Hopkins Grove Medium To Pay Restitution

     The trial could have been a media circus, given the attention paid to matters of the paranormal in this community, but Judge Leadbeater placed a gag order on the proceedings and this is the first opportunity under those restrictions we have had to report on the matter.

     Princess Amber, whose real name is Coretta De Kay, calmly stated that she was a world renown mystic of great power, and that she needed to collect data on the rain of fish. Such rains, she said, were clear indications of a perversion of the natural order and often indicated the presence of demonic presences and the black arts. More interested in plying her culinary arts on the bounty, regardless of where it came from, the Widow Gable turned away, retrieved her catch of six carp, and left the strange woman behind her. The two did not meet again for another year.

     The intervening time was pure hell for Gable, she testified. Almost immediately following her supper that evening she was beset by terrible intestinal difficulties. She was admitted to the hospital six times, but each time was released the same day with a clean bill of health. Mysteriously, each time she left her house, the symptoms would vanish, but upon returning she would double over in pain, and testified that it felt as though "thirty poisonous vipers slithered through my guts, trying to bite their way out."

     Every Tuesday the group of ghosts lounged around the living room pouring themselves liquor from her stock of brandies and whiskeys, and didn't seem to notice that pouring the dark alcohol down their throats only produced deep stains in the carpet. In fact, the group would threaten her with grievous bodily harm if the supply of liquor ever ran out, and the terrified woman began to get quite a reputation for being a booze hound when she took to buying cases of the stuff.

     Worst of all was the red skinned devil named Clyde Barbatas who forbade her to tell anyone about her hellish house guests. Barbatas, Gable testified in court, killed her cat by simply looking at it and played chess with an endless string of imps who clambered up out of the drain in her storm cellar every night. "The whole place stank of sulphur and you couldn't get a decent nights sleep unless you sat up drinking with those damned ghosts until you passed out...and then you wanted to make certain you hadn't said anything to lead Wilbur on.

     When May 20 rolled around again, Gable and many other Hopkins Grove residents were out to see if the fish would fall again. So was De Kay, aka "Princess Amber". While reclining in beach chairs in Werfenstein Park, the two struck up a conversation. De Kay told Gable that she had become so engrossed in her study of paranormal phenomenon in this hotbed of activity that she had actually moved to Hopkins Grove and opened a small shop as a medium. She told how she was accomplished in the arts of palmistry, voodoo, and tarot. She also claimed to not only be able to communicate with the dead, but to be able to "get dead souls back on the path out of this world, to eliminate demons, and to cleanse areas up to five square acres of paranormal activity."

     All this sounded pretty good to Gable, who had more activity than she cared for in just her little two story house! Fees were discussed and the two were so engrossed in working out a deal for getting rid of Gables unwelcome house guests that they didn't notice the fish fall until a carp landed right in the widow's lap! Perhaps the most important event that occurred that day was the signing of a legal document by both parties. De Kay agreed in the document to eliminate ghosts, devils, demons, and all unwelcome phenomena from Gable's home in one year's time, providing that over the course of the next year a fixed sum of $75,000 were paid to her subchapter S corporation Spook "B" Gone, Ltd. in regular monthly installments of $6,250. There were also provisions for an expense account and other costs.

     When the fish fell again on the following May 20 matters at the Gable home had not improved, they had gotten distinctly worse. For divulging the nature of the problem to outsiders, Barbatas had caused all the widow's houseplants to die and she lost all her hair. De Kay claimed that the exact scope of the possession of the home had not been accurately described to her, and that her fee for closing portals to Hell, extracting major devils, and any more than six ghosts in a single residence was twice what she had charged. She would need another year and $150,000 in advance.

     At this point Gable called her a charlatan and began to make plans to take her to court. During the trial the defense first tried to prove that Gable had, in fact, cleansed the house and that Gable was only pretending the ghosts and devils were still there. Father Niccodemus Alcott was called by the prosecution to testify as to the presence of evil entities. He testified under oath that as a man of God he had been hurled off the property into the street by huge invisible hands and that in every window he had seen translucent beings laughing at him.

     In the face of this expert witness, the defense sought to prove Gable had misrepresented her situation and that De Kay was the actual injured party. This defense collapsed due to the contract's wording which promised Gable a full cleansing for a set amount. This, Judge Leadbeater said, was specifically clear in its wording.

     Clearly on the ropes, De Kay's attorney, Holly Fleabane, shocked the court by claiming that her client had, in fact, cleansed the house as promised but her contract did not protect against "re-infestation." Fleabane claimed that after the exorcism, old widow was so lonely and missed the attentions of Wilbur so greatly that she had allowed them to return of her own free will, and that her client was therefore blameless.

     Barbatos was summoned by the court to testify as a hostile witness on behalf of the defense, but he did not appear on his court date. When two county marshals went to the Gable home to arrest the demon, they were fried to a crisp in the front yard of the house. This event was De Kay's undoing. The sympathy of the judge clearly fell to the plaintiff and he ruled in favor of Widow Gable.

     "Any demon who would kill representatives of the court in such a manner," Judge Leadbeater said during his ruling, "and who remains at large and unable to be removed at the present time by any means, either mundane or spiritual, is not likely to have been removed by Princess Amber at any time."

     De Kay has thirteen weeks to make full restitution or face a contempt of court charge.