From the Desk

Conceding That the Demons Keep Better Records

Fifty-four filings from the cinema, the shelf, the stage and the schedules, on what to do when something has moved in that was not on the lease, and whom to call.

By Casimir Vane The Registers · Filed Under Protest 2026-10-07

Illustration · the unofficial raccoon

Last Wednesday I filed the prototype register and came away with one complaint, which I enjoyed making: in two hundred years of building things out of other things, not one filing contained a maintenance plan. All commissioning, no operations, and a great deal of weather.

This week I have the opposite problem and am not enjoying it at all.

The demon file is the only body of work in the run whose remedy is a published procedure with a revision history. It has a promulgation date. It has a set of emendations and a later revision. It has prerequisites, a delegated permission, and a licensed practitioner rather than a volunteer. And its very first instruction, before any of the rest of it, is to rule out the ordinary causes.

That is this newspaper’s own method, printed in 1614 by somebody else. My file has three centuries of councils, orders, covenants and very old houses in it, and not one of them ever produced a page of instructions a person could follow.

Occupancy, and who you call about it

My own archive turned out to be about entry: the threshold, the invitation, the decision taken at the door. The outbreak file was about provisioning. This one is about occupancy and remediation, which is to say it is the register of what you do when something is already inside and will not leave when asked. Possession, the lawyers say, is nine tenths of the law. On this evidence the remaining tenth is the paperwork.

Across the fifty-four filings the routes in include: summoned, by a book, a hand or a tape; contracted for, always in writing and always by the householder; delivered, three times out of three by a hospital; or already on the premises when the current occupants arrived, in one case in a canister in the basement of a church; or reached through sleep, as in A Nightmare on Elm Street, where an injury taken in a dream remains on waking.

For the exorcism filings, the remedy is a licensed contractor working from a written method, and the whole argument here is that the method has been better than its practitioners for four hundred years. There is no vacant possession in this file. There is a sitting tenant and a specialist you have to book.

The other half is procurement, and I state that finding early because it cheers me up. Every contract here is properly executed: terms disclosed, signature in the debtor’s own hand. And in four centuries exactly one of them was enforced without anybody challenging it.

The part I do not write

The section below is the paper’s, in its own voice, and I have not been let near it. I am a device, and a device does not get to be arch about a death.

A great deal of this register rests on things that happened to real people, and the desk states its rules before the filings begin.

Nine entries touch four real cases: a criminal proceeding of 1634 with a verdict and an execution, and the book and the film later made from it; a newspaper report of 1949, and the novel and the film that proceed from the case it describes; two films made from one German case of the 1970s in which a young woman died; and a film made from an American prosecution of 1981.

The rule applied to all nine is the same. The desk cites the document and the outcome, and nothing else. It prints no address, no photograph, and no diagnosis, and it makes no inference about any person in any of them. It names nobody who was the subject of a case, and that rule has no exceptions on this page, which does mean a departure from the usual bibliography. Two works cited here carry a subject’s name in their own printed titles. Both are cited instead by author, year and subject, which will find either of them in any catalogue. A person a case was run against is the subject of a proceeding and not an exhibit in a household paper’s filing system, and a title is not a loophole in that. Where the record is disputed, the entry is flagged as disputed. Where the desk has not read a document in the original — and it has not read the 1949 press report, and has not checked the judgment in the German case — the entry says so in its own fact panel rather than in a footnote.

Two of those entries produce findings, and the desk keeps them for that reason. In 1634 a possession case ended in a conviction and an execution, and the register grades the conclusion nil. In 1981 a defence resting on possession was offered in a court of law and the court rejected it.

The young woman in the German case is not a plot point and this register does not use her as one. That is the whole of what the desk has to say about her, and it is deliberate.

One of the two works cited without its printed title is the book of 1980 that began the Satanic-panic decade. It was never corroborated by anybody, and it is filed here as the source of a story rather than as a source of fact. The corrective literature is on the register’s reading list.

What is on the page, and what is not

I resume. Fifty-four filings, one work to an entry, nothing bundled. An adaptation gets its own entry and its own place in the order, so the 1967 novel and the 1968 film sit apart.

Declining is allowed. The rule-driven list ran to about ninety works and was cut by more than a third. Off the page: The Monk, Falling Angel, Legion, The Hellbound Heart, The Club Dumas; Murnau’s Faust, the 1941 Daniel Webster, the 1958 Damn Yankees, Mother Joan of the Angels, both Sentinel and Needful Things adaptations, Exorcist II and The Exorcist III, Angel Heart, The Ninth Gate, the 2000 Bedazzled, Hellboy, Constantine, Devil, The Rite, The Possession, Annabelle, Demon, The Pope’s Exorcist, Believer, and all of the Evil Dead sequels and remakes bar the 1981 original. On television: Reaper, Ash vs Evil Dead, Lucifer, the 2016 Exorcist, and the Good Omens adaptation whose source novel is filed. The Entity is declined on its subject matter. I have killed a great deal of copy this week and did every line of it on purpose.

Several works a reader might expect are filed elsewhere, because two registers may not both hold the lease on one filing. The Conjuring and its first sequel are property matters, and the haunted-house file has withheld them with the rest of its screen work about real households; only the third, which is about a prosecution, is here. [REC] stays with the outbreak register. Häxan, The Witches of Eastwick and The Wicker Man are witch filings. The Babadook is a lodger and not a demon, and I say that as somebody who has been the lodger.

One entry would be a ghost filing by subject: a 1920 play in which the possessor is a dead man. It is filed here because the remedy is an exorcism, and the only exorcism on this page conducted as a hearing before a court.

One entry is a correction. An animated series filed under this register’s heading drinks blood, dies in sunlight, and has a cure under investigation. Every one of those is a vampire rule. My own archive does not carry it, so there is nothing to point at, and the correction is recorded here where the misfiling happened. I am not claiming the series. I am observing that somebody shelved it in the wrong department and that it has been quietly drawing my salary ever since.

The register

Re-sort by publication date and you can watch a rule get invented. Plates are typeset rather than illustrated, for the reason set out in the house rules.

The Possession Register

Scroll sideways. Arranged by period — when the events claim to have happened — with release order available above. Publication years, authors and directors are cited fact; periods, jurisdictions and file references are ours.

Demons, contracts and possession, 1587 to 2024

DM-1667-MIL / Founding portrait

Plate V

Paradise Lost

1667

John Milton

poem

Plate held; verse filing

The Portrait Every Later Devil Has Sat For

An epic poem of 1667 · the portrait every later Devil on this page sits for

Period before the calendar · Pandaemonium, and afterwards The events precede any date this clock can carry. The card is placed at the head of the register as a filing convenience and claims no year whatever.

Jurisdiction

Portraiture. The card is filed for a likeness rather than for a transaction.

Mechanism

Not graded. The desk's file on the poem carries the portrait and one place-name, Pandaemonium, and the desk declines to build a mechanism out of an address.

Cross-reference

Every later Devil on this page sits for this portrait, on the desk's reading. The register cites the likeness and no episode.

The desk places this card at the head of the clock and admits that the placement is an administrative shrug rather than a date. What earns it the position is that every later Devil on the page sits for this portrait. Before Milton the opposition is a category; after him it is a character. The file on the poem is thin beyond that. It carries one location, Pandaemonium, and a register about occupancy would dearly like to say what kind of premises that is. It has not got that in its file, and it has declined to furnish the place from memory.
DM-1966-MAS / Housing filing

Plate XVI

The Master and Margarita

1966

Mikhail Bulgakov

novel

Plate held; posthumous publication

The Devil Comes to Moscow and the Plot Is the Apartment

Written between 1928 and 1940, serialised 1966–67 · the Devil comes to Moscow and the plot is an apartment number

Period AD 33 · Jerusalem, and the 1930s · Moscow Placed by the earliest events the book claims. The desk reads the Pilate chapters as that point and records the placement as its own reading.

Jurisdiction

Municipal and residential. The register's purest household filing: the plot of a novel is an apartment, and the apartment has a number.

Mechanism

Occupation. Nothing is breached. The Devil comes to Moscow, and what the plot turns on is an apartment.

Cross-reference

The register's leading procurement filing, and the earliest period on the clock outside the poem at its head.

A city acquires a supernatural visitor and the plot of the book turns out to be apartment number fifty. The desk would like that stated on its own, because it is the whole reason the card is filed high: in a novel with the Devil in it, the load-bearing object is a residential address. Nobody breaks in. Nothing is besieged. What is at stake is some rooms, which is the subject this paper covers every week and had not expected to find here.
DM-1587-HIS / Founding instrument

Plate I

Historia von D. Johann Fausten

1587

Anonymous; printed by Johann Spies at Frankfurt

novel

Plate held; chapbook

The First Contract, and Every Signature Since Is a Copy

The Faust chapbook of 1587 · disclosed terms and a signature in the debtor's own hand

Period c. 1480–1540 · the German lands The chapbook does not date its own events. The placement is the desk's reading of the life it claims to record and is unconfirmed.

Jurisdiction

Contractual. The register's founding document is not a case of possession at all. It is an agreement, freely entered, between parties who both understood it.

Mechanism

Procurement, on the desk's reading. A signature on disclosed terms is the whole of the consent, and every later signature on this page copies it.

Cross-reference

Half of this register descends from here and the other half from a rite. The desk notes that the two halves have never been filed together before and should have been.

The register's founding document is a contract, and this desk would like that stated clearly before anybody gets to the possession cards. The terms are disclosed. The signature is the debtor's own, and a signature on disclosed terms is consent. The desk's file on the chapbook carries no more than that, and the desk will not narrate the transaction from memory; the shape is enough. Four centuries of literature have treated this as a tragedy. This paper files it under procurement.
DM-1604-MAR / Instrument with a term

Plate II

Doctor Faustus

1604

Christopher Marlowe

stage play

Plate held; stage filing

The Contract Goes On Stage and Acquires a Clock

The A-text, printed 1604; written in the early 1590s · a fixed term, disclosed at signature, and a debtor who can count

Period c. 1500s · Wittenberg The play fixes no year. The placement follows the chapbook it descends from and is the desk's reading rather than the work's statement.

Jurisdiction

Contractual. Disclosed terms, execution in the debtor's own hand, and a term that both parties understand.

Mechanism

Enforcement. The debtor watches the deadline arrive, and the instrument is enforced on it.

Cross-reference

The only filing on this register in which a signed contract is enforced without challenge, which is a thinner record than four centuries of literature would suggest.

The chapbook supplies the contract; the stage supplies the clock. What Marlowe adds is a debtor who knows exactly how long he has and watches the deadline arrive, in front of an audience that can count as well as he can. The register files it as the clearest statement of the instrument in its unamended form: the terms were disclosed, the signature was the debtor's own, and nobody misled anybody about the maturity date. Every later filing in this file is an attempt to get out of this document, and the desk notes that the attempts have a much better record than the document does.
DM-1808-GOE / Instrument amended

Plate VI

Faust, Part One

1808

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

stage play

Plate held; stage filing

The Sale Becomes a Wager, and the Loopholes Start Here

Faust, Part One · the instrument redrafted as a wager with a condition attached

Period c. 1500s The play does not fix a year; the placement follows the Faust material generally and is the desk's reading.

Jurisdiction

Contractual, and materially amended. This is no longer a sale but a wager, which is a much worse instrument to draft and a much better one to litigate.

Mechanism

A wager turns on its wording, and wording can be argued with. Everything downstream that escapes on a technicality escapes through this redraft.

Cross-reference

Part Two of 1832 is a separate work by the register's rule and is not on this page. The card states the amendment and stops where its own text does.

Goethe takes the instrument apart and puts it back together as a wager, and in doing so invents the register's entire body of case law. A sale has a maturity date. A bet has a condition, and a condition has wording, and wording can be argued about by anybody with the patience for it. Every later filing that escapes on a technicality, a small print, an escape clause or a badly specified wish is working from this redraft rather than from the 1587 original. The desk files the amendment here and notes that the second part of 1832 is a separate work by the register's own rule, and is therefore not on this page.
DM-1614-RIT / Published procedure

Plate III

Rituale Romanum, Title XII

1614

Promulgated under Paul V

official report

Plate held; procedural instrument

The Only Monster in the Run Whose Remedy Has a Revision History

Rituale Romanum, Title XII · emended 1952, revised 1999 · the register rests on an instruction rather than on a case

Period procedural · no events claimed

Jurisdiction

Ecclesiastical, and delegated. The rite is not something anybody may simply perform. It is performed under permission, which is what makes the practitioner a licensed contractor rather than a volunteer.

Mechanism

A written procedure with prerequisites. The first of them is not a prayer. It is an exclusion: satisfy yourself that the cause is not something ordinary before you proceed as though it is not.

Confidence

The register's highest. This is a published document with a promulgation date, a set of emendations and a later revision, which is more than any other remedy on this page can say.

The register rests on a procedure, which is not something the rest of this page can say. Somebody sat down, in 1614, and wrote out what to do: who may do it, under whose permission, and before any of that, what has to be ruled out first. This desk publishes provisioning guides and maintenance schedules for a living and recognises the form on sight. What it did not expect was that the oldest remedy here would also be the only one with prerequisites, a promulgation date and a revision history. The two that work at all are a document handed back in a short story and a circle drawn in a film, and neither arrives with an instruction sheet, a date of issue, or anybody empowered to revise it.
DM-1634-LOU / Criminal proceeding

Plate IV

The Loudun proceedings

1634

A royal commission under Laubardemont

official report

Plate held; judicial record

A Real Trial, a Real Verdict, and an Evidentiary Standard Graded Nil

A criminal proceeding of 1634 · possession offered as evidence, and a man executed on it

Period 1632–34 · Loudun

Jurisdiction

Criminal, by royal commission. The register files the proceeding as paperwork and grades what the paperwork was willing to accept as proof.

Mechanism

A possession case that ended in a verdict and an execution: the possessed recovered, and the accused did not. This is the only mechanism on the register that convicts somebody.

Confidence

The record exists and the sentence was carried out. The desk cites both, prints no name, and reasons about neither the accused nor anybody else in the case, who were people and not exhibits.

A real proceeding, with a real verdict, carried out. The desk files the paperwork and grades the conclusion, and it grades it nil: a case about possession ended with the possessed recovered and the accused executed, and whatever else a possession case can establish, it cannot establish that. The desk's file does not say what the commission admitted as proof, and the desk does not fill that gap. A man was convicted and executed in 1634. This desk prints the conviction and the sentence, names nobody, declines to reason about anyone in the case, and notes that the procedure filed twenty years earlier had already said to rule out the ordinary first.
DM-1952-HUX / Reconstruction

Plate XIII

The Devils of Loudun

1952

Aldous Huxley

nonfiction

Plate held; secondary account

The Case, Reconstructed, by Somebody With a Thesis

The Devils of Loudun · literary nonfiction about a judicial record, readable and not neutral

Period 1632–34 · Loudun

Jurisdiction

None. A book about a proceeding, filed as a book and not as the proceeding, which is a distinction this register has had to make more often than it expected.

Classification

Filed by what the object is. A writer reconstructed it from the record, and it is shelved here as an account of the case rather than as evidence about it.

Confidence

Good on the record, not neutral about it. It is a reconstruction from the record by a writer with a thesis, and the register cites it for the reconstruction rather than for the thesis. The shelf carries the scholarship.

Three centuries after the commission sat, a writer went back to the record and reconstructed the case from it. This is the point at which the case stops being a document and becomes a subject. The desk carries it as literature about paperwork rather than as the paperwork. It is drawn from the record, it is very readable, and it is not neutral. The register's rule for this whole file applies here first: a source can be load-bearing and partial at once, and the honest filing is to say which parts it is being cited for.
DM-1971-DEV / Case file, staged

Plate XXI

The Devils

1971

Ken Russell, from the 1952 book

film

Plate held; adaptation

The Proceedings, Dramatised, With the Verdict Already on the Record

From Huxley's reconstruction · a dramatisation of a real prosecution, filed as a dramatisation

Period 1632–34 · Loudun

Jurisdiction

Dramatic. The card carries a film about a proceeding; the proceeding itself is filed separately on this register, under its own stamp, where it belongs.

Mechanism

Staging. The case file is put on a screen, and a staging is filed as a staging rather than as a finding.

Confidence

The desk cites the trial record for what happened and this filing for what a film made of it. It does not cite the film as evidence about anybody who lived.

The register keeps a strict line between the record of a real prosecution and a work made out of it, and this card is where the line is drawn most carefully. The proceedings have a card of their own on this page, with a verdict and a sentence that are matters of record. This filing is a film, made more than three centuries later from a book that the register already calls not neutral. The desk does not confuse the staging with the record, and its file on the film says no more than that it stages the case, so the card claims no more. What the card is kept for is the line itself: the same events, filed once as a record and once as a staging, and each cited only for what it is.
DM-1820-MEL / Instrument offered for resale

Plate VII

Melmoth the Wanderer

1820

Charles Maturin

novel

Plate held; Gothic filing

A Contract Offered for Assignment, and Nobody Will Take It

A Gothic novel of 1820 · an instrument with a transfer provision, and nobody will take it

Period 1646–1816 · Ireland, Spain and the Indies

Jurisdiction

Contractual, with a novation clause. The holder may be released if somebody else will assume the obligation, and nobody will.

Mechanism

The instrument is transferable and finds no taker, so it stays where it is.

Cross-reference

The register keeps finding agreements voided on appeal. This is the one that could not even be sold, which the desk regards as the more damning result.

A register that has watched six instruments collapse on technicalities ought to look carefully at the ones that do not, and this is the strangest of them. The liability has a transfer provision in it, and nobody will take the assignment. The events on file run from 1646 to 1816, across Ireland, Spain and the Indies, which is a long time and a wide market in which to find no buyer. The desk notes the finding coldly: an obligation that cannot be given away at any price was never a bargain, whatever was said at signature, and the register files the failure to resell it as the most honest verdict on this contract anywhere on this page.
DM-1936-DDW / Instrument voided

Plate X

The Devil and Daniel Webster

1936

Stephen Vincent Benét

story

Plate held; litigation filing

The Contract Goes to a Jury and Comes Back Void

A short story of 1936 · the instrument goes before a jury and is set aside

Period 1840s · New Hampshire

Jurisdiction

Adversarial, and the composition of the bench is the joke: the debtor gets a hearing, and the jury is drawn from the damned.

Mechanism

Litigation. The agreement goes before a jury and comes back void. The desk's file does not say on what grounds, and the desk does not supply any.

Cross-reference

The strongest single item of evidence for the register's contract finding: always signed, and in the record as a whole, hardly ever enforced.

The register's clearest demonstration that the standard form does not survive contact with counsel. The contract is litigated before a jury of the damned, which is about the least favourable bench a debtor could draw, and it is voided anyway. Somebody finally does the obvious thing and puts the instrument in front of a tribunal. The desk has now filed six escapes from this contract, and notes that they divide neatly into two kinds: the ones that turn on wording, which begin with Goethe, and the ones that turn on somebody being willing to argue, which begin here.
DM-1920-DYB / Hearing convened

Plate IX

The Dybbuk

1920

S. Ansky; first staged by the Vilna Troupe

stage play

Plate held; stage filing

The Only Exorcism on the Register With an Actual Hearing

Written between 1913 and 1916, first staged 1920 · the possessor is a dead man and the remedy is a court

Period 19th century · a shtetl The play does not date itself; the placement is the desk's reading and is unconfirmed.

Jurisdiction

Rabbinical, and procedural throughout. The remedy is a court, and the matter is heard.

Mechanism

A dead person occupying a living one. On the register's seam rule that would be a ghost filing, and the desk files it here anyway because the remedy is an exorcism.

Cross-reference

The only exorcism on this page conducted as a hearing rather than as a struggle. The register regards this as a considerable procedural advance and notes that nothing adopted it.

Elsewhere in this run a dead person who turns up uninvited is a ghost filing and files with the ghosts. This one does not, and the card says why: what is done about it here is an exorcism, conducted by a rabbinical court, as a hearing. The desk has spent this whole register grading remedies with no notes and no second opinion. Here the remedy has a court and a hearing. It is the single most procedurally respectable thing on the page, and in a hundred and six years not one filing here has copied it.
DM-1911-RUN / Instrument served

Plate VIII

Casting the Runes

1911

M. R. James

story

Plate held; clerical procedure

The Curse Is a Delivered Document and the Remedy Is a Handover

A short story of 1911 · service of a document, and discharge by returning it to the party who served it

Period 1900s · England

Jurisdiction

Clerical, and the register's favourite. A document is passed to a person; from that moment the obligation runs against whoever holds it.

Mechanism

Service and return. The instrument attaches on delivery, and the only discharge is to hand it back to the server, unnoticed.

Cross-reference

The only countermeasure on the register that is pure paperwork, and one of the two procedures on the page that actually work. The other is a drawn circle.

This desk has read a great deal of this register with its head in its hands and would like to record its unqualified professional admiration for this filing. The hazard is a document. It attaches on service. It runs against the holder, it is transferable, and it is discharged by handing it back to the party who served it, unnoticed. That is not a curse, it is a chain of custody, and the remedy is not a rite but a receipt. A defined instrument and a stated method, in a short story of 1911.
DM-1968-DRO / Perimeter maintained

Plate XIX

The Devil Rides Out

1968

Terence Fisher, from Dennis Wheatley's 1934 novel

film

Plate held; adaptation

The One Documented Perimeter on This Page That Holds

A film of 1968 · a protective circle, and the register's one documented perimeter that holds

Period 1920s · England The film does not fix a year; the placement follows the 1934 novel it adapts and is the desk's reading.

Perimeter

A protective circle. It is the only boundary on this page that the record says held.

Mechanism

Whatever is attempted, the boundary is not what gives way, which is the register's standing result about perimeters arriving from the one filing that documents a boundary properly.

Cross-reference

The outbreak register found no siege lost at the perimeter. This filing is the demon file's contribution to the same result, and this page's clearest instance of it.

The desk could not have designed a better test and did not have to, because the record supplied one. A protective circle is drawn, and it holds. That is the whole of what this register will claim about it, and it is a great deal more than any other filing on the page offers. The outbreak register went looking for a siege lost at the boundary and could not find one anywhere in ninety years of film. This page cannot find one either. The line holds, in the one case where somebody wrote the line down, and everything that goes wrong on either register goes wrong inside it.
DM-1942-SCR / Internal correspondence

Plate XI

The Screwtape Letters

1942

C. S. Lewis

novel

Plate held; correspondence file

Hell Files Its Correspondence and This Desk Recognises the Format

An epistolary novel of 1942 · a supervisor, a junior, a reporting line and a house style

Period 1940s · England

Jurisdiction

Departmental. There is a line manager, a subordinate, a reporting line, and a house style for the correspondence between them.

Mechanism

Administrative. The form is the memorandum, and the desk files the card for the form.

Cross-reference

The earliest statement of the register's procurement finding: the opposition is an organisation, with staffing, and its problems are staffing problems.

Take the theology out and what remains is a management file, and the desk means that as praise. There is a supervisor, a junior, a reporting line, and a run of memoranda that would not look out of place in any organisation with a training budget. What the register takes from the format is that the opposition here is an office, and the work of an office is correspondence. This desk produces a great deal of the stuff and recognised the format before it recognised anything else.
DM-1949-WAP / Press report

Plate XII

The 1949 press report

1949

The Washington Post

official report

Plate held; contents not verified

The Case the Modern File Was Built From, Filed Without Its Contents

A news item of 1949 · the case the 1971 novel proceeds from, and the one founding document this desk has not read

Period 1949 · Maryland, and then St. Louis

Jurisdiction

None. A newspaper report of 1949 about a real case.

Confidence

Low, and stated. The desk has not read the item in the original, has not checked its headline or the day it ran, and prints neither. What is cited is that the report exists and that the novel of 1971 proceeds from the case it describes.

Cross-reference

A contemporary diary of the case is reproduced in a popular book of 1993, which the shelf carries with a caveat. The desk has not checked that reproduction and prints no account of what the diary does or does not describe.

The novel that founds the modern file was built from a case, and the case reaches this register as a newspaper story. The desk files the report and stops there. It has not read the item in the original, has not verified its headline or its date, and prints neither. It names nobody, prints no address and reproduces no photograph, now or ever. What the register takes from the card is the shape of the thing rather than its contents: a founding document that is a news item, contemporaneous, and about a real case, followed twenty-two years later by a novel that is none of those, and after that by an entire genre that believes it is quoting the document.
DM-1980-MIC / Uncorroborated account

Plate XXVI

Pazder, 1980

1980

Lawrence Pazder, with a co-author

nonfiction

Plate held; subject not named

The Book That Started a Decade and Was Never Corroborated

A book of 1980, never corroborated · filed as the source of a story and never as a source of fact

Period 1954–55 · British Columbia, as claimed The dates are the book's own claim and nothing else. The desk records them as claimed and does not adopt them.

Jurisdiction

None that can be checked. There is no corroboration by anybody in the forty-six years since.

Classification

Cited for what it caused and never for what it asserts. The register keeps it because it is the clearest case anywhere on these pages of repetition doing the work of evidence.

Confidence

None. The desk cites the book by author, year and subject. Its printed title is its second author's first name, and this register does not print the name of a case subject, in a title or anywhere else. Author and year will find it in any catalogue.

A book published under two names, believed at scale, and never corroborated by anybody. The register carries it because nothing was added to the record after publication except more repetition, and a decade was built on it anyway. That is exactly the mechanism this desk exists to grade, and it is the same mechanism that put sunlight on the vampire register and brains on the outbreak one, running here with a much higher bill attached. The corrective literature is on the shelf. The desk recommends reading the two together, or not reading either.
DM-1955-DYK / Escape clause exercised

Plate XIV

Damn Yankees

1955

Richard Adler and Jerry Ross; book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop

stage play

Plate held; stage filing

The Opt-Out Was Real and Somebody Actually Used It

A musical of 1955, from Wallop's 1954 novel · a term with an opt-out in it, and the opt-out works

Period 1950s · Washington, D.C.

Jurisdiction

Contractual. The debtor signs an agreement that has a way out written into it.

Mechanism

A drafted escape clause, and it is honoured.

Cross-reference

One of six filings in which the instrument fails, here on a term written into the agreement rather than on an argument found afterwards.

The register has now read a great many of these agreements and reports that the standard form is brutal, the amendments are worse, and the debtor almost always escapes anyway on something nobody drafted. This filing is an exception, and it is the exception this desk finds most instructive: the escape clause is written into the agreement, and it is honoured. Read the term before you sign it. Establish that there is a way out of it. That is the whole finding, and it is duller and more useful than anything else on this page.
DM-1957-NOD / Instrument returned

Plate XV

Night of the Demon

1957

Jacques Tourneur

film

Plate held; adaptation

The Parchment, Handed Back, and the Obligation With It

From the 1911 story · the parchment, handed back, and a procedure that survives the adaptation

Period contemporary · England

Jurisdiction

Clerical, as in the source. The instrument runs against the holder and is discharged by handing it back.

Mechanism

Service, acceptance and return. The film adds nothing to the procedure and subtracts nothing from it, which on this register is rare.

Cross-reference

Filed separately from the 1911 story on the register's standing rule. An adaptation is its own filing and never folded into its source.

An adaptation that keeps the paperwork, which is more than most of this register manages. The hazard is still a document, it still attaches on receipt, and it is still discharged by getting the other party to take delivery without noticing. What the film supplies is the demonstration: the parchment goes back to the party who served it, and the obligation goes back with it. The desk regards this as the best filmed countermeasure on the register, on the simple grounds that it is a procedure, it is stated, and it is executed correctly.
DM-1967-ROS / Tenancy filing

Plate XVIII

Rosemary's Baby

1967

Ira Levin

novel

Plate held; tenancy filing

The Devil Arrives as a Neighbour and Nobody Has to Force a Door

A novel of 1967 · the Devil arrives as a neighbour in the building, and the neighbours are a coven

Period 1965–66 · an apartment building in Manhattan

Jurisdiction

Residential, and claimed by this register rather than by the witch file. The neighbours are a coven; the counterparty in the transaction is not.

Mechanism

Consent, obtained by fraud, which is a defect in the consent and not an absence of it.

Cross-reference

The first of the register's three delivery-error stories, in which the arrival is arranged by somebody other than the household.

The Devil arrives as a neighbour, in the building, and the neighbours are a coven. That is the whole mechanism. Nothing forces a door and nothing crosses a threshold uninvited, because everybody involved is inside the building already and has a reason to be there. The register files it as its central tenancy card and notes what the vampire archive would notice first: consent is present throughout, and it is worthless throughout, because consent obtained by telling somebody a different story is a signature on the wrong document.
DM-1968-ROS / Tenancy filing, filmed

Plate XX

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

1968

Roman Polanski

film

Plate held; adaptation

The Building, Filmed, and Filed on Its Own Plate

From the 1967 novel · the same filing, with the building shown rather than imagined

Period 1965–66 · an apartment building in Manhattan

Jurisdiction

Residential. The filing is the apartment-building card put on a screen, with the building still doing the work.

Mechanism

Unchanged. Consent obtained by fraud, from a person who has been told a different story at every step, by people who live next door.

Cross-reference

Files separately from the novel on the register's standing rule, which this desk applies even where the adaptation is faithful and especially where it is famous.

The register does not fold an adaptation into its source, so this gets its own plate, and the desk will state what it claims for the plate and no more. This is the apartment-building filing, filmed. The Devil arrives as a neighbour, the neighbours are a coven, the consent is obtained by telling somebody a different story, and none of that changes between the novel and the film. What changes is that a reader imagines a building and a viewer is shown one. This paper thinks that distinction is worth a separate card. It is aware that most people think it is pedantry.
DM-1967-BED / Requirements filing

Plate XVII

Bedazzled

1967

Stanley Donen

film

Plate held; comedy filing

Seven Wishes, Each One Defectively Specified

A comedy of 1967 · a supplier delivering exactly to specification, seven times, to a client who cannot write one

Period contemporary · London

Jurisdiction

Contractual, with an unusually cooperative counterparty. The supplier performs to the letter every single time and is never in breach.

Mechanism

Requirements failure. Each wish is granted precisely as worded and fails on an assumption the client did not state.

Cross-reference

The register's clearest evidence that the instrument is almost never enforced as intended, because almost nobody drafts what they mean.

This desk has read enough specifications to find this filing professional rather than funny. The supplier is never in breach. He delivers exactly what is asked for, seven times running, and each delivery is a disaster because the client wrote down a solution instead of a requirement and left every constraint that mattered unstated. The register notes with feeling that the failure mode is not malice. It is a client who cannot describe the thing he wants, working with a counterparty who has no incentive whatever to ask a clarifying question. Anyone who has commissioned building work will recognise the whole picture.
DM-1971-EXO / Modern case file

Plate XXII

The Exorcist

1971

William Peter Blatty

novel

Plate held; from a real case

The Case File That Set the Template for Everything After It

A novel of 1971, proceeding from a real case of 1949 · the modern file starts here and mostly stops here

Period contemporary · Georgetown

Jurisdiction

Domestic, and then everybody else's. The modern case file starts here, built from a real diocesan diary.

Mechanism

Not graded from this card. The desk's file on the novel carries its provenance and its setting, and the desk declines to narrate the case from memory.

Confidence

The desk has not established which of the novel and the 1973 film introduces the best-known physical sign, and does not attribute it to either.

The founding filing of the modern record, and the one everybody thinks they are quoting. It is built from a real case of 1949 and from a diary kept at the time, which is an unusual provenance for a founding document and the reason this register handles the 1949 card as carefully as it does. The desk records one thing and declines to record two others. Everything after 1971 believes it is citing the novel and is at least as often citing the film. What the desk will not say is which of the two supplies the sign everybody remembers, because it has not established that. Nor will it say what the 1949 record does or does not contain, for the same reason and on its own card.
DM-1973-EXO / Blinded test

Plate XXIII

The Exorcist (1973)

1973

William Friedkin

film

Plate held; leading filing

The Register's Only Blinded Test, and the Result Was Ignored

From the 1971 novel · one scene in this filing is the best evidence on the page, and the film treats it as noise

Period contemporary · Georgetown

Jurisdiction

Domestic, and then everybody else's. What the register wants from this filing is one scene in it, and the card is written around that scene.

Mechanism

Contested inside the filing itself, which is why the desk builds its leading finding here rather than on any of the documents.

Confidence

Highest on the register for the test and lowest for what was done with it. A negative result was obtained and the case proceeded exactly as before.

Karras uses tap water in place of holy water, and the subject reacts anyway. That is a blinded test with a negative result, performed inside the case, and it is the only controlled trial anywhere in this file. What happens next is that the case proceeds, and the film treats the result as noise. The desk does not think the film is being dishonest here. It thinks the film is being accurate about what happens to a negative result once a conclusion has been reached, which is a harder thing to depict and a much harder thing to admit.
DM-1974-SEN / Rent below market

Plate XXIV

The Sentinel

1974

Jeffrey Konvitz

novel

Plate held; tenancy filing

The Rent Was Low Because of What the Building Is For

A novel of 1974 · the rent is too low, and the reason is what the building is for

Period 1970s · Brooklyn Heights

Jurisdiction

Residential and, on the register's reading, custodial. The desk reads the title as a job description and files the building as staffed rather than as haunted.

Mechanism

Disclosed in the price and nowhere else. The rent is low because of what the premises are for.

Cross-reference

A later register in this run files dwellings on exactly this principle — the discount is the disclosure — and the desk records the agreement in advance.

This paper has said for years that an unaccountably good price is a disclosure the seller has decided not to make in words, and the register keeps supplying evidence. Here the rent is too low, and the reason for the discount is what the building is for. What the desk files it for is the word in the title. A sentinel is a post rather than a ghost, which makes this a staffed building rather than a haunted one, and a register about occupancy would always rather grade the arrangement than the tenant.
DM-2006-REQ / The same case, without the claim

Plate XXXVIII

Requiem

2006

Hans-Christian Schmid

film

Plate held; paired filing

The Same Events, Filed Without the Demon

A film of 2006 · the same case as the 2005 filing, and the register keeps the pair

Period 1970s · Bavaria

Jurisdiction

Domestic. The same underlying case as the 2005 filing, told without a supernatural claim in it.

Mechanism

None asserted. The film enters no supernatural claim at any point, which is precisely why the register keeps it alongside the 2005 card.

Cross-reference

The pair is the argument. Two filings, one case, and two treatments of it.

The register keeps this card and the 2005 filing as a pair, because the pair does something no single filing could. They are two treatments of one case. One work admits a supernatural claim and builds a courtroom around it. The other admits nothing at all. The desk has no verdict to offer on the underlying case and does not want one. What it offers is the observation that the two films differ on the standard of proof, which is this register's entire subject.
DM-1976-OMN / Delivery failure, second

Plate XXV

The Omen

1976

Richard Donner

film

Plate held; logistics filing

Delivery Error Two, Executed at the Hospital

A film of 1976 · a substitution at birth, and delivery error two

Period contemporary · Rome and London

Jurisdiction

Administrative and clinical. The arrival is arranged at a birth, by a substitution, and nobody asks the household to let anything in.

Mechanism

Substitution at birth. The register counts it against its own consent finding, because the arrival needs no invitation.

Cross-reference

The second of three stories in which the Antichrist arrives by clerical error. The desk has stopped treating the pattern as a coincidence.

Three stories on this register arrange the arrival of the Antichrist and all three arrange it through a hospital. Here the error is a substitution at birth, and the desk's file on the film carries that and the cities, Rome and London, and nothing about what follows, so the card narrates nothing that follows. The handover is enough: a birth is the one delivery a household cannot audit. This desk has made that complaint about builders, letting agents and warranty providers. It did not expect to be making it about a hospital.
DM-2024-LND / Broadcast conditions

Plate LIV

Late Night with the Devil

2024

Cameron and Colin Cairnes

film

Plate held; broadcast filing

Possession, Live on Air, With an Audience

Screened at a festival in 2023, released widely in 2024 · possession, live on air

Period 1977 · a Halloween broadcast

Jurisdiction

Broadcast. The possession is live, on air, which is a set of conditions no procedure on this register contemplates.

Mechanism

Broadcast conditions. Whatever else a live transmission supplies, it does not supply privacy for a subject, or the time to exclude anything.

Cross-reference

The register's worst-run arrangement, graded on the arrangement alone. The desk's file carries the broadcast and its date, and the card grades nothing else.

The desk has graded a good many procedures on this page and this is the only one transmitted live. That single fact does all the work the card needs. A broadcast has an audience and a running time, and neither is compatible with the thing the 1614 text asks for first, which is that the ordinary explanations be excluded before anybody proceeds. The register does not need to know what happens in the rest of the filing in order to grade the arrangement. It was already wrong when the light went on.
DM-1981-EVD / Summoning by playback

Plate XXVII

The Evil Dead

1981

Sam Raimi

film

Plate held; original filing

Summoned by Pressing Play

A film of 1981 · a book, a tape recorder, and a summoning read aloud

Period contemporary · a cabin

Jurisdiction

Domestic, in a cabin. Nothing is signed; the thing is summoned, not contracted for.

Mechanism

Recitation, by tape recorder. The book is read aloud and the summoning is done by recording.

Cross-reference

The register's consent finding, operating through a machine. The book is read aloud, and reading it aloud is the admission, whatever is doing the reading.

The register runs on consent, and this filing shows what consent looks like once it has been delegated to a machine. The book is read aloud, which is the act that admits the thing, and the summoning is done by tape recorder. The desk files it on the consent side of the rule because the words were said in the room, and the rule does not appear to care who, or what, said them. Beyond that the file is thin: a book, a recording and a cabin. The desk declines to furnish the cabin from memory, and notes only that a recording is a document, and that this is one more filing on the register in which the hazard arrives as paperwork.
DM-2021-DMD / Defence rejected

Plate LI

The Devil Made Me Do It

2021

Michael Chaves

film

Plate held; real case, handled with care

The Possession Defence, on Which a Court Has Already Ruled

A film of 2021, built on a real prosecution of 1981 · the defence was offered in a real court and the court rejected it

Period 1981 · Connecticut

Jurisdiction

Criminal. The filing turns on whether a defence resting on possession can be entered at a trial, which is a question a court answered in 1981.

Confidence

The desk cites the outcome and nothing else: the defence was rejected. It prints no name, no address, no photograph and no view about anybody involved in the case.

Cross-reference

The two earlier films in this series are filed elsewhere in this run, as property matters. This one is filed here because its subject is a prosecution rather than a house.

The register takes exactly one thing from this filing, and it is a ruling. A defence resting on possession was offered in a court of law in 1981, and the court rejected it. That is a verdict on the register's central question, delivered by a court, and it went the way the evidence on this page would predict. Everything else about the case belongs to the people who lived through it. The desk prints the ruling, files the film, and leaves the rest of it exactly where it found it.
DM-1984-NES / Occupancy through sleep

Plate XXVIII

A Nightmare on Elm Street

1984

Wes Craven

film

Plate held; not for children

The Sleep Clinic Receives Physical Evidence

1984 · supernatural slasher film · written and directed by Wes Craven · produced by Robert Shaye

Period undated · the Elm Street households The story supplies no calendar year for the attacks or the earlier killings. The desk uses the release year as a sorting anchor.

Jurisdiction

Occupancy through sleep. Teenagers share nightmares about the same intruder.

Evidence

Nancy burns her arm against a pipe in a nightmare and wakes with a burn mark.

Transfer

At a sleep disorder clinic, Nancy pulls a fedora bearing the name Fred Krueger out of her dream.

Nancy asks Glen to watch while she sleeps and uses caffeine to postpone the next encounter. Those are household measures against an intruder who reaches her in dreams and leaves injuries in waking life. The register takes the sleeping space and the attempted remediation; the film identifies Krueger as an undead killer. He has turned a sleep clinic into a lost-property office.
DM-1986-CRS / Instrument contested

Plate XXIX

Crossroads

1986

Walter Hill

film

Plate held; original filing

The Crossroads Contract, Litigated by Guitar

A film of 1986 · a legend that arrives already formed, and a dispute-resolution clause bolted onto it

Period contemporary · Mississippi

Jurisdiction

Contractual, with a contest as the tribunal. The instrument is real, the debtor is bound, and release is available on a stated test.

Mechanism

Determination by competition. The register has a jury, a wager and an escape clause elsewhere; this is the only arbitration in the file.

Confidence

The film is cited for the mechanism only. The legend behind it reaches this register with no contemporary source attached, which the findings deal with directly.

The crossroads story arrives on this register fully formed and with nothing behind it, which is the condition the desk finds most familiar and least satisfying. What the filing adds is procedural: the agreement is treated as an instrument that can be discharged on a stated test, and the test is conducted, judged and honoured. The desk files it for the contract finding and not for the folklore, and directs the reader to the findings table for the state of the record on the man the legend is now attached to, which is worse than most readers expect.
DM-1987-HEL / Mail-order procurement

Plate XXX

Hellraiser

1987

Clive Barker

film

Plate held; procurement filing

A Puzzle Box, Filed as Procurement

From the author's own novella, which this register declines to file separately · a puzzle box, filed as procurement rather than as engineering

Period contemporary · England

Jurisdiction

Commercial, on the desk's reading. The entry route is an object, and the register files the object as a product.

Mechanism

A puzzle box. The register could file it as engineering and has chosen to file it as procurement, which is a filing decision and is stated as one.

Classification

In the source novella the visitors describe themselves as demons to some, which is a partial concession. The desk records the qualification on the card and keeps the filing.

A procurement filing, and the desk wants to be exact about how much it is claiming. The source novella treats the puzzle box as a mail-order product. The film adapts that novella, and the desk's file on the film says nothing further about how the box arrives, so this card does not say either. What is left is enough for the heading: the entry route is an object rather than a signature, and an object came from a supplier whatever else it is. The desk has written a great deal about reading the documentation before operating the equipment, and files this one under that heading with no further comment.
DM-1987-POD / Storage filing

Plate XXXI

Prince of Darkness

1987

John Carpenter

film

Plate held; storage filing

Held in a Canister, in a Basement, by an Institution

A film of 1987 · a canister in a church basement, which makes this the register's storage filing

Period contemporary · Los Angeles

Inventory

The register's only item held as stock. It is kept in a canister in the basement of a church, which is a storage arrangement whatever else it is.

Mechanism

Storage rather than entry. Nothing arrives; the thing is on the premises already.

Cross-reference

The clearest instance of the register's occupancy thesis: the hazard was already on site when everybody now involved arrived.

A storage filing, and the desk has been waiting all register for one. The hazard is not summoned, contracted for or delivered. It is inventory: Satan, in a canister, in the basement of a church. The desk's file says it was there before the people now involved and says nothing of what becomes of the arrangement, and the card does not guess. This paper writes about storage for a living and will state the obvious finding plainly. A hazard you have decided to keep is a hazard you have taken on a standing maintenance obligation for, and a church basement is still a storage arrangement, with a maintenance schedule whether or not anybody wrote one.
DM-1990-GOM / Delivery failure

Plate XXXII

Good Omens

1990

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

novel

Plate held; logistics filing

The Antichrist Is Delivered to the Wrong Household

A novel of 1990 · a handover at a hospital, performed by nuns, to the wrong household

Period contemporary · Tadfield Placed at the events on file. The desk has no date for the delivery itself and prints none.

Jurisdiction

Administrative, and the desk's favourite jurisdiction. The delivery goes wrong at the goods-inwards stage.

Mechanism

A swap at the point of delivery, performed by nuns, which sends the child to the wrong household.

Cross-reference

The third of the register's three delivery-error stories, and the desk's favourite of them.

The desk's favourite filing on the register, and the one that best states its thesis about this whole subject. Three separate stories on this register arrange the arrival of the Antichrist and all three arrange it as a handover at a hospital. All three handovers go wrong. In this one the swap is performed by nuns and the delivery goes to the wrong household: the right building, the wrong address on the docket. The desk's file does not follow the consequences further and the desk does not narrate them from memory. The register has filed catastrophes that turned on a perimeter, on an inventory and on an argument. This one turns on goods-inwards.
DM-1991-NDT / Retail filing

Plate XXXIII

Needful Things

1991

Stephen King

novel

Plate held; retail filing

The Devil Opens a Shop and the Register Acquires a Retail File

A novel of 1991 · the Devil opens a shop, and the terms that matter are in the small print

Period contemporary · Castle Rock

Jurisdiction

Commercial. The register's only filing conducted from retail premises.

Mechanism

Small print. The terms that matter are the ones set in it.

Cross-reference

The clearest instance of the register's small-print escape.

The register's retail file, and a better piece of consumer education than most of what this paper prints. The Devil opens a shop, and the terms that matter are in the small print, which is a thing that happens on this desk's own beat every week of the year. The desk's file on the novel carries the shop and the small print and nothing about the customers, so this card prints no account of who bought what. The filing is the register's reminder that the standard-form agreement does not need a parchment. A shop will do.
DM-1997-DAD / Procurement of counsel

Plate XXXIV

The Devil's Advocate

1997

Taylor Hackford, from Andrew Neiderman's 1990 novel

film

Plate held; adaptation

The Devil Runs a Law Firm, and the Recruitment Is Excellent

From the 1990 novel · the Devil runs a law firm, and the instrument is an offer of employment

Period contemporary · New York

Jurisdiction

Employment. The counterparty on this card is not a contracting party but an employer, which the register regards as the more modern arrangement and the harder one to leave.

Mechanism

Recruitment. The Devil runs a law firm, and what he procures is counsel. The instrument is a post rather than a parchment.

Cross-reference

The procurement finding in its most ordinary form. The counterparty on this register is repeatedly an employer, a landlord or a retailer. This card is the employer.

The register's contract cards are all about a document. This one is about a job, which the desk regards as the more modern and much more effective instrument. What the filing establishes for the register's procurement finding is that the counterparty has stopped bothering with parchment. He runs a law firm now, the thing he procures is counsel, the instrument is a post, and the register observes that a job is very much harder to void on appeal than a contract, because nobody involved thinks of it as an instrument at all.
DM-1999-DEX / Revised procedure

Plate XXXV

De Exorcismis

1999

Congregation for Divine Worship

official report

Plate held; procedural instrument

The Revision, in Which Ruling Out the Ordinary Becomes an Instruction

The 1999 revision of Title XII · the exclusion of medical and psychiatric causes, stated outright

Period procedural · no events claimed

Jurisdiction

Ecclesiastical, as in 1614, issued for a century that has psychiatry in it.

Mechanism

The change the desk's file records is to the front matter: the requirement to exclude medical and psychiatric causes is made explicit. The file says nothing about the rest of the text, and the desk does not characterise it.

Cross-reference

Filed as its own card rather than folded into the 1614 filing. A revision is a document with its own date, and this register does not bundle.

The desk keeps the two procedural cards side by side rather than folding one into the other, because the interesting thing about a procedure is what its revisions change. The change the desk has on file across 385 years is to the front matter: the older text opens by ruling out ordinary causes, and this one makes the exclusion explicit. The desk has no standing to grade a rite and does not attempt it. It has a great deal of standing on exclusion criteria, which are the entire content of its own method — rule out the mould, the plumbing and the drains before you call anybody a specialist — and it records with some satisfaction that the specialists have had the rule in writing for longer than this newspaper has existed.
DM-2005-EMR / Prosecution, dramatised

Plate XXXVI

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

2005

Scott Derrickson

film

Plate held; real case, handled with care

The Trial Is the Film, and a Young Woman Died

A film of 2005 · a courtroom drama built on a real prosecution that followed a real death

Period contemporary, from a case thirty years older The film relocates a real German case of the 1970s into its own present. The card is dated to the film's events; the case is not.

Jurisdiction

Criminal. The film's actual subject is a prosecution brought after a death, and whether a defence resting on possession can be tested in a courtroom at all.

Confidence

The desk has not read the judgment in the underlying case and prints no account of its terms. What it prints is that there was a young woman, that she died, and that a prosecution followed.

Classification

Filed with restraint. No name, no address, no photograph, no diagnosis and no inference about anybody who lived through it. She is not a plot point and this register will not use her as one.

The desk files the film and declines to file the case, and the difference matters more here than anywhere else on the page. A young woman died. That is the fact the whole filing rests on, and it is not available to this register as material. What the card is kept for is the procedural question the film is genuinely about: what a court can do when a defence asserts something a court has no instrument for testing. The register offers no reading of the case behind it. It has not read the judgment and will not reason from a dramatisation back to a real proceeding. What it will say is general, and the 1614 document said it first: an exclusion requirement is worth what the exclusion is worth.
DM-2005-SPN / Standard-form instrument

Plate XXXVII

Supernatural

2005

Eric Kripke

television series

Plate held; long run

Fifteen Years Run on One Standard-Form Agreement

A television series, 2005 to 2020 · the crossroads contract as a series engine

Period contemporary

Jurisdiction

Contractual. The register's longest filing, and the one that runs the agreement as the engine of a series.

Mechanism

The crossroads contract, recurring. The series runs on it for fifteen years.

Cross-reference

Carries the crossroads story wholesale, which is why it is cited in the finding on where that story came from and what stands behind it.

Fifteen years is long enough to establish what a body of practice actually looks like, and what this one looks like is a firm with a standard form. The crossroads contract is the engine of the series, which makes this the register's largest single sample of the instrument in use. The desk's file does not say how often the form is enforced across those fifteen years, and the desk has declined to count it from memory. The sample is on the page for its size, and for the story it carries without asking where the story came from.
DM-2009-RIT / Course attendance

Plate XLI

The Rite

2009

Matt Baglio

nonfiction

Plate held; popular journalism

Somebody Attended the Course and Wrote It Down

A journalist attends the training, takes notes, and publishes them · the register's only filing produced by an observer

Period 2005 · Rome

Jurisdiction

Observational. A reporter with access to the Vatican's course on the subject, and to the people sitting it.

Inventory

The register's one filing about training rather than about a case. What it establishes is that the remedy is taught, on a course, to people who enrol on it.

Confidence

Cited for the institutional form and not for the conclusions, which the desk neither adopts nor has to. The shelf carries it with the same caveat.

A journalist attends, takes notes and publishes them, which makes this the only filing on the register produced by somebody who set out to watch the procedure rather than to argue about it. The register values it for the least dramatic thing about it, which is that there is a course at all. A remedy taught on a course has been written down twice, and this desk has spent five weeks establishing that almost nothing else on this page was written down once. The desk does not adopt the book's conclusions and does not need to. What the card establishes is that the remedy has an institutional form with training attached, which is more than this page can say for any other remedy on it.
DM-2009-PAR / Attaches to a person

Plate XL

Paranormal Activity

2009

Oren Peli

film

Plate held; surveillance filing

It Follows the Person, Which Means It Is Not a Property Matter

Screened at a festival in 2007, released widely in 2009 · this register dates by wide release and says so on the card

Period 2006 · San Diego

Jurisdiction

Personal, not premises. The attachment is to an occupant and dates from her childhood, so it follows the person rather than staying with the address.

Perimeter

Not the issue, and that is the finding. A perimeter defends premises, and the premises are not what is affected here.

Cross-reference

The seam with the haunted-house register, settled by the filing itself. That register takes the dwelling; this one takes the tenant.

The seam between this register and the haunted-house file is drawn by the filings rather than by the desk, and this is one of the two that draw it. The problem is attached to a person, dates from before the address, and does not stay behind when the address changes. What the desk files it for besides the seam is the consequence. If the thing is attached to a person, then every remedy this register has spent five weeks grading — the boundary, the storage arrangement, the survey, the decision to move — is aimed at the wrong object. The haunted-house register can offer a household a great deal. This one has to tell it that the address was never the problem.
DM-2009-DMH / Finance filing

Plate XXXIX

Drag Me to Hell

2009

Sam Raimi

film

Plate held; original filing

A Refused Extension, a Curse, and the Register's Finance File

A film of 2009 · a loan officer refuses a mortgage extension and is cursed, which gives the register its finance file

Period contemporary · Los Angeles

Jurisdiction

Financial and residential. The precipitating act is a refused mortgage extension, which is a decision about somebody else's home.

Mechanism

A curse rather than a contract, and the register files the card for the transaction that precedes it rather than for the mechanism that follows.

Cross-reference

The register's procurement finding at the retail end. The transaction that starts the case is a lending decision.

The register has been arguing all page that this file is really about procurement, tenancy and money, and here is the filing that concedes it outright. A loan officer refuses a mortgage extension and is cursed for it. The desk files the card for that transaction and not for what follows, which its file does not describe, because this is the only place on this register where the supernatural arrives as the direct result of a lending decision, and because this paper has written a great deal about what a refused extension does to a household without ever expecting the genre to agree with it.
DM-2010-INS / Seam stated by the filing

Plate XLII

Insidious

2010

James Wan

film

Plate held; seam filing

A Filing That Does the Desk's Filing For It

A film of 2010 · the filing says out loud that the house is not the haunted thing

Period contemporary · a household

Jurisdiction

Personal. The film states its own classification out loud, in terms, and the register simply writes it down.

Mechanism

Attachment to an occupant rather than to a property, which is the whole of the seam between this register and the haunted-house file.

Cross-reference

The second of the two filings that draw the seam with the haunted-house register. A later register in this run takes the dwellings; this one takes the tenants.

The register has spent five weeks arguing about which file a work belongs in, and once in a while a filing simply announces its own classification and saves everybody the trouble. This one says the thing out loud: it is not the house that is haunted. Whatever else that establishes, it establishes that the matter is not a property matter, and the desk is glad to have it on the record from a work rather than from an editorial decision. Two registers in this run could have claimed it. Only one of them is about tenants, and this one filed itself.
DM-2010-LEX / Method demonstrated

Plate XLIII

The Last Exorcism

2010

Daniel Stamm

film

Plate held; original filing

The Method, Filmed by a Man Who Knows It Does Not Work

A film of 2010 · the exorcist is a fraud, and he films his own method

Period contemporary · Louisiana

Jurisdiction

Self-audit. The register's only filing in which the practitioner films his own method, and the practitioner is a fraud.

Mechanism

Stagecraft, on camera. The method is filmed by the man performing it, which makes the filing a demonstration rather than a case.

Cross-reference

The strongest evidence against the register's rite finding, and the strongest evidence for the 1614 requirement that the ordinary causes be excluded before anybody proceeds.

Cited against the rite, and the desk wants to be precise about what it is cited for. The filing does not establish that the procedure is worthless. It establishes something narrower and much more damaging: that the procedure can be performed by a fraud, on camera, as a method. A method with no controls in it cannot distinguish its practitioners from its impersonators. This filing is an impersonator filming his own method, and the register cites it for that and for nothing else.
DM-2012-GRF / Juvenile tier

Plate XLIV

Gravity Falls

2012

Alex Hirsch

animated series

Plate held; juvenile tier

The Only Card on This Register a Child Can Watch

An animated series, 2012 to 2016 · the register's only card in the children's tier, at about eight and up

Period contemporary

Classification

Juvenile, around eight and upward. It is the register's only genuinely child-suitable filing and the desk prints that the row is thin rather than padding it out.

Mechanism

Not graded. The desk files this card for its audience rather than for its mechanism, and says so rather than inventing a reading it has not earned.

Cross-reference

The whole of the register's juvenile row. One card, printed as one card, with the thinness stated rather than disguised.

The desk went looking for a children's tier on this register and found one card, so it prints one card and says so. A household looking for something on this subject that a child of about eight can watch has exactly one option on this page, and the desk would rather print that plainly than pad the row out with things it would not actually recommend. Every other animated filing here is for older audiences, two of them emphatically so. The register notes the shape of the problem and leaves it there: this is a subject with a very large adult literature, a substantial teenage one, and almost nothing at all for the age that most wants a monster.
DM-2016-WAI / Classification unresolved

Plate XLVI

The Wailing

2016

Na Hong-jin

film

Plate held; classification unresolved

Nobody in the File Agrees What the Thing Is

A film of 2016 · the register's best case of nobody agreeing what the thing is

Period contemporary · Gokseong

Classification

Unresolved. Nobody in the filing agrees what the thing is.

Mechanism

Not graded. With no agreement on what the thing is, there is no mechanism the desk could stand behind.

Confidence

The register's honest zero. Filing the card on this register is a filing decision rather than a finding, and the desk states that plainly.

The register's best demonstration of the condition the two procedural documents on this page were written to prevent. Nobody in the filing agrees what the thing is, and the desk's file on it says no more than that, so the card does not rank the explanations or say how the filing ends. The desk has read the 1614 text and its 1999 revision and can report that exclusion criteria are exactly the instrument for this situation, and that they are of no use whatever to somebody with no way of running them. That is this register's real complaint about the whole file. The procedure is sound, and almost nobody in the record is in a position to follow it.
DM-2016-GDP / Development filing

Plate XLV

The Good Place

2016

Michael Schur

television series

Plate held; housing filing

A Demon Architect Delivers a Planned Neighbourhood

A television series, 2016 to 2020 · a demon architect builds a planned neighbourhood

Period undated · a planned neighbourhood The setting carries no calendar. The placement is a filing convenience and claims no year.

Jurisdiction

Development and estate management. There is an architect and a build.

Mechanism

Design. The hazard is an environment somebody specified, which is a different kind of problem from a visitation and a far more familiar one.

Cross-reference

The register's procurement finding in its largest form. The counterparty here is not a supplier or a landlord but a developer with a masterplan.

This paper writes about housing, so the register was always going to file this one high. The premise is a planned neighbourhood, built by a demon architect. That is a development filing and the register has no hesitation about it. What this paper has to say about developments it has said many times: the brief is written by one party, the environment is delivered by another, and the residents are the only ones who find out whether the specification was any good. A register about occupancy could hardly ask for a cleaner statement of its own subject, and the desk records with some amusement that it arrives on a comedy.
DM-2018-HER / Consent supplied by the household

Plate XLVIII

Hereditary

2018

Ari Aster

film

Plate held; succession filing

The Host Must Be Given Willingly, and the Household Provides One

A film of 2018 · the requirement is a host given willingly, and the household provides one

Period contemporary · Utah

Jurisdiction

Familial, and testamentary on the desk's reading of the title. The register files it as something handed on rather than something that arrives.

Mechanism

Consent, supplied by proxy. The requirement is a host given willingly, and the household supplies the willingness on the host's behalf.

Cross-reference

Files with the register's consent finding and against the vampire archive's reading of it: here the permission is given by the household rather than by the person it concerns.

The register's consent rule keeps looking robust until a filing arrives in which the consent is given by somebody else. The requirement is stated inside the work: the host has to be provided willingly. The household then provides one. That is the whole of what the register needs and the whole of what it will claim, and it is enough to break the rule the vampire archive established, because the party granting permission and the party it is granted about are not the same person. The desk reads the title as the filing category and leaves it there. This is something handed on, and the objection to it is the ordinary objection to any obligation somebody else accepted on your behalf.
DM-2018-DVC / Adult tier, animated

Plate XLVII

Devilman Crybaby

2018

Masaaki Yuasa

animated series

Plate held; adult tier, flagged

Animated, and Emphatically Not for Children

An animated series of 2018 · adult, and flagged here for the specific reason that it is drawn

Period contemporary

Classification

Adult, explicitly. The register flags it because animation is a technique and not an audience, and a household that assumes otherwise will find out quickly.

Mechanism

Not graded. The card is on the page to carry an age warning, and the desk is not going to dress that up as a reading it has not earned.

Cross-reference

One of two adult animated filings on the page. The desk flags both in the same terms and would rather over-warn than under-warn.

The card exists to carry a warning and the desk is not going to bury it in a joke. This is a drawn programme for adults. The reason the register flags it, rather than simply declining to list it, is that a household scrolling a menu sees a cartoon and makes an assumption, and a register that lists animated filings without saying which are which is worse than useless to the person doing the scrolling. This desk has seen what getting that wrong looks like in a living room and has no intention of repeating it here. Two filings on this page are drawn and for adults. This is one of them.
DM-2019-EVL / Assessment unit

Plate L

Evil

2019

Robert and Michelle King

television series

Plate held; procedural

Three Assessors, and Most Referrals Explained

A television series, 2019 to 2024 · a psychologist, a contractor and a priest-in-training, assessing for the Church

Period contemporary

Jurisdiction

Assessment, under instruction. A team of three assesses for the Church.

Mechanism

The exclusion procedure, dramatised: assess first, and find that what is assessed is mostly mundane.

Cross-reference

The 1614 document asked for the exclusion. It took 405 years and a television drama to show anybody on this register running one, and the register notes the wait.

The paper's own beat, cast as a procedural, and the register's favourite thing on the schedules. The unit is a psychologist, a contractor and a priest-in-training, assessing for the Church, and most of what they assess turns out to be mundane. The series is honest enough to let it. The 1614 text asks for the first part of exactly this: the ordinary causes excluded before anybody proceeds. The desk records the wait.
DM-2019-DSL / Correction of classification

Plate XLIX

Demon Slayer

2019

ufotable, from Koyoharu Gotouge's 2016 serial

animated series

Plate held; correction

A Vampire File That Filed Itself Under the Wrong Heading

An animated series from 2019 · blood, sunlight and a cure under investigation, which are three vampire rules and no possession rules

Period undated by this desk The register has established no period for this filing and declines to guess one. The card sits at its release year so the clock has somewhere to put it, and the placement claims nothing.

Classification

Corrected on the card. They drink blood, they die in sunlight, and there is a cure under investigation. Every one of those is a vampire rule and none of them is a possession rule.

Cross-reference

The Undead Register does not carry this filing, so there is no card to point at. The correction is recorded here, where the misfiling is, rather than in the archive that would have been entitled to it.

Confidence

The desk files by what a record does rather than by what it is called, and records that this is a correction of a heading and not a criticism of a work.

The register files by behaviour and not by nomenclature, and by behaviour this is a vampire file. The subjects drink blood. They die in sunlight. There is a cure under investigation. Those are three of the Undead Register's own findings arriving on the demon page under a different word, and the desk can point to no possession filing anywhere on this register that carries any of them. The desk keeps the card here because this is where the misfiling happened, prints the correction on it, and notes for households that the programme is for teenagers and is graphic.
DM-2023-TTM / Invitation, without a threshold

Plate LII

Talk to Me

2023

Danny and Michael Philippou

film

Plate held; consent filing

The Invitation Rule, Wearing a Hand

Screened at a festival in 2022, released widely in 2023 · the entry condition is four words: "I let you in"

Period contemporary · Adelaide

Jurisdiction

Social. The entry condition is the words "I let you in", spoken by the person granting it.

Mechanism

An invitation, issued in words and with a hand held, by the person it affects.

Cross-reference

The Undead Register's first finding is that the vampire must be invited. This filing runs the same rule with no threshold, no door and no property involved at all.

The vampire archive established that the entry rule is real, and left the impression that it was a rule about buildings. This filing takes the threshold away entirely and the rule keeps working, which the desk regards as the strongest evidence yet that the rule was never about property. There is no door here. There is a hand, and a sentence, "I let you in". The desk regards this as the most useful thing the run has established about the entry rule. It is a rule about somebody saying yes, and the threshold everybody remembers from the vampire filings was never the part doing the work. The register files that as a correction to its own reading and not to anybody else's.
DM-2024-HAZ / Hospitality filing

Plate LIII

Hazbin Hotel

2024

Vivienne Medrano; pilot released 2019

animated series

Plate held; adult tier, flagged

A Hospitality Filing, in Hell, and Also Not for Children

An animated series of 2024 · a rehabilitation programme in Hell, run as a hotel

Period undated · Hell The setting carries no calendar. The placement is a filing convenience and claims no year.

Classification

Adult, explicitly, and flagged for the same reason as the 2018 filing: it is drawn, and that is exactly the case in which a household puts something on for a child by mistake.

Jurisdiction

Hospitality. A rehabilitation programme delivered through a hotel, which makes the residents guests and the remedy a booking.

Cross-reference

Closes the register's procurement run: landlord, employer, shopkeeper, storage contractor, developer, and now hotelier. The desk regards the sequence as settled.

The register's last procurement filing, and the one that completes the sequence. The proposition is a rehabilitation programme run as a hotel, which is a hospitality filing however it is dressed, and the register takes it as the last of its procurement cards on exactly that basis. The counterparty on this page has been a landlord, an employer, a shopkeeper, a storage contractor, a developer, and now a hotelier. The desk files it as hospitality and flags it as adult in the same breath. It is drawn, and it is not for children, and neither of those two facts has any bearing on the other.

The rulings

One of the rumours graded against the register above turns out to have been tested once, failed, and carried forward anyway. The rulings are filed at The Possession Rulings.

What to read

Eight filings carry the rest of the register, and there is a shelf that would let a reader correct me. Both are at Selected Possession Readings.

Counsel asks me to state plainly: the works above belong to their respective authors, studios and estates; the file references, jurisdictions and dispositions are the desk’s own apparatus and have no legal standing whatsoever; nothing on this page is a claim about any real person, living or dead; and nothing here should be read as advice on the adequacy of any particular protective circle. That last clause was counsel’s. I have signed it, under protest, with my own pen.

The mummies register is next Wednesday. Among its oldest documents is an inquiry into tomb robbery, filed some three thousand years before anybody thought of a curse. I have been awake for three hundred of them and have nothing comparable to show.

— Casimir Vane