Demons?

[ER]

Ever know anybody that just seemed....unreachable? And you look at that person, into that person's eyes, and your instincts say....yeah....that person just is not right? You feel it inside you, there's something just not normal there?

In this decade I've reluctantly become open to the possibility of something the younger me would not have entertained for one instant, that being how some people, angry, bitter people, the constantly negative, are more vulnerable than most for attack, influence, even guidance from unseen  darkness, a thing the developed world seems to discount  as risible, and yet across much of the planet today and nearly all of the world across time such things were not  dismissed.

I feel bad for people who don't understand why happiness eludes  them and their anger seems directed at others, and while mental illness is obviously real, I can't help but  wonder if many aren't under attack by what Shinto calls gri-kami: demons, in our terms.

Why is the idea implausible? Most people believe in God (about 9/10ths of the western world) and in various scriptures and oral traditions unrelated to one another speak of angels and demons to the point of it being universal.

People like the idea of angels being out there, but what about the opposite of angels? In scientific terms action and reaction/sunshine and shadow/positive and negative, how can one exist without the other, and why is it thought mental illness can explain everything, or that the mentally ill aren't made so by preternatural darkness, or exploited while ill?

What if these malign influences were not rare but the norm, ongoing and continuous and ubiquitous?

Personally I know a psychologist, as everyday a sort as you could meet, obviously well-educated, works for the United States Air Force, if you want to know the truth, who told me when interning she went into a mental hospital in an urban area in the South, and there was a woman there who was simply among the worst in the place, unreachable, cruel, constantly negative, she'd spit and curse and do disturbing stuff when someone tried to interact with her, and when the group this present-day psychologist was part of approached her she looked up "and her eyes gave me a chill, so wrong and cruel" is how the doctor who told me this put it, and said to one of the group, "You have a sister named Nancy who doesn't know it yet but she's got cancer and she's going to die next August and the baby inside her will die too."

Yes, this intern did have a sister named Nancy and Nancy did die the next August of cancer she wasn't aware she had and she lost the baby she was carrying.

Could the psychologist be lying? Sure, but why when she said to me she is an agnostic who grew up going to Easter rand Christmas services at best at a fairly mainstream Protestant denomination? She says she is not comfortable fitting God into her daily life, yet she also shared that story with me recently when we were having a conversation.

I've also known people I trust, one in particular I'm thinking of who I don't think has ever lied to me, and his stories of what he experienced in recovery after years of addiction when he hurt many people I personally count as compelling testimony. You don't know him, no reason to  base your outlook on what he told me, but I believe him and if his accounts are honest and accurate, it means we dwell in a more frightening world than most of us are ready to accept. He is convinced he was influenced by evil while addicted and had some experiences to back up that belief, and he says in his years in AA and other programs for addicts he's had many others share stories with him that matched his own.

So I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling as usual here right now but I admit I have been thinking about people who may not entirely be making rational choices in their conduct because their misery and pain is exploited. My cousin who went from a sad childhood to a young adulthood where she seemed hellbent on destroying herself leaps to mind when I ponder this, how she would seem so taken over by something other than who she normally was, something that wanted to hurt her and hurt all of us, literally hurt us.

I think of endlessly angry people. These mass shooters. People who seem to descend below the mandates of biological behavior. What if? Just what if we are getting the causes wrong?

It's a topic that might get laughed at but it does compel me to put thought into it and I don't think it's necessarily a stupid thing to think about.

Sometimes.

[RCMerchant]

Demons? Supernatural beings that possess folks? 
No- I don't believe in 'Demons.'

[ER]

I dunno, man, look at poor Amy Winehouse on a bad hair day sometime and tell me there's no demons. 

[Gabriel Knight]

You started to sound a bit like Dr. Loomis from HALLOWEEN for a while. Awesome!

Personally, I don't think there are demons, just bad people. I've met some who simply don't have empathy, they are very good at pretending they do, but their actions, and sometimes their words, speak otherwise.
I don't believe in demons, but I do believe in good and evil. And some people are simply evil.

[Olivia Bauer]

I don't believe in Demons, hell, or any of that crap. However, I find them pretty interesting on a fictional level.

Ever since I started playing the Persona series of games I've been very interested in demons.

My sister showed me that Netflix Sabrina show (It's okay, not great). I found it funny how I had to explain all the demon references to her.
A character has a pet crow called "Stolas" and my dorky ass immediately blurted out "Oh, that's one of the seventy-two demons of the Ars Goetia".

[ER]

To be honest I don't know what to think. That's what my outlook on a lot of subjects works out to be. I don't know.

[Olivia Bauer]

f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song into my brain.

[ER]

f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song into my brain.

I like that a lot. Good song. Wonder if it'll burn into my brain now? Maybe it's actually a demon in song form like Stairway To Heaven and Barney's theme? Just my luck.

[Allhallowsday]

Ever know anybody that just seemed....unreachable? 
... 

Yes.  My older sister and brother.  I just assume they're crazier than me; their reality is alien.  My relationship with both is fine; I minimize contact.  I love them; I don't like them. 

[Allhallowsday]

You started to sound a bit like Dr. Loomis from HALLOWEEN for a while. Awesome!

Personally, I don't think there are demons, just bad people. I've met some who simply don't have empathy, they are very good at pretending they do, but their actions, and sometimes their words, speak otherwise.
I don't believe in demons, but I do believe in good and evil. And some people are simply evil.

Righteous.    

f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song into my brain.

I like that a lot. Good song. Wonder if it'll burn into my brain now? Maybe it's actually a demon in song form like Stairway To Heaven and Barney's theme? Just my luck.

I shut it off. 

[Alex]

Demons in the sense of heaven and hell, not really although I am open to the possibility. I've met some evil bastards in my time who warrant the title inhuman. Then again, maybe they are normal people and I am aberrant.

One theory that's been gaining traction in scientific circles over the past few years is that there are multiple universes referred to as branes. Who knows, maybe what we think are ghosts, aliens or whatever phenomena are merely one of these alternate universes trying to reach out to our one. Of course, it would be a hell of a lot of reaching out for one spot in one universe to touch this specific area, unless each universe is a copy of each other. If we assume that this is true then it could be that this contact causes psychosis in ourselves, or that the contact is intentionally malevolent. Perhaps we are their version of a video game. After all, we have many games played by normal people that would be considered quite cruel.

I am not suggesting that this is the answer or what I believe, but just a random rumination on one of many possible answers.

https://societyofmodernastronomy.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/the-brane-multiverse/ for anyone interested in reading about branes. As opposed to being a zombie and eating them.

[ER]

I also ponder whether if beings of darkness exist maybe they have absolutely nothing to do with anything religious, they are just what they are, as much a part of nature as we are, just a segment of nature we don't comprehend; possibly energy beings instead of corporeal. Sort of like what Alex was saying.

[RCMerchant]

Demons. Like horror movie demons or personal demons of the mind? Some folks get it confused.
And coming down from a 3 day drunk will make you believe in demons. Doing 3 hits of acid might make you believe in demons. Try it! But I haven't done that in almost 30 years. But I remember it!
But it wasn't demons.

[ER]

I don't think I'd do well on psychedelics but I was very tempted by that chance to try ayahuasca three or so years ago when my friend Mitch got ahold of the means to brew it up.

I think my mind is a place where a lot of horrors lurk in the shadows of the dim sunlight and everyday reality is thin around me anyway.

My father tried LSD once in the '70s with a girl in New York and told me he had no bad experiences at all with it, only felt he was part of the universe, and the universe was part of him, as he described it.

Way for him to scare his kid off drugs, huh?

[Allhallowsday]

I also ponder whether if beings of darkness exist maybe they have absolutely nothing to do with anything religious, they are just what they are, as much a part of nature as we are, just a segment of nature we don't comprehend; possibly energy beings instead of corporeal. Sort of like what Alex was saying.

What you describe has been named an "Elemental", sentient beings that are perhaps existing because of energies, like "water flowing underground..."