CNN reports a case with all the telltale signs of demonic possession, or the impending end of the world:
A Texas man appears to have interpreted the date of 12/12/12 as a reason to carry out a grotesque and sinister act. “I shed some innocent blood,” Brent Troy Bartel told a police dispatcher from the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills in a phone call just after midnight.
When the dispatcher asked him to clarify, Bartel responded in a matter-of-fact tone, “I inscribed a pentagram on my son…’Cause it’s a holy day.”
When police officers arrived at the home, they say they found the traumatized boy standing shirtless with a large red pentagram carved into the skin on his back. His blood was smeared on the front door of the house. They arrested Bartel, whose manner was flat and emotionless. What exactly may have motivated Bartel, who is being held in local jail on a $500,000 bond, remains unclear.
