Dark Force

Now and then a book comes along that you just can’t put down. Bill Bean’s (William J. Bean, Jr.) Dark Force book is one of them.

After I finished the last page, I read his harrowing experiences from start to finish again.

It is painfully unimaginable what his mother, Patricia Bean, went through during her struggles with apparent demonic forces, her health issues, and supernatural attacks on her husband, William Bean, that pushed the family to the brink. During the years from 1970 to 1980, Bill’s family became splintered with his father driven away and his sister leaving at the age of 16 to marry while trying to find an exit from what haunted their home. Only his mother, his younger brother, and himself were left to endure the physical and mental attacks the entities had in store for them.

Many of you have probably seen Bill’s story on Discovery’s A Haunting. His story segment is called “House of the Dead.” I can’t emphasize enough for one to read his written story as compared to the one on A Haunting.

Dark Force is not a long, drawn-out story. It is instead a straight-in-your-face recollection of his youth being torn apart by demons and what he and his family encountered. This isn’t a story like The Amityville Horror, where there is only the family and a local parish priest to verify the account; instead, his extended family to friends confirmed what had happened in his childhood home outside of Baltimore, MD.

Through the power of his faith, he gained the strength to face the evil at a time when he was entering his teenage years. Bill Bean shows his God-fearing strength to call upon the demons and fight them face-to-face.

I have read numerous true-life and fictional stories of the paranormal, but not since reading Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror book has a story stayed in my mind hour after hour and day after day.

(Original review published in 2008 by Tim Kelly. Updated 4/2020)