The Confessionals - RELOADED | 327: Legion

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

In Episode 327: Legion, we are joined by Caden, who shares stories from his childhood in his family home. Caden reveals some rather scary experiences that he believes were demonic in nature. When he went off to college, he became involved in a campus ministry, where he experienced things that changed his life and left him with no doubts that the spiritual realm is very real. He recounts the story of a demonically possessed girl who, during an exorcism, exhibited supernatural strength and revealed the names of the demons that were possessing her.Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZThe Counter Series Available NOW:The Counter (YouTube): WATCH HEREThe Counter (Full Episode): WATCH HERETony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comIf you want to learn about Jesus and what it means to be saved: Click HereThe Sasqualogist: Stream HereBigfoot: The Journey To Belief: Stream HereMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyQUINCE: quince.com/tonyIVERMECTIN: twc.health/tonyVENICE AI: https://venice.ai/theconfessionalsRUMBLE WALLET: https://rumblewallet.onelink.me/bJsX/ConfessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jyorkofficialOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - Head In The CloudsYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Merkel Media I guess it's time To go back in time Are you telling me You built a time machine Kind of a Dolorean Time

is but a stubborn illusion I have a lot of memories Of the past People are time traveling Within themselves Time travel Is possible This was all circulating

around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, bony fingers reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappeared. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And he starts running and firing at this giant. Like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated.

That price. That place. He got sparsing when he got about 15 yards away from me, I raised that 12 days and I blow this head off. I feel something pulling at my leg, and I look over and there are two small gray entity. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush, and I had a chair. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay, I reload it.

Welcome to the show, everybody. you're listening to The Confessionals, I am your host, Tony Merkle. Thank you for being here. If you've had an encounter or a story you'd like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. That's The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, Theconfessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either way it works for me, just get a hold of me.

And if you want more shows on a weekly basis, just go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. hit the join button and become a member today because we put out an extra show every week on Thursdays on the website for members only. So if you want to hear more of the show on a weekly basis, just go ahead to the website and check it out. Now, let's get to this week's show, guys. All right, today we got Caden on the show. Caden, how you doing, man? Hey, I'm doing well. Thanks for asking, man. How you doing? I'm doing good, man. I'm starting to lose my voice a little bit. I just took a lot of water before we started this, so hopefully it can last a little bit. I don't know what's going.

going on, but the last few minutes, I started feeling like my voice was going. So hopefully people don't mind too much if my voice gets raspy here. But, Kaden, man, listen, it's really cool that you're living so close to me. So we just got them talking. And you grew up, or you're living in a town that I grew up in and stuff. And I'm actually going to start going back to church up in that town. So I don't know if you want me mentioning it or not, or if you might mention it later. But anyways, man, listen, you have paranormal experiences in your life, anything from hauntings, sleep paralysis to what you described as odd encounters, with demonic entities in your house.

And when I read that, I was thinking to myself, odd, demonic encounter. Odd encounters with demons. I was thinking myself, well, I feel like every encounter with a demon would be odd. Like, it's a little not normal, you know. So I don't know where you want to start, man, but just talk to us through this and let us know how this all started out for you, man. Sure. I, you know, going back to that comment, I think it's kind of funny you mentioned.

And I didn't realize I put that in the email. But I think once you experience a level of paranormal activity, like there's some stuff that doesn't seem to phase you as much. And there really is like a tier system for weird. So that's funny. Yeah. So I'll go back to, I guess, the beginning here. I'll start off maybe my earlier exposures and just like maybe to build up to just some recent stuff that's going on in life. I think growing up, it was kind of strange in my house because I always had this curiosity for things that are weird.

If something weird happened and I couldn't explain what it was or why it happened, I think it would bug me. And I don't know, I just, I was the outlier. Like my family, they would see something weird and they would just kind of move on and I would just kind of stay there and like really ponder and try to figure it out. And I don't know if I had this conspiracy mind since always, but I just, it's, it's crazy stuff. And I remember my grandmother, I would go to her house probably for the holidays, Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving. And she used to tell me that there was this ghost dog, kind of as a joke, I took it. And she would tell me that he's always watching and that we have to go find him. and it was kind of fun.

Like I assumed there wasn't like a dog actually. But I remember there was this one Christmas. And this is a story. Some of these stories, there are ones that my family has told me. And so I haven't experienced them. And so, you know, I can't really give you too much detail other than what I was told. But they're at this Christmas party.

And the way my grandmother has is set up, we have all of our cousins pictures kind of on this window sill. and my mom and my aunt are looking at them. And they're cracking some jokes. We had some weird smiles going on. But there is this moment apparently where one of the picture frames, which was leaning back on that like, you know, that little kick leg stand thing,

I guess it leans forward and it starts like hovering in the opposite angle. And then all of a sudden it kind of fixes itself. And the picture was actually my picture. And so my mom told me this many years later, and I thought, like, oh, that's kind of strange, you know. And I remember going into my grandmother's house and I would have these weird feelings. I wasn't creeped out per se. I definitely felt like I was being watched. And I don't know if that makes sense.

There's kind of this, this eerie feeling. You know, it's not threatening, but you just feel like you're not alone. And so I remember it might have been middle school and I was, one time I sat down with the grandmother and I just kind of like, just got a little blunt with her, you know,

hey, what's the deal with this dang dog? I haven't seen it yet, but is there like a backstory I should know of? You know, it's just something that like, a joke that you did with my dad growing up. And she admitted that like the dog thing

was kind of a joke, but they would have this, she said it was like this woman that they would see. outside of like the sliding door somewhere in the backyard and she would just kind of stand there in the dark and they would catch little glimpses of her. I was like, oh, that's whatever, that's kind of strange. Like I don't have ghost stories.

And if you haven't experienced paranormal stuff yet, that's kind of the reaction you would just have. Like, oh, that's cool. And then move on. And yet I found myself like really curious with all of this ghost stuff. You know, I was into watching like ghost ventures and all. these paranormal shows on sci-fi network growing up. And the personalities in my family are so

different. Like my dad, he never talked about anything spiritual. In fact, I didn't even know I didn't even know if he was a Christian or like what he was. I think I was 20 years old before I actually asked him what he was, you know. There was no mention of it. And if things were getting a little weird, he would

he would always take the rational route to explain it, you know. My brother is a little different in that he doesn't acknowledge too much the weird things that might happen. And when they do happen, he sees it and then he acknowledges it. But then he moves on really quick. My mom, on the other hand, was different. She was probably the first, I would say she was the first Christian I had growing up. And so her mind was always jumping to spiritual warfare. and everything had like this supernatural explanation for it.

And like for me, I don't know at the time if I really believed half of that stuff, but I just remember feeling like this weird curiosity about it. And I didn't have any activity or anything weird up until I probably would have been in, no, it was my first year in community college. So I would have been at that time slightly older. than 19. And to kind of give the background before I go into this story, my brother had just gone off to a football camp, and he returned. And so this is the very first night that he's back from this football camp. So he has like all of his clothes kind of spread out and his suitcases are still

kind of like half packed and off to the side. And so I don't know what I was doing. I just remember I was up. Over the summer, I was up. It was probably like two or three in the morning. And all the floors in our house are hardwood. And so if you breathe wrong, they're going to start making noises and creaking and stuff. And so I'm in my bed one night. And I hear these heavy footsteps coming up my staircase. And I remember thinking to myself, hey, my brother, his name is Cameron, I say like he should really calm the heck down because I know how this works, right? He's going to be stomping up the stairs and then my dad's going to come in here and he's going to ask me what's going on. So I got kind of annoyed and he stomped all over the stairs and then it walks up to my room, up to my door.

And then it felt as though he was like listening to see what I was doing. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's kind of weird because I expected him to come through the door. and then all of a sudden his door on the opposite end of the hallway flies open and he comes running out of it and for you know half a second i thought like well that's weird because how could he have come out of his room if he was standing in the hallway so he comes into my room and he said hey man did you hear that and i said yeah i thought i thought that was you coming up the stairs I thought you were standing outside of my room listening to me and he said to me, no, I'm not talking about that.

I had, I started hearing scratching and growling on my carpet right near my bed. You know, and we don't have, we didn't have cats or anything at that point, you know. So he runs over and we had this weird like blood pack thing going on where we decided that, you know what? We know we're too old to be terrified, but we are. So we're going to collect all of our pillows, everything. We're going to get it all together. We're going to go sleep in the living room with all the lights on. We're going to bring all the dogs in.

So we get all my stuff. We go over at his room and I'm waiting for him to get his stuff. And all of a sudden, all the zippers on his suitcase started rattling. And I've never been, up until this point, I've had no paranormal activity. I've never experienced anything like it. And it was so in the moment. terrifying because I couldn't explain what's going on, but I'm seeing things that I have no reference point for. I was just so creeped out.

We went down to the living room, and I remember just like, I didn't sleep the whole night. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie paranormal activity. The movie kind of starts off really calm, right? They have like one or two things weird that happen. And then like towards about the midway to the film, it kind of like exponentially just expletely. loads and they have like these crazy activity all the time. And so that was kind of like our start to our activity, just at one event. And a few nights later, I was asleep.

And it was the first time I ever experienced what I thought was sleep paralysis. So I'm in my bed. And I remember it was a weird lead-in. It was like a weird dream I was having. and in the dream I was in this really like pitch black room and then all of a sudden there was a light that popped in and it was showing over like a small table with a tape recorder and I remember I walked up and I pressed play on the tape recorder

and there was this voice that came out of it and it was like I don't know how to explain it other than it was like this really sinister voice It was like fluent gibberish. And as it started talking, I remember I woke up hearing screams in my bedroom. It was as if I had two different people, one in each ear, just screaming as loud as they could. And I woke up, and I remember I initially I could move a little bit, right? And I looked towards the end of my bed and then I froze and I couldn't move.

but I still heard this screaming. And it was like all the muscles in my body started to tighten. I actually curled into this ball, which is weird, because I feel like I didn't do it. Like I didn't voluntarily do that. My body just did it. And the screams continued. And then, man, a couple of seconds later,

I realized that I couldn't move. The scream stopped, but the bed behind me is, It sank in, right? As if someone, it didn't feel as though someone sat on the end of the bed right behind me. It felt as though someone had, was standing on it, as if they, like, jumped onto it and then just stood there over me. And I remember just, I felt like, you know, this is, this is what it feels like to be seconds away from being murdered. I, this is crazy. I don't want to ever feel this way again.

And I remember like just the different personalities. I would say I was close to my mom and how she reacted to things. And so while I feel as though I'm paralyzed and there's someone standing on this bed over me after I hear all this screaming, I just started to just say, you know, Jesus repeatedly. And it was like seconds later, you know, the impression on the bed just vanished. and I regained all of the control in my body. And you know what? This is the sucky part about experiencing things like this.

You know, I'm almost 20 years old when this happens. And the first thing I do, once I get control of my body, I wind sprint into my parents' bedroom. And I wake my dad up out of a cold sleep. And I was like, dad, I don't know how to tell you this any other way. I just think I got attacked by the devil. And he was really confused. He was like, what are you talking about?

You know, my mom was really concerned, but my dad, I think he was kind of like, you know, a little annoyed thinking maybe I just had like a bad dream and I'm a 20-year-old whisked cake. He's probably thinking, how did I raise this boy? Yeah, he would, yeah, I remember just feeling so crazy. I think after that because he had joked around a little bit, you know, about, you know, the devil attacks Caden in his sleep, you know. I don't really know what was going on.

I just know I woke up and I heard screaming and couldn't move and there was what I felt like someone's standing on my bed. And, you know, my brother, he kind of, he joined into, you know, just making fun of me a little bit. But I had never heard of sleep paralysis before. Before I woke up the next morning, my mom, she was already on Google, like trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And so she was like, oh, there was like a scientific explanation for this, you know,

people experience this all around the world. And, you know, I would say about three or four weeks later, my, I wake up one night and I just kind of roll over. And it's one of those weird moments where you just happen to like see something at the perfect time. I roll over and my brother is standing there in the dark and he's looking at me and he's crying silently. And I was kind of freaked out.

I was like, whoa, hey man, you're doing all the other. okay? Like, what's, what's up with you, you know? And he was kind of speechless, but he was, like, really shaking. And so I kind of asked him, like, oh, did you have, like, sleep paralysis? And he kind of nodded. Now, my brother, at the time, I am 19, so he would have been probably 16. You know, both of us are a little too old to think we're just having, like, weird mystical experiences. Like, at this point, you're mature enough to know that something weird is going on. So I you know part of me felt like really good like ha ha I'm not alone you know so I told him like you can sleep on the floor it's okay I know you made fun of me and now you had your own experience but welcome to the club so it took him probably two days to get over it before he was back to sleeping like a baby but I remember he told me he woke up and

the way the room is situated, he was laying on his right side, and when he opens his bedroom closet door has a full-length mirror on it. So he looks directly in the mirror, and behind him in the mirror is a what he described as a black figure. He said it was darker than the actual darkness in his room. And so he started praying, I think out of desperation, the name of Jesus. Just the first thing it kind of happened in his mind and just started saying the name of Jesus.

And he says that his vision goes red as if he just passes out and then he wakes up a couple minutes later. That's, you know, when he comes into my room. I just remember feeling with the weird connections in our story. Like, I also felt that

sensation as if I had, you know, seen something or experienced it and then afterwards I'd gone on a conscious for like, you know, a little bit of time. And I saw this, you know, this red that kind of washed over before it happened. So now, you know, we're both telling our parents like, you know, Cameron's had sleep paralysis. Here's, you know, his story. And it's kind of eerie because it lines up with mine. And so, yeah, he gets over it real quick. He's back to just sleeping like a baby doing his own thing. And I'm freaked out thinking, you know, what are the odds I wake up again?

and I'm having what I believe to be this insane experience with some invisible force. So in the next couple weeks I was having, and it felt like I was the only one who was now having experiences after this point. I would, I would, obviously about every two or three nights, I would have these dreams where I would, in the dream, I would walk over to my brother's room. and it felt like there was this weird sinister thickness in the air. And I would always wander into the room and be really confused, like, what's going on in the dream. And then I would see this person in my dream. It was the same person every single time. And I remember this person had like a really, I don't know how to explain it.

The face was distorted as if. it seemed like the mouth was extra, extra wide. The person of these really strange-looking eyes in it, every dream ended the same where this person would be spewing out blasphemies. And I would be trying to invoke the name of Jesus, but having a tough time saying it. And then I would wake up like in this panic, you know. And it happened every couple of nights for a couple of weeks.

for a couple of weeks, maybe even months. And then I remember, and this is one of those stories. I don't even know. I kind of wrestled with bringing this one up because I can't really explain it. But the only reason I even mention it is because I've heard of people who have had similar experiences actually on this podcast. One night I woke up and it felt as though I was continuing a conversation that I wasn't previously having, if that makes sense.

So I wake up. And I'm really mad for some reason. And I get out of my bed. And I'm walking around in my room and I'm saying, why is he here? Like, he shouldn't be here. This is my house. He needs to leave. And I really mean it, right?

But I don't know what I'm talking about. And I lean out of my bedroom door and I look down the hallway into my parents' room. And we used to have a golden retreat. retriever at this moment, at this moment of time, and he always laid kind of near the door. So I look into, appear into the hallway down to my parents' door. When I see my dog, he's just kind of laying there. But standing over my dog is a, it looks like a very black and large German shepherd, which we don't have one. So I remember the dog itself was what my brother would describe

the other person, it seemed like it was darker than the actual darkness in my parents' room. And, you know, I didn't see the, I have a tough time remembering if the eyes were like a shade of red or there was something about the eyes

that were really strange. And the dog wasn't snarling at me, but he bore his teeth and I could see them. and I don't know if I'm having like this weird like sleepwalk experience but I'm looking at him and I lean back into my room and I'm extra mad and I'm saying he shouldn't be here this is my house why he's here he needs to leave and I started I started like kicking clothing and throwing bundles of socks and like stuff you could just you know really whip and it wouldn't make a sound so I'm essentially just destroying my room out of anger I go to, it's weird, I get back in my bed and I go to sleep like almost immediately. And I wake up the next morning and I thought like, dang, that was a strange dream. And then I look and my room was actually destroyed.

You know, like everything I did in the dream I actually would have done to my room. I thought, wow, that's strange. Like I don't know what's up with that. You know, I don't hear things about black dogs and weird activities. So I remember I watched a documentary not too long after that. It was on sleep paralysis and it's comparing all these different stories that people have. And, you know, before the documentary, I kind of just blew it off as like this is just a natural occurrence and people have this experience. So the people in the documentary, they're experiencing.

that they would see this dog from time to time. It was either a dog or this guy who would apparently wear the hat. I've never seen the hat man, but apparently that's another common visual people get with sleep paralysis and things like that. So I saw the black dog, and in the documentary they're explaining this dog, and I'm like, dang, that's the exact description of the one I'm seeing.

And this person, towards the end of the documentary, she's explaining that, you know, all she had to do was start praying and she never had sleep paralysis ever again. Um, all of her activities stopped.

And I thought, uh, dang, like, maybe I ought to try that, you know, uh, and then,

me being, uh, just a dumb guy. Like, I said, oh, that'll be cool. I'll try that next time.

And then just never get it, right? So, so I kept having all these crazy dreams and these run-ins where I'm, I'm, I'm waking up at two or three in the morning, and I think I'm seeing this German Shepherd around the house that I can't explain. And, you know, kind of towards the end,

we had like this quick exponential explosion of activity. And so I would be, I don't know how to explain this. So we had central air in my house, and we stored kind of all the family junk up in the attic. And so I had a box of like these child's hand toys where it was kind of like whackamol or something. And you'd play them for, you know, a couple minutes. And then within seconds of putting it down, the game would stop playing. And somehow I had this whackamol handheld game that somehow left the box and it got into the ventilation and traveled a little.

bit down towards my end of the ventilation and it was just running all night and the game was kind of creepy itself because the little moles that would pop up or whatever they were taunting you right you know like ha ha you can't catch me you can't get

me and so I'd be hearing this just playing out you know all night and I mean flip the heck out like what the heck is going on so one night my brother and I decide that we're just going to get out of the house and we're going to go and have like a game night at my my ex-girlfriend's house at the time. And so we're driving home. I was going to quick pick up this game apples to apples.

And so I walk to the front door and no one's home. My parents, I forget where they were. There's only me and my brother and my parents. And so they're gone. me and my brother in the car and I alone go into the house to get the game and I go upstairs into my room and I pick up the game and I start coming down the staircase and I it's one of those moments where you perceive real quick that something crazy is happening and you just kind of act I'm coming down the staircase and I can hear what sounds like someone who is now sprinting out of my parents' claw. and coming right at me in the dark.

So I just did some Olympic stuff, and I just jumped from a little above halfway up the stairs. They just jumped all the way down the stairs. I crash and burn, and I, you know, the cards explode everywhere. There's a billion cards in these boxes. They're all over. I'm at the bottom of the stairs, and I roll over quick, right, expecting to see someone following me. and no one's there. So I packed that box up real quick and I sprint on out to the car.

And my brother's like, what's up with the car box? It's all destroyed. And I told him like, dude, I'm telling you someone, it sounded as someone was sprinting right at me out of just the dark closet in my parents' room on the hardwood floors. I told him, I dropped this box. and I just picked it up and I bounced. I wasn't worried about putting it together. So a couple of, let's say about 30 minutes later, you know, we're picking up someone else after this.

We're driving by my house and no one's home. And yet now all of the lights are on in my house. And I've never felt, I think that was the moment that I just felt so defeated because when you experience something that's super paranormal, something even just a slight paranormal. There's like this helplessness that comes with it. Like I don't know why this is happening. I don't know what's going on.

I'm tired of feeling terrified like in my house. And I'm tired of having all these things happening. And I can't tell people because I feel like they would just think I'm absolutely nuts. Because, you know, no one else is experiencing this. This is just a kid. thing. So the final straw. One day, me and my

mom and my girlfriend at the time were upstairs. I forget what we're doing, but there was a shadow that had shifted across it wasn't as if it traveled along the wall. I mean, there was a black mass that shifted across empty space.

And I have never seen anything like that in my life. And at first, I didn't say anything. I just was going to, you know, know, just so I wouldn't freak everyone else out. But my then girlfriend, she looks, she was looking at me really strange. And I said, like, did you see that? And she, she was like, dang, I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to say it first, you know. And my mom was there. And she's the, at the time, she was the really Christian one. And so she said, yeah, I said, yeah, I said, saw that too. I think we should pray. And I was like, oh, yeah, we should do that. I remember from

like weeks ago that that was the one thing I had to do that I literally could have done at any moment and I just didn't. So she she prayed specifically that God and Jesus would set our house free from what was happening. And to this day, we have not had one week. thing going on in that house. And I just remember being blown away. Immediately after we said that prayer, it felt as though like I could go to bed in peace. And I think it was, I think that event really jogged my my spiritual brain a little bit because I was thinking, like, wait, I'm putting things together, right? So I had my sleep paralysis. I invoked the name of Jesus. My event stops. And I haven't had paralysis since.

my brother has the same event. He invokes the name of Jesus. His event stops and he hasn't had it yet. Or since we just watched a black mass shift across open space. My mom prays. And there's something different about the house. And I remember that that piece that came with just having a house back. And I started to think, well, gang, like maybe there is, maybe there's something going on here with this whole Christian

thing, right? Because before, I think I was Christian, just because I associated myself with, like, a Christian family. Like, we were moral, we didn't do bad things. My mom was a Christian. Like, I, I understood that Jesus was important to some degree. And so I went away to Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, where I got involved with an on-campus ministry. And I remember I started learning a lot about Christianity and the core doctrines of what it taught. And, you know, I looked at back on those weird events and I could see this really crazy like spiritual activity taking place and at the time I was just too blind to see it and it really just like for me it was a proof that there was something about Christianity that I don't know I there was this validity there that I just wasn't seeing with any else so I got out of I got out of college and I went into college missions with Campus Crusade for Christ. And I still do that. I still am at Kutztown. I still do work with Kru and the students. But I remember as I got involved with crew, I started to see a little weird paranormal things happening again. You know, surprise, surprise. You know, you start advancing a

little bit in your faith and now you have the goal to share it with people and all of a sudden you had this flare-up of you know, what people probably classify as a little haunting things. So I remember at the time I was only dating my girlfriend, who is now my wife. We were living in different houses. And I was living with this guy. We were friends. And I just remember for weeks, like there was this weird depression that just kind of swept over the house. And we were, I remember we just felt like we weren't going anywhere in life.

and we were just wasting our time. And we were starting to fight a lot. And one night, um, one night I just sat him down. I was like, hey man, you feel like,

you feel like something weird's going on in the house, you know, like I just, I feel like there's this, this, uh, heaviness here. And I haven't really thought to acknowledge it yet,

but, uh, what do you think? And he agreed and, you know, something was, and then he started telling me that he was seeing shadow people in the house. And I was like, dang, like, that's something you tell me weeks ago when you experience it, you know, but I can't blame him because, you know, he probably has what I was feeling, you know, years before where I couldn't tell someone because I didn't want to be the weirdo.

He's telling me that, you know, he would be in the shower or something and he would see the shadows. They would run across the curtain as if someone was in the bathroom on the other side of the curtain. Oh, that's the worst. Oh, dude, that's like my worst fear, you know. If you're going to kill me, that's the best. moment to do it. And if you're a ghost, that's the worst moment to do your ghost stuff, you know. So he's telling me you seeing shadow people and I started praying. I decided we're going to pray, right? Because at this point, I believe in prayer. I'm down with the, with the biblical response to

the paranormal. So we start praying. And as I'm praying, I see. And this was even weirder than the first time I saw it. I saw a black mass. And it shifted. right down the center of the room, not along the walls, and this time it walked in front of a light, and it actually, for a second, like, drowned out the light, and it cast a shadow on us. And I, man,

I seen it, and I still couldn't believe it. And I don't know if anyone of your listeners, I feel a few of them can probably, like, really identify with me in this. you know, we all get scared from time to time, but sometimes you get hit with this wall of dread, and it's like your brain just shuts down. You can't talk. You can't think. There's nothing other than you're just thinking about what just happened. So I'm praying, and I hear, I get this a reminder that we're told in the Bible, there's only one thing, one person we should ever feel.

year and it's God. So I finished my prayer and I didn't have a I didn't have any activity in that in the apartment as long as I was there. That night I think he he confessed he had some weird items and so he got rid of them. So I mean I left that apartment when I got married and you know I slept like a dang baby. I moved into an apartment with my wife and I remember there are a couple of nights before I would go to the large group and I would preach and I would have these weird things happen where like all of the drawers in my dresser would fly open, you know, or something to that effect. And the dresser one was kind of weird because there was no stops on the drawers. So if they go, they could just go until they fall out. But they all opened and they all stopped the exact same place. coincidentally as I'm about to go preach to the students about you know spiritual warfare and the fact that we do have in Christianity this idea of a spiritual enemy named Satan and I was like dang this like the timing on all of these things is so incredibly weird right and I remember thinking as I was getting deeper into preaching with crew and you know having these disciples that I was working with and teaching them how to read the Bible and, you know, things like that.

I remember thinking like, you know, it's weird how much activity that I seem to experience because no one else is experiencing this kind of stuff, you know. And I've had staff members in various college ministries who I'm friends with. I've had other people who I went to school with who launched into ministry after college and they're not experiencing anything supernatural, right? But we're teaching the same stuff. And it's not like I'm going home and I have like a secret idol under my bed that I'm worshipping or you know what I mean. And so I remember thinking to myself after a few of these events like, you know, I don't know why this seems to be the pattern.

The farther I get into ministry, the closer I get to God, I get these crazier events. I remember thinking like, I really hope this isn't the pattern going forward because honestly, like I'm not a very tough guy. So every time something weird happens, you know, people, sometimes, I heard people who have had these experienced Christians and they act like they were just filled with this bravery and they were just like they had to go slay this demon. I'm not like that. When something happens, it's weird. I freeze up like a deer in headlights and I get freaked out. You know, I have anxiety. I get panic attacks sometimes and it's a real struggle I have. I remember thinking like, man, this can't keep going on because, like, I'm going to need, like, a rest period at some point, you know?

It's been, like, just off and on years and years of this stuff. And so, you know, the following story I'm about to tell it was it caused a little bit of trauma, I think, with me. And I, in hindsight, I should have gone to see a counselor about it. And I'll say this, too. This is probably the worst-case scenario, the worst-case nightmare for anyone who gets into ministry, things that people make movies about. And so if you have to, like, maybe skip through a little bit. I don't know. Just, I'm giving you the pre-warning, because to me, this freaks me out.

Actually, you had a guest on a couple of weeks ago who was going through his experience with casting out a deal. and, you know, some exorcism stuff. And I remember, like, even in that, like, I could feel that he was still dealing with that. And it felt so good to just know, because, you know, it's been about two years since this event. And, you know, I still have to take precautions. But anyways, I don't want to blow it up to be this huge, crazy story. And some of you might not even think it's that bad. So one night we had our students over for a Bible study.

and the ministry is still kind of young. And so, you know, if we get five or seven people in a given night, like, that was a really good night. And this particular night, we probably had, like, 12 or 13 kids show up. And not only did they show up, like, we had a really great talk. You know, the subject was how to know if you were legitimately a born-again believer versus someone who just kind of claims it, but you're not really a Christian, you know. And it's a really heavy topic because we're dealing with people who might actually be in the study who are on both sides. People who are saved and people who just think they're kind of saved, you know?

And it's good. We're having all the students are engaged in this talk. It's deep. And it's not like we're sitting around just waiting for someone to say Jesus as the answer, you know. And we're sitting next to this girl. She's our worship leader. and we're, you know, we're bouncing some jokes back, you know, back and forth, little here and there and nothing really weird's going on.

And so we're closing out the Bible study, and one of our student leaders decides he's going to just pray us out, which is great. It's how we usually end it. So he starts praying, and this girl who's next to me, she starts, like, shaking. And so I knew I knew she had, like, anxiety. Once in a while she might have panic attacks. Just for her identity, I'll just refer to her as Ashley. It's not a real name, but I'll just call her Ashley.

So, yeah, she starts, like, twitching and some weird stuff. And I said, like, you know, I came up to her and I said, hey, man, or hey, Ashley. Hey, Ashley, like, you're doing okay? You're having, like, anxiety, some panic attacks, meat water or anything. So she goes, no, this isn't anxiety. Like this is something totally different. And I said, oh, well, they're you okay? And she said no.

But she was like maintaining eye contact with me. And I thought, oh, come on. Like we had such a good night. I'm not a tough person. Like I cannot be doing this crazy stuff in my own house. Right. So I welcome to my wife and I tell her, there's some stuff that possibly could go down, like in the next couple of seconds or minutes, we need to start funneling these students out.

Because the last thing we need is students to see some high-level, crazy paranormal demonic activity and thinking that our ministry is like a cult or something weird, and then spreading that out to other students. And, you know, we don't need our ministry going down to tubes for some like this. So we're funneling them out. there's two guys left in the corner and I was getting frustrated because as I go up to tell them to take their conversation outside

one of the other student leaders who was a girl she walks up to Ashley and she notices something's going on and so she starts talking to her. I'm like dang it like we've got to get everyone out because it's about to go down and I can see Ashley she's just getting like even more fidgety and weird and so I approached the guys

and I say hey guys could you take this? outside. And as I asked the question, Ashley's head jerks back and her eyes roll up and she immediately like combat rolls off my couch and she starts crawling on all floors. And this is the most guy response. Without talking to each other, without looking at each other, we immediately all sprung up and we just took a limb. We just kind of pinned it down and this

girl starts screaming and she's cussing us out. She starts like saying all these blasphemies, you know? And I'm freaked out for a couple of reasons. One, if our neighbors hear us and they call the cops,

I have no way to explain why the three of us dies are panning this girl to the ground. I actually have no explanation. I could tell him the truth, hey, we thought she was demon-possessed, but that's not going to fly, right?

So I'm praying that no cops show up. And also, the way that the small wrestling match turned out, my buddy Rich, he somehow got a hold of both of her legs, and he was hanging on for dear life, and she's trying to kick him. And then my other buddy, Judah, who is a student leader, he takes her left arm. And his whole body is just holding this one arm down. And somehow I ended up like on top, like sitting kind of on her stomach and holding down her right arm.

And so conveniently enough, I'm the one who gets to talk to her now for the next three hours. This event takes place over three hours. And I got that. That upfront wall of dread, it hit me like a Mack truck. And for the first couple of seconds, I was shaking. And I couldn't believe what was happening. And I couldn't say words. I couldn't formulate sentences.

And I just felt like I was, like, every hair on me was standing up. And I finally, like, I started to, you know, process and think a little bit. And I was like, okay, well, now I'm in a situation because I have to hope the cops and show up, but also, like, if there's demonic possession happening, like, there is a biblical response. How do I lead my students through this safely? How do I keep the ministry under control? There's so many thoughts going around, and so I'm thinking through Scripture, like, what happens when Jesus or any of the apostles meet someone who is possessed? So, I finally well up enough courage and testicular fortitude, and I look at her and she's screaming,

and I'm trying to, you know, our haymakers. And I said, in the name of Jesus, come out of her. And she stops, she stops riding around. She stops fighting us. And her head kind of slowly turns to me. And she says, no. And then starts fighting us again. And I legitimately thought, oh, pack your bags, because that was the only plan I had.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what's going to work. I thought for sure that would work. So there were moments we're just trying to keep her contained because she started trying to bite her own fingers really hard. And if she got her hand free, she was trying to pull her hair out. So about 45 minutes to an hour, we were just trying to get her to stop screaming. We're praying. We're playing worship music. We're trying to get her to stop harming herself.

and then about the second hour, right? This hour to about two hours in, when you're having this really strange dialogue, me and this girl, eventually she stopped cussing us out and she started talking to us. And it was strange because I had known this girl for a couple of years beforehand,

so calm, so nice. Everything is happening so completely opposite. I, you know, I'm still in the moment I'm wrestling with like, is this multiple personalities? Is it just taking on the form of like this religious speak? Is this legitimately demonic? I don't know. So, so we're, we're, we're, I'm talking with this thing and I said, who are you? Am I talking to Ashley?

Like, what is this? Um, and I, I won't repeat the name. that it gave me, but it said, my name is, insert name, and then followed it up with... It gave you like a demureate name? Yeah, and it was a struggle because I said, what is your name, and it would not say it. And I said, in the name of Jesus, you will tell me your name. And then she whispered something. It was so strange, I thought it was a sound effect, to be honest.

So I said, in the name of Jesus, you will tell me your name so that I can hear it. and she said it a little bit louder. And then I repeated it back just to make sure if I heard that correctly. And as soon as I said the name, she started screaming and just trying to hit us and crazy stuff. So that's when she said, my name is, says the name, and then follows it up with, there are three of us in here that you have no power over us. And I was like, dang, this is crazy. Because, like, I'm supposed to be about an hour ago for work starting on Monday.

That's what you're thinking about. I was really panicking because this is two hours. I thought biblically this would take, like, you know, five minutes. You just cast it out in the name of God. And that was it. And it wasn't happening. I freaked out. We got students here.

I'm way late to bed. I don't know how this is going to finish. So I invoked Jesus again. I said, I command you, and I said the name in the name of Jesus to come out of her. And the screaming just intensified as if we were starting to gain some ground. And it was just in pain. I don't honestly know. So at one point, she wrestles my hand off of her.

She wrestles both my hands off her one arm. And she reaches up without looking and just rips the radiator shield right out of the wall. and like honestly I'm kind of like a dirt bag right so she rips the radio show out of the wall and I thought to myself dang that's like got to be at least $50 right like I'm it's comical but it it's such a weird night you're human you're human you're like you said before uh when you go into these situations and stuff you don't go in there with like uh super christian like superhero a Christian mentality, you know, like you're a human being. And even though, you know, you're going through something pretty heavy and crazy, if somebody's damaging your house, you're like,

dang it, that's going to be expensive. Right. I'm having this thought, like, dang, that's, that's money. I don't know how to explain that to the landlord. And so, so we started commanding her these three individuals, personalities inside of her to come out in the name of Jesus. And She resisted us for about another hour. So from about the second hour up until the end, right around the third hour, it was really strange. So she started to appeal to us with biblical scripture. And I forgot that demons know the Bible, right? So she starts speaking to us with scripture.

She starts trying to quote things to us. And now I'm in this weird acrobatics, just trying to intellectually find, like, where's the falsity in what she's saying? What's true? It was such a landmine. And so at one point, I was starting to freak out because I remember thinking, like, well, where is the Holy Spirit? Right. The promise is if I'm in the Bible, if I'm legitimately safe, then the Holy Spirit's in me. And I'm seeing all over the Bible that the Holy Spirit is like actively waging war on the demonic realm.

And yet I'm two hours in and I'm not seeing a whole lot of Holy Spirit. So I start to doubt myself now. I'm thinking, man, am I saved? How awkward is that? I'm leading the Bible study on how to know if you're saved and I might not even be saved. Right. And it was in this moment where I started to get these really calm and direct to the Bible study. a point and short thoughts, thoughts that I wouldn't normally think in a manner that I don't

actually think to myself, if that makes sense. So the person who is screaming would say something like, hand me that really thick Bible over there, or give me that track baton with all the Bible verses on it, because that'll help. And I would have this thought and would just say, no, don't. Okay, well, we didn't give her any objects to hold. We would just, kept worshipping. We would take moments where we command the spirits to come out. And so towards the end, we're about three hours in at this point. And we made some phone calls to the other staff members,

and they drove about 45 minutes in from Quaker Town. They're with us, and they're praying with us. And it's great because now we have, like, there's evidence, right? There's evidence that what I would have told the staff members happened is happening because one of them is actually witnessing it with me. And it was really strange. Right around three hours, it was as if she went to sleep and then woke up, totally normal. She had no memory of the last three hours, nothing had happened.

And I was kind of still like in this crazy, like defensive mindset. And so, you know, I got her some water. And then I was just, I was like the Inquisition, man. I was like, you know, hey, you ripped a radiator shield out of my wall. how did you know to do that? You said you were, this is your name. This is, you told me this is how it found you. This is how it entered you.

You know, I'm giving you all these details and she just had no idea what I was talking about. So the next night she comes over with a notepad and she wants us to recount the event to her because she doesn't remember it. And she wants to take it to her church so they can pray over her. And as we're recounting the things back to her, she starts to go into this weird, like, trance where it's like she's staring. but she's not thinking. There's no movement. There's no blinking. I always get freaked out. Like, you know, if this happens again, now we're down manpower. It's just me and my wife, which means she gets to run out of the house while I have to fight Satan alone because that's how husbandry works. So, you know, we just kind of took her home real quick. It took a couple of weeks and months of just dialoguing her after this event.

And we realized that awkwardly enough, she wasn't saved. She had heard some words. She just was good at repeating them. She really enjoyed the Christian music, and she was good at leading people through those songs. And so she was just kind of going through the motion. She couldn't tell you what the gospel was. And if you're listening to this and you're not a Christian,

it's important. The Bible makes, and I guess, It depends, right? Some people don't seem to think so. I fall into this camp. The Bible makes this argument that if you're legitimately born again and the Holy Spirit is living in you, it does not share residency with any other spirit. So you can't be possessed if you're born again. So she ended up, my wife had talked to her over the last couple months, and I guess she had started learning the gospel. She started denouncing. some of the new age practices. And I hate to say new age, because I don't know if I have any time to explain it. I think we're kind of, it seems like we're kind of getting up there. But she had denounced a lot of these new age practices, and she hasn't had anything since.

And I think looking back on it, I was really mad at the, after that event thinking, you know, I feel like I'm just doubting if I'm really safe. I don't know why my prayers weren't working in that moment and just all this stuff. And I think in the last half of that, I was just seeing that, you know, how merciful of it of God to have brought something of that magnitude out, right? Because it didn't seem like that spirit wanted to be known that it was there. How merciful was it that God drew it out? And we all got out of there completely unscathed. The cops never showed up. She ended up getting saved after that.

She was liberated. You know, the ultimate payoff that she was liberated and her sins were forgiven. And so, you know, it's such a weird event. And I can't, I still don't know half the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. But that was about two years ago. Since then, I haven't had any sort of paranoia. my activity in my new house or my old apartment. That was kind of the climactic end to it so far.

But dang, yeah, I was comforted when I heard that guy a couple of weeks ago sharing about that girl. He had done something similar with than just how, you know, he had this flare up of anxiety. And it was really helping me actually because I feel like since then I've had this anxiety where I would get like nocturnal panic attacks or I would have to watch, you know, how much coffee I was drinking because then I would get anxiety and anxiety would just, you know, morph into panic attacks and all this crazy stuff. But yeah, that was it, man. That's my experience. Wow. Well, Caden, I'll tell you one thing before I say anything else, you really laid out some

great details and you actually saved my voice on this interview. So thank you so much for that. Yeah, no problem. But I would like to say this before we wrap up here. You did do really good sharing the details of your experiences. And when somebody shares such detail, it leaves a lot less questions for me anyways. Now, with what you just said, though, about, you know, the praying and nothing happening as far as the demonic stuff goes, I kind of look at that in a very similar manner as, you know, any other prayer, you know, like if you're praying for healing, like I'm somebody who believes that, you know, to this day, God does perform miracles and heals people. It doesn't mean it happens every time. And why? I don't know why. But I know that there's a pattern here that when

you pray, sometimes it doesn't seem like you're getting the answer you're hoping for. Unfortunately, sometimes, you know, the situation might be seemingly more dire than others like, you know, an act of possession situation. But it sounds like you handled it well. And it sounds like, man, that was a, that was a, is the wrong word great? It was a great story. Yeah, it's, I guess, marvelous in the classical sense, but it definitely does share great. Absolutely. Thanks for sharing, man. I appreciate it. No problem. Thanks for having me on. Well, that's sure, but I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did enjoy it, let me know by sharing the show.

I don't care where or how you share the show. Just share the show if you enjoyed it. And until next week, friend, stay safe. Take care and remember. The truth was such a free, but first he'll piss you off. Bye. Oh, and follow us on YouTube. Go ahead and subscribe on YouTube. I'm going to start uploading shows there.

All right, bye. Fantastic. I'm just feeling, probably like you. I'm just drifting. Probably right beside you. All the abyss. Control from a fall.

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