College in Midtown St. Louis. Those are the three places in St. Louis which the diary discusses in detail. There are simply no other locations but these. And that is just the beginning.

 

  1. What else did you find within the diary?There are many differences my book discusses, but there is one particular difference, I would like to share with you. In numerous version’s which have been shared of the story the boy has a tremendous amount of blame put upon him for playing with a Ouija Board which his Spiritualist Aunt taught him how to use. But the dairy tells a completely different story which has been either overlooked or ignored. I was amazed by it completely. The mother in this event was not the innocent victim we have often thought from the book and film. During one of the first real frightening moments of the case, the mother is on the boys bed with the boy and the grandmother as the bed shakes violently and the sound of marching footsteps can be heard. What does the mother do? She calls out to the Spiritualist Aunt who died a few weeks before. If this is Aunt so and so knock four times. It knocks and she asks again. This is when the communication really begins. It clearly demonstrates the mother had a knowledge of how to communicate with spirit.

 

  1. Do you feel the mother had a motive for communicating with it?I do. The diary clearly talks about the mother continuing to ask question throughout the case and seems even excited when the answers begin to appear on the boy’s body in scratches and welts. The boy described these markings as extremely painful when they occurred. He said they felt like he was being branded and he would cry out in pain. The mother would continue asking questions even though he was in pain. She decided to bring him to St. Louis because the word Louis on the boy’s body and she had family who lived here. It was almost like a Saturday Night Live skit if you will. She asks how long should she stay in St. Louis and if she should send the boy to school. All the while keep in mind, he is screaming and writing in pain.

 

  1. That is horrible. So here is the $100 question, did they bring the boy to St. Louis for the purpose of an exorcism?No, they did not and the diary is very clear on this. As a matter of fact, the first person they see when they arrive in St. Louis is an Alphabet Medium or a Spiritualist if you will. It is not until one of the cousins who was attending St. Louis University went to Father Bishop who was one of her professors and asked him if he could help. That is how the Church gets involved. That is the point in the diary when it tells us the mothers motives. One of the first visits by the Church to see the boy at the suburban home it clearly states the family was asking questions and watching the answers which appeared painfully on the boy’s body. What was the line of questioning? The family wanted to know where the dead Aunt had buried a large sum of money. It was money motivated. Now I do not have to point out how Greed is one of the sins which leads to all sins in religion. I do not have to point out how Greed is something we always avoid in these type cases because it will eat you alive. I have even seen Priest’s in these cases tear up checks for this specific reason. There are many things like this in the book which really have never been shared in this way before. There is much more involved which on a personal and professional level I find to be somewhat shocking.
  2. With your personal background in the paranormal did you experience any adverse effects from writing this book?Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, the very first day of writing was very spooky. I write listening to music and on this day I was listening to Ave Maria while I wrote. So I am listening to music and writing and I see my son’s dog, Belle, is pacing back and forth. She keeps walking to the front stairs looking up them and growling. Then I almost jump out of my skin when there is a knock on the front door. I open the front door and there are two people in ties, “Do you have Jesus in your life,” they asked. I looked at them in shock and said, “You have got to be kidding me.” And shut the door.  That was just the very first day of writing. It was one of those moments when you know you are the right track and I knew at that moment I was doing the right thing by writing this book.

    Confrontation with Evil, is available wherever books are sold or downloaded. Or by simply following the link to Amazon.