The Exorcist Files - An Orthodox Exorcist Shares His Stories

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Fr Nectarios Trevino is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He retired in 1998 and his last assignment was as a squadron commander. His entire career was in the Politico-Military Affairs and Intelligence career fields. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center where he earned a Juris Doctorate, the National Defense University’s Staff College, and the USAF’s Air War College. He served on General Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War. Fr Nectarios is a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. He attended the Vatican’s Exorcism Program in 2009.SPONSORS OF TODAYS EPISODEFireStarter Series-    A dramatic and epic adventure recounting the legend of George and the Dragon. A fun narrative podcast that is great for the family, starring Wizards of Waverly Place Star David Henrie.  Click here to listenExodus90- Ultimate men's spiritual formation curriculum. Co-hosted by Father Martins. Join the St. Michael's Lent with a group of likeminded warriors.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Now, we received quite a few requests to hear from an exorcist in the Orthodox tradition. Today we are going to bring you an interview with Father Nectarios Trevino. With an amazing name and an intelligence officer background, this is one way. guy demons don't want to mess with. He is also a dear friend of Father Martins, who is excited to introduce you. But before he does, one more special announcement. For those that journey with us to the end of this episode, there is a little sneak peek of something. Could it be a scene from season two? Well, you'll just have to listen to the end to find out. With that, here's our resident demon disciplinarian to introduce our guest today, Father Carlos Mark.

Hello, friends. Father Carlos Martins here. Father Nectarios Trevino is an Orthodox priest and is one of my closest and dearest friends. We met many years ago at an exorcist conference and from our first meeting we hit it off. Many things impressed me about him. First and foremost, his faith. Father Nectarios is a great man of God. He has a deep relationship with Christ and would glad. gladly die for his Christian faith. Two, his intellect. He is highly educated and possesses a disciplined and well-trained mind. Three, he is a brilliant tactician and strategist. Father had a long storied career in the U.S. military, possessing the rank of lieutenant-colonel. The training and skills he obtained have served him well as a priest and exorcist. Father Nectarius worked in political military affairs and as an intelligence officer.

He served under General Norman Schwarzkhov. In fact, he was in the war room alongside the general all through the Desert Storm War. Father left the military in 1998 and subsequently sensed a call to the priesthood. He was ordained in 2002. In 2009, he attended an exorcist course offered by the Vatican, where he met the fame. named Father Gabriel Amorth, one of the most famous Catholic exorcists in centuries. Father Nectarios serves his parish congregation in Virginia within the D.C. Capital Region. In this interview, he discusses his first possession case and describes being followed,

tracked, maybe a better word, by a demon over a long period of time. And when I say tracked, I mean the possession case he speaks of in this interview. the individual being controlled by the demon, who suddenly shows up in his life. And when I say a long period of time, I mean years. At the significant points in his life, the demon will show up going out of his way to let Father Nectarios knows that he knows

all that he is doing and what is going on in his life. In other words, Father Nectarios is on the demonic radar. And the fact that the enemy says to you, I'm letting you know I'm here. I'm watching you. I know about you. I hate you. Speaks volumes about who you are. Friends, enjoy this interview from a great man of God.

I'm Father Nectario, Sabin Trevino. I was born and raised in Texas. I enlisted in the Air Force when I was 19 years old. I spent 25 years in uniform, retired from the Air Force in 1998. I fought back an urge to refer to Father Nectarios as Prayer Force One. So how does a man in the Air Force actually end up battling the spirits of the air? Here is his story. Around 1995, I was assigned to Ohio State University as a National Defense Fellow.

And while there, I read and wrote, In fact, I built a course and taught it. I have a Bachelor of Arts and Political Science from Southwest Texas State University, and I later got my law degree from Georgetown University. And I retired as lieutenant colonel after being a squadron commander. I served during the Gulf War. I was there when the war started, when the first airplane took off, and I was there the night the war ended.

It was after that that I was assigned to the defense and intelligence agency, and then to Ohio State University. What I didn't know when I retired in 1998 was that I was going to eventually be attending the seminary. I believe my bishop had a better sense of where I was destined to go than I did. When he asked me to come to seminary, I turned him down and I said, no, not me. It's not where you want me to go. It's not what I want to do, and I certainly don't want to be a priest. and he cajole me.

He says, no, no, come learn more about the faith. I did. And after a couple of years, he said, I'd like you to be a subdeacon. And then I asked him, what does a subdeacon do? And he says, well, you run the divine liturgy. The priest can't do anything without you. And your military mindset was still going.

And I said, okay, I can be a deacon. And he ordained me to the diaconate. And from there, I and another deacon, and traveled all around a nation with him, and we traveled to Istanbul in 2002 when they made the Holy Mir. We spent Holy Week there. It was a magnificent time. And all the time he was talking to me and saying, you can do this, you can't do that. And I realized that he was teaching me. We came back from Istanbul and a couple of weeks passed. And then the phone rang. And at that point in time, We had caller ID on the phone.

And I looked at caller ID and knew it was him. And I said, you know, Vladica, how are you doing? And he said, what are you doing on this Sunday? And I looked at my calendar and I, since we'd been traveling around with him, I said, well, I don't have anything on my calendar. Where are we going? And he said, well, I'm coming down to see you. We're not going anywhere.

I said, what are you coming to see me for? And he said, I'm coming down to ordain you to the priesthood. And I said, no, no, you don't want to do that. I'll be problematic and too much to handle. And he said, no, no, no, don't worry about it. I said, you don't know what you're doing, something you should never tell a bishop. And he said, yes, I do. And he said, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to say your prayers and go to confession. And he gave me a whole litany of things to do. And we ended the conversation. And I'm in a state of shock. I hung up the phone by then. And my lovely wife, who was across the house, came into the kitchen where I'd been speaking to the bishop and said, so were you talking to the Metropolitan? And I said, yes.

And she said, what did he say? He said, you wanted to know what I was doing on this specific Sunday. And she said, oh, are you going somewhere? And I said, no, I'm not going anywhere. He's coming down to see us. And she looked at me with a quizzical look and said, why is he coming down to see us? I said he's going to ordain me to the priesthood. And my wife took one look at me and started laughing.

She said, you be a priest. And she walked out laughing. And I thought, well, that's a sign of humility right there when your wife is laughing at you. And you've just been told you're going to be made a priest. We have shared that one does not usually go seeking out deliverance and exorcism ministry. It finds you. In the case of Father Nictarios, it definitely found him. Unfortunately for our adversary, it picked a fight with the wrong Air Force veteran, a classic example of evil over extending itself.

By antagonizing Father Nectarius, it awakened a whole new warrior against the demonic. Indeed, it found me. I did not go looking for it. I will tell you a couple of stories that happened 20 years ago. I had a parishioner at that point in time who I thought was very true. troubled mentally. And a nice individual, one whom I could talk to, one who was very well grounded, one who had gone through some trauma in her life. And I was trying to counsel her and help her in her journey towards salvation. And then all of a sudden she became very aggressive. to the point of attacking me, not in front of anybody, except perhaps my wife, but attacking me

with vulgarities, attacking the priesthood more than me as an individual. And then in attacking the priesthood, saying, you know, your priesthood's invalid, I'm leaving the Orthodox Church, and I'm going to the Catholic Church. And I said, well, okay, you know, farewell. And she laughed. She was gone for about three weeks. It was kind of a sense of relief that she's not going to come back and not be a distraction anymore. And then about three or four weeks later, all of a sudden, the individual is in the front pew.

And so I said in the divine liturgy, and there she is at the front row. I addressed her by her name, and I said, are you okay? And she said, no, I'm not okay. And I said, I thought you left and went to the Catholic Church. And she said, I did. And then I said, well, what are you doing back here? And she said, the priest told me to come back to you. And I kind of threw my hands up in the air.

And I said, why did the priest tell you to come back here? And she said, I don't know, but he said that I belong here, that I'm supposed to submit to you and pay attention to you. And I remember talking to my dean, and the dean is the priest who's in charge of three or four parishes in the Washington, D.C. area. And I called him after liturgy and after I went home. And I said, Father, you remember I was talking to so-and-so?

And he says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she left, and she went to the Catholic Church. And that's very good. I said, yeah, well, she's back. And he said, what do you mean she's back? And I said, well, she talked to the priest and the priest sent her back to me. Now I have to deal with her. And boy, did I have to deal with her. This is when things really ramped up. She would be in church. Some Sundays, she would not be in church. One Sunday, she was waiting for me outside of church. And as soon as I walked out, She popped out of her vehicle and was about to attack me. And I had my prayer rope, put my cassock, and I started to say my prayers. And when I did, she would back off. And the minute I stopped saying my prayers, she proceeded to march toward me to assault me.

And I really mean physical assault, and I would go back to saying my prayers. and she would back off again. This time she backed up all the way to her car. And I was listening to her, and she was doing everything from spitting to damning me, to issuing curses. And this was not her that was speaking. And I basically said to her,

I believe you need to get in your car, and you need to go home, and you need to come back, next week for confession. And she left. And I was very surprised, and I thought to myself, you know, what in the world just happened? Next week, she was there for confession. And she came forward, and I said the prayers over her, and I asked her to proceed with her confession.

And then a voice came forth, not her voice, another voice. The voice said, fill in the blank, her name is not going to confess to you. And I said, I beg your pardon? And the voice said, so-and-so is not going to confess to you. Then I said her name, and I said, are you there? And she said, yes, I am. And I blessed her with holy water. and she recoiled and looked at me, and it wasn't her eyes, and I said, you're a child of Christ,

I'm going to absolve you of all your sins. I said the prayer of absolution over her. But as she was walking away and going down the steps of the Amvon, she kept turning over her shoulder, and again, it wasn't her eyes. In fact, she didn't stay for divine liturgy. She left that day. At that point, I knew that I was encountering something that was beyond my ability to address. And that led me down a path where I had to learn more about the demonic and more about spiritual warfare. I found out that Rome was offering the exorcism courses, and I got permission at that point in time to attend. So I spent my 10 days or so in Rome, and that's where I got to meet Father Gabriel Amorth and a number of other exorcists who were there.

Then I realized what I was confronting. My awareness was heightened. my sense of discernment was heightened. And I realized that the devil, that the demons can come to church. As Father Martin shares frequently, deliverance ministry is not something one enters into lightly. There is training, mentorship, experience that one must procure. Father Nectarios found himself in need of this training

after facing the afflicted woman in his congregation. Given his time in Rome learning from Catholics, I was curious about the similarities and differences we might find between the two traditions, specifically with spiritual warfare. The differences between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, what I focus on is process. Process is basically the same. The Catholic Church has a right and a ritual of exorcism.

The Orthodox Church doesn't have a right. a ritual of exorcism inasm as much as it has prayers of exorcism. So the key for me is to look at the process that the Catholic Church uses and to be able to find similar Orthodox prayers that I can employ and use them within the process. A lot of the prayers that are used in the Catholic ritual are the same prayers that we say in orthodoxy. So there's no need to make a change there. Like the Lord's prayer, there's no change. There's no change.

The Hail Mary, the Orthodox version of the Hail Mary has a minor change to it. But it's still an appeal to the Holy Mother. And so there is no change that is substantial. When it comes to being able to say a prayer of exorcism, we have prayers of exorcism in Orthodoxy. We have them in baptism, and we can use those again. We have prayers by St. Basil and St. John Chrysacin. There are prayers of exorcism, and we can use those again.

But once the demon manifests itself in the individual and a dialogue is engaged in between the priest and the demon, that's not so much a matter of prayer is that's a matter of process. And the two don't change. Where a Catholic priest asks the demon, what is your name? because once the demon gives its name, it is seating control to the priest. The Orthodox priest does the same thing. And so that's, I guess, my appeal to the greater Orthodox Church, and the Moscow Patriarch is working on developing a ritual right now.

That is the ritual that will eventually be followed by, or institutionalized and followed by the Orthodox priest. But until that time, it's very, very important that the process be followed, but the prayers be fine-tuned to reflect the Orthodox tradition. When it comes to employing, for example, a litany of saints. The litany of saints that might be used in the Catholic Church are different than the litany of saints that might be used in the Orthodox Church. church. For the first thousand years or so, we have the same saints, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. For the last thousand years or so, because there's been a divergence between the two religions, we have different saints from different traditions that we appeal to that may not be recognized

or known in the Catholic Church. So those are the types of things that a North Orthodox priest has to become familiar with, has to become conscious of, and so as to not to stray from the Orthodox path, from the Orthodox rituals. And so we use our own litany of saints, we use our own exorcism prayers, but the process is still basically the same. Now, I was curious to know what happened with the case Father Nectarius mentioned. Well, it was worth the wait. Let me continue with that woman that I mentioned earlier. A number of years later, probably a decade, 12 years later, my wife is in line at Costco, getting ready to check out. This woman sees my wife, confronts my wife loudly at the checkout line in Costco and start screaming.

and cursing at her and taunting her. And my wife is doing all she can to maintain her composure. And everyone there in Costco has got their eyes on this woman and their eyes on my wife. And they don't know what to do. And then my wife has to finally turn her back on her. But no matter how she turns her back on her, this woman keeps harassing her. And then the woman walks away. The Costco cashier was, she was very apologetic and can I do anything for you and gave my wife a discount for everything that she had bought.

My wife came home shaken up. There came a point in time in 2018 when I moved from the Greek church to the Russian church for a number of reasons. And at my first divine liturgy in the Russian cathedral, this woman shows up out of nowhere. We haven't seen her for eight years or more. And she is there to once again harass me, harass my wife, harassed the dean of the cathedral. And it was halacious. And they had to escort her out. So it's kind of like the demonic is following you and tracking you.

And you're sitting here saying, I don't know where she came from. And I don't know how she knew I was going to be there, how my wife was going to be at Costco. I don't think that was by chance. How I was going to be at the cathedral that day, be invested. This is not a coincidence. So we know we're being followed. We know we're being tracked. And I think I can speak for every exorcist

that to one degree or another, we're probably being monitored, if I can say that. You say, oh, it's you again. You know, God be with you. Go away. And you say, Satan be gone. Demon be gone.

You command it to go away. The demon can go wherever it's in. invited. Again, an experience in church. I'm baptizing a child. We're talking about an infant. Wonderful parents. Absolutely wonderful parents. Really proud that their child is going to be baptized. The godparents are one of the most upright and holy families that I have in the parish. We go through the entire ritual. You know, we start at the very front of the church. We say the prayers of exorcism there.

The prayers of exorcism have been said. And then we walk the godparents forward, and they're holding the child. And the godmother is uncomfortable. And her husband has his arm around his wife, the godmother. He's trying to keep her calm or, you know, from not getting too excited. I'm not really paying attention. We baptize the child. The godmother's holding the child, and she keeps saying something to her husband,

and she keeps moving her feet like she's trying to steady herself. And I'm beginning to think that, you know, she's feeling sick and or feeling dizzy. And I'm reading the epistle reading, and in my peripheral vision, I can see that the godmother is very unsteady. In fact, she hands the child to her husband, the godfather. And the godmother is just kind of taking a deep breath, and she's trying to calm herself down. And she takes the child back from her husband,

and she's holding the child, and then all of a sudden she's kind of rocking, and she's stepping forward, stepping back, stepping to the left, stepping to the right. And I finished the epistle reading, and I'm starting to say, the gospel reading, and then all of a sudden something in me says, go out, be gone. And I'm shouting. And at the moment I say that, the indoor doors to the church fly out and open. And then

the exterior doors of the church fly out and open. And there's kind of like a rush of wind that goes through. The rush of wind, whatever was in there, responded to the commands. And everyone who was in the church turned around as the doors are flying out and open. And as far as I can tell, there was something in the church that somebody brought into the church. I don't have any reason to believe it was the parents. I don't have any reason to believe it was the godparents because I know. I know. I know, them fairly well. But there were a number of guests there. And I don't know all the guests. And I don't know who they invited in. And I don't know what they were doing. And I don't know how they live their lives. But those are the kinds of things that you encounter when you get in a crowd

of people, even in a church, you have no control over what other people are. are doing and what other people may be involved in. And this is the danger that we all run into. Amen. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th.

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So go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90.com. X files to join tens of thousands of men from all over the world for Exodus 90. Again, it begins Monday, January 20th. God bless you. Intelligence officer's side, which probably is why he's such an effective exorcist. He is looking for details. Now, of course, we need not give in to fear.

But Father is big on details and information. He points out a sobering fact that you really don't know everything about everybody. You never know what can be an entry point for the demonic. For you clean freaks out there, you may want to skip this story. People call me up and say, hey, father, we've had these problems in our living room. We've had these problems, noises that we're hearing and things falling down in the kitchen. And I asked the question, how long ago did this start? they'll say, oh, probably about 10 days ago. We'll look at a calendar.

What happened 10 days ago? Well, we had this big party and we had 25 people in here. Do you know them all? Well, what do you mean, Father? I said, are you willing to put your life on the line that you know everything that they're involved in? Well, of course not, Father. No, there's no way.

They're just, they're friends from work. They're friends from down the street. They're neighbors. Some of them were friends of friends. We really don't know. And I said, so any one of them might have been involved in something that was satanic or pagan or of the occult. And then the couple will look at each other and say, well, I guess it's possible. And I said, okay, while we're here, let's look at your couches.

Let's look at your chairs. Let's look under your carpet, if you have not your carpet, but your rugs. Let's look underneath your dining room table or inside drawers that you may have or behind your TV or in your potted plant. Is there anything that shouldn't be there? And they will go through and they will find things from hair, from wads of cloth to other objects. Where did this come from? I didn't. I didn't put it there.

It didn't come from me, and they have to give me everything. We don't know where it came from. We don't know who left it there. We don't know if there's a curse attached to it. Okay, give it to the priest. Let the priest dispose of it, and then let the priest exercise the whole house to make sure there isn't anything in that. house. I had a family again, number of years ago. Someone was living with them. That someone was

very special, someone they thought they knew, and they were having problems in their house. They were having bad problems in their house. They went through and they looked at everything in their house. They even went to so far as to get rid of some gifts that the individual had given them. And okay, you've done the ground floor and we've exercised it. We've exercised around the house. Have you looked in the basement? And they said, no, we really don't go down into the basement. And I said, well, you might want to look in the basement and see if there's anything there. And I give them their privacy and I leave. And probably a week later, they're going through the basement and are throwing stuff away and cleaning stuff up.

and everything else. And there's this big freezer chest. And it's the freezer chest that's probably 20, 30 years old. And it's not like, I don't think they make these freezer chests anymore. But it's kind of like the ones that you can put a whole cow in and has got a lift-up top on it. And it was old. They didn't use it that much. They wanted to get rid of it.

And so they got two hefty, strong guys to come lift it up because it was going to take at least two people to lift it up and then probably a couple of more to help them carry it out of the house. So one of them puts his hands underneath one side and the other one puts his hands underneath the other side. One of them lifts quicker than the other one lifts and lifts higher. And as the second person is lifting up his side to try to catch up with the first person, the first person who had lifted up his side of the freezer just drops it and jumps back, which means that the second person who doesn't know what's going on drops his side of the freezer and says, what's going on? Well, the first person was about to have a heart attack because there was a six-foot snake,

six-foot black snake, underneath. the freezer chest. And they call me afterwards, and the family who owned the home is stunned, because they don't know what's going on. And I said, and what did you do to the snake? And said, oh, well, we killed it. Okay, you killed a snake, and you got rid of it. Oh, yeah, we threw it out in the back 40. Okay, and you got the freezer out of there. Yes, yes, we did. How long was the snake? About six feet. And I said, so you have no idea how long the snake had been underneath the freezer. No, Father, we have no idea. You have no idea when it came in.

You have no idea how long it's been there. I said, that's right. And I said, okay, remember that you kill the snake, but you didn't kill the serpent. We kind of look at each other. I said, let's do an exorcism of the whole house. So we did the basement, we did the upstairs, we did the exterior of the home. They never had another problem again. I wish we had sub-zero freezers as a sponsor right now.

I would tie in nicely. I appreciated Father's thoroughness. No stone left unturned. Now, one topic that has repeatedly come up on this show that has been really tough for me to wrap my head around is generational sin. People who seem to be suffering despite living righteous and godly lives who find themselves afflicted because of the sins of their ancestors. I asked Father Nectarios if he had any experience with generational curses. I have encountered what I believe to be generational sin.

And I say that I've gotten to the point where I've ruled everything else out. So it's by default. But I haven't gotten to the point myself where the demon has stated that they had rights because of generational sin or packs or deals that were made with a demon. What I've really encountered more is the paganism of the present world and deals that were made by inviting the demon to participate in a person's life by making a deal with a demon and then realizing that, things have gone wrong, that they didn't, you know, they thought they were playing a game.

So I've seen a number of curses that perhaps one family member levied on another, and I guess that could be intergenerational, that could be counted as intergenerational sin. But I've encountered more people who are living out in the world, who are doing things and going places that they shouldn't be doing or going to. The intergenerational sin that I have encountered has been more under the rubric of being a witch doctor. I can heal you. I can do, I can use homeopathic remedies with a ritual. I can write my mother down in Central America or in Africa and she can send me these things that will help me heal you. And people will allow themselves to be medicated through a ritual through these healings, which are not Christian.

And what they're doing is they're inviting the demon in, inviting the unknown in by playing in the occult. And oftentimes, on more than one occasion, I'm able to talk to the person who is practice. the occult and get them to understand what they're doing and how that can injure them. And a lot of people, if they're smart enough and they're willing and understanding of the damage that they're doing because of their culture, because their mother did it, their grandmother did it, their great-grandmother did it. When I can sever those links along the way and break the tradition, Usually you have a way to spiritually heal someone.

But the problem is, and you find yourself going back and re-breaking the bonds. Now, trauma, yes, absolutely there's been trauma. But the trauma is often associated with cultic activities. and its cultic trauma that's been inflicted on someone, a family member or a neighbor or a child or even an adult that came from someone that they trusted. And so you have to find out where the portal was, where the opening was, and you have to close it.

And doing that is not always easy. Father Carlos said that, and I believe he's completely right, that it takes an average of 75 sessions to break the linkage between the demon and the individual. Sometimes it takes more, sometimes it takes less, but a lot of it depends on the nature of the attachment that the individual has and the supporting cast around the individual, the husband, the wife, the parents and everything else have with the individual to sustain them and to help them rebuild their identity because the priest can't do it can't do it by himself this is an analogy and it's a good analogy it's like an alcoholic trying to break his or her addiction that alcoholic needs a supporting cast to help them and to encourage them to stay on the path and to stay focused on what they need to do. And that's where Alcoholics Anonymous helps them because they have a

supporting cast of people who can help them stay true to the objective of breaking the addiction. We need the same thing in church, but it's not to the point of everybody's involved. It's to the point of the individual has to come to church, has to partake of the sacraments, has to go to confession. If more people went to confession, we would have less problems in the church. Most people don't think of it this way. People go into confession. They say, oh, well, Father, yeah, I said a little lie. I had a little bit of pride, my ego, and I was a little bit gluttonous. And they name off what they believe to be little items in their confession.

What they don't realize is that each one of those things they're confessing is like opening a door to the darkness. and the more they open the door to the darkness, the more the darkness can come through and can entrench itself within them. And the greater the bond can be between the darkness and the individual. I have a male who come up, who will open his wallet, pull out a card,

and just go down the litany. I've done this, this, this, this, and this. And I'm sitting in after the fourth, fifth time, I'm saying, can I have that card? Can I look at it? And they say, well, no, it's my card. And I said, no, I need to look at the card. And they'll give me the card and I'll tear up the card in front of them. And the anger that comes out of them is unbelievable sometimes.

Because one, I've destroyed one of their possessions. Two, I've destroyed one of their crutches that they have so that they don't have to think about their confession. And so therefore, they're not truly confessing and being repentant. And number three, then I can see perhaps what might be, might be a demonic attachment. Because the demon says, oh, just mention this little thing, get it done, get it out of the way, and get it over with. So confession can make such a big difference in a person's life. And the absolution that one receives from confession and knowing that they're free from that attachment. At least for that moment, they're free from that attachment.

Now, they can go back and reestablish that attachment if they want to. But if they do that, again, they're inviting the demon or demons, plural, back into their life. And they've got to break it again. Now, Father Martins has shared, along with Dr. Richard Gallagher, that most of the cases of reported possession are, in fact, mental illness. I wanted to get Father Nectarios's perspective on this as well. Is he encountering mental illness more often than not? When it comes to mental illness in the demonic, in the beginning, absent a demonic manifestation, it takes a lot of discernment on the part of the priest. There's an extensive questionnaire that is given to them to discern, to help us

to discern whether mental illness exists in the family or mental illness exists within the individual. Are they on medications? Have they been to a doctor? Has the doctor been counseling them? Does the doctor know that they're coming to see me? For me, that's very important. Does the psychologist or psychiatrist know that you're here with me right now? If they say, know, I ask them to contact their doctor and ask their doctor if it's okay for them to see me. And I sometimes go so far as to ask for permission to speak to their doctor to say, look, I'm a priest. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to say prayers with them. I don't go into a whole lot of detail about the exorcism. But I'm going to say prayers with them. Would there be any

problem in me doing that? And most psychologists say, no, no, it'll be fine. Go right ahead. And I usually ask the psychologist, if I may ask, are you a Christian or are you a non-Christian? or, you know, what is your background? Because it will help me understand some of what I can or cannot say or ought to say or ought to do because there are a lot of atheistic, agnostic psychologists out there who just, yeah, go talk to the priest or now you're wasting your time with the priest. And they can really work against you. They can work against the priest. This can be very problematic because I have had psychologists who have said when I'm counseling someone or I'm saying prayers over someone, don't worry about what the priest says.

You just listen to me. Well, then I'm fighting another battle. And that makes the spiritual warfare that much more heightened because I'm trying to lead person A down a certain path. towards salvation and help them in their healing. And yet they're seeing someone who's saying, no, you don't have to worry about doing these things. Just listen to me. And it becomes an existential battle sometimes over the person's soul

and over who's in control. And it might become an issue of power. And I've had individuals come to me and say, my psychologist says I shouldn't see you anymore. Okay? So then I ask the individual, what do you want to do? And they have to make a decision whether they're going to continue to see me. They have to make a decision from a spiritual standpoint and from a salvation standpoint

as to whether they want to continue a relationship or they might need to see someone else. because if I undermine the psychologist, then we're going to get into a tug of war. I don't have any problem doing that, but I have to be very careful because every state has different laws. And the legal system in the state puts different obligations on priests and on psychologists and on physicians and on parents and on school systems. and we have reporting criteria, especially if the individual becomes suicidal. If suicidal ideation is occurring, I can't tell you how many times.

I can't tell you because I don't want to tell you, but I can tell you that I have had to, on a number of occasions, take a parishioner or a Christian who is just coming to me for, for assistance and for support to the hospital because they're expressing suicidal ideation. And I'm saying I can't let them go. Because if they go out and they injure themselves, then I'm culpable given the state laws.

And I will tell the, I will have to tell the individual, you and I need to go to the hospital now. And they sometimes will agree to go. And sometimes they will, they don't want. go. And I've had to say, okay, if you don't want to go, then I have to call the police. And I have to tell the police why I'm calling them, and they are going to take you to the hospital now. So in many ways, you have the state and you have the church overlapping on one another, exerting a tug of war and pull of responsibilities and authorities on a priest, especially in a state like Virginia.

It's all for the good of the patient. I don't have any qualms about it, but there are times I believe it plays into the hands of the demons, and I have lost control at that point in time once the state is involved. Now, we've heard that those who are involved in the front lines of spiritual warfare ministry find themselves attacked more often than others, which would make sense if we are indeed in a war. I was curious, though, if Father had experience with this and if he had any specific stories of feeling deliberately targeted. When I was in the Air Force and I was in the Gulf War and stationed at Riyadh,

that was one of the most intense times of my life. Intense because of the war, intense because of the pressures of war, intense because you're trying to save people's lives, intense because of the hours that you're working, because of lack of sleep, intense because egos are playing, into this all unfolding drama.

And at the same time, while we're doing this, we're very much in a Sunni Muslim nation. My first name is Eben, and it's not a Christian name. It's a name of Middle Eastern origin. It is a name that if I was in Israel, they would recognize when I was in Saudi Arabia as IBM, as even, which also means son of, but it also means rock. When in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim guards would get to know us and get to know me individually

and you always wanted to be in good terms because they had guns. and the Muslims who had the red henna dyed beards. You know, they were the ultra-Islamic devotees. And those were the ones that you always looked at twice, and they always looked at you as being a foreigner in their land. Very, very loyal people to the king, very loyal to the Sunni religion, very loyal to the royal family.

But also, you never knew where you stood, where I as a Christian stood with them. And when they got to know my name, one day, there was a Saudi Army soldier there with the red hannah beards. They each had a machine gun, and one of them stopped me, and his eyes pierced me, and he said, you are Muslim. and I looked at him without thinking. I said, no, no, I'm not. I'm not Muslim. And I went to go on. And he put his hand on me.

He says, you are Muslim. And I looked at him. And I said, no, I'm sorry. I'm not Muslim. And he said, yes, you are. Your first name is, and he repeated my first name. I have no idea where he got my first name from. He says, you have a first name.

I have a Muslim first name, you are Muslim. You will meet me at the mosque at this time on this day. And I will show you how to wash your hands in your face. And I'm sitting here and says, no, I have to work. I can't do that. And now I'm an officer and he's enlisted. One thing you never do in the military, in the United States military, is you never touch. enlisted, there's never any physical touching, especially today, but especially then during,

you know, and this was during the Gulf War. There's no touching. So here's this Saudi non-commissioned officer probably with a red hen of beard, and he touches me. How does he touch me? He holds my arm. He looks into my eyes and he says, yes, you will come. with me, it is time to go to the mosque now. And if I've ever felt evil, rush through me. And it wasn't fear, and it wasn't surprised, but if I've ever felt evil, rushed through me and try to subdue me in some way, it was then and at that point in time. And I had to take my other hand and remove him and tell him, I appreciate the invitation. Maybe one day I can come, but today I cannot come.

And I turned around and walked away. He watched me all the way through until I went through the next doorway. And every time I saw him probably for the next seven months, I was being watched. I was really, really being watched. And up to that point, I had seen evil things happen. I had seen people that I would say that are evil, but it was just usually like a secular, non-spiritual warfare type thing.

But this was the first time I was touched where there was a surge of energy, of the demonic, of perhaps a little bit of fear, but it was unknown fear that was just kind of overwhelming me. This is not something dramatic like I saw somebody levitating or I saw a glass fly across the floor or something, I mean, across the wall or things like that. But this was to me personally. This was to me an attack, an attempt to get, me to make a decision that would take me away from my faith, that would take me away from my

family, and away from my culture. And believe me, during the Gulf War, there were a number of people who converted to Islam. They made the decision of their own free will. That's fine. that's what they wanted to do, but the head chaplain was well aware of what was ongoing. And there was a concerted effort, not all people of the Muslim faith, but it was a concerted effort upon, made by certain Muslims, to bring people into their faith and away from Christianity and enable them to declare a victory because the news would go all around Saudi Arabia that another American military person had converted to Islam.

It was something that I had not anticipated. It was an actual element of spiritual warfare that I was involved in, not on behalf of someone else. Now, as we ask all exorcists who visit our show, we want to get their wisdom on how to look at, look out for and discern demonic attacks on our lives. While we, of course, will not give into fear, we of course respect the threat. So how does Father Nectarios discern the difference between a deliberate demonic attack and just the difficulties of living a godly life in a fallen

world? The question is, how does a person discern that they're under demonic attack? That discernment is going to be dependent in large part on the level of their faith. and the strength of their faith. If they're just doing church, going to church because it's the thing to do, and it's a checkmark on your Sunday box of things to do, they're going to have a tough time. If they are immersed in their Christian faith, and if it's one in part of their nature, their character,

their home, discernment ought to be a little bit easier. And I say ought to be, but it's not always easier. It ought to be because they're closer to God, but it's not always easy to discern, because the devil and the demons are very subtle, and they have all the time in the world. And the demonic attacks that were seen today with individuals didn't start yesterday. They began months, weeks, years, decades ago. The demons play the long game. We humans play the short game. The demons play the long game and that the darkness comes out

and begins to become a part of you and envelop you. and affect your nature and your outlook and ask you to succumb to its ways. And then you go and you want medicine from the priest, from your pastor. That's why it can take years because you're having to unfold years' worth of investment that the demon has made in you.

So know where the demarcation lines are. You see a Ouija board? Not going there. You see something on TV, turn the TV off. You pick up a magazine, put it down. You see kids going off to do something, or you see adults who are engaged in certain activities. Walk away.

One thing that I often tell people who are involved in a sin that you could call an addiction, is to say no, immediately say no when that temptation presents itself, to run to a different room or to run out of their house, literally or metaphorically, move to a new location and then to say a prayer. But they've got to recognize that temptation from the beginning. They have to have the ability to discern, and they have to say no. Physically say no. Don't whisper it. Just say no. And if you end up doing that 10 times a day, do it 10 times a day or 10 times a week.

Your body and your soul, which are one, which are one, have to act in unison together. Make it a part of your life. Temptation comes. Say no. Move. pray. There you go, folks, an Orthodox exorcist. And for those wondering where we get the word orthodoxy from, it is Greek roots, with the root orthos, meaning right or true or straight, and doxa, which means opinion. Now you can impress your friends at Greek roots trivia night. Well, you made it. And since you were so good and finished the episode, here's a little treat for you, a sneak peek from an upcoming case from season two. This is a dramatic departure from our interview format of late.

So listener discretion is advised. This is not a feel-good scene. In the following scene, Father recounts a particular manifestation that would have me changing Airbnbs pretty quickly. When the devil overtly manifests, he often does so to intimidy. We call them parlor tricks. The door slams, footsteps, are heard going up the stairs. There's a knock on the front door, or on the back door,

or on both doors simultaneously. There's a method to his madness. The demonic mind sinks to gaslight, terrify, humiliate, and destroy. When I met Serena, she was scared and exhausted from a variety of strange occurrences in her home, but one manifestation unnerved her the most. One night, she was awakened at 3 a.m. by what she thought was an intruder. She got out of bed and reached for the loaded gun she kept in her nightstand. She got up and walked down the hole, unable to identify the source of the noise. She heard a music box in the other bedroom. She paused outside her uncle's room, thinking the intruder was inside.

She braced herself and burst in. No one was in the room. As she approached, the music box, suddenly stopped. But just then the door slammed behind her. She heard a deep growl. That was the last thing she remembered. See, I told you we've been working on it. Thanks for listening, folks. To keep in touch with us and get some of our merchandise, you can visit our website at exorcistfiles.tv. You can also email us what I especially have come to love as absurd and overly specific criticisms at exorcist files at gmail.com. All cases in the exorcist files are recounted by Father Carlos

Martins from his personal archives. Now this episode did have a little 3D binaral drama, and it also takes a ton of research in time. The series is hosted by Father Martins and myself, Ryan Bethay. Today we want to give a very big thank you to Father Nectarios Trevino for coming on and sharing his wisdom. It takes a legion of people to make this show possible, so thank you to sound designer, editor and mixers, Dan Blessinger and Michelle Martinez, music and scoring by James Cavell, research writing and script doctoring was done by Ryan Bethay, Derek Swanson, and our shining Caleb Star, and of course a shout out to our actress, terrified by the music box, Lindsay Douglas. Thanks so much, folks. Talk to you soon.