By LEIGH HURSEY
Staff Writer / Times Herald Record

At 6-years-old, Maurice Ezira Ramsey wasn't sure what he was doing when he put his hands on people. But his mother's friends and neighbors who complained of headaches or stomach pains continued to stream into the Ramsey's St. Nicholas Avenue apartment in Manhattan.

The little boy would simply touch people where it hurt and they reported feeling better. At first, Ramsey's "power" seemed questionable to his mother, Ernestine. She was glad her friends felt better, but maybe a cure existed only in their minds.

But one day as Mrs. Ramsey dressed one of her younger children for a doctor's appointment, Maurice, then 7, kept begging her to stay home. She planned to leave in the late morning on a bus bound for the Bronx. Maurice had never been clingy, so she began to pay attention to his pleas. "He held onto me," she said.

Mrs. Ramsey stayed home with Maurice. And that afternoon, about the time she would have been heading home to Manhattan, an elevated train was in a fiery accident. Her bus would have passed under the same tracks. "I said 'Oh my God, this (gift) is really true,' " she said. "It really shook me up." But she didn't encourage it. "At first I tried to hide it," Mrs. Ramsey said. "Back in those days people were skeptical of those things."

But today more and more people are seeking alternatives or supplements to traditional medicine. And more doctors are recognizing the importance of the spirit in healing. Maurice is a 52-year-old minister ordained by the Virginia-based United Spiritual Scientist Fellowship. And in a two-car garage attached to his Cuddebackville home, he runs the House of Miracles. (The town's codes prohibit construction of a church on the property.)

A quiet, unassuming man with a slight stutter, Ramsey doesn't offer flamboyant healing demonstrations like some televangelists, although some of his sessions may be mentally intense. His Sunday services and workshops focus on meditation, self-discovery and prayer. Ramsey divides his time between .healing, and reading. At the direction of the Holy Spirit, he devised a set of 58 cards with Native American images and themes. He's a self-described clairvoyant and a medium through which God heals physically, emotionally and spiritually.

He cannot, and will not, take credit for strange or miraculous phenomenon resulting from a visit to his House of Miracles. "I don't have any control," he says. "I'm only a channel for the Holy Spirit to flow through me."

Although Ramsey's healing ritual remains virtually the same, the sensations felt by others vary. Ramsey starts with a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to enter his mind and body. Once he feels the energy coming into his head and heart and radiate from his hands, he brings himself into a light trance. His hands follow the outline of the body, hovering about an inch above.

"At times a person will tell me what's wrong. Others, I just know where to go." Ramsey said. As the person sits upright with closed eyes, Ramsey looks for cold places on the body that indicate blockages. When he finds a blockage, he places his hand on the spot and sends energy to that place. Some say they feel a sense of calm or see a light. Others compare the experience to feeling static electricity.