Demonic Foes

 Foreword

As his past academic chairman for many years, I can attest that Dr. Richard Gallagher is a multitalented psychiatrist and a highly respected clinician who is also a valued teacher. He embarked on a serious scholarly study long ago concerning the fascinating, if controversial, subject of suspected demonic possession.

Contrary to a widespread belief, such phenomena not only continue to be reported in today’s world, but they still defy easy explanation as simplistically conceived medical or psychiatric disorders. Dr. Gallagher brings his trained intellect and unimpeachable integrity to bear on the investigation of such “states of possession” and has undoubtedly directly encountered more of these hard-to-explain and intriguing cases than any other physician.

Hence, his book may well be unique in history: the serious treatment of a long-disputed topic by a superbly credentialed academic physician—a full professor of psychiatry—who can accurately offer personally informed accounts in painstaking detail of modern-day examples.

                             Joseph T. English, MD

                             Sidney E. Frank Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,

                             New York Medical College; Past President,

                             American Psychiatric Association

**

Demonic Foes is my attempt to enter into a meeting place between pop culture—which sensationalizes the paranormal and the supernatural—sound spiritual judgment, and serious psychiatric and scientific study. It is of necessity an interdisciplinary approach.

The best way to illustrate this, in my opinion, is to tell my own personal journey of transformation from skeptic to believer to expert. To ground the discussion in reality, I explore along the way some of my more complex and compelling cases, outlining my own investigative methods while explaining how each case relates to and informs modern culture, history, religion, and psychiatric theories.

Of the many cases I have seen, I highlight the following:

A young woman, a self-described Satanist, who levitated for half an hour during her exorcism in front of eight witnesses—a “once in a century” case, in the words of her two experienced exorcists.

A housewife whose hearing was blocked whenever anyone mentioned anything related to religion and who uttered vile blasphemies during recurring trancelike, possessed states.

A professional woman who suffered from unexplained bruises, spoke several languages completely unknown to her, and during her states of possession periodically ran amok, potentially wreaking havoc on herself and her reputation.

A petite woman who in her possessed state threw a two-hundred-pound Lutheran deacon across the room.

In such cases, I’ve worked hard to develop a system of investigation based on my psychiatric training and experience. To begin, I never officially “diagnose” someone as being “possessed.” I do this for several reasons. First, it is not a clinical diagnosis that can be shoehorned into a conventional and scientifically responsible psychiatric diagnostic category. Because possession is a spiritual problem—not a psychiatric one—no laboratory or cognitive or mental status tests exist to register that information using medically established categories. Instead, I ask one basic question: Do the patient’s symptoms have a natural or scientific explanation?

I may begin to answer this question, as need be, through a physical exam and standard rounds of medical tests, such as blood work to search for chemical abnormalities. I especially make sure the patient isn’t suffering from an odd seizure disorder or other undiscovered brain damage. To rule these out, I may schedule a brain scan or an EEG, if indicated. If appropriate testing is negative, I rely upon a full narrative assessment and symptom survey that I always conduct. I also generally interview friends and families to confirm all details reported by the patient.

To the untrained eye, many possessions may be thought to fall into the psychiatric categories of various psychoses and severe personality and dissociative disorders, or they may seem to happen to individuals who are prone to suggestibility. However, for well-trained psychiatrists and other health professionals, possession differs from such disorders in significant ways. I outline in detail these symptoms and signs throughout this book, along with both the medical and spiritual criteria involved.

In those rare instances when I cannot determine a natural or scientific explanation for a person’s condition, I refer the individual back to the priest, rabbi, pastor, imam, or other spiritual adviser who sent that person to me. The men and women of faith make the final official determination and arrange for spiritual help, if the patient is in need of such.

I take my responsibilities as a physician seriously, so I remind those who are mentally ill and who only think that they are being attacked by evil spirits to seek psychiatric help. The field of exorcism is littered with examples of careless deliverance groups and lay amateurs who may use questionable and sometimes outright hazardous forms of “liberation” on people who are struggling with depression or another mental illness.

A major attempt to moderate mistaken diagnoses and excesses came through the founding in the early 1990s of the International Association of Exorcists. I knew most of the founders personally and acted for a time as the association’s scientific adviser. In the United States, Catholic Bishops have appointed about one hundred or so exorcists to combat serious demonic conditions. They routinely expect psychiatric evaluations. Other denominations have mounted similar, if perhaps less prominent, efforts. None of these sensible developments, however, should blind us to the continuing scattered abuses among poorly led “teams” of the overeager, especially among fundamentalists of all faiths in both the developed and undeveloped worlds.

* * *

My having earned the trust of numerous possessed individuals, as well as my privileged position as a psychiatrist, allowed them to open up to me not only about the strange features of their presentations, but also about their backgrounds and many intimate aspects of their personal lives. All these factors are crucial in judging whether a person is undergoing a true demonic attack. Patients in their profound and varied suffering will often tell a physician, and especially a psychiatrist, matters that they wouldn’t reveal to anyone else. These details commonly include shameful behaviors, such as briefly turning to the occult or even satanic practices, that may make them reluctant to divulge their past indiscretions to clergy, let alone spouses and close friends. In some cultures possessed individuals are shunned and isolated; a few around the world are even physically punished or killed. As a consequence, these individuals often keep their stories hidden. In the United States, they usually fear institutionalization.

I work hard to distinguish carefully as a scientifically trained physician what “science” and good historical testimony can and cannot demonstrate about episodes of possession. And I take these individuals’ trust in me very seriously.

All the understandable demand for proof should not blind us to the inescapable reality that tortured individuals are at the center of these assessments. They are not looking to illustrate a theory or prove their credibility. They are in enormous pain and want relief. I’ve often looked into the eyes of those who are suffering and been moved by the terror that I see. Few of them fully understand what is going on or why they are in a constant state of torment. But they believe their whole body, mind, and soul are under attack. Should one just ignore their distress?

Yet surprisingly, most often their own behavior and attitude are also essential to their liberation. As the Catholic Church teaches (along with similar beliefs in other denominations and many religions), the Rite of Major Exorcism is not a magic formula that will cast out demons automatically and completely liberate suffering victims without effort from the afflicted individuals themselves. Exorcists are not wizards, and often a long, grueling, and terrible struggle ensues for victims to be free of what ails them, just as it would be in a normal psychiatric case with a typical severe mental illness.

Exorcisms are not magic bullets. In the end, that is why I’m placing my professional qualifications on the line to write Demonic Foes. I want to enlighten the public as to the import and reality of these admittedly rare phenomena and what must be done for someone to receive help. I want to see tormented people set free from all things that would oppress or destroy their lives. I’ve dedicated my life to fighting the ravages of mental illness, and I’ve put the same sort of passion into working with people who may suffer from demonic possessions or lesser attacks, however controversial such conclusions may seem to some of my peers.

While I know I can’t persuade the hard skeptic or critic, my hope is that Demonic Foes will reach out to the vast middle ground of people who are open to the ideas that we live in a world that is both seen and unseen and that these two realms can influence each other in unimaginable ways. A segment of that invisible world seems to be mysteriously but remarkably hostile to human beings and seeks their physical and spiritual destruction. On rare occasions, like some kind of cosmic terrorist, that segment shows its true colors. The public in recent decades has learned to its horror that vile humans may practice unspeakable acts of terrorism; perhaps the suggestion that spiritual entities of a similar brutality may also engage in acts of spiritually motivated savagery has thus become more believable.

I thank the many people who allowed me to share their compelling stories. I especially express my gratitude to the avowed Satanist presented in this book, who not only permitted but encouraged me and my colleagues to report her striking narrative. I well recognize the flamboyant, almost phantasmagorical nature of her strange story; however, it is not unprecedented in any of its individual details, and I provide parallels to even the most bizarre features of her situation from other historical cases.

Neither she nor any of these victims were patients of mine; I would not write about them if they were. Almost all of the cases found to be of an “extraordinary nature” (the traditional term) have instead been sent to me by educated and knowledgeable clergy of many faiths or other credentialed mental health professionals who have requested my opinion. In recent years, a few assaulted victims have found me on their own after learning of my experience online or from interviews I’ve given or articles I’ve written.

**

Around the time that I graduated as a resident and post-doc fellow from the Yale psychiatry program, a somewhat inaccessible literature about a modern possession was emerging within the mainstream. Various investigators, inspired by the commercial success of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, and the movie that followed, were digging up previously unreleased facts about the events that had inspired the fictionalized account.

I was fascinated to learn the real-life details of this sensationalized story, and, though I was already convinced that Blatty had borrowed features from various historical accounts of exorcisms, including the Loudun case, I was particularly struck that the movie had primarily fictionalized an account of a putative actual and present-day possession.

Blatty’s fictional story was said to have been modeled on the real-life possession of a young boy in Maryland, starting in 1949. Original sources pseudonymously called the boy Roland Doe, but in the age of investigative curiosity, the boy was later rechristened Robbie Mannheim. Raised Lutheran, Robbie was ministered to by his pastor, the Reverend Luther Miles Schulze. He had stints in hospitals, but doctors couldn’t explain the case features, and psychiatric treatment had no effect. Robbie remained possessed for a long time.

As portrayed in the film, troubles began with poltergeist-like phenomena—inexplicable noises and “scratchings,” a vibrating bed, objects flying around, a tipped-over chair. Multiple accounts claimed that up to forty-eight people witnessed these strange happenings, including Reverend Schulze, who attested to such occurrences when Robbie stayed with him in his home for an extended observation. Robbie’s condition eventually progressed to symptoms more typically associated with possession: involuntary trance states; vitriolic expressions of hatred toward religion, delivered in a diabolic-sounding voice; and other paranormal abilities, including speaking in Latin, a language that young Robbie did not know. At one point, according to witnesses, Robbie’s room became frigid, a not-unprecedented occurrence during exorcisms, I later learned.

A variety of clergy performed multiple rituals of exorcisms, first according to Lutheran, then Episcopalian, and finally Catholic procedures. Several Jesuits in a St. Louis hospital eventually conducted the successful series of exorcisms years later. The priests related that a loud noise accompanied the actual moment of Robbie’s deliverance. The Jesuits compared the sound to a “thunderclap.” After his successful exorcism, Robbie went on to marry, have children, and lead a successful life.

Before his death in 2017, Blatty acknowledged that his fictional story was most prominently based on the Mannheim possession but was also a composite. For instance, Blatty modeled the character of the priest-psychiatrist in his book and screenplay in part upon Father Surin, who had similarly offered himself to the demon as ransom for the original victim.

At the same time, Blatty intended the two priests in his novel—Father Damien Karras and Father Lankester Merrin—to represent two contrasting points of view. With his heavily lined face and white hair, Father Merrin symbolized the old-school Catholic Church and its belief in literal evil spirits. He doesn’t waver from that belief even as he conducts the exorcism that will end his life. Father Karras, on the other hand, begins the story with the conviction that the young girl Regan MacNeil demonstrates signs of an unknown psychiatric disorder despite the evidence pointing to possession. Only after running every physical and psychological test possible does Father Karras change his mind, finally acknowledging that something inexplicable, something demonic, is going on.

The personal transformation of Father Karras proved especially fascinating to me. I probably only later realized how seminal it turned out to be to my much later academic pursuits and direction: a trained psychiatrist who investigates the matter from an analytic and scientific point of view and then—and only then—comes to believe firmly in the reality of demonic possession.

Like Father Karras, I have since walked in two worlds—the world of scientific psychiatric investigation and the world of exorcism. And I’ve spent much of my time over the years deepening my understanding of both, which to some seem incompatible, though in my opinion they are not so at all.

**

Julia, the Satanic Queen

Her Possession and Her Remarkable Abilities

The night before I met Julia, something unnerving happened. My family loves animals, and at that time, a French bulldog and two cats prowled around our house like longtime relatives. All three always got along well. The cats often curled up next to each other on our bed at night.

But one night around 3 a.m., loud screeching sounds startled me and my wife out of our sleep. Our two normally docile cats were going at it like champion prizefighters, smacking and clawing at each other, intent on inflicting some serious harm. My wife grabbed the female cat and I held on to the male. As we separated them into two different rooms, they continued to growl and bristle. My wife and I got back into bed, mystified, but wrote off the tiff as perhaps caused by some bad cat food or one too many sniffs of catnip.

The next morning, Father Jacques rang our doorbell. He was standing at our front door with “Julia.” She was dressed in black pants, with a dark purple blouse hanging loosely around her slight frame. I guessed she was in her late thirties or early forties. Her short hair was dyed jet black, and her black eyeliner extended to her temples—the style I later learned that was favored by her fellow cult members.

Dressed again, as always, in his clerics, Father Jacques had his hands in his pockets, avoiding eye contact.

“This is Julia,” he said. “She has something to confess.”

With a smirk Julia gazed at me.

“How’d you like those cats last night?” she asked.

I stared at her, taken aback as much by her manner as by her astonishing statement. She regarded me with that smug smile, evidently pleased with herself.

“What are you amused about?” I blurted out.

Her smile widened as she leaned against the doorframe.

“Look,” I finally thought to say. “I respect Father Jacques, and he asked me to see you. But let’s not have a repeat of last night, understand?”

My thoughts came fast and furious. What the hell am I saying? Could she really have had anything to do with the cats?

Unperturbed, Julia just stood there with the air of an honored houseguest, offering no apology.

For the rest of the day, I tried to collect my thoughts. What in God’s name have I gotten into? This was the first time I had ever doubted or even questioned my involvement with Father Jacques. To get a few things off my chest, I called him, throwing away common courtesy and asking, “What on earth were you thinking, bringing her here?”

He apologized profusely and told me she had arrived earlier than he had expected. He had wanted to make sure I was around so we could meet with her as soon as possible. Jacques was eager to get my input, though I already knew he was convinced that she was possessed.

“Striking while the iron was hot,” he put it, since he didn’t seem to trust that her motivation to get help would last long. He further astonished me by admitting that a similar thing had occurred in the house of another psychologist who had interviewed Julia. The man’s wife subsequently forbade him from having anything else to do with “that horrible woman” after their crazed cat tore up their living room couch.

“Now you tell me,” I said. I felt annoyed, invaded.

Father Jacques went on. “She can be provocative, but she does seem to want our help, at least for now. She needs our help, the sooner the better, I think. Her cult doesn’t want to let her go and will do anything to stop our continued exorcisms.”

According to Father Jacques, Julia was a truly exceptional case even for a serious possession. As a rare Satanist and the “high priestess” of a satanic cult, he further explained, Julia had been granted certain “special abilities.” Because her cult had threatened him directly, he said, Father Jacques was convinced her stories were credible.

I agreed to see her at my office the next day.

During the exorcisms of most full possessions, the evil spirit may on its own (or may be forced to) manifest itself and display its remarkable preternatural powers. Even outside the exorcisms, and critical to the diagnostic process, victims in their periodic possessed trances frequently display at least some of the classic signs of their state. Evil spirits may speak foreign languages; show supernormal strength; or reveal “hidden knowledge,” that is, display an awareness of matters they have no natural way of knowing—akin to what psychics claim to be able to do. Of course, it is the demon who has such powers, not the victim. In a possession, the demonstration of these paranormal abilities is precisely what proves that a foreign evil spirit is present and in control. Despite occasional protestations by so-called parapsychologists and spiritualists, human beings on their own have none of these powers.

But Father Jacques explained to me that a powerful diabolist like Julia who has explicitly committed herself to Satan, who worships him, may be granted some “privileges” of this sort “on their own.” That is, the contention that Satan grants his devotees the ability to demonstrate psychic powers not only outside an overt possessed state, but also in their normal conscious state. Under Satan’s power, they perform these paranormal feats through no inherent ability of their own but are able to draw upon demonic sources of power in a strange way.

Cases of individuals who have such a level of “favors” are, in my experience, very rare, even more uncommon than in a more typical possession. But Julia, I was soon to discover, was hardly typical. She openly exhibited these features and delighted in her “favors.”

* * *

When Jacques and Julia arrived the following day, I ushered her into my office. Instead of greeting me, she strolled over to my large windowsill, which was filled with small wicker baskets of forsythia, and without a word, started watering my plants. Again, I was struck by her effrontery, her almost complete disregard for formalities or everyday courtesies.

“I’m into the life of plants. We love plants and animals. Well, maybe not all animals, I suppose.” She chortled at her little joke. “But we’re unlike stupid Christians who hate nature, have you noticed?”

Through the months of our discussions, Julia always insisted that she desired to be in tune with the “natural world” and that was one reason she was a practicing Satanist. She interpreted traditional religion as unnatural and repressed. “My philosophy is this, doc,” she told me. “Indulgence instead of abstinence. Vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams. Vengeance instead of turning the other cheek.” It sounded like her cult’s formulaic motto of sorts, and she even wrote it out for me once.

She liked calling me “doc,” which I took as a good sign. She seemed to trust doctors more than priests. Having heard how she talked to priests, I expected her to treat me the same way. But I think she knew I would call her out on any discourtesy, and, as it turned out, she gave more respect and heed to my views as a physician than to the admonishments of priests, however obviously well-intentioned on their part. She wanted my perspective on, as she called it, this “possession business.”

“I know I’m possessed,” she said. “I space out and then don’t recall what happens. They tell me a voice comes out of me. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. It’s a demon, I’m sure. It’s not Satan. He doesn’t bother himself with small things like that. But it comes from him. Everything is under his control. I have long followed the Master and done everything he wants for years.”

I was struck by the calm and rational way Julia talked about her condition. It wasn’t what I had expected. She stood in front of my office window, staring at the neighboring buildings and surrounding wooded area. I had chosen this office specifically for this view, and I regularly took in the scene, in much the same way Julia seemed to be enjoying it. If I hadn’t known what she was enduring within her spirit, I easily could have mistaken her for one of my usual patients. She struck me as intelligent and in firm control of her emotions. She did not seem to me the unbalanced or limited person I had been suspecting.

I decided to dig a little deeper, hoping she would reveal to me some crucial detail about her story that would allow me to gain a better understanding of her situation and her mental state.

“Why do you think you became possessed?” I asked.

She claimed not to have a clue, which I found odd. “Well, Satan is certainly in charge, so he must have his reasons. But I don’t understand why. And, no, I don’t like it. It’s always unwise to oppose the devil, but I decided to seek help. The cult would hate that, too, so I told them I would infiltrate the church and get any priests I met in trouble. I assume they believe me, but I’m leery and afraid they’ll turn on me. But I just sense I have to get rid of this possession. I heard only priests or ministers can help me. Can psychiatrists? I don’t think so. I’m not crazy, that I know.” I was impressed by her frankness, including about the priests.

She finally sat down in front of my desk, easing into our conversation. I decided to let her talk, which she seemed eager to do. I figured out quickly that she liked the fact that I just listened. In that, she didn’t prove immune to something I’ve observed in my years as a psychiatrist: if you say little, people often tell you everything. Plus, she knew that I was taking her seriously, not charging her a fee, and not automatically assuming she was mentally disturbed or pushing for a hospitalization.

She mentioned that Father Jacques had taken her to a couple of psychologists first. Jacques had told her that in their view no psychological explanation came close to explaining her strange condition. As believers, both agreed she was possessed. She went on to say that Jacques wanted the opinion of a physician, however. She took some glee in telling me that the original “shrinks” were a little scared of her.

“Then he put me on the phone with a Jesuit priest he knew. He seems to know a lot of people, big shots. This priest was also a psychiatrist. I couldn’t stand the guy. He was a real smartass. He said he couldn’t tell me his full opinion over the phone, but he went out of his way to tell me he thought my thinking was ‘off.’ Can you believe the nerve of the guy? Here he was giving me some dim-witted opinion even though he never met me and didn’t know all the facts. Him and his stupid, heavy red curtains.”

“How do you know he has red curtains?” I asked. “You told me you spoke to him over the phone.”

Julia laughed and lit up, visibly excited. With a glimmer in her eyes, she explained that she had some “powers.” One of them, she claimed, was what students of the paranormal call “remote viewing.”

“I can also wreak havoc whenever I want.”

I was learning fast here. My characteristic incredulity faded by the minute, with every new piece of information Julia presented me.

“But I don’t want to get into that now,” she said. “You’ll see soon enough.” She promised to tell me the truth, but she wasn’t ready to tell me everything about her devotion to Satan, or anything about the cult or its leader and participants. “It might be better for you not to know anyway, if you get my drift, doc.”

In my previous conversations with Father Jacques he had assured me that he was positive Julia was involved with a committed group of avowed devil worshippers. I also knew she claimed to be a kind of satanic witch—a claim that still seemed fantastic to me, despite her continued candor. Still, I was starting to believe her story, or rather I wasn’t ruling out its veracity on the basis of this conversation. At least she didn’t give me the impression that she was deluded or simply trying to cause a stir with sensational stories.

She told me she was not some pathetic “loony bird,” as the Jesuit had implied. “He told Father Jacques I should probably be observed in a hospital.” For the first time, Julia got annoyed. “I have never had any need for psychiatric help in my life.”

Despite her growing anger, she said all this with such conviction that I again was surprised by the coherence of her vehement reasoning.

“You won’t do that, will you? Put me in the hospital against my will? Father said you’re more open-minded than most shrinks and have some experience with people like me.”

I told her that I wasn’t in the habit of putting people in the hospital unless they are a danger to themselves or to others. Julia visibly relaxed. (...)

***

Still, if you assume that the best historian of the spiritual states of oppressions and possessions was an exorcist or a theologian, or even a traditional Christian believer, you would be wrong. The classic work of states of oppression and possession throughout world history was written almost a hundred years ago by Traugott K. Oesterreich, a professor from the German town of Tübingen. An agnostic German polymath, Oesterreich became an early believer in parapsychology, a field that also secretly fascinated Freud. The wealth of detail in the voluminous 1966 translation of his work from 1921, Possession: Demoniacal and Other, Among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times, is unmatched. (Author William Peter Blatty read it before writing The Exorcist, deriving a lot of his background material for his fictitious account.)

Like Freud, who wrote in 1923 a famous short monograph on the subject of possession, which he called a “demonological neurosis,” and like many other secular intellectuals of that period, Oesterreich originally considered parapsychological states as emotional disturbances or illnesses, interpreting such conditions as psychiatric in nature. He categorized the trances and aggressive behaviors of possessions as resulting from dissociative states related to inner hostility projected outward as a personification of evil, or as compulsions. Like Freud, he originally interpreted possession cases diagnostically as hysteria, severe neurosis, and psychosis. However, Oesterreich never could explain how such mentally disordered individuals could levitate, possess arcane knowledge, speak or understand foreign languages, or experience many of the other features he cited in the myriad historical cases. Mystified by such observations, he changed his mind. He came to feel the mysterious phenomena to be so inexplicable that he concluded that states of possession must go beyond the natural and material world to reflect “spiritist” (his word) or paranormal realities.

And so, in his magnum opus, Oesterreich concedes that his earlier, more exclusive focus on mental pathology was mistaken and noted that “researchers of scientific standing consider such explanations as unsatisfactory . . . and regard the ‘spiritistic’ hypothesis as valid.” Oesterreich included thousands of accounts of and references to such cases, showing over and over how both anthropologists and historical chroniclers have found ample evidence that these odd states have always existed. Not surprisingly, Oesterreich again and again gives historical citations of many of the phenomena described in this book. For instance, he chronicles voluntary and involuntary possessions and how pagan rituals over the ages typically solicited spirits, thought to be benign, as spirit guides and helpers. But these episodes often turned out badly. Sometimes—as we witnessed in the case of Speedy, the MS-13 member who was expected to solicit hidden knowledge from the spirit world to achieve the group’s evil purposes—these “voluntary” requests backfire and supplicants conclude they were the true victims.

Oesterreich cites hundreds of examples of involuntary possessions across cultures that are remarkably similar to many of the cases for which I have consulted. These include cases involving animist beliefs in Africa, where spirit forces possessed humans, who were then reported to speak various unknown languages or reveal pieces of hidden knowledge. He describes historical Hindu possessions, presumed to occur by the activity of gods and “lesser powers,” but that this thoroughly agnostic scholar remarks bring us “perilously close to belief in demons.” He also gives examples from multiple pagan and non-Western sources of recent history, as well as reports of possession cases that are broadly similar to cases presented in the Christian and Jewish sources he cites, too. He includes accounts within texts from all of the world’s religions.

Some poorly informed modern critics of the reality of states of possession and oppression claim that only credulous members of traditional religious subcultures experience such states. Nothing could be further from the truth, as historical and contemporary accounts regularly attest. In my experience, people with no real religious background who turn to occult practices are among the most frequently attacked by spirits. And because they lack solid spiritual foundations, or “spiritual armor,” they are more mystified about what is happening to them, which makes their liberation from demonic oppressors that much more difficult to achieve. In their desire to have paranormal experiences, they are among those most naïve about a spirit world.

Regardless of time or place, throughout history and diverse secular as well as religious cultures people continue to document the existence of a rich and active spirit world and the very real predatory activity of evil spirits and demons. I witness this continuous and complex diversity of demonic or spirit-related expressions today in people who seek my advice from all over the world.

About the Author

RICHARD E. GALLAGHER, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist, is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York Medical College and a faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Columbia University. He is a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and winner of the Stinnecke Class Prize, a scholarship award in classical Latin and Greek. He trained as resident in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and is in private practice in Valhalla, New York.

Dr. Gallagher is the longest-standing American member of the International Association of Exorcists since its founding in the early 1990s. For a number of years, he served as scientific adviser on its governing council as the only layman and sole psychiatrist. He has also helped train major groups of exorcists in the United States in distinguishing possession cases and other diabolic attacks from medical and psychiatric pathology.

Over the past twenty-five years Dr. Gallagher has consulted for hundreds of ministers, priests, and rabbis (and clergy of other faiths, too) as well as numerous mental health professionals on the subject area of this book. He has published and lectures widely on the topic of diabolic possession from the medical perspective and the critical need to differentiate such very rare cases from the much more common instances of people with mental or medical illness.

None of the above organizations or any other academic or religious institution bears any responsibility for the views expressed or tales recounted in this book. Then again, they haven’t witnessed what he has as a doctor who has seen more such cases than any other physician, and perhaps any other person, in the world.

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