The little girl is ripping out pages from the Bible and devouring them whole. She is a growling, contorting, entity. "Don't be scared," she says. Of course, it's not the child herself who's issuing taunts and chewing on Psalms. It's the devil, back on his possession game in the latest installment of "The Exorcist" franchise. And scaring us is the whole point here. Forget zombies, vampires or earth-invading aliens. There are few human terrors greater or more universal than our dread of embodied evil — in ourselves or someone we love. Likewise, there are few mysteries more enigmatic or fascinating than the rituals we've designed for sending that evil back where it came from.
And in a world afflicted with so much wickedness, is it any surprise that exorcisms seem to be on the rise?
