One of the more startling Illinois stories surrounding bewitching is that of the Williams sisters. Sixteen and eighteen years old, the two girls were reportedly normal by day, but in the evening would run off into the corn and then “returned to their home, and with almost supernatural ability, climbed to the roof and began dancing near its precarious edge. Their father, James Williams, in front of around fifty spectators, pleaded with his daughters to come down. They replied with animal-like shrieks and groans.” Even the New York Times picked up this 1871 story. The sisters claimed to have been bewitched by an old woman who lived nearby in retribution for refusing to become witches themselves. What can Creator tell us?

This was a true account of these young girls being manipulated, through spirit possession, by dark spirits who cooperated readily with this witch seeking to manipulate and control them and prove the point by commanding spirits, who were attached to the girls' energy, to make them put on a display showing they were really under the control of some other dark force making them do things that were frankly dangerous. This is an object lesson in the reality that dealing with dark spirits and practitioners of the dark arts needs to be taken seriously, guarded against, and thwarted through divine healing and protection requests, and not simply rejected as an impossibility. When there are signs of something sinister taking place, ignoring it will invite a worsening of things.