I was teaching the boy about the wonders of demonic possession, which I then proved to him with the science of photography.
No, we're not allowed to fuck kids up the way they did in the 70s. I remember going to the drive-in movies with my mom and brother and watching The Shining. I was about 12 years old. This is a film about a father that loses his shit and decides to try to kill his whole family.
And you wonder, dear readers, whatever happened to boy Sean?
Well, it was that and a bunch of other shit. The 70s and 80s were the heyday for filling kids' heads with irrational and horrible fears. It all started with Rosemary's Baby, dabbled with Catholicism a bit in The Exorcist, then seemed to hit its high water mark with the Freddy Krueger fellow.
I doubt that many people get possessed any more. There's not enough free time and headspace for it. It requires leisure hours to burn to correctly conduct a demonic dalliance. People are too worried about actual horrors and threats to get involved in anything that requires any priestly extermination. I'm sure there are studies out there that will soon be used to legislate against letting kids watch that sort of nonsense any more. Our politicians care so deeply about destroying the minds of children.
I used to suffer recurring sleep paralysis. It was terrifying, as if the weight of something dreadful and invisible was sitting on top of me. It felt as if I was awake, but it must have happened in the nether space between dreams and waking. I would try to scream in my sleep but couldn't make any noise. Witches would creep out of the shadows of my mind and scratch my teeth and ears and eyes with their fingernails. I could hear their venomous whisperings. One bent down and bit my teeth, which broke off in her mouth as she laughed, mine filled with the taste of blood. I felt poison seeping into my bloodstream. Then I might fall back to a sleep that I believed to be death, or would wake in a startled, frightened panic.
I was young - not quite sure what I believed then, but I remember believing lots of it.
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