Review: Sister of Darkness
Rachel Stavis is a secular exorcist. It started about ten years ago when she spotted a demon in her then-boyfriend’s gut. After describing it to him and finding out it looked remarkably like his imaginary ghost-friend from childhood, she had him lie down in their bedroom while she went into the backyard to meditate. After an hour of communing with her Higher Beings and visualizing the little monster leaving her boyfriend’s body, she felt an energy shift. She went inside and asked how he felt. “Different,” he answered. “Lighter.”
Although her exorcism career started in that backyard one day in her early thirties, Stavis has been seeing spirits — entities, she calls them — since she was a baby. She’s seen them following her friends and floating after strangers. She’s also been visited herself countless times, both in broad day and in nightmares. Through it all, she could never discuss what she was experiencing with her mother. “Suck it up,” she would say. “You’re embarrassing me.”
After nearly 40 years of seeing entities of all shapes, sizes and intentions, Stavis has worked out a sort of spiritual taxonomy. Clives — named after their resemblance to Clive Barker’s drawings — are the smallest, most common entities, followed by Wraiths and Tricksters. Most entities, it turns out, aren’t on some epic mission from Satan to overthrow God; they’re just parasites, looking for misery to create and feed on.
It’s the Collectors and Realm Walkers that seem to answer to a higher (lower?) purpose. Collectors, says Ms. Stavis, attach to places where tragedies have occurred, literally collecting the souls of those unfortunate enough to die there and using them as fuel to effectively haunt the place.
Realm Walkers are the entities that want to cause widespread havoc and destruction. These are the most frightening — and thankfully, the rarest — entities that Stavis encounters. Realm Walkers attach to whole neighborhoods, lowering the vibrations of their inhabitants and causing tragedies, opening them up to Collectors and other, less potent entities.
Although her writing is often unpolished and too wordy — complete with tacky asides in parentheses that any good editor would have nixed — this book is undeniably fascinating. One never empirically knows an author’s intent, but the book at least comes off as sincere, if fantastical — the more so because of several embedded testimonials written by relatively public figures with reputations to maintain. It won’t change anyone’s mind about “if this stuff is true”, but it’s not supposed to. Sister of Darkness is meant to inform open-minded seekers on their hunt for what’s actually happening beyond the veil. It provides a refreshingly non-Catholic take on the subject of demons and exorcism, presenting as a report of what Rachel Stavis has seen and tried, what’s worked, and where she sees humanity going spiritually. It is an easy read and, for the not-too-closed-minded, immensely enjoyable.
