To promote the new film, Devil’s Due, the marketing team decided to introduce unsuspecting New York pedestrians to the star of the film via a remote-controlled stroller and the animatronic spawn of Satan.
Three girls have assembled into a team of exorcists led by the father of one of the girls. It’s Charlie’s Angels meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the Exorcist.
Well…there’s that…click play.
[Vice]
Who ya gonna call when someone you know or love or even yourself is suffering from demonic possession?
Answer? Not the Ghostbusters.
No. You’re going to call the Catholic Church. Not because the Ghostbusters are a fictional group of ghost-catching celebrities who can’t get their act together for that long-awaited third film.
You’ll be calling because the church is offering the service in the real world and the big clincher in our recession-slammed economy…it’s free.
The Catholic Church’s largest diocese is located in Milan is now offering exorcisms over-the-phone.
Chief exorcist Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni has recently doubled the amount of people manning the phones because of the increasing level of possession.
“We get many requests for names, addresses and phone numbers; that’s why we’ve set up a switchboard in the curia from Monday to Friday from 2.30pm to 5pm. People in need can call and will be able to find a priest in the same area who doesn’t have to travel too far.”
Monsignor says that most of the calls that come in are simply parents of disobedient teens that are dealing with typical disobedient teen stuff and that the actual phenomena of demonic possession are rare. Other calls from parents claiming their child is possessed are, sadly, simply children with psychiatric or mental disorders.
We’re just wondering when the app will drop.
The University of Oxford’s Internet Institute has analyzed Google search patterns and discovered that there are places in the United States where there are more people searching for zombies and satan than for Santa Claus.
“a few pockets including just outside the San Francisco Bay and Seattle and the cities Houston, Dallas and Austin in Texas have a lot of zombie angst. Hmmm…it might be the only things these places are in agreement on. But one of the more interesting clusters runs from Tampa to Orlando Florida….home of Disney World. Sort of makes sense in a way. Also of interest is a thin band of zombies stretched out along the Eastern seaboard, west of most of the major metropolitan areas.”
Check out the Satan cluster around Tampa Bay; I am going to have to start watching my neighbors a little more closely. You can download the data here and find your own patterns.
[Floating Sheep via Gizmodo]
If you think American schools have problems, take a look at Botswana:
Schools in Botswana are infested with devil worshippers … Operating more like drug-dealers, they get instructions from up the rungs of the ladder of Satanism. And travelling to meet their leaders is not an issue as they can simply summon a slice of bread, a needle, a blanket or mealie meal bag and instruct it to take them to the depths of the ocean where they hold meetings with their leaders and receive instructions. The girls even have the power to resurrect dead bodies after they exhume them and then take them along to the meetings in the ocean. … The devil worshippers said they often find willing recruits among youngsters because they are fond of alcohol and always engaged in brawls after bingeing. At school, devil worshippers are encouraged and even participate in fights in which blood ends up being shed. Then, when nobody sees them, they lap up the blood of the protagonists.
An underwater conspiracy of portkey-wielding schoolgirls who are obsessed with the dark arts are terrorizing the impoverished African nation. Neither The Boy Who Lived nor You Know Who could be reached for comment.
According to statements released during a recent conference on the phenomenon of Satanism at Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome, there has been a surge in requests for exorcists which correlates with the rise of the Internet. The claim is that the web has increased access to information which has, in turn, increased the number of satanists. People love to Google the devil.
I will be the first to admit that my knowledge about demon possession and exorcism is sorely lacking and based on horrible sources. Most of my exorcism knowledge revolves around what I saw in Constantine and I am pretty sure all we need is a mirror and maybe an alcoholic priest. However, I am not sure how an increase in the number of satanists increases the number of demon possessions? Are the satanists putting demons into people? I always just kind of assumed they were independent contractors and possessed whoever they wanted. Maybe being a satanist increases your chances for possession.
How can you tell if your loved one is possessed by a demon and needs a professional exorcist?
“That could be indicated by radical and disturbing changes in the person’s behaviour and voice, or an ability to garble in foreign languages or nonsensical gibberish.”
OK, that might not work for all cases; how can you tell if your loved one is possessed by a demon and not just drunk?
“Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron, scream, dribble and slobber, utter blasphemies and have to be physically restrained.”
Vomiting shards of glass and iron. Got it, thanks.
The man told police that he set the room on fire because Satan was in there, according to the affidavit. He reportedly said he wanted to protect “the good people” by setting the fire.
Who’s got two thumbs and wants to get all up in some sacred Mayan pools once believed to be portals to the underworld where offerings were dropped down to appease the evil forces waiting below?
These guys!
Steering clear of crocodiles and navigating around massive submerged trees, a team of divers began mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, which were important to the ancient Maya. In three weeks this May, the divers found fossilized animal remains, bits of pottery and — in the largest pool explored — an enormous underwater cave.
Would it be totally against the rules to leave a burger while you’re down there, you know, just in case?
You know, we tend to lionize our cultural demon hunters: Van Helsing, Simon Belmont, Buffy Summers.
But you want to know when we don’t celebrate those who locate paranormal evil and vanquish it? When the acts of holy vengence look strangely like encouraging a populace to scar and murder their children because they cry too much.
Enter Helen Ukpabio, she is a Nigerian Pentacostal preacher who has made a reputation the world over for identifying children whose souls have been corrupted by Satan. She makes movies like the one you see above and her work is partly to blame for the trend in certain Nigerian villages to identify, beat, torture and sometimes murder children who are thought to be possessed by Satan.
And she’s here in America!
“Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh.
Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.
Such a screwed up story…
HEADLINE: Wilmington blue laws help block Satan’s progress
Wilmington Morning Star: Friday May 18th, 1984
Santa Maria Stella Maris church in Fiumicino, Italy has decided to stop offering holy water for members of the public to bless with, amid fears that the water may be being stolen for satanic purposes. Walter Palombi, Parish Priest told Italian Newspapers that:
“We have motives to believe that these are used for a ‘black mass’ (satanic mass). Usually the person who carries out these practices needs items that are ‘blessed’ as well as holy water.”
So no more holy water for the faithful Italians of Fiumicino. Satanic ritual scares became popular in Italy during the 1980’s and 90’s, more recently in 2004, fears of satanic ritual cults have sprung up again.
What you see above is The Devil’s Millhopper, a genuine hellmouth (according to local legend) which has been the centuries-old site of sacrifice and kidnapping for Beelzebub’s benefit. It also looks like a Northwest Florida hole in the ground.
Weird Things investigated the sinkhole for itself this weekend. What we found were tales of princesses, lavender people, tears and glory-thieving aliens.
Read it all… AFTER THE JUMP.
