The Bedeviled

by Thomas Cullinan

Maggie Caine and her family left the rat race of suburban Westchester, where her husband's job as an advertising copy writer was slowly killing him, to live in the Caine ancestral home, an old farmhouse in Ohio, ten miles from the nearest neighbor. The first night they were there, the hellish curse descended upon them...

Her teenage son was possessed by the spirit of a Civil War general who had been a Satanist. She was possessed by the spirit of the General's mistress.

And in the night, the General came to her...

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Cults, Paranormal, Classics, Haunted House, Possession

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Thomas Cullinan born on November 4, 1919. He was a Cleveland author and playwright. He graduated from Cathedral Latin High School in 1938 and attended Western Reserve University for three years. After leaving Western Reserve he worked as a roofing sales man for several years. In 1945 he started working for the Cleveland Plain Dealer where he worked for the accounting department. In 1957 he left the Plain Dealer and began writing for television station KYW Channel 3's weekly television series titled Breakthrough, a program which examined the lives of famous scientists. He left Channel 3 and from 1959 to 1967 he wrote and produced the television show Perspective for Western Reserve University.
Throughout his career he wrote various radio commercials, industrial films, documentaries, and television scripts. In the early part of his career he concentrated on play writing. His early plays include St. Columkille's Eve, which in 1948 was under option to be produced on Broadway, Native Shore, Maddigans Wedding, and First Warm Day of Spring. His greatest commercial successes were Mrs. Lincoln which was produced by the Cleveland Play House in 1968 and was held ov er for six months. His Black Horse Tavern was produced in 1976 and was Cleveland's Bicentennial play.
He was the winner of several awards including the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1971 and two Ford Foundation grants. The first, in 1964, allowed him to spend six months in Berlin as part of the Literarisches Colloquium. Also at this six person colloquium was British playwright Tom Stoppard who wrote the original one act version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which was produced along with Cullinan's one act play The Sentinel.
The other Ford grant, awarded in 1966, sent him to the University of Utah for one year where he was playwright in residence. While there his play Madigans Wedding was produced.
Later in his career Cullinan's emphasis shifted to writing novels. His novel The Beguiled was published in 1966 and in 1970 was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood. His other novels include The Besieged, The Eighth Sacrament, and the The Bedeviled.
Throughout his life he was keenly interested in helping those interested in the theater. He participated in Cuyahoga Community College's Writer's Conference in 1977 and 1978. From 1978 to 1995 he was a judge for the Marlilyn Bianchi Kids' Playwriting Festival. It was while attending the 1995 festival that he collapsed and died on June 11, 1995.
His last play The Rose of Tralee was a college graduation gift to his son. It was finished posthumously by his son and his wife and was produced by the Dobama Theatre in 1996.

Reviews

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/4 stars!

THE BEDEVILED was a nice romp through the 70's satanic cult paranoia, with a pinch of witchcraft and rituals tossed in for good measure. To be honest, I don't know WHAT or who this group was worshiping, but there was an upside down cross and it was creepy as hell!

The Caine family loses an aunt who leaves them her old home, (more like a warehouse, really), and soon they're off to explore their inheritance. They meet the creepy neighbors, the husband falls and breaks some bones, and soon their temporary stay turns more permanent. Shortly thereafter, their son starts acting strangely, weird things begin to occur and Maggie, the mom, begins to wonder if she's losing her mind. Will the Caine family ever go back home? Will their son ever get back to normal? And why does Maggie start to think she's actually someone else? You'll have to read this to find out!

THE BEDEVILED definitely feels dated, but that didn't bother me. Well, there was an incident that everyone took to be nothing, but today would have caused a huge ruckus and rightfully so. (It was hard for me to get my mind around the fact that this act wasn't even viewed as serious back then.) I enjoyed the slow burn of this tale, and how it incorporated elements and themes that are tropes of the genre today. It was fun to see how these things became tropes in the first place.

I do think the last third of book lost a bit of the momentum and while I did enjoy the shocking denouement, I would have enjoyed actually seeing what happened, rather than looking back on it even more.

Mostly slow burning, THE BEDEVILED was a lot of (70's style) fun, with an interesting cast of characters, and a few genuinely creepy moments. I never guessed what was coming and the end was a pretty big shocker which made up a bit for that little loss of pacing. Recommended!

*Thanks to Valancourt Books for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This is it.*

[Karl]

by Christopher Shy and a new introduction by Thomas W. Cullinan.

This is copy numbered 40

signed by artist Christopher Shy and introducer Thomas W. Cullinan.
Facsimile signature by Thomas Cullinan.

SYNOPSIS

Jack Caine’s heart attack was all the advice he needed. He and Maggie and the children were moving as far as possible from the rat race that was slowly killing him, leaving New York to a quiet old farmhouse in Ohio, which Jack has inherited from a distant aunt. The house, ten miles away from the nearest neighbor, was once owned by a Civil War general reputed to have been a Satanist.
From their first night in the desolate old house, when the screams of Jack’s teenage son, Duff, split the dark silence, the Caines sense the hellish curse descending upon them. When his family burial ground is mysteriously vandalized, Jack cannot bring his tortured thoughts to bear on who might have done it — and why — until a strangely transformed Duff appears before him, possessed of the corrupt and lascivious spirit of his great-great-grandfather Brigadier General Duffin Caine. And Maggie, now possessed by the General’s long-dead mistress, is the sole object of his perverse desire.

This is a marvelously sinister brew of Satanism, possession,

[OutlawPoet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was originally written in 1978 and definitely has a vintage feel to it. The way the characters speak is just a little old-fashioned (especially the children), but that adds to the overall atmosphere of the piece. It still works.

The Bedeviled is a chilling read. That on-edge feeling begins quickly as our main character shocks the reader time and again with some of her blistering observations. She's not the nicest woman in the world, but you get to quickly like her.

Reading vintage lit always makes me a little smug as I recognize things that have become tropes in today's horror lit. However, my smugness was ripped right out of me by some of what happens in this book. Instead of smug, I was shocked - especially by one thing which is mostly only alluded to in the book. (Yeah, it happened all right!)

I loved this. I'm looking forward to discovering more from this author!

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly paced, unsympathetic characters, terrible dialogue. The fact that a sixteen-year-old in the 70s constantly called his mom “mother” gave off some real Buster Bluth vibes. The protagonist is certainly one of the most unpleasant matriarchs I’ve encountered, but not in a ‘delightfully evil’ way; just a crummy, self-absorbed parent.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always looking for some interesting 70's horror and this one caught my eye since I'd already planned to eventually read Cullinan's THE BEGUILED. It has a lot of the themes you see in 70's horror while not feeling at all like a retread.

Our narrator is Maggie Caine, a middle-aged housewife, married to a man she doesn't particularly care for. She cares about her two children, teenaged Duff and 10-year-old Frannie, and yet she seems to hold them, and everyone, at a remove. One of my chief pleasures was how different the family and parenting norms were, you would never see a first person narrator who is a mother write this way now.

Maggie's husband Jack is dissatisfied with city life and decides to move them all back to the land, to his family homestead, after it becomes vacant upon the death of the elderly relative who lived there. There are more than your fair share of 70s horror stories about this, but seeing it through Maggie, who doesn't feel any particular compulsion to leave, is a nice twist on the familiar story. Jack, who decides he's going to write a novel, would normally be our protagonist, blithely ignoring the rest of his family as they slowly get sucked into destruction. But here it's Maggie, who sees more clearly than anyone else just how everything is going wrong.

Duff, a scrawny, bookish high school senior who plays the flute, begins acting strangely not long after their arrival at the old house. The neighbors are odd, and Maggie keeps catching them in lies. The town has whispers of Satanism as well as a shrine that was allegedly the site of a miracle, but the priests are not convinced the miracle was wrought by God. And Maggie begins to see what she thinks might be visions of a man in a union uniform, a man she begins to believe is her husband's grandfather, General Caine.

Maggie writes from just after the events of the book, and often foreshadows what lies ahead. Cullinan is excellent about doling out these little insights, which let you know terrible things are coming but also distract you from the terrible things you didn't get warned about which surprise you along the way. There are some excellent twists and plenty of subversions of the usual tropes. The priests here are relatively useless as religious practitioners, and they don't seem to think these stories of Satanism are actually true. Maggie herself is a nonbeliever and lapsed Catholic, not one to go looking for an exorcism. Because Maggie has a limited point of view, we don't get too bogged down in the lore or the reasons, we just get to see things through her, even as she starts to realize she cannot trust her own perspective. This unreliability also helps to explain many of Maggie's choices, which would be hugely frustrating in a protagonist who was fully aware.

A real gem, I'm glad to have found it and now I have more of an incentive to read more from Cullinan.

I read the new audio edition from Valancourt Books, and found narrator Linda Jones a great fit for the material.

[Stay · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are things in all our lives that we don’t like to be reminded about. But sometimes by talking about them we can relieve the unhappiness they’ve caused us."

Lately, I’ve been letting my husband pick out my reads. So far, he’s chosen some true tales of bizarre horror. Ones that have me wide eyed and cursing up a storm.

Didn’t know things could get any more f**ked and then he handed me this little gem. This was truly wicked and highly enjoyable. You never knew what was around the corner and the twists always shocked me. Parts were out there weird and disturbing but it added value to this book.

[Casee Maxfield · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a word disgusting. Just a shitty book all around. I am aware this book was published in the 70s and times were different. But I find the cavalier attitude toward rape, incest and the anti-abortion stance, dated, offensive and creepy- a LOT creepier than the actual book, which is poorly written.

I have no idea what the editor of the book and publisher were thinking and I cannot believe this dreck got published. The mother in this family, the narrator is not the best. She is a staunch conservative, narrowminded and way too lenient with her kids.

The writing is awful-the language is stilted and the dialogue is not believable. I have a hard time believing anyone talked like this in 1978.

This book was a waste of time and money. Again, I cannot believe this shit was published.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little late-seventies occult potboiler by the author of The Beguiled (you know, the one made into that odd 1971 Clint Eastwood gothic western flick). Much of the dialogue feels off here, especially for the younger characters, and none of the cast is terribly sympathetic, but things were interesting enough to keep me turning those pages and I just basically really enjoyed the whole thing. It took me back. Recommended for fans of old-school horror.

[Williwaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Centipede Press edition is gorgeous! The illustrations by Christopher Shy are really superb. Not exactly Andrew Wyeth, but they are in the same vein.

I probably wouldn't have read the book unless Centipede had reprinted it. It was not on my radar at all.

At any rate, this novel came out in 1978. I found it more frightening than most horror novels I have read. It does involve Satanism, which I figured would be silly. But it touches a deep cultural chord that's hard to deny.

It's not an unforgettable classic, but it's definitely a worthy choice for vacation reading or if you just wanna get spooked.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as I can make out, the English word "devil" is derived from the ancient Greek word "diabolos," while "evil" has as its source the Old English term "yfel." Diabolos and yfel...and yet, for some ungodly reason, we have our two modern-day words "devil" and "evil"...and, of course, you can't spell "devil" without "e-v-i-l"! I only mention this bit of trivial inanity because it is something I noticed while admiring the front cover of the book that has just managed to impress me, namely Thomas Cullinan's late-'70s offering "The Bedeviled." The 1970s, as I recently mentioned in my review of Joan Samson's "The Auctioneer" (1976), had been an extraordinary decade for literary horror, and if Cullinan's book is one that is not as well known as so many others that came out in the '70s, a look at its publishing history might perhaps explain why.

"The Bedeviled" was originally released in 1978 as a $10 G.P. Putnam's Sons hardcover. The following year, Avon Books would come out with a $1.95 paperback edition whose front cover bombastically--yet truthfully--proclaimed "The house made people do strange things...too horrible for the mind to conceive...too ungodly for the soul to fight"! The novel would then promptly go OOPs (out of prints) for 40 years, till the fine folks at Valancourt Books decided to, uh, bring it back to life. And what a welcome revival it turns out to be!

Before telling you a little something about the horrors to be encountered in this book, a quick word on their creator. Thomas Cullinan was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1919. He ultimately wrote four novels and four works of nonfiction, and was the playwright of four staged productions. His first novel, "The Beguiled" (1966), was set during the Civil War, as was his second, "The Besieged" (1970); even his last novel, "The Bedeviled," which is set in modern times, spotlights some Civil War bits, as will be seen. Cullinan's third novel, "The Eighth Sacrament" (1977), seems to be a convent-set mystery. And yes, in case you were wondering, "The Beguiled" was indeed adapted for the screen in 1971 as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. Cullinan passed away in 1995 at the age of 75.

"The Bedeviled" is narrated to us by a woman named Maggie Caine, who tells us the story of how her 10-year-old daughter Franny has become mentally comatose, and how her husband Jack and 17-year-old son Duff both lost their lives. It is a truly horrible tale, as would be imagined. Following Jack's second heart attack and the loss of his job at an advertising agency, the family had decided to lease out their Scarsdale home for six months and move into the house of Jack's recently deceased great aunt Hannah, in rural Ohio. Odd things had begun to occur almost immediately. The introverted, gawkish, studious Duff began talking to the local bikers, attempted to rape his kid sister (!), became sociable, and evinced knowledge of the local history. After Jack fell and broke his hip, Mrs. Reddy--who had been Aunt Hannah's housekeeper for many years, and whose farm lay 1 ½ miles down the road (not the 10 miles stated on the back cover of this Valancourt edition)--had offered the assistance of her granddaughter, Stephanie, who was a trained nurse. Duff forcibly raped her, as well. And before long, Maggie caught Duff reading old books in Greek and Latin. He then beat up a local 6'4" quarterback, wrecked the family car, and got into a fistfight with the local cops. And then, most horribly, while Duff was sitting in the passenger seat of her rented car, Maggie had seen her son transform into a hideous, leering, bearded man!

Completely distraught, Maggie, though completely irreligious, had gone to a local church for assistance, where Father Fogarty had given her some distressing news. Jack's great-great-grandfather, Duffin Caine, had been a notorious Civil War general, widely known for his cruelty and for later becoming a practicing Satanist. Indeed, the seemingly sweet Mrs. Reddy as well as her daughter, Stephanie's mother, were very much practicing Satanists today! The wise priest had assigned the much younger Father Jackson--an adamant scoffer of all things diabolical and supernatural--to assist the Caines, but when Stephanie was found murdered in the local woods, when the cemetery behind the Caine farm was broken into and several of the graves dug up, when the very real figure of General Caine made several shocking appearances, and when Maggie had seemingly hallucinated riding in a horse and buggy 100 years ago, even Father Jackson didn't know what to think. And then one day, Maggie had looked into her mirror and seen someone else...the features of Margaret Dorn, who had been General Caine's murderous mistress a century before....

"The Bedeviled" is a genuine horror novel in that something truly horrible happens to all four members of the Caine family during the course of it. The horrors pile up with each chapter, each of which seems to conclude with another shocking development. The novel is undeniably thrilling, even frightening at times, and is one that I tore through as quickly as possible. Maggie, it seems, for all the traumatic incidents that she has undergone, really knows how to tell a story! She employs an easily readable, almost chatty style that is highly conducive to the reader keeping those pages flipping. Many of the seemingly innocent people in the area whom Maggie encounters and has dealings with also turn out to be members of Mrs. Reddy's coven, and so we never know who we can trust, adding still another frisson to the affair.

To avoid spoilers, I'll try to limit my discussion of the many scares to be experienced in Cullinan's book. But I will mention how chilling it is when Duff is heard muttering in his sleep, in the General's voice, "People in this house are going to die." Every manifestation of the General is quite scary, actually, as are the contents of his diary, which is addressed to "Margaret"; whether that's Margaret Dorn or Margaret Caine is left unclear. And then there is the absolutely flabbergasting scene in which Maggie awakens at night, walks somnolently to the Reddy farmhouse dressed in the recently discovered raiment of Margaret Dorn, and is compelled to participate in a Satanic ritual. It is a truly nightmarish sequence, brilliantly brought off by the author. So yes, horror fans who delight in the supernatural and in ghastly doings, and who enjoy those entertainments in which no one--not even the young and innocent--can be presumed to be safe from harm, will find much to savor here. And if Maggie's story demonstrates anything, it is that when dealing with Devil worshippers, anything is possible. The Satanists here can seemingly cause illusions, can revive the dead, and can summon mentally from afar. Poor Maggie and her ally, a disbelieving junior priest, really never had much of a chance.

Before getting into my list of complaints regarding Thomas Cullinan's admittedly gripping thrill ride, I will add that the backstory that he gives regarding General Caine is a fascinating one. Once again, the author--who I am assuming was a bona fide Civil War buff--gets to regale his readers with factoids concerning this dark period in American history. Thus, be ready for references to Shiloh, the Battle of Chattanooga, and Libby Prison, as well as to such figures as General McCook and General R.B. Mitchell. Again, fascinating stuff, from an author who clearly did his homework well. I should also mention that the cast of leading characters in "The Bedeviled" is not all that likeable. Jack is an ineffectual putz, solely immersed in writing a novel and of zero assistance to his wife (his and Maggie's marriage, our narrator tells us early on, was a loveless one from the beginning); Maggie is impatient with and rude to practically everyone around her, and prone to dubious decision making (granted, this might in part be due to her being intermittently possessed by an undead woman, thus making her a very unreliable narrator); and Duff is something of a milquetoast before he turns vicious. Only little Franny, poor thing, manages to capture our full sympathies. And yet, none of the unfortunate Caines is deserving of the horrors heaped upon them. Finally, Cullinan gives some of his characters here names that might cause some readers to lift an eyebrow, such as a local farmer being named Fred Dobbs; no mention as to whether or not his middle initial is "C." Was Thomas Cullinan a fan, perhaps, of the author B. Traven, or was his favorite film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), as it is mine? And then there's the fact that Father Jackson's first name is...Peter. Peter Jackson. But since "The Bedeviled" came out a good nine years before director Peter Jackson's first film, 1987's "Bad Taste," no homage can possibly have been intended, right?

Now, as for my litany of complaints regarding Cullinan's work here, it occurs to me that he might have made a mistake in having Maggie tell us of her family tragedy so early on. We know almost from the start that something has killed Jack and Duff, and reduced Franny to a vegetative state, and so our only question is, naturally, How the hell did they get that way? But speaking solely for myself, I feel that the book would have been more suspenseful, and certainly more shocking, had we not been given this sad knowledge right up front. Being kept uncertain as to a character's fate is assuredly more nerve racking than wondering how he/she got that way. But this was the author's deliberate decision, and I'm sure he had his reasons for it. More problematic for this reader were all the many unanswered questions that remain by the time we turn the final page. These questions only occur to the reader after all the frights and excitement subside, and one reflects on the book quietly afterwards. But in retrospect, one cannot help wondering the following: What exactly did Franny see that so unhinged her mind? How did Mrs. Scaravelli (a member of Father Fogarty's congregation) wind up at that Black Mass to save our narrator? Was Duff's death a complete accident or not? Did the possessed Maggie actually commit incest with her possessed son? Is it just a coincidence that Margaret Dorn and Maggie Caine share the same first name? (Duff, we are told, was indeed named after the General.) Is Maggie genuinely still possessed by the story's end? Why does the General sometimes appear to be younger, and sometimes older? Who exactly died during the conflagration at the Reddy farmhouse? In the original "New York Times" piece on Cullinan's book, the reviewer mentioned that the author "...does not take the easy way out, and never tries to explain things away by natural causes." And that is very true, I suppose; in fact, Cullinan offers virtually no explanations whatsoever! So while the book might be completely enthralling as one tears through it, it ultimately leaves the reader with more than a few conundrums. I hope that you, Goodreads reader, will be more OK with that than I was.

And there are several other problems, too. Some of the dialogue strikes the reader as being unnatural, especially the lines coming from the children. "People don't usually hit you that hard when they're joking, at least that's been my experience," says Franny at one point. Does that sound like a 10-year-old to you? Granted, the book is being narrated to us by a traumatized woman thinking back on events at some remove; a woman who may or may not be possessed by a Satanist. I'm willing to let this matter slide. Some of the book's grammar is a bit faulty at times, such as when Maggie tells us "...it was a question as though the caller was seeking me." (I've really got to stop expecting perfect grammar in my reading fare; sorry, but it's the old copy editor in me!) There is also a minor slipup as regards dates. In one section, we see some entries that Duff had been making in his diary, the last one being dated July 29th. But later on, Maggie reflects that that final entry had been written on July 28th. Oopsie! I also find it regrettable that the character of Dr. Horace Tully--a local college anthropologist/historian whom Maggie and Father Jackson consult with--is only used in two scenes. He and Father Fogarty are the only decent people here who seem to have a full understanding of and belief in the supernatural horrors being visited on the Caine family, and his underuse by the author was another unfortunate choice, I feel.

But really, that's about it for my quibbles. As I mentioned, I found "The Bedeviled" to be fairly unputdownable, and do indeed recommend it...especially to all fans of undersung 1970s horror. How this one has not been brought to the big screen yet is beyond me! "It's plain and simple scary," said the reviewer at the "Memphis Press-Scimitar" back when, and I think most readers will heartily concur with that assessment....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of well-written horror fare....)

[Lizz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

I think I can put my finger on what I liked about this book and what I didn’t. I do like possession, strange cults, mysterious histories and small town secrets. I don’t like when I can’t link a character’s personality to their choices. The protagonist acts in what would seem out of character for the type of person presented. Of course I could be wrong, but it was enough off-balance to bother me.

Also the setting was lackluster. It was easy to picture it yet I couldn’t be there if you know what I mean. Again perhaps it was me or my mindset at the time. The space felt boundary-less in a way that left me wanting.

[Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone tell this lady that it's okay to bang your son if he's possessed by a sexy Civil War soldier who dabbles in Satanism.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

My expectations were low when I started this. I'm happy to say, with mild surprise, that it wasn't as bad as I thought. The writing is competent if not flashy - no long-winded descriptions of characters or clothes or houses, for example. It made for easy reading. The plot was a bit by-the-numbers but different enough to make it unique, even for the time period. As with many horror novels, the ending leaves you guessing, which some readers like and others don't.

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointing, for a seventies country house horror novel. Too much focus on the logistics of hauntings & possession, not enough crazy.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love that the heroine in this 70s chiller is bitchy, blunt, impatient, and complicated—she's pretty interesting. This is an enjoyably lurid horror story with often bad dialogue (amazing how many writers simply cannot capture teenage voices with any authenticity), but when it works, it works.

[Emma Nordin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Cullinan never disappoints. This is the kind of book that’s scary and fun at the same time. Really enjoyable! Civil War themes meet horror story meets The Exorcist, with some nice twists and turns. It was interesting to see how he took the themes from his historical novels The Beguiled and The Besieged (both highly recommended) and intertwined them with modern day 1970s. Thank you, Valancourt Books for the new edition and making this story accessible to readers again.

[Ross McClintock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming into the late September/early October part of the year has me switching up and attempting some more horror reading to get into "the season." So I am leading off with The Bedeviled, a mix between the "old dark house" tale, and the "oops, we moved into an area full of Satanists" tale. However, unlike other books where there's spooky goings on, at least here we keep getting reasons (not sure all of them are valid) as to why the family cannot move out. That said, this was still a quick moving tale where we see the possession of the oldest child (or do we?!?) play out in the setting of a rural Ohio town. I think what really kept this one from being great, was just how wrong headed and foolish the main character's decisions were at every turn. That poor decision making at least felt germane to the main character's personality-but still, at times I wanted to have her take a breather and figure out that there are better ways of communicating to other people than histrionically yelling at them...

[Mary E West · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing

I was loony forward to reading this book after finding it on some web listicle of scary novels, but it just didn't land for me. Maggie's actions never seemed to come from someone with a personality. Nothing she did made sense given what we knew about her character. There were some spooky elements in the story, but overall it just didn't hold together enough for me. The author writes dialog decently though.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was as good of a ghost story as I've ever read! Definitely keeps you guessing.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good old fashioned haunted house, demonic possession, Satanic cult novel. Interesting characters and engaging plot. Highly recommended.

[Gregg Narber · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a heart second heart attack, Jack Caine, wife Maggie and their son and daughter moved as far as possible from the rat race that was slowly killing him, leaving New York to a quiet old farmhouse in Ohio, which Jack has inherited from a distant aunt. The house, ten miles away from the nearest neighbor, was once owned by a Civil War general reputed to have been a Satanist. From their first night in the desolate old house, when the screams of Jack’s teenage son, Duff, split the dark silence, the Caines sense the hellish curse descending upon them. When his family burial ground is mysteriously vandalized, Jack cannot bring his tortured thoughts to bear on who might have done it — and why — until a strangely transformed Duff appears before him, possessed of the corrupt and lascivious spirit of his great-great-grandfather Brigadier General Duffin Caine and Maggie, now possessed by the General’s long-dead mistress, is the sole object of his perverse desire.
This is a sinister brew of Satanism, possession, and incest very much in the spirit of The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, with which it has significant kinship in both time of publication and themes (and tropes), which is to say of its time in the late 60s and 70s. Not a great work of literature but a well written example of that genre and a real page turner. A new writer and book to me but an enjoyable, if somewhat predictable, read.

[B.J. Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always loved well-written ghost stories with a Gothic atmosphere, and The Bedeviled falls into that genre. Told from the point-of-view of Maggie Caine (the wife and mother of this story), the first chapter hints about the grim ending. The narrative sucked me in by the end of page one, and little did I know then that I was about to enter a world of Civil War ghosts, the occult, incest, possessions, and murders.

The Bedeviled is a sick and twisted story, and I loved reading every word. Thomas Cullinan weaved together the right blend of Southern Gothic, horror, and family drama. I'm surprised Hollywood has never attempted to adapt it; though it would never be as good as the book.

[John Kissane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This occult horror novel was published seven years after The Exorcist, and it shows; like that book, this one derives much of its energy from the slipping away of traditional religion.

It’s a resistible book, especially at first: no one speaks or has ever spoken like any of the characters, and many of the decisions they make stretch credulity.

The book picks up momentum in its final third, which is better than it has any right to be. Scrabble will never seem quiet so innocent again.

Overall, it’s a flawed but occasionally pretty scary novel.

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a good occult horror novel

I’m surprised this didn’t become a famous classic like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. It sits strongly alongside both of those, with similar tone, and it’s a shame it wasn’t made into a film as well. The author’s writing style is crisp. Very recommended for those who like good horror that relies on psychological fears and dread, rather than gore. Many questions aren’t answered at the end which I liked a lot too - again, very similar in tone to Rosemary’s Baby.

[Sam Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing style of "older" novels can be hit or miss for me. Published in 1978, the premise of The Bedeviled was interesting and caught my attention. Valencourt books is such a trustworthy published of lesser known titles that I always trust their curation.

Highly enjoyed this book. The writing is simple and clear. Great character and story. Relatively fast pasted with plenty of mystery. Definitely recommend.

[Tenebrous Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is likely best appreciated by going in cold, allowing the reader to get maximum creep factor from the unfolding events. Stylistically bizarre (maybe because of our narrator’s POV), filled with rather unpleasant characters and uncomfortable revelations. Not Ray Russell levels of nasty, but provides the right level of occult misanthropy for those who like that flavor combo.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosemary's Baby meets Let's Scare Jessica to Death.
This was a fast read appropriate for spoopy season but I wish there had been a bit more here. I don't love unreliable narrators and would way rather have seen more Civil War era devil worshippers and taboos broken than spend my time in the head of someone acting stupid as well as erratic.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

After losing his job at an advertising agency a family decided to to visit the family homestead after their aunts death.

Madness, black magic, murder and yes incest (sort of, hey it was the 70s)

A much better read then I expected it to be

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book a lot. Written in late 70's, it was a good old horror story.
Highly reccomend.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1979. An occult chiller with surprising twists.