Hostage to the Devil

Here’s how my life works:  I read an article or book and I think to myself - “Is this true?”  So, of course, like any other well educated American, I hit the Internet to see what’s out there on that particular subject.  As I research, I become intrigued by a related word, phrase, picture or name and I follow that link further into the Internet cosmos until I find something that finally gets my full attention [Why, yes, I do have a touch of ADHD] 

This particular fall down the rabbit hole led me to Hostage to the Devil, a free e-book by Malachi Martin.  There are people out there who feel very strongly that the devil exists and influences our lives on a daily basis.  “Ah, yes,” you may be thinking, “the ignorant, the fundamentalist, the religious fanatic!”  Or, you could be thinking more along the abstract “Evil exists, yes, but only as construct of humanity – a classification of aberrant social behavior“ [Ok, so maybe only the anthropologists out there are thinking that.]

~~Of the five case studies presented in this book, I could only make myself read through the second.~~


Whatever it is you are thinking, it can’t compare to “I no longer want to read this book, “which was my exact thought around page 117, followed by “I want to delete this book from my computer’s hard drive and then have my computer blessed by a religious person.”  This is not an exaggeration.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as truly creepy as this [and I’m a Stephen King fan!].  

Two things stood out:  First, there are grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the book that I know, on a rational level, were most likely caused by the OCR program that scanned this book in, but…there is a part of me that thinks that the errors are there on purpose.  For what purpose, I don’t know – or maybe won’t permit myself to guess at, but I have a pretty vivid imagination, and what I come up with is something like a secret demonic code that is unwittingly translated as you read and hard-wires  your brain into receiving Satan and all his minions into your subconscious.  [Sounds fun, huh?] 

The second thing that I could not seem to reconcile was the startling intelligence behind the writing in this book.  You can immediately tell that an educated person – an intellectual, in fact – wrote this book.  Having my liberal arts education turned on its ear was hardly comforting.  This intelligence coupled with the glaring mistakes in grammar and punctuation is creepy in and of itself, and lent the book an overall dark and disturbing energy. 

I never did finish the book.  [And I probably will delete it from my hard drive.]