Demons

Demons are the lower-world beings that Thomas Woolgar says appeared amid the darkness and upheaval following Elnor’s execution. In his chronicle they mark the moment when a local act of violence seems to open onto something beyond ordinary explanation; yet his account is contested within the same narrative, leaving their existence uncertain rather than independently confirmed.

Appearance in the Chronicle

The Demons enter Woolgar’s account as a presence gathering around him. While writing in the chapel, he describes the cold intensifying and says that Demons seek him out. He also fears that Elnor, whom he believes dead but not at rest, is approaching. The manuscript presents these perceptions as part of his growing conviction that her vengeance continues beyond her death.

After Elnor is executed, Woolgar describes the sky darkening and the ground trembling. He believes he sees spectres rise from the graveyard and the earth open into a black pit containing lost souls in torment. These are his perceptions as recorded in the chronicle, not events confirmed by another witness. The reported collapse of the ground and the beings he says he saw belong to Woolgar’s account of the same crisis.

The Execution and Its Aftermath

Woolgar connects the Demons to the execution and Elnor’s curse against those present and their descendants. In his telling, the disturbance begins at her death: the earth seems to open, the landscape darkens, and the apparition of a lower world overwhelms him. He flees to the Crypt of St. Joseph’s Church, where he hides for three days, covering himself and avoiding the shadows he believes have risen from the disturbed graves.

The chronicle also records a less supernatural report of the aftermath. Woolgar says that his father and Bishop told him that people in Banfield spoke of a thunderstorm and low dark clouds, but not of Demons or an opening into Hell. They attributed his visions to Elnor’s drugs and to his own damaged state of mind. Their account does not verify the Demons; it directly challenges Woolgar’s interpretation of what occurred.

Uncertainty and Narrative Significance

Woolgar presents the Demons as a reality he has witnessed, and pleads with future readers not to dismiss his writing as madness. At the same time, the chronicle supplies reasons for doubt: he has endured a frightening episode, his father and Bishop consider his mind unsound, and the other people who recount the day do not describe the supernatural beings. The narrative therefore preserves both the force of his testimony and the possibility that the Demons belong to his visions.

The account’s setting reinforces that uncertainty. The chapel, the graveyard, the crypt, and the supposedly opened earth form a sequence of religious spaces that Woolgar experiences as breached and unsafe. He intends his hidden manuscript to warn later readers, but its warning arrives through a voice that others have already judged unreliable. The Demons consequently embody the unresolved divide between a supernatural explanation of Elnor’s vengeance and a human explanation rooted in Woolgar’s fear, guilt, and collapse.