Exorcism At The Home Depot

An attempt to deal with demonic lumber thwarted by the police.

You might think – indeed, hope – that exorcism was a thing of a more primitive past before we understood about mental illness or mere eccentricity. But of course, it’s still with us, be it the scams of ardent self-publicist Bob Larson or the psychotic and murderous actions of backward religious communities that see nothing odd in beating children to death in order to save their souls. Unexpectedly, it is also apparently rampant in American hardware stores. Who could’ve guessed?

This week, it was reported by WBRE 28/WYOU 22 Eyewitness News that the police in Lackawanna County, which we are told is somewhere in Pennsylvania, were called to a case of ‘bad behaviour’ in the Dickson City Home Depot. Possibly expecting to find local miscreant youth running around doing the sort of thing that miscreant youths are given to do, they instead stumbled into an exorcism. And not just any old exorcism.

Oh no. In this case, the unnamed exorcists were attempting to drive demons out of wood. More specifically, word had apparently spread that an unidentified tree – or perhaps several trees – had somehow or other become possessed by evil forces. To make things worse, if that was possible, the demonic trees had then been cut down and turned into lumber. You and I might think that such defenestration would be the end of it, but that’s just the sort of lax attitude that has doubtless led to such an infestation of demons that even trees are being possessed. Taking a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach, the exorcists descended on the unfortunate branch of Home Depot and attempted to cast out the devil. After all, no one wants a demonically-possessed garden patio.

As with all such cases, the devil – so to speak – is probably in the details, and the details are not forthcoming. No arrests were made and so it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know the facts behind the case. It’s safe to assume, however, that the exoricism was interrupted midway through and so failed in its aims. The Devil-Lumber is still at large.

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