The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies (16 page)

Word about the problems spread, and the Bell farm became an
object of curiosity. It was discovered that the invisible assailant was
intelligent, for it responded to communication. When ordered to
cease in the name of the Lord, it did-but only temporarily. It often resumed activity with greater intensity. This is characteristic of djinn, who will temporarily stop their harassment, only to resume
it much more powerfully.

After a time, the unknown spirit began to whistle and speak.
As we saw above, the djinn are especially known for whistling and
whispering. The entity gave different explanations of itself. It said
it was a "spirit from everywhere, heaven, hell, the earth. I'm in the
air, in houses, any place at any time. I've been created millions of
years. That is all I will tell you." This description is a striking fit
with the djinn.

The spirit also said it was the ghost of a person who was buried in the woods nearby, and whose grave had been disturbed. Its
tooth was beneath the Bell house. The Bells searched in vain for a
tooth. A djinn would have laughed to see them on their wild goose
chase.

The spirit then said it was the ghost of an immigrant who died
and left a hidden fortune, and had returned to tell Betsy where it
was stashed. It gave a location, and the Bell boys dug for hours but
found nothing. The spirit laughed aloud over that one. Djinn are
known for promising riches and then not delivering.

Meanwhile, the local residents were forming their own opinions
about the spirit's identity: they decided it was a witch. The spirit
said, "I am nothing more nor less than old Kate Batts' witch, and
I'm determined to haunt and torment old Jack Bell as long as he
lives." Kate Batts was a neighbor with whom Bell had previously
had bad business dealings. She threatened to get even. There was
no evidence that she ever suited actions to words, but from then
on, the spirit was called "Kate." It was a suitable guise for a djinni.

From a djinn perspective, bad business was indeed involved.
As we have noted, djinn are extremely territorial and protective of
their turf. Like the little man in the hole in chapter 5, they can become enraged if humans invade or damage their property. A djinni
could have once occupied the land on which Bell established his farm. The Bells' arrival was nothing less than a home invasionand the djinni reacted with characteristic anger.

The spirit seemed to spin out of control. It visited other people
besides the Bells, blasting them with insults. It made predictions,
another hallmark of "fortune-telling" djinn. But most of all, it
continued to torment John Bell and his family.

A "witch layer," or professional exorcist, attempted to visit, but
his carriage broke down. When he finally made it to the house,
he attempted to kill the spirit with a silver bullet, but instead he
was slapped around. Frightened, he left. Had he been knowledgeable about djinn, he would have brought iron weapons instead, for
djinn, like fairies, are seriously weakened by iron.

The spirit's final action was to make John Bell ill-certainly a
favored djinn tactic. John repeatedly fell ill with strange symptoms, and lay in bed twitching and convulsing, as though possessed. "Kate" claimed credit. Bell's health deteriorated. He was
found dead in his bed on December 19, 1820, three years after
trouble had first began. A strange bottle of liquid never before seen
was found in the medicine cabinet. Lucy fed it to their cat, which
promptly convulsed and died. "Kate" claimed she poisoned Bell to
death, and she laughed hysterically in triumph. The djinni had its
revenge.

However, the spirit was not done with the family. It turned full
force on Betsy and tormented her over her engagement to a man,
forcing her to break it off. Djinn who fall in love with humans are
known to do the same. Betsy, however, married another man-but
apparently someone the djinni/spirit didn't mind.

"Kate" announced she would leave but would return in seven
years. A cannonball-like object then rolled out of the chimney and
burst into smoke, and the spirit vanished. Smoke and mist are associated with djinn, as they lack forms in their natural state.

Since then, haunting phenomena have continued on the property, which is now privately owned and operated as a tourist attraction. The original Bell home no longer exists, but has been replaced with a replica. It is said to be haunted as well. The activity
may spring from the land itself, which would be characteristic of a
place frequented by djinn.

Nearby is a small cave that extends about five hundred feet into
a bluff over a river. The cave is renowned for unusual phenomena,
including apparitions, photographic anomalies of misty shapes,
glowing balls of light, whispering voices, and sounds of breathing.
Caves, as we have seen, are a favorite home of the djinn. A disturbed Native American burial site lies above the entrance to the
cave. The bones of the woman buried there were stolen, which has
given rise to belief in a curse-bad luck will come to anyone who
takes anything from the cave, even so much as a stone.

Rosemary has visited the cave with Troy Taylor, founder of the
American Ghost Society. Taylor has made numerous trips to the
Bell Witch site and believes the cave to be a portal and the home
of "an ancient, primeval spirit." It probably is, and it may belong
to a djinn.

In Closing

The djinn are the "artful dodgers" of the paranormal, assuming different forms and slipping between dimensions at will. They have
the ability to severely disrupt human life. In the following chapters,
we compare djinn in more detail to other supernatural entities with
whom we in the West are more familiar, and we examine ways to
counter their effects.

O FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONNECTION between angels, demons, and djinn, we must delve into the Prophet Muhammad's revelation of the Qur'an. According to tradition, Muhammad
received the Qur'an in a series of dreams and trancelike inspired
states in which he was visited by the archangel Jibril. But was Muhammad actually visited by a djinni instead?

Muhammad is considered to be the last receiver of all divine
revelations before the end of the world. His name means "the
Praised One" or "He Who is Glorified." In all, there are two hundred names for Muhammad, such as "Joy of Creation" and "Beloved of God." Mention of his name is customarily followed by
one of several invocations, such as "God bless Him and give Him
peace" or "May peace be upon Him."

Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 CE; tradition holds
that his lineage goes back to Ishmael and Abraham. Some accounts
claim he was illiterate, but he had a successful business career and
probably was at least semi-literate. In 590, he married a woman twice his age. After twenty years of marriage and a successful career as a merchant of skins and raisins, his spiritual life unfolded.
He felt a call to withdraw from the world, and pray and meditate
to reach enlightenment. At the root of his spiritual searching was
his acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, the immaculate conception
of Mary and the virgin birth, in addition to his conviction that
Judaism and Christianity had distorted God's revelations to Moses
and Jesus, and that the pagan Arabs lived in ignorance of God's
true will.

Muhammad would often leave his wife and children in Mecca to make a four-hour journey to the Cave of Hira, located a short distance from the city on the top of a mountain. Hira is a small cave, about fourteen feet in length by six feet wide. There he would stay in complete isolation for several nights, deep in thought, prayer, and meditation.

In the year 610, while in the cave one night during Ramadan,'
Muhammad was visited by a "creature" who ordered him in an authoritative, almost threatening voice, "READ!"

Muhammad replied to the creature, "I do not know how to read."

The creature grabbed him with such a great force that he almost suffocated. It released him, and repeated the same command three times. On the third time, the creature gave him what later became the opening lines of sura 96:

Tradition holds that after issuing its commands, the creature disappeared. Muhammad went to sleep and awakened in the morning
to hear words that seemed to be written on his heart: "0 Muhammad, you are the Apostle of God and I am fibril."

According to the Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya, a biography of the
Prophet by Ibn Kathir, written in the fourteenth century, Muhammad ran from the cave, all the way back to Mecca, trembling with
fear. He ran into his house and found his wife and implored her,
"Cover me, cover me." His wife asked him what was the matter.
He told her of the creature he encountered in the cave and said
he had to leave because he feared for his life. It is not clear at this
point whether Muhammad thought the creature was a djinni or
angel, but it was obvious he was very afraid of the creature that
had accosted him.

From historical accounts of djinn and demons, we know they
often make people do things they don't want to by threatening
them or using physical force. In Biblical accounts of angel encounters, people often feared the angels because they usually appeared
when God was unhappy with a person; the angel was sent to chastise or punish. In the Arabic world, however, djinn would have
been even more feared than a powerful angel.

Muhammad was able to see the creature from any angle he
looked, implying it was multidimensional in nature. However, there
is no record of an exact description of the entity. Muhammad was
skeptical of the creature's true identity. He saw it on several occasions after the first encounter, but no one else could see it. The creature followed him from the cave and often appeared in his home.
Muhammad's wife, Khadija, wanted to discover the true identity of
the creature and so told her husband to inform her when the entity
was present. When the creature finally appeared, she asked Muhammad to sit on her left thigh and asked him, "Can you still see the
creature?"

He replied that he did.

She then threw off her veil and asked Muhammad to sit on her right thigh. Khadija then asked him, "Can you still see the creature?"

He replied, "No, it is gone."

Khadija then told Muhammad, "Be firm, by the name of Allah, he is an angel and not a demon."

Islamic scholars interpret the test above as meaning that an angel would not stay to look at the uncovered part of a female body, but a demon would. Also, the creature was visible only when he sat on her left thigh and not her right. The pre-Islamic people believed that the proper sequence of things was from right to left. If the creature was also visible on the right, this meant to them that it would have been moving from left to right and against the balanced movement of the universe and against the will of Allah. Only evil djinn can do this-angels can't. This test convinced Khadija that the creature was an angel, and not just any angel, but the Archangel Jibril. Muhammad still remained skeptical.

Three years passed after the first revelation before Muhammad felt ready to call himself a prophet. He preached to his own clan, the Hashimites, that if they did not worship God instead of their idols, they would be punished. The followers of the new religion were called Muslims, which is derived from a term that means "they who surrender to God." His evangelizing was not without conflict and even holy war.