True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate

Tags

Evil, Evil incarnate, Ghost Stories, Good vs Evil, Halloween, Haunted House, Paranormal, Spirit possession, Supernatural

The dark creatures that haunt our dreams and come to us as waking nightmares take many shapes or forms, but none is more evil nor dangerous than that which takes the shape of our own thoughts, and acts out its evil intentions through our own bodies.

When I was a little girl living in that haunted house, it appeared that I had escaped unscathed. I never heard the dragging footsteps across my floor at night, I never saw the ghost of the man who had murdered his wife in my room and hung himself in our garage. I was never attacked as my mother had been by the poltergeist that knocked her to the floor that day.

But something equally frightening and more dangerous visited me one late afternoon as I played dolls with my best friend in my bedroom. I cannot remember the exact details of what happened that day, but it was of such significance that I never forgot its occurrence. It had a profound effect upon my thinking and how I have lived ever since.

It came as a subtle suggestion as I played with my friend. An impulse to say something deliberately cruel and hurtful to her. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was mean. But I gave into that impulse nonetheless.

I was surprised by her reaction. How shocked and stunned she was. How she was physically repelled by my words and backed away. How she looked at me as if I was a stranger. As if she was afraid of me.

But rather than feeling remorse or regret, what I felt was a surge of excitement, of power and pleasure. I struck out again at her verbally, harder this, and she begged me to stop. But I didn’t stop, and as I continued, she began to cry.

The whole time I was doing this, there was no sense of empathy. She was no longer my best friend. She was this creature, a lab rat, and I was performing an experiment. How cruel could I be? How frightened would she become?

Yet beneath all this, another part of me reacted quite differently. It was shocked by my behavior. Mortified. This was not me! I could not believe that I was doing this, and could not understand what had come over me, or why I was persisting in hurting my friend. It was like a dark, evil twin had taken over me, and I was as horrified as my little friend by what was happening.

It was at this point that my feeling of moral outrage and dismay overcame the pleasurable feeling of power that had possessed me, and I shook it off. It was literally as if I had shook my head hard and threw off whatever had come over me. Then seeing my friend trembling and crying before me, I wrapped my arms around her and wept with her, and told her how sorry I was, and promised never to do that again. Sweet girl that she was, she forgave me, and we played together happily the rest of that day and all the days that followed, as best friends should, until we moved away.

But I never forgot that day. I like to think now that it was that sad, angry, stalking presence that haunted our house that tried, unsuccessfully, to inhabit me. And I think what saved me was knowing, truly knowing in my heart, that it was’t me. Even though it came in the guise of my own thoughts, my own actions, I did not identify with it. And because of that, I believe, I was able to eject it as “not me.”

I had a taste of what true evil feels like, with all its sense of pleasure and power, and I did not like it.

I was as repelled by it as my friend was of me that day. And to this day I have never deliberately, gleefully, sought to hurt anyone again.

That is not to say that I have never said or done horrible things that I regret when I was deeply angry, or hurt, or outraged by someone or something.

But never in the calculated, cold-hearted way I had done that day, merely to see how cruel, how hurtful, I could be.

Was I briefly possessed by an evil spirit that day? Or was it something else? The incident could be explained in several ways—religiously, spiritually, psychologically, even from a simple moral standpoint. Good versus evil. Right versus wrong.

I imagine the “mean girls” you hear about today who cyber-bully other girls to the point of suicide, the boys who go out on joy rides looking for someone to hurt, the rapists that feel pleasure and power when they assault others, or the serial killers that stalk their victims—all at some point in their lives felt an impulse to do something quite unlike anything they had ever done before. But rather than rejecting that impulse as “not me,” or “not who I want to be,” they consented to being that person. And the impulse became a compulsion that possessed them.

I write this now because I think it’s important to make a distinction between the supernatural or paranormal appearances that spook us and thrill us and give us those tantalizing chills, and the more “normal” appearances of evil that, if we consent to them, take up residence in our hearts and minds. That make us the “mean girls” and the cruel boys, the heartless con men, the conniving heart-breakers, the stalking predators or murderous madmen. That haunt our hallways and back roads and bedrooms, our main streets and Wall Streets, and all the places in-between.

It begins with a cruel impulse. And if we are alert and vigilant, that’s where it can end too.

What is evil incarnate, after all, but evil manifested, evil embodied, evil given a human heart and mind to haunt? Without that, evil is powerless.

And so ends my series of posts on true ghost stories, or would end here, except I have something further to ponder.

Do I truly believe this stuff?

Do I believe in ghosts and haunted houses and demons and spirit possession? In the supernatural and paranormal? In evil incarnate?

How does an intelligent, rational person explain all this?

How indeed. To find out, you’ll have to wait for my next, and final post, on this topic. On Halloween night.

This is Part V of an ongoing series leading up to Halloween of true life ghost stories, experienced either by me or by people I trusted.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing Up in a Haunted House
• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

 

True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest

Tags

Demon on chest, Demons, Evil, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Sleep paralysis, The Old Hag, True Stories

Have you ever awoken from sleep to find yourself paralyzed with fear as something dark and evil sitting on your chest has pinned you down? You try to scream or move, but find that you cannot. You are overcome with terror.

It’s more common than you think. About 15% of us, male and female, experience this at some time in our lives. Sometimes it happens over and over on a nightly basis; sometimes only for a brief period of time.

It happened to me more than once when I was a young mother. On evening when I went to bed, I was so bone-weary my body felt like lead. But before I could drift off I felt someone climb into bed with me, straddle my stomach and lean on my chest. One of my young children, I was sure, had come to me because they couldn’t sleep or had had a nightmare and wanted my attention. I was so tired I didn’t not want to get up and laid there for a while hoping they’d go back to bed on their own, but they didn’t.

So I finally gave in and opened by eyes to see which child needed me. But when I did, nothing was there. No child. Nothing but a heavy pitch black darkness that was staring me in the face with such a sinister and evil intent that I tried to scream and scramble away. But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream. I tried with all my might but could only squirm helplessly, and move my mouth but nothing would come out.

I’m not sure how long this lasted, and how I finally managed to get the attention of my husband who was sleeping next to me. When I did, it broke the spell. The heavy darkness disappeared and I was able to move. I told Dale what happened, and he said he could hear me moaning and wriggling, but saw or heard nothing else.

It happened the next night too. First the feeling of something crawling over my legs and then climbing on my chest, staring malevolently at me and holding me down. Again I was frozen with terror and could not move or speak. Again I was finally able to alert my husband.

The third time it happened, Dale felt it too! Felt something scampering across our legs. He jumped out of bed and flipped on the lights. But nothing was there.

It happened twice more, each time Dale feeling it too and jumping up to investigate. We knew it wasn’t the children who were sound asleep in bed. We wondered if it could be our parrot (we had no other pets at the time) but Sinbad was on his perch in the family room, and besides, whatever scampered across our legs was much heavier than a bird, even a large one.

Could it be a rat? It would have to truly be a gigantic one. But none of those things accounted for the heavy dark thing that crushed my chest and paralyzed me. None could account for the horrible sense of evil malevolence staring me in the face.

It never returned after that fifth visit. In fact, I’ve never experienced anything paranormal or spooky or ghostly since then. But years later I was stunned to see in a magazine a picture of the very thing that had sat on my chest. In this artist’s depiction, the dark, evil presence was in the form of a demon, and I “recognized” it at once, even though at the time I had seen only darkness. But the demon exactly matched the sense of grotesque, malevolent evil I had felt staring me down.

I was surprised, and somewhat relieved, to find out that this sort of occurrence is common across many cultures, and each has its own name and explanation for the demon. In some southern states, the visiting demon is known as “The Old Hag”. In Mexico it is referred to as “subirse el muerto” (dead person on you). In Scandinavian folklore the paralysis is caused by a mare, a damned woman. In Turkey, it is a supernatural being known as a dijinn. In other cultures it is an incubi or succubi.

In recent times this phenomenon has been thought to be a form of “sleep paralysis” or narcolepsy. Wikipedia defines it this way:

“Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which people, either when falling asleep or wakening, temporarily experience an inability to move. More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia (muscle weakness). It can occur at sleep onset or upon awakening, and it is often associated with terrifying visions (e.g. an intruder in the room), to which one is unable to react due to paralysis.”

While this certainly describes my sleep-state and my paralysis, and even perhaps my terror, it does not account for the feeling of something crawling across my legs, or the fact that my husband, who was not paralyzed, felt it too! For those who have actually experience this demon-like presence, the sleep-paralysis explanation does not come close to describing the full extent of this horrifying experience.

Whatever it is, it is vivid enough and frightening enough to have inspired the drawings and paintings of several artists through the ages, as you can see in the photos illustrating this post. Poets too have been inspired.  Here’s a bit of what Erasmus Darwin wrote in his poem “The Botanic Garden”:

“On his Night-Mare, thro the evening fog,
Flits the squab fiend o’er fen, and lake, and bog,
 Seeks some love-wilder’d maid, by sleep opprest,
Alights, and grinning, sits upon her breast.”

I found this on a blog post by Mike Rendell called “The Night Mare, the Nightmare, and the Night Mayor.” It’s an interesting and fun read on how artists through the ages who have depicted the event, some in humorous and politically expedient ways.

While I have been happily free of supernatural occurrences since the last visit of this “demon,” I cannot end this series without relating another attempt at demonic possession, or at least an evil intent, that tried to influence me while living in that haunted house as a child that I wrote about in my first post.

The “thing” that trod across my bedroom in the night so long ago, that knocked my mother to the floor, tried, for one brief moment at least, to inhabit me.

More about that next time.

This is Part V of an ongoing series leading up to Halloween of true life ghost stories, experienced either by me or by people I trusted.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing Up in a Haunted House
• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?

True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast

Tags

Evil, Exorcism, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Haunted House, Spirit possession

We felt so fortunate. Dale had a job in San Francisco that summer, and his Uncle who lived nearby asked us to house sit for them while they were away. We jumped at the chance. They lived in a beautiful home in an upscale neighborhood with a pool—a perfect place for me and our 6-month old son to hang out while Dale worked in the city.

There was only one hitch. Shortly after moving in, I became increasingly afraid to be alone in the house. I was okay when Dale was at home. But as soon as he left for work, a creepy feeling overwhelmed me. As I walked through the house I was aware of something sinister and malicious watching me. It was as if the walls had eyes that followed me everywhere. As if I was living in the belly of the Beast.

I could not stay in the house. Every morning I would pack up food and diapers and books and towels and whatever else I needed so that my son and I could camp out on the patio by the pool all day. There I felt some measure of relief. While the house behind me felt menacing, at least I was not surrounded by those eyes, not immersed in the midst of it.

One of my house-sitting chores was to keep the lush landscaping that surrounded the home watered, and I did my best. But one side of the house I could not water, the side where the bedrooms of the teenage children were located. What I felt staring out at me from those windows was too unnerving.

One day when Dale was home I felt brave enough to open those two bedrooms and look inside. Nothing seemed amiss. Yet I felt sinister unwelcome and looking out the windows that had so frightened me, I had a strong premonition that something horrible was waiting to happen.

This feeling of impending doom came whenever I heard the wind chimes blow outside our bedroom window. How I hated that eerie sound, and how grateful I felt when Dale, for some unstated reason, took them down. I didn’t press him about it. I wasn’t yet willing to share my spooky feelings with my young husband who seemed to fear nothing, who was so practical and level-headed. I was afraid he’d think me silly or foolish. I didn’t want to admit how scared I was in his Uncle’s beautiful home.

But one evening when we were watching TV together, Dale jumped up and switched the channel just as a horror movie was about to play. Until then, he had always loved watching spooky movies.

That’s when I found out that he too had the same creepy feeling in the house—like something evil was lurking, or the house itself had become possessed and was watching us and waiting. We both had the horrible premonition that something awful was about to happen.

So while it was a relief to find that I was not alone, that this frightening sense of being watched and impending doom was not merely my imagination, I could not shake it and could not continue to live there with it.

That’s when I decided enough was enough. Either we were going to have to move, or IT was. I was no longer willing to allow myself to be forced out onto the patio each day. I decided to fight back.

I’d grown up attending Sunday School each week. I’d been taught that God is Love and All-in-all. I reasoned that if this was so, then God as Love must surround me, must fill the very space that occupied that house. Either this was true or it wasn’t. And I was going to find out which.

So instead of going out on the patio one morning, I sat at the dining room table and prayed. My prayer was simply to feel God’s presence, that Love, surrounding me and filling that house. No thought, no thinking, no reasoning—just feeling Love. And I sat there like that until the whole room seemed filled with a warm inviting light, until my whole being seemed filled with Love, until I forgot all about any evil presence or the need to be rid of it. All that I felt was joy.

When my prayer ended, the house was free. That sense of evil had vanished. I walked around the house and was flooded with happiness. The house was normal, non-threatening. Whatever had occupied it before was gone. Even the children’s rooms were peaceful, empty.

The rest of our stay there was uneventful. Nothing horrible happened then, or in the future, as far as we knew. We did question his Uncle years later about whether he’d had any abnormal experiences in the house, and he said he never had. Dale and I speculated that perhaps one of the teenagers had dabbled in the occult. They did seem rather strange, as most teens do, I suppose.

So we never found out why we both felt such a sense of evil and impending doom while living there. I told Dale about how I no longer needed to spend the day outside, that whatever had been bothering me before had vanished. He was not so lucky. That evil sense never left him while we were there, and to this day he says that he would never want to stay in that house. For many, many years we could not hang wind chimes in our home. It was too eerie!

You’d think after having had “exorcised” the Beast, I never again would have been troubled by ghosts or demons or evil incarnate. But you’d be wrong.

Several years later when I had two small children I again was visited by a sense of pure evil. And this time was even more terrifying than being in the belly of the Beast. So terrifying, in fact, that I was paralyzed with fear. I could not move, I could not scream, I could barely breathe. For the Beast had crept into my bed, pinned me down, and sat grinning on my chest.

More about that next time.

This is Part IV of an ongoing series of true life ghost stories, experienced either by me or by people I trusted.

You can read the full series of ghost stories at the links below.

• True Ghost Stories, Part I – Growing Up in a Haunted House
• True Ghost Stories, Part II – Attack of the Poltergeist
• True Ghost Stories, Part III – When the Dead Refuse to Leave
• True Ghost Stories, Part IV – Resident Evil: In the Belly of the Beast
• True Ghost Stories, Part V – A Demon on My Chest
• True Ghost Stories, Part VI – Evil Incarnate
• True Ghost stories, Part VIII – Do I Believe This Stuff?