The Dark Sacrament Read online

  THE

  DARK SACRAMENT

  TRUE STORIES OF MODERN-DAY

  DEMON POSSESSION AND EXORCISM

  David M. Kiely and

  Christina McKenna

  Darkness cannot put out the light.

  It can only make God brighter.

  —ANONYMOUS

  Image 1

  “St. Michael the Archangel Slaying a Demon,” from the Hours of Joanna of Castille, c. 1475–1500.

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Important Note

  Why This Book?

  Introduction: Exorcism in Our Time

  PART ONE

  THE CANON: REVEREND WILLIAM H. LENDRUM

  Heather: A Case of Ancestral Evil

  The Housewife and the Demon Dubois

  The Boy Who Communes with Demons

  The Unquiet Spirit of Child Sarah

  Little Lucy and the Phantom Family

  PART TWO

  THE MONK: FATHER IGNATIUS McCARTHY

  The Pit Beneath the Hearthstone

  Mr. Gant and the Neighbor from Hell

  The Hessian Who Returned to Haunt

  The Woman Who Left Her Body at Will

  Devilry on the Dingle Peninsula

  APPENDIX 1: Exorcism and History

  APPENDIX 2: Prayer to Archangel Michael

  APPENDIX 3: St. Patrick’s Breastplate or the Lorica of St. Patrick

  APPENDIX 4: Prayers of Exorcism Select Bibliography

  Select Bibliography

  Reader’s Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Searchable Terms

  Photography Credits

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  IMPORTANT NOTE

  You are about to read ten true-life accounts of exorcism in present-day Ireland. When preparing The Dark Sacrament we conducted interviews with a great many people on the island. The principals in the ten cases we chose for inclusion are all very much alive, with but one exception. In this case we relied on the excellent accounts supplied by the key participants.

  The names in this book are fictitious, apart from that of Reverend William H. Lendrum, an exorcist who already enjoys prominence in Ireland and agreed to be identified. From the outset we assured those interviewed that they would remain anonymous—if they so wished. All but Canon Lendrum chose anonymity.

  Among them are those who requested that we go even further, that we change important details, such as settings and minor participants, so that the originals could no longer be identified. Those individuals feared reprisals of one kind or another.

  For these reasons the reader should note that we have, where possible, disguised the family circumstances of those concerned, e.g., the number of persons in a particular household, the gender of the offspring, and so on. Similarly, settings have been changed. While we may look at events that actually occurred in, say, a market town in the midlands, the real name of that town is never used. We will have translated the events to a locality in another part of the island of Ireland, in order to safeguard the privacy of our contributors, be they lay or cleric. The alternative to “naming names” was a text overburdened with the like of “John W—lived in the town of T—.” This would have been less than satisfactory. Moreover, in all cases we have placed the clergymen concerned in parishes other than their own.

  We have also reconstructed certain scenes and conversations for the benefit of the narrative, while at the same time ensuring that such reconstruction remains faithful to the essence of the testimony given.

  We approached our subject in a spirit of unbiased investigation. We were careful not to draw our own conclusions when examining the accounts of paranormal manifestation related by both victim and deliverer. To be sure, no one—including the witnesses themselves—can ever be certain that any single account is objective, and this fact we took into careful consideration when compiling this collection.

  In the final analysis, it was a combination of faith and reason that prompted us to reject the one case history and embrace the other. It soon became apparent whose testimony was dependable, when set against those one could dismiss as fantasy. The ten cases we present are, to the best of our knowledge, reliable.

  We cannot express strongly enough our gratitude and appreciation to the two groups of people who made this book possible.

  First, they are the exorcists: those men of God who gladly granted us the benefit of their knowledge and experience.

  Second, they are the victims: those individuals who endured great hardship—in some cases over several years—when pursued by the paranormal. They gave freely and willingly of their time to speak to us, often for many hours and in the course of many sessions. They did this for the most altruistic and selfless reasons; their prime concern was to share with others their traumatic experiences. They did so in the understanding that others, being thus alerted to possible danger, would not have to suffer as they did.

  We salute their courage.

  DAVID M. KIELY AND

  CHRISTINA MCKENNA

  ROSTREVOR, 2007

  WHY THIS BOOK?

  I can only remember that December morning in monochrome. Me at the parlor window, my chin resting on the sill, staring out at the mist-veiled mountains, the dew-beaded grass, a crow perched still and deathlike on a fence post. All quiet, shrouded, hidden, as if the world held a finger to its lips in a warning hush.

  And then suddenly through the mist in the lane, two dark figures advancing on the house: the exorcist and his assistant.

  —CHRISTINA MCKENNA

  My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress, 2004

  When I turned eleven, I made two inalienable discoveries, the one creative, the other spiritual. The two discoveries would be linked and, over time, would fuse, to give me a heightened understanding of this journey we call life. Through a box of oil colors my mother bought me and an easel my father made for me, I taught myself to paint. On the very day I finished my first picture, a door suddenly opened into another world. It was a far darker world than the one I had so lovingly represented on the canvas.

  In the early hours of one October morning, a strange “visitor” entered our home and remained for six long and terrifying weeks. It came quietly in the beginning, stealing into my young brother’s bedroom, tapping its way from beneath the big oak wardrobe, and settling under the bed.

  Over the days, the tapping grew to a scratching sound, as though something were clawing the underside of the mattress; it grew louder still, in time becoming a hammering on walls and doors. We were all frightened and distraught. Wherever my little brother went, it pursued him. My parents took him to the Marian shrine at Knock in County Mayo, but it followed in the car, started up under his hotel bed, and then followed him all the way home again. He could not go to school. He could not sleep and, as a consequence, neither could any of us: his three brothers and five sisters.

  In retrospect, I see that this entity conformed to that which is known in psychical circles as a poltergeist, or “noisy spirit.” It introduced itself by knocking, then grew louder and more truculent, overturning furniture, displacing objects, tipping us out of bed. It used a child as its focus and was more active during the hours of darkness. And, although it did not seem especially evil in intent, there was the feeling that the longer it continued unchecked, and the more our fears increased, the more likely it was to turn malevolent.

  I remember the frantic search my mother embarked upon to find a priest who could banish our visitor. I remember also my knees aching on the cold floor of my brother’s bedroom, where we as a family would kneel, reciting rosary upon rosary. And the number of Masses that were offered in that room. And the succession of clergymen who came and went
. All to no avail.

  Until, that is, there came a very special kind of clergyman, one versed in “such matters,” whose humility and holiness conferred on him the extraordinary and rare status of exorcist.

  I retain an image of this unique man. He is tall, exudes a venerable air, and is dressed entirely in black. When he enters our home, he pats us children on the head, speaks briefly with my parents in a gentle voice, then retires to the afflicted room and quietly shuts the door.

  More important than the memory of his physical appearance is the tremendous effect he left in his wake. All the fear and chaos of the previous weeks were swept away, and a great peace descended. He had performed what I regarded as a miracle. We were free.

  Our phantom visitor would never come calling again.

  Since that episode, all those years ago, I have often wondered about the nature of the spectral universe, and how the exorcist can wield such power in that universe. What manner of entities live there, in that other world? Why do they sometimes intrude upon this one? What exactly does the exorcist do? Why are some individuals a target of paranormal phenomena and others not? Is it all part of God’s plan, or do we draw such things to us through our goodness, our wickedness, our ignorance, or the unresolved issues of our ancestral past?

  This book attempts to explore some of these questions, and so dispel a little of the ignorance that surrounds this disturbing, yet fascinating, subject.

  Socrates asserted that there was only one good—knowledge—and only one evil—ignorance. We hope that, by the time you have finished reading The Dark Sacrament, you may be inclined to concur with those wise words.

  CHRISTINA MCKENNA

  ROSTREVOR, 2007

  INTRODUCTION

  EXORCISM IN OUR TIME

  My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the most exquisite of the Devil’s wiles was persuading us that he doesn’t exist.

  —CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

  “The Generous Gambler,” 1864

  This is a dark book. It is also a book of enlightenment in a specific sense, because it attempts to throw a little light into the more obscure and secret areas of human experience. In doing so, it will challenge the reader’s notions of this life, the afterlife, and—for want of a better expression—dimensions that lie beyond the physical. Broadly speaking, it deals with the paranormal.

  It treats of the concept of Satan, also known as the Devil, and examines the possibility that he might, after all, be a real and unfabled entity.

  Such a hypothesis will astonish the rationally minded; others will doubtless find it disturbing. Still others will consider it high time that the gloves came off and the “great dragon” of Revelation was confronted head on.

  There is one serious drawback in all this: very little is known about this elusive enemy. At one time, in another century, the Devil was as well defined as any adversary of flesh and blood. “High on a throne of royal state,” John Milton wrote, “Satan exalted sat…and princely counsel in his face yet shone, majestic, though in ruin.”

  The words appear early on in Paradise Lost, the great epic in which the poet recounts events that followed the angel Lucifer’s expulsion from heaven. The descriptions of hell sound strange to our ears, yet in Milton’s own time—he published the poem in 1667—his imagery would have been the accepted one. There are burning lakes and caverns, teeming with vast hosts of demon armies, all under the command of a rigid hierarchy of generals, chief among whom is Satan himself.

  Few Christians living in the seventeenth century doubted the existence of hell and its rulers. There were many reminders in ecclesiastical art: paintings, sculpture, stained glass, the admonishments of the bestiary. Even the fearsome gargoyles set atop cathedrals were modeled on a fairly precise and generally prevailing picture of how demons actually looked; in the seventeenth century, all art was representational art. It was generally agreed that the Devil himself was a horned creature with a forked tail, who might sometimes appear as a serpent.

  BEFORE THE ENLIGHTENMENT

  In our time, we regard all this as superstition, the infantile fantasies of a primitive society. We are to a certain degree justified in thinking this; the seventeenth century seems impossibly distant. Although William Harvey had established the circulation of the blood in 1628, his contemporaries still clung to antiquated nostrums. For example, most physicians held that a variety of ailments were attributable to “humors,” and that leeches—to “let” blood—could assist in a multitude of cures. Sorcerers were feared. Across Europe, in Germany in particular, an unknown number of victims, perhaps tens of thousands, were tortured and put to death on suspicion of their being witches.

  The so-called Great Hunt for witches in Britain and mainland Europe spanned two centuries, petering out around 1650. By then there were no more witches, real or imaginary, to burn.

  In America, the hysteria took a little longer to run its course—four more decades, in fact. In the little community of Salem, Massachusetts, in March 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris began acting strangely. She would go into a trance, flap her arms as if trying to take flight, and emit animal noises. The doctors were baffled, even more when Betty’s “illness” began to infect her friends. The Salem witches affair had begun.

  In all, the tragic events that ensued led to the deaths of no fewer than twenty-two men and women, all accused of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, others tortured to death; many others went insane in prison. All were accused of having made pacts with the Devil; no case was ever proven.

  It should be remembered that until the Enlightenment, it was universally accepted that all illnesses—plague in particular—were punishments from God, and not a consequence of poor hygiene, as many surely were. And if the sicknesses were not the wrath of God, they were the work of the Devil, his demons, and his earthbound disciples.

  In such a world of belief and unbelief, it is not surprising that evil entities were held responsible for mental disorders. Not until the late eighteenth century would it be thought otherwise, and the years leading up to the twentieth century saw the coming of age of the scientific approach to our place in the universe. It was a cosmology that no longer had any room for Lucifer and his nefarious associates. While the concept of heaven—or in any event an afterlife of some description—remained an article of Christian belief, the notion of hellfire and eternal damnation, with all the attendant medieval imagery, was no longer considered respectable. We felt we had outgrown such primitive thinking.

  THE AGE OF SCIENCE

  With the closure of the gates of hell came the opening of entire branches of medical science: disciplines that could at last explain, in natural terms, what traditionally had been attributed to demonic influence. Even before the twentieth century, when men were attaching imposing labels to complexes of illnesses, it was decided that possession and oppression were nothing of the sort, but were symptomatic of “schizophrenia” and other forms of psychosis. It was found that many such afflictions could be cured—and if not cured, then at least held in check—by confinement to institutions, electroshock therapy, counseling, and, in recent times, an elaborate complex of medications.

  There is nothing wrong with all of this; indeed, it would be foolish to make light of such extraordinary achievements in the treatment of a diversity of mental disorders. But there is a difficulty. In the rush to embrace the new “science” of psychiatry, the medical men were eager to jettison belief in evil forces, demonic oppression and affliction, and to ascribe natural causes to all mental diseases of unknown etiology. It could be argued that they were, in effect, playing into the hands of the very Devil they wished to sideline.

  In recent years, however, there has been a grudging reassessment of this position. While most psychiatrists are content with diagnosing mental illness in terms of abnormal brain function, chemical imbalances, and personality disorders brought about by nature or nurture, there are those who acknowledge that a small percentage of cases appear t
o challenge medical science. In short, they defy explanation—and indeed fall outside the known pathology of mental illness. Interesting in this regard is that many of these exceptional cases exhibit symptoms that have been traditionally associated with demonic influence.

  MILLENNIUM FEVER AND THE DEVIL

  In our time, the subject of demonic possession lay dormant until comparatively recently. To many it appeared that this “sudden” interest in the occult had sprung from nowhere. They can point out that, before the 1960s, the Devil had no place in mainstream society. That was to change when, in 1966, Howard Stanton Levey gave himself out as Anton Szandor LaVey, and established the Church of Satan in San Francisco.

  It is likely that LaVey, who died in 1997, was little more than a self-publicist who did not take his devil-worship seriously. Yet he began his “movement” at a time when Timothy Leary, a Harvard lecturer in psychology, was experimenting with LSD and other “mind-expanding” drugs. LaVey had little difficulty in attracting a following. With the founding of the Church of Satan, the Devil had left the shadows and gone aboveground.

  Perhaps the defining moment of this narco-satanism came in the summer of 1969 with the frenzied slaughter of Sharon Tate and others. The perpetrators were the Manson “family,” and evidently the crime was satanically motivated. The Devil had arrived in America.

  THE EXORCIST: SATAN ON CELLULOID