Touched by the Unseen: Stories of Prayer, Spirits, and Recovery

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Garðastræti 8: The House Between Worlds

Reykjavík in the 1990s was a quiet city after dusk. The wind off the harbor curled through narrow streets, whispering around eaves and lamplight. At Garðastræti 8, a modest white house with lace curtains, an unusual kind of work was quietly taking place where the material and invisible worlds sometimes touched.

Inside, Hafsteinn Guðbjörnsson, a man with calm eyes and careful hands, stood as a bridge between seen and unseen. He was not a doctor, though people spoke of him as one. His tools were prayer, silence, and something else…something that came through him like light through glass.

He served as healer for Sálarrannsóknafélag Íslands (S.R.F.Í.), the Icelandic Society for Spiritual Research, believing humbly that guiding forces could reach through his hands if his faith held steady. “I don’t heal,” he would say softly. “They heal through me.”

The Light That Moved Through Hands

Those who came to him were greeted with gentleness. There were no candles, no incense. Only stillness. A patient would sit quietly while Hafsteinn stood behind, eyes half closed, a prayer murmured beneath his breath.

He waited until he felt it, a current rising from beyond the crown of the head, flooding into his palms like warm, invisible sunlight. Then he would move his hands downward, unhurried, through the air around the body. The room would fall silent except for breathing.

He often sensed presences at his side: doctors, scholars, guiding spirits with distinct personalities. Sometimes he felt their gestures mirrored in his own: the tilt of a head, the push of a palm.

When the healing was done, he raised his hands to form a triangle above the patient’s head, whispering a blessing: that the person be wrapped in light and find their way toward wellness. Then came his parting words, firm and tender. “God bless you.”

Sometimes that moment sparked something unexpected: a whisper of message, an image, a greeting from someone long gone. “There are many ways to heal,” Hafsteinn would say later, “but this feels right for me.”

***Hafsteinn performing spiritual healing. Image generated by Perplexity AI using Seedream***

January 23, 1996 – The Doctor in White

One winter night in 1996, a woman sought Hafsteinn’s help once more. Two years earlier (Nov, 1994), surgeons had replaced her eye’s pupil. The operation succeeded, but an infection soon spread and refused every treatment. Months passed, the doctors grew uncertain, and she lay in bed frightened she might lose her sight entirely.

She phoned the Society and asked for an intercession. That evening, she prayed, half believing, half desperate.

Then she saw him.

At the edge of the room, a doctor appeared. Not of flesh, but real enough that she saw the gleam of his glasses and the slender syringe of glass in his hand. He approached, wordless, and gently injected her arm. A deep calm swept over her, and she slept.

In the morning, the infection was already fading.

When her doctor examined her eyes days later, he said only, “Something’s changed.” She just smiled.

***Vision of the Doctor in White, 1996. Image generated by Perplexity AI using Seedream***

September 4, 1996 – The Steadying of Steps

Autumn winds rattled the windows of Garðastræti 8 as Hafsteinn returned to work on the first evening after summer’s long hiatus. Among the first through the door came Þorkell Sigurðsson (1913–1998), a Hrafnista (convalescent home) resident with a determined glint in his eye.

He began with thanks. That spring, March or April, when the world still clung to winter’s chill, Þorkell had arrived trembling. Dizziness gripped him like a thief, his feet unsteady, each step a gamble. Climbing the steep stairs to the second floor had left him gasping, clinging to the rail. Doctors had thrown every pill at him, but nothing stuck. “This is how it is now,” they shrugged, turning away. Þorkell stopped going.

After one quiet healing session, the world righted itself. In about a week, the vertigo lifted, and his steps grew sure again.

But now pain shadowed his gratitude. A fall had cracked ribs, sharp breaths a torment. “It worked wonders before,” he told Hafsteinn with quiet hope. “Maybe for this, too?”

Later that winter, Þorkell climbed those same stairs effortlessly to report the miracle: the pain had vanished just two days after.

***Dizziness gripped him like a thief, emulating the unsteady climb.*** ***Image generated by Perplexity AI using Seedream***

October 1996 – Spirits at Rest

That same autumn on October 20th, a man known only as A came to Hafsteinn—anxious, almost embarrassed. The family now living in his former home had begun hearing things: footsteps, voices, the feeling of a soft hand brushing the hair. Their young daughter spoke of glowing figures who hovered by her bed. Even a priest’s blessing had not cleared the air.

Hafsteinn listened quietly, eyes closed. “They mean no harm,” he said. “But they do not know they’ve lingered too long.”

Eventually they reached out to A, asking whether he had experienced anything unusual while living there. He had not, but he asked Hafsteinn to look into the matter.

Three nights later, he prayed for the spirits, asking those he worked with to speak gently to them, to help them find the light. The house grew quiet after that. The little girl began to sleep through the night.

***Their young daughter spoke of glowing figures who hovered by her bed.*** ***Image generated by Perplexity AI using Seedream***

The Otherworldly Eye Surgery

Magnús’s Desperation

Magnús Skarphéðinsson (1931–2004), once an electrician, had been losing his sight for months. By spring of 1992, darkness pressed in on both eyes. Doctors tried everything they could, but nothing helped.

When he heard of the Society, he asked for a meeting. At first, Hafsteinn was not taking healing cases, but when he later learned of Magnús’s continued suffering, he decided to pray for him that very evening.

“Be calm at ten o’clock,” the receptionist told Magnús over the phone. “That’s when he will work for you.” Magnús nodded, though he didn’t quite know what that meant.

The Night of Healing

At precisely ten, Hafsteinn and his wife Kolbrún began. She read prayers in a low, slow voice, and he repeated them inwardly, inviting light to do its work.

Meanwhile, in a small room at Grund, Magnús lay awake. The air thickened. He felt watched but not in fear.

Then, a figure appeared. A doctor, mustached, dressed in white. Without speaking, he placed his hand over Magnús’s eyes. For long minutes there was warmth, pressure, then darkness.

When Magnús awoke, his pillow was damp. He hurried to the mirror and gasped. The haze was gone. He could see his own astonished reflection.

The next night, the doctor returned with a second companion, taller, broader, his presence strong as stone. Again, hands upon the eyes, a pulse of unseen energy and sleep.

By dawn, his sight was whole.

The Doctors’ Disbelief

Magnús wasted no time visiting Landakot Hospital. The ophthalmologists examined him again and again, their confusion sealing the room into silence.

Finally, one of them said, “Whatever was wrong, it isn’t anymore.”

Magnús smiled. “Perhaps someone else had steadier hands.”

A House of Ordinary Miracles

In those years, Garðastræti 8 remained an ordinary Reykjavík house: a doorbell, a stairwell, a small upstairs apartment. Yet for those who entered, it was something far less tangible: a place where prayer met electricity, and faith brushed finger to fingertip with the invisible.

Even now, when the winter wind rolls down the street, some say you can feel that soft hum of unseen light that once flowed through the hands of Hafsteinn Guðbjörnsson.