So Supernatural - HAUNTED: The Possession of “Julia”

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

In the early 1980s, psychiatrist Dr. Richard Gallagher worked with the Catholic Church to monitor the mental health of people seeking exorcisms. The doctor turned from a rational skeptic to a true believer when he met Julia, a self-proclaimed Queen of Satanism. 

You might think of exorcisms as these relics of the past, but actually, I've said this before, the demand for exorcisms seems to be on the rise. In 2006, there were only 12 professional exorcists in the United States, but by 2021, that number grew to 125. Are some of them grifters? Probably. But it's not just priests and fanatics who believe in possession. Just ask Dr. Richard Gallagher, a licensed psychiatrist who once treated a case so bizarre, so unexplainable, that he still believes it was a case of demonic possession. This is the story of Julia. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm talking about the possession of Julia. As the story goes, in the late 1980s, a middle-aged woman went to incredible lengths to remove a demon from her body.

She had several different exorcisms, and none of them worked. And it turns out, demonic possession was just one of her dark secrets. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Before we begin, the records of today's events use pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. They also don't use specific dates or names of locations. All I know is that the following events reportedly happened sometime in the late 1980s, over several months. One chilly evening, Father Jacques hurries into his church's rectory to meet another priest, Father A. Father A's inside preparing for the start

of an exorcism ceremony with the help of a handful of others. There's a simple altar and a crucifix set up on one wall. Nothing special, but it'll do. The atmosphere's pretty tense. It's not the priest's first exorcism, but it's probably not something you get used to either. And rumor has it,

the demon they'll be expelling today is particularly nasty. Besides the two priests, there are six other people on hand to assist. Two nuns, three large men from the congregation, and one laywoman. I'm assuming the nuns are there for spiritual support, but the men are there for their muscle.

The church isn't really equipped with restraints or straitjackets, and if things go really sideways, one of the nuns is a trained nurse. Now at this point, there's not much left to do but wait. The person receiving the exorcism is running late. But before anyone can rethink their participation in the night's events, a middle-aged woman dressed in black breezes through the door. She looks like a punk rocker, but she seems totally harmless, scared even. This is Julia. And without much fanfare, she plops herself down, taking a seat in the center of the room. This isn't her first exorcism either, and she's ready to get it over with. At this point, she's lived with her demon for long enough. But as Julia settles in,

things immediately start to feel off. There's an energy shift in the room, like an electric charge is surging through the air. The three women grab Julia's arms and shoulders to hold her down, just in case. From what I gather, the women restrain Julia because nobody wants her or the demon to react negatively to the men using force if it becomes necessary. So they stand nearby, ready to jump in if needed. Father Jacques kicks off the ceremony by reading Latin prayers from the Roman ritual,

which is pretty standard as far as Catholic exorcisms go. But almost as soon as he starts to speak, Julia falls into a trance, and this ugly, rasping voice erupts from deep inside her. This is the demon, and it's not happy. Its voice echoes off the walls of the chapel, threatening the priests, saying they have no right to get involved in whatever plan it has for Julia. She promised herself to Satan, and he has no intention of giving her back. Father Jacques stays focused, though. He just keeps reading. Even as Julia starts speaking in both Latin and Spanish, two languages she doesn't speak, even as things become physical. Julia

starts thrashing in her seat, fighting with almost superhuman strength. These poor nuns are holding her down, but they're constantly on the verge of being knocked to the ground. This struggle continues for almost two hours. The whole time, Father Jacques and Father A are repeating the prayers over and over. I command you, unclean spirit, that you tell me by some sign your name and the day and hour of your departure. And just when it looks like they're getting somewhere, something unbelievable happens. Julia lifts out of the chair and starts floating in midair, as in levitating. Apparently, she rises with enough force that they think she might break through the literal ceiling of the chapel. The three guys grab her feet and try to pull her back down, but she doesn't make it easy. Whatever demon is inside this woman, it is furious.

She's kicking and flailing in the air, fighting off these men for half an hour. And this is all before the priests break out the holy water. Once the priests start anointing Julia, things really get hairy. She starts writhing and screaming in pain. The temperature in the church goes haywire, oscillating between freezing cold and boiling. I mean, one minute their teeth are chattering and the next they feel like they've literally been transported to hell, or rather, hell has come to earth. And maybe that is what's happening because they start hearing growls and snarls from the corners of the room. It sounds like a herd of wild animals is stampeding across the room, but they can't see anything.

There's nothing physically there. Floating above all this chaos is Julia, who's still hanging in midair. Everything feels like it's building to a fever pitch. Then, without warning, it all just stops. Father Jacques says amen. Julia slowly wakes from her trance in a daze. She doesn't remember anything, but everyone's thinking, thank God, literally, it worked. But it didn't. It takes a second for Julia to get her bearings. But when she finally does, she starts shaking her head.

She still feels the demon inside her. Now, this all sounds too unbelievable to be true, like it's ripped from some 70s horror novel. But here's why Julia's case is so unique. Prior to this moment, not one, but three medical professionals had evaluated her. And all of them walked away convinced that she actually had a demon inside of her, including an Ivy League educated psychiatrist named Dr. Richard Gallagher. That's not a pseudonym. That is his real name. And according to Dr. Gallagher, meeting Julia changed everything that he'd ever known about science.

Coming up, Dr. Gallagher takes on Julia as a patient. Now back to the story. Dr. Gallagher first meets Julia a few months before her exorcism, and right off the bat, his introduction to her is interesting, to say the least. One morning, he gets a knock on his door. It's his friend, Father Jacques, and a woman that he doesn't know. She's got jet black hair, flowing dark clothes, and heavy eyeliner. Before Gallagher can say anything, this woman looks him dead in the eyes and asks, How'd you like those cats last night?

No, hello. No, how are you? But Dr. Gallagher, he knows exactly what she's talking about. See, the night before, he and his wife woke up to the sound of their two cats fighting. It sticks out in his mind because normally the cats got along really well. I mean, they're like best friends. He never figured out why the cats were fighting, and he definitely didn't know how this emo lady standing on his doorstep found out about it. Obviously, he's a little weirded out. But Father Jacques is completely unfazed.

He's just like, this is Julia and she needs our help. And so it begins. Father Jacques tells Dr. Gallagher about the demon that's living inside Julia and asks him to examine her. He wants to be sure they aren't mistaking a mental health disorder for possession. You know, like a responsible, forward-thinking exorcist. Now, Dr. Gallagher actually does this periodically for the Catholic Church. It's how he became friendly with Father Jacques. But he's not the first psychiatrist that Julia has seen.

He's actually the third. And the first two both walked away convinced that Julia's problems are unrelated to her mental health. Whatever it is, they know it's not normal. Which, as Dr. Gallagher learns, is the understatement of the century. Over the next few weeks, Dr. Gallagher gets a front row seat to Julia's world. And it's like being transported to another planet. There's a reason Julia is so desperate for help. The symptoms she experiences are both terrifying and impossible to explain. Let's start with the blackouts and the voices. This one time, Dr. Gallagher, Father Jacques,

and Julia are driving down the road discussing the upcoming exorcism. Out of nowhere, a guttural, rasping voice that the doctors never heard before starts swearing and saying, quote, leave her alone, you stupid monkey priest. She is ours. The voice is coming from Julia, who's sitting in the backseat of the car. Or rather, it looks like it's coming from Julia, but it's hard for the doctor to imagine how her vocal cords are making these noises. And Julia herself no longer seems present. She's swaying in her seat and locked in some sort of trance. After 10 minutes of hurling nasty threats, mostly directed at Father Jacques, Julia snaps out of it. When Gallagher later asks her about what she remembers

from this little interaction, she can't recall any of it. Like, not a thing. A few days later, Father Jacques and Dr. Gallagher are talking on the phone when the same voice that they heard in the car interrupts their call. Once again, it starts spewing threats. But this time, it also explicitly says that Julia belongs to Satan and that Father Jacques needs to stop meddling in their affairs. Now, at first, they think that Julia could have picked up another receiver in the church or even in Dr. Gallagher's office, and maybe she was just like butting in on the call. This would be weird, obviously, but at least it would explain where the voice was coming from. But Julia is nowhere to be found. For all they know, that demonic voice just materialized on its own.

Then there's the clairvoyance. Sometimes Julia just knows things she shouldn't be able to know. Like remember the thing with Dr. Gallagher's cats? That wasn't a one-time deal. During one of their sessions, Julia casually brings up Dr. Gallagher's mother, who died of ovarian cancer. They get to talking, but mid-conversation, Gallagher stops himself. He never told Julia about his mother. And this is before the days of Google,

so it's not like she could have looked up his family on her own. Another time, Julia is telling Dr. Gallagher about another psychiatrist she'd spoken to. They only ever talked on the phone, but she launches into this tirade about how much she couldn't stand the guy. She doesn't appreciate his holier-than-thou attitude, which I guess kind of makes sense because in addition to being a psychiatrist, he also happened to be a Jesuit priest. But what catches Gallagher off guard is that as part of her rant, Julia drops these bizarrely specific details about the priest's private residence down to the color and weight of his curtain.

And this probably wasn't just a good guess. See, Dr. Gallagher learns Julia can sometimes control her abilities. She shows him in one of their sessions. By this point, Father Jacques has asked the United States' foremost exorcist to help with Julia's case. He's who we've been calling Father A. While sitting in Gallagher's office, Julia tells the doctor that she can see Father A in front of her, like he's in the room with them. She sees that he's walking along a beach somewhere, his mind's racing, and the wind from the ocean is rustling his blue windbreaker and khaki pants. Trying to call her bluff, Dr. Gallagher gets Father A on the phone and asks where he is. And even though he's usually in the rectory around this time of night, Father A says he felt the urge to take a walk. So he walked down to the seashore by the church. And yes, he is wearing khakis and

a windbreaker. When Dr. Gallagher asks what color the windbreaker is, Father A just laughs and says, you must be talking to Julia. And if clairvoyance isn't strange enough, Julia shows signs of telekinesis too. Seriously. According to Dr. Gallagher, in one session, she starts throwing things off his bookshelves with her mind. Now, this is probably a good time to reiterate Dr. Gallagher's qualifications, since he's the one reporting all of this. He graduated Princeton magna cum laude. He trained as a resident psychiatrist at Yale University and Columbia. He says he's, quote, a man of science and a lover of history, inclined to skepticism. Like, that's the guy who's making all of these claims. And yet, he has no scientific explanation for what's happening to Julia. But he does know that he's worried about her,

and for everyone else in her life. Because when she's not in control, she can be incredibly dangerous. One night, Father Jacques and Father A offer to drive Julia home from some meeting. She hops into the back seat, Father A turns the key in the ignition, and almost immediately, Julia falls into a trance. As they're speeding down the road, a familiar voice erupts from the back of the car, berating the priest and demanding they leave her alone. At this point, they've seen this show before. I mean, it's borderline expected,

but they don't anticipate what happens next. Dozens of black shadows start to creep into the windshield, blocking their view of the road. The car's headlights flicker out and the lights on the dashboard go dead. Unable to see ahead, Father A veers off the road and crashes into a ditch. All the shadows disappear on impact.

Luckily, nobody gets hurt. When the priests turn around to check on Julia, she has this smirk on her face, like she knows exactly what's going on. But not long after that, she kind of warms up to the idea of another exorcism. It may be the first time she realizes whatever's inside of her, it's not afraid to kill to get its way. As their sessions go on, Julia opens up to Dr. Gallagher a little more about her past. What could possibly shock him at this point? Well, Julia says that she's in a satanic cult. And not just in a satanic cult, she's their high priestess. She's scared of

what they'll say or do to her if they find out she's seeking exorcisms. Now, this is obviously important information that Dr. Gallagher follows up on. But Julia's not entirely forthcoming about all the details. And Dr. Gallagher doesn't mention the cult by name for fear of retaliation. So I'll tell you everything we do know about them, including how Julia got involved. Julia was raised Catholic but never felt a super strong connection to the church. She had a pretty tough home life growing up, and when she's a teenager, a local priest pursues and sexually molests her. As you can imagine, this drastically changes Julia's perception of religion and morality. She learns

how blurred the lines between good and evil can be from a very young age. And when a friend mentions something about a local Satanist sect, Julia's intrigued. Dr. Gallagher believes teenage Julia at this point is looking for community, a surrogate family to fill the space left by her family's neglect and her past trauma. So she runs in a direction that feels new and different. She attends a Satanist meeting, and before long, she is knee-deep in a Satan-w new and different. She attends a Satanist meeting and before long, she is knee deep in a Satan worshiping cult. The leader of this cult is a guy named Daniel,

who has these bad boy vibes. He's edgy, attractive, and acts with intention. And Julia, she is immediately smitten. According to her, quote, he was the first really strong man I had met. It doesn't take too long for Daniel and Julia to develop a sexual relationship because a lot of what this satanic cult does revolves around pleasure. They're allegedly pagans who worship a demon called Asmodeus that is essentially the embodiment of lust. They practice their own brand of free love, lots of orgies and the like. Julia tells Dr. Gallagher that they performed black masses, which are these parodies of Catholic masses that sometimes involve stealing sacramental bread and using it in some sort of sex act. Before long, the sect starts calling Julia the queen of the voluptuous delights, for reasons you can work out on your own. But

Julia thrives in the cult. She loves the community. And most of all, she loves the attention she gets from Daniel. But at some point, a shift happens. Julia takes on an unusually grisly role in the cult. Let's just say it has to do with human fetuses and blood sacrifices. And participating in these absolutely bizarre, gruesome rituals apparently raises her status in the cult. She goes from high priestess to, quote, Satan's queen. And this, this is the moment her life changed forever, when she made a literal deal with the devil. Coming up, Julia's world comes crashing down. Now back to the story. Over the course of their psychiatric sessions, Dr. Gallagher learns that his patient Julia

was once a member of a satanic cult that had some pretty unsavory practices, including sacrificing human fetuses to the devil. This is apparently how Julia became graced with her supernatural abilities. In exchange for her sacrifices, Satan gave her powers. And for a while, everything's great to her. She's young, loved, and can move objects with her mind. But when Julia hits middle age, everything changes. It becomes a lot more difficult for her to get pregnant, which makes her less useful to the cult. The group's leader, Daniel, who she's in love with

and who she thinks loves her back, starts acting really cold toward her. The rejection is devastating. And in the depths of despair, the real demons move in. starts acting really cold toward her. The rejection is devastating. And in the depths of despair, the real demons move in. Julia finally sees the downsides to letting Satan's power into her body, which is when, from what I can tell, she returns to the church for help. That's when they send her to those two psychiatrists and she has multiple exorcisms before she winds up on Dr.

Gallagher's doorstep. He offers to work on her case pro bono and after examining her for weeks and witnessing the impossible with his own eyes, Dr. Gallagher determines that Julia's mentally sound. She may have some elements of a personality disorder but she's 100% living in reality. He sends her off to her final exorcism, which, as we saw at the beginning of this episode, doesn't go well. She comes out the other side, still feeling a demonic presence inside her. Dr. Gallagher believes the reason it didn't work is because part of Julia still wants to be with Daniel and to return to the only community she really ever felt accepted by. She can't separate herself from the devil and serve him at the same time. Ultimately, Julia refuses to go

through with another exorcism, and she does what Dr. Gallagher feared she would do. She returns to the cult. And sadly, that's where our story ends. A year later, Dr. Gallagher learns that Julia has developed terminal cancer, and he assumes she dies shortly after. Dr. Gallagher considers her case one of the most over-the-top, violent, powerful possessions in American history. In fact, his time with Julia inspired Dr. Gallagher to dive even deeper into the world of demonic possessions. He made an entire career as an exorcist consultant, written books on possession, articles for the Washington Post, even with headlines like,

As a Psychiatrist, I Diagnose Mental Illness. Also, I Help Spot demonic possession. He devoted a chapter of his 2019 memoir to Julia. Dr. Gallagher is also upfront about his own religious beliefs. Catholicism is an important part of his identity, but he's also still a board-certified psychiatrist as well as a professor at New York Medical College. I'm emphasizing all of this again because Dr. Gallagher's impressive resume is what brought so much attention to Julia's story. It's what gives it credibility in the eyes of so many people. There's no getting around it. People are more likely to trust a guy with a

bunch of fancy degrees. But the question is, does he deserve our trust? Almost all of today's story comes from Dr. Gallagher's singular account, an account that only uses pseudonyms and doesn't include many dates or locations. As I've said, this is apparently to protect Dr. Gallagher and the other individuals involved, which is fair. But on the other hand, it's also kept anyone from being able to corroborate his claims. And the little context that the self-proclaimed man of science and history does provide in his account, well, it doesn't exactly line up with science or history. For example, according to Dr. Gallagher, Julia's unnamed cult was pagan and served Satan.

He mentions the leader Daniel once said that pagans are essentially demon worshippers. And while that narrative is propaganda that has been pushed by Christian religions for centuries, it's actually not exactly true. The word pagan first referred to any non-Christian religion that's typically polytheistic, meaning they worship more than one god. Today, it's also become an umbrella term for any religion that's not in the so-called mainstream. This includes most indigenous religions and, yes, Satanism. And although Dr. Gallagher's depiction of Julia's Satanic sect matches what you might find in a horror film, it doesn't match any record of a real cult, at least none that I can find.

Do Satanists exist in America? Definitely. In 1966, an American occultist established the Church of Satan. Since then, a number of different offshoots and sects have emerged. And yes, many of them parody Christian masses. And sure, they do tend to celebrate an indulgent lifestyle.

But none actually worship a real-life Satan or a literal interpretation of the devil. They don't believe in supernatural powers or entities at all, including demons. Most are actually just agnostics who consider themselves political activists more than anything. Not to mention, Satanists follow a strict moral code that explicitly says to do no harm to animals or children. And it's worth mentioning, in the late 1980s when Julia's case was supposedly happening, America was in the midst of a satanic panic. People legitimately worried that heavy metal music

and games like Dungeons and Dragons would turn their kids into devil worshippers. News anchors spread false accounts of ritual animal sacrifices and child trafficking rings in preschools. The objective was often to drive people back to religion. So a story about a black eyeliner-wearing, fetus-killing, satanic priestess who becomes possessed by a demon, written and published by a devout Catholic, it raises some questions about Dr. Gallagher's motivations. But I'm not necessarily calling Dr. Gallagher a liar. He may have just been duped.

I mean, even according to his own account, he wasn't there during Julia's exorcisms. He wasn't in the car when demonic shadows appeared and made a crash. All the most sensational parts of the story, he only heard secondhand from the same person who brought Julia to him in the first place, Father Jacques. Now, Dr. Gallagher admits that clergy or religious people in general may be too quick to jump to possession. But he believes that demons exist and should be seriously considered by more medical professionals. But even with all his credentials and accolades, Dr. Gallagher has found himself relatively alone in that opinion. One of his fiercest critics, Yale professor and neurologist Stephen Novella, has accused him of getting sucked into his patients' delusions. He worries about the consequences of Dr. Gallagher's beliefs, saying, quote,

The primary goal of therapy is to reorient them to reality. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. Maybe more than anything, Julia is a case study for education bias in America. A fancy degree is just a piece of paper. It doesn't make you infallible. It doesn't make you morally good or bad.

But Satan knows it can give you influence. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.