Visions and Revelations

In the last post on my timeline, I talked at the end about how during one of the tent revival services I was asked to take the children into the house and babysit them.

The weird staring and glaring from my Mom and her best friend got worse and worse. I started to feel paranoid, like they were watching me all the time. Then, one night, I sat down to the dinner table and Mom and Dad told me that they needed to talk to me.

They told me that I was possessed by a demon. They said that during that tent revival service, the preachers (Mom, her best friend, and her friend's husband) had cast it out of her best friend's son, and that the demon left the tent looking for another body to enter, and came in the house and found me. They said that it was a rebellious demon that found me inviting because of the way I'd been expressing anger against wearing dresses, going to church all the time, and being taken out of public school. They said that I needed to be aware of this because it would affect my reactions to anything Godly until they could get it cast out.

Then, my Mom proceeded to tell me about all the visions her and her best friend had about me. They had a vision of me being raped due to my rebellion of wanting to wear pants (keep in mind that I was 9 at this time) and they gave me graphic detail of this vision. They told me they could see demons running around in my bedroom that were attracted there because of the demon in me. They said that my wanting to spend so much time at non-apostolic family member's houses had contributed to my rebellious spirit inviting in the demon. They also told me the demon's name, what it looked like, and that it was a fallen soul - a rebellious teenage girl that went to hell and became a demon. There were more "revelations", but you get the general idea.

As you can imagine, by this point I was terrified. I was afraid to talk to my family, I was afraid to be around my little sister. I stopped going anywhere and stayed home all the time (as much as I had the choice to), and alone most of the time, wondering how many of my thoughts were really my own and how many were coming from the demon.

Occasionally Mom would "address the demon" instead of me. I'd be walking along and she'd suddenly jump in front of me and say "(Demon's name) you want to hit me don't you! Go ahead and slap me, I dare you!". I didn't know what to do when this would happen. I'd try to turn and walk away, but she'd grab me by the shoulders and hold me in front of her. I'd say "Mom I don't know what you want me to do!". Eventually when the 'demon' didn't respond she'd give up.

Plans were being made to "cast it out".