Template:POTM/September 2015

The Journal of Charles Cooperton

February 9, 1860

I begin this journal as a testament to the trials and tribulations my family has endured.

May God have mercy on our souls; I feel that we are truly cursed.

''To think it has only been six years since we left our ancestral home in Prince Edward Island to come to this so-called Promised Land of California. It feels like an eternity. I have become a widower. My left leg has been amputated and replaced with an uncomfortable length of wood so that I must limp and lean upon a crutch. I have watched as our family fortune has dribbled away to nearly nothing. And now I have had to send for a priest, for the condition with the girls has grown worse. Much worse. My little twin daughters—Bethany and Josephine—they have committed acts of desecration and fornication the likes of which I can hardly stand to think, much less commit to paper. It does in fact seem that my dear twins, only fourteen years old, have succumbed to some sort of demonic infestation and are in fact possessed by devils. Even now as I sit hunched over paper with my quill, turning this pale parchment black with my words, I can hear them screaming from their back bedroom where we have had to bind them to their beds, their howls and cries, animal like screeching, filling the void of the house. Read more...''