Posts Tagged ‘demon possesion’

My Aunt Muriel was a lady of peculiar disposition.

When I first met her we had been in town for no less than four hours when we were dragged into her home. She was standing upon her golden orange shag carpeting, wearing a blue floral print dress with her arms outstretched and with a grimace upon her face, as her eyes judged my mother’s handiwork… me.

There was a slight leer upon her face, a quick and ever present judgment.

She had a solution… she always had a solution. That solution included chores, haircuts, spankings and even more importantly scriptures. If a glass of water was spilt in her home, she even had a felt board demonstration of a biblical story to explain and condemn you of your wasteful actions.

She wore her long graying hair tightly wound up into a bun that was larger than a loaf of bread. The hair of her youth became a biblical crown into her old age. She never wore makeup, or jewelry. She was sanctified, and that was glory enough. To tell the truth, she looked fierce more than anything else. Not fierce in the modern new cool way… but in that old timey,”Oh Shit… I ain’t messing around with THAT” kind of fierce.

Well truth told… she did have some Jewelry. The combs, with which she put up her hair, were her jewels. She had five of them; all were ivory combs that were intricately carved with such delicate beauty. They were brought back to her by her brothers from World War II, one from each of the seven brothers that returned from the war. There should have been seven combs, she had been promised seven combs when her brothers had left for war.

Each morning she arose from her bed, to kneel at the foot of that same bed in prayers as she brushed out her mane of hair. The prayers and hair brushing lasted for hours, sometimes the spirit would move her and she might continue brushing her hair and praying like that for even longer than that.

I remember one time we watched Aunt Muriel in her Bedroom just a rockin’ and swirlin’, swaying like she was mad or crazed. Mom grabbed a cold towel and tried to bring her back to reality and Aunt Muriel came up swinging and screaming.

“You got another thing coming into my home and disturbing me when I am in direct communication with my God. How dare you… how dare you?” The scream always faded as she transitioned her volume down to a low mutter, and she then would seemingly go back into her trance.

My mother and I lived with this woman of faith for a few months, and during this time I watched Aunt Muriel go into at least seven of these trances. They were rather frightening, actually.
Sometimes she would shiver like she was cold, at other times she would shake like she was sick. Her body would spasm, and always she would be speaking softly to herself, praying. In the days of the great pentecostal revival of the great depression, it was called Praying through. Praying until you couldn’t pray any longer.

She tried to explain it to me that what I had seen was not a bad thing, as a matter of fact; it is just proof that God existed.

During these episodes of divine communication Aunt Muriel went without food or water, many times even without sleep. Ceaseless prayers, muttered softly under breath. She had tried many times to do the very fast that Jesus himself did, a forty day fast, but it had always proven too strenuous for her.

She prayed for soldiers in foreign lands, she prayed for starving children, she prayed for the lost people in Africa, the soulless sinners in Moscow. She prayed for the babies who were dying in back alley abortion clinics. She cried because of all the pornography at the local 7-11, she wept for the loss of prayer in schools; she wailed for the transgressions against minorities, she raged about the welfare system. She wept over the loss of the nuclear family, she lamented about the loss of old fashioned farming community values.

While the rest of the world was introduced to Saturday Night Fever, Disco Duck and the Muppets…

I got to enjoy the angry raised voices of tent revival preachers in suits made with rhinestone lapels with a chorus honky tonk swing bands waiting in the wings.

As you learned to do the hustle…
We knelt at altars until you came up crying from the pain of your knees, which most of the congregation would interpret as communication with God. Often times the pain might induce you to believe that is so as well.

Once,In the middle of the night I was awoken from my sleep by being shaken so abruptly from a rather provocative dream about Gilligan’s Island involving Ginger and Mary Ann being my mommies (I was around 3 or 4 after all). There she was… Aunt Muriel, she had olive oil in hand and was pouring it all over my body.

“What’s going on?” I sputtered,” What are you doing Aunt Mu…”

“You just hush now,” she whispered to me in the dark,” It’s the demons boy, just trying to keep you free of the demons. Them demons are terribly tricky. Far too tricky, if you ain’t anointed… even trickier if you ain’t been baptized.”

“But I’m not baptized.” I stuttered.

“Which is why I’m anointin’ you , so hush up and let me get back to it.”

She raised her finger to her lips with a smile, a wink and continued on with the anointing. I was slathered up real good as she stood over me and paced back and forth. She prayed in whispers, and soft spoken words. She commanded devils to leave me alone, to stay away from the poor sinning child who she had just blessed in the name and Blood of Jesus. She asked God to open my eyes to the real world behind it all, and then kissed my forehead and whispered a soft goodnight into my ear.

The next day I went with my mother as she applied for another church daycare position and sat in the main sanctuary while she spoke with attendants in the front office about the job.
As I stared about the room in the darkened sanctuary something caught my eye, down up at the pulpit, right in the spot where the extra-large family bible resides. There in front of this bible stood a radiant being made of shimmering lights. It was flipping through the pages of the bible, and then it lifted what I assumed to be its head, raised an appendage of what I assumed to be an arm to its head and made the gesture I had seen Aunt Muriel do the night before.
It was asking me to be quiet, to remain still.

The being stood away from the book, and though it became brighter, its light was not unbearable… and then it was gone.

I ran to the front and looked down at the pages of the bible; it had been reading the book of John. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God.

I ran to the office, and found my mother there still speaking with the office manager who was in charge of hiring staff.

I tried to grab her attention, but it was no good. I knew that if I interrupted her now and ruined her chances at getting the job, my butt would be hamburger and there would probably be some kind of felt storyboard parable to go along with it.

I sat by the front door and waited as patiently as I could, and did my best not to wriggle about.
The conversation was over an eternity later (about seven minutes by the clock), and as we walked out to the baby blue station wagon Mom Had borrowed from Aunt Muriel. I tried to tell my mom all about seeing the being I could only assume was an angel.

She quieted me with a silent stare, and we sat there in silence all the way back to Aunt Muriel’s house.

When we arrived, Aunt Muriel was in a trance and my mother stormed a path straight to where she laid and dragged her by the hair of the head into another room and slammed the door shut behind her.

Hushed screaming ensued, My mother lovingly referred to these kinds of arguments behind closed doors as discussions and away from the ever listening ears of children. I had experienced this before when she had discussions with my Dad back at home
.
She believed this enabled the adults to have conversations without prying ears getting involved. Instead it just lead me to more inventive ways of discovering the forbidden information.
With glass upturned against the door and listening to the glass just like Tom and Jerry did in the cartoon, I was able to hear their faint mumbling from inside the room where the argument was taking place.

I was only able to pick out a few words… like insanity, anointing and we’re leaving.
My mother stormed out of the room quickly, if I hadn’t been paying attention I wouldn’t have known to move away from the door as quickly as possible and pretend to be drinking waterfrom the same glass I had just been using as my eavesdropping device.

My mother stared at me looking slightly flustered, and then went to the back part of the house to pack our things.

Aunt Muriel walked into the living room with a smile and said to me calmly.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.”

With awe I realized, she had been the angel I had seen.

She still slightly radiated with a soft brilliant glory and smiled at me; then she simply raised her finger to her mouth, and gave me a wink.

I did the same and we never spoke about it or to one another again.
We lived our separate lives, and my mother had as little as contact as possible with her.

I never told my mother the bible verse she had silenced me before I could say anything past… Mom, I just saw an Angel. I never got a chance to speak to Aunt Muriel before my mom decided to have such a final discussion with her, either.

As an adult I discovered by accident that Aunt Muriel had died in a mental hospital after her fourth day there.

According to all accounts, Aunt Muriel had been hospitalized by the city because she could no longer take care of herself. The city officials of welfare that check out such matters had found her half starved, according to witnesses no one had heard from her for about 40 days.

The newspaper clippings stated that she didn’t go quietly, screaming out that she’d take on all of the devils and demons that were trying to get her to stop praying. Eventually the officers had to restrain her for not only her own safety but also the safety of the officers who reported that Aunt Muriel had attempted to cast demons out of them as they attempted to subdue her.

The records revealed that on her very first day in observation, they shaved her head so they could check for lice. The hair she had grown since she was a small girl was now scattered across the tiled floor like strewn petals. Aunt Muriel’s shame at her loss would surely have transitioned her from the trance like sedated state where she found peace into a mood of deep sorrow.

They locked her into a safe-room, with soft walls and no exposed fixtures. Aunt Muriel sat in the same spot for the next three days. Rocking back and forth, crying, and most assuredly praying
The state doctors would occasionally check in on her over the next few days, and the only words they could understand from her litanies of prayers were a few verses of the bible.
Notably

Judges 13:5
Because you will conceive and give birth to a daughter No razor may be used upon her head, because the girl is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and she will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

The doctors had noted that she had changed the original scriptures a bit, but paid it no mind, thinking her to be harmless.

On the fourth day, the psychiatric care facility that she was currently being housed in blew up at 3:16 am. Thirty six of its fifty residents and four of the seven staff on duty at the time of the accident died. Aunt Muriel was among the deceased. According to the official record, a pilot light went out of an old gas burning industrial stove in the kitchen facilities on the floor where Aunt Muriel lived. The gas had been ignited in some fashion, but at the present time they were uncertain of what had caused the combustion.

I spoke to a few of the survivors that were awake and wandering the halls at the time of the accident. Only one of them was coherent enough to talk about anything, and truthfully he wasn’t that reliable.

“Muriel was rocking along the floor, she was spasming and going into some kind of epileptic seizure.”Spoke Jimmy,” and then I heard a kind voice spoken out loud. It seemed to be coming from everything and I heard it say “Well done my good and faithful servant” And then there was this amazingly beautiful silvery white dove and it fluttered down from out of nowhere and landed on top of Muriel’s head and then… KABLOOEY!!!! ” He ended the sentence with an almost infectious laugh, and a smile.

“It was kind of like spontaneous combustion, except I never heard of doves and ethereal voices being involved in spontaneous combustion before.”

He was still covered in charred burns and slightly leaking blisters, though the accident had occurred a few months prior. He was lucky to be alive, and yet the story still filled him with some kind of glee.

“KABLOOEY” he reiterated and fell over into another fit of uncomfortable laughter.

I looked at him in horror, with a pained question written on my face. I was too stunned to speak.
He answered me before I could even ask the question.
“Well,” Jimmy spoke pensively,” at least its proof.”