Tektonikus:  Your Honor, my client wants to confess.

Attorney 2:  You see, Your Honor! I told you he was guilty! But you let him go!

The Court:  That’s enough, attorney 2!

Attorney 1:  You were warned.

The Court:  That’s enough, attorney 1!

Tektonikus:  Thanks, Your Honor!

The Court: Thanks? Thanks? I let Mr. Pazuzu go because of you! I have a good mind to…

Tektonikus: You misunderstand me, Your Honor, it’s not Pazuzu who wants to confess.

The Court: No?

Tektonikus: No! I mean my new client.

The Court:  That’s different. Who is your new client?

Tektonikus:  Well, he likes to be called…The Face.

Attorney 1:  I object, Your Honor! Counsel has argued repeatedly that The Face isn’t really real at all! She said that he’s a sort of marker for the audience…who I represent! And now she wants to say…

Tektonikus: No, not that The Face, the other The Face.

The Court: there’s two?

Tektonikus: Yes! But I did tell him that the name was already taken. He insisted.

The Court: Well, where is he?

Tektonikus: he’s in the hall.

The Court: Bailiff, please call Mr. The Face to the stand.

Bailiff: Would Mr. The Face take the stand please!

Tektonikus: there he is, Your Honor!

The Court: Good heavens!

The Court: That’s your client?

Attorney 1: It figures!

Tektonikus: Yes, he’s my client! Everyone deserves representation!

The Court: That’s true. Does he wish to confess to haunting Regan MacNeill?

Tektonikus: No, Your Honor.

The Court: What about…starting a religious war that led to the death of two priests?

Tektonikus: Not that either.

The Court: What does he want to plead guilty to?

Tektonikus: Trespassing.

The Court: Really? Where?

Tektonikus: Chris MacNeill’s attic.

The Court: Well, I suppose he can….

Ok, that’s boring. But I did a considerable study of Chris MacNeill’s attic, and I found something interesting things indeed! Like the guy in the photo…he looks like a demon, or a monster, or some strange thing that probably really isn’t so strange if the attic wasn’t so dark. I also learned that Regan MacNeill may well have lied to her mother. And! I think I learned just where Captain Howdy came from. That’s right…the attic.

So, Chris has had her party. Regan appeared in the middle of the after-party, to declare that someone around the piano was going to die Up There. Then she urinates on the floor. Chris takes her upstairs for a bath, and puts her to bed. Chris heads back downstairs, asks Willie if she’s able to get the urine out of the carpet. Then we hear Regan screaming. Chris runs back upstairs and just as she is heading for Regan’s room, we see the above shot of the lights in the hallway. One of the lights is flickering.

So what? Well, it’s obviously important. And it’s the not the only time that this happens.

Yes, I know it’s hard to see because of the darkness! Chris comes home from her nighttime meeting with the doctor, where it is decided that they need a psychiatrist. This is also evening that Burke, losing a fight to a strong man in Regan’s room, has his neck broken and is thrown through the window. I again assert that this man could not possibly have entered the house in any normal way, or he would never have got past Burke and made it upstairs to Regan’s room. And so we know that he entered the house, or Chris’s side of the house, through the attic. That leads to an easy explanation for why the lights are flickering…the wiring obviously runs up into the attic, and it would seem that it is exposed, and that someone moving around in the attic ends up jostling the wires, thereby causing the lights to flicker. And there is more proof of this! In the scene where Chris hears the attic noises for the second time, she decides to climb up into the attic to take a look. She does something quite sensible beforehand:

Yes, the attic is a dark place, especially at night. So she plays with a light switch on the wall, trying to turn the light on. But it won’t turn on. Again, it is the presence of someone moving around in the attic and jostling wires that causes the problem with the lights. In fact, this scene is of tremendous importance. And not just because she ended up seeing my new client up there. As she stumbles around in the dark attic, she, and so we, hear the attic noises again.

Not only has Chris heard the attic noises again, she knows where they’re coming from…an opposite corner of the attic. Someone is up there, panicked when he or she realized that someone was climbing up into the attic, and attempted to hide.

Chris proceeds undaunted, peering into the dark corner of the attic to see the source of the Noises in the Attic.

This is the corner where someone, and not a demon, is hiding. The blue glow that it is visible is coming from a window, which may be the access point…the person gets into the attic through a window. Just as it would seem as though the movie was about to end, we are treated to yet another diversionary tactic:

This movie masterfully uses sleight of hand again and again to throw off the viewers. Carl has appeared. Two things, he heard Chris in the attic, but gave no indication that he had ever heard the other noises. Notice too that he has a flashlight. In other words, he knows the lights aren’t working…because he’s been up there. It may be a little odd that he didn’t mention the problem with the lights to Chris.

And so now I jump to the question of Captain Howdy. We know from the beginning of the movie that he is associated with the Ouija board. What Ouija board?

Oh yes, that one. Chris has never seen it before. So she asks Regan where it came from. Regan says that she found it. Where? The closet, and she motions toward the far wall.

Yes, shortly before we learn of the existence of the Ouija board, we meet Big-Orange Bird-Thing. And he is, of course, very visible has Regan is about to show mom how the Ouija board works:

We learn about Captain Howdy, and how he is associated with the Ouija board. And we a treated a good, long look at Big-Orange Bird-Thing as we learn about Captain Howdy. I have said elsewhere that Captain Howdy and Big-Orange Bird-Thing are one and the same. True. But! I think that Regan lied to Chris when she told her where she found the Ouija board. And it’s not nice to lie! Though people lie all the time without being demon-possessed. So where did she find it? The same place she got her idea about Captain Howdy. As Chris was slowly closing in on the Real Demon of the movie, moving carefully to the far corner of the attic after hearing the attic noises again, and before Carl’s intervention that allowed us to have another hour or so of movie, we see attic junk.

To the right, is a box. But it’s not just any old box. No! It’s a very important box. I blew it up:

There is a momentary flash of light just in time to see this box. It says, “John Dewar & Sons” on it, and that is a Scottish distiller of whiskey. To the bottom right the word, partially obscured by a sticker, is “fifths,” and a fifth is a bottle of whiskey. The box is open, with newspapers sticking out of it. So someone has removed whatever was in it. And look at the bottom left! Does he look familiar?

So here we have the inspiration for Big Orange Bird-thing. The logo on the box appears to be wearing a hat, something like a sombrero, with the upper part of the hat rising up in the air. I show Regan’s sculpture again:

See how the yellow feather rises up out of the head? It seems to me that the bird logo on the whiskey box and Regan’s sculpture are one and the same. The box is open, and the contents removed. I see only one conclusion…the Ouija board was the item in the box in the attic. Regan was in the attic looking around, found the box, opened the box, removed the Ouija board, and proceeded to use it. She then made her sculpture based on the bird logo on the box, associating the bird with the Ouija board, and quite creatively reproduced Orange Box Bird using her artistic abilities. And he is Captain Howdy. Looking at the box, there is an abbreviation that looks like R N O C, and it’s possible that the “O C” part of the abbreviation means “overnight center.” If the package was sent express delivery, then it was probably sent by airmail. And who flies airplanes? Yes! Captains.

So Regan was in the attic, found the Ouija board, saw the orange bird, and made Captain Howdy. Why lie about where it came from? She wasn’t hiding it from her mother…not at all. So why say that it came from the closet? Why not say that it came from Up There? If she were not supposed to be up in the attic, she might lie to her mother about where it came from. But it may also be that someone told her to lie to Chris about where it came from.  I would note this shot:

Chris wants to play the Ouija board. Regan pulls a little trick that causes the planchette to suddenly be propelled toward her mother. How? I don’t know, but I do know that some Federal Express Overnight Captain didn’t do it. It’s probably like the little trick with drawer of her desk that seemed to impress Father Karras. Still, based on where her mother is sitting, a question with a “no” answer is coming. In fact, the question…Captain Howdy, do you think my mom is pretty? gets a “no” answer from Captain Howdy, who “gives the answers,” but Regan doesn’t move the planchette toward “no.” She doesn’t move it at all:

Based on the previous shot, Captain Howdy indicated a “no” answer already. What to make of that? Probably nothing, other than Regan takes a shot at Angel. But the little trick with the planchette suggests practice, and I would suggest that she has practicing; playing it with someone. Who does Regan play with?

What did you do today? Angel asks.

Me and Sharon played a game in the backyard.

Oh, Regan plays with Sharon. I wonder if Sharon likes playing with the Ouija board? But still, why lie about where it came from? Because Sharon told her to. Why? That’s a tough one. But one might be tempted to see something like this…Sharon finds Regan with a Ouija board. It’s not hers, and it’s not Chris’s Ouija board. So where would a 12-year-old suddenly get a Ouija board? Regan tells her that she found in the attic. Then Sharon asks her how she got up in the attic? And I’m glad she asked? Of course, Regan could use the pull-down stairs in the hall. But what if Regan didn’t know that’s what the rectangle in the hallway ceiling is? Because that’s not how she got into the attic? In earlier essays I suggested that the only way to get at Regan using the attic was someway other than the strange portal in the hallway. Chris follows the sounds into Regan’s room, looking at the ceiling the whole way. We know that the attic extends over Regan’s room. The only way to get at her, would be an access point in her room. I think I found it!

This is a shot from the exorcism scenes. Two doors! The one to the right of the priests is the door that leads in and out of Regan’s room. The door to the left must be a closet. Yes! There is an access point to the attic in the ceiling of Regan’s closet. So I suppose that it’s clear where I’m going with this. If Regan is asked how she got into the attic, and she tells whoever asked her, that you can get into the attic from her closet, then it might just occur to whoever did the asking that if you could get into the attic from outside the house, i.e. from the roof, then you move through the attic, and then drop down into Regan’s closet. Open the door, and you are now in Regan’s room. But the Noise in the Attic is a dead give-away, right? It pretty much is. But! We don’t know when this person accidentally knocked out the lights in the attic. That might have been very recently, and the compulsion that drove this person on, couldn’t be repressed, so this person took his chances anyway. And so it was that as Burke sat downstairs, probably drinking Chris’s booze, and we know that Father Dyer showed up at Karras’s room with a bottle of Chivas Regal, a pricey booze as Karras indicated when he asked Dyer where he got it from, he suddenly heard a commotion upstairs. Going Up There, he found Regan struggling with a man. And now we know how he got there. Burke was no doubt flabbergasted to find this man in the house seeing how he was not present when Sharon left, and no one had come to the door. When Chris came home, the lights were flickering, and this was caused by the man in the attic, probably moving toward the way in and out of the attic.

Yes, the blue glow off to the right is coming from the windows; we can even see the curtains. If one of these windows was unlocked, and may have been for a very long time, then one could get into the attic VIA NEW YORK…sorry! That was a lame Box in the Attic joke, via the window. But if you knew the window to the attic wasn’t locked, it still wouldn’t get you very far. Sure, you could steal an old John Dewar & Sons box that had a Ouija board in it, but I don’t think so, looking at how Chris was able to lower the stairway in the ceiling in the hallway, that you can actually open it from inside the attic:

It takes a special extending pole with a peculiar end on it that fits into a small latch on the, from the perspective of someone in the Up There Attic, outside of the hatch:

In other words, you can’t lower the hatch from inside the attic. And of course, you never would need to, unless you weren’t supposed to be Up There. But! If someone in the house learned about the way in and out of the attic through the top of Regan’s closet, then everything changed. Now you could access the attic through the window via the roof, make your way through the attic, and then drop down into Regan’s closet. And now…you have access.

Of course, an entrance way in Regan’s goes a long way…miles and miles, walking miles and not flying miles like a Captain flying a Federal Express delivery plane would have if he were carrying a Ouija board in a whiskey box in his aircraft…I must give a warning that there may be a few Federal Express jokes along the way, and perhaps a few references to the Enigmatic Attic Box that Regan’s abuser almost tripped over as he hid himself in the corner of the attic, to explaining several key elements of the story. I show this scene, from the pivotal Crucifix Scene, about which I will have a great deal more to say later:

This is what Chris first sees when she runs into Regan’s room after hearing, first the Attic Noises, and then Regan scream No! Followed by Do it! You bitch, do it! There is a very strong gust of wind that has blown several things across the room, including some records, and a small library book that was sitting on her desk.

But we also see that the window is closed. So the Supposed Demon did this? That is the easiest explanation, although I am at a loss as to why he wanted to do this, or what purpose it served. In fact, we see this when Chris sees this…after she suddenly pushes open the door to the room. One might suppose, wrongly I’m sure, that if the window to attic was open, and the access to the attic in the ceiling of Regan’s closet was open, creating a potentially strong current of air…if add the possibility that the bathroom window could be open, then Chris suddenly throwing open the door to the room may have caused a powerful gust of wind to suddenly blow through the room.

Attic Man was in Regan’s room, seeing how we heard the distinctive Attic Noise, and since he wasn’t present when Chris arrived, he must have gone back up into the attic. Chris ends up getting walloped and her face shoved into Regan’s bloody crotch, so she wasn’t having a particularly good day. But now:

Superhero Sharon to the rescue. One thing that is certain is that the man who accessed Regan’s room via the attic hatch in Regan’s closet did not go downstairs to retrieve the crucifix that he had earlier left in her bed. Someone in the house would have had to do that. Now:

I admit, it would take a tornado to do that.

And definitely that. However, the only person who actually sees these things happen was Hysterical “You can lick me” Mommy. At various points in the movie a particular character, not counting ourselves, and that character alone is seeing the action. In the case of Chris and Karras, the action is being seen through their eyes, or we’re seeing into their minds, meaning that it isn’t really happening in the Artificial Reality. The air current blew the door shut, there was no chair. And although Regan is only 12 years old, she packs a punch that would have left Joe Lewis envious, and I’ll bet, when she got clobbered by Regan, that an antique dresser smashed her in the face. No one else is present as witnesses to what happened. And how can I possibly suggest that what we saw isn’t really happening. Answer…Cunting Daughter:

So only Chris sees Regan do something under the power of demon that leaves one scratching her head as to why a demon would want to do this anyway. And isn’t it odd that Here! Wipe Your Face with This, Mommy has just been talking to the homicide detective about the murder of Burke, and the condition of his body? You know, the guy that had his neck broken, and then twisted all the way around! Hysterical Chris to be sure…now she sees it happen in front of her. Then the climax:

That’s right…Cunting Daughter! Chris hears Regan speaking in the voice of murdered Burke Dennings, and hears Burke Dennings blame Regan for what happened to him. I know! We can check Regan AND Chris into a top psychiatric facility, and both, sort of a mother-daughter team, can get the observation and therapy that they need. My money’s on Regan. But the strange, and albeit, powerful, wind that shot through the room when Chris threw open the door, fueled by the airflow from the attic windows through the attic hatch in Regan’s closet, explains what Chris saw, though exaggerated, of course.

Now I understand that you might think that I’m going out on a limb on the tree outside of Regan’s window when it comes to this gust of wind theory as it relates to the attic. And perhaps you’re right. But I think I can prove it!

What has happened? Carl has opened the hatch to the attic. And we know that Chris, because the lights don’t work, had to make use of the candle.

This sudden and dramatic flaring of the candle startles Chris. You might say that it is a long way from the flaring of the candle, to the gust of wind we find in the Crucifix Scene. Good point. However, if one or more of the windows in the attic were open at the time…then it is at least possible that we might get a much more powerful gust of wind. I believe that the scene with the flaring of the candle as a result of the open attic hatch is the basis for understanding a less-than-supernatural powerful wind in Regan’s room, even when the window is shut. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether the bathroom window is open at any point in time.

It must be acknowledged that early on, Captain Howdy came under suspicion. Of what? Of being the third-party who inexplicably took up residence in Regan MacNeill. It is true that there are plenty of Christian extremists who have taken the ridiculous view that Ouija boards are dangerous because they open the user to demon-possession. Perhaps such ignorant extremists could be called Perrinists, since in the novel, Mary Jo Perrin very effectively suggested the same to the I-Have-No-Religion-but-I-Do-Have-a-Penchant-for-Superstitious-Twaddle Chris MacNeill. I would maintain that real Christians, by which I mean followers of Christ, would laugh off the assertion that a wooden board with the alphabet and a couple of words on it is actually a gateway from the realm of demons to actual demon-possession. What this says is that such people might be called Pseudo-Christian Neo-Pagans, who believe in witchcraft, magic, sorcery, necromancy, and a whole host of other laughable things that are pagan. But belief in these pagan things can only be held, in my opinion, by other pagans; those who differ from those who actually practice these things only in so far as they have a thin veneer of misused Christian ideas and dramatically ignorant understanding of Scripture painted over the surface. Here, I see a pagan vs. pagan duel.

In my opinion, Captain Howdy was set-up. We know about his Whiskey Bottle Box in the attic. And Regan recreated him in the basement, and obviously associated him with the Ouija board that was in the basement. Now, I think it might be worthwhile to answer the question…how did we get to the point I will be making shortly? When looking at the issue of the chronology and development of Regan’s worsening condition in the movie. I think that we have at least one big gap.

There are no issues at this point, and this follows the first Noises in the Attic experience by Chris.

There are no issues at this point either.

It is Regan’s birthday, and her father has not called. Chris becomes very angry as she attempts to get hold of her husband, and cannot. Now, in the immediately preceding shot where Chris is attempting to remove an eyelash, Regan tells her that Burke Dennings can accompany them on Regan’s birthday outing. When she asks why this, Regan suggests that Chris “likes him” and even “likes him like Daddy.” Chris lies, stating that she will always love Regan’s father. How is it that Regan has come to believe that Chris loves Burke? Regan states that she had been told this. It is easy to shoot past this without asking the question…who told Regan that her mother loved Burke? I can only think of one person…Sharon. There is a gap in the story as it pertains to Burke Dennings, who is the small, alcoholic, director of Chris’s film. He behaves very badly at Chris’s party. But other than these two contexts, there is no indication that there is any connection between Chris and Burke. I would suggest that this gap is due simply to the fact that there wasn’t anything between them. He is, however, left in charge of the house while Sharon goes to get the Thorazine. Then he is killed in Regan’s bedroom. This is a puzzling jump in the story. But I think that the most important thing is not this gap, but the fact that someone has been feeding false information to Regan. I still love Regan’s father even though the reason he didn’t call is because he doesn’t give a shit. Ah, yes, young people in love? And the shot provided above does make it clear that Regan knows that not only did someone else lie to her, but her mother is lying to her as well. And while nothing particularly negative is connotated in the scene, it does open the door to the negative effect of her father not “giving a shit” about her. Still, it seems to me that this is not developed further, although if the Howdy in Captain Howdy is actually Howard, Regan’s father, then his statue represents his continued presence.

This is the second Noises in the Attic scene, and Regan, afraid of what those noises mean, has escaped into her mother’s bedroom. She tells Chris that her bed was shaking, and the shaking of the bed, and later levitating of the bed, is found throughout. I have taken the position that the shaking of the bed theme is related to Regan’s spasms and convulsions, as the Fuck Me! Fuck Me! Scene indicates, and may also be suggestive of what had really befallen her.

This shot clearly implies that the Noises in the Attic are deeply troubling to Regan, but there are still no indications that anything is really wrong with Regan, other than the claim about her bed shaking.

End Part 1