Halloweek, Day Five: Could It Be Satan?

Today, I can watch most horror movies and laugh them off. In my teens, I saw all the Friday the 13th movies and rooted for Jason. But the ideas of Satan, of demons, and possession… yeah, that's not funny.

My mom raised my brother and me as fundamentalist for a time. I'm not sure how much it affected him — he was seven or eight — but I bit down on it hard. I was a fervent, devout little believer. I had a Sunday School teacher who told us how the Devil once appeared at the threshold of her bedroom door. While this would make more sense once I finally read Freud, at the time, I believed in the physical reality of Satan; I believed in it as much as I did gravity or weather.

This had consequences.

My father did not go along with us on our trips to church. Which is why, perhaps, for reasons known only to himself, decided it would be OK if I watched The Exorcist with him when it was first broadcast on network TV. I was about nine. I don't remember much about that night, except for the Vietnam-type flashbacks I get whenever I see the movie listed on the channel guide.

I was actually starting to get into horror movies — especially the cheesy sci-fi kind — when Satan struck again. I was 12 or 13, my church youth group got a lecture from an expert on "back-masking." Randy, my best friend then and now, listened to Motley Crue and had a protective armor of sarcasm and irony. He knew it was bullshit. I didn't. I remember all the blood draining out of my head, feeling nauseous, and leaving the room. One of the youth group leaders followed me to another classroom. I was climbing the walls. Here was this massive Satanic conspiracy, and everyone else just sat there. How could anyone rest when the Devil was infiltrating our brains? He tried to calm me down. Just as I was starting to feel better, however, he launched right into the entire spiel again, telling me all the hidden messages glorifying Satan in the works of even most innocuous groups. The example he gave was "Hotel California."

Great. I was going to Hell because I listened to the Eagles. Seemed a bit harsh.

I got over it, eventually.

But as an adult, there's only one book that I've actually had to put down (and then, put under another book) due to outright fear: Malachi Martin's Hostage to the Devil.

It's a supposedly true account of modern-day exorcisms by a former Catholic priest, and it is unbelievably terrifying to a lapsed fundamentalist like myself. Martin is a talented and intelligent writer — for the most part, everything is delivered deadpan, with a calm acceptance that makes the subject all the more eerie. Satan and his minions do things that are vicious and quite tangible — this isn't the namby-pamby kind of exorcism you'll see in some churches, the ones where they wrestle with demons of obesity or gossiping or infidelity. These are monsters that lurk inside the eyes of real people, drowning all that is good and human in them. Martin writes that the primary motivator of these demons is hatred: they despise us for the simple fact of our existence.

Today I read and watch all kinds of truly disturbing stuff, both fiction and non-fiction. If it's really great, effective story-telling, it will haunt me for a while, likeThe Mist (story and film) The Ring (which was partially filmed at my old employer, the Orange County Register; is like, 19 inches tall in heels). Some movies key into my particular phobias and kinks so effectively that I can't even watch them, no matter how fantastic everyone tells me they are (I'm looking at you here, Slither. Sorry.)

Obviously, I'm no longer a fundamentalist. And I don't scare as easy as I used to. I don't believe the line that Halloween is a demonic trick to sucker children into devil worship. (If you don't like celebrating pagan holidays, I have some bad news for you about Christmas.) I'm currently in the middle of a bunch of research on Satanic cults and cult-related murders and conspiracies, which is probably why this is on my mind this Halloween. In my free time, I've been reading Gillian Flynn's Dark Places, about a woman who's the sole survivor of a Satanic massacre allegedly committed by her brother. While my research is gruesome, and Flynn's novel is excellent, neither one gives me nightmares.

But if you think I will so much as touch Hostage To The Devil anywhere near Oct. 31, you are out of your freaking mind.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go bury my copy under a couple more books.