The Exorcist Files - Dr. Richard Gallagher On Exorcism and Mental Health

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Dr. Richard Gallagher is an eminent psychiatrist and mental health professional. He also is called upon to evaluate patients prior to Exorcism. Our SponsorsKizik Hands Free Shoes- These aren't just slip ons, these are completely hands free. These shoes are incredible. Use promo code EXFILES for 15% off and free shipping. Click Here BUBS-  BUBSNaturals makes the world's best collagen.  It dissolves instantly and is the absolute highest quality on the market. So much so that dozens of professional sports teams rely on it, including most Major League Baseball Teams. Use promo code EXFILES for 15% off your order. Want to join the thousands who pledged on Kickstarter? You can still grab some merch - Click here .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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where we relisten to past episodes and cases, and father reflects back on insights and anecdotes he just didn't have time to get into in the podcast. To subscribe, head on over to exorcistfiles.tv and sign up, or just click the link in the show notes. Again, that's exorcistfiles.tv to get access to the vault. Welcome back to the Exorcist Files, an exorcistic expedition into the erudition of the ethereal.

Today is a special guest episode, and perhaps of more importance for our patient listeners, another episode closer to the release of Season 2, which we anticipate launching at the end of June. Episodes are recorded, editing is happening, things are moving, shaking, and not in the paranormal scary way that would have you heading straight to your local church.

For our loyal Kickstarter supporters, the Pledge Manager is now open for business, so if you haven't gone in and put in your shipping info to complete your order, please do so now. Now, it's no secret that the Exorcist files attempts to document gaping holes in our model for just what we believe to be normal. From the archives and case files of a leading exorcist and priest of the Catholic Church, our listeners for the last year have been regaled with stories that on the surface hardly seem believable, Ouija boards that come alive, witches binding people with the power of sex magic,

little kids who have no reflection. Many of these anecdotes rightfully invite skepticism. We could, in fact, tell ourselves that these tales of the demonic perhaps are just coincidences or unique experiences from a priest with a preset bias. Today, however, we are confronted with testimony from a highly respected psychiatrist and a professor at Columbia, but not just any psychiatrist. Dr. Richard Gallagher has consulted on thousands of cases relating to exorcism as a clinical professional. He is a brilliant man who is convinced at his core that what we document is not a number.

not the stuff of mere myth or legend, but in actuality, a rare but real occurrence. Please welcome to the show, Dr. Richard Gallagher. I'm Dr. Richard Gallagher. I'm a professor of psychiatry at a couple of places, including New York Med, and also I'm on the faculty at Columbia. Just to make me even more busy, I'm also on the faculty of St. Joseph's Seminary, which is the Catholic Seminary in New York, where I teach. the subject of demonology. I'm a graduate of Princeton in the classics. I trained in psychiatry

at Yale, and I'm the longest standing American member of the International Association of Exorcist, which meets every couple of years in Rome, and I just addressed their assembly of about 300 exorcists a few months ago. For those who are frequent listeners of the show, you might remember that the Catholic Church has a thorough and robust process of mental health evaluations that must precede any exorcism. I've often wondered what those sessions would be like. For the skeptic, mental illness is perhaps the most compelling alternative to what is happening when we talk about demonic possession. We wanted to have Dr. Gallagher join the show because he has a rare vantage point. He is one of the clinical professionals who has consulted on these cases closely and with priests to discern the

appropriate course of action for people to find healing and relief from their torment. Now, before we dive in, he mentioned the International Association of Exorcists, which was helped founded by Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vince Lombardi of Exorcists, if you will, and someone we cite often. I was curious about what actually happens at their conferences. Well, in addition to Daily Mass and stuff like that and the camaraderie of my being with a lot of exorcists around the world that I know well, it's essentially consist of a series of lectures, usually scholarly talks by one person or another. I addressed the assembly and I talked about psychiatric aspects of this whole subject. I also presented formally the case of Julia that I write about in my book as Ryan Demonic Fos. And given this audience of Exorcist were pretty blown away by that story.

I, of course, couldn't help but wonder, do they have sponsors? Dura Flame? Chick-fil-A? But in all seriousness, listeners will remember from season one, Monsignor Brankin, the episode in their own words. He tells the listeners how lonely it is being an exorcist. half your friends think you're crazy, and the other ones can't even relate to anything you've done during the day. I mean, can you imagine? You sit down for dinner, so anything happened to you today at work? Imagine that conversation. So I'm encouraged these exorcists have community and a place to discuss this very strange line of work they find themselves in. Also, if you found yourself wanting to hear more about Julia, I recommend reading Dr. Gallagher's book, Demonic Fos, which we'll talk about a few times today.

and of course, staying tuned, as he will share a little bit of that story later on. And it's a good one. Now, as we begin our dive into the subject of mental health, I first wanted to hear more about how psychiatric work has evolved over the past few decades in order to understand how our understanding of human mental faculties can help discern the need for exorcism. Is it more hostile to religion now? Has psychiatry changed its mind on any major mental illness diagnoses? Dr. Gallagher was more than happy.

to provide an enlightening overview? Well, it's a complicated question, like a lot of good questions, it would require a complicated answer. Let me summarize by saying psychiatry is a scientific discipline at its best. Now, it is also subject to certain fads. You could say that while the basic science of psychiatry improves, the practice depends on a lot of different factors in terms of its efficacy and all that. Certainly we know much, much more, literally hundreds of times more

about the brain than even 50 years ago. So the brain science continues. It's relevance to psychopharmacology, which I teach to the young doctors has also advanced. You know, a lot of the newer drugs that are tolerated. They're not necessarily more effective than the drugs I had when I was a resident at Yale. Psychotherapy, you know, is a much more complicated subject. There are rigorous studies not only of cognitive therapies and behavioral therapies, but also some decent work on psychodynamic approaches. But again, a lot of that, a lot of the quality of that depends on the individual practitioner, which varies widely. Psychiatry as a whole is no longer quite reflexively hostile to religion the way it used to be. In the mid-20th century, you had a lot of

residual sort of impact of Freudian antipathy towards religion and regarding it as neurotic or even psychotic. The American Psychiatric Association itself, of which, of course, I'm a member, is a little more open to the value of a healthy spirituality. Now, obviously psychiatrists different. I mean, there are many Christian and Catholic psychiatrists, and they're more open perhaps to traditional religion. I know people all over the world. I have a number of good friends scattered around the country and in other countries, too,

where mental health people, including psychiatrists, believe exactly how I do. I mean, I'm not the only guy who does evaluations of suspected demonically attacked individuals. On the other hand, there's not a lot of active interest or, let's say, recognition, and sometimes there's outright skepticism by more non-religious or even materialist scientists, which includes psychiatrists. Sometimes people will say to me, well, Dr. Gallagher has it feel to be out of the mainstream. And they always say, well, what mainstream are you talking about? If you're talking about mainstream American psychiatrists and Western European psychiatrists,

I suppose it could be argued that I'm out of the mainstream. If you talk about the American public, I am not out of the mainstream. The majority of Americans believe not only in God, but the majority believe in evil spirits. around the world, if you take the world population as a whole, the vast majority of people around the world believe in evil spirits. It was interesting to me that my book, Demonic Fos, was recently translated into Japanese, which is essentially a non-Christian pagan culture. And yet they believe in evil spirits, which is why the publisher wanted to translate my book. into Japanese cultures throughout history have accepted a belief in evil spirits. Not only a belief

in evil spirits, but a recognition in most of those cultures that evil spirits can possess people. Historically, it's a very interesting subject because from the dawn of recorded history, there are reported cases of possession. There was a famous anthropologist. Her name was Eric Bouguignon, who was essentially a skeptic about any kind of spiritual cause to possession. And she did a cross-cultural study, and she found about three-quarters of human cultures, even probably prehistoric cultures, believed in possession and showed evidence of that. Another famous professor named Dr. Osterike, who was in Germany about 100 years ago, even though he was agnostic himself, he wrote a book, although he did believe in sort of the so-called paranormal.

He gives reference to thousands of cases throughout history. So even skeptical agnostics recognize that these phenomena have existed throughout all of history. Now, of course, just because something is widely believed doesn't mean it's true. Lots of people once thought the sun rotated around the earth, or that the world was flat, or that mayonnaise tastes good. But still, given the widespread historical and cross-cultural belief that, spiritual forces exist, I always wonder how people can reject a belief in the supernatural completely. Dr. Gallagher shared a bit more about how those in the Western world, and specifically the scientific community, view most of what we talk about in this show as medical issues, not spiritual ones.

In today's Western world, including the United States, these phenomena are generally interpreted by skeptics and materialists as medical disorders. And primarily psychiatric ones, because there's an overlap between certain symptoms like trans states and different psychiatric syndromes. In my book, I write about three major groups that, number one, some fundamentalists do think that these are demonic, and they're not. And that's a big part of what I do when evaluating patients. But there are other

more skeptical people who claim that all these cases of possession fall under the category of psychotic patients like schizophrenic. Number two, people with severe personality disorders who often deal with dark or evil feelings, especially people with borderline personality or people with anti-social personality. And then there are a lot of suggestible people. It's become fashionable in the last 100 years or so to regard legitimate cases of possession to be said to be suffering from dissociative disorders. There used to be the term multiple personality. We tend to use the term dissociative identity disorder now. And I would say, to answer your question, a lot of more skeptical, psychiatrists, doctors, people who often pontificate about the issue,

they say, oh, well, this is all a person who's in a trance, a voice is coming out of them. These are all cases of multiple personality or cases of schizophrenia, et cetera, et cetera. There are some other medical illnesses, usually neurological disorders, different type of seizures, something called Tourette's, which is a neurological disorder where the individual vulgar and blasphemous utterances that sometimes past errors may have thought were demonic, but which we recognize have a organic brain condition. And so you get some skeptics in the modern world who say, well, all these people have either psychiatric or neurological disorders. What they fail to recognize, of course, is that the evidence for paranormal phenomena,

things like levitations, speaking in foreign languages, superhuman strength, what's called Latra, which is the Latin term for hidden knowledge that an individual human being would never know. These phenomena and others, so much accompany true possessions, that you have to throw out all the idea that these paranormal phenomena accompany these states. So what I say to my colleagues at times is, well, how many mentally ill people do you know who all of a sudden start understanding and speaking Pervig Latin and throw a person across the room and even levitate? I mean, I'm a very experienced psychiatrist.

I've got 27,000 people during the course of a long career. And I can tell you, no mentally ill patient has any of those abilities. Those are abilities of demons. What the modern world calls paranormal, the church used to call preternatural, meaning diabolic, paranormal events, it turns out almost invariably to be what past errors would have characterized as either supernatural or preternatural implying the demonic. Notice Dr. Gallagher's corroboration of the experience of these languages and hidden knowledge. the same signs the Catholic Church looks for when it is evaluating cases of genuine possession.

Interestingly, it seems like our modern world is quick to categorize things with natural terms, even if there are historical categories. This inclination in part might be because our views of the world have shifted from the ancients. For example, most people in the Western world no longer believe their political leader is partly divine, or that seasonal drought is the result of a displeased God. but have we gone too far the other way? Are we too quick to say things are solely material and miss out on the reality of the spiritual? Listen to what Dr. G. has to say on this. Some of these stories make you really wonder how you could dismiss it all as not being spiritual. A lot of possessed individuals are far from crazy. They're often very rational and functioning people.

There's a wide variety of the depth, broadness of a possession, but in general, these are sane people. What I have observed is it goes to the classic signs. For instance, I've attended exorcisms where the individual goes into a trance and the person will speak a foreign language because the demons are using the vocal cords of the body. I mean, a good example would be I went to a one in the Midwest once where this possessed woman was in a trance. All of a sudden spoke a language that appeared to me. I mean, I know several languages myself, including Latin, but she appeared to me to be talking about a Slavic, in a Slavic language. And some of the lay people, along with myself, who were assisting, were looking at each other,

like, what is she saying? And the exorcist, after the exorcism ritual ended, said, oh, by the way, she was speaking Bulgarian. And she said, the demon was speaking to me because I was born in Bulgaria. The demon was addressing me by speaking in that language. And again, I've been through exorcisms where the priest may be saying the prayers in Latin, and the demon is following along. I happen to be a Classics major at Princeton, so I know Latin,

but obviously the victims of these possessions do not know Latin. And I remember one case where the priest is saying the prayers in Latin, and the demon is clearly understanding and making sarcastic remarks about the Latin prayers. Superhuman strength is another one that I've seen quite often. A very good example I write about in my book is a woman who, she was not Catholic. She had a Lutheran deacon doing some deliverance prayers who didn't take proper precautions. So when the demon manifested itself, this 90-pound lady, grabbed this 200-pound Lutheran deacon, who did not have a lot of experience in this field,

threw him clear across the church hall. Levitation has been reported to me in about 40 cases. Now, I've never seen a levitation myself. I've talked to good, completely honest, competent observers who have either told me during the exorcisms they've attended for just witnessing of their a family member who was possessed that the possessed victims have levitated. A lot of times, skeptical people will say, how come that wasn't recorded? And I say to them, look, demons have tried to confuse people by mimicking mental illness to an extent. They can't do it that well.

Or pretending to be gods and goddesses and all this kind of thing. You're dealing with highly intelligent creatures, spirits who are fallen angels. And they're not all of a sudden going to allow somebody to record it. But you can't tell me that these 70 or so people who have reported to me in the course of their life that they've witnessed a levitation, sometimes the victim himself. I know this woman who is a possessed victim. She obviously was in a trans state at the time. She didn't remember it. She told me she had no doubt based on the eight or nine witnesses that she levitated. So these phenomena are remarkable.

They don't occur in all cases, but you have to have very strong additional evidence, not just somebody going into a trans state and speaking. You have to have sort of a good history. I mean, this doesn't just happen to everybody. It often happens to people like who have been drawn. to evil or who have seriously had involvement with occultism or something. So there has to be a history. There has to be kind of classic signs of an attack.

But in addition, there has to be clear evidence, such as I just mentioned, something pretty natural, supernatural, that goes so far beyond the natural that people are skeptical. Alas, it looks like Dr. Gallagher and I both still have levitation unmarked on our exorcism bingo card. Although, I'm unsure if that's something I ever want to experience firsthand. Now, speaking of a levitating experience, it is time that I give a shout out to one of our partners who is helping make this show possible and something I genuinely and absolutely love. Kizek hands-free shoes. They are truly as much fun to wear as they are to say.

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I'm still curious how skeptics dismiss all the reported phenomenon. Some of it, of course, makes sense. It could be coincidence. But if people suddenly start speaking Latin, is that really possible? Turns out, though, skepticism is just as old as the belief in these phenomena. I've been to a tremendous amount of exorcisms as an observer, not as an exorcist. So I've seen these wonderful results.

But, of course, the skeptics always come back, just as they try to explain away all the phenomena that I just mentioned, optical illusions or blah, blah, blah. But the fact of the matter is that skeptics will say, well, this was suggestibility that the person just, was convinced that this was going to help him, and then they had these dramatic cures. So, look, there's always going to be people that you can't convince, even if something very dramatic happened.

I mean, in the rise of Christianity, I'm a bit of a biblical scholar because I was a classicist who teachers at a seminary as well. And when St. Paul went to the cosmopolitan and somewhat skeptical city of Corinth in Greece, He said, you don't have to believe me. He said, I can tell you that there are about 500 people who witness the resurrected Jesus. They're alive. You can go talk to them. So, look, if St. Paul had trouble convincing the skeptics of his day, even with that dramatic testimony, certainly I understand that we'll always be skeptics.

And again, I can respect the skeptical mentality. Many of them are searching people who have never been presented completely with the massive evidence for this stuff throughout history. But let's kid ourselves. There are a lot of people in the world who just don't want to believe this stuff either. I mean, who really wants to believe in devils, you know? Dr. Gallagher has some great historical knowledge as you can hear. I wanted to get a bit of history about exorcism, given that it predates Christianity. There were exorcists in the Jewish tradition, it turns out.

Well, I'm a great lover of history, and I do regard the New Testament as essentially historical. And there's no question that Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, was by far the most effective exorcist in history. There were Jewish exorcists. And by that time, the Jewish thinkers had figured out that evil spirits tended to be fallen angels. It's really a remarkable insight that a lot of the Jewish thinkers even before Christ were aware that essentially when pagans were worshipping gods and goddesses, that was a type of devil worshipper. And in a sense, they were worshipping and asking favors from demons. The historian and the Jewish historian around the time of Christ a little bit afterwards writes about Jewish exorcists. And it's quite clear from the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostle that the Palestinian population at the time of Jewish believers absolutely believed in possession.

Not everybody. There were different schools of thought, of course, among Jewish leaders of the day. The Pharisees actually were much more believing of demonic phenomena than, say, the Sadducees. And then in the Talmud for centuries afterwards, there was still advice given about, evil spirits and exorcisms. It really wasn't until probably Maimonides, who was a skeptical medieval physician who didn't particularly care for Christianity, who began to interpret all those things as mental illness, that the tradition in the Jewish faith began to turn against the idea of possession and evil spirits, although for many years Jewish folklore believed in

possession by what was called dibbicks. Dibbics were deceased souls who were believed to possess common people. And again, it was another, in my opinion, it was another trick of the demons. If they're not trying to convince us these people are mentally ill, they're convincing us that spirits of gods or goddesses or horrible people are possessing the individual. So when the Christians then came along, of course, we believe Christ specifically designated to the church, the authority to deliver spirits. And that's when successful exorcism became much more prominent in the ancient world. In fact, at times, sort of like Moses with the Pharaoh and the plagues and Elijah showing the god of the Hebrew Bible, much more powerful than the pagan

gods, many of the early Christian exorcists would challenge the pagan authority. pagan priests of the day to compete who could deliver people successfully from possessions and use that as evidence to prove the claims of Christianity. Now this, of course, is backed up with accounts in the book of Acts like Chapter 19. We hear a story of a Jewish exorcist attempting to cast out demons in the name of Jesus Christ. The demons have a classic response. Jesus I know and Paul I have heard of. But who are you?

Interestingly, demons seem to be able to tell if you are part of God's family or have a genuine connection to Christ. As to just how they know, well, that's conjecture at this point. Today, they probably just look at your Spotify playlist or if you watch Game of Thrones. Just kidding. Now, one claim that gets tossed out frequently is that now that we know more about modern medicine, could mental illnesses that they didn't have a framework for in the past account for the many cases of demonic possession? For example, were demoniacs just people having seizures or Tourette's syndrome where they shout out obscenities? Dr. Gallagher points out that the church was actually quite skeptical of claims of demonization.

It's one of these myths that the church were constantly calling all mentally ill people possessed. I mean, the best thinkers in the church, certainly somebody like Aquinas, for instance, always recognized that there are mentally ill people who may be fooled into thinking, they're possessed or something, and that at times it's important to have doctors involved. I mean, it's quite clear in the official prayers of the church in the Roman ritual, that the Roman ritual specifically suggests using doctors when necessary. Now, we know more about medical illnesses like Tourette's, and we know more about certain mental illnesses today than earlier in history.

So it's particularly hard now not in expert hands to be able to make these distinctions that sometimes, with a few cases, I'm sure earlier errors were confused about. But it's not as if, I mean, you read the gospel stories about people breaking chains and stuff like that because of their superhuman strength. I mean, people were not naive about the virgin birth that virgins don't normally give birth. birth to somebody without some supernatural reason for that. And they were certainly not naive that demonically attacked patients were simply crazy people. Now, like Father Carlos, Dr. G. believes genuine demonic possession is rare, and that medical intervention can be a tool the Lord uses to help the victims find freedom. Well, they're rare. And my good friend, Carlos, is sophisticated enough to understand that the cases, say, of a real possession.

are rare, so people shouldn't automatically jump to that conclusion. I mean, they've got to have some kind of hint that there's something beyond sort of just some kind of natural malady. Now, since a lot of people, good-hearted people, don't necessarily know much about medical problems. Obviously, they may be confused, but a lot of times people get a sense that there's something dark here, there's some kind of initial manifestation, which, remember, may not be as prominent in the beginning so that it may be hard to discern. I always tell people something that kind of blows the minds of fundamentalists. I've seen about 27,000 cases of psychiatric patients in my life. Of those 27,000 cases that I've evaluated in the course of my normal professional life,

how many of those cases do you think I thought were possessed? The answer is zero. Those 27,000 cases, I've come across in my normal professional life. I'm not normally saying to somebody who walks in my office, oh, by the way, sir, you have no idea, but you're possessed. That doesn't happen. The cases that I evaluate, many of them may have mental illness, but they're people who are sent to me because somebody suspected, either the victim, their family, or most often a clergy,

said, you know, I think there's something more to this case. in those cases who are not patients of mine, even Julia, the satanic queen that they're going to make a movie about, was not technically a patient of mine, although I got to know her very well. But of those cases, yes, you're going to get a much higher percentage of people who do have authentic, extraordinary attack of the demons and even a possession, because there's been somebody suspicious about that to begin with. Now, it may turn out that those cases turn out to have mental illness, but it's not somebody who normally comes to me in the course of my professional life. It's somebody who comes to me saying, doctor, I think I have a demonic problem, and I have to tell them they don't. But the reverse is also common that, say, a priest or a Protestant minister or sometimes

even a rabbi or a imam will say, Dr. Gallag, I'd like your expertise. on this because I suspect there's something more than just mental illness or a medical problem. And then in a lot of those cases, I can confirm that's the case. You hear that? He expected zero of his patients to be genuinely possessed. However, when they are referred to him by spiritual authorities, those are the cases he has seen more evidence for genuine demonization. And of course, it's possible it's not just one or the other.

Dr. G doesn't believe they have to be mutually exclusive. I'm not saying that people with mental problems don't have a combination of things that is often part biological, part psychological or social, and potentially sort of moral or spiritual to some degree. But when we're talking about mental illness versus extraordinary attacks of demons, you have to have something beyond a typical case, in my opinion, to begin to suspect that's happening. That doesn't mean that everybody who goes through suffering of a strange to them, psychiatric or medical illness, can't be confused. But then that's at the point where if they are confused, they should consult clergy and doctors or other mental health professionals

to tease apart which is which. in some rare cases where both exist. Now, I couldn't let an exorcistic expert psychiatrist off the hook without some user Q&A. We get a lot of questions about sleep paralysis, and if that is somehow rooted in demonic origins, many people report the sensation of being stuck to their bed and unable to move at early hours of the morning. I asked Dr. Gallagher what that might be. Well, it's a tricky phenomenon because I do think it is often neurological.

It's almost like a slightly dream state. Having said that, there is no question that other cases have such dramatic, associated demonic phenomena that it does go beyond that. I think you have to look at each case individually, whether it's natural or whether there's something beyond that, where there's a true appearance, sometimes visual, of a spirit entity that apparently does seem to be diabolic. I mean, that stuff has been reported throughout all history and what sometimes we call incubi and succubi.

And those cases seem to go beyond what might be a sort of pathological, neurological condition. Well, on the one hand, there are what we call hypnagogic or hypnipompic hallucinations, And those tend to happen sort of when somebody is going to sleep or waking up. So there's no question that's a neurological phenomenon. I think if you're talking about the more dramatic cases where there seems to be stronger evidence of an actual demonic spirit. Like all these illnesses or odd conditions as opposed to demonic attacks, demons, they're very smart. And they have been trying to hide for millennia. they're going to use some natural phenomena like messaging so that the person is thought to be

schizophrenic or trans states so the person is thought to be dissociative. They will also use neurological and quasi-neurological phenomena that is more common at night precisely to confuse people because then everybody's going to find, oh well, that's not really a possession that's schizophrenia, that's not really an attack at night. It's just the person is misinterpreting some kind of sleep paralysis. And this is why, again, it usually takes a bunch of evidence. We don't jump to conclusions just because somebody goes into a trance or somebody has mild sleep paralysis. We have to have stronger evidence. I like to say to people, you have to look at the overall syndrome. What's the history of that individual, is that person being involved with occultism? What are the exact

manifestations? Even with what I mentioned before, levitation, I mean, there have been reports of gurus and certain spiritualists throughout history who have levitated. There have been great saints who have levitated. Now, some people feel even with them, that's demonic tricks, but they're clearly not possessed. So even a dramatic phenomenon like levitation in itself is not proof of a possession. It is a proof that some kind of paranormal or supernatural thing is going on. You can never take one factor alone. Again, this is precisely why I wrote my book to show the complexity of this stuff. And I always say in lectures and in the book, it's the totality of the evidence that gives you the answer. You don't go jumping to conclusion just because people report one symptom that they can't

understand. Now, let me be clear. There have been reported cases of holy levitation, but still, if you were a loved one, begins floating in midair, please contact your local church authority. Don't just do a selfie. I wanted to dive a bit deeper into mental illness and its interplay. Does Dr. Gallagher believe all mental illness has demonic roots and origins? I also asked him about people finding liberation in other religions. Does he find that only Christians get set free, or has he found other traditions to be effective in removing evil spirits? I don't really buy the idea that all mental illness is somehow demonic. If a person has a true spiritual attack, yes, they're not going to get better unless they get spiritual help. Now,

they may be able to work on things themselves to an extent, especially with more minor attacks. And there are people in other religion who do get better with some kind of demonic attack. I think the most dramatic possessions that I've seen absolutely do best with a Christian Catholic or Eastern Orthodox approach. And I have a lot of Protestant friends. I don't mean to be denigrating of some of the good work that many Protestants do in this field. But the most dramatic miracles, I think, unquestionably respond best to the ministrations of the churches who believe in the apostolic succession and believe that this power has been designated through the apostles and bishops. Having said that, I don't deny that certain people, even in other religions, can get some relief from demonic attacks. if there's a kind of practitioner, let's say, they don't always call themselves exorcist,

if there's a practitioner who is essentially pretty spiritually healthy and understands the power of God in a sensible, even if non-Christian way. So it's a complicated issue. I mean, I obviously sort of believe that ultimately it's our Lord who delivers people. but of course our Lord and grace can work outside of Christian context as well, even if the person is not aware that the help they're getting is from our Lord. So in short, Dr. Gallagher does believe people can get better in other religions or traditions or find relief from satanic attacks, but by far he believes Christian, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox are the most effective.

I think it's important here to remember that like Father Martin says, God is sovereign, and he can heal or deliver anyone, anywhere, any time that he so chooses. So it's important not to draw any extensive conclusions. Whenever we hear about someone getting set free, we have to remember we don't necessarily have all the information. I want to do one last ad break today and give a shout out to Bub's naturals, a great partner of ours. The company makes incredibly high quality performance grade collagen proteins. Now, we all know collagen is important for ligaments, tendons, and overall joint health. And to be sure, it's not a miracle. You don't take this a few times and suddenly find yourself 15 years younger. But if you do your homework, and I do encourage people to go on and search out the

studies, you will find there is some actually really interesting evidence that collagen can help with joint health, but it's something you have to take for a couple months it looks like. Bubbs is awesome. It dissolves instantly, and it's used by dozens of professional sports teams where performance matters big time. So head to bubs naturals.com and use promo code X-Files for a divine discount. All right, last question, before we get a small taste

of Dr. Gallagher's interactions with Julia, the satanic queen. From a psychiatric perspective, what does treatment look like? We know from Father Martins that often multiple sessions of exorcism are required. What does the proverbial post-op look like and what does Dr. Gallagher seen

as far as recovery goes? Well, look, A possession can make people depressed, and you may be able to treat the depression independently. Certainly, going through a extraordinary demonic attack can be quite traumatic. And yes, there are emotional scars, although by and large, a lot of times when victims undergo these serious demonic attacks, if anything, it can mature them because they become aware of how powerful forces of evil can affect human beings and affected themselves. So often they become much more devout, for instance. So again, you take each case individually, certainly, even though a lot of

these more dramatic cases that you're talking about take a long time to get better, Jesus Christ is not around to work his help immediately, as he seemed to have done quite well in the Gospels. Having said that, most people, it takes a while, but they can recover fully, sometimes mature, and certainly often get past what are horrific experiences, even on a psychological level. All right, we made you wait long enough. Let's get to Dr. Gallagher's famous story, which he alluded to and shared a bit from season one. This is one of Dr. Gallagher's most interesting cases, Julia, the Satanic Queen. I make it a case highlighted in my book, Demonic Fos, because

it was just an incredibly dramatic case. I mean, it was dramatic to me personally because my wife and I were in the bedroom and the cats went berserk one night. In the very next day, the priest introduces me to Julia and she says to me, I've never met this woman before. She said, nice to meet you, Dr. Gallagher. By the way, how'd you like the cats last night? She claimed she could see people from a distance. I mean, as an example, among others, she described to me once what the chief exorcist, what he was doing. He lived in an erectuary, but he had traveled to the seashore near where he lived that day. He was saying his prayers. He was dressed in a windbreaker and khaki. And all this stuff, Julia, who was 100 miles away,

would have no natural way of knowing what he was doing, which was unusual for him in an evening. she described all those features. And I called the guy who had also become a friend of mine. And I said, father, what are you doing? And he said, well, you know, I'd normally be at the rectory, but I decided to take a drive and walking along the beach. Father, what are you doing? What are you wearing?

He said, who wants to know? I said, I want to know. And he quickly sensed that, you know, Julia had described them to a tea and said to me, that woman is something else, right? The reason the case was so remarkable, in addition to all these psychic powers that she had, demonic powers, really. Number one, she was a satanic queen. She was a high priestess of a satanic cult. I had by that point, finished my residency at Yale, and I was very well aware of these exaggerated reports of Satanism all over the country, what we call the satanic panic. But she was the real deal, and so the priest

wanted her to talk to me. Again, not to treat her, but to kind of explore her ambivalence about getting help. And she told me about her cult. I had remarkable access to hearing about, not only about this possession, which the priest themselves described as a once-in-a-century case. You know, I presented this case. at the International Association of Exorcists a few months ago, and even the worldwide exorcists were blown away by this case, which is not surprising. Hollywood found its way to my door and is going to make a movie out of this.

Well, this gets into the whole issue of the paranormal. At a minimum, this is paranormal stuff. I mean, unless you're just a complete skeptic and you don't believe the literally thousands and thousands of stories, over the ages about paranormal phenomena, ghosts, etc., etc. These remarkable powers in her case were so obviously because of her demonic practices. She herself said something that was interesting to me. She said, you know, some people say I'm gifted.

I'm not naturally gifted. She said to me, nobody is. You either get these powers from above, from God. I don't understand your God is what she used to say to me. Or you get it from something dark and demonic. There's no neutral zone of the paranormal. There's a lot of demonic tricks involved in an awful lot of the paranormal stuff. I mean, there's also miracles which are kind of paranormal, but again, that comes from God.

So the modern term paranormal is really an attempt to characterize these things using neutral scientific language. You can't study these things. to experiments on this kind of things. That's why I think people like the CIA in the KGB or naive if they think they somehow can tame this material and study it like in a lab. You can verify that this stuff can happen, but you can't really harness it, so to speak. I would say that I have to realize when you get involved in dealing with these people, you're not going to be able to videotape this stuff. Because you're dealing with an agent who has intelligence. They're not going to perform for the camera. I sometimes say to people, you know,

people are not going to levitate like some Hollywood actor, you know, to show off. They tailor their machinations to the individual person. They may want to terrify people. And then you have to decide are these credible people? There's nothing unscientific about historical knowledge. These are historical phenomena. You know, nobody can do an experiment or verify in a lab that George Washington crossed the Delaware, right? But it's because we have credible historical evidence. What people don't really appreciate is the massive level of evidence for the kind of phenomena that I mentioned, both supernatural like miracles as well as predi-natural like demonic phenomena. I tend to agree with Julia that no people are naturally gifted.

When I've tried to investigate this stuff, I always find that there's some kind of spiritual explanation going on. She told me I could write about her case. And again, it was a case that was described by the very experienced exorcists themselves that I worked with as a once-in-a-century case. So it was this amazing combination of factors that made this such a, a remarkable story. For more details and to hear about the compelling story of Julia, make sure you grab Dr. Gallagher's book, Demonic Fos. It's the Summer Beach Read you don't want

to miss. This is not a sponsored message at all. It's really just a great read. Let's wrap up the show with some final words from Dr. Gallagher. I just want to emphasize the overall thrust of what I'm saying. There is a lot of confusion, complexity, sometimes simple-minded, fundamentalist views about this stuff that can cause problems, but the Catholic Church, by and large, has attempted to be pretty rigorous in discerning and diagnosing this stuff. And certainly my assistance to these individuals also partakes of, you know, a truly rigorous scientific approach. I don't jump to conclusions. I don't intuit that a spiritual attack is occurring. I have to see, you know, good Yankee,

skeptic and scientists that I am, a scientifically trained person that I am, I have to see some, I have to see some real evidence. And there you have it, folks. Dr. Gallagher is a real gem, and we're so grateful for him lending his expertise and wisdom to the show. He will return, of course, in future episodes for season two, which is coming soon. Now, we've gotten so many requests from people who missed the Kickstarter and still wanted to grab some of the rosaries or copies of Father's Book, we opened up late pledging through Exorcistfiles.tv. So head on over, and you can still grab some of these incredible items. It takes a legion of people to make this show possible.

So thank you first and foremost to Dr. Gallagher, and our sound designer, editor and mixers, Dan Blessinger, Michelle Martinez, music and scoring by James Cavell and Tom Straeli, special edits from Derek Swanson, and our own script doctor, Caleb Starr. We'll see you soon, folks. Thank you.