BATTLE WITH SATAN.

Northern Advocate, 6 October 1913, Page 6

BATTLE WITH SATAN.

ENDS IN TRAGEDY

PARIS, August 20,

Religious fanaticism caused a terrible tragedy at a farm at Ponmieux, near Avignon, yesterday.

The farmer Julien, his wife, their three children, Marius, Rose and Julie, aged twenty-five, nineteen and twenty-nine respectively, and the grandmother aged 80, lived there. The family was well off and the farm in a prosperous condition.

One day the eldest daughter, Julie, declared that she was possessed by Satan. Every day she had another tale to tell about the demon in whose power she believed herself to be.

The other members of the family, with the exception of the grandmother, seem to have been so worked upon by her statements that at last they believed her.

Yesterday she lay on the floor, and began crying out, "Go away, Satan, go away!" Suddenly her brother, sister and parents joined in the performance, and all began to cry out for the "demon" to go away. The grandmother tried to comfort them, but they bound her to an armchair.

Then they returned to the daughter ■with chairs and sticks, shouted to the demon to go away and beat the poor girl's head till it was an unrecognisable mass of broken bones, brains and blood.

When the girl was dead the brother and sister called at the house of the local abbe to tell him they had succeeded in driving Satan away. The priest informed the police, who arrested the family.