The “Devil Family” The strange happenings of an upper-class English family

This story is from “La Luce di Maria translated by Google from Italian.

There are numerous mysteries surrounding the events of the Norton family, who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and went down in history as the “devil’s family”.

It is in the eighties of the nineteenth century that the singular events of the Norton family take place, whose exponents were part of the English upper middle class. The Nortons, who enjoyed vast economic wealth in the Victorian era, also seem to have important knowledge, including members of the royal family. But what we want to talk about are the singular phenomena that gravitated around the well-known family, so much so that it passes, in the collective imagination, as the “family of the devil”.

The Nortons, defined as “the devil’s family”

At this point one wonders what the resonance of this heavy name is due to and we jump here in the eighties of the nineteenth century, precisely in 1886. From that date, a series of macabre and dark events began to follow, related to the Norton family. In fact, it is said that, just in that year, a 9-year-old boy (factory employee) was found dead in one of the factories run by the Norton family. The accusations immediately fell on Roy W. Norton, the owner, who, according to tradition, brought with him a morbid attachment to children.

The very particular deaths

But that of the factory was not the only anomalous case that occurred around the family. In fact, already several years earlier, the family had become the protagonist of anomalous events. One of the most illustrious is that linked to an elderly aunt who claimed to be possessed by the devil. According to her story, the woman hosted some malevolent entities in her body, so much so as to feel the insects gravitating in her skull. The epilogue was tragic: the woman killed herself with a pair of scissors.

Demonic rituals

Paradoxical deaths were accompanied by events that proved decisive for public opinion. Perhaps it is precisely from the latter that the nickname “family of the devil “ began to develop. Also in the eighties of the nineteenth, inside their residence in the countryside of London, some plainclothes agents showed up, who, in spite of themselves, discovered the execution of a demonic ritual. The people began to accuse the family of being devoted to Satanism and hence the nickname still famous today.

Fabio Amicosante