9.
“I’ve never told that story to anyone because 1. just talking about it freaks me out good and 2. I know 99% of people won’t believe me. But, here we go. This story is about my aunt. There was a time when she would go ‘crazy.’ She would get INCREDIBLY angry/out of control randomly, spitting nonsense words. She seems to have 10 times my strength then, too. There would be absolutely no way I, my father, or both of us together would be able to hold her down. For context, I am a 6’2, rather fit man. I practice Aikido and can bench press 240. My father and his brothers are pretty much as tall as I am, maybe a little less strong due to age, although most of them have been in fighting sports for a while. My aunt is about 5’4 and probably weighs 110lbs at best. All four of us were needed to actually pin my aunt and get her to stop moving until she calmed down.”
“It was extremely scary. She could just pop off at any time without warning. Now, I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but my grandmother — a rather traditional Moroccan woman — was convinced she was possessed. And…honestly, it really felt like it. For those who don’t know, Morocco has a pretty big culture around the supernatural, possession, exorcism, and the like, so most of the elders in the family firmly believe in it.
Fast forward a few months later, and it was getting way too difficult for us to handle her. My uncle contacted a good friend in Morocco who had an ‘exorcist’ in his family. The exorcist asked us to do one odd thing. He asked my aunt if she could put a drop of her blood in a glass of water and hide the glass somewhere in the apartment while she slept. We were reluctant, but my grandmother forced her to do it. In the morning, the glass was empty. I’m still convinced she probably just woke up at night and drank it, but the exorcist’s explanation was ‘she is possessed by a demon (commonly known in the Muslim culture as ‘djinn’), and giving him this blood just was a way for you to welcome him and calm him down temporarily.’ He then said she needed to see an exorcist ASAP.
Seeing her getting wilder and wilder, we started being convinced he was right. In desperate times…sometimes you just choose to believe in whatever solutions are possible. So, at this point, I decided to believe in what he said, and we had to go get proof that he was right. We live in France, so we decided to drive to Morocco (about 1500km driving + a 6-hour boat, + 500km in Morocco again). I’ve never been as scared as I was during the drive. I was sitting in the back on the right, my father on the left, my aunt between us. She went berzerk it at some point. We couldn’t really contain her, and she was trying to hit my uncle who was driving. We almost ran into a wall at one point. My father had to hold her in a chokehold until she lost some strength.
Anyway, we made it to Morocco to this village named Sefrou. Rather creepy place, but not in a conventional creepy way. There, we met this exorcist guy. He asked us to buy a sheep to ‘sacrifice’ and told us we should bring the sheep’s guts back to him for the exorcism to happen. My father and uncle took care of this. Me…I was FUCKING SCARED. As stated earlier, I didn’t believe in that shit. But at this point, in a freaking spooky village in the middle of Morocco, I was really losing it and couldn’t wait to leave this place forever.
On the following day, we went to the exorcist’s, bringing him these guts. He put them in a bowl and asked that if we were feeling strong enough, we stay with him as more people would make it easier to ‘exorcise’ my aunt. Well…I really wanted to leave, but seeing everybody staying, I stayed as well.
My aunt was lying down in front of us next to the bowl, and we were sitting down around her, holding hands. The exorcist started saying stuff I couldn’t understand (it was traditional Arabic and not a Moroccan dialect). He got sweaty as he talked faster, and I saw my aunt twitching in what looked like pain. The lights went out (holy shit, I think I peed my pants at this moment), the exorcist screamed something, my aunt screamed as well, and then total…silence.
I think the silence went on for about 30 seconds, but it felt like HOURS. The exorcist’s assistant then came in with a lamp and we saw that both my aunt and the exorcist passed out, and the bowl was on the floor with the guts next to it. The guts had turned black. I have goosebumps just writing that and re-picturing that. The assistant urged us not to touch the guts at any cost. The exorcist woke up, put some water on his face, and then told us to follow him. We went to a nearby empty hilltop, and he asked us to burn the guts right there, as ‘the demon was now possessing the sheep and we could now get rid of it.’ Done.
I have never seen my aunt show any problem whatsoever since that day. Her crisis periods never happened again. She never went back to this ‘angry mode’ and to this day, that honestly still scares the crap out of me. Just seeing her now gives me the chills. And the worst is, her sons love me, but I really have trouble staying around her as I am genuinely scared, and they obviously don’t know why.”
