1973 High School Freshman Year
The film The Exorcist, terrified me. I was attending private catholic schools at the time and was just being introduced to the fact that exorcism is REAL! (I am a Presbyterian.)
The Rites of Exorcism
Although it has been practiced for centuries, the Roman Catholic church uses the rites of exorcism only as a last resort. The priest performing the rite has to be certain that the victim is truly possessed, and not suffering from medical or psychological ailments.
The rite usually takes place in a church. The priest will wrap his stole around shoulders of the possessed person - known as a "demoniac" - to show that the victim is welcome in God's community. The priest will then sprinkle holy water while reciting prayers and passages from the Bible. He then makes the sign of the cross and touches the the demoniac with a crucifix. The priest finishes with exhortations to the possessing spirit to leave. The exorcism is over when the demon tells the priest its name and reason for possessing the subject. After the exorcism has been completed, the victim is warned not too stray too far from God's grace, lest the demon return.
This was the face that haunted me for months!
When the movie came out, there were not many tv ads..not back them..advertising was done differently then. It was heavily advertized on the radio. The radio stations played over and over the sound of the demonic Linda Blair speaking and calling "Karen." I can still hear it echoing in my ears now just like it was yesterday. I finally got to the place where I would have to turn off the radio when those horrible demonic sounds came on. I did not go see the movie. I could not. The demons were already in my room. Seriously!
I became very afraid at night and thought that there was something in my room with me. I have always know that children can see things that a lot of grown ups cannot. I was a child that at times saw things.
The existense of ghosts has been debated for centuries. It is only in modern times with technology having advanced to it's current stage that we may now capture on film and audio what many believe to be images of the supernatural. The questions of why some can and yet others cannot see or sense the presense of these entities has been contested with numerous theories both for and against the subject of spirits. One such cause for speculation is do our children see and sense what many adults either cannot or will not see?
One theory is that children have not had years to adjust their thinking and have not had the time to train themselves as to what to accept or not accept as reality like adults have. Adults program their thinking and consequently refuse certain images, noises, and feeling as real simply
because in our minds we cannot accept impossible or unproven science.
Some parents unknowingly start to teach and train their children at a very young age to block these images. They do it out of protection and misunderstanding of the situation. How many parents have tucked their little ones back into bed with the words that they thought were reassuring; there are no such things as ghosts, you just had a bad dream, it wasn't real, it was just your imagination? I think most parents are guilty of this including myself. How many parents are guilty of telling their children that their imaginary friend is not real, maybe not realizing that not only is that friend real but a ghost? I am sure it has happened before. Do you ever wonder if any of those bad dreams, those images seen in the night, those imaginary friends how many may actually be ghosts that for whatever reason have shown themselves to a child?
When we tell our children it was just a bad dream we may inadvertently teaching them to mistrust what they may have actually be seeing. Eventually training themselves to block what they have been taught cannot be real. Where as the opposite side of this theory; the parent who teaches their children that sometimes for whatever reason, a spirit may linger after death,is leaving a space in that child to be able to accept the vision, the noise or the feeling of the supernatural. Could this be why some people are able to accept the supernatural with an open mind and yet others cannot? Does the door get shut at childhood or can it remain open? This is just one of the may theories used to explain why children see more of the supernatural world than adults do.
So...to continue on when the exorcist came out I think things became attracted to me because I was so afraid. I had nightmares over and over about the same thing. It was a parallel to the tv ads I saw for this movie. One ad showed Linda's mother walking up the stairs to Linda's room where she was in the bed with her head spinning around. I had this dream over and over. I was walking up the stairs and when I opened the door, there I was in the bed with my head spinning around crazily on its axis. I had this same reoccurring dream for months. It was horrible. I lived for daylight.
In addition, there were at times when I would wake up and the room would be in total darkness--which it should be as it was night, but...big but...there would be a shadow of a body or person that was even darker than the room standing over my bed. Right over me. I remember thinking I was still dreaming and would blink my eyes to clear then but the figure never left. It was darker than the room that was in pitch darkness but
I could see it because it was so much darker than the room. I called it "the thing that was darker than dark." I have come to learn it was a shadow ghost.
Shadow ghosts appear as a shadow of sorts. They look a bit like Ecto-mist but are dark gray to black in color. There are actually three separate types and we list them all in classes below. In photographs, it's easy to confuse them with natural shadows, so be careful with your analysis. They are usually extremely sneaky and evasive. When they are spotted it's usually out of the corner of your eye or as they are darting through a wall. They can also be spotted as a reflection in shinny objects and mirrors. As for photography, They are one of the rarest ghost types to be captured on film. Birds and cats are especially sensitive to them.
Type A - Appear as a small dark misty cloud and are almost always under two feet in length, but can hover or float up to 8 feet high.
Type B - Appear as a huge glob of thick cloudy mass. They typically range from 2 to 8 feet in height.
Type C - Appear in human form and some may be seen wearing a hat. They typically appear up to 8 feet in height.
I began sleeping with the bible and praying for a long,long time before going to sleep. I would sleep with the bible in my hands and would wake up with it still there. This went on for about a year. I began to sleep with onand would be fine until my mom would turn the light off. I would wake up later with the thing that was darker than dark standing over me. It was like he was waiting. Waiting for me to make the least mistake and maybe then I really would have my head spinning around in real life.
Matthew 25:4: "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
1 Peter 2:4: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment."
Jude 1:6: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day."
Revelation 12:9: "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."
One night or very early morning I woke up in the darkness and the thing that was darker than dark was right over my face leaning down over me. I froze and did not move. I closed my eyes and prayed. Everytime I opened my eyes it was still there. I lay frozen there for about an hour. I turned my head ever so slightly to the left so I could see my clock. It was about 4:30am. It was summer and I knew daylight would be coming soon. I did have the bible in the bed with me. I decided to move, turn on the light and read the bible. Maybe that would make it go away.
In one quick move I sat up, turned on the lamp next to my bed and began to read the bible out loud. I read the bible outloud until the sun came up. Once the sun was up I read outloud for another hour. I then turned off the light and went to sleep in a sitting up position. After that episode of reading the bible outloud, the thing that was darker than dark, that had been standing over my bed each night for over a year never came again. I never saw it again.
It was not until my sophomore year in college that I did go to the movies with a girlfriend and saw the Exorcist. I took my bible with me. It was creepy and once was enough. I have never seen it again. It has been on Tv reruns and whenever I have come across it, I change the channel very quickly.
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