The Demon Haunted World (aka The 70’s)

 

Purely out of a sense of nostalgia I watched the first Ghost Rider movie starring Nicholas Cage on Netflix this week.  In elementary school I was fascinated with this dark and mysterious “superhero” who wore leather and had a flaming skull for a head.  He apparently had made some kind of deal with the devil and become his champion of sorts, imbued with powers that included wielding hell fire and riding a magical motorcycle, except he double-crossed the devil and became a punisher of evil-doers.  This somehow made him a good guy, or not-a-bad guy maybe?  Like “the enemy of your enemy is your friend” perhaps?  Regardless, it was not a comic my parents would have approved of so I kept my Ghost Rider fandom very much on the down low.

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In the mid-90’s Carl Sagan wrote a book called THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD: SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK.  I’m not sure the significance of the ALL CAPS but its aim was to explain the scientific method to laypeople and encourage them to learn critical and skeptical thinking.  I did not read it but I don’t imagine it was talking about demons per se and seems to have set up a false dichotomy between spirituality and science in the title, but I digress.

The first half of that title takes me back to the 70’s growing up in a fundamentalist Protestant home where my Dad was a preacher and the Second Coming of Christ was going to happen at any moment whisking believers up into heaven “in the twinkling of an eye”.  This was in the wider context of a world seemingly split between freedom loving peoples and the soul-destroying Communists.  From this Manichaean perspective flowed a great river of paranoia and manipulation justifying any number of egregious actions on our behalf at home and abroad, but also had its manifestations in individual hearts and minds. 

And in the midst of this potentially terrifying portent of apocalyptic prophecy and mutually assured destruction was the existence of demons.  They were everywhere!  They were in Sunday sermons, my Christian comic books, movies shown at churches, and books written by charlatans like Mike Warnke who lied about being a satanic priest who converted to Christ (the latter assertion being even more preposterous than the former).  

There were nights as a kid when trying to go to sleep I was convinced a demon was at the foot of my bed reaching out to grab me.  I’d read about it in a Christian publication where someone had dabbled in the occult and suffered the consequences.  At these moments I felt an abject terror which was proof enough that I was in the presence of something diabolic.  I had a comic entitled “Somebody Goofed!” in which an older man befriends a younger man and convinces him to ignore God and simply enjoy himself in life.  When that younger man dies unexpectedly he confronts the older man who he finds in Hell only to have that man pull his face off to reveal he is a horned demon who cackles “You goofed!”  

Another time in my elementary school years we were at a gathering with church members at someone’s house for “food and fellowship”.  I remember them filling the room with conversation and laughter while I sat in the corner of a couch bored and tired from running around and playing outside with the other kids.  Knowing my younger self I’d probably done something to get into trouble and was in a time out.   I nodded off to sleep and when I awoke an indeterminate amount of time later the room was completely empty.  In a growing panic I realized the Rapture had come and I had been left behind.  It was the only feasible explanation to my young mind.  I wandered around inside the house looking out the windows and sobbing.  I went outside and called for my parents without reply.  My mischievous behavior and disobedience had caught up with me.  I sat back down on the couch where my father had just been seated seemingly only moments before and “listened” for him to talk to me from that other world and I asked him to come back and get me... that I was sorry... that I would change.

And then in high school I wrote a short story about someone who gets hit by a car and is knocked out but awakens to find he can see demons attached to people.  He eventually stumbles into a mega-church looking for a respite from this terrifying new ability only to find the biggest demon of all sitting on the shoulders of the preacher at the podium.  I submitted it to Christianity Today magazine for a C.S. Lewis writing contest for young writers.  I did not win the prize money or get published but I did get a letter saying my story was a runner-up.  For all I know everyone who submitted a story got a similar letter (it was not very good) but it signaled a change in my thoughts that looked to be a little less concrete and a bit more nuanced.  It was the 80’s by that time after all.  

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Coming full circle back to the Ghost Rider I have another distinct memory from when I was 10 years old and we were visiting my Grandparents in northern Indiana.  Grandpa Haney had a large farm with barns full of animals, tractors, and hay surrounded by hundreds of acres of corn.  He was a quiet person and I never really talked with him as a kid, but on this one occasion I was with him at a grocery store.  We stood in the checkout line and there was a comic book rack where I found a Ghost Rider comic and guiltily flipped through it while trying to be small and invisible.  My Grandpa turned in my direction at which point I thought I was totally busted.  Instead of chastising me he asked if I wanted that comic and I said “yes?” and he had me throw it up on the counter (face down of course).  He had absolutely no idea what he’d just agreed to and I now owned my first and only Ghost Rider comic book.  

In that particular comic Ghost Rider is racing Death himself who, strangely enough, is a fellow motorcycle rider with a flaming skull-head that is green.  It was yet another deal or wager he’d agreed to (had he not learned his lesson with the devil?).  At the end of the story they are racing up a mountainside road and as they ascend Ghost Rider kicks Death’s front tire sending him careening off a cliff and he goes on to win the race.  I feel like I am in that very race even now and I have a strong suspicion I am not going to win no matter who or what I kick.  But hopefully I can make a good showing of it without fear... or cheating.

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