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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

18. Fending Off Satan With Pain

demonic possession — Demonic possession. Netflix

One day after beating themselves senseless, Margaretta told her followers that more pain was needed to ward off Satan. She then grabbed an iron wedge and began bludgeoning her brother, while her followers resumed beating each other up. Margaretta then announced that her dead mother’s ghost ordered her to sacrifice herself, but her sister stepped up and insisted that she be sacrificed instead.

Margaretta accepted and began beating her sister with an iron wedge. The rest of the congregation joined in, and soon, the sister was dead. When a follower protested, Margaretta assured her that her sister would rise from the dead in three days.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.