The Sean McDowell Show - Exorcisms: The World's Leading Psychiatric Authority Speaks Out

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

What is the evidence that demon possession is real? What do exorcisms entail? Today I talk with board-certified psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry, and leading psychiatric expert on demonic possession, Dr. Richard Gallagher. He is the author of a book called Demonic Foes and has a ton of insight and stories to share with us from his twenty-five years of investigating the subject of the paranormal and diabolic attacks. READ: Demonic Foes, by Richard Gallagher (https://a.co/d/bImzNaf) WATCH: What the Bible Teaches about Demons, with Michael Heiser (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4SbHoOZpQQ) Make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos for more on Christianity, Theology and other aspects of culture! *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/

What is the evidence demon possession is real? And what do exorcisms actually entail? Our guest today, Dr. Richard Gallagher, is the author of a book called Demonic Foes. He's going to help us think through these issues and more. Dr. Gallagher, you are a board-certified psychiatrist who teaches at Columbia. You did your residency at Yale. So if it's okay with you, I'm going to jump right in because this topic is so serious and important. How did you,

as a medically trained doctor, get pulled into the world of demonic possession? Well, first, thank you, Sean, for the invitation. I always tell people I didn't volunteer. And I'm not sure it's actually a particularly good idea to volunteer for this work. I'd like to feel it was providential because everything I've done, I've been asked to do over the years to the point where as a physician, I have probably seen more of these kinds of cases than according to my chairman, than any physician in history. I'm not an exorcist, but I was asked about 25 years ago by a local priest who somehow got my name, I guess, because I was a practicing Christian and I was an academic psychiatrist. I was at Cornell Medical College at the time. And he said to me, Dr. Gallagher, would you please evaluate a case for me as an exorcist? He was a prominent exorcist in America. I'd like to get a psychiatric opinion,

even though I think it's a demonic case. And I remember Sean telling him at the time, there was a certain amount of what we called the satanic panic at the time. You may remember that period where people would say that Satan was around every corner. And I said, well, Father, you know, I finished my training at Yale and quite frankly, I'm a little skeptical of a certain amount of that stuff. And he said to me with a smirk, he said, well, then you're the perfect guy for the job. Because They wanted someone skeptical. So over the years since, he and a few other exorcists would send me these cases to evaluate. I was later invited to join the International Association to write articles, to write a book. And so everything I've done, because really I was asked, which I would like to

feel, Sean, was a little more providential than if I rushed in where angels fear to tread. Sure. So take us back to that moment where you're asked to consult on a case. Maybe it's the first time you saw somebody that you thought this person is genuinely possessed or experiencing diabolical attack. And how did it affect you? Well, let me digress for a minute, even though there's a lot of confusion about terminology. There are people who are possessed where an evil spirit, in my opinion, unequivocally takes over the body and the control of the individual. And then there are slightly more common, although also rare, there are things we tend to call in America oppressions. This first case was an oppression. It was a woman who was being beaten up by spirits. She would feel pummeled by evil

spirits while she was in her house. And everybody felt very helpless. So I was asked to, you know, sort of make sure that this woman was not psychotic or something, that her story made sense, that there wasn't any medical explanation. For instance, we did blood tests. She had bruises, but people can get bruises for different medical reasons, including low platelets, that sort of thing. So I did a medical and psychiatric workup, and I said to the priest, you know, Father, I can't find any medical or psychiatric reason why this is happening. The woman appears very sane and very credible. So even though I was a little skeptical, Father, your explanation that this is something demonic actually makes a lot of sense to me. And then after that, I began to evaluate a lot, a lot, a lot more, a lot of other cases,

including possessions. So let's talk about for a minute, if you will, how somebody is diagnosed with a demon possession. I know you said you're not an exorcist, but you do medical diagnoses. So what is that process like? And what are the signs where you conclude this is genuine, either possession or oppression in some fashion? Well, essentially I'm assisting, usually an exorcist, I'm assisting the exorcist in making the discernment. Ultimately, I feel strongly that the spiritual clergy needs to take responsibility for the actual spiritual diagnosis, you might say. But these are kinds of diagnoses that require a lot of rigor and require a certain amount of scientific knowledge. Sometimes it's very, very obvious, and a very experienced exorcist can often tell

fairly quickly. In America, at least in some of the mainstream churches, like the Catholic Church, where the bishops require a medical or psychiatric evaluation, I get involved at that point. But the criteria, I should emphasize, are quite rigorous. Essentially, you have to have very clear, you might say phenomenological evidence that there is a foreign entity involved. Now, how do you do that? Well, in possessions, you're going to see the manifestation in different ways of an evil spirit. Sometimes that spirit will take over the consciousness of the person, will even speak in a slightly different tone of voice. Remember, they're using the body

of the victim. So they're actually using the person's vocal cords. They're going to sound a little bit like that, but they also clearly will seem like it's a foreign personality. Now, again, you have to make sure the person's not imagining this and has something like dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality. You have to rule out things like that, let alone psychosis. But eventually you often also see or get reports of seeing signs of the lay public cause of the paranormal. We would call it the preternatural, things beyond the natural ability of a human being. For instance, the criteria are speaking a foreign language all of a sudden that the person never studied, exhibiting superhuman strength of some sort

i dealt with a woman once who was possessed and she was being exercised by her protestant deacon who was kind of inexperienced and they didn't hold her down and when the prayers started, she jumped up, she took the guy, she was 90 pounds soaking wet. She took this 200 pound guy and threw him across the church hall. That sort of ended things very quickly in that session. But that strength was obviously beyond the human. And then a third major criteria they call in Latin, laetra, L-A-E-T-R-A. It's sort of the revelation of hidden knowledge that the person would have no reason for believing. One of the more dramatic cases that I dealt with who was possessed, I call her Julia. And again,

whenever I use a name, it's confidential. In my book, I write about different cases to illustrate these phenomena, but of course their privacy is protected even though all the details are true. The privacy is protected by my disguising their, least name and locale, that sort of thing. But she could tell me a lot of this hidden knowledge. For instance, she told me once how my mother had died much years earlier of ovarian cancer, but she also told me all kinds of things. In fact, she also had a number of other preternatural or paranormal abilities. She had what the parapsychologists call remote viewing. She could actually see things at a distance. And when I asked her one time, and these were even outside of when she was actually in a formal state of possession, although she had other signs very clear of possession. And when I asked her once, excuse me, if she felt she was a gifted person. You know,

when you deal with spiritualists and channelers and that sort of thing, these people will often say, well, I was born gifted. And there probably are some spiritually gifted people. Having said that, Sean, she was very blunt. She said, nobody is born gifted. I get these powers through Satan. And I said, why do you think Satan gives you those powers? In this case, this was one of these rare genuine Satanists who worshiped the devil and also received these powers. Unfortunately, at the same time, she became possessed, which she was well aware of and I evaluated for quite a while. So it sounds like the signs are supernatural strength, knowledge and information somebody

couldn't have, whether that's at a distance. And in your book, again, Demonic Foes, you tell a story about, I believe it was a priest that she, maybe it was Julia or another person who said, I can see him is here wearing the shack. You calm up and it perfectly matches up having information at a distance the other one you mentioned is is levitation now in an article interview i saw with you you said you have not seen this but you have reason to believe that there are credible cases of people who are being demon possessed or oppressed genuinely levitate you have you have to talk about the level of rarity of some of these things. A full possession is fairly rare. Oppressions, people who feel attacked in different ways by evil spirits, they're not common, but they're also fairly rare. Now within possessions, we know both historically, and in my experience, talking to about 35 different people who either witnessed it or experienced it themselves.

Even within possessions, levitation is rare enough so that even though I've had a lot of experience with these people, I've never actually seen it myself. But I've talked to 35 people, including a European professor of my acquaintance, who have sworn to me that they've seen these levitations. In the case of, yes, you were referring, referencing the case of Julia, the Satanist, she had an incredibly flamboyant, described once in a century possession. I write about her in the book. And she, during her last exorcism, levitated, according to eight people that I spoke to. I've been to quite a few exorcisms in my life, but I couldn't go to hers. I'm a pretty busy guy. And they all said to me, she levitated for about half an hour during the exorcism.

She had to be held down, otherwise she would have ascended further. And this is also reported in history in spiritualist and occult literature too. They all seem to be partaking of a phenomena that is, again, ultimately caused by evil spirits. I don't know a lot about exorcism, in part before reading your book carefully, but one of the things that really impressed me is how seriously the Catholic Church does, and not all, but many ministries, take diagnosing and dealing with exorcism. What is the training like to become an exorcist? Obviously, somebody could start their own exorcist ministry independently, but say within

like the Catholic Church or within another formally recognized institution. What is that process like for somebody who says, I think I'm being called to or I want to be an exorcist? First of all, the exorcists are usually carefully chosen, and they are supposed to have a certain spiritual maturity and piety and sort of common sense. This is not a field for histrionic people or people who are overly credulous. So it's often an older priest, and they do have usually special training of some sort. In many ways, the best training is a kind of apprenticeship, where they will be under the tutelage of an older or at least more experienced exorcist. There were also several societies in America

that are specifically devoted, priestly societies that are specifically devoted to training these people, you know, new exorcists. And there are actually many more exorcists now than when I started. One of the reasons I saw so many cases, Sean, especially in the first 10 years, was that there were very few exorcists. So the exorcists that I worked with, they would use me for a wide

variety of cases all over the United States. They became very good friends of mine. And quite frankly, I had an enormous level of experience. Exorcists are usually confined nowadays to the diocese because it's the individual diocese that are responsible for selecting and training the exorcist, and they deal with the cases within their diocese. So a lot of exorcists today, they won't really, because of the rarity of these conditions, they really won't see very many of these cases. Unlike myself in the original exorcist that I dealt with, they would see cases all throughout the country. When you are working on a case of somebody who's oppressed or possessed, are there common experiences as you probe further or beliefs that you find in that person's life, if not always, more often than not, and what are they?

The history is incredibly important. you will often get an individual who is not particularly hostile to religion or something, but when the evil spirit manifests itself, the evil spirit is incredibly not only hostile, but afraid of sacred things. But the background of victims varies a little bit. But on the other hand, they usually have made some kind of turn in their life that is very unwise. They've either turned to something of a serious nature, occultic or dark. Obviously in Julia's case it was Satanism, but other people turned to lesser degrees of witchcraft or some type of slightly dark spiritualism or something. And at the same time, many of them, or independently independently people turn to very sinful or evil

practices in some way have invited either directly or indirectly they have invited again with a possession they have invited the evil spirit in so for instance in Julia's case it was was very obvious. She worshipped Satan. She thought she was getting a lot out of it, but it was literally what we call a Faustian bargain. She got much more than she bargained for. In another case, I write about a book. I write about a guy who was a criminal, and he was kind of a drug kingpin of sorts. And he had turned to a Mexican occult cult called Santa Muerte. And he was a pretty nasty guy. He was eventually in prison for his crimes.

And the chaplain at the prison found that he was possessed. He did eventually get help. But obviously in his case, probably even more than his involvement with the occult, which was a factor, was the fact that he had led such an evil criminal life. So in the worst cases, that's what you often see. In cases of oppression, it's different. You don't necessarily see somebody who's horribly involved in evil, but they usually have dabbled in occultism or something like that. There's some reason that they have these more minor harassment or oppression by a demon.

Your training is in psychiatry, board-certified psychiatrist. So I'm curious, what mental illnesses most resemble a kind of diabolical attack? And how do you make sure you don't misdiagnose somebody? Well, I'm a pretty experienced guy, and I've probably seen over 25,000 cases during the course of my career. So I'm pretty good at diagnosing people. Throughout history, sometimes people in the church have been confused by different neurological conditions, by seizure disorders. If you're familiar with the neurological disorder Tourette's, where the person kind of involuntarily has themes, obviously these have been confusing diagnoses throughout history.

But with the development of modern diagnostic techniques and neuroimaging, MRIs, that sort of thing, it's rare that a medical or neurological illness is mistaken for possession these days. world. What happens nowadays is most of the cases of people who imagine or are deluded into thinking they're possessed, and their families may as well, are people with psychiatric disorders. And there's three large groupings. I mean, some people are psychotic, especially somebody like who's a schizophrenic. They may hear a demonic voice or feel they hear an evil spirit talking to them. And that's, you know, what we call a hallucination. And it is explained as a mental illness and brain-based symptom. So, yeah, you certainly have to rule out different psychotic conditions, including drug states. Number two, you will get a certain amount of people who are very suggestible. Again, I write about a couple of these people in the book,

and they may have something of a histrionic nature of a dissociative disorder. The classic one is what's called multiple personality disorder, now DID, dissociative identity disorder. And these people may imagine again that one of their so-called alters is a demon. You have to rule out that category, which is a broad category of kind of histrionic or suggestible people. And finally, there are people who are dealing with what we would call in our field personality disorders. What it means is that they have a bunch of maladaptive symptoms working against them, but they're not particularly psychotic or anything.

And these individuals include people who are often diagnosed as borderline or even antisocial personality. And they're dealing with often a great deal of evil impulses or dark impulses, some of which are involuntary. And they may feel, hey, I'm dealing with such dark impulses for which they may or not take any responsibility. Often a sociopathic patient is perfectly fine with their evil impulses. But these personality disorders who deal with these dark forces do not necessarily seem to be directly affected by demons, but it's sort of a part of

their character or their personality. So those groups, you might say the severely histrionic, the psychotic, and the personality disorder patients with some kind of dark impulses, they're often confused, certainly by, I would say, fundamentalists as being demonically possessed or at least oppressed. And we don't necessarily see that as the case. I think you probably would agree with me that human nature is capable of a certain amount of darkness of their own, given his fallen state of human nature. And you can't go around, as C.S. Lewis wisely said, who was a genuine expert in this area, by the way. He didn't write a lot about it, but certainly the screw tape letters showed how much he thought about demonic strategies

on human beings. But he used to say, it's important to recognize that evil spirits exist, and you certainly don't have to convince me that evil spirits exist. But on the other hand, you shouldn't become preoccupied with it too. And you shouldn't blame all human problems on demons. The great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas used to say, and again, it was an estimate on his part, but he used to say 90% of human evil is caused not by demons or demonic influence, but by our human frailty. but just lying and misinformation and deceiving people. And the ones you talk about are more the exception, because you said both possession and oppression are rare. Is that the primary tactic Satan uses, but then sometimes pop up these cases of oppression and possession? I would agree with that 100%.

Possessions are very rare. People who are seeing possessions all the time are mistaken, you know, end of the story. Oppression is more common. But there's a kind of continuum in that, in some sense, we're all tempted. So all human beings are tempted by evil spirits. The question then becomes, you know, does that absolve people of responsibility? Of course not. You in possessions, they're taking over the consciousness and the action of the individual, but then the individual is not responsible for that behavior while they're in a possessed state. But even with individuals, their free will is still intact when they're not just overwhelmed by this evil spirit possessing them. Walk us through, if you will, what actually happens in an exorcism. So the Catholic Church or whatever organization has very carefully ruled out all possible mental illness, seen positive signs, whether it's power, information, that they couldn't have levitation. And like you said, with that first case, come to conclusion, this is the only possible explanation. What would that process look like then to perform an

exorcism? Well, after the careful discernment, and then in the Catholic Church, which you asked the question about, it has the exorcism, the formal exorcism. And there are deliverance prayers, just as in Protestantism, a lot of people define those as deliverance ministers. There are deliverance prayers that are done by Catholic priests too. But to get a formal exorcism, you have to go through this rigorous process and have the approval of the local bishop. Once that happens, I mean, the exorcist I worked with most closely, who was probably the most experienced exorcist in the United States ever, I call him in the book Father A, which is a pseudonym he used. He used to say, well, every exorcism is a little bit different, and it probably depends on the technique and the practices of the individual exorcist. At the same time, within the Catholic

Church, and the Orthodox Church for that matter too. There is a very formal ritual. It's existed for about 400 years now. It was codified in the 1600s to make sure that the procedures and practices and prayers were standardized, because in every era of the church and the churches in Christian history, there's always going to be people who kind of abuse or are a little loosey-goosey about the world. And the Catholic Church does prescribe that those prayers should be used during the ritual. It's included in a book called The Roman Ritual. It's a pretty venerable and scripture-based set of prayers. On the other hand, at times the exorcist priest is going to go outside of the prayers and attempt to question or investigate further, try to access the evil spirit and not really have a conversation. You're not supposed to have an idle conversation with an evil spirit. But what you are supposed to do is discern the cause, if it's unknown,

and command the spirit by the power of Jesus Christ. No exorcist is going to say, this is by my own power. They're going to say, I command you or our Lord commands you to leave eventually and to reveal yourself. There is some emphasis on getting the name of the evil spirit. There's nothing magical about that. What it is, is these evil spirits try to hide. And they've done a great job in history. that what it is is these evil spirits try to hide, and they've done a great job in history.

And they often present themselves as some dastardly figure in history. They'll say, oh, I'm Nero or Hitler or Judas Iscariot or something. In ancient times, I think the Hebrew scholars, as well as the early Christian thinkers were quite insistent that the gods and goddesses of the pagan world were disguised demons. And I've come to believe that. In fact, I've seen cases of possession where people will claim that they're possessed by Zeus or by Apollo or something like that.

So throughout history, these demons have often disguised themselves, and they still often disguise themselves, including in spiritualism as dead souls and things like that. They'll try to confuse people. Sometimes they'll even present themselves as angels. So you always have to be careful about people who claim that angels are talking to them as well, even though I think that can also happen. So when the demon is forced in the exorcism to reveal who they really are, they do so reluctantly, and it's a good sign because of what it means is that the church or the priest is gaining control that the evil spirit is having to submit by revealing their real name and that's

a good sign because now you're getting the evil spirit who doesn't want to submit obviously uh you're getting their compliance and they they are forced to um submit to the power of our Lord, and often soon after that happening, they will be driven out. It can be a protracted process. Again, I've attended exorcisms, not as an exorcist, but as a requested observer, and I've seen people delivered in one session, but I've also seen it go on typically often for a few months. And sometimes it can go on for years. Those cases are often quite difficult. A lot depends, by the way, it's not a magic ceremony. So the victim has to work at it too. You know, it's a witch doctor and, you know, the priest says these mumbo jumbo prayers and case is settled.

What happens is the victim has to work at developing their own Christian life and turning closer to our Lord before it's likely that they're going to be driven out. I received a book not long ago from someone who said they were an exorcist. And I thought, wow, this might be a really interesting interview. Sent it to a theology professor I work with. And he said, I'm not convinced this is genuine. I think he's a huckster because he charges people a certain fee for exorcisms. And he's the one who sent me your name. He's like, you should talk with Dr. Gallagher. How many hucksters are out there, and how can you recognize them from someone who is a genuine exorcist?

Yeah, well, you've mentioned one criteria. I'm very skeptical of anybody who charges for it. The woman I mentioned who had this Lutheran deacon, inexperienced, try to provide an exorcism. She told me that later she went to a famous televangelist who said to her, well, you can either give me $5,000 to do an exorcism, or you can appear on my television show. And she wisely recognized that that was not a sensible thing to do. And I tell people, you know, you have to seek out and ask the permission of the church or if you're Protestant, some experienced deliverance minister to help you. If they charge you, you know, stay away from that person.

That's helpful now what what have you learned about demons from this you kind of hint at your book like different personalities of demons just in terms of their tactics and their nature and then i'd also say what can we trust on that given that the nature of a demon is to lie and deceive how do we know i have accurate information and false information well at some point related to uh the process of the exorcism being under the uh command of our Lord, ultimately. Demons are forced to tell the truth about something. But if you're asking them anything that's extraneous, and in general, when they kind of are communicating

in these odd ways with people, they're inveterate liars. And so you cannot trust anything they say, really. They do have different personalities. We certainly believe, as I think you do, Sean, that they're fallen angels. They tend to be very smart, very intelligent, although some of them act very foolishly. And probably rebelling against God was their most foolish act in cosmic history. But yes, they have different levels of powers and different levels of intelligence. At the same time, they probably have slightly different personalities.

The personalities tend to be sort of sadistic and repugnant. They certainly seem to enjoy torturing human beings. I think they think of us as sort of beasts, little animals that they are superior to. I always tell the story of Julia, when I saw her in one of her possessed trances, she said to the priest, I'm not going to imitate the voice, but it was in the demonic tenor voice. She said, I said, leave her alone, you monkey priest. You'll be sorry.

And I think that's exactly how they tend to regard human beings, like sort of monkeys that they can play things. Ultimately, they hate human beings. They're full of hate. And their main hate, of course, is directed at God and God the Father and our Lord, precisely because they feel they've had to submit to this power that they've rejected.

The movie I know you're familiar with, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was actually directed by a Biola grad who was there a few years before I was, Scott Derrickson. Right, I never knew that. Yeah, really interesting. It was a good movie. And as you know, Sean, it was based on a real case from Germany. That's what I was going to ask you to share that case, because many would use that as a case of criticizing exorcism because of what happened to her. Would you be willing to tell us what happened a little bit in that case and what you think we can take away from it? Robert R. When you talk to policemen, and as a Gallagher from New York, I know a lot of police and have had a few as relatives, they will often

say the first story is often not the complete story. So a lot of people don't know the full story. She, in my opinion, was possessed. On the other hand, she and her parents had been so frustrated with the German medical system that they neglected her medical problems. She had a series of medical problems. And eventually, because of her neglected medical problems, not because of the possession, but because of her neglected medical problems, which she didn't address properly, which she refused to address, she died. And so the German priest who were working with her, who had tried to get her to go to physicians, but then said, well, look, you know, she refuses. We're going to continue the exorcisms.

They were held actually legally liable. They never actually, you know, were jailed or fined or anything like that. But they were put through the ringer and put on probation. So it was a notorious case in Germany because a lot of people in Germany were skeptical of evil spirits and it sort of discredited the whole exorcism ministry for many years. I guess the devil achieved a certain victory there. Oh, wow. That's really interesting.

That's really the inside story, which I think the movie sort of touches upon, but perhaps doesn't fully reflect the origin. As a whole, what do movies get right and get wrong about exorcism, at least popular movies? And I know there's a lot. And I wonder, I mean, do you watch these movies given what you do, or do you just stay away from them? Well, there's so many of these movies. Um, and Hollywood has often wanted me to participate in a movie and I actually have agreed to do that. Oh, wow. That's a whole other story.

It's going to be done by Jason Blum, who's a pretty big power broker in Hollywood. I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it for attempting to present a realistic portrait portrait of what the field is really like. But most of them, and it's in the service of addressing exactly what you're saying. A lot of these movies are sensationalist, they're schlocky, and they're oversimplified. And again, they kind of present it as a magic ceremony in the way I mentioned before, that a lot of people sort of, in medicine, they want the magic pill to cure their condition. In exorcism, sometimes they want the magic formula to relieve them of a demonic attack. But it's always more complicated than that because the victim has to turn to God, has to reform their life. For instance, again, using Julia's case as an example, she was this literal Satan-worshiping priestess,

she called herself, of a cult. Even though these cults are rare, she was the real deal. But she never really agreed, despite the priest being generous enough to do exorcisms with her at her request. She never was really willing to reform her life or leave the cult, in part because she was afraid of the cult. And so she was never delivered. So as opposed to this gangster I mentioned, who after this serious possession, he returned to his practice. It was an Hispanic man who returned to his practice in the Catholic Church, reformed his life, and he was eventually delivered. So that's what Hollywood really gets wrong. They minimize that whole thing.

It's not just some magic combat between the priest, witch doctor type, who does all the deliverance. It's delivered by our Lord, and it requires the cooperation and sometimes the reform of a person's life by the victim. So I'm sure you can think of Hollywood movies which distort both of those factors. So again, I want to remind just our viewers you're an Ivy League trained academic who is a consult you do consultations

but not exorcists and in your book it says 25 years you've been investigating diabolical attacks and the paranormal how confident are you that demons exist and what might you say to somebody

who is unconvinced? Well, I've seen so much evidence, Sean, that, I mean, I'm unequivocally convinced. I mean, I know it's not a question of a belief. I know that evil spirits exist. I've just seen so much. I mean, that in a way is why I wrote the book. It really is a book, a serious book. It's not dumbed down, not sensationalized. I have a good friend who happens to be a Jewish doctor out West. And I don't always go around talking to everybody about this work. So he didn't even know, even though he's a close friend what i do and he said rich how come you never told me about your involvement in this field and i said well you know it's not like i go

around telling everybody in my private life about this and he said i said what did you think of it and he said and this is i mean this is a good man i mean he certainly believes in god but he was brought up as a secular jew and he said well rich well, Rich, I'll tell you what my opinion is as an intelligent doctor, as he is. He said, I don't think anybody can read your book and say that a good intellectual case can't be made that evil spirits exist. The other way I sometimes phrase it is, I'm sure you're familiar, Sean, with the New Testament. When St. Paul went to Corinth, which I suppose is like somebody going from Kansas to San Francisco or something, and he preached Jesus Christ crucified, he also preached that uh jesus rose from the dead and he said he said folks of corinth citizens of corinth you don't have to believe me 500 people were reported

he he appeared to 500 people those people are still alive go talk to them and analogously i sometimes say every couple of years i I go to this meeting of the International Association of Exorcists in Italy, there's about 500 of those people. I said, take the evidence in my book, decide, you don't know me, so decide what you think about it. But you don't have to believe Dr. Gallagher. Go talk to these 500 exorcists. You know, they write their own books. They're perfectly happy to talk about this stuff. And of course, there are many other Protestant as well as Catholic people involved in this field. People are alive. I mean, you can talk to them about their experiences. And if a person is really objective about it,

I know you're an apologist, Sean, so you're kind of interested in this sort of thing. If people are really serious about it, they can get a pretty good idea of the truth to this. You know, it's not hidden under a bushel. So one of the things that's partly convinced me of the stories for near-death experiences and miracle claims is there's certainly some people who are parading false claims to sell books and get a platform, but there's a whole lot of people who are just even reluctant to share these kinds of stories because they think people will say that they're crazy you're an academic in the ivy league and so clearly it went through your mind like if i start helping with possession

if i write on this this could affect me professionally how did you overcome and why did you overcome that barrier and how is your work received in the larger scholarly world? Well, first of all, I'm a full professor, so I don't think anybody's going to take that away from me. Nice. Second of all, the short answer is I really don't care what people think. I mean, people have all kinds of unpopular opinions in this country and, you know, you can't go around worrying about what people think. But the other rejoinder I give to people if they challenge me, and I'm perfectly happy to be challenged, is they say, well, Dr. Gallagher, how does it feel to be outside the mainstream?

And I tell them, what mainstream are you talking about? First of all, most Americans believe in spirits. They believe in God and they believe in evil spirits. I mean, a certain amount of skepticism in the United States and Europe, but around the world, even more of a majority of people believe in evil spirits. My book was recently translated into Japanese. I mean, in East Asia, almost everybody believes in evil spirits. You go to Haiti or Madagascar, you know, belief in evil spirits and their activity is universal. So I hardly think I'm out of the mainstream. And if you look at cultures in history, and people have studied that. Possession cases have been reported throughout the vast majority of Christians, of all cultures throughout history. So when people say, how does it feel

to be out of the mainstream? I say, again, what mainstream are you talking about? I'm in the mainstream, maybe you're not. Now it is true that psychiatrists for different reasons, they tend to be a little less religious than the American public. They tend to, of course, see people all the time who only think they are affected by evil spirits. We're all familiar with schizophrenic patients who have hallucinations of evil spirits or aliens or communists or the FBI or whatever. So it's natural, Sean, that psychiatrists are going to be a little more skeptical of these things. But, you know, that's their problem, not mine. Sure, sure.

So, Dr. Gallagher, one of the tactics of demons is to silence people that are calling them out and limiting their powers. So have you, given that you are helping with oppression and possession, you're speaking out, trying to educate people. I would imagine, you know, if demons are real, and like you, I believe they are, they'd be thinking, we got to take this Gallagher guy out. He's causing too much trouble. He's drawn people to attention to this. We'd rather have these phenomena explained away as mental illness. Have you experienced that? If so, how do you deal with it? If not, how have you protected yourself from experiencing that? Well, I think any Christian, Sean, who speaks out is going to be a little targeted. And how do you deal with that? I mean, you as an apologist are in some ways a similar category.

You have to have your own spiritual life. In my case, I'm a little shameless about asking people for prayers. I have a lot of people praying for me. In fact, you give me the opportunity now to ask your audience to pray for me. And I think you have to go into this sort of work with that mentality that we all need to protect ourselves and to have protection of others. And then you live with it, whatever is sent you in life.

I don't particularly feel like I've been overtly attacked myself. So you mentioned that demon possession is very rare. Demon oppression, a little bit more common, but still rare. If we're going to say, if we're going to take like- I would say oppression. I mean, if a clergy person keeps their eye open, they'll see a few of those cases. They probably won't see very many possessions, if any, in their whole life. So as far as what your best guess would be, if we were going to take, say, the Catholic Church in the United States, you said all exorcisms work through official channels very carefully. If you had to guess within a given

year, how many are performed in the U.S.? Is it two? Is it 2,000? How many would you guess just within the Catholic Church? And of course, this does include the Orthodox, other Protestant ministries, etc. Or is that impossible to know? Well, it's impossible to know precisely because a lot of these things are kept very private. Sometimes people tell me, well, why doesn't the church do videotapes of people? It's forbidden. And I have seen people outside the church do videotapes, and believe it or not, sounds kind of like a pat answer uh sometimes the tapes are are blank when you when you try to view them yeah yeah and then again evil spirits a certain amount of power over over material reality uh otherwise they couldn't they couldn't you know possess somebody

having said that um i don't know, maybe a couple of thousand, you know, every year. A couple of thousand. That would be my guess, you know. Okay. That's helpful. That's fair. If somebody thinks they're experiencing demonic oppression in some fashion, what should they do do well the the first thing is they should pray and they should turn to our lord and ask for guidance and then they should try to find somebody in the catholic church people can always sort of contact the diocese. In a lot of other churches, they should attempt to find somebody within their congregation or denomination, somebody who's sensible, has experience, as we talked about before, who sees this as a spiritual ministry. Sometimes those people do have a little difficulty finding someone,

but they have to continue to search and pray that they will find somebody who will help them. Are there differences between how Protestants and Catholics and those who are Orthodox perform exorcisms? The exorcism rituals in the Catholic Church and in the Orthodox Church, the formula in the Orthodox Church actually goes back even centuries before. They're pretty systematized and formalized. In the Protestant denominations, it varies much more. I mean, some of them use fairly traditional prayers and some of them, some of the mainstream of individual choice of prayers and ways of working with the individual. So there is that difference as a generalization. Fair enough.

Dr. Gallagher, I have so many questions for you. I really want to respect your time. Did I miss anything? uh dr gallagher i have so many questions for you i really want to respect your time did i did i miss anything anything you want to clarify story you want to share that would just help our audience whether it's a christian one understand exorcism maybe a skeptic who's not convinced anything else that would be helpful to share with the audience before we wrap up well i'll make one point and then maybe give one more example. You know, I'm a big believer in science. I'm a physician. You cannot be a good physician without believing in science. And I don't see any contradiction between what the scientific knowledge that I rely upon,

which is often based on a, if you want to be fancy about it, a scientific principle called methodological naturalism. It means, you know, we're doing experiments, we're expecting replicated findings, like in cancer studies and stuff. So I'm very committed to science, but the kind of findings that I report, they're not unscientific just because they're historical. So the evidence-based error is history. And that's the way actually most people come to know things. I mean, how do we know that George Washington crossed the Delaware? Well, because we have good evidence for it. So I've tried in my book to present, I've tried in my book, I'm sorry for the phone.

Howard Bauchner That's okay. Anthony Acciavatti I've tried in my book to present good evidence. Recognizing at the same time that you're dealing with a realm of reality that is trying to confuse her, that is trying to confuse us. So people are bound to find this a complicated subject. The best illustration of the confusing aspect of that is I dealt with a woman who was oppressed. She was perfectly sane, but she felt she was getting messages from the beyond. And she originally told me, I evaluated over the course of about six months, she originally told me that she was having

angels talk to her and that these angels had a great mission for her. And she was skeptical about it because she was a very down-to-earth person and didn't feel that God was seeking her out for some grandiose mission. So I said, well, you know, pray about it. She had already been clearly diagnosed as non-mentally ill. And she came back a month or so later and said, Dr. Gallagher, they now say that they're dead souls. And this is the sort of bread and butter of spiritualism. People who channel spirits and stuff, they often think they are in touch with dead souls.

And she said, well, I know we're really not supposed to speak to dead souls, certainly in the way that I feel they're communicating with me. Summoning of spirits is condemned in the Bible, as you know. I said, well, keep praying and take the advice of the priest, and we'll see if this gets sorted out. And eventually, she said, you know, Dr. Gallagher, you were right. They finally have revealed who they are. And just as in a exorcism, where the evil spirit is forced to reveal who they are. Eventually, these messengers speaking to her admitted that they were evil spirits. So it's a good microcosm of how they try to disguise themselves. They can even disguise themselves as angels. That's also a New Testament theme, right?

Epistles. Number two, they have often throughout history disguised themselves as deceased spirits of one sort or another. This is a bread and butter of psychics and spiritualists. And on the other hand, in ancient times, as I mentioned, they have presented themselves as gods and goddesses who were often thought to be sort of malicious as well as benign, which would make sense, right? And so they have tried to confuse people, and that's why people need to hold fast to the standard Orthodox teachings of the church. Dr. Richard Gallagher, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and join me. I enjoyed your book. I hope that's the right word in the sense that it was fascinating.

It was insightful. I listened to it on Audible twice. Again, for the audience, it's called Demonic Foes. And you tell the stories, but the way you described it earlier was my experience too. It's not sensationalistic.

You give the details we need to know to understand the stories and some of them are disturbing, but not overly sensational beyond what's necessary for the audience to understand. That was my take. So those of you who want to go further and understand some cases and examples and teachings

about demons, I'd highly suggest Demonic Foes. The rest of you, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other videos coming up on a range of apologetic and worldview issues, including within the next few weeks, doing an interview again with Billy Halliwell, a journalist who's written a book called Playing with Fire on 10 questions about demons. We're going to follow up and probe into some of the particulars there. If you thought about studying apologetics, we'd love to have you at Biola. We're the top-rate apologetics program. It's fully distance and online and part

of studying apologetics is we have bible and theology classes and we go into angelology demonology and some of the very topics today within the program so information is below would love to have you join us again dr gallagher thanks so much for your time and uh for your work i've really enjoyed it uh thank you sean god bless