Beware the Night

by Ralph Sarchie

  To rid the building of its inhuman inhabitants, five of us went over to exorcise its three floors. Cases like this are dangerous because we don’t know exactly what kind of black magic we’re up against—or how we might be attacked. Even if we were able to clear the building of the things that are there, they won’t stay gone, because the Satanists will invite them back. We still wanted to help these people, so we split up and went to different locations around the building to perform our rituals.

  I was in the apartment across from where the devil-worshippers lived. Just then the Satanists’ leader, a man named Lewis Williams, came up the stairs. Someone had tipped him off to what we were doing, because the daughters of one of these families hung out with these guys. I was purifying the apartment across the hall from his with blessed incense when I heard conversation in the hall. Someone with a heavy New York accent was asking “Who are these people? What denomination are they?”

  I looked out in the hall and saw Williams, who was standing at his doorway. He sneered at me, so I sneered back. He was holding a copy of The Necronomicon, which is an extremely evil book. On the inside cover there is a warning: “The Necronomicon’s magick is nothing to fool around with and may expose you to psychological forces with which you cannot cope. Remember, if you tinker with these incantations, you were warned!” Psychological forces, my ass! What you will be dealing with is demonic spirits, as Lewis Williams later found out.

  This book is dedicated to the late Aleister Crowley, a notorious Satanist who was known as “the Beast.” The editor of this book goes on to thank a whole group of people, including a demon he mentions by name. Imagine that! Thanking a demon for terrorizing humanity and seeking the ruin of souls! Apparently, this demon wasn’t particularly placated by thanks, since the second edition of this book mentions someone associated with its publication who is plagued by “poltergeists.” Well now, we all know what poltergeists really are, so why don’t these people have the guts to come out and say so?

  This preface adds that the group who put out this book have experienced a number of bizarre occurrences that nearly cost them their lives, then hints around about another potential effect of this extraordinarily evil work. In an apparent Freudian slip, the editors say that people who come into “possession” of this book may experience “changes in consciousness.” I think it’s pretty obvious what those so-called changes would be—and what kind of risk people who read The Necronomicon are running. It may be hyped as the ultimate book of spells, or the godfather of grimoires, but I consider it a publication of pestilence.

  None of this deterred Williams from standing there, right in front of me, and reading aloud this diabolical book to counter my prayers. It didn’t work. He suddenly broke off his reading and actually ran from me. From my years on the street, I’ve seen assholes like him before. They like to cause fear in people, but I wasn’t intimidated in the least. My prayers were a lot more powerful than what he was reading and he knew that. He had been an altar boy in his younger years, and even in his warped mind, he recognized the power of Catholic prayer. He exited the building—fast.

  Before he left, I shouted to him, “The Necronomicon is a very bad book.” He smirked and replied, “That’s good.”

  We resumed the ritual. In order to evict evil spirits in a building, we need access to every apartment, but that was out of the question in this case. We did our utmost to make the areas we were in extremely hostile to diabolical forces, but the fact that some of the tenants had no desire to rid themselves of evil was a problem. Lewis Williams, for example, was sure to invite it back in. Despite these handicaps, our prayers seemed to contain the malevolence in the building: Phil’s friend told him that after our exorcism, the terrifying phenomena stopped.

  When we finished our Work, we left the building to find fifteen Satanists standing menacingly outside. Knowing how bad this group’s reputation was, I was armed with my gun. I wasn’t looking for trouble, but if I’d found it, I was ready for whatever might come. Scott was Connecticut martial arts champ for eight years. I’ve studied martial arts for twelve years. Joe is a Vietnam vet and knows how to handle himself in a fight. And we had Phil and Chris, who are gutsy guys too.

  While we were there to help people spiritually, none of us would back down from these guys. I try very hard to be a good Catholic, but if you slap me in the face, I won’t turn the other cheek. I’ll probably knock your teeth out. That’s the attitude we used to walk out of there without any trouble from the Satanists.

  Like my other case in this area, this investigation ended with a death. A week later I got a call from my investigator, saying that Lewis Williams had taken a gun and blown his brains out. He’d told one of the girls who hung out with him that he “couldn’t control it any more.” If only he’d listened when I told him he was reading a dangerous book.

  Chapter Ten

  Busting the Devil

  LIKE POLICE WORK, exorcism is a dirty, dangerous job. Since most people will never become possessed or even witness an exorcism, it’s hard for them to even imagine how foul and dreadful the ritual can be, just as it’s impossible for the average person to grasp what it’s like actually to investigate a really gruesome crime, instead of just reading about it in the newspaper as you have your morning coffee. Recently I got a radio call about a fire at a schoolyard. When I arrived on the scene, the odor was overpowering. When I got closer, I found out why. The smoldering object, which initially appeared to be a large pile of rags, was a corpse, so charred that I couldn’t tell if it was a man, woman, or, God forbid, a child.

  Try, if you can, to imagine how I felt standing there, with my nose filled with the stomach-turning stench of roasting human flesh, looking at what used to be a human face. Most of the features were burned away, except for a mouth forever frozen in its final scream. I hoped like hell that this person was dead before he or she was drenched in gasoline and torched like yesterday’s trash. The other officers who responded reacted just as I expected, stifling their horror in coarse cop humor. I know this makes us sound like horribly cold sons of bitches, but it’s a cop’s defense mechanism. Just as doctors in a hospital burn unit distance themselves from their unbearably injured or maimed patients by cracking jokes among themselves about “crispy critters,” the officers on the scene dehumanized this victim with sarcastic suggestions about what his or her name might be. “How about Bobbie-Q?” one cop joked, while another said, “Or if it’s a girl, what about Suzy-Q?”

  I joined the grim camaraderie, just as I did at another horrific crime scene. Responding to a report of shots fired in a Brooklyn project, my partner, whom we affectionately called B-Dog, and I found pools of blood in the lobby and followed the trail up the stairs. We started seeing bloody handprints, showing that some horribly wounded person had crawled or dragged himself upward. We carefully stepped around the handprints, to avoid contaminating the evidence. With each step, the smell of iron got stronger and the blood thicker. When we reached the tenth floor, we found the victim—a young, muscular guy wearing a green Army jacket, lying facedown in a huge pool of blood. He’d been shot several times and died in a crawling position, with one leg bent and one arm still reaching for the next step.

  Soon after detectives from the major case squad arrived on the scene, we saw something move. “Look at the size of that fucker,” one detective said. We watched the most enormous cockroach we’d ever seen crawl out from under the dead man’s belly and walk lazily up the wall. It must have been feeding on the blood, I thought, and realized the other cops had just come to the same disgusting conclusion. Naturally, we had to pretend that seeing some poor bastard lying dead in a slum staircase, while roaches feasted on his life’s blood, didn’t bother us a bit. Instead, we bantered about being late for our breakfast when one of the detectives showed up, munching on a bacon and egg sandwich and drinking a cup of coffee. That was how we shrugged it off as just another night’s work in the projects.

  A lot of macho cops won’t admit it, but s
tuff like this gets to us. Yes, you get hardened to cruel, random death to some extent after seeing it for years, but no matter how much protective armor you put around yourself—or how many hard-boiled cop jokes you tell—some cases leave an indelible mark. I hate to think about the really grisly murders and assaults I’ve seen, but they haunt me in ways I’d never tell my wife, and I pray my little girls will never discover. That’s not to say that the Job has left me broken or burned out, but you can’t see things like this night after night and walk away completely unscathed.

  An exorcism also stains your soul. It’s not for nothing that demons are called “unclean spirits” in the Bible: Their goal is to defile and destroy. If you’ve never felt the fury and filth of Satan firsthand, as I have, you may be saying “I don’t believe in the Devil or demons, so this is just a lot of crap.” Believe me, I’ve heard that plenty of times, as I sat in a stranger’s living room, listening to the nightmare that person was recounting. Even victims of the demonic may refuse to believe that the forces of darkness are responsible for what’s happening to them: Often their stories begin “You’ll think I’m crazy, but…”

  Perhaps you also feel these people must be nuts, or that exorcism is a medieval remedy for mental or physical illness that has no relevance in the Internet age. If so, score one for the Devil. Denial only makes him more powerful. But if you believe in God at all, are you really willing to dismiss the parables of Jesus casting out demons as mere fables? In Matthew 4:24, the Bible makes a clear distinction between medical and spiritual ailments, telling us that Jesus’ followers “carried to him all those afflicted with various diseases and racked with pain: the possessed, the lunatics, the paralyzed. He cured them all.”

  The Vatican certainly doesn’t consider evil obsolete. In 1999 it issued its first update of the Roman Ritual of Exorcism since the rite was originally authorized in 1614. Possibly spurring this move was an earlier report by Father Gabriele Amorth, official exorcist for the diocese of Rome, of an alarming increase in cases of demonic possession over the previous ten years as well as explosive rises in satanic sects and other occult practices. Also fueling the father’s concern was what he considered “sins of omission” on the part of the Catholic clergy, many of whom aren’t familiar with the practice of exorcism and many of whom even question the existence of the Devil. He urged the Church to intensify its fight against evil, quoting the Second Vatican Council’s prophecy that Satan would seek to destroy humanity “until the end of the world.” These sentiments struck a chord with Pope John Paul II, who recently denounced the Devil as a “cosmic liar and murderer.” Satan’s power is fed, the Pontiff charged, by the public’s increasing tolerance of “lies and deceit … the idolatry of money … [and] the idolatry of sex.”

  The Vatican document—an eighty-four-page book of prayers and instructions for exorcism—reaffirms that the Devil isn’t an abstract notion or a matter of opinion but a very real menace in the modern world, who “goes around like a roaring lion, looking for souls to devour.” Unlike the previous draft of the Roman Ritual, the new manual specifically cautions exorcists not to confuse symptoms of mental illness with the acknowledged signs of demonic possession, such as speaking in unknown languages, “discerning distant or hidden things,” exhibiting unnatural strength, and developing a vehement aversion to God, the Virgin Mary, the saints, or sacred objects and images. Exorcism, the guidelines emphasize, should be attempted only after “diligent inquiry and after having consulted experts in spiritual matters and, if felt appropriate, experts in medical and psychiatric science.”

  There are other new stipulations. One is that no one connected with an exorcism shall ever talk about it publicly—and no members of the media are allowed to attend, to keep the ritual from becoming a spectacle. Recordings, video- and audiotapes, and written notes are also banned. In other words, the Church still attempts to keep exorcism in the closet, so to speak. The manual also stresses that no one can legitimately perform an exorcism without the express consent of the bishop of the diocese. Nor can any Christian layperson use the prayer of exorcism against Satan and the fallen angels, for any purpose, especially exorcisms. Bishops are instructed to bring this edict to the attention of the Christian faithful as necessary.

  I agree with these stipulations to a certain degree. No layperson should undertake the exorcism of a person, and in that I’m 100 percent compliant. But Pope Leo gave the faithful permission to read his prayer when the Devil is active. That’s why I use it in cases of diabolical activity. (The Pope Leo XIII prayer and other prayers I use in the Work are included at the end of the book.) Now, the revised ritual says that Christians should never say the Pope Leo prayer in whole or in part. I have two problems with that. First, no one in the Church has the authority to overturn a decree issued by a Pope except a subsequent Pope, and that hasn’t happened in this case, since these revisions were made by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, a group of priests, rather than the Pope himself. Second—and most important—are the words of Jesus Himself: John said to Him, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we tried to stop him because he is not of our company.” Jesus said in reply, “Do not try to stop him. No man who performs a miracle using my name can at once speak ill of me. Anyone who is not against us is with us” (Mark 9:38–40).

  The Vatican’s updated ritual has sparked heightened interest in exorcism. In September 2000 the Archdiocese of Chicago announced that it had appointed the first official exorcist in its 160-year-history. This priest, whose name was withheld by the archdiocese to protect the privacy of those who consult him, has participated in at least nine exorcisms in Rome and now is evaluating over a dozen possible cases of demonic possession in Chicago. The Reverend James LeBar, one of four exorcists now serving the Archdiocese of New York, reports a sudden surge of exorcisms in his city, from none in 1990 to over three hundred in the decade that followed. Overall, the number of fulltime Roman Catholic exorcists has risen from just one several years ago to ten, with many other priests performing the ritual as part of their other religious duties, the way Bishop McKenna does.

  On September 7, 2000, Pope John Paul II held an exorcism for a nineteen-year-old Italian woman who had been possessed since childhood. The woman flew into a diabolically provoked rage during a public audience with the Pope in St. Peter’s Square, screaming in an unknown language. According to Father Amorth, a witness, her voice became “cavernous” and she exhibited superhuman strength during a struggle with security guards—telltale signs of possession. Touched by the woman’s suffering, the Pope hugged her and promised that he’d hold a ritual for her the following day. He spent nearly an hour praying over her and commanding the demon to leave but was unable to expel the evil force.

  After the papal exorcism failed, Father Amorth, president and founder of the International Association of Exorcists, who had been asked to consult on the case, spent two hours conducting his own exorcism. During the ceremony, the demon jeered at the Pope’s efforts, saying “Not even your [church] head can send me away.” Nor did the second ritual cure the woman. “This is a case where the possession is very, very strong,” Father Amorth reported. “From what can be foreseen by us exorcists, it will take years of exorcisms” to banish such a powerful demon that it could even resist the prayers of the Pope himself. The Pontiff, however, is said to have successfully exorcised another Italian woman in 1982.

  Although the Catholic Church has downplayed the role of exorcism in recent years, its revision of the Roman Ritual and the Pope’s own willingness to serve as an exorcist have affirmed that the nearly four-hundred-year-old ritual remains a very modern answer to the age-old problem of possession. Yet it can also be a dangerous undertaking because, as Father Martin says, when an exorcism fails—and the demon ultimately triumphs—all who participated in the ritual pay the price.

  Still skeptical? Let me tell you about the worst case of diabolic evil I’ve ever encountered and the toll it took on everyone involved. In May
of 1993, my partner Joe was in a terrible mood. He had a very bad headache, had just finished a rather annoying day at work, and was upset by a prediction a psychic we both knew had made a few days earlier: an attempt would be made on his life later that year. When the phone rang, he was greeted by a raspy, uneducated—and extremely familiar—male voice: “Having some problems, Joe?”

  Joe immediately went on red alert. Ever since the psychic’s prediction, he’d been expecting trouble—and here it was. This particular caller had an uncanny ability to sense when my partner was at a physical, emotional, or spiritual low—and he invariably chose those moments to get in touch. He was a New Jersey housepainter who, rather ironically, had the same name as the saint who drove Lucifer and his fallen angels out of heaven: Michael.

  This Michael, however, was anything but angelic: Although he looked like a frail old grandfather—with a thin, bony face; pointy white beard; and pale, almost translucent skin—he’d been possessed by an extremely powerful demon for many years. Joe knew all about Michael’s long ordeal since this was one of the first cases he’d investigated after entering the Work in 1986. My partner had also participated in two harrowing exorcisms for the housepainter—and paid a terrible price for his efforts to help, since he was almost killed during the first of these rituals.

  In the bland, guarded tone he used for polygraph exams of vicious criminals, Joe asked, “What can I do for you, Michael?”

  “I need another exorcism,” the painter said. “I’ll be in New York for a few days in September, so that would be a good time.”

  “Have things gotten worse for you?” my partner inquired, aware that the demon inside Michael had tormented him terribly after the previous exorcisms. At times the housepainter would suddenly become frozen in his footsteps, with a hideously contorted expression on his face, as the evil force suddenly seized control of his body—leaving him to stand there like a gargoyle until it released its grip.