The Mouth of Madness

Having today observed a very mentally ill person, I can well imagine why people used to think they were demonically possessed.

This person chanted in an indecipherable tongue. The look in his eyes was absolutely chilling. This person could (and I believe would) have killed anybody he might have laid his hands upon. He stood there smeared in his own blood, and resisted multiple people who were trying to get him under control. At one point, he lifted up four people who were on top of him. His strength was almost supernatural. We’ve all heard about the strength of crazy people. I’m here to tell you it’s real. There was no recognition of where he was, or what he was doing. There was no hint that he had a shred of humanity left. Think Hannibal Lecter looked evil in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? This was far, far worse.

When he was finally subdued, things changed. You could suddenly see the humanity back in his eyes. There was no recognition of why he was suddenly being restrained by a bunch of big people, or why there was Taser darts sticking in him. It was like the madness had suddenly passed, leaving a suddenly normal person in a horrible situation that he could not understand. Maybe that priest in the EXORCIST could have saved Linda Blair a whole lot of agony had he simply shot her with a Taser a few times. I can just hear the demon screeching, “Don’t tase me, Bro!!!”

Very, very odd indeed. I don't mind saying this guy scared me on some sort of primal level. There's a difference between being scared of something for a good reason, and a visceral fear of something that you don't understand, yet you know when you see it that it's very, very bad. There persists a line of thought that madness is a demonic possession of some sort. I’m not prepared to rule it out.