One of the more salacious facets of our Holy Roman Catholic faith is exorcism, so much so that Hollywood has grown fat and rich with its telling and re-telling over the years, almost in direct contrast with the intensely taut state that is demonic possession. It's not something I talked about during my office career, as sanitized places where the gossip can be about sex or drugs, but never about the evil that lurks around a generic-looking water cooler, but that's exactly what it was.
After reenacting countless work scenarios where every single card in the crazy deck was played for a host of sick people at work, it was the only explanation left to explain the suicides, mental illnesses, and violent psychosis I observed firsthand, as well as heard in the first person from other employees. You could feel it swirling around you, the way you can feel a house's soul as either empty and fraught, or lively and well (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2016/01/sick-house.html). It's the same thing with some office spaces and commercial buildings: if you immediately get a bad feeling (or very soon after), trust it.
In criminology, sometimes a gut instinct is the only thing a really good detective has, besides knowing the killer is guilty as fuck, because evidence is notoriously tricky to find, and that's what evil relies on. It was the only explanation that made sense to me after my years toiling for insane family businesses; that they thought they had "the drop" on better workers because they cheated. It was something my dad and I used to talk about openly with one another. He worked for a sick family in Pennsylvania (the one year we had lived, as a family, outside of the New York area) who had a solid business that didn't need tricks, but they skimmed off the top anyway, and for peanuts, too. If they made a million-dollar deal, then a thousand or a few hundred dollars would go missing. It was always petty cash.
And it was baffling to my father, because they were already rich and successful. I asked my dad why he didn't call the cops after figuring out their scheme, and he just muttered that "all good things come in time". He got a big payout as his severance for knowing about them, in a dramatic stand-off scene that enabled us to move into a house in suburban New York with our family dog. He just wanted out. I knew it was finally over when the head of the family (one son flipped on the brother and father to cop a plea) appeared on the cover of a famous American magazine, and it still sickens me to think about it to this day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rigas).
Given his rough Brooklyn upbringing, my father already knew that the line between businessman and gangster could be a thin one. I think he was afraid they'd kill us, if he talked about it to anyone in the cable business. Besides the company, there were absolutely no signs as to how tight a grip the corruption of this wealthy family had over the other rich white men in town. We lived in a beautiful Victorian house we were very happy with, and the countryside was beautiful. I had my own room! Plus, we got the cutest little Samoyed puppy I'd ever seen in my life. Life was good. But, still, there was something. My mom asked one of the women in town to do a "house reading" for us, which, to the uninitiated, is gauging a living space for "good" or "bad" spirits.
We were told that our house was "clear", meaning that if anyone had died there (and with a house that old, before funeral parlors and that sort of thing, dying at home came with the territory), they'd been happy, peaceful people who'd moved on easily. Oh good...we breathed a sigh of relief. That's good. And it was. We had a clay patch in the backyard, beneath a little ridge that led to a set of old train tracks we loved to explore together. As kids, we were instantly bumped up a grade for our innate New York street smarts and natural acuity (in rather stark comparison to the small-town folk), and we jumped into huge piles of autumn leaves in the fall that smelled of the richness of the earth. It taught me that good and evil can live right next door to each other, sometimes in very close proximity.
Let's leave it at that for now, as a sort of a beginner's primer to the (super)natural forces that exist around us, every single day. I couldn't wear a cross to work back in the day without getting hassled about it, (in yet another tale of workplace harassment that's actionable by law), and my life in the secular world has always danced around the natural one that I know to be true, but try telling that to deeply ignorant people who are afraid. Fear is a crippling emotion that feeds off bad juju (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju), keeping its oppressors stuck in deeply ingrained patterns that can last for many years, often until death. And afterward.
Some say that "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger", but that's not what happens with evil. No, sometimes it soul-sucks at you real slowly, until you grow weaker and weaker, almost dead with its sickness. Doubt me? Well, I've survived brush-ups with a few witches (recently, too, with a deranged Hexe: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hexe), and as your favorite modern Fili (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fili), let me assure you: witchcraft isn't something that you just hand out once a year with Halloween candy. No, children, there are dark things to be afraid of that go bump in the night, and I'm here to tell it to you straight. Class is now in session.
