Demons Attack!

Demons are everywhere.  This is not a figurative statement. Demons, foul, creeping things,  unclean, shadowy beings are nearby.

I believe you too may have witnessed an encounter as well. My first experience was during a summer night growing  up in a small rural township in Ohio. I was 21 and working 60 plus hours a week.  My younger sister had her trifecta of friends overnight. I was trying to sleep during their ruckus in the adjacent room. Then I heard the grumbling  growl of our little dachshund. I patted the edge of the bed, half asleep, thinking he wanted an invitation. What I heard next wasn’t from the dog. It was a gravelly  growling language.  I tried to wake up. It was sleep paralysis and I caught the thing out from underneath my struggle  to raise my eyelids. It was a small, three foot long by a foot high dark gray black – thing, like a smudge. It was speaking to me and I couldn’t wake up! When I was finally  able to  wake, of course nothing was there. I eventually  went back to sleep and went to work as usual.

The only change I experienced  was an immense  desire to get back to Mass. I had lapsed and hadn’t went to church in several months. Sometime during the next day I had the overwhelming need to go to Mass -asap. And I did.

Flash forward 6 years later and I’m down in Southern  Ohio for part of the July 4th weekend.  I’m meeting a friends mother, who describes to me her born again experience. She was a heavy drinker and one night, after coming home from work late she immediately  started drinking. Sometime around 1 am she grabbed  a beer from the fridge, set it on her nightstand and had in her words “a vision.”

A tall dark shadow figure stood before and started speaking in a growling, garbled way. This caught my attention! Just like the way I heard it, we both knew it was speaking  to us. Then and only then, did I realize what I witnessed. She said it a “demon.” She too had to bring herself to herculean  efforts to snap out of it. When she did, her beer, still cold was right where she had left it. Then and there, she vowed to stop drinking,  reform and return to God and her church.  It was then, too that I remembered  my urge to go to Mass. Before her story I had forgotten about my encounter.

Now incensed by this new development, I couldn’t  wait to tell my sister in law. I had our family  function  to go to that Sunday and I knew I could tell her. I had never told my story beforehand. When the time came, I told her all about what had happened.  It could not prepare me for she had to say. My sister in law was a recent  convert to Catholicism. I had assumed  we just rubbed off on her. Not so. One night she was awakened by what she described as a black animal that was running circles under and around her bed. My brother  was sleeping  next to her but she couldn’t  wake him. The ‘animal’ was growling as it scurried around her bed. Once she was able to wake my brother  it ceased.  She vow ed the next day to become  Catholic.

So all three of us had encounters, all three of us as a result, returned to God. I’ve had several instances since and each time I know to get to Mass. Now I’m seasoned enough to call out “Mary mother of God” and they ( I’ve had two next to me before ) flee.

But those encounters are for another post.