Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 69

When we consider all of the remarkable discoveries in physics in the last few decades, acceptance of the world of the unseen should have been made much easier. The invisible reality of quarks and atoms and molecules and electrons that form our very existence are now able to be seen with the powerful microscopes and telescopes that can penetrate and examine both the inner space and the outer space that have for centuries been withheld from mortal eyes. The reality of the unseen spirit world should no longer require a great stretch of imagination or a mighty leap of faith. It simply needs to be better identified and understood.

When we speak of spirit, we are speaking of something that is eternal, nonmaterial, and beyond time and space. Spirit is unchangeable, enduring, and above the laws of nature.

Matter, on the other hand, is ephemeral, transient, material, subject to change in space and time.

Regardless of the theories of quantum mechanics or the large numbers of serious scientists beginning to theorize about ten or more planes of reality, for the great majority of contemporary humanity accounts of demons are found only in grisly novels that depict vicious serial killers or in eerie horror stories that tell of tormented men and women who hear voices that order them to kill their victims in horrid ways. And, of course, there are the blockbuster movies that depict ingenious mass murderers who dissect and digest parts of their victims with fine wine and fava beans while they make fools of the authorities.

All of these grim depictions of the criminal mind are devised to cause a shudder of primal fear within the reader or the viewer, but the effect is temporary. The book is ended. The theater lights come up. One can sigh, perhaps even chuckle wryly at the author’s or screenwriter’s rather perverse imagination, for these vivid works of fiction and cinematic chillers are just that—made up stories. We are relieved to put the book aside or leave the theater, knowing that the monsters that these tales portray are not real. They are only creatures born somewhere in the darkside of a writer’s psyche.

There are, however, tortured individuals in real-life who heed fiendish commands to kill. There are men and women who really hear demon voices that demand unquestioning obedience.

Those possessed by demons are truly human monsters, willful agents of death, who practice ritual slayings, human sacrifice, and large scale slaughter of innocent victims.

These disciples of murder and mayhem are very real.

And so are the demons who scream at them relentlessly to do their awful bidding and kill without mercy.