Over Christmas, I dreamed I was possessed by an evil demon.
It might sound funny, but it was quite distressing, at the time. The girl is always concerned when I have bad dreams, and I think she thought me a little strange when I asked her to reassure me the next morning that she didn't think I was possessed. The lovely, obliging girl indulged me, but with a bit of a strange look. I guess it's like dreaming you're a penguin, then asking your partner to confirm they don't think you're a penguin. Or something fictional, like a unicorn -- since to me those are about as real as demons.
It would be slightly inaccurate to say I grew up in a Catholic household. I didn't. My parents sent me to a Catholic school, and attended church weekly -- although with decreasing frequency as my brother and I got older. But I don't think they ever believed it themselves, they were just repeating their own upbringings. Just the same, I was quite a literal child and always expected God to speak to me. I expected to physically hear God's voice, out loud, and I remember slight puzzlement that it never came. A lot of the parables I heard at school I took completely literally and on face value, so I think in some ways their messages were slightly lost on me.
I'm sure that my own Dad became entwined with God in my developing mind, as it must do with so many others (except with their own Fathers, it would be creepy if everyone associated mine with God) -- something I strongly disagree with.
As I got older, I stopped expecting to hear the voice of God. But in my teens I became convinced on a number of occasions that God was telling me things. I didn't hear a voice and believe it was God's, but I had thoughts or ideas and I believed them to be divinely inspired. Which is weird, since I had a very on-off relationship with any sort of belief. I would believe that God wanted me to do things like go to war-torn former-Yugoslavia to do aid work (thankfully not missionary work), or sometimes that I should go without food, or that I should hurt myself.
There were other times when ideas would come to me -- such completely abhorrent things -- that would seem so completely outside of my own thought processes, that I wondered if there really could be something outside of myself, giving me these thoughts. I wonder now how quickly a doctor would have put me on anti-psychotic medications if I had thought to tell them. Or anyone.
It worked the other way, too -- I have always felt as if anything creative came from outside of myself, short story writing sometimes felt more like automatic writing, I had no idea what was going to be written until I wrote it. The mind is a curious and mysterious thing.
I was left feeling distinctly uneasy following my dream of demonic possession. I didn't like to see my reflection, the dark circles under my eyes reminded me of my own evil reflection I had seen. At least if you dreamed you were a penguin someone could give you a mirror and a picture of a penguin, and leave you to work it out for yourself from there.
Many people still do believe literally in demonic possession -- feel that things like alcoholism or depression or self harm or drug abuse or murderous rages are all caused by an evil spirit, hitchhiking on our souls. My friend Jon was one of those people, to an extent -- until he abruptly lost his faith last year. His family's bookshelves contained modern day accounts of exorcisms and possessions -- you'll be glad to know I never felt compelled to read any of them. I'd be interested to know what he makes of them all now.
I watched an exorcism live on TV once. It was broadcast late one night on Channel 4, and had been debated and vilified in the press for weeks. A man suffering from various problems and who had been exorcised before (in part, it seems he had a lot of uninvited guests) was going to be 'cured' right before your eyes. It spent ages building up, then cut to an ad break. Before it restarted after the break, there was a warning that the following could contain distressing scenes, people of sensitive dispositions should turn off, all that kind of thing.
The exorcism itself lasted perhaps 30 seconds, and was less distressing than most kids' tv programmes. In fact, nothing appeared to happen. Words were said, hands laid on, then it was over -- "Do you feel better now?" "Yes thanks, I'll get my coat" was essentially it. Even the presenters were left a bit not knowing what to do next. All that was left was to try and fill the remaining time with debate and scientific analysis -- an EEG analysis of his brain was looked at closely, and a small spike of activity was identified as the exact point that the evil spirit left him.
I think they'd been hoping for screaming and spitting and shouting and...other things beginning with the letter S. The sufferer admitted that, yes, it was quick and uneventful, but that previous exorcisms he'd had were much more exciting...
You'd have thought he could have at least put on a bit of a show.
Anything is possible
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