A Head Full of Ghosts

“The message was already clear. Daddy Barrett was out of a job and consequently the family and society as a whole was in full decay mode. Poor Mom, Sarah Barrett (stalwart bank teller), only gets a brief background check in the opening segment. Her being the sole breadwinner in the family isn’t mentioned until later in the pilot […].”

In her first blog post analyzing The Possession, “Karen Brissette” critiques the Discovery Channel special as misogynistic. Merry’s pen name is her cloak of anonymity for writing about the horror genre. In this instance, her pseudonym is particularly crucial because she is writing about herself and her own family from the perspective of a detached third party. Merry later tells Rachel that she believes everything that she writes on “Karen’s” blog; this post encapsulates Merry’s belief that her father was not deserving of the sympathy he received.

“To be honest, all the external influences aside, there are some parts of this I remember in great, terrible detail, so much so that I fear getting lost in the labyrinth of memory. There are other parts of this that remain as unclear and unknowable as someone else’s mind, and I fear that in my head I’ve likely conflated and compressed timelines and events.”

Merry is the archetypal unreliable narrator. She is astute enough to preface her version of events by claiming that her memory has been affected by time and trauma. At the same time, she considers herself the arbiter of which parts of her story should be accepted as factual and which she should be forgiven for misrepresenting. Merry’s unreliability is grounded in her admission of deception and calculation, as well as the plausibility that her age did impact her ability to recall events accurately. Merry admits that she is a liar, but it is often impossible to discern whether Merry herself knows if she is lying or believes she is telling the truth.

“Marjorie had drawn Richard Scarry-esque cats and dogs wearing sports coats and ties, and they were stuck in the molasses, thrashing around. The molasses wave crested above a doomed train, its passengers, made to look like cats and dogs, screaming in horror.”

Though their relationship is contentious, Merry is the only person in the family whom Marjorie Barrett feels she can confide in about her psychological distress. Marjorie’s illustrations are her attempt at reaching out to her sister and conveying the frightening imagery that is tormenting her.

For Merry, Marjorie’s illustrations are a frightening deviation from their fanciful activity of creating their own stories in Merry’s picture books. Merry is frustrated and confused by her sister’s departure from her expected behavior.

“Picture it: you’re in heaven with who you think is Grampy. The ghost looks like him and talks like him and acts like him, but how can you be sure it’s really him? And as more time passes you realize you can never be sure. You can never be sure that any of the ghosts around you are not all disguised demons. So your poor soul is forever in doubt, expecting that in any one moment of eternity there will be some terrible, awful, horrible change in Grampy’s face as he embraces you.”

Merry recalls Marjorie expressing this chilling notion, particularly because it left her parents shocked and unable to reply. Dad is primed to accept new information through the lens of his newly reclaimed faith, and Marjorie’s suggestion likely becomes fodder for his conviction that his daughter is possessed. What sounds sinister is likely an expression of compounded paranoia and psychosis, which are making Marjorie wonder who she can trust.

“‘No. You have to remember that story about the two sisters. You have to remember all my stories because there are—there are all these ghosts filling my head and I’m just trying to get them out, but you have to remember the story about the two sisters especially. Okay? You have to. Please say Okay.’ Marjorie was just a shadow on her bed. She could’ve been a pile of blankets, twisted and discarded. I couldn’t see her eyes or her spaghetti-sauce-stained chin. When I didn’t answer her, she screamed as though she were being attacked; so loud it lifted my feet off the floor and pushed me backward.”

Marjorie’s story of the two sisters and their dangerous, murderous father is an allegory she creates for her sister. This suggests that even before the intrusion of the church and the production crew into their home, Marjorie was already afraid of their father and saw in him the potential to cause harm to their family. Marjorie’s emphatic insistence that Merry remember the story is an element of foreshadowing; the narrative gradually reveals that Marjorie believes she will need to call on Merry to act if their situation should become dire. Here, Tremblay uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as.” In this case, Marjorie is likened to “a shadow on her bed.”

“This was beyond tattling. This was betrayal of my sister, who, apparently, was terribly, terribly ill. […] I embellished the growing-things story, telling her that Marjorie said they would start growing here at the soccer field while I had practice and would swallow all of us up.”

Merry divulges sensitive information her sister asked her to keep between them in the hopes of satisfying her own curiosity, thinking that their mother will reveal Marjorie’s secrets in exchange. Merry calls it embellishing, but claiming that her sister said the vines would appear at soccer practice is a lie intended to elicit a specific response. As Merry describes her behavior and her thought processes as a child, it becomes clear that similar traits continue to remain present in her personality.

“Dad rambled about being sorry for the last few weeks, that he hadn’t been going out in the mornings and afternoons on job searches, but instead going to church to pray for a clear head and for guidance.”

Dad is calculating in the way he confesses that he brought Marjorie to Father Wanderly without consulting Mom. Instead of telling Mom outright, he tests her by suggesting the possibility of taking Marjorie, hoping for positive feedback. Instead, he is forced to sheepishly confess that he already went against Mom’s wishes. Merry’s recollection of this exchange suggests that she may have learned about obscuring or carefully structuring the truth to her own advantage from her father. It also indicates that Dad is not above impulsively doing as he pleases and asking for forgiveness later.

“Our fun sunroom sister-time had deteriorated quickly into crumbling pieces so obvious and so there, just like the imperfections of the curling and stained yellow wallpaper on the sunroom walls were there if you looked long and hard enough. […] ‘Stop it! Just stop it! Listen to me. You tell on me to mom again I’ll rip your fucking tongue out!’ […] Even knowing what I know now, I’ll never forgive Marjorie for what she said to me then, and I’ll never forgive myself for staying in the sunroom and taking it all. I just stood there. ‘I’ll keep your tongue and put it on a string, wear it like a necklace, keep it close against my chest, let it taste my skin until it turns black and shrivels up like all dead things do. What an amazing fucking thought that is: your never-ending tongue shrunken and finally stilled.’”

Merry describes her and Marjorie’s interaction as “fun” up until the moment that Marjorie lashes out at her. However, Marjorie was not enjoying herself, and had given ample warnings that her patience with Merry was waning, asking Merry repeatedly to leave her alone. Merry understands that her sister is suffering, but fails to exhibit compassion, even though her mother specifically requested that Merry be kind to Marjorie.

Marjorie’s threat is violent, graphic, and intended to terrify her sister. That she targets Marjorie’s tongue is a direct reference to the friction and tension Merry causes by her inability to realize when it is time to keep her mouth shut.

“He paused and seemed unsure of what to say, as though he was an amateur, a poseur. A fraud. […] Then he screamed in pain. The table rattled again as he pulled his arm out from under the table. The back of his hand was bleeding, had been slashed open. There were two deep red lines dowsing a path toward his wrist. He clutched the hand to his chest instinctively, then held it out toward Mom, in an expression of childlike fear and incredulity at the unfairness of it all.”

Merry’s description of her father as childlike is consistent with much of his behavior throughout the novel. He often fails to take responsibility for his decisions, makes no effort to reflect on his responsibilities, and never addresses his shortcomings. He latches onto external solutions, expecting them to solve his problems, losing his temper in situations that require patience and becoming frustrated when others don’t play the roles he expects them to. Calling him “an amateur, a poser” and “fraud” is accurate in the sense that he latched onto religion not out of genuine, sincere conviction and interest in pursuing spiritual life, but out of a sense of need, a hope that everything will be taken care of for him—in other words, he transfers responsibility yet again. Instead of considering that his daughter’s behavior might benefit from a different approach, he insists on his own, yet is surprised when he isn’t rewarded for his feigned piety.

“Besides serving as the patriarchal-breakdown theme of the show (as I already discussed in GREAT detail), the show’s opening explains (without having to spell it out for everyone) how a family would possibly consider allowing a network to broadcast their living nightmare: a teenage daughter going through a particularly nasty, devastating psychotic break, while believing (or pretending, yeah?) she was possessed by a demon, and a stereotypical demon at that. Let me say it simply: the Barretts were about to default on their mortgage and lose their home. They needed cash, and quick! The show’s producers paid them that quick cash for their televised pounds of flesh.”

“Karen Brissette” criticizes the Barretts for being willing to televise their daughter’s anguish and make their private family tragedy available to voyeurs around the world in perpetuity. The irony is that Merry is writing this blog from the comfort of her high value South Boston brownstone, paid for by the proceeds of the show. Merry is following in her parents’ footsteps; she mentions needing to pay the mortgage when discussing the proceeds of Rachel’s books, exploiting her family’s tragedy in exchange for financial security. It is possible that in her criticism of her father’s portrayal in The Possession and her interpretation of events to Rachel, Merry hopes that she will be painted as a victim, hero, and survivor, thereby inciting a fresh wave of attention, resources, and sympathy.

“‘Your guess about why Mom went along with it all is as good as mine.’

‘I sincerely doubt that, Merry.’

I smile. It’s the first time Rachel has pushed back and accused me of not being forthcoming. Good for her.”

Rachel becomes increasingly suspicious of Merry as their interviews progress; Merry is coy, and often appears to be experimenting with how much leniency and sympathy Rachel will give her, often making outrageous or controversial statements while appearing to eagerly anticipate Rachel’s reaction. She realizes that Rachel is suspicious of her, and admires that suspicion, instead of feeling insulted or becoming guarded; this is a kind of confession on Merry’s part, indicating that Rachel has reason to doubt her. Merry often refers to Rachel’s book as “our” book. In her self-centeredness, Merry fails to recognize how many sources Rachel will be consulting and how significantly facts and personal recollections will likely deviate from Merry’s own.

“Are you worried you’ll conflate what happened with the fictions you watch and read? You’d said to me on our first day together that your memories were mixed together with what other people told you about what had happened, and you’d included pop culture and media.’

‘I said that?’ I say, and spin around one full revolution in my desk chair.

‘Not in those words, but essentially, yes.’”

Rachel is shocked by the amount of horror media that populates Merry’s “playroom”; the extent of Merry’s interest is revelatory for her. Merry’s intense preoccupation with imagery which evokes her own experiences seems macabre and psychologically unhealthy. Merry deflects by spinning in her chair, returning the challenge by feigning naivete, and then quickly trying to diffuse the situation by joking with Rachel. Merry’s penchant for incessant talking has not abated; instead, it has evolved into what she believes is charismatic and successful persuasiveness.

“Mom and Dad were totally stressed about money and the house, I hated being in stupid high school, and then I started hearing the voices, stressed induced probably, but yeah, still it sort of freaked me out. Then I got super pissed when they started sending me to Dr. Hamilton and his fastest prescription pad in the East, when they were the ones who should’ve been getting help, not me. They’re a mess, you’ve had to notice they’re a total mess, right? And then Dad added to the mess with his new finding God BS, so I decided I’d just keep pushing it, see how far I could go… […] I saved the house. I saved us, all of us, and I’m going to make us famous.”

Marjorie’s observations confirm much of Merry’s descriptions of the interactions between Mom and Dad and what these exchanges suggest about their relationship. When she declares that their parents are a mess, Marjorie raises the question of what her prognosis might have been if her home life had fewer stressors. In spite of her illness, Marjorie has a level of insight into the gravity of their collective predicament and the foresight to orchestrate a way out of the situation they are in. Her confession confuses Merry, who knows that Marjorie has a mental illness, but struggles to reconcile her more extreme behaviors with what she expects of her sister. Though Merry assures Rachel that her sister was never possessed, as an eight-year-old, there are times when Merry expresses doubts, swept up in the tumult of filming, the exorcism, and their parents’ escalating contention.

“I ran the course two more times, with my personal best being forty-six seconds. After the third run I told Ken that he should write my obstacle course into the show. Mom and Ken’s smiles dimmed a bit at that, and they both took synchronized sips of their coffee.”

Merry’s claims of gaps in her memory appear to be a convenient deflection, as she can remember highly specific things, like how many seconds it took her each time she ran the obstacle course in front of her mother and Ken. Eight-year-old Merry seems not to understand the severity of her sister’s symptoms, despite how frightened she claims to have been by Marjorie’s behavior, the presence of crowds of people outside their home, and the scores of adults coming in and out of their house to produce the show. Similarly, adult Merry lacks insightful reflections about how her own behavior was alienating, and how she must have made her mother and sister feel. Merry has not outgrown her voracious appetite for attention and an audience.

“‘I’m videoing this, you know.’ I waited for a reaction. There wasn’t any. So I hit her as hard as I could with, ‘I know you’re faking. You told me you were faking.’ Letting out her biggest secret while recording, I thought for sure she’d come out of the house, mad at me, telling me that I was a baby and I couldn’t take a joke, and that she was doing this just to make the show better and didn’t I want to help? And I would say yes, but I would also cry and make her feel bad so she’d stay in my room and sleep in my bed, and then we’d delete what I’d recorded and I would’ve been happy doing so.”

Even as a child, Merry is highly manipulative, possessing the forethought to leverage her sister’s secret, and make sure that she is doing so on camera. As frightening as the movement inside the cardboard house is to her, she knows she can guilt her sister into giving her the response that she wants in exchange for deletion of the incriminating evidence that Marjorie is faking being possessed. Merry understands the power she holds in knowing that secret, and though she later worries about what Ken will think of her and Marjorie, Merry keeps the footage and shows it to Ken because it allows her to be of value to him.

“Mom turned up the TV’s volume purposefully loud and took the remote control into the kitchen. […] Because of what Dad had said earlier, I knew I was the subject. After months of all-things-for-Marjorie, I was pleased that something happening in this house potentially involved me. With Marjorie almost exclusively sucking up our parental resources, I’d felt like I was getting lost, a loose picture that had fallen out of the family album. I couldn’t hear anything said in the meeting and the one time I tried to sneak across the room and get closer to the kitchen, Dad heard and sternly ordered me back to my spot on the couch.”

Merry has no respect for boundaries. She defies her parents in trying to intrude on their conversation with Father Wanderly and the production crew when they expressly told her that she was not to listen in. Her mother knows to instruct her to remain in one place, turn up the television, and take the remote; this is indicative of Merry’s sneakiness and lack of respect for privacy. Dad anticipates that she will get off the couch and watches for her to do so, showing that she is willing to be deceptive in order to get what she wants. As the novel progresses, it becomes apparent how Merry’s emotional development has been affected since the death of her family.

In the above quote, Tremblay uses a metaphor when Merry compares herself, without using “like” or “as,” to “a loose picture that had fallen out of the family album.”

“Marjorie said ‘[…] did you know that Father Wanderly is breaking, like, one of the most important official rules according to the church?’

Father Wanderly had his legs crossed and his hands folded on top of his leather-bound book. He said, ‘And what rule is that?’

‘No media, right? You’re not supposed to make a spectacle of the sacramental rite of exorcism. Duh. I’ll quote directly quote the Vatican for you.’”

As “Karen” suggests in her blog, it appears that Father Wanderly was instrumental in enlisting the participation of the Discovery Channel, and that he also benefitted financially from his participation in the show. This scene portrays Marjorie’s intelligence and insight, and Father Wanderly is entirely unprepared to answer her questions. As is the case with Dad, Father Wanderly is happy to make rules for others, while exempting himself from following those set for him.

“‘[…]—fourteen-year-old girl couldn’t possibly know all she claimed to know—'

‘—to give details advanced seminary students wouldn’t give—’ […]

‘—a girl like her can’t speak as eloquently as she did—’ […]

Mom yelled at them, ‘Marjorie has always been an extremely intelligent young woman. Of course she can do all those things you’re saying she can’t do.’”

This conversation is a crystallization of the patriarchal attitudes criticized in “Karen’s” blog; Marjorie has Internet access, and was well aware that the exorcism was being considered, but Father Wanderly, Dad, and Dr. Navidson all agree that it is impossible for Marjorie to have uncovered readily available information about exorcism on the Internet. Their determination to convince each other that she is possessed centers around diminishing her based on her age and gender and comparing her to men. Later in the novel, Marjorie finds an academic study and dozens of examples of men who killed their families, further demonstrating her ability to conduct a thorough inquiry online. In the above quote, Mom emerges as a compassionate character who believes in and wants to support her daughter.

“Dad started roughly unwrapping Marjorie from the curtain, yelling at the foul demon that was inside her. Mom started yelling too, telling him to stop it, that he was hurting her, and she grabbed his arm and tied to yank him away. He growled at her and ripped his arm out of her grasp. Mom fought harder and hit and scratched at his arms. Barry and Ken went over and tried to break it all up.”

This quote illustrates The Impact of Family Dysfunction. Dad can be frequently found yelling and posturing in an intimidating fashion when trying to control his daughters’ behavior. He is able to maintain his contrived persona, adopted for the cameras, of the sincere believer desperate for a holy intervention to save his daughter, but his lack of true faith and spiritual conviction emerges as he unravels even when the cameras are around. As Marjorie later attests to Merry, his unraveling takes the form of violence toward others, beginning with his assault of the protester and this near altercation with his wife. The production crew is supposed to remain observant and intercede only to ask questions and direct scenarios. However, they are forced to physically intervene to protect Marjorie and her mother. This indicates the level of tension in the house on the night before the exorcism.

“Mom seemed ready to break down into tears, but said in her calmest voice, ‘Do you want to talk, Marjorie? Do you want me to put a stop to this? I will. You just tell me. I’ll cancel everything.’

Marjorie said, ‘A little late for that now, isn’t it, Mom?’

‘No. It isn’t. I’m—I don’t know. It’s like a few months ago, when your dad first brought up the idea, I was this totally different person. I had to be, because I don’t understand what that other woman was thinking. I don’t understand how she could’ve thought this was a good idea. And I’m so goddamn mad at her.’”

At this moment, before the exorcism is set to begin, Mom demonstrates growth. Months earlier, she had deferred to Dad. Now, she recognizes the toxicity of the situation and wants to support her daughter.

Merry claims that Rachel’s guess is as good as hers with respect to why her mother agreed to participate in the show, but Rachel disagrees. Merry’s mother had appeared to understand better than anyone else just how severe their financial problems were, with no relief in sight since Dad had abandoned the search for a job. Losing their house, an imminent threat, would certainly contribute to Marjorie’s mental health condition. It is possible that Mom thought that doing the show would net the Barretts much-needed money and allow them to pursue more intensive, evidence-based psychiatric treatment for Marjorie.

“She reached down and picked up something black and metallic that sort of looked like an opened-up stapler, but I didn’t get a great look at it. She held it over her head, waved it around, and screamed, ‘See? See? It was this! The drawer wasn’t me,’ and then she threw it at the window behind her. ‘Why would you do this to me? Did you put it there, Merry? Did they make you put it there when I wasn’t looking?’ She wiped the back of her sleeve over her bloody mouth.”

During the exorcism, Marjorie breaks from what Merry perceives to be her performance of possession once the desk drawer opens on its own. Marjorie has been experiencing symptoms of psychosis, including perceptions that her room is changing its décor and orientation. However, until the drawer opens, she feels in control of the situation.

The narrative makes it clear that this prop has been placed in her bedroom by the production crew in order to punctuate the scene with a classic horror trope, an object moving on its own. That Marjorie assumes that it was Merry playing a trick on her and not the film crew, who have been manipulating most of her life at home, indicates the mistrust that Merry has engendered.

“Meredith sees the camera and stares into it. The camera stares back, filling its frame with her face, which is smeared with tears. […] She could be Marjorie’s misunderstood spirit; broken, mistakenly exorcised/expelled, and doomed. Meredith could be our own collective subconscious silently judging us, chiding us for our shameless complicity, for our doing nothing by watching the terrible and systematic torture of a mentally ill teenage girl under the guise of entertainment. […] Meredith could be Marjorie and Marjorie could be Meredith. We only know who is who by context. […] and we understand that the entire series has built to this moment. And with all the implications of what has already happened and what is about to happen, we know the terrible truth that this is their story. It’s their story.”

“Karen Brissette” describes the final moments in the last episode of The Possession. “Karen’s” readers do not know that she is Merry. Therefore, her analysis of the scene and characterization of the series as “their” story rather than Marjorie’s alone might not seem strange; the reader would have no reason to suspect a personal motive for portraying it that way. It is possible that Merry believes that in conjunction with the release of Rachel’s book, renewed interest in The Possession will draw readers to her blog posts. Her decision to paint herself, in the third person, as one of two focal points in the show is characteristic of her self-centeredness. Merry appears, even as an adult, unable to grasp the reality of her sister’s mental illness.

“I said her name three times. I didn’t use my signs. I asked her what we were supposed to do now. Her eyes were dark and reflected the light above her. Her skin had turned to clay. I asked how long it would take for the powder to wear off. I asked how long it would take them to wake up. I told her that this was a bad idea, that she didn’t have to eat the sauce like they did. I told her I needed her and I didn’t think I could go to the police myself because I didn’t know where they were. I put the empty glass jar in Marjorie’s hand, wrapped her fingers around it, tried to make her hold it like she was supposed to. But it kept falling out, so I took it back.”

Merry claims that she feels betrayed by her sister, who did not indicate that she too would be ingesting the poison, and that she worries about the consequences. Yet Merry doesn’t panic. It is possible that her eight-year-old mind is having difficulty grasping the gravity of the situation. However, the presence of mind she exhibits in manipulating the fingers of Marjorie’s corpse to make sure that she will take the blame suggests her detachment and self-interest. Even in relaying her role in ending her family’s life, Merry makes certain to ask Rachel whether or not the prints of anyone but their father was discovered on the jar of poison.