The Girl Bitten by the Invisible

In May of 1953, a teenage woman named Clarita Villanueva was arrested and placed in the Bilibid jail in Manila. Within days, guards, inmates, and eventually city officials witnessed something inexplicable: fresh bite marks began forming on her arms and legs while she screamed that an invisible creature was attacking her, though no one else in the cell could see any assailant.

The case grew so alarming that Manila's mayor, Arsenio Lacson, and several physicians personally observed the phenomenon, watching new wounds appear on her skin in real time. Medical explanations failed, and word spread through the city that the young woman was under demonic assault. Newspapers carried the story, and public fear mounted.

Lester Sumrall, an American missionary serving in the Philippines, was summoned to the jail after local pastors struggled to bring relief. He read from the Gospel of Mark, spoke directly to the tormenting spirits in the authority of Jesus' name, and commanded them to leave. Villanueva's screaming stopped, the biting ceased immediately, and she was set free from the attacks for good.

News of the deliverance spread across Manila and internationally, opening doors for Sumrall's ministry throughout Asia. It became one of the most documented deliverance accounts of the twentieth century, witnessed not by a church congregation alone but by government officials and members of the secular press.

For Sumrall, the event confirmed a lifelong conviction that the authority Jesus gave His followers over darkness was not a relic of the first century but a present reality, ready to be exercised whenever it was needed.