- Be gone, Satan.
Hey, I'm Sapphire.
Wanna hear something scary?
(eerie music)
Children can have pretty wild imaginations.
So no one bats an eye when a kid
starts playing with an imaginary friend of theirs.
They'll tell you all about their exciting adventures,
and you smile and nod and say,
oh that's great, honey.
But sometimes, those stories can be oddly specific.
And detailed.
What I'm about to tell you
is a true story that happened to a family friend.
Decades ago, a baby was born
in a small village in the Philippines,
two months earlier than she was expected.
Because she was so small,
they nicknamed her Baby.
Baby and her older cousin were very close.
Practically sisters.
When Baby was about four years old,
she would go off on her own a lot.
Where were you?
Her cousin would ask her.
She was about seven at the time.
Playing with Sven, she'd reply.
Who's Sven?
My friend.
Her cousin assumed it was an imaginary friend
because they lived in a very small village
up in the mountains,
and she was pretty sure there were
no children named Sven nearby.
But she did find it a very odd name choice.
So, what did you and Sven do?
We went in his flying machine with a spinning top.
It makes a lot of noise.
We flew in the sky and went over the water.
Sounds fun, her cousin replied.
She had no idea what she was talking about.
The next time Baby disappeared,
it was for a longer period of time than the last.
And where were you today?
With Sven.
He has these clothes that you wear underwater
so you can breathe and you don't get wet.
I saw lots of pretty fish.
Sounds fun.
Again, she had no idea what she was talking about.
Then one day, Baby and her cousin
were walking down the street
and Baby pointed at a tree.
That's Sven's house.
He took me to visit his mom and dad.
They have a really nice house,
and they have this snake,
and he can paint really pretty designs
with his tongue on these plates.
And that's when her cousin knew something wasn't right.
See, some Catholics believe that the snake
is a sign of the Devil.
And so, she went to Baby's mom
and told her all about Baby's stories.
They must be encantos, Baby's mother said.
Encantos are the enchanted ones,
beings that only show themselves to people they like.
Baby didn't have books or TV
to give her the type of details
that she was saying in her stories.
So her family believed that she must be possessed
by some sort of spirit.
They decided that Baby needed to be taken to the church
to receive the rite of exorcism.
Thanks to horror movies,
exorcisms have been portrayed as rituals
to expel demons that are possessing a human being.
But they were also performed to protect
an individual who might be susceptible to the Devil.
Be gone, Satan, and venture in master of all deceit.
Enemy of man's salvation.
(bell chimes)
After the ritual, Baby no longer went missing
for periods of time.
When asked about her friend Sven,
she had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Did she grow out of a phase?
Or did the ritual actually remove something from her?
Years later, when Baby's cousin was much older
and was living in the U.S.,
she saw a National Geographic Magazine for the first time.
And that's when she saw the flying machine
with the spinning top,
and the clothes for being underwater.
If you asked her today,
Baby has absolutely no recollection
of those adventures she went on,
or her friend Sven.
But her family sure does.
So if Baby wasn't friends with an encanto,
how does she know about helicopters and wetsuits,
things she had never seen before?
Do you know anyone whose experienced something similar?
Let me know in the comments.
Like this video if it gave you the chills,
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and check out our other videos.
Until next time, sweet dreams.