Right off the bat I know that many of you will scoff at the notion that there may be a spirit world. The idea that there are good spirits as well as a slew of very unsavory ones is to some, a laughable idea. Yet the movie industry makes millions of dollars each year on movies based on the occult and the living dead.
Though you may not know it, the Bible confirms that there is a very active demon world whose goal is to defeat and bring down the souls of mankind. I know myself from first-hand experience the works of the Demon Possessed Appliances.
I began to suspect it was possible about ten years ago when I was using a belt sander to take the finish off an old door which I had lying on the floor in the garage. As I was running the sander over the surface of the door, I truly believe that one of the many poltergeists who live in my house, namely Dewey, decided to either pull a practical joke or get a free ride into town. The demon entered the belt sander, tore it from my hand and rode the sander out the open garage door and down the driveway. He would have made it all the way into town had he not run out of extension cord.
It was not more than two days ago that I heard, coming from my laundry room, a banging on the floor which was heavy enough to make the house shake. Being brave but cautious, I opened the door just enough to let my granddog Milton Barry enter the laundry area to fulfill his role as guard dog and protector of the house. No sooner had he entered; he began barking hysterically with a sound of terror in his growl. At this point I told my wife Cheryl, “You stay out here, I’m going in to confront the demon…unless you want to.”
Swinging open the laundry door, I leapt into the room only to find the terrified, barking Milton Barry backed into a corner. The washing machine was in the spin cycle, jumping up and down on its front pads. It had lunged out from the wall and was held back only by its three hoses. It was trying to kill the dog!
“There is a foul spirit in the washer!” I yelled to Cheryl.
Standing in the doorway and sounding a tad bit sarcastic she yelled back, “The only thing foul in that washer is your socks and underwear.” She then walked past me and shut off the jumping washer. “Don’t put so many towels in next time. It puts the machine out of balance.”
What does she know? She obviously has no experience with demon possessed appliances.
I can go all the way back to when I was 19. I was over at my best friend Chuck’s house. One of his college classes was small engine repair and he had just put a large outboard motor back together. To test it out, he had it firmly attached to the inside of a 55-gallon barrel filled with water. To adjust the carburetor, he needed to start the engine. Being mounted to the inside of the barrel and submerged would allow water to flow through the engine, keeping it cool while it was idling.
As I watched him grab the starter rope, it seemed that there was a cold and eerie feeling in the room. Now I recognize that this was an appliance demon but then I had no experience with them, no knowledge to warn Chuck. I saw him pull out the choke with his left hand and pull the rope with his right. The appliance demon came to life in the outboard at full RPM. Instantly the prop blew the 55 gallons of water out of the barrel and soaked the garage. The demonic roar of the engine was deafening and now, it and the 55-gallon barrel were chasing Chuck and me around the garage. Had it not been for my cat-like reflexes, I fear I would not have had the agility to jump onto the tool bench to avoid being run over. Chuck confronted the beast and with a simple flick of a switch, shut it down.
“I guess I hooked the throttle up backwards,” Chuck said.
Being completely deaf, the best I could come up with in my soaking wet clothes was, “What?”
Chuck didn’t recognize an appliance that was demon possessed.
A few years later I again encountered another demon, this time in my mother’s house. The main floor hallway had no power outlet. She wanted to have a phone in the hall with an answering machine which required power. After surveying the situation I ascertained that the easiest way to run power was to go from the furnace room directly below the hallway, tap into a power source and run wiring up through the wall to the telephone stand. With my newly found skill as an electrician, the job only took three to four hours. After I had the hallway outlet box wired and mounted, I connected the wires to the power in the furnace room. It was somewhere during this process that I upset a demonic appliance spirit. To test the outlet, I plugged in my mother’s vacuum cleaner and called for her so she could witness my genius.
“Ok ma, go ahead and switch on the vacuum,” I said with a sense of pride.
And as she pushed the button the appliance demon shot from the outlet into the vacuum filling it with supernatural power and strength. The motor revved at three times its normal rpm and to make things more spectacular shot sparks out the back end. It then went dead.
“Well, that was odd,” I said. “What a coincidence your vacuum would choose to die right now.”
So, I went into the kitchen and got the electric eggbeater. Plugging it in, I held it in the air and flipped the switch. That wretched demon leapt into the beater like a shot of adrenaline, racing its small motor and blowing flames out the back. Sadly, it took the life of another appliance. With mom’s limited knowledge of electricity, she commented that furnaces run on 220 volts. Regular outlets, and the appliances which run on them, are all 120 volts. An interesting comment but she was totally discounting the possibility of an appliance demon.
Now I am battling a demon who has taken over my computer. I was browsing the web for information on CPAP machines since my wife has informed me that sleeping in the same room is like being at an all night tractor pull. Mind you now, I only checked a few sites. The computer demon saw what I was looking at. Now, when I look at Facebook every other post is about CPAP machines. Be gone you wretched, vile thing!
Lastly, and I am happy to say that this was a false alarm; Cheryl and I were watching TV in the den. I had my dinner plate on my lap when my granddog Milton Barry bounded into the room and jumped onto the couch to mooch some of my pork chop. Noting that he had brought nothing to share, I told him to get lost.
What happened next was a tad bit spooky. The disgruntled Milton, obviously possessed by the poltergeist Dewey, stared straight into my eyes, curled his lips and began a hissing growl. Immediately, the TV started rapidly flipping through the channels- faster than I ever believed was possible. The volume increased to the point at which I thought the speakers would blow. We were helpless against the powerful demon, and I was missing the best part of my show so I yelled, “Here, take it. Take the pork chop!”
I set my plate in front of the dog and as he came forward and grabbed the meat, the channels stopped moving. It was then I realized that what I mistook for an appliance demon was only Milton sitting on the channel changer. After I washed it off, I found the pork chop still to be edible even without the gravy.
Such are the strange occurrences that go on around the Mitchell house.
** See also, the story of Dewey.
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