The Psych Ward
Once at the new hospital, Brittany was taken up to the juvenile psych ward while Sheila and I went to the office and filled out the admission papers. I knew she wasn’t crazy, but there are no established remedies within the institutional frameworks of our society for anything as far-fetched as demonic possession. The questions the doctors and nurses asked us that night had nothing to do with the forces that had overcome our daughter—but I was grateful to at least have someone who was willing to help us.
As Britt was being checked into the ward, several medical personnel interviewed Sheila and me. I could tell from the look in their eyes that none of them believed us when we told them what had happened that night. The doctors’ and nurses’ explanation for Brittany’s bizarre behavior on the night of the “holy water incident” was that she was simply insane.
After an hour or so, Sheila and I went home, leaving Brittany in the care of psychiatric doctors and nurses.
She was in the psych ward for slightly more than a week, and we visited her once a day. I discovered that unlike ordinary hospital visitations, you can’t just drop in on a psych ward patient any time or sit with them for prolonged periods. Brittany was allowed to have visitors once a day for an hour. Although I tried to explain to them that she wasn’t crazy, the visitation rules were inflexible. They were convinced she needed to be there for psychiatric reasons.
Sheila and I were at the hospital to visit Brittany each evening as permitted, and Mima visited at least every other day. Brittany seemed to be totally back to her old self upon those visits, and from her general demeanor, you’d never think anything as surreal as what we’d gone through that night could have possibly happened.
Mac Visits
I brought her brother, McCartney, to visit on a Sunday afternoon, after explaining to him what had happened and trying to prepare him as best I could. Mac was familiar with many of the paranormal experiences we had had at the house before the incident of Brittany’s possession. He’d been there and had been introduced to the notion that such things were at least a part of reality.
Britt and McCartney grew up in different households, so their relationship wasn’t Brady Bunch typical. Mac’s mother and I split up when he was only six months old, so that six months was the only time they ever actually lived together. Upon Mac’s visits every other week, sometimes they played together pretty well—but often they fought, more than I would have liked. Finally, by the time Britt was a teenager, they had started to get along much better. She had taken him under her wing and acted almost motherly toward Mac. In true little brother fashion, he really looked up to her.
I expected Brittany to rush up to Mac and hug him when she saw him at the hospital. However, that didn’t go as I’d hoped. She was distant and withdrawn, with very little to say to him. I suppose this could be explained by embarrassment—after all, she was in a psych ward. But after a rather off-the-cuff hi and an unenthusiastic hug, she turned her attention to the food we’d brought and recounted to us how much she hated the place. She basically ignored her brother. I found that more than a bit troubling. I didn’t know whether to shrug her complacency off as simply an unpleasant side effect of her incarceration or whether it was an indication that the entity was still in there. But regardless, I felt sorry for McCartney for just being brushed under the carpet.
Even by that point, I believe, the demonic entities were still exerting an influence.
Britt’s Psych Ward Narrative
They transferred me to a local psych ward where Mom put a cross on my upper arm with a rubber band. It burned but kept them [the demonic entities] at bay—for the most part, anyway. I took the cross off to shower, and that was a bad move. I left the room in a towel, then threw a heavy lounge chair (that I should not have been able to pick up), tossing it like a ragdoll at one of my favorite counselors.
Searching for an Exorcist
Brittany would be coming home in a few days, so I felt like my number one priority was to arrange for some sort of cleansing: a deliverance or an exorcism. My first inclination was to go back to Father Jeff and implore him for help, but a phone call revealed that he was skeptical about there being any supernatural cause for Brittany’s affliction based on the report that his wife Jane, the nurse, had given him.
“It’s not within my level of expertise,” he said.
Frankly, I was crushed. I had looked to Father Jeff for support and closure, but instead he was patronizing and condescending. Without putting it into so many words, I felt he was telling me I was crazy. He didn’t say, “I don’t believe in demons,” but his attitude spoke volumes. Not only did he say this was out of his area of expertise, but he left me with the impression that he simply didn’t believe such things happened in the real world. He showed no sympathy for our plight at all.
All this happened eighteen years ago, and it took me sixteen years before I stepped foot back inside another Episcopal church. Researching the liturgy and rites of the Episcopal faith, I learned that it does indeed have a rite of exorcism. The processes one would go through are slightly different than obtaining one in the Roman Catholic faith, but in a way are less complicated. If an Episcopal priest feels that an exorcism is warranted, he/she refers the case to the bishop of that diocese. If the bishop agrees an exorcism is needed to expel demonic entities, then the bishop is the one who performs it.
I have struggled with Father Jeff’s lack of concern all these years. But perhaps he wasn’t simply being callous. Perhaps he was just scared, but that’s no excuse. After what I had seen that night, I was scared too. But I couldn’t let that stop me.
Next, I tried appealing to the local Catholic diocese. After summarizing my plight over the phone to a secretary, I was transferred to a priest who civilly heard me out but then politely informed me that the Catholic process for being granted an exorcism was extremely complicated and involved. There were so many layers of bureaucracy to weed through even to be granted a hearing. He also didn’t feel like this whole matter was within his area of expertise. That sounded familiar. At least he was honest enough to confide that if I were in any hurry at all, the Catholic diocese wouldn’t be able to help me.
When the Catholic diocese declined, I was at a loss as to what to do. Brittany was at least safe as long as she was in the hospital, but once she was released, I was convinced an exorcism was the only solution—or all hell would break loose again.
I started thinking about stocking up on more holy water, because it was the only thing that the entity had recoiled from. I had gotten the holy water from my friend Ann. She got it at her church from a Greek Orthodox priest.
I called Ann and told her about the possession and how her holy water had been the only thing that helped. By now I had become used to people treating me as if I were crazy, but she was very sympathetic. She suggested I talk to the Greek Orthodox priest at her church and gave me his number. I called the priest up and gave him a synopsis of the events of the last few weeks. After my lack of luck with these Episcopal and Catholic churches, I was a bit surprised to hear the sympathy in his voice. He didn’t act like he thought I had lost my mind or that I was actually from Mars. He agreed to meet with me at his home. For the first time since it all started, I began to have hope.
Father Nicholas lived in a small Tudor bungalow near his church. He was emotionally warm and sympathetic, but at the same time I could tell this was a no-nonsense kind of guy. He informed me that the Greek Orthodox Church did indeed have a rite of exorcism, that he had witnessed cases of possession himself, and in no way did he deny my assertions. But then he proceeded to outline the conditions for his services. He described how modern teenagers often were preyed upon by demonic spirits because of the evils of the lyrics in the rock ’n’ roll music they listened to. Suddenly my hopes for a resolution to our dilemma came crashing down. He went on to say that he would conduct an exorcism only if my family was willing to begin attending his church.
In his concept of ultimate reality, this was the only way the devil could be kept at bay. The exorcism that I knew Brittany absolutely had to have seemed to be slipping through my fingers, because I knew that my family simply couldn’t be who Father Nicholas wanted us to become. Although there was much of modern rock ’n’ roll music I didn’t care for myself, I didn’t agree that it was inherently evil. I also knew that for any exorcism to work, the subject (in this case, Brittany) had to have faith in the exorcist. Brittany was never going to exhibit faith in someone who was telling her she had to give up her favorite style of music. So I knew a Greek Orthodox exorcism was not in the cards. I was polite and thanked him for his time and said I would call him, knowing that I wouldn’t. I was relieved I’d finally found someone who believed my story, but also despondent because I’d just gone down another dead-end street.
I had just about run out of options. On the trip home, it occurred to me to call my old friend Joel (the director of the Bell Witch play Brittany had done several months earlier). He was very fond of Brittany, a dear friend, and a trusted adviser. I filled him in on everything that had happened to us in the last few weeks. He was stunned. Joel didn’t question my story for a second. All his adult life he had been interested in the paranormal, though he had never personally known anyone who had been face-to-face with what my family had encountered recently. I filled him in on my frustration with the total lack of success I’d had in finding someone to perform an exorcism on Brittany.
Joel agreed with me that there was not a minute to lose in securing the assistance of an authority on demonic possessions. He asked if I’d ever heard of the noted demonologists who were among the first paranormal investigators of the Amityville haunting case. I had no idea who they were, though I’d seen a movie about it years earlier. But I trusted Joel. He loaned me a couple of books written by them about demonic possession, giving examples from various cases they had worked on.
I wasted no time in getting their email address off their website and sent a frantic plea to them asking for help, advice, or whatever they could do to assist. I sent them an attachment of my account of the possession along with my email begging for help. I didn’t know whether to expect an answer or not, but I seemed to have no other choices.
I received an email the next morning. One of the demonologists answered, essentially saying that she was very sympathetic with my family’s plight and thought that we may very likely have a valid case of demonic possession going on. However, her husband was having health problems at the time. She was going to pass along my information to her trusted assistant and nephew. She gave me his phone number and suggested I call him. I sent her an email thanking her, saying I’d be calling her assistant very soon.
I wanted to give him time to look over the material his aunt had supplied him with, but I didn’t really have time to spare. After a few hours, I called him. He was extremely compassionate and sympathetic. He had read the journal I’d kept of the night of the possession, and he said that it certainly sounded to him like there was the possibility of a valid case. But his organization received many calls for assistance and they could only respond to a limited number. His group could not afford to send down a team of investigators from Connecticut with an expensive plethora of sensitive, technical detection equipment for free. I admitted that I was just a poor newspaper editor and couldn’t afford to pay them. He also said that even if money were not a consideration, he couldn’t assemble a team and get down to Nashville for several months—and it sounded to him as if I needed someone right then.
But again, he was very sympathetic and said he had a suggestion that could be as effective as anything his group could do anyway. He said that many major American cities had local psychics, paranormal investigative groups, and demonologists. Growing up in the Nashville area, I was less sure about its ability to attract such freethinking urbanites. But he had me thinking about solutions I hadn’t previously considered—solutions that were right under my nose.
Over the last few years I had become acquaintances and even friends with a number of psychics who called Nashville home—primarily from editing a paranormal magazine. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it immediately, but it took this one man’s prompting to make me realize that my old friend Laurel just might be the key. She had been a major fixture of the Nashville metaphysical community for years. Laurel would know what to do.
I thanked him for his time and wise advice. He wished me the best, assuring me that he was sure God would take good care of my daughter.
As soon as I got off the phone with him, I called Laurel and recounted the story of Brittany’s possession.
I filled her in on everything that had happened from the first night of the possession through my attempts to procure a priest. I’m sure my friend sensed the desperation in my voice; she was not only sympathetic but also cool and collected. Laurel asked detailed questions and didn’t seem in the least bit skeptical. After patiently listening to my recounting of our emotional trek through a demonic Sinai, I asked her if she knew of anyone in our area who could perform an exorcism.
“Sure, me,” she replied simply but confidently.
She said that she had done a number of exorcisms (or cleansings) in the past and was more than familiar with the process. I asked if she could possibly visit Brittany in the hospital beforehand, but she was scheduled to go out of town the next day to speak at a Unity church in Georgia. A major part of Laurel’s work involved traveling all over the United States giving metaphysical lectures and psychic readings to various groups. But although she wouldn’t be able to get out of this previous engagement, Laurel had a friend named Lisa who assisted in her exorcisms. She asked me if I’d mind if Lisa dropped by to see Brittany—mostly just to get to know her and make friends. I thought that was a great idea, gave Laurel the visitation hours, and discussed the logistics of the upcoming exorcism. It seemed that Laurel wasn’t scheduled to return to Nashville until the day after Brittany was set to be released. We both agreed that the exorcism needed to occur as soon as Britt came home. I honestly feared that whatever had possessed her would come back and be ready for a rematch.
Since Laurel couldn’t change the date of her return, that meant I had to get Britt’s release date postponed a day or two. We would have to get Brittany’s primary psychiatrist to petition the insurance company to extend her stay an additional night—not such a big deal at the time. Back in 2001, doctors had a bit more latitude in saying when a patient could be released from the hospital than they do today. We just had to convince her psychiatrist that Britt needed to stay an extra day. How was I going to ask him to extend her stay another night on the grounds of fitting into the timetable of my exorcist? Especially since he didn’t believe my story about demonic possession anyway.
Dr. Happy
None of the medical professionals I’d talked to during this ordeal had taken my assertion of demonic possession seriously. The official diagnosis was a hodgepodge of possibles: possible schizophrenic; possible bipolar; possible multiple personality disorder; possible psychosis. No psychiatric “-osis” had been determined upon, and demonic possession wasn’t even in the running as a possibility. But I knew that I was going to have to play the game in order to get Brittany out of the psychiatric unit so she could get the exorcism I was hoping would free her.
Our nickname for Brittany’s psychiatrist was “Dr. Happy.” I think he was the most preposterously optimistic person I have ever met. My family had just gone through the most horrible, traumatic event we could ever possibly have conceived. Dr. Happy ignored virtually everything we tried to tell him about what had actually happened to Brittany during the night of the possession as if it were irrelevant. He was also frustratingly skeptical when we told him there had been no signs of her displaying psychological or emotional trauma of any kind prior to that night. He was absolutely and stalwartly convinced that her eventual breakdown was simply the culmination of years of psychological abnormality building to a crescendo and finally erupting that night. We called him Dr. Happy because he chatted on incessantly about plans for Britt’s rejuvenation and impending total recovery after his proposed program of therapy—ignoring what we were telling him based on face-to-face observations. To Sheila and me, he seemed oblivious to the real world we were trying to describe. How could he make her better if he insisted on denying what had really happened to her? Ultimately, we just went along with him, realizing that resistance was futile.
They had tested and observed Brittany for a week and wanted her to continue to come in for outpatient observation during the day for an additional week. We made up a story about how my mother wouldn’t be able to stay with Brittany until the day after she was scheduled for release. Sheila and I both worked, so my mom would have been the only one who could watch her. However, Dr. Happy didn’t seem to care. He denied our request and said the previously scheduled release would stand. This was a crushing blow, but there just didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it. Sheila and I stopped by to see Brittany before we left the hospital to give her the bad news. She was very upset and started crying. She didn’t want to take the chance of going through another night of being haunted by demons any more than we did. We tried to explain that we’d bring her home, and then she could see Laurel the next day.
Because of the unit’s regulations, we were only allowed to be with Brittany for a few minutes and had to leave. She was still crying and frankly distraught. We told her to ask to speak with Dr. Happy herself. Maybe he would listen to her where he hadn’t to us. The three of us went to the nurses’ desk, and through her tears, Brittany told them she wanted to have the doctor contact her. Up till that time, I hadn’t been too impressed with the compassion I’d seen from the staff—but this particular nurse showed real concern, called Dr. Happy’s office, and said they promised he would stop by that night and talk to her. Finally, it seemed that someone was showing genuine concern. Britt was placated and stopped sobbing. Sheila and I left, promising to come see her the next morning regardless of the doctor’s decision. It truly broke my heart to leave her. She had been so positive and enthusiastic about receiving Laurel’s help that watching her hopes dashed (even temporarily) was tough. Brittany had come to trust and even love Laurel over the years, and the possibility of Laurel helping her had been the only factor giving her any hope at all. Neither Sheila or I had any real hope that Dr. Happy would relent and change his mind at the insistence of a mere patient, so we went ahead and made plans to pick Britt up the next day.
However there were still a few silver linings in the sullen, gray cloud that had engulfed us. Dr. Happy was sufficiently moved by Britt’s plea, and postponed her release from the hospital until the next day. I’m still not sure what she told him to make him change his mind, and after all these years she doesn’t remember. But I guess it just goes to prove that there was at least a little warmth in the good doctor after all. The pleas of a frightened young girl had worked. Sheila would take Britt back and forth for her week of outpatient therapy, but the hurdle of scheduling the exorcism to fit with Laurel’s return to town had been overcome. So after about a week in the juvenile psych ward, she was allowed to come home.