SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Your computer may be possessed by a demon, a leading minister

warns.

"While the Computer Age has ushered in many advances, it has also opened yet

another door through which Lucifer and his minions can enter and corrupt men's

souls," said the Reverend Jim Peasboro, author of an upcoming book, The Devil

in the Machine.

Demons are able to possess anything with a brain, from a chicken to a human

being. And today's thinking machines have enough space on their hard drives to

accommodate Satan or his pals.

"Any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit,"

the minister confirmed.

The Savannah clergyman says he became aware of the problem from counseling

churchgoers.

"I learned that many members of my congregation became in touch with a dark

force whenever they used their computers," he said. "Decent, happily married

family men were drawn irresistibly to pornographic websites and forced to

witness unspeakable abominations.

"Housewives who had never expressed an impure thought were entering Internet

chat rooms and found themselves spewing foul, debasing language they would

never use normally.

"One woman wept as she confessed to me, 'I feel when I'm on the computer as if

someone else or something else just takes over.' "

The minister said he probed one such case, actually logging onto the

parishioner's computer himself. To his surprise, an artificial-intelligence

program fired up -- without him clicking it on. "The program began talking

directly to me, openly mocked me," he recalls. "It typed out, 'Preacher, you

are a weakling and your God is a damn liar.' "

Then the device went haywire and started printing out what looked like

gobbledygook.

"I later had an expert in dead languages examine the text," the minister said.

"It turned out to be a stream of obscenities written in a 2,800-year-old

Mesopotamian dialect!"

Since, then, Rev. Peasboro has researched the problem further and uncovered

alarming facts.

"I learned most of the youths involved in school shootings like the tragedy at

Columbine were computer buffs," he said. "I have no doubt that computer demons

exerted an influence on them."

The minister estimates that one in 10 computers in America now houses some

Type of evil spirit.

Rev. Peasboro advises that if you suspect your computer is possessed, you

consult a clergyman or, if the computer is still under warranty, take it in

for servicing. He says, "Technicians can replace the hard drive and reinstall the

software, getting rid of the wicked spirit permanently."