THE ‘DEMON CHURCH’
Occult crime hits Lincolnshire village
Hampshire Police have made an arrest in connection with a series of sheep killings accompanied by church desecration and ‘occult’ graffiti in the New Forest area. “A 41-year-old man from Winchester has been arrested on suspicion of six counts of criminal damage,” said a police spokesperson. “They relate to the deaths of sheep in Wittensford Lane and Kewlake Lane, Cadnam, and Penn Road, Bramshaw. He remains in custody at this time.”
The crime spree has been attributed to Satanists, on account of graffiti depicting inverted crosses and the number ‘666’. But a letter purporting to have been penned by a member of the Church of Satan and published in local newspaper the
Daily Echo pointed out that a pentagram spray-painted on a sheep’s carcass was “the wrong away around to symbolise Satanism” and that the number 666 held no fears for Satanists, only Christians, who are “superstitiously afraid of this number”. The writer claimed it was “extremely rare for Satanists to perform rituals where there is an animal that is slaughtered as a sacrifice (which is normally only performed by extremists)” and that “the animal would have had its throat slit clean and not stab wounds from what sounds like a messy and cruel knife attack”. They concluded by saying “as a Satanist myself, I feel that Satanism is a very taboo subject and is often frowned upon as we are misunderstood.”
Further sheep deaths were reported in the villages of Bramshaw and Cadnam in January. A ewe was found stabbed to death in the middle of a
road, with a broken wooden pitchfork sticking out of it and a straw cross lying nearby.
An abandoned church in Lincolnshire has also been desecrated. The Grade I-listed St Botolph’s Church, Skidbrooke, has repeatedly been broken into by intruders, who sacrifice chickens, scrawl occult symbols, and smash tombstones in the graveyard.
Local farmer Martin Chapman, 72, has taken it on himself to clear up after the trespassers, and says he has come into contact with them as they descend on the ruined church on Friday nights. He says the groups are made up mostly of women and that they “bring chickens and slit their throats” so the blood can be sprayed over the walls. “They make rings of candles and salt. They smash graves. There is no fear. There’s a group of serious witches that come down,” he said.
Among locals, St Botolph’s has apparently become known as the ‘demon church’. dailyecho.co.uk, 2 Dec 2019; D.Mirror, 13 Jan; D.Telegraph, 23 Jan; D.Mail, 13, 26 Jan 2020.