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My Halloween story is no story: My night with the devil worshipers really happened
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I want to tell you about a bizarre night many years ago when I accidentally found myself at a gathering of Satan worshipers. It was one of the freakiest nights of my life -- and keep in mind that I know it's Halloween -- but the story I am presenting here today is not a Halloween "Trick-or-Treat".
This story is true.
It happened about 30 years ago. I was a young man of 19 or 20, and I was out at a keg party at someone's cabin in a remote corner of northern Minnesota. For the record, in those days, I was a total nondrinker, but I didn't mind hanging out sometimes with my pals who were prone to swill down the sauce like the Apocalypse was scheduled for the next morning.
One of my buddies, whom I'll call Sparky, suggested we go to another "better" party he knew about some 20 miles away -- in an even more remote location of the northern woods in Kittson County near the Canadian border.
So I jumped into the car with Sparky and another friend, whom I'll call Stan. I wasn't driving, despite being the only one sober. Ah, youth.
It was a dark night. The stars and moon were obscured by low moldy clouds. As we drove through the woods, the pine trees hugging either side of the road looked like a jagged wall of shadowy sentinels guarding the entrance ramp to Hell.
We eventually turned up a long, narrow graveled driveway that opened into a wide yard of what had once been a small country church. The church was an ancient structure made of locally quarried granite stone. But it was no longer a church. Someone had clearly converted it into a home.
There was a campfire burning, almost a bonfire, in the front yard. I immediately knew something weird was going on because around the fire were sitting about 15 people dressed in Druid-style hooded robes. I could see other shadowy figures milling about in the yard, moving in and out of the flickering firelight.
We got out of the car. Sparky and Stan were solidly baked after slamming whiskey shots on the ride over. We walked toward the hooded people around the campfire, and a I felt a swarm of spiders run up and down my spine because the hooded figures were chanting in some strange language while rocking back and fourth.
My first thought was: "Let's get out of here." But my two drunk friends were already approaching the circle of chanters -- and to my consternation -- Stan went up to them and started slapping them on the backs of their heads!
I expected immediate trouble, but to my amazement, none of the robed figures reacted an iota to being slapped, and sometimes quite hard. They just kept looking into the fire, oblivious to all else. I rushed over to Stan and pulled on his arm to get him away from the group.
"Stan!" I said. "What the hell are you doing? You're going to get us killed out here! Let's get out of here!"
His response to me was something along the lines of "go (bleep) yourself!"
In the meantime, Sparky seemed to have suddenly disappeared into the night. I asked Stan: "Where's Sparky? He has the car keys!"
Stan's response" "I don't give a damn! Let's go check out the house."
As we walked closer to the house, the dancing firelight revealed a large white cross hung upside down above the front door. I thought to myself: "Oh come on! Is this really happening? An inverted cross? Hooded zombies chanting around a fire? It's all so cliché!"
Of course, everyone has heard about all these aspects of devil worship, but to me, it always seemed like something out of a crummy B-horror movie. But here I was on a black night in the middle of nowhere about to enter a converted church adorned with the symbol of Satan.
Listen: The last thing I wanted to do was enter that house! But Stan had already staggered in ahead of me. I decided to follow, mostly because I hoped that Sparky had gone in there. I wanted to find him, get his car keys and get the hell out of there!
Walking through those front doors was not easy. It was unnervingly dark inside. All I could see were vague shapes of what I assumed were various pieces of furniture. But there was a dim rectangular outline of light coming from a closed door kitty-corner to my right. My idiot friend Stan headed straight for it. I saw him open the door and plunge down the stairs which led to a basement. Against my better judgment, I followed.
Down the in the basement was a large empty room illuminated by hundreds of candles. A set of chairs circled the middle of the room, and sitting on each chair was an incredibly obese woman.
Some of the women were just basically fat, but about half of them were enormous. Stan had already pulled up a chair and joined this "round of mounds." I held myself back near the doorway, but Stan was sitting there, looking around and laughing. He was hurling insults at the women, making exceptionally crude references about their weight. Some of the women were wearing robes, but others were wearing normal clothing
Just as the chanters outside hadn't noticed a hard slap the head, these women didn't seem to mind Stan's string of fat jokes.
Rather, the obese women seemed delighted at the arrival of Stan, who was too drunk to be really coherent about anything. They smiled broadly, although some stared at Stan with the glassy cool gaze of lizards.
Some of the women began putting their hammy, fleshy hands on Stan's arms and shoulders and started rubbing his chest. This only made him laugh. Then he got up and said something like,
"I can see why you babes might be hungry for a man!"
Of course, I am giving only a mild version of what Stan was really saying, but let's just say his comments would not normally be heard inside a church -- well, maybe in a church with an inverted cross hung over it, but you know what I mean.
I had heard enough, seen enough. I walked up briskly, grabbed Stan roughly by his shirt collar and dragged him rudely away from the group and back up the stairs.
Thankfully, none of the women followed. They just watched and laughed as I dragged Stan out. I hustled Stan up the stairs and out the door. I was thankful to be back outside. I gave Stan a rough shove sending him sprawling to the ground. I resisted an urge to kick him in the ribs as he lay there, laughing like an idiot. Instead, I stood over him and shouted:
"Dammit -- let's find Sparky and get the (expletive) hell out of here!"
It was clear Stan would be no help to me, so I started looking around for Sparky. As I looked back toward the group of chanters around the fire -- and was totally amazed at what I saw next!
NEXT COLUMN: MY NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL WORSHIPERS GETS MUCH WEIRDER!
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