THE parents of a boy aged four were horrified when a “mark of the Devil” appeared on his chest.
Sharon Lewis and Robby Jones spotted the cross-hair imprint as they got son Samuel ready for bed.
The sinister sign is proving a devil to explain. The imprint has baffled his parents, teachers and even the family's GP.
Shocked Sharon, 37, of Market Drayton, Shrops, said yesterday: “It’s a nightmare. Some people have said it’s the Symbol of Mammon — the sign of the Devil’s first born — which has been very upsetting.
“Just looking at it made me shake thinking something unnatural had visited my boy.
“Something or someone made the sign on him but we just can’t explain how.”
Sharon, an adult care worker, said there was no mark on Samuel when she gave him a bath and put him to bed on May 23.
The lad dressed himself for school next morning and the couple spotted the symbol that night.
Sharon said: “I took off his uniform and there it was — two concentric circles with a cross through the middle. I asked Samuel if he’d had a bump at school or fallen over but he said ‘no’.
"He looked at it in the mirror and — like Robby and myself — could not explain it.
“Samuel suffers from a rare brittle bone disorder and we assumed he had slept with a toy or something pressing into him. But he said he hadn’t. We stripped off his sheets and found nothing.”
Fearing he had a skin infection or rash, Sharon of Market Drayton, Shrops, took him to her GP.
She said: “The doctor said it was not a rash, the mark was not sore and there was no surrounding reddening. He admitted he hadn’t a clue what it was. We were confused and frightened.”
When Samuel returned to school after the half-term break, Sharon asked his teachers at Hinstock Primary if they could explain it.
But they knew of no incidents.
Worried Sharon put a picture of Samuel on Facebook asking what people thought the mark could be.
She even contacted a US website specialising in mysterious body marks and read claims of alien abductions.
She said: “They asked me to do a questionnaire. One question was: ‘Have you seen objects in the sky you cannot identify?’
“It felt strange getting involved in that stuff but we were, and still are, desperate to find the truth.”
Sharon, who has two children, Joe, 16, and Hannah, ten, from a previous relationship, said: “The whole thing has been a nightmare.
“You see this kind of thing on scary sci-fi films. It isn’t supposed to happen to families like us.
“Now we sleep with the landing light on and Samuel often comes into bed with me and Robby.
"I know it sounds crazy but I have found myself listening out for bumps in the night.”
The marking stayed on the right of Samuel’s chest for three weeks before finally fading on June 16.
Robby, 34, a plumber, said: “You can still make out a faint silvery outline of where it was.”
The symbol features in the 2005 Keanu Reeves film Constantine.
A priest carves it into his hand after a nightmare.
Sinister history of cross-hair
MAMMON is said to be one of the Seven Princes of Hell and used the cross-hair symbol as his calling card.
He is associated with the deadly sin of greed.
The symbol appears in Egyptian tomb paintings and carvings dating back to 1500BC and cave paintings in Italy apparently depicting visits by beings from outer space.
Some amateur researchers say it is a branding from an alien abduction. -Thesun.co.uk
