I suppose it had to happen. Now someone's gone and turned exorcism into a game. Flying Fish Works will be presenting their latest offering at the Game Connection in Lyon.
It's called Hellion: Mystery of the Inquisition and will be ported to Xbox 360, PS3 and the PC.
Hellion's protagonist is scarfaced Godric of Glastonbury (pictured), a hero who not only wields a mean broadsword but is adept at exorcism. His first mission takes him to a Cistercian monastery in medieval England, where he does battle with pagan sects and heretics as well as Olde Nick himself.
According to the makers, “For the first time we will present our hero’s extraordinary skill – the exorcism. In Hellion the exorcism is a unique upgradeable and storytelling instrument. It is a real main feature as gamer will use this tool continuously in various ways for – attacking, protecting and supporting. It is not comparable to some kind of simple magic in fact it is a powerful talent our hero is blessed with.”
Gamers will be able to face virtual demons, as well as taking part in "political and religious intrigue. The game is "an epic journey through different medieval cultures full of real-life characters, wild animals, rough warriors, powerful Templar knights, deadly assassins and, ultimately, horrifying demons."
You can find out more about Hellion: Mystery of the Inquisition at the official website, www.hellion-game.com.
The homophobes are at it again. Talk show host Tyra Banks is the latest among high-profile Americans to focus on a perceived link between homosexuality and evil. In other words, gayness is the work of the Devil, and a homosexual can be "cured" by means of an exorcism.
The "victim" in this instance is a 16-year-old Connecticut boy named Jeffrey. The lad is gay and began cross-dressing at the age of 14. He was dating other gay young men as well.
Jeffrey came to prominence in June when he was "exorcised" by a "prophetess" attached to the Manifested Glory Ministries of Bridgeport, CT. It lasted for twenty minutes and was captured on video. It became a YouTube hit but has since been taken down.
Asked to justify the deliverance, Ms McKinney spoke for her congregation when she said that "we believe a man should be with a woman and a woman should be with a man.... We have nothing against homosexuals. I just don't agree with their lifestyle."
She went on to explain that Jeffrey approached her community, not vice versa. "This young man came to us. We didn't go to him.… He was dressing like a woman and everything, and he didn't want to be like that.
Now Jeffrey has achieved even more media coverage courtesy of Tyra Banks. For those among us who don't know the lady, Larry Dobrow, writing in Advertising Age, notes that she "used to model swimsuits and she utters the word 'empower' more than any being on this or any other planet." He describes the Tyra Banks phenomen as "an Oprah-lite media empire," that was built on the premise that she "truly, deeply cares about her empowerable fangirls but is in reality Jerry Springer-ish pulp submerged in a torrent of girl-power bluster and prettified by a killer weave."
Gosh! Not a Tyra fan then. Nevertheless the episode, broadcast on 22 September, was illuminating in many respects. Not least being the extraordinary number of people who commented on Tyra's website expressing solidarity with Ms McKinney and her wacky beliefs.
And Jeffrey? Speaking about his ordeal, he claimed to have been freed of his "homosexual demon" and heaven would now welcome him, rather than slamming the pearly gates in his face. "I'm no longer gay," he said, "but it's still a process that I have to go through to be fully delivered."
Tyra wondered if that meant he was still attracted to other men. "I still have temptation," he told her.
Finally she asked if he was attracted to women now. He hesitated before answering without too much conviction: "Women? Umm, yes."
It was a tragedy that brought so much grief to her parents in August 2008. Four-year-old Martina died in a car crash. The child was attending nursery school in her home-town of San Martin. The town is situated in the Andes, some 45 km from the border with Chile.
At the time of the accident, Martina was in the back seat and wearing a seat-belt. Her mother was pregnant with her second child. Both she and her husband survived but required hospitalization.
The family recovered from the tragedy, yet it seems that the little dead girl could not bring herself to depart from her school and the friends she’d made there. Time and again, her ghost was seen in the school playground and in the building itself. Witnesses included several teachers and many of Martina’s classmates.
Her presence was benign. When asked whether they felt any fear on seeing the ghost of their dead classmate, the children were emphatic that they felt none at all. Yet all expressed a deep sorrow. It pained them that Martina's soul was not at rest.
The apparitions continued for over a year, and became so frequent that schoolwork was being disrupted. The headmistress decided to engage the services of Father Manuel Acuña. He enjoys a reputation of “healing” and deliverance in the nearby parish of the Good Shepherd.
The priest regarded it as “a very hard case, very difficult to address because it involved a little girl who had a whole life ahead and died violently. Clearly her soul was wedded to the place where she’d been happiest: her school and the playground.”
Father Acuña had several meetings with the headmistress, the teachers and school governors. All concluded that a Mass said in the school would be the best approach. “Our primary objective,” he says, “was that to make the soul of Martina aware of her situation and help her find refuge in the kingdom of Jesus.”
As chance would have it, an outbreak of influenza persuaded the headmistress to close the school for several days. The priest made plans to say a Mass of deliverance in Martina’s classroom.
It followed loosely the rites of Coptic Christians, he says, who conduct services for the dead by way of nine separate ceremonies. Such services are held in the workplace or home of the deceased as a way of obtaining closure and preventing what he calls “these situations of lost souls.”
Father Acuña maintains that such practices were widespread once in the Catholic Church. “For example when a worker dies in a factory while operating a machine, the best place to celebrate a Mass to liberate his spirit would be that very spot. The same applies to any type of violent death.” This was done up until a few decades ago, he says, “but the Church laid aside its own doctrine.”
And so it came about that a Mass was said for a little girl in her classroom. “We asked for the intervention of the angels of God,” the priest says, “to come and rescue the soul of the child and guard it until such time as it achieves its eternal resting place.”
The Mass of deliverance proved very successful. The ghost of little Martina has not been seen since, and the school has returned to normal.
A woman dies in New Zealand following days of torture.
The Maori people call it a makutu. It's supposedly a rite of exorcism designed to lift a curse placed upon a person or home. In October 2007, members of a family living in Wainuiomata, a suburb close to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand's south island, became convinced that one of their number had incurred a curse. The "victim" was Janet Moses (see pic), a 22-year-old mother of two.
Why did they think this? Some weeks before, Janet, together with a 14-year-old cousin had stolen a statue of a lion from outside a local pub. The family believed that the statue was a taonga, a treasured object of great importance to Maori culture. The theft had brought a curse on the whole family.
According to police reports, about forty whānau (or extended family members) convened at the little apartment owned by Janet's grandparents. Janet and her cousin were to be "exorcised" by five of the clan. The ceremony of makutu began and it was to last several days.
Janet was subjected to torture, culminating in copious quantities of water being poured into her eyes and down her throat. Family members stood in a circle around the victim, chanting "go with peace and love" while a 52-year-old female cousin sat on her belly and poured water into her mouth and eyes. It was believed that her "demons" could be expelled through the eye sockets and throat. She died of drowning.
Her 14-year-old "accomplice" was forced to look on as Janet died struggling for breath. Then it was her turn. She was held down by four of the "exorcists" while a fifth repeated Janet's torture. The girl passed out several times.
She survived, but barely. At sometime during the ritual somebody had scratched and gouged her eyes. She was eventually taken to hospital with blood oozing from the sockets.
The case came to trial in Wellington last week. The five torturers were convicted of Janet's manslaughter and of causing grievous bodily harm to a minor. Their punishment, however, was unusually lenient: each received a community-based sentence. This prompted Trevor Mallard, the MP for the area where the killing took place, to suggest a racial motive behind the leniency.
"I think there is a lot of sympathy for the individuals involved," he told Radio New Zealand News. "They did get caught up in some sort of hysteria. They were sleep-deprived.
"But there's just not an acceptance either from the vast majority of Maori ... that you can effectively torture someone ... causing death and there not be a jail sentence."
The tragedy is yet another example of what can happen when inexperienced lay people attempt an exorcism. Two children are left motherless and a young girl is perhaps traumatized for life. I cannot say it often enough: leave exorcism to the real exorcists.
A man reportedly bashed his 14-month-old daughter to death in order to "save his district's spirituality". The horrific incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday, 9 August, in the Bua Province on Vanua Levu, an island of Fiji, in the South Pacific.
The child, Sadikuini Yalewavukivuki (pictured), was allegedly murdered in front of her mother, Valetina Dimae, a schoolteacher, in their home. Her father Ratu Beni Salagi (32) became convinced that their community was cursed. He'd been to the village pastor earlier, on the instructions of "the Holy Spirit".
He returned to their home in the Lekutu District School compound in early evening, and locked his wife and daughter in the bedroom.
He was heard to quote verses from the Bible, and declaring the house to be infested by an evil spirit. He would "exorcise" that spirit, he said. He told his wife that he was about to do what Abraham did: sacrifice his child to the Lord.
His method of "sacrifice" entailed repeatedly punching the child in the head.
A villager said they "heard the pleas for mercy from the house but thought it was a domestic dispute."
So that would have been okay then, would it? Did nobody think it sounded like a pretty one-sided domestic "dispute"?
When Ratu Beni Salagi was finished he instructed his wife to dress the child while he went to fetch a van. He intended that they all go to his parents' home, just over a mile away.
He later turned himself in to the police. A post-mortem is to carried out today.
While it would be easy to say that this was an isolated incident, it would be less than the truth. Unfortunately such things happen frequently, and not just in the developing world. In a book I published recently, More Bloody Women, I recount the case of a woman in Cork City, Ireland, who stabbed her daughter to death in July 2006. It seems that the Virgin Mary had told her that her daughter was "bad with the Devil" and must be released through death.
The killer, Mary Prendergast, was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. One wonders how many such mentally ill people have "exorcised" demons in such a brutal way, and how many will continue to do so.
I can't say it often enough: Beware the Devil, but beware the Pseudo-Devil even more.
Satan is behind the “apparitions” at Medjugorje says Pope Benedict.
The pope, in one of his most unambiguous statements to date, has just declared that the Croatian shrine is a fraud, designed by the Devil to lure the faithful away from the real teachings of the Catholic Church. His statement reinforces that of Bishop Andrea Gemma who, in 2008, suggested that Medjugorje is more than just a simple hoax to attract revenue to the village. “In Medjugorje everything revolves about money," he said. "The pilgrimages, the accommodation, the sale of trinkets. This whole sham is the work of the Devil.” As a former Vatican exorcist, Gemma can certainly draw upon some expertise in the field.
The pope's words will have dealt a body-blow to the 30 million pilgrims who’ve flocked to Herzegovina since 1981, and to thousands of prayer groups the world over devoted to the site. That was the year when it was claimed the Virgin Mary—known to the natives as the "Gospa"—had appeared to six children in the small Balkan village.
Central to the affair was and is Father Tomislav Vlašić, a Franciscan priest. He quickly became the “spiritual father” of the children, now adults—and extremely wealthy thanks to the economic boom the visits sparked off. Supposedly the Virgin visits the children, the visionaries, each and every day: there have been over 40,000 visits so far. She is reputed to have vouchsafed “Ten Secrets” to them. Vlašić and the visionaries have always been vague on the nature of these secrets, but I think we can rule out answers to questions such as: Are We Alone In the Universe? What Is the Biological Basis of Consciousness? And the 23 other major unanswered questions of science.
At any rate, champions of Medjugorje aren’t happy with those who see the hand of Satan at work at their beloved shrine. A spokesman for the National Medjugorje Council of Ireland said last week: “We accept that Medjugorje is constantly under attack and we view that as a sign of the authenticity of the visions and of the powerful graces which are flowing. If Satan wasn’t attacking this great work, it would be surprising.” An interesting application of logic to be sure: If the authenticity of an apparition is doubted then it follows that the apparition is genuine. Oh dear.
Father Vlašić himself hasn’t come off unscathed. In 1976, years before the “apparitions”, he fell in love with a local nun and made her pregnant. To conceal the pregnancy he had her sent to Germany, having promised he’d leave the Franciscans and join her there. He reneged, and her landlady found his love-letters, which she sent to the Vatican.
Unfortunately for Vlašić, they were read and filed away by a senior official named Joseph Ratzinger. Twenty-eight years later, Father Vlašić’s chickens were to come home to roost when Ratzinger became Pope Benedict the 16th.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, another Medjugorje priest, Father Iveca Vego, was described by the Virgin during one of her appearances as “a living saint”. But no sooner had the pronouncement been made than it emerged that Vego, like Vlašić before him, had made a nun pregnant. Clearly the Gospa doesn’t always get it right.
The role of the Franciscans in all this was going to lead to red faces at best, violence at worst. The order, along with other Catholic clerics in Yugoslavia, gained infamy during WWII. As Seán Mac Mathúna reminds us:
Catholic priests and Muslim clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nation's Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens—750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, the Croatian Ustasha and Muslim fundamentalists were openly supported by the Vatican, and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who openly encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later implicated in crimes against humanity
The violence carried over into recent times, and almost led to a schism in the Church in Croatia. The Franciscans rebelled against Rome and its bishops. In 1996, Bishop Perić of Mostar and his vicar general were kidnapped and beaten by an angry mob in support of the order.
Vlašić was eventually expelled from Medjugorje. He settled in Italy, where he founded a community devoted to the apparitions. There he "continued to party like a bad dog". According to reports:
He was accompanied by a German woman, Agnes Heupel, who claimed to have been healed at the shrine and also by one of the visionaries, Marija Pavlović [see photo above]. She left after a few months, however, allegedly after catching Vlašic and Heupel having sex.
Last year, Pope Benedict threw the book at the rogue cleric, accusing him of misdemeanours that would have had him burned at the stake a few centuries ago: “heresy, schism, sexual immorality aggravated by mystical motivations, and the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspect mysticism and disobedience towards legitimately issued orders.”
Vlašić was laicized last year, i.e. unfrocked. He may no longer perform duties as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.
French Guiana is a small country of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants situated on the northern coast of South America, nestling between Suriname and Brazil. It seldom makes world news, but when it does it's often for the wrong reasons. Take, for example, this report from Agence France-Presse:
A French Guiana court has jailed four church members for up to 12 years for the exorcism of an epileptic teenager who was found dead attached to a cross.
The members of the Celestial Church of Christ were jailed yesterday [24 June] for terms of three to 12 years for "wilful violence that caused death'' for 15-year-old Roger Bosse in 2005 in the south American territory.The court heard that the mother of the boy, who suffered from mental illness, had brought him to the church for help and was told he was possessed by the devil.
The church members beat the boy repeatedly over a three-day period with reeds and belts and attached him to a cross for the last two days, the position in which he died.A post-mortem examination showed that he had probably died from suffocation.
The Celestial Church of Christ was founded in the west African state of Benin in 1947 and claims millions of adherents worldwide.
It's so tragic that a young life was taken so cruelly and needlessly. Superstition is still rife in our world, even in the 21st century. I'm glad the boy's tormentors were given tough jail sentences. That should deter others, or at least make them think twice before seeing demons where there are none.
Our pic shows another 15-year-old boy being crucified in the Philipines on Good Friday. The difference is that he presumably endured it willingly, unlike the boy in French Guiana.
News reaches me that in Lakhimpur, a town in northern India close to the border with Nepal, a five-year-old girl was hacked to death and her corpse disposed of like garbage. She'd been beheaded during what appears to have been an "amateur" exorcism.
The Press Trust of India quotes the local Superintendent of Police, Piyush Mordia, on July 28:
Vandana, a resident of Mudia Hemsingh village, was hacked to death by Ram Niwas and his uncle Mewa Lal, who later dumped the beheaded body in the fields, from where it was recovered this morning.Both the accused had been arrested," Superintendent of Police Piyush Mordia told reporters. The SP also said that Ram Niwas was under depression as his wife was failing to conceive and his brother Ram Sahay was ill. "Ram Niwas's uncle Mewa Lal, who practised exorcism, advised him to sacrifice a girl, which the latter claimed can remove his hardship," the SP said adding that Ram Niwas and Mewa Lal picked Vandana from her house on Monday night.
He "advised him to sacrifice a girl". It's hard to know where such abhorrent ideas emanate from. I'd hesitate before outrightly condemning the men involved, because obviously they were following what they believed to be sound religious advice. At the same time, they must surely have sensed that the murder of a child is terribly wrong in any circumstances.
All too often humankind has allowed its culture to be shaped by poisonous beliefs and superstitions such as this. There are no easy answers as to how to prevent a recurrence. Education? India has one of the finest education systems in the world. Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics at Cornell University, notes that:
India's production of professionals is phenomenal. With over 300 universities and 15,600 colleges spewing out 2.5 million graduates each year, in terms of the volume of production India trails behind only the US and recently China.
I can only conclude that the culture or society in that part of India is at fault. At some time in its past something went wrong: women (or in this case girl children) were scapegoated for the ills of society. That this has endured up to the present day is both sad and despicable.
Let us by all means be on our guard for the presence of demons. That they exist and that they exercise a baleful influence in many countries should be beyond question. That they are present in a five-year-old child, who must be brutally murdered in order that the demons be expelled?
The blog Pink News notes that several fundamentalist churches in England may be attempting to "exorcise" gays and lesbians.
This comes hard on the heels of our July 3 article, which discussed a video of a similar demon hunt in the United States.
Jessica Geen reports that:
... a Pentecostal church in north-west London offers the controversial 'cure'. It is one of hundreds of fundamentalist churches in the UK.
Rev John Ogbe-Ogbeide, who runs the United Pentecostal Ministry in Harrow, said he carried out exorcisms on gays four or five times a year and that the procedure always worked.
He said: "The evil spirits are telling you what's wrong is right, the opposite sex is not attractive."
He cited a recent case where he exorcised a young man who was about to get married but was in love with a man.
Rev Ogbe-Ogbeide added that the procedure could be carried out at any age, as demons could take hold of a person at any time.
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has called for protest against the practice and a thorough police investigation.
He said: "The exorcism rituals involve the casting out of alleged demons and witches that supposedly possess a gay person's soul and turn them away from heterosexuality.
"There are claims that gay teenagers and young adults are being subjected to exorcisms at the insistence of their parents and pastors, in an attempt to rid them of same-sex attraction.
"The exorcisms can include traumatic emotional scenes where the victims are surrounded by a group of church elders who scream at them to drive out the evil spirits and who sometimes shake their bodies.
"When this is done to youngsters under 18, it is a form of child abuse and the police should intervene to stop it.
"Some gay adults have been pressured into exorcisms by their family members or faith communities. Other victims are people with learning difficulties or mental health problems. They have been preyed upon when they are in a vulnerable state and are not capable of giving fully informed consent."
Tatchell called for gays and lesbians to write to Rev Ogbe-Ogbeide and their local MP to complain.
A Metropolitan Police Service spokesman told PinkNews that police would consider investigating the church if complaints were received.
Peterson Toscano, a gay rights activist who spent 17 years in ex-gay therapy, has been subjected to three exorcisms.
He told PinkNews: "The premise of these was that foreign demonic forces infiltrated my body and manipulated me so that I could not turn from being gay.
"I felt desperate for a cure especially after trying so hard to change through other means. I could not comprehend why I was still gay especially after all the promises."
"In one case in New York," he said, "the exorcist and her team yelled and screamed at me in English and in 'tongues' for over an hour touching me all over my body, jabbing me in my gut, getting close into my face, peering deeply into my eyes in hopes of provoking these evil spirits. It got so loud and out of control that a neighbour called the police who, when they came, broke it up.
"This is a form of religious abuse and spiritual violence. I found the experience traumatised me."
Where will it all end I wonder. And who's going to tell the fundamentalists that homosexuality is common to just about every species of animal on the earth? Odd that the Creator should have allowed this state of affairs.
A recent article in Scientific American considered whether homosexuality might have an important role to play in the evolution of species – including our own.
In short, if the evangelical "exorcists" are trying to eradicate homosexuality then they could have their hands full. I mean to say: how does one go about exorcising a gay rabbit, or a dung-beetle with superior taste in interior decorating?
We tend to think of Australians as being hard-headed no-nonsense folk. We'd be wrong. The occult is burgeoning at a great rate Down Under. Mostly harmless stuff, propagated by the like of rock diva and staunch pagan Wendy Rule (right) who regularly makes the cover of one of Australia's witchcraft magazines.
But there's a serious side to all this. Exorcisms are being performed by lay people, often with disastrous consequences. Just recently an Australian policeman was suspended following an allegation that he attempted to exorcise a teenage boy.
Apparently the Lutheran Church were running a youth camp near Adelaide and Senior Constable Roger Sketchley, 28, a church member, was helping out. He was off duty at the time.
The boy, who hasn't been named, had complained of stomach pains. Not, one would think, a symptom of demonic possession, yet three adults believed otherwise. Having tied him up, Sketchley and the others subjected the teenager to a twelve-hour ordeal involving "exorcism".
Sketchley, an Englishman, had been recruited to the South Australian police force some months before. He's been charged with false imprisonment and aggravated assault, and been suspended from the force pending the outcome of the charges.
The Lutheran Church condemned the incident and stated that it "does not endorse or encourage any actions which are abusive or which results in the limitations or freedoms of any individual."
So much for the amateurs, it would seem that professional exorcists have their hands full in Australia.In February of last year a Queensland journalist, Hannah Davies, reported how "a growing interest in satanism and the occult has led to a rise in exorcisms across the state".
She spoke to a Catholic priest, who preferred to remain anonymous, for fear of "reprisals". He claimed to be carrying out "at least one exorcism a fortnight".
His exorcisms appear to concentrate on the Gold Coast, the prosperous stretch of beach resorts to the south of Brisbane, than anywhere else. The priest explained:
"There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison. The Gold Coast is not good at all. I do far more exorcisms there than Brisbane."
The priest, whose parish is in the Australian capital, is the designated exorcist for Queensland, and his duties take him to many parts of the state. He lamented the small number of trained exorcists, "too few to cope with the big occult following that is emerging today".
In conclusion, he cautioned children to take extra care. He'd had to exorcise a woman who'd been "plagued by demonic manifestations since taking part in a playground witch game as a child".
She played the sweet twelve-year-old touched by evil in the film version of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. Linda Blair, with more than a little help from the make-up department, horrified audiences in 1973. Cinema-goers actually threw up during and after the screening. Given what has appeared on our screens since, it seems unlikely that the same could happen today.
San Franciscans have a chance to find out this week, when The Bridge Theatre launches its midnight movie series. Linda Blair, looking rather better than her possessed self (see pic), will be on hand to introduce two of the movies she starred in. Friday's offering is the eminently forgettable Roller Boogie, of 1979 vintage.
The good news is that the outfit Linda wore in the film will be auctioned on Friday (10 July). Proceeds will go to the animal charity she founded: the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation.
But of course the bigger crowd is expected for Saturday's showing: The Exorcist, for which child star Blair won an Oscar. As they say, never bettered and seldom equalled, it's the film that sparked off a renewed interest in a Catholic rite that had rarely impinged on the public consciousness since the Middle Ages.
On both nights Linda will be taking questions from the floor.
Tickets can be ordered at https://tickets.landmarktheatres.com/Landmark.aspx?TheatreID=222.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody tried it. A religious community in Connecticut attempted to exorcise the "demon" of homosexuality from a young man. Here's how CBS News reported it:
The video shows the 16-year-old boy lying on the floor, his body convulsing, as elders of a small Connecticut church cast a "homosexual demon" from his body.
"Rip it from his throat!" a woman yells. "Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!"
The 20-minute video posted on YouTube by Manifested Glory Ministries is being called abuse by gay and youth advocates, who are demanding an investigation. But a church official this week denied that the teenager was injured or that the church is prejudiced.
"We believe a man should be with a woman and a woman should be with a man," the Rev. Patricia McKinney told The Associated Press. "We have nothing against homosexuals. I just don't agree with their lifestyle."
The church posted the video on YouTube but has since removed it; it is still available on some Web sites that copied it. The church declined to make the video available for distribution by The Associated Press.
It shows church members standing the youth on his feet by holding him under his arms, and people shouting as organ music plays.
"Come out of his belly," someone commands. "It's in the belly _ push."
Later, the teenager is back on the floor, breathing heavily. Then he's coughing and apparently vomiting into a bag.
"Get another bag," a participant says. "Make sure you have your gloves."
As the youth lay back on the ground, limp, church members put a white sheet over him.
It's nearly impossible to say how often similar exercises occur in churches nationwide. But Kamora Herrington, who runs a mentoring program at True Colors and has worked with the youth, said she believes it's fairly common.
"This happens all the time," she said. "This is not isolated."
Robin McHaelin, executive director of True Colors, an advocacy group for gay youths, said her organization is aware of five cases in recent years in which youths in her program were threatened with exorcism.
In one case, she said, a child called to report that his caregiver had called a priest who was throwing holy water on his bedroom door.
"I think it's horrifying," McHaelin said of the video by Manifested Glory. "What saddens me is the people that are doing this think they are doing something in the kid's best interests, when in fact they're murdering his spirit."
McHaelin said she planned to report the situation to the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. An agency spokesman said the agency does not comment on complaints or investigations.
"They have this kid in a full nelson," she said. "That just seems abusive to me."
McKinney said the youth was 18. The boy confirmed he is 16 but otherwise declined to comment, citing the advice of his pastor.
McHaelin said the boy told her staff that the church performed the ritual three times at his request. She said the boy has been engaging in risky behavior that she blames on the church's treatment.
McKinney said the youth went to the church last year and collapsed on the floor during a service.
"He was out of control in the church," she said. "This young man came to us. We didn't go to him."
McKinney denied the ritual was an exorcism, describing it instead as a casting out of spirits. She said the church took care of the youth, providing him clothes.
"He was dressing like a woman and everything. And he didn't want to be like that," McKinney said.
The teen had been in reform school for stealing but was eager to get out and go to the church to have what he thought were his demons driven out, Herrington said.
Exodus International, a Christian group that believes gays can become straight through prayer and counseling, does not advocate the church's approach, said Jeff Buchanan, director of church equipping.
The Rev. Roland Stringfellow, a minister in Oakland, Calif., said he was subject t demon casting in the 1990s when he was at a Baptist church and was struggling with his sexuality. He said he was put in front of the church as members shouted "demon of homosexuality come out of him."
"It caused nothing but shame and embarrassment," Stringfellow said.
McKinney also has a weekly radio program. She talked on Wednesday's program about being "persecuted" in recent days but did not mention the video specifically.
"It's been a hard time for me, but I'm looking good and I'm standing strong because when you have a mandate like mine you're not going to say what you want without the adversary coming after you," she said. "If you are a true prophet you're not going to be popular with the people."
Indeed. I couldn't help noticing that most of the congregation were, er, big. Wonder how long it'll be before somebody decides to exorcise the "foul demon of fat". Or perhaps that would make the true prophet even more unpopular.
Yes, it's official: the ouija board has claimed yet another victim. This time it's British film director Shane Meadows, whose credits include the 2004 thriller Dead Man's Shoes.
At the Edinburgh Film Festival this year he announced that he'd secured the film rights to Beware the Devil by Robert Lee. Based on true events, it tells the story of a sceptic who falls foul of ouija. Shane spoke to Empire magazine.
“Yeah, I’ve got the rights sorted now, so it’s not such a hidden thing,” he told Empire over the course of a long chat about his latest film and festival entry Le Donk & Scoz-ayz-ee. “It’s based on a book of the same name, based on the life of a guy who, by getting involved with ouija boards and the occult by trying to disprove it, trying to take the piss out of it, got possessed, had to be exorcised, and later became an exorcist himself. The guy it happened to has died, but his son [Robert Lee] is a novelist, and he helped him turn it into a book before he passed away, and now I’m working with him to turn it into a film.”
Beware The Devil, though, which has previously been described to us by Meadows as “making Dead Man’s Shoes look like Play School”, is one of what the filmmaker is now referring to as his ‘bigger’ films (the inference being that he will be making more ‘smaller’ films as part of his Five Day Feature initiative, a la Le Donk & Scorz-ayz-ee) and is currently second on a busy production slate as director.
“Yeah, the big news is that we’re already thinking about doing another Le Donk. It’ll be another ‘Le Donk And...’, something completely not music based. We’ve come up with a few ideas, and we might just go straight back and do another one, because we had such a laugh doing this one. Not like a sequel in terms of trying to be like the other one, but he’s got his missus and his kid’s a bit older, and a whole different set of events. So maybe before I do this next big film, might just go out, grab five days somewhere and knock another out so we can come back (to Edinburgh) next year."
"So it’ll be something like Le Donk & The Tomb Of The Cursed Fanny,” and we’ll stress that title was right off the top of his head “and then Beware The Devil. Two complete poles apart opposites, but I think it’s important to keep people guessing a bit, rather than doing the sort of Mickey Shyamalan thing where he does eight scary ones in a row, with the spooky twist at the end.”
Sounds scary. If we didn't already know that messing about with ouija boards is a dangerous pursuit, Mr. Meadows is all set to show us.
One of the most ground-breaking American voices in the field of paranormal broadcasting is Jim Harold, who hosts Paranormal Podcast: "The podcast that goes bump in the night."
Jim's online "articles" go out regularly. They cover a huge range of subjects, from ghosts, UFOs, the afterlife, divination ... and of course exorcism. I had the privilege of being interviewed by Jim at the time of the US publication of The Dark Sacrament. It was a lively discussion and you can listen to it here:
We’d love to hear about your paranormal experiences. Perhaps we can throw some light on them. The paperback version of our book, The Dark Sacrament, is now available. We would like to do a follow-up and are looking for genuine cases. Many thanks.
I'd been meaning to start this blog for some time, but pressure of work intervened.
Christina McKenna and I became interested in exorcism in 2005. We decided to explore its application in modern Ireland and in 2006 published The Dark Sacrament. A similar book appeared in the United States in 2007.
From that time on we've been in contact with several people around the world who share our interest. We'd like to use this blog to expand the group, swap news and generally discuss this fascinating subject.
a real main feature as gamer will use this tool continuously in various ways for – attacking, protecting and supporting. It is not comparable to some kind of simple magic in fact it is a powerful talent our hero is blessed with.”
