Inspired by a few days off and a new MacBook Pro, I fell to messing around with iMovie and came up with a short spoof remake of Paranormal Activity. Within a few minutes of sharing my creation on social media I had a handful of likes and favourable comments.
Thing is, not one of my several American social networking friends responded to my post. Several of them customarily Like my videos but this time they remained obdurately silent. Not a dicky bird.
Is this coincidence? I think not. Get onto Google and see what proportion of Americans believe demonic possession is real. Sources I've Googled tonight suggest over half. The true figure may be as high as 59%.
The problem isn't confined to the States. A Welsh friend, with a strong chapel background, when I texted that I was watching Paranormal Activity, texted back vehemently that it was FAKE! CRAP! FAKE! SHAM! etc. It was as though the film had been marketed as genuine camcorder footage, showing the demise of a cohabiting Californian couple at the hands of an invisible, real demon.
Paranormal Activity is a work of fiction. It has never pretended to be anything else. Its Blair Witch-style 'found footage' genre lends an atmosphere of contemporary reality, but surely no-one believes that anyone actually claims to have experienced the events it depicts? Really!
I suspect that certain of my friends believe I have invited trouble. I think they believe that matters demonic are best left alone for fear of attracting the unwelcome interest of some lurking supernatural entity who might choose to cause us harm. Moreover, if it does, we are the architects of our own misfortune because we meddled with dangerous forces we cannot control.
What a load of utter balls. What childish, arrogant presumption. If these forces are beyond our ken and influence, then who the hell has the authority to comment on them? It's another example of the infantile fencing game (see earlier posts). Declare an area of potential knowledge 'off limits' - i.e., no-one is allowed to discuss, or, worse still, joke about demonic possession - and then proceed to make a series of specific claims about that very issue.
I will admit to one nightmare after watching Paranormal Activity and also Oculus, a film about a haunted antique mirror that houses another 'supernatural entity' and causes the deaths of everyone who interacts with it. (Note that in each of the Paranormal Activity episodes, a scattering of bumps, menacing guttural growls and occasional flying objects precedes a violent murder or two by an invisible being of superhuman strength, with at least one bestial snarl and blurry, fast-moving halloween mask thrown in for good measure.) In my nightmare, I was standing on a railway platform as an old train departed. The carriage next to me had those old narrow doors, opened by sliding the window down and turning the outside handle. The nearest window was closed, and through the glare I saw a demonic face staring out. The visage was female, unspeakably malevolent, with straight black hair on either side, and penetrating, dark eyes. The eyes flicked upward and caught mine. Foolishly, in my entranced, dreaming state, I stared back, and squared my shoulders toward the apparition, adopting a defiant stance. She acknowledged me, lowering her forehead and narrowing her eyes. She had accepted my implied challenge, with what consequences? I awoke shouting, and feel a shivery chill even while typing these words, two days later.
I checked the time when I awoke. It was exactly 3am.
The next morning, my daughter told me that she had awoken, inexplicably, at 3am, and had found it difficult to get back to sleep.
Am I suggesting that all this is real? Are the Americans right? Have I invoked a demonic stalker who will now torment me to the end of my days?
Not a fucking chance. I would consider it utter arrogance on my part to be able to summon - intentionally or otherwise - an invisible, physically undetectable entity that I could nevertheless describe in detail. I would be playing the fencing game. I would be defining my imaginary friend as supernatural and unknowable to science nor conventional wisdom, yet claiming certainty that it is a demon and that it is interested personally in me.
Whence, then, my vividly visualised apparition? The face of the figure in the carriage window was remarkably like that of the ghostly succubus in Oculus, that seduced the father of the sibling protagonists when they were children. She was glimpsed fleetingly (as are all the most chilling movie spectres) through a window, and later appeared in a hallucination that resulted in the principal character unwittingly slicing the jugular of her fiancé. She was conjured by my recollective imagination. Were she a true demon, perhaps she could have varied her appearance a little? Come to me as something I hadn't hitherto seen? By such provisos I claim no fencing-game-style privileged knowledge; rather I question the penchant of an intelligent, independent, malevolent entity to mimic so closely a made-up actor whom I had so recently glimpsed. Was she trying to fox me into thinking her a mere dream, and double-bluff me? I find myself worrying that my American friends might answer yes....
And my daughter's wakeful episode, temporally aligned with mine? Supernatural bi-presence, or demonic teamwork? I suggest neither. I recall crying out as I awoke, and it is entirely possible that my cry also woke my daughter in the room across the hallway. Neither is it beyond the realms of possibility that we both awoke for different reasons around the same time.
No, my American friends, I have not meddled in matters that I do not understand. I need no false wisdom; no I-told-you-so counsel. I will get over my nightmares, and I will do so by rational means. No impotent deities who let demons roam freely, terrorising children and violently murdering the innocent. No pathetic death-dreading pensioners who seek to unload their childish terror vicariously onto me and mine. Keep your infantile paranoid predilections to yourselves. Better still, divest yourselves of them, throw out your religious security blanket, put away childish things and get over it.
Thing is, not one of my several American social networking friends responded to my post. Several of them customarily Like my videos but this time they remained obdurately silent. Not a dicky bird.
Is this coincidence? I think not. Get onto Google and see what proportion of Americans believe demonic possession is real. Sources I've Googled tonight suggest over half. The true figure may be as high as 59%.
The problem isn't confined to the States. A Welsh friend, with a strong chapel background, when I texted that I was watching Paranormal Activity, texted back vehemently that it was FAKE! CRAP! FAKE! SHAM! etc. It was as though the film had been marketed as genuine camcorder footage, showing the demise of a cohabiting Californian couple at the hands of an invisible, real demon.
Paranormal Activity is a work of fiction. It has never pretended to be anything else. Its Blair Witch-style 'found footage' genre lends an atmosphere of contemporary reality, but surely no-one believes that anyone actually claims to have experienced the events it depicts? Really!
I suspect that certain of my friends believe I have invited trouble. I think they believe that matters demonic are best left alone for fear of attracting the unwelcome interest of some lurking supernatural entity who might choose to cause us harm. Moreover, if it does, we are the architects of our own misfortune because we meddled with dangerous forces we cannot control.
What a load of utter balls. What childish, arrogant presumption. If these forces are beyond our ken and influence, then who the hell has the authority to comment on them? It's another example of the infantile fencing game (see earlier posts). Declare an area of potential knowledge 'off limits' - i.e., no-one is allowed to discuss, or, worse still, joke about demonic possession - and then proceed to make a series of specific claims about that very issue.
I will admit to one nightmare after watching Paranormal Activity and also Oculus, a film about a haunted antique mirror that houses another 'supernatural entity' and causes the deaths of everyone who interacts with it. (Note that in each of the Paranormal Activity episodes, a scattering of bumps, menacing guttural growls and occasional flying objects precedes a violent murder or two by an invisible being of superhuman strength, with at least one bestial snarl and blurry, fast-moving halloween mask thrown in for good measure.) In my nightmare, I was standing on a railway platform as an old train departed. The carriage next to me had those old narrow doors, opened by sliding the window down and turning the outside handle. The nearest window was closed, and through the glare I saw a demonic face staring out. The visage was female, unspeakably malevolent, with straight black hair on either side, and penetrating, dark eyes. The eyes flicked upward and caught mine. Foolishly, in my entranced, dreaming state, I stared back, and squared my shoulders toward the apparition, adopting a defiant stance. She acknowledged me, lowering her forehead and narrowing her eyes. She had accepted my implied challenge, with what consequences? I awoke shouting, and feel a shivery chill even while typing these words, two days later.
I checked the time when I awoke. It was exactly 3am.
The next morning, my daughter told me that she had awoken, inexplicably, at 3am, and had found it difficult to get back to sleep.
Am I suggesting that all this is real? Are the Americans right? Have I invoked a demonic stalker who will now torment me to the end of my days?
Not a fucking chance. I would consider it utter arrogance on my part to be able to summon - intentionally or otherwise - an invisible, physically undetectable entity that I could nevertheless describe in detail. I would be playing the fencing game. I would be defining my imaginary friend as supernatural and unknowable to science nor conventional wisdom, yet claiming certainty that it is a demon and that it is interested personally in me.
Whence, then, my vividly visualised apparition? The face of the figure in the carriage window was remarkably like that of the ghostly succubus in Oculus, that seduced the father of the sibling protagonists when they were children. She was glimpsed fleetingly (as are all the most chilling movie spectres) through a window, and later appeared in a hallucination that resulted in the principal character unwittingly slicing the jugular of her fiancé. She was conjured by my recollective imagination. Were she a true demon, perhaps she could have varied her appearance a little? Come to me as something I hadn't hitherto seen? By such provisos I claim no fencing-game-style privileged knowledge; rather I question the penchant of an intelligent, independent, malevolent entity to mimic so closely a made-up actor whom I had so recently glimpsed. Was she trying to fox me into thinking her a mere dream, and double-bluff me? I find myself worrying that my American friends might answer yes....
And my daughter's wakeful episode, temporally aligned with mine? Supernatural bi-presence, or demonic teamwork? I suggest neither. I recall crying out as I awoke, and it is entirely possible that my cry also woke my daughter in the room across the hallway. Neither is it beyond the realms of possibility that we both awoke for different reasons around the same time.
No, my American friends, I have not meddled in matters that I do not understand. I need no false wisdom; no I-told-you-so counsel. I will get over my nightmares, and I will do so by rational means. No impotent deities who let demons roam freely, terrorising children and violently murdering the innocent. No pathetic death-dreading pensioners who seek to unload their childish terror vicariously onto me and mine. Keep your infantile paranoid predilections to yourselves. Better still, divest yourselves of them, throw out your religious security blanket, put away childish things and get over it.
