The Exorcist Files - Did These Saints Actually Levitate and Bilocate? The Christians Who Flew With Dr. Carlos Eire

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Dr. Carlos Aire of Yale University, has studied hundreds of accounts of saints that levitated, bi-located and exorcised demons. His conclusion? It happened.Also don't miss a special guest joining us in the beginning...Want to skip the ads? We get it. Join the vault. It helps support the show, liberates you from ads and ensures we keep content coming all year long. Thank you to our sponsors who DO MAKE THIS SHOW POSSIBLE! Cowboy Colostrum- https://www.cowboycolostrum.com/EXFILES for 25% off. Fast Growing Trees- Get some green in your home! Fastgrowingtrees.com and use code EXFILESWake up with clearer skin, smoother hair, and cooler sleep. Use code EXFILES for an extra 30% off at blissy.com/EXFILES.Mars Men- Head to MenGoToMars.com and get 50% Off AND 3 Free Gifts when you checkout.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, and today we have a special guest, and I think a lot of the fans are really going to appreciate this guest. So I would like to introduce you to the Padre with the Heavenly Cadre, and I believe it's two in your cadre, right? Because Father Martins, as a priest, you get two guardian angels, right? That's what they say, Ryan, yeah, too. And I could probably take two dozen and put them all to work. Well, I'm excited you're here today.

We wanted to do a quick little intro. We've got a great episode coming up for you today with Professor Carlos Ayr to talk about levitating, bi-locating, and exercising saints. And it's pretty interesting, huh, Father? Oh, it's fascinating episode. So before we start, though, I wanted to do a segment for our fans that we've done a few times on some of our Q&As called Praise and Hayes, or, and I'm workshopping this. Father, what do you think about the name, Winners and Luther's? Winners and Luther's. I like it. You like it? I figured you like that, Father. All respect. I love my Lutheran brothers and sisters,

but it occurred to me in the gym yesterday and I thought, what the heck, I will throw that out there. So, Father, are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. First note, listener beware, a review comes in. You will get hooked into the stories, which are so interesting, but then quickly realize after a while you are really being taught Catholicism through these episodes. And the target audience seems to be non-Catholics. This podcast may be entertaining, but for now it's time to stop listening. That's fascinating, that a Catholic priest, who's an exorcist, would be talking about Catholicism. It's hard to know what to say about that.

I mean, if I were the CEO of Coca-Cola, I would be talking about Coca-Cola. I wouldn't be talking about Pepsi or Dr. Pepper or anything. that doesn't belong to my line of products. Well, again, we don't like to pick on people, but these are all public, so y'all can go on our page and review them. We just think it's funny. Here's another one, Father. I'm an ordained reverend in a Protestant denomination,

and I'm very grateful for the faith, practice, and witness of the many Catholic voices that have come before and pave the way on spiritual warfare. The show does a great job of mixing entertainment with excellent spiritual education, and in that way is a tool of discipleship that speaks to fans with an ear for the spooky. Thank you, Father Martins.

Oh, very nice. You're most welcome, whoever you are out there. Thank you for noticing and for your words of praise. Much appreciated. All right, Father, last one here. This one probably falls under haze, but it's a bit of a gray area. So this isn't dogma, but I'm pretty sure it's teaching. It says, thank you for your ministry and for this apostolate.

It has solidified the reality of the darkness of sin in my mind and heart and has helped me immensely in combating my vices and habitual. sin. I'm not a huge fan of Ryan, though. Cringe and not funny. So, Father, what are your thoughts on such a heretical statement? Finally, finally, someone who sees things for what they are. Now you know how I feel. Come and rescue me. Come and rescue me from having to hear these things. Ah, well, what can I say? You know, a prophet is only without honor on his own show. That's right. Now, Father, before we start today's episode, Professor Eyre talks about some amazing saints and some stories that I had never heard, but I have to ask, as the show's resident relic expert, do you have any relics of any

of these saints that were mentioned in today's interview? I know we covered a saint I'd never heard of, Christina the astonishing, what a name. We covered Sor Maria de Agreda, and we covered St. Joseph Cupertino, which I think I've heard, but only because I think his namesake lives on in Silicon Valley and Apple computers, right? That's right. I have relics of all of the above except for Mary of Agrada, who is not yet a canonized saint. I have first class relics, so in other words, relics of the body or some part of the body of all of the above, Joseph Cooperino, Padre Pio, and so forth. Christina, the astonishing.

Wow. And, Father, have you seen any, I'm assuming, since these are first class. relics, anything you could tease the listeners with as far as have you seen any profound works of God done through any of these first class relics? Absolutely. So there have been many healings at my expositions done through Joseph Copertino, Padre Pio, healings, like the healing of osteoporosis, for example, the healing of somebody who had terrible arthritis with the relics of Padre Pio.

With Christina the astonishing, so at my expositions, what I do is I guarantee people who attend in the talk that precedes the veneration where I teach about veneration and what people ought to do when that opens up. And there's there's a very large number of relics that are going to be on display that those in attendance are going to be able to view. And what I say is there's going to be at least one saint here present, at least one that is going to reach out and communicate with you in a personal way. So be prepared for that. And what's interesting, you know, Christina the astonishing, her name sticks out absolutely. You know, what a name.

But almost nobody, almost nobody has ever heard of her. And what's interesting is the priests that come to my expositions, many of those, she is the saint that they end up bonding with. She is the one that they say, you know, I love them all. This one in particular, that one, there's relic of the veil of the Blessed Mother. but for some reason, and I don't know why, Christina the astonishing, jumped out at me, reached out to me, and I felt her connection. It happens daily, daily. So there is something going on, even if people can't really define it.

And this happens. This mirrors relationships in everyday life. we encounter somebody and that person either comes into our life or we go into that person's life and you just immediately like the person and you find yourself even after the fact thinking of that person and wanting to find out more about that person simply because that brief interaction was touching at some level in a way that you can't necessarily define and this kind of thing happens even among saints saints have a personality and i remember a woman for example who she was healed of breast cancer by by St. Anne, by a relic of St. Anne at one of my

expositions. And she, years later, she was visiting the exhibit at a parish out of state. And she worked very hard to bring it to her own state, to her own parish. And we made it happen. It worked in with my schedule. She helped set the relics up and she couldn't wait to pull out St. Anne. You know, there was this very dramatic healing that she experienced and there was no doubt in her mind that it was St. Anne because there was just this electricity that went through her. She felt something in her chest and that feeling remained with her. She went and got checked out and she's cancer-free. When she pulls out the relic of St. Anne, there was nothing. There was no kind of, hey, how you doing? I've been waiting for this moment again. It's nice to visit you. There was nothing of that.

And she actually said she was disappointed. And I said, don't be disappointed. Signs are given according to their need. And the personality of the saints doesn't change just because they go to heaven. And you're encountering the style, if you will, of St. Anne. And it doesn't mean she's not your friend. It doesn't mean that she didn't intercede for you. It doesn't mean she's not glad to see you. But she's not bubbly in a way that you were expecting her to be bubbly. And that's the way it is. Well, I can't help but think you're recalling our first meeting that something stuck with you. and that was me actually. Here I am.

Father, before we get to our final prayer time and just encouragement for the listeners before we start today's episode, have you thought of a superlative? If I ever make sainthood, have you thought of what it would be, St. Ryan the what? Oh, gosh.

Ryan the irascible? Ryan of the kitchen, Ryan of the dining room table, Ryan of the third helping. Oh, I like that. Okay, Father. I think we found it. St. Ryan of the third helping.

All of them, You would be the patron saying against fasting, I think. So Ryan has an appetite that I have never seen in a human being at all. Every time, every time we have a phone conversation, whether he initiates the caller or I do, he is chewing on food every single time. Well, it's good. Someone notices. All right.

Well, before we head into our episode, Father, the world is a little crazy right now. get on a little more of a serious note. We've had a war breakout to interrupt in the Middle East with the U.S. and Israel engaged in a conflict with Iran, which is spread into some broader surrounding areas. But I just wanted to check in with you, Father. What encouragement do you have? We've had a lot of listeners ride in and ask, is this the end times? Is, you know, I'm fearful for what's happening. We have wars and conflicts. And I just, Father, was hoping you could leave us with an encouragement or some sort of reflection on. on how we can think through the signs of the times right now.

Yeah, you know, look, at every moment of history, we are in the end times. And, you know, this day might be the last day that I'm on Earth, might be the last day that you're on Earth. You know, we may have left home this morning to go to work and may never return home again. And that's just the way it is. And so, but we are Christians, and that means that we are people. of courage, we are people who set our hope on God, knowing that God has a plan. Yes, there's evil in the world. Yes, there's war. There are rumors of wars. There's violence. There are atrocities.

But we know that God has a plan and we know that God wins in the end. And so that has to be our focus. In the time that we're here, we have to do everything in our power to mitigate the evil that is present in the world. So our prayer and our good works really do help folks. And we should be engaged in those. But I think that people would benefit more if they started listening to the news less and started listening to prayer more. And, you know, it brings me to a story of, you know, this is an actual story of P.O. So a friend of mine, his pregnancy was when he was inside his mother,

he's a gentleman now over 70 years old, but 70 years ago when his mother was, was pregnant. The doctors were recommending an abortion because the baby was in a breach position and had X number of detectable issues. The baby is probably going to die anyway and you're probably going to die giving birth. And so this is what was recommended. And so the aunt of this woman knew Padre Pio very well, lived in the same town as he, and went to him and asked for prayers. And his response was, your niece should be listening to the doctors less and listening to her prayer beads more and more. In other words, her rosary beads.

And he just walked away. And so that was the message communicated. And Michael's mother put all her faith in her prayers and a healthy baby was born. and thank God Almighty because he's one of my best friends and somebody I admire incredibly. He's a great man of God and he has done and continues to do an incredible amount of good on this earth and has helped countless number of folks. So look, if Padre Pio hadn't given that advice, that advice wouldn't have been taken. And so if those prayers hadn't been said, look at the amount of good that would not have been present in the world.

you know, seven decades of a person being present who has, you know, Michael, this person I know is, there's no doubt in my mind. He is a living saint, a living saint. And so God has a plan and your job in mind is to be part of that plan, not to concoct our own plan, not to try to devise a way that we can come up with our own plan to kind of defeat evil. That's not the point. God has a plan. And yes, we have a plan. And yes, we have. have to work to mitigate the power of evil at every step of the way, but doing so within prayer and with our sights set on God and doing so as disciples and not as usurpers or overthrowers or what have you.

Well, amen, Father. Thank you very much for the encouragement. It's great to hear from you. And folks, I really hope you enjoyed this interview with Professor Eyre on levitating, bilocating, and exercising saints. I don't think you'll want to miss this one. So, Father, any parting words for us? Yeah, so just a blessing upon everybody, and I hope that the coming rituals of Holy Week and of Easter are going to bless everyone.

All of you are in my prayers every day, and please keep us in yours. Amen. All right. Enjoy, folks. In a world of excess supplementation, one colostrum stood above the rest. It's whole, full fat, high in protein, and ready to fight for your gut health. one beautiful vanilla chocolate or strawberry scoop at a time. Okay, so given we just had the Oscars, I figured I'd try this in a movie trailer ad. In all seriousness, though, today's sponsor, Cowboy Colostrum does offer the highest quality bovine, that's cow, colostrum available in the U.S.

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He is the T. Laurison Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University and an expert on medieval and early modern European history. But more importantly, and for our purposes, he is the author of one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. And when I say fascinating. I mean it. It's called they flew. And it's a history of the wildest stories of levitating saints and bilocating figures who floated and gloated. Well, actually they didn't glow because they're saints. But man, it is wild. So, Professor, thank you for joining us. This is such an amazing book. Well, thank you for the invitation. Absolutely. My pleasure. I think, you know, just to, just to wet the appetite here, I want to start with just a cold open of a very

interesting story that I read about in this book. There was an account you had in this book about a flying saint, which I know is actually doesn't narrow it down that much, but Padre Pio allegedly flew into the sky and stopped some bombs from dropping on a town of this report. Could you tell the fans what I'm talking about? I was stunned at this. That's the story. And it's about American pilots flying over Italy during the Second World War, and they were about to drop their bombs. And one of these pilots claimed, right, he claimed he saw Padre Pio way up there at some, you know, what, 20,000, 30,000? Not that's not 30, but maybe 20,000 feet, warning them away. Get away. Don't bomb sun. Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy, which is where his monastery was. This is, of course,

now become one of the most often repeated legends about Padre Pio. And I have not had the chance to check it out deeply. Well, what was interesting? I just passed it on to my readers because, you know, it's one of the most outlandish and unbelievable or impossible miracles, conceivable. However, what was interesting, and again, I need to check this, but it seems that the squadron, or at least several people, converted as a result of this incident. So that is an interesting point. And perhaps it's a good jumping off point because when we talk about the way we can actually discuss proving quote quote some of this and the challenges as a historian, you know, we have to use what we have. And if someone changes their life as a result of an incident, whether it proves or not, it does at least give us some confidence in their testimony. And so I'm curious, you when we first met when this wild profile of bilocating saints and levitations, etc. You said that in our first conversation, one of the most compelling things about these facts is the way that they're gathered and that we can't just ignore these claims as medieval superstition. Yes. The ones that I deal with in my book have a special character to them because the ones that I researched are all in the 16th, 17th century. after the Catholic Church established a new, what was for the day, for that time,

a scientific or empirical way of testing out the veracity or truth of miracle accounts. And this was done for the canonization inquests that were held for anyone who was being promoted as a saint. throughout the Middle Ages, the whole process evolved towards a more kind of empirical way of judging miracle accounts. But what happened in the 16th century is that the process was set in place that is actually still used today. And the simplest way to explain it is that questionnaires were developed for every case. Questionnaires were circulated, all the people who had known this person come in contact with them if these witnesses were still alive. And the questionnaires always had a section on miracles. Have you ever seen a miracle

associated with this person? And then would go the description of whatever the miracles were. But the sort of gold seal, that's a gold seal placed on these questionnaires, is that the witnesses had to swear an oath. They were telling the truth. And unlike a court of law here in the United States today, where people still are asked to swear that they're telling the truth, the penalty for lying was not a fine or a prison term. No, the penalty for lying was hell with a capital H.

right? It's a mortal sin to lie under these circumstances. So I don't have a percentage, but I'd say most of the people who were testifying for these questionnaires were very pious. Many of them, if not the majority of them, were actually monks, nuns, priests, who believed in hell for real. They also believed in purgatory, which meant that, you know, even if they got off with a light sentence, let's put it that way, there would still be some price to pay for lying. So I'm just comparing this to courtroom testimonies, right, which are taken to be true, and in fact, many people lie in court, and every now and then they get caught, and then they get punished for lying. But in this case, those swearing to be telling the truth are people who believe in ultimate penalty. And they don't seem to have an incentive to, like, it's also, this is prior to all the

merchandise, right, in the pilgrimage industry, right? I mean, these are people who basically don't have much to gain by lying and have a ton to lose. They don't have anything to gain financially from the canonization of this purse. Yeah. So I just look at what the probabilities are that every single one of those testimonies, would be a lie. And I say that the probabilities shrink down very, very low. I'm not saying that, you know, it's impossible for anyone to lie under these circumstances. I'm just saying it is so highly

unlikely that it makes the testimony very credible. All right. So, Professor, I'd like to start off by just defining some terms here because there's a list, there's an entire litany, no pun intended, of incredible manifestations that have happened here. And obviously, we're focusing on levitation. by location, but there's actually, you talk about quite a few things. So could you, for the person going, what the heck is by location? And you able to define some of our terms that we'll be talking about today? Yes, sure. You know, these are physical phenomena that accompany mystical ecstasy. And that's been the case throughout Christian history. And levitation is being able to escape the law of gravity mildly or not so mildly.

Most reports of levitations involve a few feet up in the air, but there are some who are reported to go much higher than that, to the tops of trees, for instance, or to actually be able to traverse distances, in other words, flying from point A to point B. Those are rare cases. Most cases involve floating. Let's call it that way.

It's floating. And sometimes it's accompanied by glowing. The body glows while it's suspended in the air. That's levitation. By the way, it's a term that didn't exist until the 19th century. What did they call it? Well, they say suspended in the air. or some other verb that indicates being floating.

It was 19th century spiritualists who coined the term levitation, because for them this was a very important phenomenon. The root word for levitation means lightness, levitas, in Latin. So, biolocation is someone being seen in two places simultaneously. place A and place B. Quite often, place A and place B are at great distance from each other. And of course, levitation is something that people actually see on the spot. So you've got eyewitnesses who are there in this room or in this space, wherever this happens.

By location is a little harder to get evidence for because you need eyewitnesses in both places. and granted in my time period, there was no instant communication anywhere. So often in my time period, you know, 1,500 to 1,700, it takes months, sometimes years, for the testimonies to be brought together. And then people have to check or triangulate in some cases, you know, place a, place B, and the place where the person might be when they're giving the testimony might no longer be the same. And for bi-location, it seems like there are different manifestations of it and some maybe ambiguity around it. Because in some sense, it seems like people claim to have seen the same person in two places that they at once.

Others, it seems to be more of a teleportation, right? Like they moved instantaneously from one place to another, right? And then get back. They're not simultaneously in both places at once. Well, that's rarer. And actually, the technical term for that is teleportation or transvection is another term used for that. And if that, you know, in the literature about these phenomena, there is that distinction made by location is not transvection. It's this person being seen simultaneously.

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Yeah, the list of the physical phenomena of mystical ecstasy. It's a long list. It's a very long list. And there are some, some of these phenomena are rarer than others. Some, for instance, stigmata, it's very problematic, extremely problematic because there have been so many cases of individuals faking it. One of the reasons I chose levitation especially, but also by location, is that while stage magicians or illusion, as they're called nowadays sometimes, do it on stage. You can trick people into thinking that somebody's suspended in the air, you know, with cables and stuff. But the cases I'm studying, there's no way to set

up cables. And if they had set up cables, everybody would have seen them. And these are people not charging admission for shows either. That's correct. And it's involuntary. That's another important thing. The people who experience these phenomena, the individuals who have levitate or bilocate, they're not producing this. They're not willing it. It just happens to them. And they can't predict when it will happen. So it's not in their control, unlike a stage magician who brings out their assistant on stage and says, oh, here, you know, I'm going to pull this board away from my assistant and she's going to stay in the air. No, this is totally different. Absolutely. Well, that's a good, that's a good jumping off point here to talk about, you know, maybe

one of the original queens of levity herself, St. Teresa, I was shocked at the amount of accounts. And to your point, I mean, she describes firsthand her experiences. And it seems like she doesn't want to leave the ground. She finds it frustrating at various points. And I found that to be so interesting because we tend to fixate on this. And you read some of the stuff in your book and these saints, in particular her, she is, it seems that it's like, can we please just stay grounded today. Yes. Holding on to objects, like, please, I don't want to go up.

Yes. Yeah. And, you know, she finds it, she begs God. She tells us that she begged God to stop it. Well, why would she do this? Well, two reasons primarily. One is her body hurts afterwards. It's a painful experience, especially if you resist it.

So you have to ask the question, why would anybody want to resist this? Well, in her day, this called attention to her at a highly charged time where, and we're talking about Spain in the 1500s with the Inquisition, the Inquisition was constantly bombarded with reports of miracles of this sort, but they were not reports as much as accusations that this was happening because the Inquisition needed to discern or determine whether this case of levitation, Teresa, was of divine origin or demonic origin, because this is part and parcel of the phenomenon going back to centuries, to the Middle Ages, was that the devil could also produce this phenomenon. and determining whether the phenomenon came from the devil or from God in Spain, in Teresa's day, involved the Inquisition. So this was calling attention to her. And here's a third reason that she didn't want this to happen, because the chief virtue sought by nuns and monks is humility.

Being humble is so important. And if this calls attention to you and people start coming to gawk at you while you levitate, as happened in the case of Maria de Agriada and other levitating nun that I have in my book, it's not good. It's not good. So Teresa would, as you say, hang on to anything she could, not to go up, but she still went up. And she ordered her sisters, her fellow nuns, to hold her down if they could or to pull her down if she went up too suddenly and they were always unable to do so. Talk about being lifted on high.

Yeah. I want to transition a little bit over to, I do want to talk a little about the Inquisition. The fact that they took it so seriously, their task to discern between diabolical and actual legitimate manifestation of the spirit, does that point towards how widespread the belief and experience of these preternatural phenomena were that they actually had to have a, you know, because we view it as maybe a more superstitious period, but, I mean, they literally are sending their finest minds and confessors. They'll actually try and investigate all this stuff because it's that big a deal, right?

Right. Well, the Inquisition handled all, any and all cases involving any kind of religious deviancy, right? And they had to be a religious component to it. You know, if, let's say, a wife accused her husband of sexually abusing her or sexually abusing a neighbor, no, the Inquisition wouldn't handle that. There was no religious dimension. Inquisition handled all cases of religious deviancy, including speech control, what people said, you know, blaspheming. It could be brought in, heresy, teaching falsely. But it also folks. on these convents and monasteries where people, there were so many people who were searching for holiness, for close contact with God. And this goes way, way back to the beginnings of monasticism, that the devil is always involved in monasteries and convents, trying to prevent people

from actually becoming genuinely holy or coming close to God. And actually, the holier you become, so goes the formula. The more likely it is that the devil is going to get involved in trying to derail you on the path to the divine. So in the 16th century, the devil was not a metaphor anywhere in Christendom. the devil was real. And in Catholic countries, Catholic cultures and societies, the devil always hovered very closely over monks and nuns

or anyone who was seeking to be a good person, a holy person. So in Spain, in the 16th century, there's just, it's one of these situations. Let's call it a perfect storm, the number of men and women, mostly monks and nuns, who are having these mystical experiences, experiences of closeness to God that involve these physical phenomena. So the Inquisition has to get involved. And the purpose of the Inquisition coming after people is not to condemn and actually execute them or torture them, no. is to put them on the right path, to help them convert to the right path, if in fact something is wrong. So Teresa begged God to stop this, and she says in her autobiography that these levitations stopped.

But later, she says in a letter, oh, they've returned. So towards the end of her life, she started levitating again. And what I was very fascinated by, too, is that so many of the famous, of saints, and perhaps this is perhaps why, but the number of familiar names, especially for someone who didn't grow up Catholic, I mean, I recognize St. Anthony Padua, St. Francis, right? It just all, it seems like a lot of your favorite saints seem to have some experience with some wild phenomena that are happening. Well, the premise, the basic premise underlying these phenomena, you know, in a belief system of Catholicism, is that,

body and soul, matter and spirit, are closely related. So, you know, your soul and your spirit is in a state of heightened closeness to God. Things, weird things happen to your body. That's the bottom line. Of course, with the devil, it's the other way around, you know. You can make these things happen, but it's people, this is it. people who have given their will over completely to God can experience this in Catholicism. People who have given their will over to the devil, this also can happen to them.

But in this time period, one very, very important change that takes place is that the Protestant Reformation, all of the first-generation Protestant reformers. argue that all of these things that occur in the Catholic Church, levitations by locations, other kinds of miracles, cannot be divine because the Catholic Church is a false church. So therefore, all of these things actually are happening, but they come from the devil. And this is a very, very, that adds a whole set of very complicated scenarios. Is that where modern cessationism was born? Was the Reformation as far as the suspicion of the Catholic Church?

Yes, absolutely. And you have to keep in mind that this is polemics heightened to a very, very intense degree. Catholics want to argue they can prove that Protestant churches cannot be the true church because they don't have miracles. Right. So they're constantly asking, where are your miracles? So the Protestants in response say, no, no, no, your miracles are all demonic. We don't have miracles because they ceased happening when the last of the apostles died around the year 100.

Interesting. That explains why it's such a powder cave for a. Oh, yeah. Let's talk about someone who flew. It seems higher than anyone else, barring Padre Pio, who allegedly flew into a jet fighter squadron, which that gave me a whole idea for a new movie. B-26s, I think, because we're talking about the 1940s, but still, they got up pretty high. It wasn't top gun, but it was the close thing we have. They had to wear oxygen masks and everything. They were that high up.

Give us a little primer. Who was St. Joseph of Cupertino, and why is he so well known? Joseph of Cupertino lived between 1603 and 1663. So we're talking 17th century, which is the same. period where we have the scientific revolution and the birth of modern science. Isaac Newton and Joseph Cooper Tina walked the earth at the same time. But one of them stayed on the earth. Yes.

They both dealt with gravity, just in a different way. To me, I think it's an astounding fact. They could have met had circumstances been different. But Joseph was a Franciscan friar who was very simple-minded. we would say he had learning disabilities. And from a very early age, he was very devout, prayed a lot, and started having deeply religious experiences. But no monastery would take him because he was so simple-minded.

But eventually he does get into the Franciscan order. And once he's with the Franciscans, and they assign him very simple tasks, you know, he spends as much time as he can't pray. He starts levitating. And, of course, people come to see him. And sometimes, you know, some of his early levitations take place out in public during processions. So he's out on the street and up he goes and people start marveling.

He gets denounced to the Inquisition in Naples. And he's taken to the Inquisition and their finding is, no, this is genuinely divine. This man is not, you know, in league with the devil in any way. and for the remainder of his life, they keep sending him to different locations. He was born and reared in Cupertino, Italy. So he's then sent to Assisi, and from a C.C. He keeps being sent to ever more remote locations because he attracts too much attention. His levitations are so frequent and so out of the ordinary.

that he's a distraction to everyone. Like he would fly over people at Mass, right? Yes. That would be, I mean, that sounds like a very Protestant church to me, right? Some kinds, yeah, maybe Pentecostal. Yes, he was the O.G. Pentecostal flying over. So what would happen? Would he just be a priest in the corner during celebrating Mass? And then the people would look up and he would just be up in the rafters?

He often levitated during mass. and he also had triggers that would send him up. You know, for instance, religious images would send him up. Things that reminded him of God or Christ or the Virgin Mary would send him up. Like one time he saw a lamb, picked it up, and up he went with a lamb in his arms. Because, of course, it reminded him of the image of Jesus, the lamb of God, right? But we have people a very, very high social and political standing, basically lined up to see him, especially when he was at Assisi. And the most surprising and perhaps least researched event was that a Lutheran prince from Saxony was traveling through Italy.

went to Assisi, asked to see him. And Joseph flew over his head. And he converted to Catholic. But there's basically nothing written about this. I searched. I searched. There's practically no scholarship on this event, although there are definite mentions of it in histories from the 17th century.

I'm curious, you know, As someone who has studied so much, obviously knows so much theology and has studied the Reformation and the Christian Church, do you find it interesting? When do we start seeing these levitations? And it's interesting because we see, obviously, the stigmata in the sense of we see Christ's wounds, right? We have at least allusions to biolocation or potentially teleportation or transvection with Philip, right? Yes, and the act for the apostles. And maybe Elijah, you could even make a case for running really fast, but maybe he outran his transvection. But levitation, you know, it's interesting. Maybe Paul was, maybe Paul could have theoretically been taken up in one way.

That's the only thing I could think of. But we don't really see that in the apology. Do you find that curious? Yes, I do. You know, it's not a theme or an event mentioned in the New Testament. it. However, other individuals, not Christian and not Jewish at this time period, you have levitation. Levitation is as ancient as human history. And especially in Asian religions, you know, you find it in India. You find it in places where Buddhism becomes established. So there is a text called the Acts of Peter, which is second or third century, and of course was not included in the Christian Bible. But it tells the story of a non-Christian magician or magi, Simon Magus, Simon the magician, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. He's the one who tried to buy power.

Yes, yes, yep. And he was sent packing. But the acts of Peter tells the story of what happened after that moment. And Simon levitates, and through levitation especially, he tries to get people to believe that he, Simon, is the real Messiah. Right. So Peter and Simon have a showdown in Rome, where Simon levitates and Peter starts praying really, really hard. and Simon comes crashing down. Wow.

And, yeah, he breaks a few bones, but then even worse, the crowd, the crowd is so disappointed in his fall that they attack him and beat him mercilessly. So it's a very strange story. Wow. So in other words, there were people, you know, the time that's the New Testament, the story, the same time period that we find in the New Testament, there are men and women levitating all over the place, we have these reports that just don't happen to be Christian. Do they typically accompany intense meditation or prayer? Do we find any commonalities in what

these express or how this happens? Definitely. You know, in Asian religions, yes. In Christian history, yes. You know, I often say that in Christian history, as well as in Buddhist and in Hindu history, many of these levitators, if not the vast majority, are people who spend their lifetime, like Olympic athletes. They're not training for this specifically, but they train their bodies to be different through constant prayer, through fasting, right? They are in a completely different state when it comes to the spiritual and physical dimensions of their selves. So it's no mystery to me that this is a rare phenomenon and that most of the cases that end up being reported through history are people who have spent their time on earth

or a large part of it trying to get to a higher reality. Literally. as well as figuratively. Sorry, I'm just going to keep rattling off saying because the book is phenomenal. There's so many accounts. I only have you for a limited time. And I'm just learning about all these people I never knew about. There's another one, Sor Maria of Agreda. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Yes. And her accounts absolutely fascinating. But she didn't struggle with gravity as much as she struggled like many of us to just stay in one place. Absolutely. Yes. she actually developed a deep and rich friendship with, was it Philip the 4th? Yes, King Philip the 4th of Spain. Which I found so interesting that you could find a connection between these supernatural

occurrences and how it influenced the, you know, leadership and the people of the time. But first off, can you give us a little primer on who was Sister Maria and why is she so well known? And then, you know, what are some of the crazy accounts about her that you documented? of the book. Yeah, well, Maria Diagra lived about exactly the same time as Joseph Cooperino, give her take a few years at either end of their lifetime. So they overlap perfectly. And unlike Joseph Cupertino, she was no dyslexic or mentally challenged person. She was very, very bright. She read a lot. She came from a very remote corner, northeast corner of Spain, very remote Agatha is very small.

So the number of books she could read was very limited, but she did read a lot. And we know that from other things that she's written. But she, at a very early age, started like Joseph, levitating. And it was also during her levitations that she began to experience biolocation, which goes something like this. There were at least, according to her, over 500 times that while never leaving her convent in Aghaer, she found herself among the Humano peoples in present-day Texas

over 500 times. And she did something that no woman could do at that time, which was to evangelize these natives. right, to be as a missionary and to teach them about Christ. And it's very complicated how this story finally, the accounts of her being in both of these places at the same time, how these stories came together. But the fact is that while she was levitating in ecstasy,

again, this is a side effect. She would find herself in North America. And it took years for, as I said before, for the accounts, you know, place A, place B, how did people, it all came together eventually. And her bylocations actually took place during the earlier part of her life and then seemed to have ceased. But what she actually accomplished according to the missionaries, the Franciscan missionaries, in what was then, New Mexico, it's right from the New Mexico, Texas border. or so the men who were there started to get visits from these Humanos saying,

please baptize us. We'd want to be Christians. We want to be Christians. Baptize us. And they say, well, we can't baptize you. We haven't taught you anything yet. And they would say, well, you know, this lady comes to talk to us about it. We know all about Jesus and Mary and the church and everything.

So eventually, yeah, they do get baptized. King Philip IV of Spain. who at that time was arguably the most powerful monarch in the world, and certainly, without doubt, the richest. He hears about her. He goes out of his way to visit her on his way to the front. Spain was at war with France at the time, and they established a relationship,

and they wrote over 300 letters to each other. And he would seek her advice. and of course he supported her. She was also investigated by the Inquisition and cleared. And of course, you know, any historian worth assault would say, yeah, of course, you know, her friendship with the king might have had something to do with the outcome of the investigation. But the Texas part, I'm curious, is it a situation where when they find these, so is it documented as much as it can be?

that these indigenous people who should have had no contact or there's no record of contact are remarkably well catechized in the Christian faith, despite having no outside contact. And then later they find out and they say, tell us about this person who's been teaching you. And it matches up this description. And then we corroborate those dates or her journal and her writings or her peers. Yes. That's the basic outline of the story. Except must keep in mind that in this time period,

American natives who convert are not catechized thoroughly, right? They're catechized in a very basic way, and then they're baptized. And most of their religious education comes through ritual, through attendance at mass, through images, right? so through ritual and symbols. So they're all illiterate. They can't read any catechism. They might have some catechism taught to them. But we're talking about, you know, in terms of population,

the entire population of natives that is converted to Christianity in the new world, they outnumber missionaries by hundreds of thousands to one. in some cases millions to one. So the education is very basic. But Maria claims she visited them 500 times. She must have said a lot to them. Did I read correctly that she didn't have definitive answers? So in an inquisition, she could say, I don't know if I was like.

One option was God miraculously transported me there. And I'm not in two places at one. But then you would have people who say, no, we could attest that you were still here. or did an, you know, the other I'm assuming assumption was, did an angel taking on my likeness appear, which we could get to maybe from a Hebrews, you know, some have entertained people who are actually angels and, you know, shown hospitality without knowing. But the fact, you know, so she's, she's interacted with these people. She could see them, et cetera. And so, you know, what, to your best of guess, what do you think she thought was happening? Well, she had, like Teresa, she had to be very careful with the Inquisition, right?

Because women are not supposed to be able to understand theology as well as men. So she has to be very differential to the Inquisitors. So she often hedges her bets and says, no, I really don't know. All I know is that I was there. Who can say? Let's not complicate the matter. One of the questions that she gets, very logical question, okay, so tell us, you don't speak their language and they don't speak Spanish. As a matter of fact, one of the Inquisitors goes as far as to say, you know, and this would be very politically incorrect nowadays.

He said, well, these people don't even know how to talk. All they do is grunt. So how do you communicate with them? And she says, I can't tell you. I don't know. All I know is we understood each other perfectly. And if I may tell you, jump to the present, one person who read my book and got in touch with me, this really blew me away.

This is a person who had worked doing remote viewing for the CIA. Familiar with remote viewing project? I am. Sure, you are. Yeah. Well, he said, I did this for 20 years. I was a remote viewer for the CIA. And sometimes while I was remote viewing, I would find myself on the other side.

And I could talk to them. And they could talk to me, even though we didn't share the same language. And that's what he loved so much about reading about Maria Diagrada in my book. Wow. That's, wow, that is so fascinating. And you do wonder, because, you know, did she teleport? Did she stay in two places? is just, yeah, and you go, but also what the ends God will do to just have his message. It seems, is it correct to say that many of these bylocations, often like many miracles,

accompany the need? It's not just by locating, you know, purposely. I just showed up to like turn on the light switch for you and say hello. It's to like help you make a big decision or to encourage you or something. Yeah. Unlike levitation, which seems to be pointless, right? Oh, there goes Joseph up in the rap. Would someone bring Joseph down, please?

Yeah, there he goes again. How are we going to get him down? Because there's a very funny story. He got up to the top of a tree, and then he came out of his ecstasy up in the tree, and he didn't know how to get down. And they had to go rescue him, like a cat trapped at the top of the tree.

They didn't have a fire department to call at this point, right? No, no. By location always has a purpose. Always. And the thing to also emphasize, because it's very important, is that you can't be busy at both ends. No, one of you, who is very visible to everybody,

is an ecstasy in a cataleptic state, which means that you are stiff and you lose your sensation completely. And actually, the nuns around Maria Diagrida held candles up to her eyes, pricked her with pins. while she was in the state and supposedly also in North America at the same time. And she would not respond to any of these physical stimuli.

Okay. So there are not accounts that we know about of someone ministering in two places at once. No. No. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, because I remember there's an account you have. I forget the saint, but who was preaching. And then I've often wished I had this superpower. He forgot a commitment he had. He had promised to read from the liturgy like 15 miles away. And he went, that's right. Whoops. And then he went into a trans like state and just stood at the lectern. I could imagine everyone's like, what is happening up there?

And he appeared, did his little duty and then returned back. Yeah. Obviously, this is not necessarily a science per se. But to your best guess, what would you, assuming this is happening and assuming this is real, what would you guess at like a, you know, preternatural level is actually happening? Is someone taken up in the spirit and then is it their spirit moving somewhere else? Or is God creating a like hologram of them somewhere? What do you think is most like?

Of course, the concept of a hologram was inconceivable to the people at this time period. Sure. But for us, it does kind of make sense. Before I move on to the next kind of section here, are there any other crazy accounts professor from our levitations, biolocation, stigmata, teleguists that you think are just worthy of mention because I know, I want people to read this book because it's just, it's going to, it shows you God is bigger than you can possibly imagine.

Well, there is one, and it brings us back to the subject of differences between Protestants and Catholics. And throughout the entire project, you know, which I worked on for many years, not, I worked on it for 40 years, but not constantly. I was desperately looking for Protestant accounts of levitation, which of course would have to be demonic. By their own metric, by their own rubric, right? I found one towards the end of my research. And close to home, literally, Boston, 1693, right after the Salem witch trials, there was a teenage girl, Margaret Ruel, possessed by the devil,

who was attended to by Cotton Mather, who was one of the leading Puritans of Boston and also involved in the Salem Witch Trials. They're trying to get the devil out of this teenage girl, as Protestants do through prayer. There's no holy water, no crucifixes, no standard prayers from a book for exercising someone. So they're praying over her.

And she's in bed, and up she goes. like the character played by Linda Blair and the original exorcist. She goes up. Same thing as Teresa, though. Exactly the same phenomenon. Mather orders these men to pull her down. Actually, to jump on top of her,

keep her from coming up and pulling her down when she's in the rafters, and they cannot. They can't pull her down. And then Mather convinces these men or strong arms them into writing and signing affidavits with their testimonies, saying this happened. And we're talking 1693 Boston.

So if you're just comparing the two phenomena, Teresa in 16th century, Avila, and Margaret Rule in 1693, Boston, exactly the same thing is happening. At least the description is exactly the same thing. To be fair to Protestants, even if there were accounts of biolocation and levitation, there would be a larger bias to not report them because the belief of the day was that these occurrences were all demonic, right? That's right. Correct. Okay. Although the great American Protestant theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards and his wife, they have passages about their own spiritual experiences that hint.

at possibly being off the ground, especially his wife. And these passages are amazing and surprising for, you know, 18th century American Calvinist Protestants. Yeah, sinners in the hand of an angry God. Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, that's, he regretted saying that. He regretted later in life the effect that this sermon sinners in the hand of an angry God had on his congregation.

That's interesting. I didn't know that. Oh, they were some serious, like, you know, we would call them, you know, mental health crises after the sermon. I want to ask you about the spiritual warfare dynamic. And one of the things that I found so interesting, well, first off, I had no idea about Martin Luther's obsession with the devil. And the number of times the devil makes a, and I mean this in a sense of like he seems to talk about the devil so much, at least for remaining your book. It seems that he had more bouts with him than almost anyone else I can read about. It seemed that he was, he accused the devil of throwing nuts into the ceiling constantly. I did appreciate how Martin Luther not only believed in the power of prayer and tremendous faith and

his doctrine, but also the power of flatulence and his unseemly parts to ward off the devil as well. He seemed very crass. And yeah. But you know, of course, this has a lot to do with his personality and also with his theology. But it's also an old monastic attitude towards the devil. You can be as crass as you can with the devil because he's crass. He's obscene. So being obscene in confronting the devil is part of a monastic tactic. And Luther was an Augustinian monk. So he's got this, right? But the theological part is, is, of course, Luther's theology of salvation by faith alone means that it's your faith in Christ's redemptive act that saves you.

And you will never stop sinning, right? Up to the day you die, you'll keep sinning. But Jesus forgives you, and you have faith in this forgiveness, you're fine. In his case, his worst demonic attacks were cases, as he tells us, of the devil, get him inside his mind and saying, oh, remember that sin you committed. Oh, you're a sinner. Oh, you're damned. You're going straight to hell. Do you think when he talked about, oh, the devil showed up again, he writes about it so nonchalantly. Do you think those were mental conversations he was having?

You know, it's hard to tell because most, most of what we have from Luther about his encounters with the devil comes. from a part of his writings known as the table talk in English or teach writing in German. He would have dinner with his students every night because they lived together. And of course, the students would take down every word Luther said at dinner. So he was being, you don't find these in sermons. Right. He's being informal with his students. and he's telling them all these stories,

but he's earnest because it matches, it matches the rest of whatever he has to say about the devil in his formal theological writings or in others of his sermons, not as raunchy. Right? And Luther loved to drink at dinner because it was not a sin,

anymore. I mean, salvation by faith alone, one of his students was very depressed. Luther wrote a letter to him. And this is in Luther's works in English, the American edition. Anyone can read it. He wrote this letter to Jerome Beller, where he says, you know, next time you feel depressed, and the devil is tempting you to despair about your sins. says just drink a little more get happy get happy and also

if it gets really bad just commit some little sin and tell him I'm not going to hell Christ saves me you know exactly the same thing he says in his table talk that's in the writing somewhere

yes that's his letter to Jerome Veller W-E-L-L-E-R okay I'll have to link to that It's online. You could Google letter to Jerome Beller or Weller. That's wild. It's there. The full text. So help us understand at this time here when all this bilocating and levitation stuff are happening, the devil and has always been a reality. Like the New Testament, we see exorcism and deliverance all over the place. But it seems that things really start to coalesce around the time of kind of the period you're researching. And we see what I, found so interesting was this parallel between the enlightenment and like all these new scientific fields are emerging and yet we see and suddenly instead of like the diabolical disappearing we see this rise of demonology which seems so interesting so paint us a picture you know around this period of these

saints etc how real is the devil you know how much do people think about this and what's kind of the the climate for like is the devil behind everything bad that happens or what was kind of the position of that. All right. While there are some individuals who are in the process of turning the devil into a metaphor at exactly the same time, we're talking 16th, 17th century. At the very same time that, you know, skepticism about the reality of the devil is beginning to show up with a few people. The opposite is happening in society throughout Western Europe and Eastern Europe. And Eastern Europe, the whole Christian world, you know, including the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the new world. This is the, I could rightly be called the age of the devil.

When you think of the number of books that are published on this subject, it's just mind-blowing. Absolutely mind-blowing. And I'm not talking about just books in Latin for the learned books in vernacular languages. Every place, these books are coming out that detail how to deal with the devil, including, you know, perhaps one of the thinnest. It's not very long, but perhaps one of the best known is demonology written by none other than King James I of England in the early 17th century. And the reason he wrote it is that he was convinced that the devil had almost sunk his, that these, witches that were in league with the devil in Denmark had caused his ship going back to England from Denmark to sink. And this is the age of witchcraft persecutions. And here, that line

between Catholics and Protestants kind of disappears or becomes very, very thin, because Catholics and Protestants persecute witches with equal ferocity. And not only that, here, here, Here's another very odd twist to the history of the Protestant Reformation. Protestants reject a lot of Catholic theology from top to bottom. But basically, most of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation and theologians for the first three generations, the history of Protestant churches, they adopt Catholic demonology almost 100 percent without changing it. So ironically, the witchcraft persecutors in Protestant territories and in Catholic territories

are relying on the same kind of texts to identify witches. Why is there such fervor to prosecute witches and witchcraft and sorcery and magic? Is it because it's a threat to their, you know, the skeptic would say, oh, it's a threat to their, you know, the skeptic would say, oh, it's a threat to their institutional control? Or is it more, in your opinion, a suggestion that this is a reality, that like this is something the church has always battled with, that, you know, divination and, you know, sorcery, this is the sin of rebellion. This is the original sin, you know, of the enemy. And that this is a real threat to people's souls and is fairly widespread. That is magic is just everywhere. And so the churches are coming down hard on this.

historians have different takes on why this happened and what was happening. But it's kind of obvious to me that, yes, there were witches. Yes, there was black magic. There was also a lot of white magic going on, too. There were witches. And this was happening. And it's the fact that the Protestant Reformation tries to do away with all sorts of, superstition. And at the very same time, the Catholic Church is doing the same. They want to do away

with superstitions. They want to do away with the stuff. Were people executed unjustly for being witches? Yes. I think that's beyond doubt. But I think that there were a lot of people, and the figures speak for themselves. Most of those executed for witchcraft in Catholic and Protestant Europe. are women. They're the majority. And there are all sorts of questions why this is so, but the fact is that it doesn't go away. The persecutions stop in the latter part of the 17th century. But it doesn't go away.

Look, Salem Witch Trials is 1693. Here in Connecticut, the last witch trial here in Connecticut was about the same time, more or less. But does it stop this from? occurring? No, not at all. As a matter of fact, as the crow flies, less than half a mile from my house here in this nice New England town, there was a woman, everyone in the town was convinced was a witch. And she had a huge rock outside her house, painted white with black letters. Payback is a blessing. I'm talking about early 2000s, right? It's something a lot of

these things just don't go away because, you know, I think, you know, my personal as well as my professional opinion, I think the devil is real, very real. It's not a metaphor. And whenever he can gain control, it does. If people don't pay attention. What do you want people to take away from this and these accounts? Why do we want to study this? And why does it matter? That reality is a lot stranger than modern sciences and materialism has told us that it is. That there are different dimensions to reality. And purely materialist take on reality is short-sighted. It's like having blinders on.

I'm not saying that, you know, all these accounts have to be believed, you know. I'm just saying they should not be done. dismissed. And what I have discovered is that there is a correlation between the depth of belief and some things being real, some things being possible, cultural belief, and the occurrence of these things. No doubt about it. Why does all this happen in the 17th century, 16th and 17th century?

There's deep belief in this, and it continues to happen. But ever since I finished the book, towards the end of it, and after it was published, I have run into more and more cases of 20th century, even 21st century, wild facts, as William James called. Facts that can't be put into the cubby holes that materialist history has told us they must fit into. So, for instance, that email I received from the man who claimed the work for the CIA. And I'm just astounded, you know, that it's only a very, very small number of people who know about this remote viewing project. And yet, CIA went on for over 20 years carrying this out. And on the other side, the Russians, KGB, we're doing the same thing.

And this is the height of the Cold War. So there's more Well Shakespeare says Many more things than one can imagine And I see a greater openness Usually the younger my audience If I'm speaking Doing some public speaking on this subject

The younger my audience The more accepting they seem to be Or the more curious Let's put it that way So I'm just calling attention to something that's there and it's like the proverbial elephant

in the room that people ignore. But there's always a danger to that too because there's so much that religion is, I always say religion is a lot like atomic energy. It can do wonderful things.

But it can also be immensely destructive and even crazy. So finding a way through all the different positions people take on the spectrum from the, you know, the much too credulous on one end and totally skeptical and even hostile at the other end, there's something in between. So your advice would be, if you're doubting this, if you think it's crazy, have a little to drink, right?

Well, that's what Luther would say. for sure that's what i would say too and you know unless somebody is a problem with alcohol then they don't they can't even take a sip yeah that's different but yeah i'm lighten up man as he used to say in the in the 60s professor error thank you so much for joining us this has been one of the most interesting books and subjects and i say that as someone who's documented now with father martin's wild exorcism stories and this is just you know growing up growing up Protestant myself, we just never studied floating zanes. And so this is all news to me. Yeah, well, you know, one of my greatest surprises early on in this project was I read Gabriella

Mort's book. An Exorcist Tell Stealth. Oh, it's wonderful. I was blown away. So I started looking for books on Amazon and I find there are all these Protestant books on spirit deliverance. And that's, something I did not expect to find. It really surprised me that, yes, this is, this is not just Catholics. Devil's still real, and everyone's, we're still trying to share swap strategies and how to beat him. So answer is usually Jesus.

It might not even have one person who said it. It's just been repeated so many times throughout history, but the devil's chief trick is to make people believe he doesn't exist. That's right. Greatest trick the devil overpulled was convincing us he didn't exist. Well, Professor, thank you so much for your time and appreciate all your work. And hope you, you know, keep your feet on the ground, all right? I try. I try. And I hang on to things in case I go up. That's right. Amen. All right, folks.

Thank you, right. Stay in one location unless God grants you otherwise. God bless you all.