Probably everyone has heard about the poltergeist. Judging by the publications in newspapers and magazines, this "noisy spirit" appearing in apartments is engaged in quite peaceful pranks: hiding things, swinging chandeliers, tapping with the owners. Sometimes, however, he begins to misbehave, throws vegetables, adds water to the bed or swears in a hoarse voice on the phone.
- Is it true that a poltergeist is such a funny and safe phenomenon, as they write about it? - I appeal to the head of the Demonology Center, Igor Vladimirovich VINOKUROV, who has been dealing with the phenomenon of poltergeist for many years.
- No. Whoever or whatever is behind the poltergeist is far from a harmless phenomenon; it leaves an indelible mark on the souls and hearts of people who have come into contact with this dark phenomenon. I am often disturbed by the thought whether it should not be viewed as a disease, albeit extremely unusual. Speaking of illness, I do not mean secondary symptoms, when a person who finds himself in the epicenter of a poltergeist falls ill as a result of the shocks he experienced. We are talking about the strange harbingers of this phenomenon: the state of health and lifestyle of its future carriers.
- What do you mean by the words "carriers" of a poltergeist?
- It has been noticed that a poltergeist most often attacks adolescents living in single-parent families, elderly people deprived of family warmth, or a person who, for one reason or another, is cut off from his family: in the army, in prison, in a monastery, and so on.
The future carrier of this dark phenomenon will usually have serious physical or mental health problems. Most often, the observed physical loneliness is only a consequence of mental loneliness. Obviously, there is some other reason why this attack falls on unfortunate and lonely people, but we do not know about it.
- You spoke about the disease preceding the poltergeist. What did you mean?
“Having studied this phenomenon for a long time, I noticed that despite all the variety of poltergeist cases, they can be combined into two large groups -“teenage”and“demonic”. The American researcher D. Rogo drew attention to the same feature.
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The center of the first group is usually teenagers. The phenomenon itself, which, as a rule, arises in their presence, does not go beyond the physical capabilities and intelligence of the adolescent and is more often reduced to the movement of objects.
The demonic poltergeist looks completely different. He is more violent, often carries an independent and, at times, evil will. During it, heavy objects appear and disappear, there are "attacks" on certain people, human levitation.
Unusual and often very sophisticated forms of behavior, manifested in demonic-type poltergeists and often completely independent of the host, resemble the phenomenon called "obsession" by the church.
- Explain, please, what is it?
- The most detailed description of obsession is in the writings of the Roman Catholic Fathers. Demonic entities - demons - make themselves felt in two ways: "invasion" and "possession." Intrusion means inexplicable sounds, smells, noises, movement of objects, i.e. the same effects we just talked about.
Obsession is manifested in the fact that people in whom the demons are possessed are convulsed, shouting blasphemous and obscene words, etc. Today, this disease is being treated by the department of psychiatry. In the old days, the spiritual departments were officially engaged in it. And, I must say, with a much greater effect. Fortunately, these days they have not lost their art and often constitute a very serious competitor to scientists from psychiatry.
Jesus' casting out of the devil from the possessed person is described in the New Testament. In the 16th century, the rite of healing the possessed was described in detail in the missal of the Kiev Metropolitan Peter Mohyla. He became the compiler of the rite, later called the ritual of exorcism.
- Is this medieval ritual performed in our enlightened age?
- I can give a large number of examples of this. The most typical case is the struggle with the obsession of a thirteen-year-old boy in the American city of Georgetown in the late 1950s.
It all started with a seance. After him, sometimes incomprehensible knocks and scratches began to be heard, emanating from the icon with the image of Christ. At the next stage, the poltergeist began to disappear, later appearing in the most unexpected places, clothes. In the presence of the boy, a chair turned over, objects flew up and floated around the room. The boy began to rise into the air directly from the bed, sometimes together with the mattress, and "floated" on it. The child was asked to be picked up from school. Doctors examined him carefully, but found no pathology.
Concerned parents invited priests, and they diagnosed obsession. The boy was shaken by convulsions, he resembled a doll controlled by invisible threads. After six weeks, the seizures stopped. But the boy changed dramatically. He spoke now in a low, hoarse bass with menacing intonations, uttering only obscenities.
A Lutheran priest who entered the house was thrown to the floor by an invisible force. The boy's parents converted to the Catholic Church. The exorcism ritual lasted ten weeks. The forty-kilogram boy scattered the clergy with extraordinary ease. His body was incredibly swollen, the movements of his head resembled those of a snake, the air in the room where he was lying suddenly became very cold. Once, having escaped from the hands of the priests, the boy snatched out a ritual book, flew over them and in an instant, in an incomprehensible way, turned it into a cloud of "confetti".
Yet the labors of the ministers of the church were not in vain. The boy was returned to his normal state, but he did not remember anything about what had happened to him recently.
True, the exorcism ritual does not always end happily, especially if it is performed by non-professionals. In 1991, in one of the small towns of Italy, priest Guntano Vigliotti was killed while trying to heal a fifteen-year-old girl without the bishop's blessing. When the girl's mother entered the room two hours after the beginning of the exorcism session, she found the body of the unfortunate priest, tortured with inhuman strength and cruelty.
- The cases you are talking about contradict common sense. Do you yourself believe that the devil can take over the body of a person and that it can be driven out with the help of prayer?
- I can answer you with the words of one of the modern theologians: the greatest achievement of Satan today should be considered the fact that he managed to make us forget about his existence … You can believe in the ritual of exorcism, you can not believe it. But if, God forbid, an attack of obsession falls on someone from your friends or relatives, do not rush to seek help from the police or put the person in a mental hospital. Go to church.
Author: M. Kostin
