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Animals of the Mind
With the tenth week came a topic not often discussed with this sort of thing. Indeed, it was quite unusual.
"On March 25th, 1975, a jury filed back into the courtroom at Leeds Crown Court in England and delivered a verdict in a tragic murder trial, a trial filled with accounts of witchcraft, demonic possession and supernatural violence so horrifying in its intensity that court officials said it reminded them of the blackest excesses of the Middle Ages." Well, unusual might have not been the right choice of words. However given what Ken had previously covered it was in a way unusual: cryptids, the extraterrestrial, the unexplained. Now they were moving into something purely magical but it would be something the citizens of Norrisville were well familiar with, thus why not many would be watching. "The crime? Michael Taylor, a tall, thin, thirty-one year old unemployed British farm laborer of limited education, stumbled out of a Barnsley church in October, 1974, shivering and exhausted after undergoing a seven-hour, all-night exorcism ritual during which he had seen forty of his own 'personal devils' cast out by two British clergymen. Two hours later he attacked his wife at home and, convinced that she too was possessed by devils, murdered her quickly but bloodily with his bare hands. The verdict? The English jury, after hearing the bizarre testimony regarding Michael Taylor's gradual decline into the pit of demons, the subsequent rites of clerical exorcism in which he participated and the incredible act which he committed only hours later, found him not guilty by reasons of insanity. The judge ordered him sent to Broadmoor Prison for the insane. Taylor's slide into the dark netherworld of demons and Satanic possession is only one aspect of the modern wave of fascination with the occult which has swept the world in the last sixty-one years. Not many of us have flown over the plains of Nazca and wondered if we were looking down at a message to space-suited gods. Not many of us have climbed a high snowy pass in the Himalayas and shiveringly wondered, 'Yeti?' as we gazed upon mysterious tracks. But many of us have confronted monsters in our own minds. Old beliefs die hard, even in this modern age of skepticism. Today, you will find serious people involved in complex occult and psychic arenas stretching from black magic all the way to the edges of the 'white magic' of science, such as the extrasensory-perception experiment in which astronaut Edgar Mitchell attempted to communicate thought to earth from Apollo 14. Michael Taylor's path was bleak all the way, but it started innocently enough. Happily married to Christine Taylor, the twenty-nine year old 'darling of his life,' Taylor had a great deal going for him. He had five young sons, a devoted wife, loving parents, a good job on a northern English farm, But the economic crunch came along and his life began to slip away from him. It could have happened to anyone. First he lost his job. A man without work is a man without a paycheck, and with a wife and children to support, the walls begin to close in quickly. Taylor tried to find work, but there just weren't any lobs open. He fell into a state of depression, watching his wife and sons trying to make do on the little they had. Taylor turned to religion for comfort."
In the kitchen, there was once more a card game in due part to a visitation. The players were Mort, Cerdic and Rick while Heidi watched and listened to Rick speak.
"I met Gerald Lankester Harding many times, I knew him well in fact." Stated Rick. "He was a family friend and I was there with him when he excavated the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found."
"That's fascinating, Rick, now will you please finish shuffling the cards?" asked Mort. Rick had been shuffling the cards for the past thirty-three minutes and both Mort and Cerdic would just wish he would finish shuffling them already.
"And when I was eight I was present for the Exorcism of Roland Doe. William S. Bowdern objected to me being there but my father insisted, stating there was a thing far worse haunting our family than what was possessing Roland."
"You mean Moloch, don't you?" asked Heidi.
"That I do." Replied Rick.
"What was he?" asked Heidi.
"Well, I have encountered Owlmen almost everywhere except for some parts of the Arctic and all of Antarctica."
"There aren't any owls in Antarctica." Commented Mort.
"Exactly!" exclaimed Rick.
"Then they must only exist where owls their smaller cousin live." Continued Mort.
"My thoughts exactly." Added Rick. "However, I have encountered the same questions ever time. Mass hysteria or is there something to be afraid of? Alien or animal? Harbinger or hallucination? Of course, the thing I've noticed most is Moloch was seven feet tall while every other Owlman I've encountered was five feet in height."
"Well, what does that mean?" asked Cerdic. "That he really was a god?"
"I don't know." Replied Rick. "If that is what you believe then let it be what you believe but I can't help but wonder if he was if his name was that of a Phoenician god whom children were sacrificed to. Still, if others have names or if he was the only one is something that can make you wonder. Are these people as we think of people or something else entirely? I know they are not mass hysteria or hallucinations but still I wonder."
But still Ken was on the subject of Taylor. "The Reverend Vincent, concerned at what he had seen, sought the advice and help of a Methodist minister in the area, Reverend Raymond Smith. Together, they decided Taylor might be demonically possessed by Satan, by some strong force of evil which would react to nothing but some prolonged rite of exorcism. On the evening of October…"