My mother was a religious nut. If you asked her, she was following the word of God and living her life the ‘right’ way. Her reality and reality were two very different things, however, and her determination to be the worst person you had ever met was something to be admired.
I followed my mother to church three times a week as a child because I had no choice. I never liked it though, and soon enough I was signing myself up for as many extracurricular activities as possible in a successful attempt to get out of sitting in two-hour-long sermons about what a piece of shit we all were.
Week after week we were fed variations of the same message: we were nobodies who deserved to suffer, and no matter what we did we would never deserve anything. The only thing we could do was follow the word of God in hopes that he would be pleased by our desperation and redeem us and allow us into the kingdom upon our deaths.
Even as a child, something about all those rules and promises felt empty to me. My mother desperately tried to shove the fear of eternal damnation down my throat again and again. Her words did not have the desired effect though, and soon enough my fear became annoyance and then acceptance.
I completely left the church at the age of eighteen once I promptly moved out. This didn’t stop her and for months she sent various church members to me. They would show up at my door and beg me to listen, determined to win back my soul so they would be considered more important once they got to heaven.
After about a year of constant visits, they all stopped abruptly. I was so relieved that I didn’t even stop to think about why they might have stopped and to be completely honest, I didn’t really care.
It wasn’t until a few months later when I saw a post pop up on social media, that I started to wonder why my mother had stopped trying to win me over. The post linked to an article that had been published by a small blog in my hometown. It mentioned Church Hill and I recognized the name and the photo of the church immediately.
The article stated that the members of a local religious cult had locked themselves up inside the church, claiming that the end of times was coming and that it was the only safe place to be. Apparently, they had spent weeks standing on the side of busy streets waving signs at the cars and warning them about their impending doom.
When no one listened, they went door-to-door to try to convince people to listen to their warnings and take action in order to be spared. Apparently, they had managed to convince a few people by targeting folks who were not exactly mentally well. A woman was quoted in the article stating that they had convinced her elderly father who had been struggling with schizophrenia to go with them and he had been locked up inside the church ever since. She said she just wanted to know if he was still alive, but none of the church members or the guards would give her any sort of information.
Before they closed their doors, they had gone around town, posting various signs wherever they could. The signs stated that the people would be sorry for doubting them, just like everyone was sorry for doubting Noah once the flood came.
The flyers were taken down rather quickly, and the doors to the church were locked and barricaded just as fast. The people in the church (or most of them at least) were presumed to still be alive, as people could sometimes hear music and cries coming from inside the building. The windows had been boarded up though, and the doors had been sealed from the inside and the outside, and a few men stood outside the church day in and day out to stop anyone from attempting to get inside.
Whoever ran the blog stated that they had tried to interview the guards, but they would just start praying in tongues whenever they were approached by outsiders.
Part of me was worried about my mom. I understood that she had been brainwashed by these people and that their beliefs had grown from regular religious beliefs. I was aware of the fact that there was really nothing I could do though, and so I stayed put and lived my life as normal, checking the blog for daily updates.
For a few dates, all updates were the same: music and shouting could be heard coming from inside the church at random hours of the day, the guards were still refusing to speak to anyone who approached, and people continued to try to find a way into the church to get to their family members who were unwell and had been scared into submission by the members of the church.
And then, after about a week and a half of the same news, something happened. A woman had gone down to the police station to claim that she had reason to believe that her ex-husband had kidnapped their daughter and had taken her with him into the church. There weren’t many details on the situation, other than the cops had finally been convinced to try and find a way into the church to at least get the girl out of the building.
There was no news for the next two days. On the third, however, it was reported that after much convincing (and some threats) the guards allowed two officers to enter the church via a side door that they would be opening up. They agreed to allow them to go inside, grab the girl, and then come back out and leave them alone.
The two cops went into the building and came out about twenty minutes later, holding the little girl. The next day there was an interview posted about the girl and her mother being reunited. The day after, there was an article posted about the cops who had gone inside the church to get the girl out.
They had died overnight after cutting up their own eyeballs, one with a switchblade and one with scissors. Before they died, they had each made distressing calls to the emergency line, claiming that they could see God and that he “wasn’t what we thought he was”. They told the operators that they were seeing gruesome images and that the only reason to stop them was to get rid of their eyesight. Paramedics had been sent to each of the officers’ homes but by the time they arrived, they found the cops dead, bleeding out of their eye sockets.
According to the blog, everyone thought this was some weird, random, unconnected event that occurred. The writer of the blog stated that they thought there was something deeper going on inside the church, and I will admit that I did believe them.
The following week, the town had woken up to find the bodies of four church members lying in a field just outside the church. They were dead of course, with giant gaping holes in their chest. The skin around the holes was burnt black and somehow, all of their organs had rotted. Nailed to the foreheads of each of the bodies were notes with one word written on each one. When put together, they spelled out a message: HE DIDN’T WANT THESE.
It took a while for the bodies to be identified, and the cause of death was never stated, as no one was able to figure out what exactly had caused the four people to die.
From there, things only got weirder. According to the blog, multiple people reported seeing a bright ray of light descending from the sky and into the church at odd hours of the night. They claimed that it was so bright that looking at it for more than a second hurt their eyes. A few took photos and videos of it, only to find that their cameras and phones were completely ruined afterward. Some people were able to recover some of the shots of the beam of light, and those were posted to the blog.
A few people in the town had begun to get a bit anxious, and some had even approached the church, begging to be allowed in, claiming that they were wrong to doubt them. The church, however, ignored them and did not allow anyone in.
People began to camp out around the outside of the church, thinking that it would offer them some sort of protection from whatever was in there.
It was at this point that I decided to travel back to my hometown and see for myself what was going on.
I drove straight to my mom’s house upon arrival and found it empty. All her stuff was there, and there was rotting food in the fridge, but she was nowhere to be found. That was my confirmation that she was locked up inside the church with everyone else.
I walked around the house, searching each room. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I eventually stumbled upon crates full of VHS tapes labeled with dates that went back to right before I had moved away.
Each tape was labeled with dates, about one week per tape. I carried the oldest crate of tapes into the living room where I found the VCR player located near the TV. I popped in the first tape and waited for the grainy image to appear.
It was a recording of a sermon, and I could see Pastor William standing at the front of the church. I fast-forwarded through the sermon after listening to it for a few minutes, as none of what he was saying seemed to be that important.
After a few seconds, however, I stopped and let it play normally. I could see two women walk up to the front and stand on opposite sides of the small stage at the front of the church. One of the women I didn’t recognize, but she appeared to be in her fifties. The other woman I recognized immediately, as it is not easy to forget your own mother’s face.
I watched as Pastor William began to chant something in an unknown language, the congregation joining him shortly after. They chanted for a few minutes before Pastor William switched to English and announced that they would be receiving warnings from above, and from below, and instructed everyone to pay close attention.
I leaned closer to the TV and stared at the grainy image. Both women stood still until the other woman began to move. I watched as she first threw her head back and opened her mouth as she began to scream at the top of her lungs. The congregation began to cheer as she continued to scream. Then, she flung her upper body forward until she was bending at the waist, her hair covering her face. Suddenly, her head turned 180 degrees, facing the crowd.
I backed away a few inches, as if she could come out and get me, but continued to watch. Her mouth opened, and she spoke in a hoarse voice, deeper than normal.
“The end is coming….” she stated. “I command my people to go out and spread the word before it is too late. Many will doubt you, but you mustn’t let that stop you. The people seek salvation.”
Then, she crumbled to the floor as if she was a rag doll, and lay there, unmoving. The congregation clapped and cheered, and Pastor William held up his hand to silence them as he turned to face my mother.
She stood still, unmoving, unblinking. For a few seconds, there was silence and then she spoke in a low growl.
“You are all pathetic. No matter how much you fight for yourselves, you will never succeed. You will all burn up in flames for your sins. Every single one of you.”
The people sat silently, and Pastor William began to pray softly, holding his hand out toward my mother and praying for the demon that had taken over her body to be cast out. The others joined him, and then, my mother ran across the stage towards the other woman who lay on the floor, and ripped her throat out with her teeth, and the tape stopped.
I sat in silence for a while, scared of what I had just seen, but I didn’t have time to think about it before the tape continued.
I skipped through a few of them, noticing that they all followed a similar pattern. Pastor William would bring my mother and some other person (usually a woman, but once a child, and another time an old man) up onto the stage and claim that Satan was speaking through my mother, and God was speaking through the others.
Each time, he would attempt to cast out the demons in my mother, only for her to manage to kill, or greatly injure, whoever else was on stage with her.
I skipped ahead a few weeks on the tapes and stuck a random one into the VCR. This one started the same, except instead of bringing up my mother and another church member, Pastor William and the rest of the congregation were shown walking around inside the building, chanting in tongues.
This recording was the longest, and it seemed like this had gone on for almost an entire day. By the end of it, there were screaming babies on the floor of the church, ignored by their parents who were too busy walking and chanting.
Right at the end of the recording, I could see people stop chanting and one by one, they stopped walking as they all stared at something off to the side.
“Behold,” Pastor William shouted. “It is Him!”
The camera panned over to where everyone was looking, and I saw the blurry image of someone standing off to the side of the church. It was hard to make out any features, and the tape ended as soon as it turned to capture the image. I tried going back and pausing it at just the right moment, but the quality of the footage was too grainy, and I was unable to make out any discerning features.
The next tape started with a shot of a large hole that looked to be at least 10 feet deep and was located right in the middle of the church. People stood around it, keeping a distance of a few feet as they attempted to peer down the hole.
Pastor William instructed everyone to be silent and listen to the sounds of pain coming from beneath the earth. There were about three minutes of silence in which nothing could be heard at all, and yet multiple people claimed to be hearing the cries of those burning up in Hell below them.
Pastor William announced that there would be a volunteer sent down to experience Hell. He claimed that the volunteer would return within a few hours, unharmed, and testify about their experience to everyone.
I watched as a young man was dragged through the crowd as he attempted to dig his heels into the ground to stop the men who held him by the arms from dragging him any closer to the hole. He cried as he begged them to stop, to leave him alone but they didn’t listen.
“Don’t worry boy,” Pastor William said to him. “After this experience, you will return to us. Sometimes, pain is the only way that we can learn from our mistakes.”
I watched in horror as they pushed the guy into the hole. He screamed all the way down. There was a sickening thud heard as he hit the bottom of the hole, and his screaming dulled a bit. The camera moved closer until the bottom of the hole was visible, and I could see the guy laying at the bottom. He wasn’t moving, even though he seemed to be alive still, and I assumed that he had probably broken a few important bones in the fall.
After a few minutes, I saw my mother push through everyone to reach Pastor William where she got down on her knees in front of him.
“I’m so sorry that I was unable to get my son back for this. It should have been him that would be sent down to experience pain and learn from his mistakes.”
I felt sick as Pastor William consoled her.
I skipped the rest of the tapes and decided to pop in the most recent one, which seemed to have been recorded the week before the church was locked up.
I sat back to watch it, feeling weirded out and horrified about what I had already seen. I skipped through some normal-looking sermons, pausing to see what Pastor William was speaking about, but it all seemed to center around the end of times, and preparations for locking up the church. He stated that remaining locked up was the only way to prove themselves to God, and invoke the end of times that would result in their eternal salvation.
In the last few minutes of the recording, I watched as twelve nude men walked to the front of the church where their arms were tied together and then pulled up above their heads. They seemed to be tied to some sort of contraption that was off-screen, and once all of the men were tied up, I watched as the pastor gave a cue to someone also off-screen, and the men were lifted a few feet up into the air by their arms. They flailed around a bit in pain before they proceeded to simply hang there.
The camera focused on the men as some began to feel uncomfortable and struggle against their restraints. After a few long minutes, someone else approached the men one by one, cutting their throats open. Their blood spilled down their bodies and onto the floor as they flailed around some more before dying.
Then, members of the church proceeded to rush up to them, dipping their fingers in the blood and sucking it off. Then, the tape ended.
I turned off the TV, horrified at what I had just watched, not knowing what to do. Should I give someone the tapes? Alert the police?
I decided instead to head to the church myself, and so I made the ten-minute walk to the building. There were still men guarding the entrances, and a few dozen people camped out just outside the building.
I kept my distance and watched in silence. Suddenly, I noticed a cloud of black smoke coming from the back of the building. Someone else seemed to notice it as well, and soon, people were pointing at it as they whispered about it.
A few seconds later, the screaming started. It was coming from inside the church and the people outside began to panic as the guards simply stood there. A few people attempted to approach the doors, but they were stopped by the guards, who kept them from getting too close.
I heard the wail of a firetruck approaching and assumed that someone must have called it in. A few police vehicles approached as well, and the guards were forced to back away from the entrances as they pleaded with the officers to let the building burn, stating that the doors were not to be open under any circumstances.
I watched from a distance as a few officers managed to break open one of the doors and proceed to call people over as the smoke grew thicker.
The people around the outside had backed away a few feet to avoid the cloud of smoke.
A few people came out of the church, stumbling as they tried to get the cops to leave and close the building back up. They seemed disoriented, probably due to the smoke, and the officers helped to lead a few of them away from the building.
Suddenly, there was a piercing scream that came from inside the church, and the fire stopped, just like that.
Everyone stood still, confused, wondering what had just happened. The few people who had made it out began to sob loudly as they fell to the ground. A few firefighters went into the building after a while and began to pull some people out. I noticed a few young children and even babies being carried out of the building. They were being put a few feet away from the crowds, and the officers and firefighters would stop to whisper to each other every few seconds.
“You let it out!” Someone screamed.
I turned to see one of the men that had been pulled out of the church crawling over to the officers.
“You let it out! You saw what it did to us in there! What do you think is going to happen to all of you who are not at all prepared? You don’t even believe!”
He suddenly got up and ran, headed right toward me. I froze as he came at me, running clumsy, like a newborn deer.
“Stop him!” One of the officers shouted as two others ran for him.
Without thinking, I tackled the man to the ground as he approached me. I landed on top of him, looking down at his face. His eyes were missing, leaving two holes in his face that were covered in dried blood. I backed away from him, not wanting to get a closer look at what was beyond the holes.
As the officers got to him, I stood up and looked over at the crowd of people who had been pulled out of the building. None of them had eyes, not even the children, and a few of them were missing fingers. They were covered in dirt and dried-up blood and looked like they had been tortured for days.
“He’s right,” a woman shouted. “You let it out. Now it’s going to come for you all.”
After that, I left. I walked back to my mom’s house and got back into my car and drove home.
The following week, there was a new update on the blog.
Officers had made it inside the church to find that almost half of the people had been dead for days. The ones who were still alive were in a similar state as the people I had seen pulled out of the building.
Every single person who could speak warned officers about the “thing” they had let out of the building. Every single member stated that they hadn’t been keeping anyone out, but rather, they were keeping something in. They said that part of it managed to get out when the first two officers went inside for the girl.
According to the blog, authorities theorized that the congregation was suffering from some kind of shared delusion and that they had turned on their leader, Pastor William. He was found dead, seemingly having been beaten to death by the hands of his own followers.
He was the only one who was not missing any eyes or limbs, and apart from the injuries caused by the beating, the was fine.
Some of the church members had been arrested after attempting to injure officers who carried out the bodies, stating that Pastor William’s body not be touched under any circumstances.
The update ended with a message to all the survivors, hoping that they get the help they require.
I didn’t call my mother. I just sort of assumed that she was dead, and if she wasn’t, it didn’t really matter. All the church members were sticking to their story, and they all seemed to be terrified of whatever thing had been set free.
There was only one other update made to the blog, and it came about a week after the one prior. This one was short and merely stated that Pastor William’s body was missing, and coincidentally, multiple bodies had been turning up around town. The bodies were partially eaten and appeared to have been alive while they were being consumed.
The writer finished off the article by stating that Pastor William was responsible for the murders, claiming that “It requires the flesh of the innocent in order to survive”.