Everything the Archbishop carried
An exorcist's secrets. A doctor's testimony. A boy's prophecy. One case.
Dubuque, Iowa. The 11th of July, 1969. A car stops outside a house on the edge of town and a man in black gets out carrying a small case. He has been carrying it for years, to hospital beds and back bedrooms, and he has never once opened it for anything like this. Inside the house a twelve-year-old boy is waiting for him. What the boy said that night is in the file. What it cost the men who heard it took twenty-seven years to arrive.
This is the Archbishop's case. With it, everything you need to perform Incarnate.
That night the Archbishop took the case down himself. A sick call set, the trade called it: crucifix, candles, holy water, and the vessels for the anointing, each in its own velvet cut, everything the last rites require in a case that fits in one hand. It had gone with him to hospital beds and back bedrooms for years and come home again every time. It was made for the dying. The boy in the house was not dying at all.
This one is The Hilary, made in the 1930s by Laverty & Sons of Leeds, church furnishers, with IHS in gilt on the lid and the maker's label still inside it. Genuine, and complete: the standing crucifix with a skull and crossbones at its foot, the pair of candlesticks, the holy water bottle, the porcelain jug and cup, the small crucifix for the hand. It shuts, it latches, and it goes with you.
Alongside the case, the rest of the exorcism.
At its heart lies a copy of Incarnate, the infamous performance artefact from Dark Artifice: the sealed dossier of correspondence, drawings, audio transcripts, and the levitation photographs that made the original investigators put down their cameras.
Beside it, Laudanum House's The Doctor's Photographs: the parallel record kept by the medical doctor who witnessed the rite and did not survive it. Vintage slides, stamped archival documents, blank prescription papers from Dr. Whitmore's desk, and the newspaper clipping that reports how he met his end.
Beneath them, the books. A Latin Rituale Romanum, the small black one a priest keeps in his pocket, with the purple ribbon left in at the rite of exorcism. And the boy's own Bible, drawn over in pencil: something or someone trapped in Hell, the flames around it coloured in by hand, on the page where Satan is bound for a thousand years.
Open the case on the table in front of your audience and set it out, piece by piece, exactly as he did. Candles. Crucifix. Water. Only then bring out the file. At the end, put the crucifix and the candlesticks back in their velvet and shut the lid. This is not a display. It is a kit, and it has a job.
These details do not merely support the performance. They complete it.
The collection
- A copy of Incarnate (Dark Artifice), long sold out and difficult to acquire: the complete case file of correspondence, drawings, audio transcripts, and levitation photographs.
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The Doctor's Photographs (Laudanum House): vintage 1960s slides bearing colourised photographs from the case file, stamped archival documentation, the newspaper clipping reporting Dr. Whitmore's death, and blank prescription papers from his desk. The perfect companion piece to Incarnate.
- A Latin edition of the Rituale Romanum, containing the solemn rite of exorcism as authorised by the Catholic Church, with its ribbon at the rite.
- The boy's personal Bible, annotated in pencil and coloured crayon across the Book of Revelation.
- A genuine 1930s sick call set, "The Hilary", by Laverty & Sons Ltd of Leeds: the fitted black case with IHS in gilt on the lid, a standing crucifix with a skull and crossbones at the foot, two brass candlesticks with candles, a glass holy water bottle with its original label, a porcelain jug and cup with IHS in gilt, and a small hand crucifix. Every piece packs into its own place.
Condition is as photographed: a working case that has done its ninety years, unrestored.
Closing
This is not a collection of props. It is a complete exorcism kit, and at its centre is the case he carried. In performance, you do not just tell the story of Incarnate. You carry the case through the door, and everyone in the room watches you open it.
Do you believe in prophecy? You will.
Incarnate: The Exorcism Archive is released with the full permission of Bobby Hasbun from Dark Artifice. Some images redacted on request of Dark Artifice.
