22 Jan The Ouija Floor

Posted at 11:00h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on January 22, 2025

“The Ouija Floor”

Written by Dale Thompson
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

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🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 19 minutes

Rating: 9.33/10. From 3 votes.

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Reverend Marshall Tucker was a godly man. He was fierce behind the pulpit, uplifting the name of the Lord and scolding sinners where they sat. His sermons were often too lengthy, but he had a built-in drive that he called the Holy Ghost, which he claimed spoke through him straight from the throne of God. His reputation as God’s right-hand man was notorious in these parts, and any church would have been proud to have had him as their pastor. He was a minister of truth and did not entertain foolishness. He had inspired many in his congregation to act mindfully, and through his perseverance, he had built several churches earlier in his life before his age began to show. In his younger years, he had held many foot-stomping, hand-raising, spirit-shouting, roof-raising revivals.

There came a day when Reverend Tucker’s life drastically changed. Being a man of God, he was in tune with the world of spirits, both good and evil. He believed in speaking in tongues, laying hands on the sick and expelling demons. He had warned others, imploring them not to mess with the old devil because Satan was real, and unless you knew what you were doing, he would get the best of you before you knew it. He often quoted the Bible verse, “For we are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age.”

The Reverend had endured his share of spiritual warfare against the principalities and powers and the prince of the power of the air and all sorts of demonic forces. Reverend Tucker had been labeled a Holy Roller or a Pentecostal. He did not care for those labels because they frightened and put off many within the more dignified and conservative aspects of Christianity. Regardless of what others believed about him, he pursued God feverishly, always believing himself to be unworthy of the grace that he had been shown and undeserving of the blessings that had been bestowed upon him. He prided himself on the fact that he was a “sinner saved by grace.”

The Reverend shared his life with his wife, Holly, who adored her husband and shared the same convictions as he did. Their splendid, committed life of church building and unifying congregations came to an abrupt stop one winter day right before Christmas. Instead of joy and goodwill toward man, their world was turned upside down and rocked by a series of unexplainable events.

Initially, the day began as any other day, with a light breakfast and coffee followed by their morning devotional, where they would read Bible scripture and briefly discuss what they had read. Afterward, the Reverend decided to tend to some matters in the garage, mainly organizing his tools, which he had recently used but not stowed away properly, and Holly had an entire day of house cleaning that she was going to occupy herself with.

Reverend Tucker was alone in his garage, placing tools back in their allotted places. An unfamiliar sound piqued his curiosity and drew his interest away from the job at hand. The noise was a shuffling, a subdued but audible rattling from across the garage and seemed to have come from a cabinet where he had his long tools such as a weed trimmer, his rakes, hoe, and shovels.

He and his wife had only lived in this house for two weeks since it was a fixer-upper, and admittedly, he had not explored every nook and cranny. As a matter of fact, as he recalled, he did not initially take a look into this cabinet at all when he decided to put his lawn tools inside of it. He never would have noticed a den or nest of birds, mice, or rats, but then again, he wasn’t looking for any such thing. Now, he wished he had been more conscientious when he had moved things into the garage.

There came upon him an irresistible desire to investigate the sound. Any other time under the same circumstances, he would not have bothered to look unless it had repeated the dull, muted, clanging noise, but, on this occasion, there was an ever-growing conviction in him not to brush this off as a fluke. It could have been a simple thing, such as something related to a rat possibly scampering about. He had trapped a couple of rats that had nested in the garage before. Where there was one rat, you could be assured there were likely to be a dozen more.

He considered that it could be the force of gravity taking hold of an improperly secured shovel, and that over time the tool had slipped from its hook. Stirred with peculiar motivations, the Reverend went directly to the cabinet. The door was locked, but the Reverend had the key somewhere on his multi-key ring, which he kept attached to his belt. After a bit of fumbling about, unable to immediately locate the correct key, he had the key secured between his thumb and forefinger.

The key was tight, and slipping it into the allotted slot took some effort. He made a mental note to oil the lock and went to twist the key clockwise when another more clamorous sound resonated from inside the wooden upright box. He held off twisting the key in the lock and reflexively took a step back and gave it a good listen. He was convinced that there was something alive inside the cabinet, and being the case, he held off on his inquiry and glanced around for any sort of defensive weapon. He was somewhat experienced when it came to woodland creatures, and he knew that if spooked, some could deliver a powerfully painful bite. He was about to become impatient and enter a place angels might fear to tread. Now was not the time to be hurried or impulsive. This would call for some reflection before he proceeded.

On the one hand, he had the bravery and imputes simply to swing open the door and deal with the consequences, but on the other hand, after running some unfavorable scenarios through his head, he opted to find a hammer as a backup plan just in case if, what was ever lurking and diligently rummaging about might see him as a threat and attack him there on the spot. He struggled with extremely vague intimidations because he could not imagine what was prowling around uninvited in the cabinet. He listened closer, differentially he leaned his ear up to the wooden door. He was slightly enticed to lay his ear on the door itself but reasoned he was close enough. Whatever had prompted him thus far was no longer stirring inside.

He found himself holding his breath when something jostled inside again. This gave him some positive reinforcement and a clear incentive to move forward and complete the turning of the key. It was a bold move on his part because he was about to initiate contact with the unknown. His curiosity was burning bright inside of him, so much so that he felt he might explode unless he was able to appease and placate the situation reasonably with pure logic.

The lock snapped open, and he gently eased the door back on tired, squeaky hinges. Preparing himself for the worst-case scenario, he tightened his grip on the handle of the hammer, and with artificial boldness and an unshakable curiosity, he tilted his head to one side, allowing the light from the overhead lamp in the garage to shine inside of the tool cabinet.

His tools were all in the place where he had remembered hanging them on hooks. Being more acutely aware, he espied a shelf above the tools to which he had paid no mind. He reached up and, with his bare hand, felt around on the shelf, which was higher than his eyesight, and his fingers crossed over a book. He removed it from its dusty hideout and laid it down on the workbench. The book was not thick; it had a brown leather binding, and its spine was soft and limp. He cleaned away the layer of dust and grit with a handkerchief he was never without, and the cover had an inscription in an unfamiliar language burned into it.

He opened the book without taking time to attempt a translation of words he had no knowledge of. Inside the first page was a hand-drawn image of a man with the head of a jackal. There was more text which, by his surmise, might be Egyptian. He had never studied Latin but could recognize Latin when he saw it, and this was not Latin. As he casually flipped through pages, he recognized Egyptian symbols, cemetery plots, temples, and many symbols that one might expect to see in a museum. Intrigued, mainly due to its age, he carried the book with him into the house to show Holly what he had found.

Holly was repulsed by the book and told him she felt evil resonating from it and was not comfortable having it in the house.

“Just for a little while, then I will take it back to the garage. I want to see if I can research it and find out what it is and where it came from. It might be worth some money,” Reverend Tucker said.

“I am telling you there is something dark about it. I do not want to be around it,” Holly emphatically protested.

“I am going out to the garden. When I come back in, you better have your research done. It gives me the creeps,” she said as she left the room, visibly irritated.

Reverend Tucker was not the type of man who would normally delve into the macabre; however, he had never seen such a book as this one. He brought the book with him into his study, and he placed it on his reading desk, where he did his Bible studies before ministering. Being a nondenominational preacher meant that, along with his faith, he also had some superstitious safeguards built into his beliefs for divine protection. He laid a hand upon the book and prayed that God would protect him from the evil–if evil did, in fact, exist within its parchment paper. He asked God to give him wisdom, knowledge, and righteous insight so that he could read the book and understand its mysteries.

The major thing that the good Reverend failed to pray about is the unspeakable drawing of fear that comes with opening up a universe of the unknown. This form of fear cannot be so easily managed and repelled after it has sunk its baited hooks into the weakness of the flesh. Flesh and blood cannot discern such depths of depravity, and the more the book unveiled itself to the Reverend, the more it shared unspeakable, damnable revelations to his heart. Regardless of the deep blackness that it bore, it was strangely voluptuous and alluring even to the saintly man. The Reverend had always prided himself on his ability to resist temptation and to shun evil. It was improbable for such a spirit-filled man to become seduced by even the hint of mysteriousness associated with the occult and demonic forces.

Through the use of the Internet and some deep searches, Reverend Tucker managed to extract certain words from this ancient book. Words such as ‘Necropolis,’ which, as far as he could understand, had something to do with cemeteries, and some character named Anubis who appeared as some type of funeral director. The language was nearly impenetrable, and the text was thick with lettering that he had no schooling in. He knew he was out of his league and needed someone who was versed in Egyptian studies to guide him through this written account. He prayed that he would not be condemned for desiring to look further into these writings, but something inside of him was like a magnet pulling from the book. He even considered that he was making this more than it was, and it was plausible that this was a superficial invention intended to throw uneducated minds such as his off. He did not want to be misled or to drop down into a rabbit hole quite impossible to escape, but if this writing contained secrets concerning his enemy, the devil, he certainly wanted to extract them for his own personal use. As a man who kept himself immersed in spiritual warfare, Reverend Tucker was convinced that this cryptic book might add to his esoteric arsenal of the arcane metaphysical and undetermined supernatural.

There was, however, one aspect of the book that did not coincide nor correlate with the Egyptian theme of the text and illustrations. On the very last page, someone had crudely drawn a diagram of a Ouija board. Another oddity was that there were flecked stains on this page that were most likely blood. This in itself led him to believe that someone else other than the originator had been in possession of the book and possibly had delved into mystic layers, attempting to unlock the secrets. It made no sense that he had found it in the most impractical place.

Realizing that he could go no further in his research, he opted to phone a colleague from ages ago who had been delivered from the occult and set his path toward Biblical matters.

Glen Michael Sherrard had been invested in the occult for years when he had what he described as his “Silas experience,” and he was confronted by a great light that caused him to instantly denounce his former association with wickedness and embrace a new life of love and forgiveness. Reverend Tucker had been ministering in a small country church when Glen stumbled in one day, and the rest is history.

Glen was happy to hear from Reverend Tucker and agreed to visit him right away. Glen warned the Reverend not to open the book again until he arrived. His warning was more of an admonition and sounded severe. Shortly thereafter, Holly entered the Reverend’s study. The Reverend had the book in plain sight upon his writing desk. The Reverend himself had stepped out. Holly timidly approached the desk, her eyes fixed on the book. She became angry, seeing that her husband had not properly disposed of the book as she had requested he do. At first, her reluctance to go near the book was strong. As the fearful feeling subsided, however, she walked to the back of the desk and peered down at its cover with much reservation.

The longer she stared down at the cover, the more her concern grew, but at the same time, as this bout of apprehensiveness swelled in her chest, there was a temptation to touch the book. She shook her head as if to say no, while at the same time, her hand with a pointed index finger was nudging forward toward the cover. Something unstoppable was occurring spontaneously without deliberation. Her finger brushed the cover of the book. Something unseen awakened in the room as her finger grazed the cover ever so softly and, in enveloping suffocation, clamped down upon Holly insomuch that she found it impossible to resist.

The atmosphere around her grew stagnant, and she would have been hysterical if possible. In a fit of repugnance, she attempted to cry out for help, but she was unable to gather any air whatsoever. With intuitive regret, which came too late to prevent this unexplainable occurrence, her fight or flight response came too late. She closed her eyes in utter loneliness, believing this may be for the very last time. Unable to spur herself along, her sheer desperation sank into a hopeless refrain in unendurable, inescapable dread.

Reverend Tucker answered the door after hearing the bell chime. He met Glen with a smile yet somberly with an abundance of worry on his mind.

Glen was a tall, lean, blonde-haired man with a nicely trimmed mustache. He was smartly dressed in a suit jacket and t-shirt, which suited his presentation perfectly.

“Good to see you, Marshall,” Glen always called the Reverend by his first name.

Marshall and he shook hands, and Glen was led inside. He followed the Reverend nearly wordlessly to the study, where Glen immediately sensed something strange in the air. He paused and scanned the room carefully.

“Something is off in the room,” Glen alerted the Reverend.

“What do you mean?”

“I sense a spiritual tension, and it is wound tightly,” Glen revealed, as keen as ever in the spirit realm.

There was an airlessness about the room, which Glen was zeroed in on, but the Reverend was unconscious of this fact.

Glen elaborated. “There is a newness, a primary stench as if a gateway has been opened and something toxic has leaked out, lingering for only a moment then immediately dissipating or retreating back from where it came from. There is a restlessness attached to this room, something unresolved, momentary, yet it has left a trace.”

Reverend Tucker attempted to connect with the sensation, but he was unable to, not being as incisive as Glen in such erudite matters.

“This kind of stillness often presages something far greater, whether it is intrinsically good or truly bad. There is expectancy within this silence, a mounting fascination that I recognize and, in the past, had grown accustomed to. Something irresistible has visited this room in your absence. I sense a dreary finality, profoundly cruel in intent and strong enough to try the patience of any virtuous person who came in contact with it.” Glen’s words frightened the Reverend. Glen approached the book, which rested in the exact place where it had been left. Glen took a close look at the cover.

“I take it you have handled the book with your bare hands?” Glen asked.

“Yes, was that a bad thing?” asked the Reverend.

“I do not wish to sound like a smart-aleck, but, no, you should have not touched the book.”

“Is it bad?” Reverend Tucker asked.

Glen’s next question sent shivers up both their spines. “Where is your wife? Where is Holly?”

The Reverend turned as white as a ghost and, in a frantic search, began to call out her name and searched each room in a fury of breathless distress.

Seeing how frazzled the Reverend had become, Glen eventually reached out to him, taking him firmly by the shoulders and bringing him back from delirium with some words of encouragement. “Nothing is eternally lost just because you do not see it. We must be smart and figure out where to look.”

Once the Reverend’s fervid emotions cooled slightly, his temporary insupportable breakdown resolved itself, and he began thinking more clearly, ready to receive instructions.

“Tell me, what can I do?”

Glen reached into his suit jacket and withdrew from deep pockets a pair of gloves. With gloved hands, he opened the book and began to probe its indiscernible message. The book obviously evinced strong emotions within Glen, as evidenced by his ever-changing facial expressions.

“This is profoundly disturbing, Marshall. I believe your wife has been subjected to the powers of these pages. I cannot be sure, but she is not here, and the book is transparent as far as who can lay hands on it. This misfortune may not be permanent. The book is subscribed to defend itself through incantations, and if a spell, so to speak, is not carried out, the book reacts. You were safe because it appears the book lay dormant for some time, and you were the first to touch it in a long while; thus, the book recognized you as the proper bearer of its pages.”
The Reverend did not want to know the whys; he only wanted to know how to reverse whatever had happened to his wife.

Certainly, I will do what I can, but you will need to do as I say and follow my lead without question,” Glen instructed.

“There is a power in this house that is giving the book its ability to be animated. It could be a charm or an amulet, practically anything tangible. Do you know of anything else in the home peculiar or out of place? You know, like something that does not belong? Glen knew he was grasping at straws, but these were desperate times.

The Reverend racked his brain, trying to recall anything in the house that just did not fit, and then it dawned on him like a divine revelation. “The carpet in the guest bedroom. It is the only room with a carpet. All of the other floors are hardwood.”

“Bring me a carpenter’s knife and a hammer if you have one handy,” Glen asked.

The Reverend retrieved these items promptly from his kitchen, and the two proceeded to the spare bedroom. Once there, Glen began to cut and tear the carpet from the floor, lifting it and pulling it with all of his might. The Reverend joined in, and what was revealed stirred a profound discomfort in both men. As the image began to reveal itself, it did not take but a few brief moments before they instantaneously recognized the image below their feet carved and burned into the hardwood flooring.

Below their feet was none other than a giant Ouija crafted lustrously on the floor, designed with amazing script.

With his mouth gapped open, the words spilled from his tongue, “What in the devil is this?” The Reverend was mortified.

“This is a gate, and the book is the key, and I believe your wife has opened the gate and inadvertently has let herself in,” Glen said.

The canvas on which they stood was resultantly chilling, to say the least, a spectacle or malevolent foreboding. Its polyurethane finish only enhanced the astonishing, demonic perversity.

“This was used for nefarious deeds. You can be sure of that,” Glen said as he now was upon the palms of his hands and knees, feeling the texture of the magnificent beguiling work. It was a staggering art piece yet caused the Reverend to shudder, clinging ever more tightly to his faith and calling on the name of Jesus Christ in the face of the danger that broadly encompassed every corner of the room.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” The Reverend asked.

“When I was in the occult serving as a High Priest, I had a throne made for myself in which I evoked countless evil spirits to dominate and to possess it. I realized after some time that it was not the inanimate object of the chair that they were taking control of, but rather it was me that they possessed. The chair had no power, but there is something remarkable about the written word and the book, which I have realized is a book of the dead or the Volumes of Reanimation and is part of the Egyptian Mythology dealing with Anubis, who resides as the lord of the dead or he who is in the place of embalming. As conductor of souls, his job is primarily with the funerary cult, and the dead are in his care.”

The Reverend’s look of concern caused Glen to backtrack a step, and he said, “Listen, Marshall. Your wife, unless she has experienced a physical death, is most likely in oblivion, much like purgatory. She has stepped beyond the veil, but she is not in utter darkness; she is only in a shadow. We can still reach her. Do not fret. Apply your faith.”

The Reverend reminded himself of a Biblical promise: “I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me.”

“Indeed, that is the spirit, my brother.”

Glen retrieved the book most confidently from the study and rejoined the Reverend, whose countenance could be best described as downtrodden.

“The key to unlocking this gateway is understanding the mechanisms in place, and I believe this book has the instructions, if I can decipher them correctly. Stay close to me regardless of what you see. Trust God, Marshall, for he alone has brought us this far,” Glen’s optimism was to be commended, but it did not reassure the Reverend, whose declination was visibly obvious.

Glen placed the book on a nightstand and began going through the pages one at a time, meticulously combing over every word, focusing on each symbol in order to unlock its mysteries.

Reverend Tucker stood on the outskirts of the Ouija floor in expectation of a trap door possibly opening and falling headlong into some inescapable abyss. He was not far off because Glen began to chant an indistinguishable, interpretable phrase from a page of the book, and the room began to activate. It was working mechanically in the mind of the Reverend like something he had never experienced before. It reminded him of a room at the funhouse at the carnival when he was a kid, with optical illusions and moving walls with mirrors.

“Holly!” He cried out in a desperate attempt to make a connection, but no answer came back his way. Maybe he expected at least an echo, but his words fell flat.

“Do not give up, Marshall. She will be able to hear you. I am convinced of that,” Glen encouraged him.

Reverend Tucker commenced repeating her name with urgency, crying out with longing convictions to his wife. If not for the exhortation and mentoring of Glen, he would have become despondent, and his faith would have failed him. Glen was a pillar of strength in this time of need.

Pieces of the floor, the lettering “A through Z,” and the numbers, “zero through nine,” began to move and shift and slide into different places, aligning themselves by seemingly invisible hands into perceptual patterns and then in unknown variables interchanging in intricate motifs and formulas nearly in a state of flux, with the unstable adaptions, swapping back and forth, altering up and down, switching places at random until aligning themselves in an act of consolidation with one last lurch, as if balancing on a tightrope dangling over hell’s mighty blaze until reorienting into readable words.

“Who dares to open the gate?”

“6, 6, 6.”

At the top of the Ouija was an all-seeing eye carving, burned and etched in black. The eye began to glow with crimson, blood-red colors and puffs of blue latent smoke issuing from nonexistent pipes like chimneys, funneling, billowing, with choking conduits of nimbostratus ambiance which shadowed the room in gathering shapes resembling faces.

Thunderstruck, Glen gasped, and the Reverend exclaimed, “God Almighty.” This was entirely unexpected and unbelievable. Neither of the men could have predicted this. The floor began to melt like some homogeneous membrane too thin to walk upon. A buzzing filled the air like the makers of summer honey, a vibration like that of quivering leaves on a quaking aspen. A raw taste of wormwood filled their mouths, a bitter gall from the hyssop that wetted the Savior’s dry, thirsty lips. Their mouths puckered from the nearly interminable foulness of a quinine substance rising from below. Before their eyes was a wretched scene beyond comprehension, too awful to behold upon the threshing floor of separation and judgment. Below them, amidst an imperceptible broth of fiery revenue of engulfing red hot flames, brimming with rejection and destruction, were desperate mothers and daughters, despondent fathers and sons in an illusion of inscrutable acts of devilish charm and vanity ever inviting so terrifying and bizarre without explanation it could not be real. Melting fiery streams burning like guttering wax tortuously in the labyrinth lay siege upon their ear canals in a torrent of fueled glowing liquid, which flowed into the lining and membranes of their scalded brains.

“Do you see her?” Glen was forced to yell because of the tumultuous noise of the infernal tremor.

The Reverend was embarrassed to cast glances upon the mob scene, only functioning at a subsistent degree. Stumbling close to the edge where the Ouija had opened up, the Reverend balanced himself firmly against the resonation that climbed up his legs. He scanned the malicious pit of abomination and blasphemy to see the writhing dammed oblivious to his presence. He prayed to God that Holly would make herself seen. Draughts of what appeared to be human blood oozed from the walls. The stirring mass confusion was a scene of Tartarian chaos and frantic hopelessness. The struggle of condemned, censured humanity, horrible caricatures only, were lost to the netherworld was more than overwhelming and despairing. Not one person looked up. They looked like raw red meat squashed together in smothering restraint, bound by the stupefying dilemma of confinement. The Reverend assumed that they could not see out of their encased darkness, and blackness was their torment, their sentence, along with the flames.

“Merciful God, what do we do,” the Reverend fretfully cried out anxiously, unable to find Holly in the clamoring multitude below them. His theology had flown right out the window, which left him in sinking sand, faith-wise. Quixotic doubt rose in the man of God, so much so that he believed he had failed his wife even before truly trying to find her. He thought that surely this was sheer hell and that finding Holly was impossible. Not a substratum of probability could sustain his faith.

Glen pointed and caught the Reverend’s attention. He had seen the lone person who was looking upward. He had not seen Holly in quite some time, but if this solitary woman was not Holly, Glen was determined to rescue her anyhow. The Reverend confirmed Glen’s notion. “It is her!”

The Reverend shouted out, “Heaven help us!”

Conscientiously, both the Reverend and Glen lay on their stomachs and reached down in the swirling sea of bodies, resisting the urge to give in to their physiology of fear. They could feel the cold of lifeless corpse hands trying to cling on to this lifeline. They were forced to pull loose and shake off the anguished souls to reach Holly’s extended hand. She wept with tears and climbed upward in a mighty struggle to be rescued. The vexing scene was heartbreaking and harrowing in that everything was demented, haunting and painful to view.

Holly stretched as far as she could, extending her arm and flexing her fingers upward until the Reverend latched onto her. Glen assisted by keeping the Reverend from being dragged into the cavity below. There was more horror than anyone could digest.

As farfetched as this tale may sound, the men triumphantly conducted a remarkable, impossible rescue that day. Holly was nearly inconsolable, bewildered, and disconsolate.

She remained hysterical for some time, battling the illness until doctors medicated her and restored her composure, returning her to a functional, placid state of mind.

She never spoke of the experience to anyone, nor did she blame her husband for leaving the book unattended in the study. She was able to attenuate the nightmare by dedicating herself more to the church and charity events. Her emergence from self-isolation brought her instantaneously back to the land of the living.

The Reverend and Glen spoke privately about the memorable experience of what they had suffered through. Neither believed that they had got a real glimpse into a place called hell. They did not know what the illusion was or even where Holly had actually been. Both men would have to reevaluate their life and their personal missions in order to move on from the devastating mental shock of it all.

They made several futile attempts to burn the devilish book that had elicited the accursed series of events, but its pages would not burn. They also failed to tear them out or to cut the book into pieces with any sort of tool. The book appeared to be not of this world and was indestructible. While debating on how best to rid the world of the book that they so-named “the key,” they took nail bars and hammers to the Ouija floor and successfully dismantled it.

Making a large pile with the flooring out back behind the house, they were successful in setting it ablaze. The wood was dry, the fire was extremely hot, and through an immense thermal degradation, the wood was released into the atmosphere, just a plume of smoke and drifted away with the wind. Glen gathered the char and ash of what remained. He promised to take it to the river, where he would dispose of it.

There was some debate on what should happen to the book. Neither had a true understanding of how the book worked, but they both agreed that it was a key of some kind. The flooring which the Reverend had replaced right away had been a gateway, and although that gateway had been utterly taken out of existence, there was no way to know for certain if the creator of the foul thing had built others. The book was not safe even by itself. Because they had discovered no way to annihilate it, the Reverend had called the local Archdiocese to see if they might be interested in securing it away from the public. The Reverend had no affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church whatsoever and had bad-mouthed them openly in the past from his pulpit, but he had to humble himself in that he was out of his league here. What he thought he knew about Satan, demons, hell and evil in general did not compare to the actuality of facing the authentic terror from beyond the grave.