”
Elder Galaktia:
“Demons are monsters… completely deformed…
They do not condescend to show their ugliness, but to me they come exactly as they are… especially at night…
Every night when I speak on the phone with my Antonis (Moraitakis), there they are! They surround me but they do not touch me… They make strange, mocking movements… It almost makes you laugh…
I tell Antonis and describe them to him…
At some point I gently touch with my hand the icon of the Archangel that I have beside me… I look at them sternly at the same time, and they flee in panic… They leave through the closed western window…
Antonis got used to hearing this from me…
One night, while I was speaking with Fr. Antonios, I saw a wild, pitch-black being approaching me, like a savage Moor… I told Fr. Antonios, and abruptly he said ‘good night’ and hung up the phone… Afterwards I laughed…
I said to my black visitor: ‘Did you see what you did to me? You interrupted me with my child! Be gone!’
I caressed the icon of the Panagia beside me, and he vanished like smoke!
Their faces cannot be described…
Sometimes they have one enormous, blood-red eye in the middle of the head, sparkling fiercely…
Other times they have three blood-red eyes, very small—two together and one lower down…
Their fingers are completely distorted—wide, like a door handle. I never touch a door handle, because I blame the demons’ fingers for it…
Their feet and claws are like those of large birds…
Their hair stands straight up, up to ten centimeters high…
When I see young people coming for confession to Fr. Antonios with their hair standing up like spikes, I take them with love, bring them to the sink, and fix their hair… Then I explain why…
You see them with earrings—in the nose, the belly, even the tongue…
With savage drawings on their bodies (tattoos), with strange trousers…
Whatever they promote to people today, they show it to me on themselves…
They open and close their mouths like rubber, stretching them enormously, revealing teeth like glowing wires, red-hot…
The stench… the stench… the stench… It makes you want to vomit… Your insides are shaken…
Nothing in this world smells that bad… Perhaps cadaverine after sixteen days, when a dead body bursts in the grave… And even that does not compare to this worldly stench…
That is how unrepentant people also smell—those over whom demons have authority…
When I get up at 2–3 in the morning and sit on the chair to rest my operated legs and pray (I could not turn over in bed), they come, grab the chair, and spin me around and around…
I hold on tightly and mock them: ‘I’m not falling,’ I say, ‘I’m not falling, whatever you do!’
They get angry and leave…
But once they grabbed me and threw me under the bed…
God allowed it so that I would understand more deeply that we overcome them only with His power…
I pulled the telephone cord and the receiver fell… Fortunately, I know Ririka’s phone number by heart… I woke her, she came, opened the door, and helped me up… Alone I could not rise…
I have a small diptych icon, and with it I bless every day the cane I hold in order to walk, so they will not touch me…
And with my grandfather’s Cross (Fr. Nikolaos) I make the sign of the Cross every morning over my bed and all the main points of the house, so they will not touch anything…
Their fury is to see me take the censer and the prayer rope!
The censer, many times, they have knocked out of my hands…
When I say the prayer rope… then you should see!
Once there came a fleshy stalk, like a neck, and at the top it had the head of a rooster… It pecked at my hands so I would drop the prayer rope… I dealt with it properly—not by myself, but by entrusting it to the heavenly powers…
Another time it came as a shameless woman, indecently showing her backside—huge…
I ignored her, and she came and touched my nose with it…
I whipped her with the prayer rope, and it was as if fire caught that place…
She ran in panic and smashed into the opposite wall… The stench filled everything…
But she returned a few days later and shamelessly said to me:
‘Why did you burn my a** the other day? With what I show, I now rule the world—young and old…’
I lost no time and answered:
‘You haven’t seen anything yet! When the fire of eternal hell comes upon you, then you will truly see your “rule”…’
She growled and disappeared…
He becomes even more ridiculous when he disguises himself and struggles to deceive me… Then I laugh and say:
‘Go away, wretch, over there where they don’t know you… Here we know your stench, the shudder you bring, and the tricks you play…’
Once he came disguised as a bishop—wearing a mitre, a staff, everything… He strutted with exaggerated, puffed-up steps…
As soon as he realized I had recognized him—he took off running!
He disguises himself, but he never becomes anything other than what he truly is… Those who have learned him recognize him immediately…
Once I said to him:
‘Tell me, wretched one, the name of Him who stabbed you with the nails of the Cross—what do you consider your greatest achievement?’
He answered:
‘Convincing people that I do not exist.’
‘And how do you convince them?’
‘I make them believe that everything I do is psychology and imagination.’
‘And which human actions please you the most?’
He answered:
‘Calling me to do works for them (magic), blasphemies, bloodshed (murders, fights), and perversions.’
The Elder said many more things and concluded:
‘You, stay with Christ and do not be afraid… Do not turn him into a scarecrow, but do not play with him either! He has great power… Only Christ turns him to dust!
Never think that you have defeated him—he will thresh you…
Whatever good you do, count it as Christ’s… Whatever evil you do, write it as your own and the monkey’s (the devil’s)… Then repent… In this way he will never have authority to touch you.’”
