Granny Kills Grandchildren After Hallucinating They Had 'Evil Spirits' In Them

A grandmother was jailed for 16 years for strangulating and stabbing her grandchildren to death as she believed they were possessed by demons, according to a report. The incident took place in the Belgorod region of Russia.

Svetlana Muradyan, 42, and her lover were caring for Vladislav Eliseev, five, and his sister Esenia, three. During a drinking session the couple hallucinated and began seeing evil spirits in the children, according to the case’s law enforcement investigator.

This is when they strangulated the boy with an electric cord and stabbed the girl to death. Both the adults “saw demons in the children,” the unnamed investigator said, according to the Sun.

After attacking the children, the granny called for help from a neighbor’s son, a doctor.

“The boy was already dead and the girl was wheezing,” the doctor reportedly said. However, the girl later died in hospital.

A court ruled that the grandmother was “sane” and sentenced her to 16 years in jail. The judge said that the lover was unaware of his actions due to a “temporary mental disorder” brought on by “alcoholism.”

This condition “deprived him of the ability to recognize the danger of his actions and to control them,” a court statement read. The grandmother's lover was sentenced to compulsory psychiatric treatment.

In a similar incident that took place in Utah in July last year, a man was arrested after he allegedly killed his 10-month-old son on suspicion of the child being possessed. Alex Hidalgo, 37, told the child’s mother that the infant was possessed and he had built "an altar like they had talked about." Investigators found blood-soaked towels and carpets in the apartment and a paring knife in the kitchen sink that was “wet as if it was freshly washed.”

According to a probable cause statement, Hidalgo stabbed the infant multiple times in the neck. He then threw him in a garbage can.