Lisa A. Flowers

Researching stories of satanic pregnancy, and locating women who truly believe that they’ve carried Satan’s spawn, is more difficult than it might seem. The world will always welcome kaleidoscope-eyed acolytes in peasant smocks and Manson-following concubines with swastikas carved into their foreheads, it’s true, but bearers of the Antichrist don’t always get so lucky.

Some IRL Rosemary Woodhouses hail from the colonial era when Satan was basically a household name. Some come from present-day tribes stuck seven centuries back in the time continuum, while others are just Goths in love with the smolderingly tormented glamour of the Dark Lord. But all claim to have, or have had, one thing in common: a womb that’s played host to a cloven, mauling, fanged little bundle of joy.

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• Otty Sanchez, Mother Who Satanically-Sacrificed Her Offspring

Photo: Gustave Dore / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In the summer of 2009, San Antonio police stumbled in on a scene that “was so gruesome investigators could barely speak.” Physician Patrick McNamara, writing in Spirit Possession and Exorcism: History, Psychology, and Neurobiology, claims that believing that one (or one’s child) is possessed by Satan is “all too common in schizophrenics with religious delusions.” According to official reports:

A 3 1/2-week-old boy lay […] in the bedroom of a single story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed, and his brains ripped out… Officers found the boy’s mother, Otty Sanchez, sitting on a couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming […] She told officers the devil made her do it, police said.

Psychiatric examiners believed Sanchez suffered from psychosis and was driven to consume her infant, “Scotty,” as part of a Bacchae-like ritual – in which the mother ends and eats her male offspring.

• • Ana Feria Santos, Mother Of A Fire-Breathing Devil

Photo: William Blake / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

According to a 2012 article in the Daily Mail, one of Satan’s sons is alive and well in Colombia. At a mere 4 weeks old, the demon child (who has apparently not been named) could already “walk by himself and produce fire,” or so his aghast mother, Ana Feria Santos, says. She also attests that her son “frequently hides around the house, cackles in an ‘adult’ way for hours on end, and has an ‘intimidating’ pair of eyes.”

The article claims that Santos’s neighbors, in fear of their lives, have begun pelting the residence with stones, but area lawyers, social workers, and psychologists aren’t so sure, and sources say that the mother is being investigated for possible child abuse. (The same thing happened to Naomi Watts in The Ring II when her son got possessed.)

• • Suzanne Connors, Demon Vessel Who Was Cut From The Inside

Photo: Herrad von Landsberg / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In 2016, a 28-year-old Utah mother, Suzanne Connors, made headlines when she gave birth to a screeching entity, whom she just as promptly made the sign of the cross over and cast out.

Connors, who said that her pregnancy felt like “being cut with razors from the inside,” claimed that she’d decided on adoption because she wanted “no part in raising the Antichrist.”

Reports state that doctors apparently opted for a C-section and found Connors’s uterus and amniotic sac “completely ripped to shreds.” One may assume that the infant then scuttled off, It’s Alive style, but the babe was then taken to a nearby pediatric hospital for evaluation.

• • Rashida Chowdbury, Mother Who Ended Her Demonically-Possessed Infant

Photo: Domenico Beccafumi / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Superstitions and phobias about demons and witches are legion, but some people don’t hesitate to take them to disturbingly literal levels. Such was the case with 21-year-old Rashida Chowdhury, who, in August of 2015, tossed her newborn son out of the fourth story window of her apartment in Queens because she believed he was possessed by an “evil spirit.”

Chowdhury’s apparently non-interventionist family confirmed that she’d indeed been actively harboring a belief that her child was possessed. Moreover, four adults and two – presumably demon-free – other children were in the residence at the time, which made the set-up even more suspect.

Chowdhury was charged in both the first and second-degree and told the NYPD that she’d had “no other choice” but to hurl her offspring into the symbolic flames below for his own protection.

• • Juanita Gomez, Bearer Of A Late-Blooming Antichrist

Photo: Edal Anton Lefterov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

The realization that one has borne (or is about to bear) a demon child doesn’t always come early. Some evil spawns are late-bloomers, or so one Juanita Gomez appeared to believe. In August of 2016, the 49-year-old Oklahoma mother made headlines when she took the life of her 33-year-old daughter with a crucifix. The Huffington Post reports that:

‘Officers arrived and found [the] victim … lying in the home with a large cross/crucifix upon her chest […] Blood was visible, and she had suffered severe trauma around her head and face.’ […] Juanita Gomez said she believed her daughter was ‘possessed by the devil,’ and was attempting to ‘rid Satan’ from her body.’

Specifically, it seems, Gomez forced a crucifix and religious medallion down her daughter’s throat before cleaning her up and posing her body in the shape of a cross.

Gomez does not seem to have expressed any particular interest in the crime after the fact; her main preoccupation appears to be with her bowels. She has accused officials of providing her with inadequate toilet paper, allegedly complaining (in court) that she “had to use that plastic from the food they give [her] to… wipe [her] bottom.”

• • Isabella Miroslav, Texas-Born Mama Of Satan

Photo: Philip James de Loutherbourg / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Another progeny of Satan (but can there be more than one divine inheritor at a time?) had the honor of gestating in the womb of a certain Isabella Miroslav of Texas. According to 2014 reports, the encounter came while the avowed Satanist was saying her bedtime chants – all of a sudden the Dark Lord appeared in the room, ordered her to undress, and then “bred her.”

Miroslav’s plans to name the child after his father may seem predictable enough, but there are some inconsistencies in her report that are more troubling. She maintains that her son is supposed to become president at age 12 and create “a one world government” to later combat the coming of Jesus Christ.

• • Deborah Leeds, Mother Of The New Jersey Devil

Photo: Limbourg brothers / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Horned, taloned, bat-winged, and snarling, the New Jersey Devil is as American as apple pie. However, his mother, Deborah Leeds, was a Brit. According to historical reports, she and her husband, Japhet, lived in the Pine Barrens of NJ in the early to mid-1700s. They had 12 children, and by the time the 13th was conceived in 1735, Deborah Leeds (who by then was past what most people would consider reasonable childbearing age) was in no mood to give birth to it. Some accounts even have her declaring “may it be a devil” when she learned of her unwelcome condition.

There are multiple versions of what happened on the night of the birth. Some claim that “Mother Leeds,” as she was called, believed from the outset that her 13th child would be a demon because the number 13 was cursed. Others claim that she invoked the devil during her delivery, thereby dooming the babe. The most popular variation, however, claims that the infant – devil or not – was born deformed and that Mother Leeds cared for it until she passed of old age, whereupon it flew off into the swamps.

Whatever the case, in the centuries since the New Jersey Devil’s birth, there have been numerous sightings of the creature all over southern New Jersey.

• • Camille, Mother Of ‘The Devil Baby of Bourbon Street’

Photo: Martin van Maële / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Born in the French Quarter of New Orleans, legendary “voodoo queen” Marie Laveau was renowned for her powers as a sorceress and a healer. One of her acquaintances was Camille, the daughter of a prominent Creole family, who allegedly angered one of her Creole suitors by “throwing him over” for a Scotsman.

The story goes that Camille’s spurned beau approached Laveau and begged her to avenge him by cursing his would-be bride and her child. Shortly thereafter, Camille became pregnant and began having recurring nightmares about her unborn baby being possessed. According to Haunted New Orleans Tours, Camille passed during childbirth, but, just as she’d feared, the infant
was not a plump and blushing human baby, but a grotesque and lurid imitation, a horror, a curse. Wails filled the room when the thing was exposed, and all could see that where light tufts of hair should be were two lumps – the early roots of horns to come. Where little hands and feet should have been were the claws of some wild animal, like a possum or a raccoon. There were scales upon its body.

What really happened is anyone’s guess, but the babe lives on in infamy as “the devil baby of Bourbon Street,” and some of Marie Laveau’s history was chronicled in American Horror Story’s 2016 “Roanoke” installation.

• • Joan Of The Angels, Seduced And Impregnated By A Demon

Photo: Martino di Bartolomeo / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges (AKA Joan of the Angels) is famous for having been seduced and impregnated by a demon masquerading as a priest masquerading as an angel – basically your classic mix up. The infamous drama of des Anges began when a gentleman known as Urbain Grandier became a parish priest in Loudun, France.

In addition to being good-looking and charismatic, he was said to have been a rabid womanizer who regularly disregarded his “vows of celibacy.” Jeanne, who had become obsessed with Grandier, alleged that he was a devil who had appeared to her in the guise of a radiant being. She also said that Isacarron (the demon of debauchery) had gotten her with child, and she went through a long psychosomatic pregnancy that was rife with shrieking, convulsions, and babbling in tongues.

A group of nuns soon joined her in her accusations, and after a lengthy “investigation,” Father Grandier was summarily tortured and burned at the stake in 1634. Jeanne (who never did bear her demon child) lived more or less piously ever after, and the whole debacle was the subject of two films, Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) and Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (1961).

• • Jane Addams, Community Activist And Mother Of The ‘Devil Baby’

Photo: Chicago Daily News / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Jane Addams was an influential figure in Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She opened up the historic Hull House, a communal gathering place for impoverished immigrants to embrace their shared community and a place for single working women to stay and find safety from the slums. The story postulates that one day, three working Italian women burst through the doors of Hull House and demanded to see the “Devil Baby.”

Apparently, the baby had cloven hooves, pointed ears, and was able to articulate even though it was an infant. It was also apparently fond of profane language and would curse those that came to visit it. According to Addams, the people attributed her infant to the devil because Addams was allegedly sinful in the child’s conception.

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