An Unwanted Lesson in Practical Demonology

From: Amitai B. Adler (taliesin@cats.ucsc.edu)
Story type: Ghost
Location: Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Source: Form Submission

This occurred two years ago, October. My best friend came to me, and reported that he and a friend of his had been taking a night stroll through our campus, which is very woodsy, and in fact, parts of it are nature pre- serves. He told me that during this walk, both of them felt unnaturally compelled to go to an abandoned quarry on campus. When they got there, they felt compelled to go to a certain grove, but resisted at the last moment, feeling extremely filled with dread. They felt near paralyzed for a brief moment, and then fled the area. My friend requested my help because, although we are both Jewish, I have made some study of mysticism and occult phenomena both Jewish and Gentile, and I can read tarot and runestones.

I laid out a tarot reading to try and explain their compulsion, their feelings of dread, and why they had, after the experience, separately drawn pictures of a pale and monstrous being, obviously the same being, which they both felt they had seen in their minds, attacking them, at the instant they felt paralyzed. I laid out a tarot pattern using only the major arcana, and was surprised to find a distinct and unpleasant reading with many cards such as Death, the Magician, the Devil, and so forth, in very ominous patterns. I found the pattern of the cards disturbing, and somehow threatening. I shuffled the cards well, inquiring again as to the nature of the mysterious being my friends had drawn.

Impossibly, the exact same pattern came up. Shaken, I shuffled the cards extensively, and was frightened when the precise, horrible pattern came up a third time. Very afraid, my friend and I threw down the cards, and began praying fervently. With much invocation of God, and a frightened and amateurish attempt on our part to form mystic wards around my room, the feeling of fear we both felt and the repetition of the same sinister pattern of cards ceased.

What we found out that night, and later on, using tarot casts, runestones, and a device like a ouija board, would be a long and frightening story. Suffice it to say that the mystery and not-always-pleasant magic that entered our lives that night has never yet left. There are forces in this world which are largely unknown, and we found that it is dangerous to seek them out or be drawn in by them.