My House is Occupied by the Most Delightful Demon
By: Rosalyn Parker

Have you heard of this movie "Paranormal Activity"? I did, and being a sucker for romance and lighthearted comedy, I decided to brave the crowds of my fellow (albeit much younger and much more loud) Americans at my local 40 screen cineplex this weekend to give it a shot.

Boy was I shocked. And appalled. I mean, they made the demon in the film soooo dark and evil! WTH?

Granted, I acknowledge the possibility that really mean and scary demons do exist out there, but as the owner of a home that is currently occupied by a demon that has never been anything but kind, helpful and courteous, I’m compelled to call foul on this cinematic smear job.

Much like Katie's demon in the movie, the events surrounding the occupation of my own home started out slow and relatively mundane before building with the hospitality we showed our guest. However, in stark contrast with Katie finding her keys rudely swiped onto the floor, we were pleased to discover that a pile of old periodicals that had been cluttering our living room had been tidied, stacked, and set aside for recycling.

Attributing my husband's denial of responsibility for the magazines to one of his more "senior moments", I didn’t think much of the incident – until a number of other strange, neat things started to happen. For example, the sound of running water and the clanging of dinnerware brought me tip-toeing into my kitchen one late night – to find all the dirty dishes in the sink had been carefully cleaned, dried and put away. "How nice!" I thought.

Now, Surgat - that's our demon's name (he told us during a Ouija Board séance in which he also told us our deceased Tibetan terrier Checkers was in doggie heaven, advised us against investing too much of our savings in the insurance and banking industries - this was months before the meltdown on Wall Street! - and shared a recipe for what turned out to be an excellent Italian sausage frittata) is constantly helping around the house. Every few days, the mop will float out of the closet, and 20 minutes later our kitchen and hardwood floors are sparkling clean.

Yes, our demon is a Godsend, thank you very much. And the worst he's ever scared anyone was when he turned the vacuum cleaner on in the same room our new Tibetan terrier Sajak was napping.

Surgat also does plumbing, plays piano, and even helps color coordinate my outfits – but you'd never see anything like that in the movies, because a movie about a nice demon would probably be a box office flop.  Like 19th century Sambo theater and minstrel shows that disparaged black people for the amusement of the petty, ignorant masses, crap like "Paranormal Activity" demonizes demons unfairly (btw - would the Chinese put up with such a word as 'Orientalize' that meant 'to represent as evil or diabolic?' I think not). Seriously, is there any wonder some of them are so angry?  For shame.