Some spiritual battles look like horror movies.
Fog rolling out of an 1850s barn and sliding into your front door. Pots and pans clanging in an empty kitchen. A low male voice shouting your name at 4:30 a.m. so powerfully it rattles the whole house.
But as I listened to Eric Davis on Created in the Image of God, I realized the most frightening part of his story wasn’t what he saw and heard.
It was what gave those things the right to stay.
Eric and his wife, Cindy, poured their life savings into a dream plantation that almost became unlivable. What finally broke the power of darkness there wasn’t stronger anointing oil or louder prayers.
It was forgiveness.
This is what I learned from Eric about spiritual law, unforgiveness, and the image of God—in a house, in a marriage, and in a nation still haunted by its own past.
A Dream House that Started to Breathe
Eric has loved old houses and antiques since childhood. As a boy, he was captivated by his great‑grandmother’s place and the sense that the walls had watched generations live and die. History class was his favorite; he soaked up stories from the past.
Later, visiting Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston, he looked up and quietly prayed: “God, if it would be possible, could I have a place like this one day?” Then he went back to everyday life—military service, marriage, running the family manufacturing business. He and Cindy bought what they could afford and kept saving for “someday.”
Someday came in 2016. Around Christmas, Cindy showed him a free real‑estate booklet. Inside was a Southern plantation for sale, just five minutes away. Eric recognized it from childhood: Spring Hill Plantation.
They walked the property—1830s house, 1850s barn, a separate two‑story building that had been a doctor’s office and Civil War hospital. After looking at lake homes, wooded homes, and suburban homes for a year, this was the first place they both immediately wanted.
They sold what they had, emptied their savings, and bought Spring Hill. “It was not only a dream come true,” Eric told me, “it was a prayer come true.”
At first, the biggest problem was neglect. The property had been in bankruptcy for years, sitting empty. They hired a professional cleaning company that stayed an entire month. Layers of dust and decay came off; the house began to shine again. Period antiques filled the rooms. It looked like the 1800s reborn.
Then, one early morning, the house began to breathe.
Eric was outside with a cup of coffee, quietly thanking God for making this dream a reality. In front of him stood the old barn. To the side, the former hospital building.
He watched as a thick, dry‑ice‑like fog rolled out of the barn door—four feet wide, three feet tall—slid across the driveway, and went straight through the front door of the house. The whole event took about two minutes.
He knew immediately: something else was here.
Months later, he and Cindy woke at 5 a.m. to the deafening sounds of pots and pans clanging downstairs, doors opening and closing, the unmistakable racket of people cooking. He went down with a handgun, expecting intruders.
Nothing. Silence. Doors locked.
When he came back upstairs, Cindy was pale. While he’d been investigating, she’d heard an audible voice in the room, right in front of her face—not in her head. It simply said, “Hey, buddy,” and was gone.
At that point, they both knew: this “dream house” was haunted.
When Prayer Helps, but Freedom Doesn’t Stick
Eric and Cindy did what sincere Christians do. They prayed over the house. They used anointing oil from Israel on doors and windows. They walked room to room in Jesus’ name, commanding anything unclean to leave.
Things happened. Once, when the smell of rotten flesh filled the living room, Eric simply said the name of Jesus and the stench instantly vanished. These weren’t hallucinations; they responded to prayer.
But they didn’t leave for good.
Eric saw a tall man with long white hair, dressed like a 19th‑century farmer, standing behind Cindy in the barn as she fed the cats. When Eric rose to confront him, the man looked at him and vanished in a puff of smoke.
An oppressive heaviness settled on the house. Anxiety, depression, a suffocating sense of dread. Eric sometimes could barely breathe. A low male voice bellowed his first name from the foyer with such force that terror shot through him. On another day, he was suddenly overwhelmed with irrational hatred toward his wife—so intense he wished her dead—even though he knew in his sane mind he loved her deeply.
He tried to say the name of Jesus and found he couldn’t. “It was like a demonic spirit gagged my mouth,” he said.
In the natural, nothing had changed between them. But something was attacking from the outside and exploiting something on the inside.
Each time they prayed, the pressure lifted. But slowly, steadily, it crept back.
For years, Eric assumed the problem was “out there”: a haunted property with a dark history—Civil War hospital, slave quarters, injustice, perhaps occult practices among enslaved people desperate for power in powerlessness. He was right to see the house as a spiritual battleground.
But the turning point came when God put His finger on something “in here.”
The Hidden Contract
One day, after yet another oppressive episode, Eric pulled into the driveway and felt a wave of evil the moment his tires touched the property. Looking up, he saw that same white‑haired figure staring down from the window by Cindy’s desk with pure hatred.
He could barely breathe. That evening, under a cold, starry sky, he fell to his knees and cried out:
“Where are You, God? Have You forsaken me? Why have You left me here? I’ve tried to be a good Christian. I’ve prayed. Why are they still here?”
In the stillness, he sensed a single word: the name of a local church. They hadn’t been in church for six years, disillusioned by past experiences. But now he was desperate. He called.
Seven people came. In the driveway, one woman looked at him and said, in essence: “Before we go in, is there anything between you and your wife?”
Eric felt his heart pounding. The Holy Spirit convicted him on the spot.
“I’ve got unforgiveness toward her,” he admitted. When the woman turned to Cindy and asked the same question, she said she had unforgiveness toward Eric.
They confessed and repented, right there.
Eric said it was as if a key turned in a lock. He realized something crucial: unforgiveness hadn’t caused Spring Hill’s early history or the spiritual infestation on the land. But it gave those spirits a right to remain as long as he and Cindy lived there.
Unforgiveness was their legal foothold.
Once that was renounced, the team went through the house, praying and commanding anything unclean to go. This time, the freedom held. The manifestations stopped. Peace settled over the property—and has remained, years later.
Later, at a prayer conference, a minister had a word of knowledge about Eric’s father, a strict and often unreasonable man. Eric recognized deep resentment he still carried. As he forgave his father—who had already passed away—he was instantly healed of severe sleep apnea he’d suffered for 25 years. “You can’t fake that,” he said.
In both the house and his own body, the pattern was the same: when unforgiveness was brought into the light and released, torment lost its grip.
Forgiveness as Spiritual Law
On the show I reflected on Moses, who led Israel out of Egypt yet was barred from entering the Promised Land for a single, small act of disobedience: striking a rock instead of speaking to it as God commanded, in a moment of anger.
Under law, even “small” violations have weight. Moses brings the law; and he wasn’t allowed in. Joshua was chosen. The names are etymologically related, which is not, in this writer’s opinion, a coincidence. Jesus fulfills the law with forgiveness, and is uncompromising about our need to forgive:
- “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
- “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
- The parable of the unforgiving servant, delivered to the “torturers” after refusing to forgive a small debt despite having a massive debt forgiven himself.
Eric’s story makes that language painfully concrete. Unforgiveness is not just an emotion; it’s a spiritual contract. It imprisons us and gives darkness a claim.
Because we are created in the image of a God whose nature is merciful, refusing to forgive puts us at odds with who we are meant to be. It distorts the image.
Haunted Land, a Haunted Nation, and the Need for Healing
Spring Hill’s story is not just personal; it’s American.
Eric mentioned the slave quarters that once stood on his land—eight houses now gone, but not forgotten. Enslaved men and women who suffered injustice there, and who may have reached for whatever spiritual power they could in a world that denied their humanity.
Those realities matter. They leave a mark.
But a doctor owned the property, and a small Civil War hospital there treated wounded soldiers. This property becomes a metaphor for a nation still wrestling with the legacy of slavery and racism. There is real generational trauma in Black communities. There is real guilt, confusion, and defensiveness among many white Americans. Demonic forces feast on resentment in both directions: bitterness over historic and ongoing injustice; bitterness at being blamed, misunderstood, or written off.
The answer is not to minimize sin or rewrite history. What happened in places like Spring Hill was wrong. Slavery was, and is, evil. But it also reminds us of the soldiers who gave their lives to end it. Approximately the same number as for all other wars combined.
So if Eric’s story teaches us anything, it is that unforgiveness keeps evil in place. It doesn’t heal. It keeps the house haunted.
We need truth about our past, yes. We also need forgiveness that only God can birth—a supernatural ability to release, to repent, to honor what both Black and white Americans bring to this nation as image‑bearers of the same God.
Until hearts change, we can legislate and argue and post, but the spiritual house we live in together will remain heavy and tense. When we begin to forgive and seek forgiveness—personally and collectively—we revoke the enemy’s legal right to keep stoking hatred.
In that light, conversations about race, history, and justice are not just political; they’re deeply spiritual. And they require the same thing Eric and Cindy discovered in their driveway: honest confession, mutual humility, and forgiveness flowing in both directions.
A Heart Check for Image‑Bearers
Most of us will never see fog walk into our front door. But many of us know what it’s like to have a marriage, a family, or even a nation that feels “off”—blessed on paper, yet strangely joyless.
Eric’s story invites a simple question:
Is there any unforgiveness in me—toward a spouse, parent, child, pastor, race, or nation—that is giving darkness a place to land?
Forgiveness does not say, “It didn’t matter.” It says, “I am handing this case to God.” When we do, we step out of prison ourselves, and we clear space for the image of God—His mercy, His justice, His creativity—to shine more clearly in us and through us.
Eric and Cindy poured their life savings into a dream plantation that almost became unlivable. Only when they forgave did they finally get to enjoy what God had given them.
Where is God inviting you to do the same?
You are created in the image of God.
When you forgive, you don’t just obey—you reflect your Father’s face.
Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Up on Created in the Image of God
In upcoming episodes, we’ll look at this same theme—the image of God—through very different lenses:
- With Andrew Peterson, we’ll explore how art and story quietly point people toward Christ and why beauty matters in a fractured world.
- With Peter Greer of HOPE International, we’ll talk about faith, entrepreneurship, and how seeing the poor as image‑bearers changes the way we approach charity and justice.
Across it all, one conviction guides me:
You are created in the image of God,
and God loves His creation.
If this stirred something in you about unforgiveness—personal or historical—I’d be honored to hear from you. Reply with as much or as little as you wish. I do read what you send, and I pray for you as we walk this road together.
Until next time,
Wade
