Have you ever seen evil in someone’s eyes?
(I posted this over at my Amazon.com plog. And usually I hate to double-post the same text, but I really am hoping to hear from a member of the Sons of Jared, and maybe this will draw them out to talk to me.)
Now that I’m book tour, I’ve been talking to a number of people about THE MEPHISTO CLUB, and about Biblical legends of demons who walk among us. I’m meeting a number of people who have disturbing stories to tell me, people who actually believe they’ve encountered such creatures.
One man, a hairdresser, told me about the woman client whose hair he was cutting. He had never met her before, and she seemed like a perfectly ordinary, pleasant woman. Then she said something that made him focus on her face. As he looked into her eyes, he felt a sudden, soul-shattering chill. He saw something else, something not human, staring back at him. “I instantly backed away,” he said. He had to excuse himself and go into a back room, where he stood shaking and on the verge of tears. It took him some moments before he could bring himself to go back out and finish cutting the woman’s hair. She paid her bill and walked out. He never saw her again.
This happened several years ago. He has never had another experience like it since. But as he told me the story, he was once again shaking, once again frightened. What, exactly, did he see in that woman’s eyes? He still doesn’t know.
His experience isn’t unique. Other people have told me similar stories, of looking into another person’s eyes — usually strangers they’ve never met before — and recognizing something dark and powerful, something that truly, deeply frightened them.
I’m sure this is not new in human history. In the era before Christ, other people must have experienced the same chill, the same sense of fear. They too believed they glimpsed something that was not quite human staring from another person’s eyes. Could this be what sparked the legends of the Nephilim?
If you have a similar story to tell, I’d like to hear it.
And if you are a member of the Sons of Jared, I want to hear from you too. You need not tell me your name.
Struggler and Emmett, I don’t think that having weird and inappropriate thoughts is unusual — yet seldom do people even dare to confess that they have them. But when they really start to scare us or we think we might actually act on them, it’s probably time to seek help in dealing with them. Emmett, I do hope you’ll find someone to talk to if these impulses start to feel overpowering.
Whilst reading this book I had to get up and check that my windows and doors were locked because deep down I know that there is raw evil in the world ready and waiting to destroy and lash out. Growing up, I attended parochial school and we were taught, although thankfully not in detail, that there are indeed mystical and demonic forces at work in the world all around us. Kaballah, jewish mysticism, teaches about such mystical and evil forces. I think you did an amasing job of weaving interesting historical/biblical detail into a riveting storyline.
“Eyes are the window to the soul”….and so, I try never to look a person in the eye until I get a strong vibe/sense of him/her. I say “ignorance is bliss” and I would rather not know or see evil up close ever!
I can’t wait for the next book…Kudos Ms. Gerritsen!!
I was reading over this entire blog and I was a little worried about one of the posts.
The truth is there a many times when everyone sees “red” and marvels in the idea of lashing out in fierce anger but they never act upon it. I have had them many times but once I have really thought about it, the thoughts disappear and anger usually goes with it. Thoughts in of themselves are not a problem. It’s a socially acceptable way for your brain to release some of it’s frustrations and anxieties without hurting yourself or anyone else. If however, the desire and impulse becomes overpowering and you find yourself spending a lot of time thinking about it or planning ways to go through with it, I suggest seeking out some help. There is nothing wrong or shameful about needing help and I would say it takes a strong and courageous person to ask for it.
The point is many people have thoughts and there is nothing wrong with a thought as long as it ultimately stays, just a thought.
June, you weren’t worried about MY post, were you? I wish I’d never confessed now!
I had problems last year finding “Vanish’ at the Books-A-Million in Greenville, SC! I ended up preordering ‘Mephisto Club’ through B&N. I have to say, it was well worth the wait! This one has to be your best novel so far. You had me scratching my head with Lily. I won’t say anymore since I don’t want to spoil it for the other who might not have read the book yet.
I knew a child in the 70′s when I was in gradeschool, who I thought was pure evil. He never smiled or laughed that I can remember and had that blank stare and I swear his eyes were black as coal. One day I saw him stomp on a lizard like it was nothing and walk away without a word. *shiver*
Struggler, I believe that everyone has two parts to them. You have the one that you allow people to see and the one that tends to be private being the part that has impulses that would be considered abnormal. If these impulses were to be carried out then you would be considered an evil person, however there are very few of us that are not able to repress these impulses. It is almost like you have an incontrollable moment of rage but then you realise it is unfounded. I suffer from these most when I am stressed, however I do not hide these from people I tell them. I always say I am feeling the rage, we have a laugh and the feeling subsides. I believe that these are normal feelings, and it is just that people do not normally talk about things that unsettle them, that makes it almost taboo!
bitchinsahsa, Emmett76, Tess : I’m still reading this strand because it’s interesting – and feel compelled to clarify my ‘feelings’. I have two precious and beautiful little daughters who quite frankly are the main reason for my wanting to live for many years to come, but inexplicably I get these thoughts (rather than urges or compulsions) when I’m preparing a meal in the kitchen, usually when I’m slicing and dicing some vegetables or something like that. In other words, I have a knife in my hand, a long sharp knife. Nothing unusual in that of course, but one or other of the girls will keep coming into the kitchen to demand something (as they do!) or perhaps just to ask where mummy’s gone, if she’s out. My feeling is a mixture of guilt that there’s my innocent, vulnerable daughter close to me while I’m holding something that instantly transforms from something innocuous for slicing mushrooms into a lethal weapon, and a vision of stabbing my little daughter. Needless to say I have never stabbed anyone of any age and have never contemplated it, so why I get these guilt/violent visions I have no idea. I don’t ‘hear voices’, I’m not emotionally unstable, although I suppose I have been suffering from stress in recent years (business related), if that’s any guide.
I’m not evil though, despite wondering if the best way to create genuine notoriety for the book I plan to write one day – it doesn’t involve murder at any point, but does include violence – would be to carry out all the acts of violence myself shortly before publication date! Suddenly a work of fiction would become factually based….I wonder if that’s ever been done before? I should add that the victims in the book are real people, with their names changed, and I know who they are even though they have no idea who I am, they’ve never heard of me. When I heard what these seven people had variously done (over a 15 year period) to a single woman my initial urge was to seek vengeance on her behalf; instead I decided to write a book about her life. It’s serious stuff; the woman has been raped many times, she has been left disabled as a result of other unrelated actions, and she has been conned out of her life savings by another unrelated person. If anything, my instinct isn’t one of ‘evil’ but the opposite of it, whatever that is…to seek exact retribution, such that rapists are raped in return, for example in the fashion of ‘an eye for an eye’ justice.
If anyone’s still reading this, please say what you think of my comments!
I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT I AM CURRENTLY READING “VANISH” WHICH I AM ASHAMED TO SAY IS THE THE FIRST TESS GERRITSEN BOOK THAT I HAVE EVER READ. BUT I JUST CAN NOT SEEM TO PUT IT DOWN….WELL UNTIL NOW…AND THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE I NEEDED SOME TIME TO REST MY BRAIN. I AM REALLY ENJOYING JANE RIZZOLI’S WIT AND PERSONALITY. TESS REALLY KNOWS HOW TO DRAW A READER IN.
I can’t say I’ve ever encountered evil in someone’s eyes…but I do have a story.
Maybe 10 years or so ago there were a couple local stories of cults doing rituals up in one of the cemeteries around my hometown. At the time, reading about the occult fascinated me, not to the point that I wanted to dabble in it, but I wanted to find out more about the people involved. So a friend and I decided to go to the cemetery…it is called Quaker Cemetery. It was around dusk, I didn’t want to go at NIGHT, in case the cult would be there. The cemetery is literally out in the boondocks…farmland all around and the nearest house maybe a 1/2 mile away or so. So we parked our car and walked into the brick building on the cemetery grounds and walked in…in the center of the building was a sacrifice circle with the pentagram in the middle, they also had to fireplace on either side of the building, I walked over to them, and I don’t know what was inside them, but something had been burned.
The way the cemetery sits is on a hillside, so the graves are down the hillside past the building, which when you walk down, you can’t see the road. We walked down to look at some of the headstones…and for the life of me, to this day, I can’t remember what one of the headstones said, but it was a child’s headstone. Whatever the writing was on the stone, freaked me out so much that I told her, I’m done here and I won’t be back and walked up to the car and locked the door (cause THAT would’ve helped:). She stayed for a few extra minutes and then came back up and we left and have yet to ever go to that cemetery again, and I don’t plan on it anytime soon.
-Lynn
May I suggest you read “People of the Lie” by psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck? It is all about the concept of evil.
I was surfing the web for sites regarding evil or sensing evil or negative energy in another person and came across this blog site. I recently had a very strange experience when a plumber came to my house to fix backed up drain. We were in my basement (which is unfinished, cold, musty, and not a place i spend time in other than to do laundry). He seemed relatively normal, pleasant, and moderately funny. I tend to befriend people quickly and think I have a good sense of humor, which tends to put a lot of people at ease. He made a very nice comment about me being the nicest person he’s done service for in a very long time intimating that most customers are rude. He spent a significant amount of time explaining all of my different *options* and costs for fixing my plumbing problem. At one point in our conversation, we were standing in my basement and I was staring into his face and his eyes looked black. I recall staring at his eyes, thinking they looked momentarily soulless and creepy and then I had a vision of him suddenly snapping, reaching out and grabbing me by the neck and attacking me. It was so strange and I had never experienced anything like that before and I’m typically not afraid of anyone, but for that brief moment I felt like I was in the presence of someone dangerous (or that I might have intuitively tapped into something dark in his own thought process or psyche). I did what I usually do when when around animals – tried not to show my fear. I stood with my hands on my hips, which tends to be a very authoritative stance, nodding my head in recognition of everything he was telling me about my plumbing, keeping a straight face, staring into these horrifically unnerving black and soulless eyes, all the while trying to consciously block out the image I have having of him trying to strangle me. He hung around for a few hours (and I knew he was attracted to me b/c he kept making innuendos), which I tried to deflect by talking a lot about my boyfriend. There was only that one instance in my basement when I saw something very dark in this man and had that vision. I looked him in his eyes several times and didn’t feel the fear that I did at that one moment. I’m not sure if it was evil I sensed, but it was definitely an experience I will never forget and one I’ve never had before about anyone.
I, like mocha, I have seen the black eyes before too. I think it is the demon we are seeing in the individual who is possessed. Truly. Of course I have seen MANY spiritual things in this life, and have seen plenty of evil unfortunately, and encountered MANY demons and angels…
When I was a young kid, we were playing and stopped in this house being built, and when we I looked in the mirror on the wall, I suddenly saw a bull sitting in the bathtub behind us with the shower water running on it. That was weird for sure.
Another instance was a neighborhood we lived in, this house on a street had no one living in it, and yet anytime we rode our bikes by, these curtains would open up, like someone/something was looking out at us. As soon as we got to the property line, they opened up, and as soon as we left it, they closed. We could ride our bikes right back in front of it, and they would open over and over again. Remember the movie the Devil’s Advocate, and how the peoples faces changed when they killed someone? Or like in Jacobs Ladder, when his girlfriend asked him if he had a problem, “well, do you?” and her eyes went black? These are messages from the Light, to remind us of Paul the apostles words, “that we war against principalities and powers…”
Let me assure you, demons and angels are real, and demons and very much under the authority of Satan. Make no mistake, I am speaking from experience. Pretty scary stuff to be sure.
In my case it was in Salt Lake City, and it was a coworker that is in the same agency in the fed as I am, and we shook hands to say goodbye at the end of the class, and his eyes went black for an instant, but I did not look at him for any length of time. I have never been fascinated by the devil, and am his sworn enemy, and if I could be counted among the 144,000, I would be very glad indeed. He was a really bad character, always talking like he was just ignorant of everything around him.
I was also in a house many years ago, and could feel the evil ones around me and my girlfriend. Absolutely paralized with fear. I have never felt that before. It was an interesting sensation, that if not for prayer and the subsequent intervention of Jesus Christ, I may have perished. It was weird though, the house we were in was two story, and the house had motion detector lights at all corners of the house, and the wind was going, the animals, (it was in the country) horses etc were all restless suddenly, and all the lights came on at once. The demonic spirit was in the hallway, I could feel him through the wall.
Then in another instance, we came to the house to drop her off, and I could see 4 or 5 of them in the house, one on the front porch. We couldn’t even get close the house. It was pretty wild to say the least. But I have always believed in God, and naturally in all the things that we cannot see, which matter more than the things we can…
I will say this much, I don’t remember a feeling of soulessness in the eyes I saw. I would describe it more as total hatred and contempt for the fact that I am breathing.
I would remind you all, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist…”
Christ is Lord, and our ONLY defense against the Dragon, who seeks to devour us all. Never resting, “seeking whom he can devour…”
I have read a few of the blogs here, and I have seen “evil” in a persons eyes plenty, but until you really see the demon looking back at you, that evil eye doesn’t compare.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
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I have a friend who I have been uneasy around. He is into shamanism, tarot, horoscopes, healing but is anti Christian although he grew up with a minister father. He came to the door the other day after I hadn’t seen him in almost 2 months and I looked at his eyes and was almost paralyzed. I got very scared…I’m not sure why, they just scared me..they are very piercing and I just see something not good when I look at them.
I also read a post of someone on a website I belong to and it was just introducing himself and how he is back on the site after an absence. I immediately got this bad feeling that something wasn’t right. Nothing in his post showed that, just got a really scared feeling. Well I went to his FB page and looked at his pics and he was goth looking and I thought wow he’s very odd looking how weird. And just a gut wrenching bad feeling (nothing wrong with the goth look just this particular guy scared me and I was shaking). My friend later said to me, I have to warn you to stay away from that new guy. He’s a satanist. He sacrifices babies. I was like, um I knew there was something evil there from reading his post (which mentioned nothing about that). Weird that I picked that up from reading a hey I’m back on the site and changed my name post? Yeah…
On my honeymoon in Singapore last year I truly know I saw evil.
It was in a supermarket, I was kidding around with my wife and we were having fun together. I had got to be about 5 yards infornt of her when I turned a corner. As I turned the corner a young lady locked eyes with me, it was as if my eyes were drawn to hers. Her eyes were black and she smiled at me. At once I felt a pain in my chest. My body crippled over as I grabbed my chest. My wife came round the corner and at first thought i was kidding around still. I felt vunerable like she had violated me. Tears welled up in my eyes and my wife realised something was very wrong. Still bent over with the pain in my chest I pointed to the back of the young girl dressed all in black with long black hair and told my wife “she is the devil! She is evil.”
As my tears began to fall down my face I realised that around that corner in the supermarket were stalls with women selling seafood. The women on the stalls were laughing. They had seen me come round the corner, look at the evil lady, bend over in pain, and then cry and yet they laughed – I could tell they knew exactly what had just happened. They looked as if they completely expected what just happened.
My wife bought a drink from the supermarket and we left quickly. I was shaken, upset and freaked out but she was very thirsty and I insisted she got a drink.
After my wife( a cardiologist) asked questions about the pain I got in my chest and I realised it was my soul that the lady hurt. It was as if she saw into my soul and her evil penetrated it.
Two evenings later in our hotel room I took record of our expenditure. I found the reciept from the supermarket and the store was called Satan. Instantly I freaked.
I just wanted to share my experience.
yes i believe and have seen this. numerous times. i am not sure if you have to have an open mind to be able to see someone posessed by evil/devil or what. i do know when i tell people my stories of what i have seen and saw. no one seems to really believe me or want to even listen to what i have to say. i do believe people who have never experienced this block it out of there mind/soul. 1st off my ex husband is posessed by a demon or demons. i knew something was off the moment i met him. there was something about his eyes. . . at first i mistook it for something special. some kind of spiritual connection with him. boy was i wrong!! one of his eyes looked darker to me (as if i could see through to his soul) it was also a little mishappen from the other. it was his soul i was seeing…. a darker, evil soul…… i have also seen another old friend, aquaintence with eyes posessed. it was as if he knew i could see this in him and he would play with me with his eyes. this evil i could see was in both eyes. it was as if either sides of his eyes were a dark grey color that you could see infinity into them. this man would like flip his eyes from normal, to evil back and forth to me. it was as if he had another set of eyelids. also his eyes were a strange reddish/yellowy color. this man also was into self mutilation, i once saw him stand in the middle of a fire pit for 10 minutes and not even catch on fire. i lost contact with this man for about 7 years. i just recently ran into him again with my new husband at a bar….. the man came up to me and asked me how i knew he had demons inside of him. i said i could just see them. he stated he did and was trying to get them to go away. my husband was in complete shock and amazement at this point…. i had told my hubby about my experiences and he never really seemed to believe me. he looked right at me and was like oh my god your right!!! i do not know if these evil spirits seek me out or if they know i can see them and are curious as to why….. it fascianates and scares the f!@# out of me at the same time. i also believe they can only hurt you if you let/allow them too. they are manipulators and prey on the weak (example:ex husband) as long as you have a strong soul they will not hurt/harm you. they are scared of you. believe me……… and no i was not on any drugs during these experiences!!!!!!!
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I saw something in someones eyes ONCE. And have searched a long time find someone that knows what I’m talking about. I’m very serious and its a very emotional event for me. If you are sincere please email me back.
Correction, I saw something in someones eye.