Last Podcast On The Left - Relaxed Fit: Deadly Exorcisms

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

In light of the recent episodes covering Anneliese Michel, this week the boys tackle several other cases of Deadly "Demonic Exorcisms", proving that the Catholics aren't the only ones with blood on their hands in the name of exorcising evil.  Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

A roast as dark as the night, perfect for fueling the cryptid research and mad ravings required for your podcasting. Don't mind the red eyes, he's just trying to warn you of the bridge! The bridge! Finally, from the caffeine-addled brains of Spring Hill Jack Coffee and Last Podcast on the left, we bring you Mothman's Red Eye Blend. Yes, delicious Panama beans, go to lastpodcastmerch.com to order yours today! Hey, what's up everyone? How you doing? Ben Kissel here with Henry Zabrowski. Yes, me, man!

Yeah, bro, Henry Zabrowski is smoking some of that sweet last podcast on the left, babe. Go out there and purchase yourself some. I hope you enjoy it. We have Sativa, we have Indica, and we have a hybrid. And I have to tell you, from my personal experience, they are wonderful. Super tasty, live resin. You really get the delicious, weedy taste, which is what I like. And three different experiences. You go to your local vape store and get it. Absolutely, thank you all so much for supporting the show. We absolutely love you. Can't wait to see you on the road and get that vape, put it in your brain, and have a good time.

And if you want to set your favorite weed store, give them a call and ask for them by name. Last podcast on the left, it's weed. Hail yourselves, everyone! Hail Satan! There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started.

What was that? Man, I spent my whole night. Good old-fashioned hotel night. Hotel, motel. I'm not going to tell them we were staying. No. We're at the holiday, everyone. Yeah, very good. I choked down a bunch of edibles that smoked a huge joint behind the curtain. So that's my new thing. What I do is I hide behind the curtain, I blow smoke into the corner.

Like a Polish vampire? Pretty much. But I was watching competing interviews. One with the CIA spook by the name of John Ramirez, who says, not only was he abducted and milked by Greys, but he also was trusted with some of the deepest, darkest secrets that the CIA has. Wow. You know, that's how it is.

But he was trustworthy, you think? You know, he talked a lot about his butthole for somebody that wasn't necessarily going to start off that day by talking about his butthole, you know what I mean? So that's a person that happens to. You know, we all have butthole news. Oh, of course, we have a lot of butthole news, and I'm ready to talk about it at any point, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to talk about it that day. Absolutely.

See, that's what happens. All right. But then also with this father, I was a professional Vatican exorcist by the name of Vincent Lampert, right, this fucking guy, this little. Lampert. Oh, I hate him. I hate him. And I trust the CIA guy way more than I trust the exorcist.

Yeah. Even though they are arguably the same amount in full of shit. Right. But there's just something about, at least the other guy's talking about his butthole, I can get in on that. That's something we've joined up with. Buttholes. But this guy, I don't, I don't know, I don't know about these fucking Vatican guys.

There's something about him I don't trust. Well, at least with the UFO stuff, like we have the tic-tac videos, we have all of the soft disclosure that's coming out. But with the exorcist, like all we have is the Anna-Lisa Mikkel picture where it's like, it looks like a wisp of smoke, but it's like, eww, it's the devil. It's the devil. It's different. That's how the devil's showing up.

He's not showing up in a fucking like carriage made out of bones with Bonnie James Dio as the fucking Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer with the front of it. That's how the devil shows up. Welcome to the last podcast of the Left Everyone. I am Ben, hanging out with Henry and Marcus. We're on the road recording live in Bruminum, Alabama. It's great to be here with you. You can really sense the history here.

It was like a good night last night. I danced a little bit. There was a dance floor. It illuminated on the ground. People were getting down to some Faith Hill. Nice. And some other kind of country music. You fucking lived the sun and law life last night.

Two step, a three step, a roll around. Wait a second. Giselle, you were line dancing last night? I mean, I watched people do it. Yeah. That was great. That's sadder than sitting in the back of the strip club. All right.

Today's episode, we're going to do a little bit more of a tiptoe around the tulip when it comes to the devil. Yeah. We're going to talk about deadly. We're going to talk about deadly exorcisms. No, it's a good reference. Tiny Tim was insidious. Like, yeah.

Oh, very much so. Yeah. Because if anybody was possessed, it was that man. Was he ever committed? Was he ever accused of crimes? No, he married a beautiful woman on television. And then he died on stage, right? Yeah.

Something like that. Sweet. Cool, man. I like Tiny Tim. He just seemed kind of like a weirdo. He was a weirdo. But honestly, no. But like in the truest sense, he was actually a weirdo.

He wasn't like Brian Warner. Yes. Tiny Tim was born a weirdo. Tiny Tim had personality problems. He didn't even believe that. That was Tiny Tim. So in our series on Anna-Lisa Mikkel, I made a statement that death by exorcism is rare. And while I stand by that statement, further research into the subject to show me that

actually, death by Catholic exorcism is rare. OK. Or at least if it does happen, it's more successfully covered up. Well, they're fucking bullshit. It sounds like you're working in a corporate office when you're dealing with the Catholic version of exorcism. It requires a lot of checks and balances. Each one more horseshit than the next because it is still somebody kind of making it up.

And when it comes down to it, Vincent Lampert talks about the four signs you're supposed to go through, like the idea of like, show of excess of physical strength. Not being able to know things that they're not supposed to know, knowing a language that they're not supposed to know. And then also like, being a diversion to holy objects, all of which in a way can be faked by someone who's a good character actor, especially if they roll up on a Henry Zabrowski. Absolutely. I know what's going to come out of my mouth because they don't know the ancient language

of Zip Zaps Up. The old improv tongue. As it seems, things mostly get messy when the amateurs get involved. What's most troublesome about this, though, is that many cases of death by exorcism are relatively recent, with most cases going off the rails in the 21st century. So the question here is why? Yeah, because we know the how, which is they squeeze you like a toothpaste tube. We're going to get to.

Nice. Although it seems like it's an urban legend, exorcisms did indeed skyrocket in both Europe and America after the wide release of the exorcist. He as a representative of the Catholic Church said in the movie, exorcism was once indeed a rare right, especially in the 20th century. And most people at the time, it was something that most churches didn't really talk about. It fell in a disfavor and it became known as an ancient technique. It's something that we don't do anymore, especially with the rise of various sects of Christianity,

especially the Catholic Church, trying to remain relevant. So like they're trying to show me like, no, we're introducing science. We're doing all of this. But the exorcist, I think, in a way, kind of like how meth adds a certain amount of sexiness to your life. Like a drama. Like salt. It adds a little flavor. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an epsom salt that you put on your food and it makes you sick, right? You're getting something different. I think in a way, the exorcist almost looked dramatic and interesting. Absolutely. Well, and be careful what you consume because, of course, after the film Stripes came out, military recruitment went through the roof. And it wasn't like it's in Stripes.

It's not like the movie because then the movie never ends because it's now your life. Not at all. I mean, this is something that we're definitely seeing nowadays where people see something that is fiction. They consume a lot of entertainment and they start to believe that they are living in a movie or at the very least they want so badly to live in a nice, clean narrative. Look at Elon Musk. He's trying to become Tony Stark. He wants to be Iron Man.

I don't even think it's trying. It's a deliberate attempt to go the fuck it, but he's making it. You just gave the definition of trying. You know what I mean? He is doing it. I know what I mean. Well, after the success of the exorcist in 1973, people began blaming demons for personal problems with all the intensity and fervor of a medieval era villager, all because the exorcist

still to this day feels real, even plausible. But exorcism was not just a religious fad that faded out by the end of the decade. Like, remember those dudes in the late 90s that used to wear those fucking, like, fishing hooks on their caps? Yeah, they look stupid. Yeah, that's right. Because they, and when I would ask them, they're like, well, because Jesus was a fisher of men.

Oh, you're talking about... You are bringing... Put the bandaid back on. Put the bandaid back on. But also, fishers of men just sounds like he's luring dudes into a trailer to suck their dick, even though, like, they didn't know they were gay before going in there. Instead of fainting out, exorcism has increased exponentially since the exorcist. But simply, the more that exorcisms are performed, the more people hear about exorcisms.

And the more people hear about them, the more people believe that demons are real. And since more people believe demons are real, more exorcisms get performed. And the cycle goes on and on. It's a vicious cycle. Honestly, it is a vicious cycle. I was having a conversation two days ago about, like, the idea of social media and, like, the new, like, hot take things on true crime. Like, you know, like, trying to reestablish the men and his brother's innocence and all

that kind of stuff where it's like, what people are seeing is massive posts on social media that get a lot of play and get a lot of attention and likes and stuff. And so, in their minds, they think, oh, this must be validated at some point. Like, oh, this must... There must be some basis of truth if so many people are watching and liking this. When it's just been like, no, you could just have a great set of boobies, male or female, and puts you to the top of the algorithm. And you say it in a certain way.

You say it in a certain fervor because you also have to cut through all the noise, right? So it's being as controversial as possible is what allows you to get to the top of the heap of the fucking algorithm. And then you are now perpetuating the same cycle because you believe someone's saying something just because they said it on the fucking Internet like we used to believe Walter Cronkite. Absolutely. And of course, we added our contribution to the new true crime with Jodi Arias' butthole. We brought that.

We brought that to the center stage. People have really seemed to enjoy it. And I think Jodi would appreciate it. I think that Jodi does appreciate it. Well, additionally, after the Exorcist was released, books written by men who claim to have performed actual exorcisms became bestsellers, giving the phenomenon of demon possession a sense of reality. HIFT.

These stories hit especially hard with people who are already looking for something to blame when America became an unstable, highly violent serial killer, ridden hellhole during the 70s. It's a good way to explain it. Why are all these guys fucking eating all these dudes? Oh, it must be the Davies. I mean, it's lead poisoning. It's lead.

It's the lead and the lead of gasoline. And now this was good, though, dude. The music was good. My favorite music ever is in the 1970s. We're in a time of great instability, and I think people feel it the same way, where it's just like we have this vague superflu going on, which seems to be evident. So it seems like the hand of God, because it's an invisible force that's fucking with everything, and people can't wrap their brains around it,

which is also like we have a very real phenomenon also going on with the mass shooter epidemic that's also going on in our country. And it's weird, I think that people that also equate it as to acts of the devil as well. Well, it's like acts have got like, you know, a plague is an act of God, you know, mass shooters, violence, that's an act of the devil. So people can look and they can... But what kills more? The plague.

See? Yeah. There you go. Now, the most famous exorcist author was an Irish Catholic priest named Malachi Martin, who wrote an honestly fun, bizarre, and convincing book called Hostage to the Devil, which we covered many, many, many years ago. I think he was like... Hostage to the devil.

Can I just get one more Salisbury steak devil? I know it's Tuesday and I'm not supposed to get more than one. I'm telling you, you're becoming more of a customer than a hostage. I love to see the smile on all your divings. The gist of Hostage to the Devil, as I remember, was that Martin told tales of five exorcisms he either personally performed or participated in, including, I think I remember there was an NYU student who had kind of dabbled in the counterculture,

and there was also, I definitely remember, a guy who got attached to a demon while he was astrally projecting. This is the Catholic version of what that father was talking about. This is a Catholic spiritual version of you dress that way, you deserve it, where he said, like, you've opened up a hook to the devil. Yeah. Like, he'll raise her. Yeah.

I mean, this is his point again and again. Like many of his LQs, scare tactics to keep people in line with the Catholic Church wanted to keep people going to twice weekly mass in the 1960s and 1970s. Taking that money. Yeah, dude. The Catholic, the attendance at mass dropped precipitously, so you got to use something to get people back in the fucking seats. Yeah.

Free chicken nuggets. Honestly, that would help. That would have worked. Pay rent in people's houses or something. Oh, did you want the Eucharist with guac? Thank you. That costs extra. That's a meme.

That's a shirt I've seen. But the point is that hostage to the devil was convincing even as someone like me, who doesn't believe in an eternal battle between God and the devil, so I can only imagine what type of impact it had on people who truly believed in the presence of demons on earth. Fortunately, it gives them gasoline. Yeah. It gives them ready to go.

Yeah. Because, you know, again, you get to go to arms. That's great for Deborah. It's good cosplay. You know, like Deborah, who will give you a one star if you forgot to put napkins in the bag with the delivery. You know what I mean? Deborah can't wait to physically fight the devil.

Hand to hand. Yeah, they do tend to be petty, don't they? The biggest problem with this, though, is that after a while, exorcism began to leak outside of the Catholic Church. Eventually, the Protestant sex of Christianity, specifically the more fundamentalist ones, began blaming demons and the devil for behavior that they either didn't understand or just plain didn't like. And since Protestantism allows for an anything goes DIY approach to the Christian God,

a lot of people joined in on the exorcism game with no real idea of what they were doing. And as a result, a lot of people died. I told you, I don't need an exorcist, man. These are just djinko jeans. They're just djinkos. I promise you. Taper jeans. Taper jeans.

Oh, man. It seems as if this child has been possessed by a demon called the Great Malinko. Now that we know his name, they say it again and again and again. Why are you giving us such power over you, demon? So today, we're going to cover a few of these cases of deadly exorcism, starting with the murder of a 49-year-old Australian woman named Joan Volmer, who was killed in a small town called Antwerp, population 63, located hundreds of miles northwest of Melbourne. One thing that a lot of these stories have in common is very far away from large city centers.

Always. They're isolated. Except for one. There's only one that's in a major city. Agrarian. But Joan Volmer is also the same exact name as the woman that William S. Burroughs killed. His wife, his quote-unquote common law wife, which is weird. Yeah, his wife.

Yeah, it was... You've never heard this story. William S. Burroughs, he had gone down to Mexico with his wife. Well, he ran out. He was running from heroin charges. Yeah. And also maybe molestation charges. I'm not sure.

He was a poet. He liked... I don't think I understand. He was a poet. He liked boys. He did. But they were getting fucking trashed in a bar, and William S. Burroughs was always armed and he told his wife,

put a fucking glass on your head and I'll shoot it off. And he just blew her fucking brains out. Joan apparently was also suicidal and knew William Burroughs couldn't shoot for shit. Apparently, that's like one thing to be like, this is the way I'll get it done. Just use a Nerf gun next time. Or just like throw something. I just thought it was an odd coincidence.

Yeah, it was a very strange coincidence. Interesting, okay. William Burroughs' life met a brutal end after a four-day exorcism in 1993. According to Joan Volmer's pig farmer husband, Ralph, Joan had been acting strangely in the months leading up to the exorcism. I can eat my own pussy. Look at me eating my own pussy. Well, I thought you said she was acting strangely.

I'd be fun though. The behavior began with Joan lurching and dancing around outside, flailing her arms and swearing loudly to nobody in particular. You mean tell-tale signs of Tourette syndrome, possibly some form of epilepsy. I thought you were going to say tell-tale signs of a pig farmer's wife. It's hard to be under that much man. It is. To me, this sounds like a brain tumor.

She was 49 years old. She started showing... You hear about... Behavioral changes. Yeah, behavioral changes, like just very bizarre behavior. I mean, in Ralph's words, she began acting, quote, like a prostitute. But honestly, you know, Kissel. If a sex worker's acting like that, you're going to have a hard time booking her, right?

Like if she is just like... Yeah, but it's his wife. Yeah, I mean, you know... I think she just wanted to have sex with him. I think that she also was... She could have been looking for attention. I have no idea. It seriously sounds like a brain tumor.

Yes. There's like that hypersexualization sometimes happens. She might be rubbing her mound on stuff. It might be, yeah. And after that, Ralph actually claimed that his wife took on both the physical forms of a pig and a dog. This man is just... He's fantasizing.

It sounds like the seven-year-inch. I remember that scene when Marilyn Monroe turns into a pig dog. And he also said that she took on the personality of a sheep shearer. Yes. Although I don't know what the personality of a sheep... I don't think the man has a lot of different things to compare things to. Yeah, he's a pig farmer in very rural Australia. So maybe a pig farmer looks down on a sheep shearer, like they are rough around the edges.

Maybe. So instead of looking for signs of what sounds like either a stroke or a brain tumor, I mean, remember she's 49, Ralph took it upon himself to exercise his wife of the demons that he became convinced were plaguing her day and night. And then this is the thing where he's like, I'm saving her, which you begin... Then you don't understand that if you said the words out loud to a normal human being, you'd sound like Bill Paxton's character from Frailty. Where it's like you sound like a serial killer.

Yeah. Right. It's a good movie. Now first, Ralph just locked his wife in the basement. See what that did. See, maybe that'll change stuff. See what that did. Yeah, you know it is. Maybe we should love it.

It's like I'm saying this is all like this is DIY, make it up as you go along exercise. Great. But eventually, Ralph moved her to the bedroom and tied her to the bed frame. When none of this had any effect, Ralph called his neighbor a woman named Leanne Reichenbach. Together, they decided to call a local 78 year old spiritual leader of the fundamentalist stripe named Leah Clugston. Yeah, you're right. Clugston's coming for the devil.

I believe that. But since Clugston was so goddamn old, we also saw this in the Annalisa Mikkel series. She decided to participate in this right via telephone. Yeah, man, always, always fucking zoom it in. Especially with the devil. You don't want to be in the same room as theirs. But if you're incredibly old, it seems like a kind of a lazy approach to an exorcism, just kind of phoning in there like you're calling C-span to say, ba-ba-boo-ee, ba-ba-boo-ee.

It's like also, we also weirdly the equivalent of like having a passenger land the plane. Yeah, right. She literally phoned it in with Clugston on the line. Leanne and Ralph surmise that Joan was beset by no less than 10 demons. Oh, how'd they get to that number? Yeah, you know, they had a round of them. Yeah, they counted. She farted nine times.

It was probably like seven, and they were like, would you say 10 for this one? Just round it up, yeah. Well, after identifying the enemy, they untied Joan from the bed and seated her in a chair on the opposite side of the room for a prayer session. But when Joan struggled against the intensity of their prayer, Leanne and Ralph figured the demons might again be gaining the upper hand. So they tied her to a chair with her own stockings. For four days, Joan was given neither food nor water. And any time she tried to sleep or even close her eyes, Ralph and Leanne would pry them open so God could better confront the demons.

This is my thing. Well, that's not right. If God could already confront the demons right here, why doesn't he just do it? You're asking logic. Why didn't he just do it? You're doing that like 13-year-old thing, like the 13-year-old thing. Well, if God is actually powerful. Correct, though.

Well, I mean, it is a good question. That's correct. They are sometimes. Yeah. I mean, there's no logic with any of this. Yeah, of course. Because they're all like, just doing this DIY shit, they're just figuring like, logically, if she closes her eyes, because they're trying to find some way in.

Because they believe so hard. They got a clockwork orange approach to it. I think at this point, she's pretty pissed that she's being tied to a chair with her socks. Which is why she is freaking out. Wolves socks, too. That's probably pretty itchy. So none of this had any effect. They called a fourth neighbor.

A doctor, no? No. 28-year-old man named Dave. Dave's coming. Dave can actually stop. Dave's coming. We actually need a 28-year-old man here. Dave might be able to help.

Yeah, Dave Klinger. Dave Klinger. Great. Normal dude. Yeah. After very little convincing, Klinger joined in and tied Joan up tighter with even more socks. Yeah, I'm getting dead. And we get down my fucking tire up with tighter than whatever you can do.

And oh, you know what I'll do? I'm gonna tie a feat to her fucking head. The thing is, if we keep a boho on a vagina open, the devil can crawl his way out. He slapped her face, slapped her around in order to quote-unquote, summon the demons. Well, that's why the Catholic priest was saying, is that you have to make the point of the beginning of the exorcism right, is to provoke the demons' behavior.

Yeah. Right? So you're supposed to go out, foul a demon, and then spritz water in its face. Yeah. Because it gets a cat. Then you're supposed to make the demon go come out, and that's when you can get it. Yeah. But they didn't have it.

There wasn't even a church in that town. So all of these people are just making it up as if we don't have holy water. Let's just fucking slap her. But on the other hand, I don't know what they were supposed to... I don't know what they expected if the demons actually showed up, because they're just making it up as they go along. Right. With Klinger as the ringleader, this group of God's warriors tortured Joan for three straight days.

Oh my God. Until they were convinced that they'd exercised Joan of all the demons, except two that Ralph described as, quote, strong male evil spirits. Ooh. Yeah, but then I guess it was just her just arguing back and forth in the various voices of the whack pack. I guess so.

But since those two demons proved to be a little sticky, they brought in the big guy. Uh-oh. 23-year-old guy. Okay. This guy. Named Matt Nooski. Matt Nooski can do it.

He wore his offensive lineman gear. You can see him walking in with a football helmet right there. I can put it to the top. Nooski came highly recommended by his mother. Yeah, because she said, he's good at it. Yeah, he's good at it. She told Ralph that Matthew had the God-given ability to exercise demons, even though he'd never actually done it or even tried it.

Great. Yeah. You just knew. Yeah. She just knew. Yeah. She had a trophy generation we're talking about. Well, I guess so.

Yeah. So, working on Instinct, Nooski tried flanking the demons. Everyone else, they're going straight forward. He's doing the flank. Wow, he went the flank route. Yeah. You know how he did it? He told the ever-growing God squad to destroy all of Joan's possession.

Yeah, that's a great idea. This is so fun for her. Yeah, they fucking, they destroyed, she had a greenhouse. They destroyed it with a hammer. Right in front of her makes a lot of sense. They destroyed all of her favorite shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And I guess who is the one possessed again? Well, because they thought. This woman. They thought that all of her stuff was also infected with demon energies. The demon got into the greenhouse. Yeah. And he's in the glass. And he's in all the plants.

Yeah. They destroyed all that. They got to burn all her clothes. They got to burn her PS4. Oh, my God. It is all over. You got to leave the mattress outside with a bag on it. Nooski then wrapped the house, the whole house with seven layers of clink.

Layers of cling wrap. They just brought in a dumber dude. Each person in the story just got dumber and dumber and dumber. And then this guy's like, we got to fucking syran seal this whole thing. Let's make it, let's make it like a sandwich. Yeah. He believes that this would prevent demons from entering the house. Further demons from entering the house.

That's a really smart thing. Yeah. They couldn't get through the cling, the cling wrap. Yeah. They certainly don't have a pair of scissors. Yeah. Now I'm going to do it, if it keeps the demons out, isn't it going to also keep the demons in? Yep.

Yeah. It could. Or what about the roof? I am certain. They might not have Christmas this year. I am certain to think that not a lot of planning went into this. Yeah. I mean, enough.

Seems like a lot. Some did. Well, there's a lot of, in the moment. Yeah. I just don't know where they got all that cling wrap. Yeah. With the groundwork layered. Seriously.

Yeah. There's a lot of layers. Yeah. Laurel in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Like the forest of Australia. I guess you got to send a runner. I don't know.

I don't know. I think that's the outback. Wow. Yes, indeed. Well. With the groundwork laid, Nooski tried what everyone else had tried, which was just beaten this poor woman. He punched her in the head, slammed her into walls, but finally he was struck with a revelation.

The path to salvation, Nooski believed, would be to sit on Joan Volmer to physically squeeze the demons out. Oh my God. It is just the dumbest calamity of all time in this poor woman. We will cover another story again as we go through this, and there is a weird biblical precedent that I'll bring up then, but it doesn't make any fucking sense at all. And to their delight, sitting on Joan seemed to have some effect. Yeah.

She didn't like it. Yeah. She hated it. Yeah. Of course. So figuring that this was the key to the whole thing, they moved Joan to the bedroom and all sat on her at the same time. I mean, I've seen some of these on many vids, and the way they arrived, this isn't fucking

cake farts. No. There's no one's birthday here. Well, starting at her stomach, they each used their butts to move their weight up her body in an attempt to force the demons out of Joan's mouth. Kissel has paid for this. Yeah. This is the single dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Ever. It's toothpaste. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Using their butts. Yeah. It's just, it's just so Australian, by the way.

The only thing that's accomplished, however, was the death of Joan Volmer. Yeah, man. You can't butt scoot your way to God. No. You know what I mean? That's what Wendy does on the carpet, but then it kills a woman. She had a heart attack as her thyroid cartilage was crushed by four backwoods Australians, and she died hissing and frothing as her last breath came out as a pained groan.

But even though they were obviously responsible for her death, they thought that maybe, just maybe, they had enough faith in the Lord stored up where they could resurrect Joan Volmer. This is going to work. Dumber. It gets dumber. Okay. But honestly, the vibe seemed to have been she died, and then there was like a moment

of silence where like she'd given up, and then the moron, head moron Nuski was like, guys, you think that this was a, this is part of the plan. Yeah. Like, yes, no good. Now we got her where we want her. And they're all like, she's dead. And he's just like, ha, ha, ha, exactly. Exactly.

Perfect. So they prayed over Joan's crushed corpse for two days as it lay. How'd it go? It just rotted. Yeah, man. And rotted. It just rotted. Eventually they called up Leah Clugson, the 78 year old spiritual leader.

Sure. They stepped off her ass and traveled to Ralph's home to see how she could help. This is long out of the cars, the cows are already out of the barn. Yeah, I did. Clugson also tried praying Joan back to life, but when Joan stayed dead, did she call a doctor? I don't know. Did she call the police?

No idea. Called the local Baptist minister. It is another guy. Another guy in the next town. Always outsourced. Yeah. The minister who presumably wasn't told that Joan was already dead, he arrived to find all five of them calmly eating lunch near Joan's rapidly decaying, fly-covered corpse

on a day where the mercury reached 104 degrees. Literally, it's just like ding-dong and then it comes in and you're like, oh, you want some lunch? You know, we're doing it. It's just like, literally, there was a actively rotting corpse. Which must smell at this point. And he's also being like, don't they think, even if we did happen to bring Joan back to life, she's going to be a mess.

She's going to be a zombie. Like if she comes back half-rodded and stuff, and then she's going to be like, dang, I feel so much better now. It's nice to have you here a little, Niki. Thinking clearly, that was pretty good. Thinking clearly and logically, that movie would have been so much better if you hadn't used that voice. I like the movie.

The voice ruined the movie. It was great, but the voice was terrible. I do too. It was great. Hugh B. Halloween. He also did a silly voice, which also worked. For me, I like it. Yeah.

Well, it was a silly voice. A silly voice is fine. It was just the wrong voice. Yeah, it was. Well, thinking clearly and logically, the minister called a doctor who then called the cops. Yes, finally the cops. Oh, here we go. You have a fucking dead woman.

Where? And they're like, no, don't worry. You just need to come and help us bring her back to life. And he's like, come here. Just give me a second. Okay. I'm going to put you on hold. Seriously.

When the press started circulating this bizarre story, Ralph Valmer gleefully invited the media to Jones funeral to witness her resurrection. Oh, no. This euphoric declaration was repeated to the police who were told that Joan would vouch for their actions when she returned to the land of the living. She might. If she did come back, she might be like, I just want to give a big shout out to Husky. He believed it.

The whole time he was punching me, I was thinking, I love this down 50 grand in blackjack and making 50 grand back. It's like, you're just the negative. You're still at zero. But when Joan again stayed dead, everyone involved, except Leah Clugston, were charged with manslaughter. You know what saved her life? Telecommunication.

Honestly, she was smart. Her laziness saved her. But in an infuriatingly light sentence, the judge reasoned that since all these people truly believed that they were doing the right thing, he only gave the outside participants four months while Ralph Vollmer got no jail time at all. He lost his wife. He did. But I would also say this is where.

He killed his wife. He killed his own wife. He lost kills. That's like saying the Menendez brothers lost their parents. Where are they? Where are they? Where did they go? It is interesting, though, because I think we've talked, this has been coming up a lot.

We've been talking about inside stories a little bit. We've even talked about a little bit on last podcast even more so about the idea of sympathy for the moronic. Great people that are genuinely very stupid. The problem with this man is that there is that vibe where like up to he was so like boggly. I dumb about this whole thing. And he truly did believe that all of this would work out, even though they tortured his

wife for a week together as a group, like he was locked locked in much like Annalisa Mikkel's family. We're like this idea of like, no, now I'm dug in. Now this is the only way that we're going to work our way out of this situation. And he also just was just irrevocably stupid. Yeah. And he couldn't. And so I think the judges were way more apt to look at you being like they're doing the

fucking former president's defense of like, you know, the ignorance means he couldn't be fucking. He didn't break the law. Too dumb to do something wrong. Yeah. Let's see the same thing. They only do that, though, when there's God involved. They only do that when it's like, oh, no, he they exercised her to death.

Oh, no. But it's like if someone makes a dumb decision of like, you know, fucking Robin, a drunk driving, yeah, Robin, a convenience store or something like that, then the hell no, that's the book. Because then it would, it would also look like they were using the court to say something about the wrongness of the religious ritual. Yeah. And you would have to acknowledge that exorcism isn't real and that what you're doing wasn't

real. They just killed this woman out of sheer ignorance, which was, I think, difficult, which I also don't know why I believe in alien abduction, but I don't believe in exorcism. Maybe it's just because one's done by Staten Friedman, who I trust with my life. One's talked about my, you know, your father's, you know, don't forget, though, she, you know, in his mind, she was a dog pig. Yes. Which is also a shame.

Isn't that sad? Yeah. He remarried, moved to Queensland, lived the rest of his days convinced that he'd done the right thing. And I'm going to do it again. I hope not. I hope not. I hope not.

Now, the deadly exorcism scene stayed quiet for about 10 years. But when the millennium turned, the leftover apocalyptic feelings from Y2K needed an outlet. I remember that. Oh yeah. And it seems that those feelings were released through an increase in demonic activity. In 2002, a 19 year old boy living in London, Ontario, named Walter Zepeda, died during an exorcism led by his father and a member of his church. Walter was strapped to a chair, denied food and water, and prayed over.

But when nothing changed by the third day, the crew brought in their reverend. He joined in. And after six days, Walter died of dehydration. Every single time these guys bring in some water, but honestly, every single time these guys bring in their closer, these people die. Yeah. Like I don't really understand why these guys come in. It's like, what's it like?

It's like within the pitching like a baseball pitcher. Yeah. You're supposed to win. You're supposed to win. But then they just seem to lose all the time. Well, I mean, if you look at the numbers, there is actually, I mean, they say thousands of exorcisms are done every single year now. No, according to that stupid father I was watching the whole time, he was just like,

and how many times does God win 99% of these demons just give in? And it's just like a weird thing of like, are the demons that strong men when they just like literally like, he was like talking about how like he made a demon say the Hail Mary like prayer where it's like, he asked it to say the Hail Mary prayer and then it went, Hail Mary. I just think that person understood like, I'm not going to fuck this thing going to end until I say yes and yeah, right. What seems like they treat demon, it seems like they treat demons as like particularly

like dangerous vermin. Yeah. Like if you don't like, if you like a nutria, yeah, if you let them, well, the nutrients aren't dangerous. They're just big and creepy. I was told they're dangerous by David Tells and Somnia. Maybe they are, I mean, I'm sure if you have like 8,000 Nutrias like fucking running through Lafayette, Louisiana, then yeah, you're going to have a problem.

Yeah. A million rats will consume the human body in a very short period of time. Just 10 rats. I mean, they're scary. But you know, the parents in this, in the case of Walters of Peta, neither them nor the church showed any signs of remorse when Walter died because they believe that Walter's death returned him to Jesus. This is the problem.

That's a problem. The problem is it's just this still idea of like we're kicking the can to the heaven side of things and don't understand like, no, you just killed a boy. Like you just killed a little boy. He's got to give him some water. Yeah. Like heaven's not real. Yeah.

Like he's not going anywhere. Well, Burpo said it is real. Oh, wow. Burpo also recanted and said the whole thing was bullshit. Well, Burpo lied once or twice. I don't know. But this didn't stop the court from sentencing both men to a better but still paltry four years in prison.

Okay. Tragically though, exorcism is not just something performed on adults. In 2003, in Milwaukee, actually, really, an eight year old autistic boy named Terrence Cottrell died during church when members of his congregation attempted to all heal him at the same time. I was reading an interesting article on this story. So what happened was is that he was an autistic, he was very young, he was very young. Yeah.

He was beginning to exhibit the sort of behavioral symptoms of autism where he was kind of out of control and his parents didn't really know what to do with him. This is 2003. They should have a little bit more information than. And a woman saw them together at a grocery store and a woman says like, you need to come to my church where we can fix him. Not like the women searching for you, Kissel, like we can go and like you will heal his autism.

Yeah. And so they brought him into this. It's a church in a strip mall. This place. Church in a strip mall. The church in a strip mall. Oh my goodness. The temple church of the apostolic faith.

You can go to Gadzooks. Did you praise him? Go to Gadzooks. A little bit. And they, they had this idea like he, they use this concept of when an evil spirit comes out of a man. This is a biblical quote. When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and

does not find it. And so their idea is that you physically make it impossible for the demon to exist inside this body. So it has to come out and it dies in the air. Well, this is the whole concept of laying hands. Sure. Like this is a big, big, this is a big deal in the four square church back home. Fun stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a dig. I can see a glimmer of memory in your eye. Well, I remember the first time I ever got pushed over because you just kind of push you over. And I, I was like, maybe 11 years old and I opened my eyes and then I just looked right up a woman's skirt.

Yeah. And you're like, that was the first memory deep inside. Yeah. Well, answering a call from the pastor, the congregants in this church formed a circle around the boy and lightly placed their hands upon them or so they claimed. They said they lightly placed their hands upon them. And concerning the pressure though, the forensics told a different story. Oh my.

At the end of the prayer session, a churchgoer noticed that the boy wasn't breathing. Oh my God. By the time the EMT showed up, the boy was dead of mechanical asphyxiation from massive chest compression. Everyone knows as an eight year old, if you're going to die like that, it needs to be at a Michael Jackson concert. At least has to be like to the soundtrack of like beat it. Yeah.

Something fun. What a horrible tragedy for this young man. Like Reverend had laid his whole body on top of him towards the end. So he was humanly panicking. But it's weird because also they, I have, I saw the, there's that idea, I guess that in certain types of things with people, autistic, autistic people may be having freakouts. There's like that one idea that you pin them to the ground, which is like also it sounds like a terrible idea to just randomly do.

Like roll them up in the blanket or something like that. I don't know if we should always be handling these people like they're disruptive members of a flight. You know what I mean? Like the, but he completely crushed his body and it's a deal of pushing the demons out, which makes, it makes no sense. It's just a trillion story. Yeah.

Makes no sense at all. And it's not the last one we'll discuss. But to be fair, it isn't just Christians who kill during exorcisms. It also happens with fair regularity in the Islamic faith, although they don't call the villains in their stories demons. I'm sure many of our listeners know they call them gins. Oh, yes. I've heard that.

Actually where we get the word genie. Oh, no kidding. But now we know like, you know, and it's, I think gins are a lot of time portrayed as evil genies. But the thing is that genies as a whole are actually mischievous mystical race as well. Yeah. Right. Because their idea is like, you know, you're speaking as if they're real.

Oh, you never know. How do you think I got here? I have an idea. Like, I remember that when Marcus and I, we found that hidden little, that chalice that we wrote. And you read me. Yeah. Yes.

You're turning blue, Henry. Oh my God. So in 2014, a 17 year old in Palestine named Isra Zorub died after a so-called therapist at an Islamic medical clinic, thought that the shortcut to solving Isra's mental problems would be what else but an exorcism. Get this man. No. An exorcism.

No, it's not like the parents brought Isra to the clinic looking for medical help and the staff just took it upon themselves to take things in a demonic direction. Rather, the mother had brought Isra to the clinic specifically because Isra had been hearing strange noises and more importantly, words of religious renunciation. I mean, this, what seems also to be a major through line of all of these stories is they are all true believers and they are looking for it. Yeah. Now, the therapist in question was a sheik named Abu Harith.

He conducted the exorcism chiefly by force feeding Isra saltwater, which it could have gone so good if it was ravioli. Yeah. I mean, obviously, but then you become even worse Mario Batali. That's what happened to him. That's an exorcism. Exorcism by pasta. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, he's tweaking everybody's gnocchis.

The saltwater. You guys really need to find a new reference. I think about it more. This is my God. Every day, every week, it's like, how are they going to fucking force Mario Batali into this one? It's not every week, but also, I miss Bama. I miss him.

It's either in the show or on the stage. It's one of the two. I wish he wasn't criminal. Well, there we go. So back to the saltwater market. Yeah. Of course, saltwater is deadly. Of course.

And he did all this while he read verses from a book that did not sound like they came from the Quran. I mean, most likely this was like the Islamic exorcism grimoire, a lot like the Catholic rites of major exorcism. After forcing Isra to drink a liter of saltwater, the sheikh said that the spirit would be flushed out by the salt mixture. Nope. Nothing, of course, was flushed out except Isra's pulse.

Oh, no. And she soon died of asphyxiation. For our next story. These are great stories. This is not. This is a listicle that I love. Honestly, it's not. These are sad stories more often than not, but it's like as you go through, like it's

more about you. It's interesting how they cross over from culture to culture. Yeah. And it does happen all over the world. Like exorcisms are a part of the human condition. Absolutely. And I do believe that up to a point, they are big like what we said, how 99% don't result in death.

Right. And I guess on some level, they do work like you do can you can, I guess, fix problems of a spiritual nature by offering a spiritual solution. I don't really think so. But you know what I mean? Like for certain people itself, hypnotism. Maybe. Perhaps.

Yeah. I mean, really, I mean, it comes mostly from, you know, religions that had their start in the Middle East. You know, like the, you know, in the Jewish faith, you have the divot Abrahamic religions. Yeah. The Abrahamic religions. That's what I meant to say. Yeah.

Abrahamic. Yeah. Oh, no. There's Shinto. There's Shinto exorcisms. And there are like there. I believe that pretty much there's a type of exorcism for every single belief system except for like.

I don't know. Confucianism. Calaton. I think Calaton doesn't yet have exorcism. Does Buddhism have exorcism? I don't think Buddhism has exorcisms. Well, we'll get some emails. Side stories, L-P-O-T.

Yeah. Yeah. Let us know. Please. I'd love to know. Now for our next story. Let's head down to Belize. Belize.

Beautiful country. Isn't that where McAfee, that was where he was hiding now, where he murdered a couple of people. Mm-hmm. Fantastic documentary on him. By the way. Forgiving country. It was to him.

All right. Okay. Well, there, I tried. I mean, he was dead. He did have an un-quiet mind, essentially. He did. Yes, he did. He's in charge of all of our security.

Not anymore. No, he sold that company. Yeah. Thank God. Well, in Belize, a 22-year-old named Jacqueline Sanchez was killed in 2015 after she played with that ever-present artifact of possession, the Ouija board. Yo, don't even get me going on that Ouija board, the one we had in high school that, you know, Milton Bradley has blood on their hands, because I will tell you one thing,

man, it's pretty trippy. My goal is to, I want to do say-ons real bad, I want to do a big official one. You better be fucking careful, bro. But we will get to it. I will do it. We have to sign a contract before you do that. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, we're going to have to, yeah. It's got an insurance policy. You don't want to share a third of the company with Pazuzu? Come on. Well, Jacqueline's family claimed that she'd been a perfectly normal person prior to her dalliance with this most evil game. And afterward, she suffered from a myriad of mysterious illnesses marked by convulsions and hysteria.

These convulsions lasted for months. And finally, presumably after doctors could do nothing with their limited resources, she was taken to the Pentecostal Church of San Ignacio de Velasco, so the evil spirits could be cast out. She died during the exorcism ritual due to cardiac arrest, which, as we see, is a common way for people to die during these rites. I think mostly it's they are exhausted. There comes from physical exhaustion of doing it for days on end, not allowing them to sleep.

And then I think a lot of times, by the time they've gotten to this point, whatever it appears to be, the phenomenon, like it is almost like a wasting disease, almost like a chronic pain disorder type thing, where they're very weak by the time they arrive. And so I feel like a lot of times these people just give out. Or she might have been crushed. I couldn't find a lot. I couldn't find a lot of details on this story, but yeah, I just know she died of a heart attack and she died of a heart attack and she was 22 years old, so shit did not

go well. John Daly is still alive. Yes, John Daly's still alive, seriously. John Madden's still alive. Is Madden still around? Yeah, I think that he is, because they're just a special... We wouldn't know if he died. The cheeseburger flags across this great country of ours would be at half mass.

Yeah, John Madden, 85 year young. Oh, so 85? Yeah. Only 85, yeah. Olivia DeHavilland just died like last year. Oh, holy shit. I don't know who that is, but that's all right. Old ass actress.

Great. Yeah. Bob Dole is technically still alive somewhere. I can believe that they saved his brain. But with Jekyll and Sanchez, unlike most of the stories in this episode, no one was charged in her death. And in fact, the investigating body said that she died of natural causes in the throes of a trance.

This perhaps shows more than anything, just how ingrained the idea of demon possession can become even now in a modern society. This was 2015, six years ago. Well, honestly, OJ just made a mistake using a knife. He should have just sat on everybody and then he could have gotten away without having to lie in court. See, folks, see, Twitter world, I was possessed. I'm just saying.

Yeah, I'm just saying. But it would be interesting to see if legislators almost in a way, especially in certain countries like where they, you know, like they are very religious, they have a big religious base. I think one of it's like, you're afraid to delegitimize the practices of the church. And they also wonder if they themselves, I mean, talking about just on a personal singular level where they say to themselves, well, if I say that this exorcism and shit is not real, I won't get to do that Hail Mary pass. If it happens to me, yeah, it might happen to me like God might send a demon to kill

me or most likely my family. That's the way it always seems to go demon Sirhan Sirhan. Um, he killed. Remember that? Yeah. He's out. Kennedy. Yeah.

Or what's it? The woman in the polka dot dress. Honestly, Sirhan Sirhan looking for your contact information, email sites or his LP tlgmail.com. We're really near your side of the story. They also need, they need that church money and this is good for the church, but it adds a lot of revenue. And speaking of societies with an ingrained fear of the devil, Texas.

Whoa. Is as usual, the home of the darkest and most nefarious of today's stories. Okay. Again, in 2015, a small cult following the orders of a charismatic female leader starved a two year old boy to death. Oh, I remember the stories. The pastor in question at a celli mesa of like glacia, you know, not, you know, I was saying, all right.

Very good. No, that's the best. I can do a better than that. Now, I glacia in a national has been a very nice, very terrible. My wife is going to beat me later. He's doing it on purpose. He wants to go to be with this woman claim that she had the ability to both speak with God and perform healing rituals on her commune near Mesquite, Texas, just outside of Dallas

using tried and true methods of manipulation and control, Pastor Mesa separated children from their parents as early as the first year of their lives, which is exactly what had happened with the victim in this story, Benjamin Apparicio. This is again, remember, as soon as they're separating kids from parents, any family separation means that you're in a cult, like it's not no matter what they say. And when anyone questioned anything, Pastor Mesa dead or said, she would immediately accuse them of either speaking with the devil's voice or if they were particularly argumentative, being the devil himself.

How convenient. Now, when presented with Benjamin Apparicio, a toddler with behavioral problems, Mesa toddler. It's a toddler. It's a toddler. Some toddlers are difficult. Yes, but it's still fucking toddler. It's a toddler.

It has no idea what it's doing. Mesa surmised that the boy was possessed by a demon of manipulation that needed to be expelled. No, it's a needy toddler. Yeah. So Benjamin's parents believed Pastor Mesa to be a prophet. They gave the go ahead, but it was not the exorcism that killed this poor boy. Rather, it was the preparation for the exorcism.

Pastor Mesa said that before she could even start, the boy had to fast for 25 days, not smart. No, that's not what the kids have to eat food. It's two year old. They only gave him five sips of water per day. Being a toddler, the boy, of course, died long before the 25th day came as it happens when cult leader predictions don't work out, though. Pastor Mesa pivoted and said that the boy needed to be resurrected with what she called

a rising ceremony. This happens a lot, especially in Texas. We were covering this a little bit, I believe, on side stories about the group people that had a dead kid in the middle. There's like a lot of these stories. I almost think we might have talked about this on a round table or something. It's very true. We might have.

We might have. This was really weird. The idea of keeping a kid dead in a church, openly on a table where they would just have sessions of people coming and praying and being like, this is going to be the one, this is the one. And it's like, no, sir, you just tied a bunch of wires to his body and you made him a puppet. It doesn't count, sir. No, it doesn't count.

No, witness my puppetry of the Macau. Oh, my God. This is horrible. When again, that didn't work. Mesa and the child's parents undocumented immigrants, both took the body to Mexico for burial. When the truth came out, though, Pastor Mesa was found guilty of felony injury to a child and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Holy shit. That's America. Yeah. Well, that's Texas. That's Texas. Because the people in Milwaukee didn't get shit. No. Yeah.

Yeah. She got it. 99 years. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She didn't find exactly what she did, but she actually did a plea deal to get 99 years because I think they were going to try to go for a murder one and fry this fucking one. Oh, my goodness.

Because the prosecutor said we made a deal with the demon to get a bigger demon. So this woman had some knowledge of some shit. Oh, yeah. She tried to sell the idea of like maybe she was a part of a network of these fun little churches. Yeah. Isn't that nice? Yeah.

But someone else went down. But the case of Pastor Mesa was not the only cult led exorcism that ended in death. And in fact, the most recent and bloodiest happened just last year in Panama. This one's fucked. Y'all might have covered this on side stories, I'm not sure. Very lightly. Yeah. Found out some more details about this shit today.

It's whoo. Well, there, authorities found a body pit containing seven corpses, all belonging to members of an indigenous community called Ngabe Bugle. I have no idea how the fuck. I mean, I don't know their local indigenous Panamanian language. Yeah. Excuse me, but this fucking place was located deep in the rainforest. The authorities discovered these bodies when three villagers escaped whatever madness had

gripped their community. And they reported that this indigenous run, but still Christian sect was holding several families against their will. Well, the sect called the new light of God. They were apparently performing rituals in which people were held against their will in a ramshackle hut in the middle of the village. From reports, a village patriarch named Mario Gonzalez had run the official men of God out of town and had taken over the village's spiritual guidance.

Man, fucking Christian gang violence. Yeah. He claimed to have received messages from God giving him instructions to exercise the entire village. And these rites, according to the defectors, were designed to kill the villagers if they did not repent their sins. Yeah, man. They didn't repent or die for serious.

They were out there. Like they were like, fuck this shit. Yeah. It's like we're killing everybody. Yeah. And it's a gang that is enforcing this shit. It's like a gang of like 10 dudes headed by this guy Mario and his son that were basically, they'd all had a psychotic break.

And what was truly terrifying about all this was the isolation of the village located deep inside the rainforest, the nearest town is an hour's hike down a steep muddy track followed by a two hour canoe trip. And that's just the nearest town, the nearest place where you could get help required a further two and a half hour drive. Damn. Yeah, man. This is like, this is a horror movie.

Yeah. It really is. Absolutely. But when authorities finally showed up, they found an unsettling scene. A black and red accordion was found on the floor of Bible open to the book of Revelation rested on the wooden pulpit. Of course. Seven crosses were etched into the green moss of the floor and 15 villagers were found

tied up next to a ritually sacrificed goat. Imagine you're just a normal ass person in this village. Yeah. Normal. Right. Or you're like, you know, because they all were like, they were all deeply religious out there. It was a Christian sect that was already there.

And fairly new, like they were fairly new to religion like in these sorts of like deep rainforests. Like the actual missionaries have only recently in the last few decades gotten out there and converted these people like, you know, these are people like, you know, they probably have people who remember still alive, remember times before the Christians came. Oh, I bet. Absolutely. And now you're watching this thing.

The first post to come is this, which is like, I mean, it's so symbolic, it's nuts. It's the idea of like, this thing's supposed to be comfort and salvation and all this bullshit. And you watch it immediately flip into the darkest shit you've ever seen in your because they live most of the time and they must live like kind of like lovely lives in tune with the like, you know, it's also hard out there. It's hard scrabble. I mean, before modern Christianity, yeah, I mean, now it's, I think they say this area of beliefs is like, it's 95% live below the poverty line because they're trying to be

they're trying to force them into modern society where they had a perfectly fine society on their own before the Christian missionaries came, but now it's they're being forced in this new society, which does not, of course, you know, match up with the way they've been living life for millennia. Hey guys, just so you know, hey, there's this thing called money, there's a little thing called taxes. Now you're going to have to do both of those, right? Just so you know, you all just been hanging out and having a good time, but now you're

all going to have to get jobs just so you know, oh, you don't have jobs. Did you know you're super poor? And so what that means is that you're not going to be able to get any resources either. So sorry about that. And you're possessed by the devil. These people have been beaten with the flats of machetes and beaten with Bibles and some had their tongues burned with hot embers in an attempt to rid them of the devil. And what's terrifying to me is to think about this is to think about the scene in which

these people are having their tongues burned and there's some dude in the fucking corner badly playing an accordion. Yeah. They. Oh my God. Yeah. Not weird at all. Yeah.

All while fucking Mario screams about the fucking book of Revelation, but also, I mean, honestly, it's guitar music. Yeah. Or fiddle. Fiddle. Yeah. How do you repent? If your tongue is burnt?

Like, how do you say to work? You repent later. I'm sorry. Well, according to a survivor, the cult had rounded up the entire community. Like chickens tied them up with wire, you know, threaten them with machetes, and this is all in pursuit of exercising the demons from the whole community. And all 10 people were arrested in connection with the rituals. But the worst discovery was, of course, the mass grave.

Right. That usually is the worst discovery. A lot of times. Yeah. It's not normally the buffet. No, no. When the body pit was exhumed, it was discovered that the victims were a pregnant mother. Oh.

Her five children. One to 11, and their 17-year-old neighbor. It seemed to have been the idea that those were the examples made. Yeah. As of yet, no one knows what the rituals were. They only know that these people were killed because the leader of this violent, short-lived cult believed that demons refused to leave their bodies. Oh, my goodness.

You know, sometimes, what's wrong with just having the demon in there? Yeah. You know? I don't know. The demon makes you really good at basketball. Yeah. Maybe James. Maybe.

Well, if anyone's got a basketball demon, it's Michael Jordan. My idea. And he took it first? Yeah. It's possible. Awesome. Well, not so awesome, but very interesting. Indeed.

We got one more. Very interesting stuff. Finally, we have the case that Henry discussed briefly during our Anna-Lisa Mikkel series. That of 23-year-old Romanian nun Mariccia Mericica. Mericica. Mericica. Mericica. You have to say it with the accent.

You have to go, Mariccia. Yeah. That of 23-year-old Romanian nun Mericica Cornicci. Very good. Very good. Very good. Good work, buddy. Cornicci had actually been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and when her treatment failed, she relapsed

into a paranoid state. Now, this was 2005. This was not the 1970s. Right. Yeah. This is brand new, dude. But still, Cornicci's fellow nuns and the local priest, Father Daniel Corriginu, decided that instead of psychiatric care, she needed an exorcism.

Uh-oh. Is woman needs an exorcism? Over the course of three days, Cornicci was bound to a cross with rags anointed with holy water. She was then gagged with a towel and left in a dark room in the convent without food or water. Eventually, this woman died of both suffocation and dehydration. They're actually not sure what killed her.

Okay. This is a fucked up story, but it's also interesting because this part of the world has only recently embraced religion because they were part of the, they were, they were under a communist rule for a period of time, which is Chichescu. Chichescu. Yes. And they were communist dictator, and he was, it was anti-religion, right? Like, I do.

It was like, they can't have religion. They can't have any religion, which is, you know, I mean, honestly, whatever. But the, in the release, like when he was gone, a lot of these small villages found religion and not only just found religion, it wasn't like found like, my mom's like, version of like unitarian, crystal, like Christian bullshit, you know what I mean? Oh, no, that's, I mean, you look at South Korean Christians, they're very intense because, of course, in North Korea, religions banned, and it's a deadly sin. Yes.

You can get murdered if you have a Bible. They went straight to the ancient Christianity. Yeah. They found, I guess that's where you start, huh? Yeah, I got to. The whole school, and the priest that they had was like a young, like, hot shot dude. Like, have you seen pictures of him? No.

He's got this super long ginger beard, like he's redhead. How did you feel when you saw him? I mean, I thought it was a great beard, but he was like a young guy, like, and so he's this guy who came in and was just like, I'm going to hold the torch of the ancient Christian church and show people what we're going to do here, we're going to do it legit, we're doing it in old school. And then he became sort of like a weird celebrity because when all of this went down, they had to figure out how to prosecute this church group.

And it was very difficult because it was all about like, we don't want to, again, ostracize the new religious fervor in our country. I mean, well, had it not been for the girl's parents calling for the imprisonment of the four nuns in this priest, I mean, the crime might have been swept under the rug by the church. Absolutely, because they were trying to save face in a way. And it was weird because this girl was not, she, the girl that Maurizia was not necessarily very religious.

She was just kind of strange and otherworldly and her friend from high school was the one in the church who was just like, she reached out to her, I think literally through Facebook and said like, where do I go? Where do I go? I'm feeling these feelings of like, on we, like that's how it was. It was a general dissatisfaction with life might have been a half lesbian, you know what I mean? Like that type of thing where she didn't know she was having all these thoughts she didn't

understand. And she's like, you should come to this, this church on top of this hill out in the middle of the Romanian forest. It could be fun, but it doesn't sound like it ended very well, but as it was, the evidence was clear. Cornicci was disfigured from days of struggling on the cross. And she even showed evidence of physical violence on her stomach, quite possibly from more crushing.

Yes, crushing with the crushing people. The priest was at the very least sentenced to 14 years in prison, but he should have gotten more. The nuns, however, got off with next to nothing considering how they helped murder a woman in the name of God. Right. One got six years while the other three only served five. Yeah.

Cause they were also, they were viewed as accessories and again, it's a sort of like religious crime and they couldn't figure out how to prosecute it. And it was also this massive media sensation because the whole world took it up and then they kind of showed up. They looked like characters from an old school picture book. Everybody's like at this trial, everybody's in modern, it's modern, right? It's modern times. What the fuck, it was a 2015.

2005. Oh yeah. 2005. So everybody's like dressed normal and shit. And then here comes like essentially these Franciscan monks. It looked like the Manson girls, that style where he came in as this all the worldly spiritual figure. And so there is sort of that where the optics itself make people kind of doubt what's going

on. Cause they're like, well, look at, he looks like a guy from a movie. Yeah. He looks like one of those old. The intent wasn't a killer. I don't know if the, I guess, intent matters, I suppose, I guess they try to save people, but it doesn't work. They also believe that if you fucking die, we'll get, we got you anyway.

We got you anyway. So who cares? But it's the thing is that you need to, like, I know the intent, like it's all about intent, but it's also about fucking making an example. Yes. It's also about showing people, like if you kill someone during an exorcism, you will go to prison. Yeah.

You better do it right. Call a doctor. Call a doctor. You need to have a doctor in the room. You can do your little exorcism. But you should have a doctor in the room as well. Like you should be able to say, like, okay, yes, the demon, the demon needs fluids. Yeah.

We need to stop aligning. Yeah. We can maybe save, quote unquote, save this person if we need to. So while prosecution for deaths caused by exorcism is certainly uneven across the world, there's never been, as far as I know, a modern case in which the defense successfully argued that the devil is the real culprit when a so-called possessed person dies during an exorcism. Yeah, Bill Cosby to stay in jail, you know what I mean, like, we're not going to win.

The devil needs to show up in court and guess what? He's already there. You always the judge. But nevertheless, it still seems like there's a continuing and growing epidemic of people who believe so hard in demons and the devil that they're willing to kill other human beings in pursuit of proving that Satan and therefore God is real. Sometimes you got to look in the mirror and realize you are the demon. You've become the demon, you've become the demon.

That's very interesting. It's fascinating. What's so fascinating and fascinating is that these are so relatively new. Yeah. Oh, no, it's still happening now. No, it just seems to be almost an epidemic of its own. Yes, indeed. Quite a few that I'm sure we don't even know about.

Absolutely. And I'm very excited that now we're about to head into a new year. That's right, new exorcism is going to happen in 2022. I hope what I'm hoping for some meta exorcisms. I hope Facebook can really help us in the digital space of exorcisms. Actually, we all know about the Bob Larson exorcism. It's like Bob Larson. Just passed.

He died? Oh, no, I'm wrong. You know who our other favorite just passed? Russ Dizdar. The Black Flame Ministries. Dizdar died. Yeah. Russ Dizdar is that too.

Yeah. Larson's still around. He's still got his YouTube channel up. No, he's doing good. Those girls are still out there. I think they did a pro-Trump song, which was very interesting. Sure they did. Ray Stevens.

In between Skype exorcisms, you know, to make sure all the best people. But next, we talk about outside stories this week. Next week we're going on our winter solstice break, which is what I'll call it. He doesn't want to say Christmas. Of course not. It's Christmas. I love Christmas. It's really fun.

Because you're allowed to love Christmas. Yeah, thank you. And I'm sorry that Henry is hampering your spirit. I don't hamper your anybody's spirit. He can't hamper Jack's shit on me. Yeah, it's your fucking life. I'm going to go see the Miami Dolphins play. Honestly, that's the better way to celebrate Christmas.

So we're taking a break next week, and we will be back the week afterwards. And just so you know, 2022 has so many surprises in store for all of you fucking assholes. I don't want any more surprises. You fucking assholes are going to see the kind of content that's going to be ribbed for your pleasures. I feel like it's going to be so many surprises. Maybe we should just give everyone a list of what we're doing so they can play. We'll know if any more.

I can't handle any more surprises. One more UFO story right before we end out the year. And then we've got some surprising true crime leading up until February. We will be we're again, we're going to stay on Spotify, but we're going wide to all different apps as of February 1st. And so you'll see, we got a special one coming. We cannot wait to be on all of your services, platforms, whatever it is, thanks for supporting all the shows here on the last podcast network.

What a wonderful year it's been. Thank you all so much for your support again. And yeah, we'll just see all, I guess the road is over. We had the roads. Yeah. By the time we're right back on the road, we're going to be there, but we also, we died. Yeah.

We got soul plumber out right now. Issues one, two and three are on the shows. Yes. Call them. Rast them. Yes. Don't have soul plumbers on your soul plumber on your channel and keep on supporting all the shows.

Yeah. And still, yeah, and the Z2 comic book, last two comic book on the left is coming out in the next quarter as well. Yeah. Make sure to pre-order that one as well. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. Hail yourselves.

Hail Satan. Hail Geen. Magus dilations, everybody. Hail me. Also, just go to the doctor. We say it all the time. Go to the doctor. Go to the doctor.

Ask your therapist for something. Yeah. What's this? Just say, what's going on with my bullshit? What's with my bullshit? Yeah. What's up, mister? What's up, missus?

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