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October 31

posted 4 years ago by MAGolding (1096)
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A few notes on "October 31":

The Exorcism:

The depiction of the exorcism may be inaccurate. Of course I am not an expert on exorcisms.

One obvious tactic to use to exorcise a devil you suspect is possessing someone is to inflict pain on the body of the possessed person, hoping that the pain will make the devil suffer too much for it to bear and so it will leave the body.

But that tactic suffers from the flaw that possibly a devil might be able to stand a lot more pain than its human host can, so that the painful exorcism might drive the human insane with pain without bothering the devil at all. Or possibly the devil possessing the human can turn its ability to feel the pain in the human body on and off at will, and will turn it off whenever the physical pain in the body gets to be too intense for the devil.

In short, there is no guarantee that inflicting pain on a body possessed by a devil will bother the devil at all or hasten its departure from the human host, while it is likely to give a lot of pain to the innocent victim of the possession.

So the present approved methods of exorcism included tormenting the devil, and not the possessed person, with prayers. Devils hate anything holy, after all.

But apparently the episode is correct that the exorcism may involve restraining the possesed person and can go on for hours, days, or weeks until successful.

Process of the exorcism
In the process of an exorcism the person possessed may be restrained so that they do not harm themselves or any person present. The exorcist then prays and commands for the demons to retreat. The Catholic Priest recites certain prayers the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Athanasian Creed. Exorcists follow procedures listed in the ritual of the exorcism revised by the Vatican in 1999. Seasoned exorcists use the Rituale Romanum as a starting point, not always following the prescribed formula exactly.[7] The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained describes that an exorcism was a confrontation and not simply a prayer and once it has begun it has to finish no matter how long it takes. If the exorcist stops the rite, then the demon will pursue him which is why the process being finished is so essential.[8] After the exorcism has been finished the person possessed feels a “kind of release of guilt and feels reborn and freed of sin.” [9] Not all exorcisms are successful the first time; it could take days, weeks, or months of constant prayer and exorcisms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_in_the_Catholic_Church

So possibly someone who knows more about exorcisms may be able to tell how realistic the procedures are in this episode. I note that it is considered unusual that this exorcism has lasted for 6 days.

Continued:

[–] MAGolding (1096) 4 years ago

"October 31"

Continued:

Fake Brenda.

We have to wonder how the experience of the Bouchard girls with the false Brenda will affect their relationship with the real Brenda. How did the Fake Brenda know that the real Brenda was too sick to come?

Maybe the false Brenda knew the real Brenda was sick because she made her sick. Maybe Fake Brenda put some kind of food poison in Branda's lunch at school, or something.

So Fake Brenda might be a sister of Brenda, or maybe a classmate of Brenda and the Bouchard girls.

Of course Fake Brenda was probably the disfigured girl in the story that she told the Bouchard girls. And at the end of the episode Fake Brenda is seen from behind, apparently without her mask, walking down the street away from the camera, and two boys approach her and then run away in fright and she laughs.

If that theory is correct, fake Brenda shouldn't be a girl from the Bouchard girls' school. But she might be a sister of the real Brenda, a sister who is kept hidden at home and considers the unpopular Brenda to be much more popular than she is - after all, other kids know that Brenda exists - and envies Brenda's relative popularity and freedom.

I wonder if Fake Brenda was planning to get the Bourchard girls to cover up the girl in the grave to suffocate her. I saw the 20/20 episode "The Wicked" on 10-25-19 and wonder if the writers of "October 31" were familiar with the Slenderman stabbing case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man_stabbing and more or less modeled Fake Brenda on Morgan Geyser & Anissa Weier.

And of course I wonder whether the false Brenda is bitter and malicious and sort of evil, or if she is EVIL and has joined the evil society of the 60, whatever exactly that is.

[–] MAGolding (1096) 4 years ago

"October 31"

Continued:

The Crown:

I can't tell the Bourchard girls apart very well yet. They wore Halloween costumes in "October 31", which of course made it even harder to tell them apart.

One of the younger girls, the one that Fake Brenda persuade to lie down in the grave, wore a fairy costume, and a costume jewelry crown. She was wearing the crown when she got down into the grave, but as I remember she wasn't wearing it when they pulled her out of the grave. It is quite plausible for a crown to fall off when someone lies down and then gets up.

And what is weird is that nobody jumped down into the grave to retrieve the crown. So I guess someone will have to go back to the cemetery on November 1 and get the crown out of the grave before someone is buried in it. I think it would be embarrassing to yell "Stop the funeral! I have to get something out of the grave before it's covered up." And the way to avoid such embarrassment is to not carelessly leave jewelry, even costume jewelry, laying around in newly dug graves.

I don't own any jewelry, but if I ever do buy any costume jewelry it will be crowns. So I have sometimes checked the prices of costume jewelry crowns and think that the crown in the episode looked too expensive to just leave in a grave to be buried or taken home by the gravedigger. I don't have a picture of the crown to compare, but I have seen vaguely similar looking crowns online sold for tens or hundreds of dollars.