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intensified from one assault a day to many, at completely unpredictable intervals. The future bride never knew when she’d be punched, kicked, flung on the floor, dragged out of bed, bitten, or yanked around by her hair. Her life became a living hell, as she was brutalized in every imaginable way. Earlier in the interview we’d seen how raw her nerves were, and now we knew why. Because she was attacked night after night, in order that the demon could feed on her fear and gain power over her mother, she was angry, exhausted, and on the edge of complete despair.
    Put yourself in that house for a minute, and try to imagine what it was like for this young woman and her family. It’s late at night, and you’re in your own comfortable bed. But you know there’s something evil in your home with you and lie awake, scared witless, just waiting for something to happen: Will you be attacked—or will a loved one be? Then you hear your daughter screaming. Your legs can’t carry you fast enough, your heart is racing, and you can’t breathe. That’s exactly the horror this family endured, twenty-four hours a day, for nearly three hellish months.
    So they stopped sleeping in their separate bedrooms and huddled together in the living room, in sleeping bags and makeshift beds. Even then rest was fitful and unrefreshing. Midnight screams punctured what little sleep they got, as the foul force clawed its bloody mark on Luciana and terrorized the other family members. Their possessions were flung around like trash: The future bride’s cherished collection of clown dolls was repeatedly found on the floor, and her books kept flying off their shelves, sometimes striking nearby walls so violently that they left dents in the plaster. Stranger still, Gabby found that the silk flowers she kept on her dresser had mysteriously left their vase—and arranged themselves on her bed in the shape of a cross.
    Heavy furniture began to move on its own, shaking up and down as if from an earthquake or levitating off the floor. Large chairs—or on one occasion, Luciana’s bed—started flying around, smashing into walls, and knocking the family’s pictures to the floor in a hail of glass. The demonic also used other terrorist tactics: One of the most unnerving was the way the TV or stereo would suddenly blare to life in the middle of the night, at full blast. Horrible moans and growls were heard in the basement, and on some mornings, creepy messages would be found on the bathroom mirror, Ruth said. “Several times we found the word ‘help’ written backwards on the glass.”
    Too scared to be alone, even when using the toilet or standing naked in the shower, they took to visiting the bathroom in groups. There was some safety in numbers, Ruth explained. After she was twice menaced by flying objects—a box of tissues that struck her in the face when she was in the basement by herself and a can of peas that levitated off a kitchen shelf and just missed the back of her head—she asked her future daughter-in-law to stand guard as she took a shower. “I was drying myself off when Luciana shouted ‘Watch out!’ I ducked and a heavy soap dish came flying over the shower door and smashed into the wall behind me. If she hadn’t warned me, I’d have definitely gotten clobbered! Whatever this thing is, it has a lot of power!”
    Ruth also noticed that the infernal force had a peculiar effect on her body. “When it’s around, I’m one of the first people to get cold and start shivering uncontrollably. If something is starting to happen to Luciana, I feel like needles are poking my thighs, and my leg muscles go crazy. Several times this happened when she was in another room, and I didn’t have any way of knowing she was getting scratched or bitten. The time she was pulled from her bed by her hair, just before the attack, I saw a white bullet—or a white