Trices Group Book Review Journal

In A Dark Place

Garton, Ray

by:

Dell Publishing

Publisher:

Location:

1992

also see "Deadly Obsessions"

Cover:

Paperback

Type:

Lynard Barnes

reviewed by:

03/05/1995

Comment:

Two books recommended. Adult material.

Republished from Crushies Book Reviews - Volume II Issue No. 3 - March 1995 - Copyright 1995: Why two books under one review?

After moving into a newly remodeled house one evening, Stephen Snedeker, the fourteen year old adolescent of the Snedeker household, walked into the kitchen where his mother was washing dishes and told her, "Mom, we have to leave this house. There's something evil here." Later, amid reports of ghostly apparitions and sounds in the house, Stephen will be taken to a juvenile detention center after unsuccessfully attempting to rape his twelve-year-old cousin. In a Dark Place is truly a scary book. But not for the reasons you would think.

John Ray Weber was four years old when he started a fire in a wastebasket at his house in the small town of Phillips, Wisconsin. Twelve or so years later, he was pointing a .22 rifle at his sister demanding that she "go with him". Shortly after the rifle incident, he smashed a bottle over her head, intending to render her unconscious so that he could molest her. The deadly obsession of Deadly Obsessions is a chronicle of John Ray Weber's inalterable trek down a path that lead to the death and mutilation of a seventeen year old girl and the brutal beating of a woman who had the misfortune of being Weber's wife. This is definitely not a book everyone should read. The details are a bit much. But there are references, sometimes vague, of a John Weber arguing aloud within himself in two voices. There are references of John Weber who sometimes referred to himself as Natas--Satan spelled backwards.

The concept of evil as we conceive it dates from the tenets of Zoroastrianism or Parsiism which emerged about 500 years before the birth of Christ. In Zoroastrianism, the world is divided between two separate but equal forces--good and evil. Judaism and early Christianity--though not necessarily early Christians--rejected this division. Their belief system holds that there is only one force in the world, good, and that evil, though a force in its own right, is subordinate to the good. The distinction is an important one. Without the distinction, it is possible to have two gods--one good and one evil. This is supposed to be the belief of those who call themselves Satanists. They don't reject the existence of a Judaic or Christian god, they simply chose to worship the other god.
Our current attitudes on evil has been shaped by popular media. In 1971 there was

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William Blatty's novel The Exorcist. In 1976, Rosemary's Baby purportedly showed us the world of Satanists. Also in 1976, there was David Seltzer's The Omen about a child who was either Satan incarnate or possessed by Satan. All of these works slithered along the fine line between evil as subordinate to good and evil as an all powerful force quite capable of contenting with the force of good. In the end, they opted for the majority view that good triumphs over evil.

In Ray Garton's In a Dark Place there is no resolution of the supposedly evil force haunting the house in which the Snedekers live. Though their fourteen-year-old son is the first to notice the "presence", the mother and father, another son and the daughter eventually experience something otherworldly, something evil. Reading the book however, it is not the ghostly goings- on that captures and sustains the reader's interest. We quickly recognize the stirring of a classical battle between good and evil. The combatants however are not some otherworldly devil and these poor innocents who have stepped onto his turf. No, the battle is the rather pedestrian battle of parents and child. There is a spiritual complicity going on here. The fear of Stephen is feed by the spiritual ineptitude of his parents who themselves succumb to the fear. The significance of this over-rides stories of ghostly sightings, cold spots and even manifestations of demonic possession.

If you took away the haunted house slant of In a Dark Place, you would still have a very disturbing story. The parents, Carmen and Al Snedeker, seem so caught up in their adult world problems that their children become mere extensions of their imaginations. Their reaction to Stephen's reports of apparitions and strange voices is to attribute it all to his imagination. Maybe it is his imagination. Good for him. Imagination in a child is something to be nurtured and channeled, not belittled and squashed. Okay, maybe their style of parenting is to raise children with no imagination. Fine. That's okay too. But when Stephanie, the younger daughter starts reporting ghosts , the parents accuse Stephen of infecting his sister with his imagination and forbade either from discussing ghosts or strange voices ever again. This goes beyond the confines of parenting style and approaches an abnormality of consciousness. Just because you don't see it, just because you don't hear it doesn't mean it is not there. Maybe if you won't listen to the voice of a child, a voice from the other side of reality perhaps, like a incarnate demon?
But was there an evil presence in the Snedeker's house? Did this evil presence persuade Stephen to listen to Satanic music, collect pornography and attempt to rape his twelve year old cousin? In other words, is there an evil that can infect, possess, consume a human spirit?

There is no other word for John Ray Weber except evil. But it could be argued that the word describes what John Ray Weber did, not what he is. The other side of the argument however is that John Ray Weber started doing evil things from the time he could walk, almost as if it was an inborn capability. The wastebasket fire at the age of four was only one manifestation of that evil. He also set a fire in a wastebasket in his aunt's family kitchen that was more serious. When he was around fourteen-years-old, he smeared feces over his grandmother's dresses and cut off the buttons on the shirts of his uncle. And from the time he worked in the family's store, he stole large sums of money. He also stole women's underwear. But, at an early age, it was his obsession with hard-core, sexually graphic bondage and discipline pornography that was the focal point of his life.
Years later, Weber was to tell a psychiatrist that he stopped setting fires after his father whipped him with a leather belt. After pulling the .22 caliber rifle on his sister at the age of sixteen, Weber fled the family home and returned a few days later. Recognizing that there son was a danger to their daughter, the parents had him admitted to a mental hospital. A

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psychologist who examined him determined that he was seriously disturbed. The psychologist also predicted that Weber would commit a hostile act of some kind against women by the time he was eighteen. Less than six months after being admitted, Weber was released and returned home. His sister lived in a state of terror until she left home to live with relatives in nearby Wausau, Wisconsin.

Weber was again placed in a mental hospital following another attack on his sister after she graduated from high school and returned home. From there, he was sent to a group home in LaCrosse where he graduated and entered in the Army in 1981. By 1986, having returned from the army and marrying, John Ray Weber apparently lost whatever control he had over himself. He brutally killed his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law and, two years later, attempted to murder his wife.

It was his wife, Emily, who raised the specter of demonic possession of John Weber. As she lay dying, drifting in and out of consciousness from the horrendous beating administered at his hands, she heard him arguing for and against killing her. The voice arguing for the killing was much different than Weber's normal voice his wife said. In the end, he let her live, concocting a kidnapping and ransom story to explain to family and the law the condition of Emily.

Deadly Obsessions is not a book recommended for the squeamish reader. It is graphic. But the authors have gone a step beyond the usual gloss-over of John Ray Weber's past to present a portrait of a complete, deeply disturbed person. The signs were present from an early age that Weber was possessed of a single mindset to control and harm women. The question we are left to ponder is why. Was he born that way? Was there something in his past that triggered a head- strong divergence from conventionally accepted behavior?

There are a myriad of answers to these questions. Not that any of the answers really help. Indeed, examining the early life of Stephen Snedeker (though not in as much detail) and John Weber, you pick-up on the extraordinary lengths they went to act-out a need for love, for attention. Perhaps their parents didn't love them enough. Perhaps missing the structure of a moral authority to follow through life, their minds were left open to the designs of an evil entity, a demon.

Incidents examined in the lives of Stephen Snedeker and John Weber highlight a growing problem in our society. A more apt description might be a bit of social-consciousness magic. As long as I can come up with unanswerable questions about why John Weber decided to kill or Stephen Snedeker attempted to rape, I don't have to commit to a moral structure myself. I can express appropriate horror over their deeds, bemoan the fact that some kids don't grow up with the love they need, and wait for the next murder, the next rapist. All the time I can comfort myself knowing I'm asking the right compassionate questions. This would be fine if life were about questions. Unfortunately, as Snedeker's and Weber's lives demonstrate, life is about answers and some people find them in the darkest of dark places.

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