The Dark Sacrament Read online

  “She’d never been taught about God, you see. I was very much reminded in this case of the warning in Exodus, the one about the sins of the father being visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations.

  “A child who doesn’t learn about God’s love and compassion from the parents is an easy target. The father in this case was very violent and abusive—as was the stepfather. Having to cope with this, day after day, week after week, year after year, has a terrible effect on children. They suffer tremendous ‘psychic stress.’

  “It is easy to see how evil can be promulgated over generations, if the individuals concerned have neither the fortitude nor the resources necessary to put an end to it. Oh, you can be sure,” he says with a sigh, “that Satan’s bid for our souls is predicated on the debasement of our humanness as early as possible in our childhood.”

  He is saddened that Heather Mitchelson had so little chance in life—that she was, from the earliest moment, exposed to such danger.

  “After the exorcism I visited her several times and found her at peace,” he says. “However, it’s quite a distance from Belfast to Balbriggan, and for that reason I could not visit her regularly enough, so I passed her into the care of another minister who lived closer.”

  The canon pauses. He looks wistful and downcast.

  “Oh, how I wish I could say that the dear girl found peace in this life! She was very, very unfortunate—from the beginning of her life right up to the end. “Six months after the exorcism she died, you see. By her own hand. It was her third attempt at suicide and this time it was successful. Joe wasn’t there that day. There was no one who could stop her, reason with her, give her the assurances she craved. She hanged herself from the light fitting in her bedroom. She strangled herself.

  “So, in the end, sadly, the grandmother did indeed have her way.”

  THE HOUSEWIFE AND THE DEMON DUBOIS

  On the face of it, there is nothing magical about the Ouija board. It has no powers, either good or evil. It is simply a rectangular tablet of wood, much the same size as a Monopoly board. It has a long history, extending back to the ancient Romans, perhaps even predating Christ. Its present form emerged in the nineteenth century and was patented by the Baltimore inventor and attorney Elijah J. Bond. Although many of the earlier boards were elaborate affairs that included angels, swastikas, and signs of the zodiac, the modern variant is relatively simple. It is printed with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, and the words yes, no, and goodbye.

  The “game” is played by two or more persons. Somebody will pose a question, which the board attempts to answer. It does so with the aid of a planchette, literally a “little plank.” Again, designs vary considerably, but generally speaking, the planchette, or pointer, is a small, triangular piece of wood or plastic that moves smoothly over the surface of the board. Often it has a “window” of clear plastic, by which a letter or number is framed. Each player places a fingertip on the planchette. The board responds to a question either by moving the pointer to yes or no or by spelling out the answer by choosing a sequence of letters.

  This is the first contentious aspect of Ouija. Who—or what—is moving the planchette? Those who have used Ouija relate with awe how the pointer moved of its own accord. Participants will swear to their fellow players that they did nothing to influence the pointer’s progress, and indeed most believe this to be the case. Ouija users often describe it as having “a life of its own.”

  Yet skeptics dismiss this. They speak of “ideomotor” action: unconscious muscular activity by which minuscule movements are made without a person being aware that they are making them. Since it takes very little effort to set the planchette in motion, this theory might well be valid.

  And yet, it is less important who or what moves the pointer than where the game leads and the uses to which it is put. Some use the board to look into the future; others to make contact with the dead; still others as a means of experimentation in a spirit of fun. Ouija as board game—as innocent as a round of Risk or Trivial Pursuit. All might be well, were it not that dabbling with Ouija seems to have had disastrous consequences for many users.

  Canon William H. Lendrum suggests that all right-thinking people should shun it completely. He believes that Ouija is a portal by which malignant forces can enter this world and cause great distress, even insanity. He recalls one of his most upsetting cases, that of a County Antrim woman whose life was turned on its head from the moment she dabbled with Ouija. The “game” was to cause her fifteen years of great distress and torment—one of the longest cases of demonic attack on record.

  Julie’s ordeal began on a cold and wet November afternoon in 1980, when her son Gordon came home from school in high excitement. The boy had learned of a new game. It required no board, nor indeed any outlay at all. One needed only to divide up a sheet of paper and write the letters of the alphabet on the pieces, as well as numerals, and the words yes, no, and goodbye. Gordon had played it with his school pals.

  They had put questions to the board, and it appeared to be able to foretell the future. It knew who would marry and when, what somebody would do on leaving high school, what they would do in later life, whom they would work for, if they would be successful in their career. It was uncanny.

  His mother knew at once what he was referring to, though she did not know Ouija by that name. She had come across it from time to time in the rural area where she grew up. The country people had called it the “talking board.” They would play the game, with or without an actual board, to while away a long winter’s evening. To the best of Julie’s knowledge, it was simply harmless fun. She followed her three children into the living room and prepared the pieces of paper accordingly, and they settled down to an evening’s amusement.

  The game began as solely that: an innocent diversion. Following Gordon’s instructions, each of the four placed a finger atop an upended tumbler. Somebody—Julie herself or one of the children—posed the first, formulaic, question. “Is there anybody there?”

  No one had expected the glass to respond, and so it came as a surprise to Julie when it moved almost at once to the yes. There was the customary reaction from the participants, each accusing another of cheating, of sneakily moving the glass. But everyone protested their innocence.

  “Who are you?”

  The second reply came as swiftly as the first, even though the spelling out of the word took a little more time. The glass glided about the table again.

  S-E-A-M-A-N

  Julie frowned. It was the last thing she had expected.

  “You’re doing that!” one of the younger children accused another. “Mom, he’s moving the glass.”

  “Am not!”

  “Children, behave.” She did not know what to make of the strange message—if a message it was.

  “What kind of seaman are you?” Gordon asked. He had the usual boy’s fascination with the sea: the romance of it.

  N-E-L-S-O-N

  Gordon was perplexed. He was about to ask for clarification when, seemingly of its own volition, the glass progressed across the tabletop again. Five pairs of lips quietly vocalized each letter it paused at.

  H-M-S V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

  And so began an eerie communication. Although the “visitor” did not identify himself by name, he gave the family to understand that he had once been a lowly seaman on board Admiral Nelson’s celebrated warship. The glass sped rapidly over the dining room table, spelling out the letters of each word communicated by the man who claimed to have lived and died centuries before. He related how he had fought in a number of sea battles, and how he had perished at Trafalgar in 1805, when Nelson himself lost his life. And, throughout the telling, the mysterious mariner used an antique English, peppering his “speech” with “thee” and “thou” and phrases such as “It be said.”

  The children were delighted. It was Treasure Island and Horatio Hornblower come to life.

  “I remember when the Ouija was telling us t
hose things,” Julie says, “a coal popped out onto the hearth, and we all jumped. And I thought at the time that I shouldn’t be dabbling in such things. As a practicing Christian I’d been brought up to believe that fortune-telling, like tarot cards and tea-leaf reading and the like, was wrong. But I didn’t really believe it was dangerous.”

  Nonetheless, she packed away the “game” and called it a night.

  But the next day it rained again, and the children—her younger son and daughter especially—persuaded their mother to repeat the game. With some reluctance, Julie cleared the dining room table, Gordon helped distribute the pieces of paper, and they settled down to another session of fortune-telling.

  Almost immediately, they made “contact.”

  J-E M-A-P-P-E-L-L-E D-U-B-O-I-S

  This time it was no English seaman but a Frenchman, who went on to identify himself as Pierre. Pierre Dubois; it was the French equivalent of John Smith. An alias? No one could say. But the visitor almost immediately lapsed into simple English, full of misspellings. He had, he claimed, died at the time of the French Revolution. Without being questioned at all, the glass continued to move from letter to letter, spelling out what the newcomer wished to tell them about his life.

  Julie and the children learned that he had been a blacksmith in a small town called Lessay in northern France; he communicated details of his family life, and “spoke” of matters relating to his era. It was all very absorbing, but Julie still had her reservations. Then, without warning, the messages being transmitted via the glass began to address themselves to her alone.

  “Julie,” the glass spelled out, “I like stay here with you.”

  She was shocked. Yet she plucked up the courage to ask why. The glass explained.

  “I am tired wandring and need rest…. I was with relations in Suth Africa but not wanted there.”

  Julie did not know what to make of it. And she remained skeptical, still believing that either Gordon or his younger brother was moving the glass. “Pierre” was to convince her otherwise. The glass began to spell out a most unusual message.

  “Julie go in kitchen and shut window,” it read. “Rain comes in.”

  To her astonishment, she found this to be the case. The wind had blown open the kitchen window and rain was soaking part of the floor and countertop. She could not have known this; none of them could. From the dining room it was impossible to hear or see what went on in the kitchen….

  Matters took on a more serious aspect at about 5 p.m. Julie’s husband, John, came home from work to find her and the children still engrossed in their game. He was a nurse attached to the emergency room at the county hospital, and often did night duty. On this occasion, he was working a double shift and wished to catch an hour’s sleep before leaving again. He came into the dining room, looked at the table, and frowned.

  “What’s that you’re doing?”

  “Ouija, Dad,” Gordon piped up. “It’s great fun.”

  “It’s a load of old nonsense,” John assured him with a wink.

  “I’ll get dinner,” Julie said. “And change out of those things. You’re soaking.”

  But no sooner had he left the room than the glass—entirely of its own accord—began to spell out a message. It was for Julie.

  “John does not believe in me,” it read. “But I will come to him in night as ghost.”

  Julie was terrified. “Oh, please don’t!” she cried. “Go away.”

  She gathered up the pieces of paper and flung them into the fire. They burst into flame at once, then browned and blackened. All, that is, except one, which fell, face down, on the hearth step. Julie bent down to pick it up. Without thinking, she turned it over—and immediately wished she had not. For it seemed that the Ouija had given its response to her plea.

  The paper read no.

  She was greatly shaken. “No more of this, children. It’s no fun anymore. Time for homework.”

  That night Julie was unable to sleep. Alone in bed, hearing the rain buffeting the window, she found her thoughts straying to the silly “game.” It remained for her a game; despite the enigmatic messages from Monsieur Dubois, despite his apparent ability to see through walls—and even to know her name—she was as yet unconvinced of the seriousness of Ouija.

  Her husband returned from the hospital in the early hours. He kissed her cheek and inquired after the children.

  “I hope you stopped playing that silly game,” he said. “That Ouija nonsense. You’ll be giving the kids nightmares with that spirit stuff.”

  She was still a little nervous. She reflected that the children were less afraid of the “spirit stuff” than she was. She had looked in on them earlier and all were sleeping soundly. She tried to make light of what the mysterious Frenchman had told her.

  “You’re the one who should be scared, John,” she said with a grin. “The Ouija said it was going to come to you tonight as a ghost.”

  Her husband chuckled, turned over on his side, and was soon asleep.

  Not so Julie. Her ordeal was about to begin.

  She drifted into an uneasy sleep, but not for long. Half an hour later she was wide awake again. Something was wrong; a change was coming over the bedroom. Julie describes experiencing “a sense of dread.” She sat up, fully alert, straining her ears for the slightest untoward sound, but all was silent except for the little trusted noises of the night: the ticking clock by the bedside, her husband’s light snoring, the steady rain, a car hissing past on the road.

  But she noticed something odd: an unnatural coldness was stealing over the room. The heating had been on for a good five hours and had only just switched itself off. How could it be so cold? She shivered and ducked back under the covers, tugging them more snugly about her.

  It did not help; the cold kept increasing.

  She pulled the covers over her head, chiding herself for being silly and willing herself into sleep. But the terrible dread kept gnawing at her. She tried to think pleasant thoughts, tried to ignore her thudding heart, and tried to pray. Her attempts brought little comfort; the fear continued to build. She sensed that something frightful was about to happen. She held her breath and waited, not knowing what to expect, but in the conviction that the Ouija was making good its threat.

  Before too long, she heard a sound: the unmistakable creak of the doorknob. The spring bolt was sliding back with tiny clicks. She froze.

  Very slowly, the door began to open.

  They had no pets. Nor could it be one of the children; they never came into their parents’ room without permission—even the youngest was too big for that.

  Julie still had the covers over her head. An inner voice was urging her to remain so, not to look in the direction of the door.

  Her fear quickened further as she heard the tread of heavy, booted feet approaching the bed. She wanted to call out to John, but some alien force was willing her to silence. She felt helpless in the face of that power.

  The bedclothes were no defense against what happened next. To her horror, she felt a man’s body pressing down on hers. It was cold and heavy, stifling her, almost suffocating her. And still she could not cry out. She had the sensation of a face against her own, could feel the roughness of unshaven cheeks, could hear the rasp of labored breathing. Yet she saw nothing. Later, Julie would describe how loathsome and overpowering the stench was; she likened it to the odor of decay given off by a dead creature. And she could identify another smell, commingling with it—that of burning coal or soot.

  Then began the assault.

  “It molested me sexually,” she says frankly. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took for me to actually come out and say that to anyone…not even my husband. I was so ashamed.”

  She tried to rouse her husband, but her arms as well as the rest of her body were frozen into immobility. Nor could she speak. Frantic thoughts were churning about in her head. When she tried to pray, the words kept slipping from her as if they were in some alien language. She had never been so frigh
tened in her life.

  She is unsure how long she lay there, pinioned to the bed. She believes that she passed out, to regain consciousness hours later as dawn was breaking. By then, the coldness had lifted. The stench in the room was now only just perceptible. She experienced what she describes as a sensation of “lightness,” and knew at once that the unholy visitor had gone.

  Only gradually did the paralysis leave her. Feeling returned first to her fingers, then to her hands, then to the rest of her body. She was in a cold sweat, and utterly terrified. When John woke next to her she remembers him commenting on an odd smell in the room—“like a campfire,” he said—and concluding that someone nearby must have been burning garbage, or perhaps had “lit their chimney.” She recalls feigning sleep, afraid that if she spoke, he might notice something that would betray what she had been through.

  She heard him go downstairs to make breakfast. Next thing she knew, he was waking her with a cup of tea. She managed to tell him that she was feeling unwell and needed to sleep more. He left the tea on the nightstand.

  “That’s all right, love,” he said. “I’ll see to the kids and take them to school.”

  Half an hour later, Julie heard them leave. She remained in bed, feeling wretched. She had ample time to consider what it was that had come to her in the night. When examined in daylight, the visit appeared as unreal as a bad dream. Perhaps that’s what it was, she thought—a bad dream. She got out of bed, feeling a little better.

  “I really did believe it had all been a nightmare,” she says. “The more I thought about it, the more logical it seemed. But God, when I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I nearly died of fright.”

  The glass reflected all too clearly the terrible truth. On the left side of Julie’s face—the side that had been in contact with the unshaven visitant—was an angry red rash. Horrified beyond words, she backed away from the mirror and fell against the bathtub. Nightmares were not supposed to intrude upon one’s waking hours, and certainly not in such an utterly ghastly way.