I’m lying awake in a hut on the side of a mountain at two in the morning. We are keeping a vigil, and waiting. It’s been fifteen hours, and the demon still isn’t gone.
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Wednesday, May 22nd
One morning about a week ago, just days before we met her, a young woman was bathing at the community spring in a mountain village outside of Gorkha, Nepal. She was alone there, until she was approached by another woman who she didn’t recognize. They started making conversation, and eventually the girl was telling the stranger her whole life story – even details that she would normally leave out. This led to an invitation to visit the stranger’s home later that day, which was accepted with little hesitation. The exact details of what happened during that visit are unclear, but after confirmation from other women in the community that the stranger was a known practicer of witchcraft, I feel like I’m better off not knowing more than I already do.
Neither us, or our hosts, or any of her friends, knew any of this until yesterday. She didn’t talk about the conversation, or about the visit to the witch’s home. She was a new believer, still seeking to know more about who God was, and trying to seek out a new faith of her own. As part of her search, she was attending the Bible classes that my team came to the mountains to teach, and that’s where we met her and her classmates five days ago. We’ve all been living together since then – my team and all the students – eating together, attending church services, playing games, and just spending time getting to know each other. Nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary, until yesterday morning.
After the morning class, all of us went together to do a couple home visits and encourage other believers in the village. Before leaving, our host warned us that the area we were going was very dark, and known for witchcraft and other demonic rituals. He told us to be prepared in case we encountered anything that resembled any of that, but at the time, I had no idea what to expect. While visiting the first home, the girl who had encountered the witch starting feeling faint, and stayed back with one of her friends while we went to the next home. When we returned a short time later to meet up with them on the way back, she was recovering from her first manifestation. After we had left, the demon had entered her body and taken control for the first time, and there were scratch marks on her neck where she had clawed at herself as evidence. Her friend, who was also very new to the faith and had yet to have any sort of encounter with the Holy Spirit, had held her and declared healing over her in the name of Jesus. It had been quick and effective, and at that time we celebrated it as a victory. In a way, it still was, even in light of what came after. It was a faith builder for her friend to be sure, but the whole thing was far from over at that point.
After lunch, I went for a short hike to process everything alone and to prepare for the class I was teaching that afternoon. When I came back, one of my teammates was sitting on the porch outside the hut, and told me that the girl had manifested again. Since I hadn’t seen it the first time, and had never experienced anything remotely close to this, I had no real idea what this meant. We both went inside and found ten other people there in a circle, praying over her unconscious body in the middle of the room. We joined in for about ten minutes before she woke up. With no warning, she lunged forward at the person closest to her, shrieking with a sound that I had never heard another person make outside of a movie. It took several of us to hold her down as she tried to harm herself again and as she struggled to break free. The struggle lasted for a few minutes with the whole room praying consistently, but eventually the fighting stopped. She woke up back in her normal state of mind, looking lost and exhausted. Again, we celebrated it as a victory.
About an hour later, we all gathered in the open air building we used for meals, classes, and devotions. My class was scheduled for two thirty, but five minutes before starting, she passed out again. The next several hours all blended together – looking back, I don’t really remember what happened when. I lost track of the number of times the spirit took and released her.
Each time she passed out and the demon took control, we had five people around her to hold her down – one holding each hand and shoulder, one holding each leg, and one holding her head. It might sound excessive, but whatever was in her was far stronger than she would have been on her own, and it really wanted to run away and cause her harm. Each incident was usually quiet at first, but eventually she would always start jolting and shaking and trying to break free. She would shriek and cry and scream for us all to let her go, all the while a crowd of believers surrounded her in constant prayer. The whole thing was tragic and terrifying and comforting all wrapped in one, and no words that I write down here will ever accurately portray what I was feeling in that moment, or make you fully understand what I was witnessing.
It sounds crazy, but I think the most bizarre part of the whole situation was how calm our hosts stayed. This was normal to them, and we didn’t know quite how to handle that. At one point while she was passed out, we even had a tea break.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, more and more believers from surrounding villages came and joined us. One woman in particular was the witch’s neighbor, and as such had had conversations and experiences with her in person. The girl was from a different part of the country and had only come here for the Bible classes, so she didn’t know anyone in this community except for those she has been living with the last few days. All of the believers that came to pray over her were strangers, including that woman. However, as soon as she showed up, the girl opened her eyes and stared directly at her. It wasn’t like the previous times she had woken up – her body was still tense and the spirit had not released control. Instead, it began speaking through her to the woman, saying that it knew her, but the girl did not. It began telling the woman details about her family and her life that the girl could not have known, and could have only come from the history that she had being neighbors with the witch. She responded by rebuking the spirit in the name of Jesus over and over, and eventually the girl fell back asleep and came back into herself. I cannot explain the experience of looking into the girl’s wide-open eyes, hearing her voice, and knowing that, in that moment, none of it was her.
The conversations with the spirit didn’t stop there, though. Eventually it started sharing information with us, including the details I shared at the beginning of the story about how she came to be possessed in the first place. It told us that this was far from the first body it had taken control of over the years – rather, this was number seventeen, and three of its past hosts had been killed as a direct result. We immediately began praying and declaring that this girl would not be a fourth victim, and the manifestations only grew worse in severity the later into the night it got. Far passed the time most people usually went to bed, we had a crowd of around forty people interceding on her behalf, praying for deliverance and relief.
Eventually we decided to take shifts so that people could rest, and I went to bed around eleven. Three hours later, I woke up to the worst incident yet. The screaming was louder, and lasted longer, than it had any of the previous times. By the time she finally settled down again she was exhausted, and she slept the remainder of the night.
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Thursday, May 23rd
At our evening devotion, she got up and shared with us – with everyone that had spent nearly twenty-four hours the day before praying over her deliverance. Before she even started talking, the joy on her face could have been felt by a blind man. Her smile was radiant, and the words she spoke had so much weight after coming out of the experience she had been through. She thanked us all for standing by her in prayer and support and protection. She shared how much strength she had gained in her faith through all of it. She shared her desire to keep growing, and that this would do nothing to deter her from pursuing God with the rest of her life. It was the most encouraging thing I have ever heard.
The incident at three in the morning had been the end, but we didn’t realize it until later today. Every once in a while, she would still pass out, but it was nothing more than that. The possession was over, but the spirit was still trying to afflict her. That eventually ended as well, and by the time she shared, she was mostly back to her normal self – even better than normal, actually. She didn’t remember most of what happened the day before, but she knew enough. She knew what she had been saved from, and she knew what her response needed to be.
I’ve never witnessed anything like this before in my life. Going into the week, our host told us that this kind of thing was normal, here. The village we were in is known for witchcraft and spirit worship, and the spirit that the villagers make sacrifices to torments anyone who begins exploring other religions. They are afraid to convert to Christianity. They are afraid of the work being done there by our hosts, and by the groups that he brings in.
Even knowing all of this, though, I had no idea what to expect. This was so far outside the realm of what I understood before that day. But now I know. If there was every any doubt in my mind that any of this was real, that has been erased. I’m reminded that, just because we don’t see this in America, does not mean that it’s not happening anywhere else. Spiritual warfare is very real, and I witnessed it first-hand. It’s not something that I can just walk away from without being changed.
