The devils of the stage were not the real demons which daily and nightly threatened mortals with temptation and by possession. Saint Jerome (c.341-420) provides a written account of the seriousness and fear with which early Christians reckoned the denizens of hell as he describes the Roman pilgrim Paula's fright at the strange goings-on within the tombs of the prophets in the Holy Land:

She shuddered at the sight of so many marvelous happenings... For there she was met by the noise of demons roaring in various torments, and, before the tombs of the saints, she saw men howling like wolves, barking like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like snakes, bellowing like bulls; some twisted their heads to touch the earth by arching their bodies backwards; women hung upside-down in mid-air, yet their shirts did not fall down over their heads.

This account of exorcisms-in-progress was a terrifying example of the disorder of demons. Saint Jerome's description alone explains the real fear of possession, a hellish Carnival that distorted the natural order by turning the body upside-down and inverting the roles of humans and animals. It was the human and this-worldly Carnival, however, which defeated symbolically the ever-present threat. Laughter in medieval drama, depending on grotesque exaggeration to the point of ridiculousness, used the conventions of Carnival to blunt the terrifying edges of hell and death.