Demons Underfoot

The 1990 movie Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze (Sam) and Demi Moore (Molly), is a beautiful love story between the living and the dead. Carl has arranged to have his co-worker, Sam, murdered by hired-gun Willie, leaving the love of Sam’s life, Molly, to fend for herself unless Carl can convince her to fend for him, too. Eventually, Willie is killed unexpectedly by a car crash in the street as Sam’s spirit watches. That scene from the screenplay follows below.

EXT. STREET – NIGHT

Willie, blinded by his own hysteria, runs wildly into the street. Cars are bearing down on him from all directions. He does not get out of their way.

One driver sees Willie coming and swerves to avoid him. His car skids. Another car brakes to avoid a collision and suddenly both cars crash right into him.

SAM

Look out!

Willie’s body is crushed instantly between the two vehicles as his spirit is catapulted into the air still screaming and writhing. His ghostly form reaches out to people for help as they rush past. No one stops.

Willie spins around and sees a mangled body crumpled on the street. Suddenly, he recognizes that it is his own dead body lying there. He begins to scream.

A bizarre and frightening CLICKING SOUND fills the air. Sam looks up. A group of strange dark figures has emerged from the shadows.

With a loud, terrifying shriek, the dark forms swoop down and grab hold of Willie. Sam freezes. In an instant they are dragging Willie, kicking and screaming, down through the sewer grates into the bowels of the earth.

I wonder how often a man thinks about his own death and ultimate destiny, about heaven and hell, and about God and the devil. These are heavy and frightening subjects, just like Willie’s encounter with emissaries from the devil himself, who pulled his spirit into the fires of the underworld. Just as life turns on a dime to force a man to face a whole new direction, so death arrives unannounced to force a man to face the end of everything. There is a dark force but it isn’t the one found in Star Wars. In this world its name is Satan and his agents are called demons and they do all the heavy lifting and the dragging into this gloomy kingdom of final demise.

The arrival of the movie The Exorcist in 1973 coincided with a sweeping national religious revival in 1972 and the rapid emergence of the charismatic movement in 1974. Spiritual power draws spiritual power, so it’s no surprise the movie appeared when it did. Forty-seven years ago, a levitating bed, projectile vomit, and a 360˚ swiveling head was enough to cause an entire country to consider seriously the reality and work of the devil. Today, he seems less interesting and perhaps not so real.

I worked one summer in Galveston, Texas with a team of young people assembled from across the country to engage in evangelistic activities throughout the city on behalf of a national Christian organization. My teammate Bill and I worked for the Galveston public school district as groundskeepers and maintenance men. We were paired with a team of ten other young black men who were either permanent employees or temporary hires for the summer.

One temporary hire was Joey, the youngest member of our work crew. One day while we were working at the high school football stadium, Bill and Joey were assigned to do various things around the shower house. As they worked inside, Bill shared the Gospel with Joey, who seemed quite attentive. It wasn’t long before Bill asked Joey if he wanted to ask Jesus Christ to be a larger part of his life, and Joey said yes. But before he could act on this affirmation, Joey was picked up by an invisible power and slammed forcefully into a row of metal lockers, after which he collapsed unconscious onto the floor. He recovered and this incident strengthened his resolve to make Christ his Lord and be baptized in the Gulf.

Kent made weekly visits to a men’s medium security prison to conduct an evening Bible study. It was late when Kent left the penitentiary and started his twenty-minute drive home. About halfway home a strange thing happened. A small thumping sound began to fill the cabin. Kent thought the sound was coming from the back of the cargo bay, but it wasn’t. The sound was indeed inside the pickup. Quickly the thumping became a loud drumming sound and from there a loud crashing sound.

Then, an invisible force, seemingly coming right out from the center of the steering wheel, pushed up against his chest making it almost impossible for him to breathe. The pressure was so great Kent thought he was having a heart attack as he began to lose control of the pickup at 60 miles an hour. Struggling to breathe and maintain control of the vehicle, Kent cried out to God for help and rebuked these manifestations of evil in the name of Jesus. At his name, the loud drumming sound and the immense pressure against his chest simply vanished. He would later learn that an inmate had a voodoo doll in his cell and had cast a spell on Kent because he opposed the spiritual life Kent was bringing to the prison.

One evening a large group of my high school friends were at our home just hanging out. Someone suggested we play a levitation game with the lights turned off. We decided the victim would be my mother, who was told to lie on her back on the floor while four people on each side placed two fingers from each hand under her body. Then after some mindless gibberish that mimicked the casting of a spell or the calling upon unseen supremacies, the eight people lifted her slowly into the air. I was one of the eight. Amazingly, we lifted her into the air with the authority of only 16 fingers, and it seemed her body was as light as a feather.

One night while I was still living in Galveston I was awakened abruptly following an incredibly vivid dream. In the dream I was sleeping in my bedroom in my boyhood home when I awakened to the sight of an orange glow in the hallway outside my room. I got out of bed and looked down the length of the hallway to the living room, which itself was lit up with an orange glow. As I walked closer to the room it was clear to me the room was engulfed in flames. And then the dream ended.

I didn’t think much more of the dream until my twin brother, who was living in the home at the time, called to tell me he had an odd dream involving strange occurrences in the living room! After I listened to his dream it was clear to me a demonic presence occupied the room and it had to be removed. I remembered that our older brother had visited Cancun, Mexico years before and returned with three small ceramic Aztec idols. These idols had been placed on the fireplace mantle in the living room. I knew immediately that these pagan symbols were the source of the problem. Somehow some kind of demonic power possessed these idols and its power was going to begin to influence the household. I told my twin to destroy the idols as quickly as possible.

One Christmas my parents bought us a Quija board, which was all the rage when I was a young boy. Fast forward 20 years and the Quija board was in the basement storage room not having been used or touched for a very long time. I came home one night to an empty house as my parents were gone. With one step inside the house an overwhelming fear swept over me and the Quija board came to mind. Immediately I recognized that the fear was supernatural and that the Quija board was acting as a portal to a demonic presence in our home. I knew I had to destroy the Quija board as soon as possible.

I opened the basement door and took a few steps down the stairs when the fear inside of me began to grow. With each step the fear intensified. The closer I got to the room where the Quija board was stored the greater the fear became. Along with the fear was this terrifying notion that if I destroyed the Quija board I would be physically harmed, maybe even killed.

My heartbeat continued to race with every single step I made toward the storage room. Opening the door was nearly a herculean task as I was practically frozen with terror. Once inside the room I reached for the board as my entire body seemed to be cloaked with dread. I took the board out of its box and broke it in half over my knee. Instantly the most penetrating fear I’d ever known in my life disappeared.

A few years ago, I worked weekends at the Interfaith Hospitality Network, an alliance of local churches that provided temporary, emergency shelter for homeless families. One day a family from Chicago entered our program, and later that same day I had a chance to speak with the father, Darren.

Somehow our conversation turned to life in Chicago. Darren told me about a backyard party he’d attended with Rob, one of his friends. At the party there was drinking and drugging and everything else. An hour or so had passed when an intoxicated Rob got into a heated argument with another guy. In his anger Rob got on his motorcycle to leave. Darren tried to stop him as he was far too drunk to ride. But Rob would have nothing of it and raced off down the street.

Darren ran after him as fast as he could. But Rob accelerated greatly and roared away over a steep hill. That’s when Darren next heard a loud crash. When he came to the crest of the hill he could see that Rob had lost control of his bike and crashed into a parked car. Darren ran up to Rob who was still alive. Darren knelt by his side and held his head in his hands. It was difficult for Rob to talk; his breathing had begun to be labored. Then Rob said Don’t let them take me. Darren didn’t understand, but in a moment Rob’s spirit began to leave his body. Rob screamed at Darren Don’t let them take me.

It was here when Darren saw several black figures come up out of the road. They looked like black gumdrops that were about three feet tall. Sam backed away in fear as the apparitions closed in on Rob’s spirit. DON’T LET THEM TAKE ME! Rob screamed one more time before the beings engulfed him and pulled him down into the asphalt and disappeared. All was quiet. Rob was dead; his body was lifeless on the road.

I asked Darren if he had ever seen the movie Ghost. He hadn’t even heard of the movie. Yet, his friend’s death involving these unformed creatures of darkness was nearly identical to Willie’s death in the movie. With his own eyes he had seen demons drag his friend’s spirit into hell, screaming all the way down.

Art imitates life… and death. The darkness, the demons, the screams – they’re all real. The invisible spirit that slammed Joey into the lockers was real. The invisible force that tried to kill Kent was real. The invisible power that levitated my mother was real. The invisible authority that tried with overwhelming fear to prevent me from destroying the Quija board was real.

We are not given the right to decide if these phenomena are real. Dark, evil spiritual powers dwell in our midst. They would prefer that we just ignore them. They would want you to dismiss what I’ve written here as an over-the-top discussion of something from a science fiction movie.

So, read at your own risk and live long and prosper.