Loves and Demons

In order to keep my mind off the stresses of everyday life and insane relationships, I paused my reading "Outliers" and passed to John, who is probably almost done with it. I then replaced it with something a bit more sensational (to keep my ADD in check), a book about demonologists. It's about a couple who have been in the business of exorcising demons and such for about 30 years, and they are supposed to be one of the most knowledgeable teams in the world (ok, or at least the USA).

This book is supposed to scare the wits out of you, and I've only read one whole chapter. But here's where I'm going with this...

A few years ago, I had an episode where I had been on the phone with someone supposedly very spiritual. She was trying to convince me of something that to me was morally and ethically unacceptable, never mind the fact that it wasn't incredibly Christian. Nothing major, just her views on the subject seemed to reek of status-influenced, rich people bullshit.

After hanging up, I felt a hideous knot in my stomach and that something was very wrong. It was making me sick, nauseous, and I was crying. I told my husband at the time that something was wrong, I felt sick, but it was something different, something really bad.

He left me in the living room to go put the kids to bed after handing me a bowl just in case. No sooner did he walk away, I felt the knot dissipate and I felt better. After a while, he came back and asked me how I was feeling, but his eyes were open slightly wider than usual. I told him "I feel fine now, thank you." Then he asked me something unusual: "When did start to you feel better?" and I told him that was pretty much as he walked away, towards the kids' room.

Then, for just a few seconds, he was quiet. "You know what?" he said; "I took longer than usual because Bala (our son) wouldn't go to sleep, he was terrified". "Why?" I asked him. "Bala kept talking about a dark figure with no eyes standing at the doorway of his room, and he was absolutely convinced. He couldn't stop talking about it, this very dark figure with no eyes. He then said that it took off down the hallway, towards our room".

Stef was clearly freaked out about this, as was I. "Not with my kid, you don't" I thought to whatever this dark thing may have been...

The next day, and for quite a few weeks, our sweet Bala kept talking about this incident. I told him that it was just his imagination, but he wouldn't buy it. Nowadays, if I ask him about that night he sweetly says "it's ok, it was just my imagination..."

I spoke to a couple of priests, reaching no real conclusion. Just in case, my very dear Father Phil happened to be in L.A. and stopped by our home to bless it with Holy Water, in hopes this sort of thing wouldn't happen again, or just to humor me, no matter...

Going back to this book (which, by the way, is called "The Demonologist, the Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren"), the two subjects are trying to explain to people the difference between ghosts and demons.

Here is something that, well... just read: "Ed displays a picture, taken in a demonically-infested house, of what looks like the ghost of a boy. 'That was no ghost,' Ed says... ...As for the picture, the boy had no eyes. That is a trademark of the demonic..."

G