Download or read book The Rite written by Matt Baglio and published by Image. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the film starring Anthony Hopkins, journalist Matt Baglio uses the astonishing story of one American priest's training as an exorcist to reveal that the phenomena of possession, demons, the Devil, and exorcism are not merely a remnant of the archaic past, but remain a fearsome power in many people's lives even today. Father Gary Thomas was working as a parish priest in California when he was asked by his bishop to travel to Rome for training in the rite of exorcism. Though initially surprised, and slightly reluctant, he accepted this call, and enrolled in a new exorcism course at a Vatican-affiliated university, which taught him, among other things, how to distinguish between a genuine possession and mental illness. Eventually he would go on to participate in more than eighty exorcisms as an apprentice to a veteran Italian exorcist. His experiences profoundly changed the way he viewed the spiritual world, and as he moved from rational skeptic to practicing exorcist he came to understand the battle between good and evil in a whole new light. Journalist Matt Baglio had full access to Father Gary over the course of his training, and much of what he learned defies explanation. The Rite provides fascinating vignettes from the lives of exorcists and people possessed by demons, including firsthand accounts of exorcists at work casting out demons, culminating in Father Gary's own confrontations with the Devil. Baglio also traces the history of exorcism, revealing its rites and rituals, explaining what the Catholic Church really teaches about demonic possession, and delving into such related topics as the hierarchy of angels and demons, satanic cults, black masses, curses, and the various theories used by modern scientists and anthropologists who seek to quantify such phenomena. Written with an investigative eye that will captivate both skeptics and believers alike, The Rite shows that the truth about demonic possession is not only stranger than fiction, but also far more chilling.

Download or read book The Haunting of Sister Mary Francis Part I written by Alessandro Perucci and published by Alessandro Perucci. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alessandro Paolo Perucci's latest work is a spellbinding horror novel, THE HAUNTING OF SISTER MARY FRANCIS PART I which tells of a young lonely Catholic schoolgirl named Mary Francis who is teased by the popular girls in her school called the Click for being meek and awkward. Mary Francis has six pitbull terrier pups named Gentle Soul, Lion, Sickle, Justice, Terror, and Three Eyes who are as meek as she. After being tormented to a boiling point, she meets a charasmatic defrocked priest named Father Gregory Martin who persuades her to join the world of the occult. He shows her the evil Infernal Book of Wisdom and a frightening sword called the Cadaver Sword which can give her tremendous powers. She is swept away by Father Gregory Martin and sells her soul to the Devil, uses the sword's power and thereby transforms into the gouged out eyed demon nun spectre Sister Mary Francis who wears a sentient birdlike nun's habit that is an omen of the Demon Nun's presence. Her Pitbull Terriers are also transformed into monstrous sized Demon Dogs who have a penchant for terror. Now she will get revenge on anyone and everyone who hurt her. Watch out, the demon nun spectre Sister Mary Francis will get you.

Download or read book Malignant Man written by Michael Alan Nelson and published by Boom! Studios. This book was released on 2014-08-20 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger! Alan Gates, a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis, is resigned to his fate...until he discovers that his tumor is actually a mysterious parasite! Granted a second lease on life and incredible, otherworldly powers, Alan must fight against an evil army buried beneath society's skin, all the while unlocking the secrets of his forgotten past. From the dark & twisted mind of James Wan, the creator and director of SAW, MALIGNANT MAN is a sci-fi thriller that can't be missed! Co-written by fan-favorite writer Michael Alan Nelson (28 DAYS LATER, DINGO) and illustrated by rising star artist Piotr Kowalski, with a cover by industry legend Trevor Hairsine!

Download or read book Nuns Behaving Badly written by Craig A. Monson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male superiors, these women circumvented authority in sometimes extraordinary ways. But tales of their transgressions have long been buried in the Vatican Secret Archive. That is, until now. In Nuns Behaving Badly, Craig A. Monson resurrects forgotten tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these cloistered heroines. Here we meet nuns who dared speak out about physical assault and sexual impropriety (some real, some imagined). Others were only guilty of misjudgment or defacing valuable artwork that offended their sensibilities. But what unites the women and their stories is the challenges they faced: these were women trying to find their way within the Catholicism of their day and through the strict limits it imposed on them. Monson introduces us to women who were occasionally desperate to flee cloistered life, as when an entire community conspired to torch their convent and be set free. But more often, he shows us nuns just trying to live their lives. When they were crossed—by powerful priests who claimed to know what was best for them—bad behavior could escalate from mere troublemaking to open confrontation. In resurrecting these long-forgotten tales and trials, Monson also draws attention to the predicament of modern religious women, whose “misbehavior”—seeking ordination as priests or refusing to give up their endowments to pay for priestly wrongdoing in their own archdioceses—continues even today. The nuns of early modern Italy, Monson shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their own age—and beyond.

Download or read book Demons written by Alexandre Dumas and published by . This book was released on 2023-01-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE DEVILS (1971) Ken Russell's horrifying film of the possession and resultant exorcism of the "Loudun Nuns," (based upon the book THE DEVILS OF LOUDON by Aldous Huxley), scourged the eyes of audiences in the 1970s, with its harsh, brutal, and sickening depiction of blasphemous torture, hideous pain, possession, and wild, orgiastic rites to fallen spirits. Now here is the classic full account of this bizarre, startling, and tragic chapter in the history of possession and exorcism, the annals of primitive witch hysteria: the exorcism of the Loudun Nuns, and the subsequent trial and hideous execution, by burning, of Father Urbain Grandier, (claimed by some to have entered into a pact with Satan to torment and afflict the sisters of the afflicted Ursuline order). Was Urbain Grandier an emissary of Satan? Or was he simply a man caught up in the crosshairs of his vindictive enemies and powerful forces, those willing to send a man to his death for purely political reasons? What of the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne? Was she really the focus of a black, demonic incubus? Or was she simply a disturbed, repressed woman, one whose life of piety, self-abnegation, penance, and sacrifice, lead her to the brink of madness? To read this chilling account is to step back through a doorway in time, gaining an insight into the hysteria of the witchcraft hysteria of the old world, and what it might tell us about our own contemporary society. Published by Zem Books

Download or read book In a Dark Place written by Ed Warren and published by Graymalkin Media. This book was released on 2014-10-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the most terrifying case of demonic possession in the United States. It became the basis for the hit film “The Haunting in Connecticut” starring Virginia Madsen. Shortly after moving into their new home, the Snedeker family is assaulted by a sinister presence that preys one-by-one on their family. Exhausting all other resources, they call up the world-renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren—who have never encountered a case as frightening as this... No one had warned the Snedekers their new house used to be an old funeral home. Their battle with an inexplicable and savage phenomena had only just begun. What started as a simple “poltergeist” escalated into a full-scale war, an average American family battling the deepest, darkest forces of evil—a war this family could not afford to lose.

Download or read book The Nuns of Sant Ambrogio written by Hubert Wolf and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true, never-before-told story—discovered in a secret Vatican archive—of sex, poison, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth-century convent. In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Church’s Inquisition uncovered were the extraordinary secrets of Sant’Ambrogio and the illicit behavior of the convent’s beautiful young mistress, Maria Luisa. Having convinced those under her charge that she was having regular visions and heavenly visitations, Maria Luisa began to lead and coerce her novices into lesbian initiation rites and heresies. She entered into a highly eroticized relationship with a young theologian known as Padre Peters—urging him to dispense upon her, in the privacy and sanctity of the confessional box, what the two of them referred to as the “special blessing.” What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical significance, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing on written testimony and original documents, Professor Wolf—Germany’s leading scholar of the Catholic Church, and among the very first scholars to be granted access to the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the office of the Inquisition—tells the incredible story of how one woman was able to perpetrate deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Church itself.

Download or read book The Devils of Loudun written by Aldous Huxley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns. Grandier maintained his innocence to the end but four years after his death the nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms to free them from their demonic bondage. Huxley's vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our understanding of the medieval world.

Download or read book Gay and Catholic written by Eve Tushnet and published by Ave Maria Press. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a 2015 Catholic Press Award: Gender Issues Category (First Place). In this first book from an openly lesbian and celibate Catholic, widely published writer and blogger Eve Tushnet recounts her spiritual and intellectual journey from liberal atheism to faithful Catholicism and shows how gay Catholics can love and be loved while adhering to Church teaching. Eve Tushnet was among the unlikeliest of converts. The only child of two atheist academics, Tushnet was a typical Yale undergraduate until the day she went out to poke fun at a gathering of philosophical debaters, who happened also to be Catholic. Instead of enjoying mocking what she termed the “zoo animals,” she found herself engaged in intellectual conversation with them and, in a move that surprised even her, she soon converted to Catholicism. Already self-identifying as a lesbian, Tushnet searched for a third way in the seeming two-option system available to gay Catholics: reject Church teaching on homosexuality or reject the truth of your sexuality. Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith is the fruit of Tushnet’s searching: what she learned in studying Christian history and theology and her articulation of how gay Catholics can pour their love and need for connection into friendships, community, service, and artistic creation.

Download or read book Satan s Harvest written by Ed Warren and published by Graymalkin Media. This book was released on 2014-10-04 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shocking true case of demonic possession from the reporters who first covered it in the Boston Herald. The case was discussed and you can watch the real exorcism footage in the blockbuster horror film The Conjuring. When terrifying, bizarre things kept happening to a hard-working Massachusetts farmer, he did what anyone would do. First he went to the local police chief. Then he went to his priest. And then he went to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the world’s most famous demonologists who investigated the “The Amityville Horror” and other terrifying cases of demonic possession. It was the Warrens who called in one of America’s most renowned exorcists, Bishop Robert McKenna. What they all experienced is described in this extraordinary book. Absolutely terrifying. Absolutely true. Don't miss the Warrens' new film "Annabelle" (October, 2014).

Download or read book Immodest Acts written by Judith C. Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1986-12-11 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discovery of the fascinating and richly documented story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, by Judith C. Brown was an event of major historical importance. Not only is the story revealed in Immodest Acts that of the rise and fall of a powerful woman in a church community and a record of the life of a religious visionary, it is also the earliest documentation of lesbianism in modern Western history. Born of well-to-do parents, Benedetta Carlini entered the convent at the age of nine. At twenty-three, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature. Benedetta was elected abbess due largely to these visions, but later aroused suspicions by claiming to have had supernatural contacts with Christ. During the course of an investigation, church authorities not only found that she had faked her visions and stigmata, but uncovered evidence of a lesbian affair with another nun, Bartolomeo. The story of the relationship between the two nuns and of Benedetta's fall from an abbess to an outcast is revealed in surprisingly candid archival documents and retold here with a fine sense of drama.

Download or read book Begone Satan written by Rev. Fr. Carl Vogl and published by TAN Books. This book was released on 1994-09 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous 23-day-long exorcism case of Erling, Iowa. Incredible and frightening. We have received several letters from Iowa verifying that this exorcism really occurred. Probably the most famous exorcism ever performed in the U.S.A.

Download or read book A Devil in Nun s Veiling and Other Stories written by Francis Charles Philips and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Saints Who Battled Satan written by Paul Thigpen and published by TAN Books. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war is on. The Devil plots to defeat you. Meet some battle-tested warriors who fight at your side. Satan is real. He’s a formidable foe who wants to snatch us away from God, and the thought of doing battle with him can seem daunting. Even so, the saints who have gone before us have engaged the Devil, armed with the power of Christ … and emerged victorious! These fellow warriors in heaven now fight on our behalf. In Saints Who Battled Satan, Paul Thigpen, author of Manual for Spiritual Warfare, details the heroic combat of 17 saints who defeated the Enemy. In Saints Who Battled Satan, discover: How Satan attacks us through extraordinary assaults and everyday temptations. How these 17 saints used prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, and other spiritual weapons against the Enemy.How the virtues served these saints as combat armor. How these victorious saints now offer their aid to those of us still battling on earth. Read the inspiring and triumphant stories of Padre Pio, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John Vianney, and a dozen other saints who battled Satan. You’ll find the strength, the courage, and the faith to win your own war against the Enemy.

Download or read book We Don t Go Back written by Howard David Ingham and published by . This book was released on 2018-07-08 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of ­pagan ­village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women

Download or read book The Rebel Nun written by Marj Charlier and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church. At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands. Craving the legitimacy thwarted by her bastard status, Clotild seeks to become the next abbess of the female Monastery of the Holy Cross, the most famous of the women’s cloisters of the early Middle Ages. When the bishop of Poitiers blocks her appointment and seeks to control the nunnery himself, Clotild masterminds an escape, leading a group of nuns on a dangerous pilgrimage to beg her royal relatives to intercede on their behalf. But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death? In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine.

Download or read book Speak of the Devil written by Richard Hawke and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-02-27 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] amazing thriller . . . [Richard] Hawke’s dialogue is sharp and snappy and the plot moves with all the energy of New York City.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer A child of Hell’s Kitchen and the bastard son of a beloved former police commissioner, Fritz Malone is all too familiar with New York City’s rougher side. So when a gunman opens fire at the crowded Thanksgiving Day parade, Fritz steps into action, giving chase. He then learns that someone dubbed “Nightmare” has been taunting the city’s leaders for weeks—and there’s more carnage to come, unless the city meets the madman’s impossible demands. The nervous police need an outside man, and Fritz fits the bill. Racing furiously against time, Fritz finds himself confounded by Nightmare’s multiple masks and messengers. But the dark story behind the story soon begins to emerge, and when Fritz zeroes in on the terrible truth, the killer retaliates by making things personal. Now Fritz must grapple with his deepest fear: Sometimes nightmares really do come true. Praise for Speak of the Devil “Hawke razzle-dazzles us with . . . bada-bing narration and quirky, well-drawn characters.”—The Boston Globe “[Packed] with a breathless pace and hairpin turns.”—South Florida Sun Sentinel “Fast-moving, first-rate . . . Hawke’s plot grabs us by the throat. . . . He keeps the suspense mounting.”—The Washington Post Book World “Solidly entertaining . . . Hawke makes a big splash on the thriller scene with his debut novel.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “[Speak of the Devil] tours the city with unusual streetwise panache . . . but this isn’t a book that coasts on its urban geography. It lives by its wits, and its wits would work anywhere.”—The New York Times “A bang-bang thriller . . . We are absolutely powerless to stop reading.”—Chicago Tribune “[A] deftly paced debut that crackles and pops from page 1.”—Booklist (starred review) “Thrill-a-minute pacing and inspired plot twists.”—Newsday “A rare combination of intrigue and intensity.”—Michael Connelly