TrueLife - Dr. Richard Gallagher - Demonic Foes

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

https://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Foes-Psychiatrist-Investigates-Possessions/dp/0062876473 Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal by Dr. Richard Gallagher Successful New York psychiatrist Richard Gallagher was skeptical yet intrigued when a hard-nosed, no-nonsense Catholic priest asked him to examine a woman for a possible exorcism. Meeting her, Gallagher was astonished. The woman’s behavior defied logic. In an instant, she could pinpoint a person’s secret weaknesses. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including Gallagher’s own mother, who passed away after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. She spoke fluently in multiple languages, including Latin—but only when she was in a trance. This was not psychosis, Gallagher concluded. It was, in his scientific estimation, what could only be described as paranormal ability. The woman wasn’t mentally disturbed—she was possessed. This remarkable case was the first of many that Gallagher would encounter. Sought after today by leaders of all faiths—ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams, Gallagher has spent a quarter-century studying demonic activity and exorcisms throughout history and has witnessed more cases than any other psychiatrist in the world today.

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with an incredible individual. He's a board certified psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry at New York Medical, psychoanalyst at Columbia University and the author of a fascinating new book

called Demonic Fos. It's by Dr. Richard Gallagher. And it's his 25 years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions, diabolic attacks, and the paranormal. Dr. Richard Gallagher, thank you so much for being here. Did I leave anything out in that introduction? I think you got the key points

and thank you for the invitation, George. Well, it's my pleasure to be here today. And I got to tell you, as I was reading the book, it wasn't an easy read. There are some parts in there that made me put the book down for a minute and have to contemplate my own spirituality. It's fascinating. But before we get too deep into that, can you maybe introduce the way you got to be here from maybe skeptic to investigator or how did this whole thing come about? Well, I always tell people that I never volunteered. You know, basically as a physician, I try to help people.

And that's been my major motivation over the years. There was a priest who came to my office and he asked me to help him evaluate a case. I mean, later I was asked to join an international association called the International Association of Exorcist. I'm now the longest standing American member, mainly because when I joined, I was a relatively young guy. And everybody else has passed on to their reward. But it's a group of 500 exorcist. I'm not an exorcist, obviously. I'm a scientific advisor.

And then I was asked to write a book, and believe it or not, George, Jason Blum, you may have heard that name. Pretty big name in Hollywood. He wants to make a movie out of the book. So I'd like to think it's a little, we would use the word providential, that I just got sort of pulled into,

to the field, never volunteered. And I'm not sure it's a good idea to volunteer. Yeah. It comes to in the book, you know, when you, the way you wrote it, I think you've got a lot of feelings in there and you were able to demonstrate to the reader some of the feelings you were feeling with Julia and the cats. And, you know, even Father Jacques or priest Jacques coming to you in the beginning, he seems like a pretty interesting individual, this gentleman.

It was a very kind man. and a very smart priest. And at the time, even though this is not that long ago, about 25 plus years ago, there were very few exorcists, at least Catholic exorcist in the United States at the time. And so all of a sudden, this somewhat rumpled looking priest, a pleasant guy, comes to my office and says, Dr. Gallagher, I'd like you to evaluate a case where I think there's something demonic. And I had just graduated George from my residency at Yale.

And at that time, there was kind of this, what we called satanic panic, where people were seeing Satanist all over the place. And so I said to him, well, with all due respect, Father, I'm a little skeptical of that stuff. And he chuckled a little bit, and he said, well, then, Dr. Gallagher, you're the perfect man for the job. because he wanted someone to be rigorous and someone to ask questions. I mean, it turned out he asked me to evaluate this woman who had bruises all over her body. Obviously, I had to rule out any kind of medical problems or abuse or anything. She had claimed that she was getting beaten up, literally beaten up by invisible spirits.

And at the end of my evaluation and medical workup of her, I came to the conclusion. And I said, look, look, father, you're right. There's no medical or psychological explanation for this. And he said, well, that's exactly what I thought. Thank you for validating my view that this woman has not a possession, but what they call, at least in America, terms differ from country to country, but what we tend to call an oppression.

And after that, I just kept seeing more and more of these cases. is he and a colleague of his who did the eventual exorcisms on that Satanist woman you were mentioning, they would travel all over the country seeing cases because there were so few. So I wound up seeing a tremendous amount of cases. In fact, my chairman of psychiatry, who was a Catholic, a very prominent American Psychiatric Association president, said to me, I'd probably seen more of, these cases than any other doctor in the world and maybe any other doctor in history just because, you know, we have the telephone, we have Zoom and that sort of thing now.

Yeah, it's, I want to, I want to say to the book is really well written from quoting Dostoevsky to sometimes I laughed out loud, especially in your description of, uh, when you first met, uh, father Jacques and he said, here comes this crumpled old man. It's probably because his pants haven't been pressed. You know, there was some really good like, one-liners in there that I moved between different emotions. So thank you for writing it in a way that kind of took you through this emotional areas and made you laugh and made you think. And I'm curious, how was it when you first met this case and you were skeptical about it? And then there was all these things that happened that you described in the book that led to the idea that, okay, this has to be something else.

Was there like a moment, like a shift in your mind? Like this is real. This is really happening. Yeah. I mean, I suppose I was theoretically open to the idea that some of this stuff could have happened. But certainly in my training as a resident at Yale, I'd never seen anything like it. I knew that there was all this exaggeration about it. So it really took a lot of evidence, George, to convince me.

Although pretty soon when I started to see some even more dramatic cases, it became pretty clear to me that this goes way beyond psychiatry. I often say to people, colleagues say, I say, well, how many psychiatric patients have you had who can all of a sudden speak perfect Latin or know all these hidden facts about people or in these rare cases even levitate? Now, while I've never seen a levitation, I've talked to about 35 very credible people who've either reported it to me or witnessed it. So this weird stuff does happen. And after a while, when you get very familiar with it, the way I became, you become pretty darn convinced.

Yeah. And it seems that you have found this Ariotony thread that seems that seems. to run through the possessions of the inter, the entanglement with the occult or even worshipping Satan alone. And there are some dark things, like the relationship between Julia and David and some of the things that were happening in there. Like, like, you really had to get close. I once heard it said that the best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist. And in this book, I think you give some real evidence for some dark, dark stuff. It's tough to read sometimes.

Yeah, I was happy that Harper Collins, let me write the book, De Monifos, the way I wanted to write it. In other words, I told a lot of stories, which people describe as pretty enthralling, but it's also a serious book. You know, there's a lot of these sloppy or sensationalist books. There are books about Satanists where people just make up stuff. So I wanted to write a very credible book as a professor of psychiatry. And every fact is true. I do change some of the names. For instance, you referred to the,

probably the most dramatic case I ever saw was that woman, Julia, that's not a real name. But everything else in the chapter on her is 100% accurate. The way they first got a hold of me about it was, again, illustrative of, again, these kind of, of extremely odd phenomena that have no naturalistic, we would say, explanation, no materialistic explanation. So I was in bed with my wife in the middle of the night, and we had two cats at the foot of

the bed. And all of a sudden, these cats, who were fairly well-behaved, placid cats, they started going at each other like two prize fighters, you know. in a way we'd never seen before, and we figured, well, maybe it was catnip or something. Who knows? Now, the very next morning, I'd never met this woman, this priest who a lot of people know who the priest is, but I still use a pseudonym, Soudinom, Father Jacques, amazingly brings her to my house, which I was annoyed about.

Sure. Certain emotions, you know, and I said to them, please, don't bring Satanus to my neighborhood. So now, literally the first words out of her mouth as she was introduced to me were Dr. Gallagher, how did you like those cats last night? So I don't necessarily say she caused it, but she knew something had happened. And she claimed all kinds of psychic powers. She was a devil-worshipping Satanist, and she claimed that she got these powers from the dark side from Satan himself. I remember her saying once to me, well, Satan gives me favors, this God you believe in, he's never done anything for me. You know, this sort of skeptical type of argument.

And she exhibited quite a few what modern people would call power. paranormal powers right to me. For instance, she could see people. She always claimed to me, George, that she could see people at a distance. Now, this is something the parapsychologist called remote viewing. So it's reported in the, let's say, paranormal literature, which is kind of a pseudoscientific term. It doesn't explain anything.

And when I asked her about it, she said, yes, it's an ability that I'm not gifted or anything. it's an ability that Satan has given me. So I had a comfortable enough relationship with her because I was asked to evaluate her further, even though the exorcist had no doubt that this was a possession. And I myself saw her in trances a number of time and a voice would come out of her.

But she said to me once, well, I can, when I challenged her a little bit, I said, well, I can see, the exorcist who was a guy who called himself Father A. I can see the exorcist. Now, I knew this guy who had become a friend of mine. He was like 100 miles away. So I had a comfortable enough relationship with her that. I said, okay, Miss Smartypants. Why don't you tell me what he's doing and what he's wearing? So she said, I see him. He's walking along the beach. She's saying his mumbo-jumbo-jum prayers. And he's got a blue windbreaker on, and he's got his khakis. So I said,

well, I'm going to call him. I called him, and I said, Father, you know, how are things going? What are you doing? He said, well, Rich, normally I would be at the rectory. But today I decided to drive to the beach, and I was going to say my breviary, the priest's prayer, I was walking along the beach. And I said, and what are you wearing? And I remember him saying, he was a big, tough guy. I mean, I'm six to five. I used to play basketball, semi-pro in Europe.

This guy dwarfed me. He was a six-seven burly ex-marine. And when I asked him what he was wearing, he said, who wants to know? And I said, well, you, me, father. And he said, well, I have my windbreaker on, what color, blue. And I said, what else do you

have on? And he said, Rich, I know what's happening. You're talking to Julia. She's something else. I have my khakis. So she had described him to a tea. And not only would she do that, George, but she could tell all kinds of things about people.

Which, again, she claimed that knowledge came from evil spirits and specifically from Satan. For instance, she knew how my mother had died 20 years earlier, but she knew like a bovarian cancer, but she also knew how other people had died. So she had what they call, there's a fancy Latin word, Latra, and I studied Latin for about 10 years.

She had all this kind of hidden knowledge. She'd go into a trance, a voice would come out, out of her. She obviously had the historical background. So what you do is you take the totality of the case and you say, look, there's no other explanation, but something at best paranormal, but in our case, the explanation being something demonic. Man, I can't see, I've never, I bet you most people have never had something like that happened to him. That can seem to me, like that could seem to be used as a tool of intimidation. that's what she was trying to do?

Well, I think she would try to intimidate people. Again, I had a pretty good relationship with her. She respected talking to a doctor. And she knew that she had to talk to me, because otherwise, she was so ambivalent about the exorcisms that they wanted her to talk pro bono to a psychiatrist. I would say the intimidating agents are the evil spirits. They absolutely want to intimidate.

and confuse us. Picking up on your earliest remark, you know, the great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis used to say, people should not disbelieve in the devil, but they should also not become overly scared or preoccupied with it. And I think that's a good sensible rule of thumb. Yeah, I'm wondering, I'm just going to throw this out here. I'm wondering in your office, did you have like screw tape letters?

Did she gravitate towards any books in your office? Or when she was in your office, was there some sort of, you know, staying away from idols or staying away from anything that may have a religious figure on it? Or could you see any of that happening? Well, I've obviously read a lot over the years and I have a whole library. That's quite immense about that. I mean, in my office, I remember I had some plants. and she claimed that she was a great lover of nature and that Christians were anti-nature and all this.

And she had this whole kind of diabolic philosophy, which essentially was sort of pagan in tone. She was a thoughtful woman. I felt sorry for her in some respects because she was scared. of the cult. She had told me that she was in love with the cult leader. She was the high priestess. She called herself the queen. And the leader was a truly nefarious guy. But, you know, people's taste, right? There's no explanation to people's taste. She claimed to be in love with this guy. And she also claimed that if she left the cult, she was going to get harmed. So for all those reasons despite the fact that we did some exorcisms. Now, again, you know, I was a family guy.

I'm not, I'm very busy guy. I couldn't travel to her exorcisms. They were not right in my home area. But they were very dramatic and about eight or nine people would always report to me. She is a case that levitated for about a half an hour, according to eight witnesses, you know, kind of salt to the earth person. She spoke foreign languages. The room went cold for a while. Well, room went hot. This ex-Marine, Father A, said to me, it was like being at the gates of hell, Rich. But be that it is in May,

because George, she would not really cooperate. You have to reform your life. I mean, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't remain worshiping Satan and expect that you're going to get relieved of your possession because the relief of the possession is not really the exorcists is from from God or as we say our Lord. And she wanted to have it both ways.

So eventually she did get scared of the cult and she dropped out. And I felt that was very unfortunate because most cases that I've seen, I've seen quite a few cases. I've been to quite a few exorcisms in my life. Most cases do get better. So this is an interesting point. In the book, Demonic Fos, you get into this idea about the difference between a psychiatrist or a doctor and someone who's actually performing the exorcism.

And there's real differences there. You say it in the book, Demonic Bose that it needs to be a priest to perform these exorcists. But I'm wondering, are there some crossovers? Like it sounds to me when you see someone who's in a cult, they may have the same psychiatric problems. Maybe they may be a similar history of being abused or being manipulated. It sounds like that there's some manipulation on. both sides of the fence. And maybe that's one reason why you were really good at what you did is because

you could provide not only some of the faith-based background, but some of the psychiatry background, the inner workings of the mind. Interestingly, she was not a crazy person in any way. Right. And she was a pretty thoughtful person. Right. And in some ways, she was somewhat of an interesting person. She had had some bad experiences in life. and that probably, you know, there's a lot of, there's tens of millions of people who have drug abuse and have bad experiences. So, you know, the average person is not to be worried about getting possessed all of a sudden. She was possessed because she really turned to something very evil. Having said that, she was pretty coherent, but she was looking for help.

maybe she was looking for a father figure and the guy in the cult and then I thought later the exorcist so she had her issue put it that way which maybe I could understand a little bit better than some people as a psychiatrist but I don't want to act like possession is a is a psychiatric or medical illness who's not you have to rule out that stuff and there are people people who are schizophrenic people who are psychotic, people who have so-called multiple personality, people who, even people who are evil, or are other people who are very imaginative. All these people can think they're demonically attacked. I have to rule that out in certain cases. But on the other hand, then you're left with the real deal. Yeah, once you peel away all of what can be, you're left what is there.

Exactly. It's fascinating to think about. I like the way the book moves from case to case, and then there's a lot of history behind different cases, and it talks about how even though some things happen in the past, you know, you tie it together to the future. And this has been going on for a really long time. And it just seems like maybe with Hollywood or over the last 20 years,

it has become so sensationalized that it's gotten away from, from, it's done two things in my opinion. One, it's gotten away from what's really happening, what you describe in the book. And the second thing is, it's almost been like, gosh, I can't think of the right word, but like just Hollywood-ified. You know what I mean? Like, they

sensationalized it in some ways. Well, Hollywood definitely does sensationalize it. And they make it sort of into a magic ceremony. You say the right words. It's a little more complicated than that. We believe, and not just in the Catholic Church, but in some other religions too.

Certainly, I know many Protestant deliverance ministers. Now, some of them are very experts. Some of them are maybe a little loosey-goosey. The fact of the matter is that the prayers are very important, but the person also has to reform their life. Sometimes people say to me, well, how come only the Christian fundamentalists get possessed? And actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

This has been reported throughout all history. Sometimes people say to me, as a psychiatrist, you know, Dr. Gallagher, how does it feel to be out of the mainstream? And I said, what mainstream are you talking about? Most people in America believe in the devil and believe in the possibility of possession. Most people around the world, you know, maybe not so much in a secular area like Europe. But most people around the world believe in evil spirits. In fact, my book was just translated, believe it or not, into Japanese, where there's a great deal of interest in evil spirits. And if you look at history, you know, I was a classic major at Princeton.

I took my studies of history very, very seriously. And I became struck as I studied ancient history of how ubiquitous these beliefs were that throughout the vast majority, history, with a few exceptions, most people believed in evil spirits. So again, I tell people, I don't think I'm out of the mainstream. Maybe you are. Yeah. And I like how you drove home the point that when we think about possession, most people think possession and that's it. But there's also oppression. And there's two different forms of what happened. And possession is a lot less, is a lot more rare than oppression. A lot of people can be, have these things. happen to them. Can you describe the difference between those two things?

Well, there are these different categories, and sometimes people use different terminology. And nobody is saying, George, remember the old Flip Wilson show, The Devil made me do it? Yeah, I don't know if you remember that. I can't. You know, I'm not saying that everybody who struggles with, you know, what we would call sinful behavior or outright evil behavior, you know, you can't go around blaming the devil. But there are these different levels of attack by evil spirits. Some people do get tempted. I think that that is something that evil spirits try to do.

They try to corrupt human beings. Sometimes at the other end of the spectrum, they can take over the personality for a while. Now, they tend to come and go. Well, I won't say come and go, but they tend to submerge themselves at time. So you can be talking to a possessed person, and they may act, perfectly normal until they go into this trance, which especially happens during an exorcism, and then the demonic voice emerges. Then there's this middle category that at least in America, we mostly call oppressions. And there are external oppressions where the person like the character

in the book I call Maria, that was that first woman I talked about who claimed she was beaten up by evil spirits. You had the bruises to show for it. Other people report to me, you know, I'm choked, I'm scratched, pushed, pushed against the wall. That's what we call an external oppression, at least what I call external oppression. Then there are internal type of attacks, too, which again, I use the term in the book. Other people use different terms. I call internal oppression. And that's where people's evil spirits have some ability. Now, again, their power is limited, but they have some ability to attack certain people who make themselves vulnerable in their senses or even in their imagination. They can plant ideas in people's heads or

images, they can also sometimes take away or influence somebody's senses. If you remember the character, the woman I call Catherine in the book, she couldn't hear anything, but it was very selective. She could not hear anything of a spiritual nature. So if you said to her, as I did on a number of occasions, Catherine, did you go to the store this morning? Yes, Dr. Gallagher. Catherine, did you go to church this morning? I can't hear what you're saying. What did you say? And it was an attempt by evil spirits to make sure that she didn't get spiritual help or advice. So the psychiatric colleague of mine, we had this bright idea.

Let's write it on a piece of paper, right? So on a piece of paper, we wrote, what did you buy at the store this morning? And she would verbally then say to us, as she saw this piece of paper, well, I got some potatoes and some beef. Again, this woman was possessed. She was still a very good cook. On the other hand, we wrote on a piece of paper, Catherine, did you pray today?

And she looked at me kind of quizzically, a little disappointingly, and said, Dr. Gallagher, why are you showing me a blank piece of paper? So it's remarkable, but the evil spirits in her case, in many ways to discourage or to intimidate her the way the word you used before, they would be able to selectively block some of her hearing and even some of her sight. So there are these weird but powerful pieces of evidence that, again, make someone like myself who goes into it with a little bit of skepticism, obviously convinced. that this goes beyond, this goes beyond, you know, material reality. Yeah. So we got a, we got a question from our, one of our listeners here, Dr. Gallagher, and they want to know from Benjamin George, can you define evil?

What does evil mean to you? Boy, that's a philosophical question. It is. And as your, as your audience probably knows, people have debated that issue for millennia. Yeah, I think the common sense definition of the term is reasonable. It's people who are doing behavior that is truly destructive, in some sense, even to themselves, but certainly to other people. And do good and evil exist?

Again, this is sort of one of those commonsensical things. It's very hard to convince people of those concepts if they're skeptical. of it, but I think the vast majority of the human race has always believed in some notion of good things and bad things, you know, murder is a bad thing. Right. Helping people who's sick is a good thing. So we all have some basic sense of good and evil. Yeah, in the book, ladies and gentlemen, the book is called demonic foes.

It's a great read. You check it out. I just wanted to get the title out there so everybody can go. It's out in stores right now, but would you, it seems to me that in a lot of the cases you laid out. And let's be clear, not every case that you investigated ended up being somebody that was possessed. You did a great job at going through and talking about the cases. Here's a person that was. Here's a person that was.

Here's a person that may have been. Here's a person that definitely wasn't. And I like the way you laid that out there. It seems to me in quite a few of the cases, the people that actually were possessed, if we take your definition of evil, you know, someone who has malicious intent or is, you know, there's, murder, there's death. A lot of these people that were possessed, whether it was speedy or whether it was, you know, Julia, they were up to what I would agree with were some evil practices. It's almost like, you know, there's that old saying that you have to invite the vampire in. It's almost like you have to invite this evil spirit in. And it seems like a lot of people did that.

Well, again, it's certainly not everybody, but there are just a certain amount of people, again, in every society who have done something like that. It was a famous book by a German professor. It was pre-Nazi era, who was an amazing psychologist as well as a historian. And he gives reference to literally thousands of cases throughout history and references. In fact, his book very much influenced William Peter Blattie's novelistic treatment of a case, which was also actually also based somewhat on a boy in Maryland who got possessed. And he had, this boy had turned, for instance, to contacting dead spirits

and which we generally believe are demons who just pretend to be dead spirits. And on the other hand, once the dark world, you might say, does people a favor, it's a little bit like getting involved with the media, with the media. That is a shift on the tongue. Getting involved with the mafia. You know, once you're involved with the mafia, once they've done you a favor, man, they don't want to let you go. And that's what it's like when you turn to evil,

when you turn to explicitly occult stuff, the demonic world feels they have their fingers in you and they don't want to let you go. And then it takes a major effort or reform of your life as well as ideally, you know, say the praise of the church or something. It makes me wonder, it almost sounds like what, you know, I have such a primitive idea of what heaven and hell are.

And sometimes it almost seems as if it's just a different dimension. And there are ways to cross that dimension, whether it's through spiritual practice, drug use, you know, extreme tragedy. But it seems like there is this dimension that you can cross and almost interact with. And maybe it's through extreme power. We hear these things like power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that's kind of the same reference as the mafia getting into you or this power or greed or fear. Like there's so many of these emotions that seem to transcend these different dimensions.

I'm wondering, what's your idea of heaven or hell? And could it be a dimensional thing where we're crossing back all the time? Well, I do believe these are realities. In other words, you know, these evil spirits, they come from somewhere. They're certainly not coming from heaven. You know, the traditional teaching is interestingly that just as human beings have freedom and, you know, somebody can become a mother Teresa and somebody can become a Hitler, evil spirits or spirits, which we as Christians tend to believe

were fallen angels, that these angels, some of them rebel. And then, you know, the phrases they go to their own place. The underlying truth, basically, is that God, respects human beings and any creature he makes so much that he allows us to be free. And he doesn't force himself on people. And if people choose to go their own way to turn to, you know, extreme selfishness or or even worse, evil and stuff, he doesn't force himself on it, on them. And they go to some other alternate, you could call it a dimension, I suppose, George. They go to some alternate reality. Yeah, it's, you know, it's interesting too.

I think you referenced Edgar Casey in there, too, how he was able to utilize the same kind or at least a similar kind of remote viewing to see the future, the past, or other people's lives. And I'm wondering, it seems to me that in a lot of the stories that are told about possession or oppression, that it can be evil spirits pretending to be something else. But I'm wondering, have you ever encountered the opposite? Have you ever encountered maybe a saint or a good spirit that has gone and influenced people? Well, sure.

I think when you talk about non-material realities, because that's what we're talking here. Right, right. Modern science, and I believe in modern science. I believe in evolution. I believe in the Big Bang. I couldn't be a good doctor without believing in lab studies in science. But there is a realm of human, there's a realm of reality that goes beyond simple materialism. Right.

Science is based on technical term methodological naturalism. You know, we've learned a lot by just treating things subject to science and experiments. But the evidence from history is important too. and phenomena seen in history is not unscientific. You're not unscientific by believing in possession or for that matter in the supernatural, that some people have experienced something visitation from God or an angel or something. I believe in those realities too. And they kind of counterbalance each other.

in some ways we're in the middle and we still have our freedom and we're still choosing whether we're going to follow as Lincoln said the better angels of our nature or whether we're going to become to more destructive life. I like that a lot. So this is going to be, this is an interesting question I've been thinking about. It seems to me that lately with everything going on right now, whether it's, it seems to me there's been this thing in education, in work, in life, and everyone's life for the last, maybe since the Industrial Revolution, that we have just gotten so specific. We've really moved

into this idea of specialization. And in doing so, we've really been unable to communicate with each other. And it seems to me we're seeing this reunification of science and spirituality, now more than ever. And I'm sad that those two things have come so far apart, because it seems at one time they were a whole, like the scientific community was part of the spiritual community and they've gotten so far away that they don't talk to each anymore. Do you see it kind of coming back together? I see this book as kind of a way to mend fences a little bit and say yes and yes. Well, it's hard to know. I mean, I certainly don't want to be personally grateful about the subject. I do think that in history, you look at a country like Iran today, not to get too political,

Now, there are religious abuses too. There are religions that have, even like the priest abuse in the Catholic Church, there are religions that have had a less savory side. So in the Enlightenment period, which sort of what you're talking about, people began to have the freedom and maybe the prosperity to make a their own philosophy. I do think it swung too much in certain countries to a kind of mindless secularism and to the idea that it was sort of science and then there was faith and the two never meet. There's nothing unscientific about anything I write about in the book. So yes, I'm one of many,

many people who maybe are calling for some rapprochement between the scientific field and the spiritual field. And these people, you know, should be talking to each other. I don't see any contradiction in anything I write about that it's not George like I'm taking things on blind faith. Right. Now, I'm examining these things. I'm saying what is by far in my opinion, by far in my opinion, the most likely explanation. And, you know, I think, I think my beliefs are as reasonable as anybody else's, certainly. Yeah. It's, is there ever any, any sort of difficulty in trying to measure? Like, it seems to me that that's a big part of science is, okay, how do we measure this? And I'm curious, like, how in the idea of exorcism, do you manage or measure,

someone's level of possession. Is that, is that an issue? Well, certainly there are more dramatic possessions than others. I think Julia was an incredible one. I think because she was a Satanist, especially the evil spirits, where they made a lot of fireworks. So there are degrees of demonic attack, whether it's possession or oppression or even temptation, probably, with some people. Having said that, you can't subject this stuff, because it's, You cannot subject this stuff to normal experimentations. But again, that doesn't mean it's unscientific. People have tried, and more than one person has said to me,

you know, Dr. Gallagher, why don't you videotape the sessions? Now that's discouraged, at least in the Catholic Church, number one. But number two, you're videotaping spirits who have their own, they have their own abilities, they have their own knowledge. They're not going to let you tape something very dramatic so that you can put it on ABC News that night, you know. They're going to hide themselves at the same time that they try to scare certain people. So you can't subject to it to a lab experiment. I've even had people, and this is pretty remarkable when you think about the strategy involved on the evil spirits behalf, I've had people who have, usually Protestant friends of mine, who have taped a very dramatic exorcism,

where they'll get something like some remarkable features that would convince an awful lot of people. And then they say to me, you know, Dr. Gallagher, I wanted to play it for you, but the tape was erased. So you're dealing with crafty entities that have a certain amount of power and have a certain amount of power to obscure themselves. It's almost like a paradox, right? Because on the one hand, they're revealing themselves in certain contexts, but they're being very selective about it. They were also trying to conceal and confuse the people. themselves. And this is why I think, you know, throughout history, they've often pretended to be something else. You go to a Catholic exorcism and often the evil spirit, you know,

the priest will ask who the evil spirit is. And the evil spirit will say, well, I'm Nero, or I'm Judas Ascariot. But what eventually happens is, and it's a good sign, is they're forced eventually to tell the truth. They don't want to reveal themselves because they don't want to submit to human beings. So it's a good thing when they have to finally, as they always do, they have to finally reveal who they really are because then they feel humiliated. They've had to submit to the prayers of the church and to God's power, which of course is precisely what they don't want to do, precisely why they're in this situation they are in the first place that they've rebelled. that's fascinating to me it's almost if we you know i believe that the spirit resides in us and it seems to me

that what you described is that if you can get the demonic entity to admit the truth to you it's almost like the same way we can get someone who has a mental issue to begin seeing the truth so too if we can get the demonic entity to see the truth it weakens them where it where the individual kind of empowers them. Is there some sort of parallel there? Well, again, to a doctor, you've raised a lot of companies. I don't want to oversimplify this area. But I do think that remarkably, because it sounds irrational, I sometimes compare evil spirits to cosmic terrorists.

Oh, I like that. Remember when we were kids, you know, you didn't really think that, I don't know, You didn't think that a president would be assassinated, or you didn't think that terrorists would come in and blow up a building in New York City. But then we've become, in some sense, more realistic as a society, that there are these terrible human beings. Well, it's the same thing on a cosmic level. There are these terrible evil spirits, strange as it sounds,

number one, there's evidence for them. And number two, in trying to explain them, it appears that they, first of all, they basically think where they're inferiors. I mean, to them, we're just evolved monkeys. I remember Julian went into a trance once when she called Father Jacques, he said, you monkey priest, you know,

leave her alone, you'll be sorry. So to them we're like, you know, we're like pets almost, you know, and they feel they can abuse us. But what they're really attacking is they're really attacking us as made in the image of God. They're really attacking God because in some ways they realize, in my opinion, this is my opinion, the theological opinion, they kind of realize that they made a bad choice, but they're still not sorry for it.

In other words, they do not renounce what they do. didn't accept they don't accept any responsibility and again it's like it's like a terrorist right they think they're they're doing the right thing even though we know they're doing something very evil and they're not about to say oh you know i'm sorry well okay so what about this like because if we look at terrorists like you know i once heard it said that a crime fighter fights crime a firefighter fights fire a freedom what is a freedom fighter fight so if we look at terrorist. A terrorist probably thinks they're doing the right thing if they're bomb in a building because they're free in their country or something like that. Do you think it's the similar for like a

for a demon? Does he maybe, I mean, how would you know? But I mean, just in your opinion, is that still similar? Does that, does that example still hold? The general, the general teaching about fallen angels, if you really want to get into the aisle. Let's do it. Is that they are very intelligent. much more intelligent than we are. We all think we're pretty smart guys, right? But, you know, they know an awful lot. By the way, they don't know the future.

Only God knows to you. So even when somebody says, I can predict the future or, you know, I know what's going to happen to you, that may be a very good guess. And they're very good guesses because they know a lot. But on the other hand, the general teaching is that they made their decision and it's irrevocable. They decided, hey, I'm not going to submit, I'm not going to submit to God. I want my own realm. Satan, Satan appears to want to be worshipped and he has some

people who worship him. So what did Milton, the poet said, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. There are people who just refuse to want to claim that anybody else, God, whoever, has any authority over them. And then I think there's a biblical phrase, they go to their own place and they suffer the consequences. But they're not about to say, oh, sorry, I made a mistake. Sorry, sorry, God. I acted stupidly, forgive me and bring me into heaven. They're not about to say that, which is why they remain in the state they are. Man, it's, it's, I find, it fascinating. I really enjoy thinking and learning and I think, excuse me, the book's called

demonic foes, ladies and gentlemen, if you really want to learn about some true life things that are happening all around you that you may not get to see, you should read Dr. Richard Gallagher's book demonic foe because it's really fascinating and it's, it gets into the history of things. And I think it's, I think it's important to note that in your book, you did come across and document many people who felt as if they were possibly possessed, but in fact, maybe just had some mental issues. Would you say that that's the majority of the cases or the minority of the cases? I think it's a majority of cases who think they're possessed. Now, you got to remember, I'm a very busy psychiatrist. I used to run the emergency services from my county. I'm not going

around diagnosed with your average person. So, but there are, there are people who feel that they're attacked by spirits. The schizophrenic patient who's hearing a voice of an evil spirit or maybe the FBI or maybe, you know, the communist, they have a brain disorder and or some people just kind of imagine that they're attacked. Or they want to blame evil spirits for their problems. So there are a lot of those people, George. On the other hand, the cases I see are usually people who,

they've often spoken to a clergy already, they've often read a little bit about this subject. They're more credible group of people in asking me, could you evaluate that? And in those cases, surprisingly, now again, we're talking about many, many years, and we're talking about people from all over the world. In those cases, actually many, many of those people are in fact demonically attacked one way or another.

But that's very different than, say, you know, the private patients I've had. I mean, I've treated thousands and thousands of psychiatric patients, you know. I've never had a situation where somebody comes into my office and I say, oh, surprise. And the average person should not worry about. getting possessed or something. Yeah, I like how, there's so many cool little, I feel like I got to learn a lot about neurological disorders when I read the book too.

And you know, you talk about how maybe schizophrenics hear things a certain way versus someone who is depressed would hear it a certain way. And I really liked the way you did some mind mapping in there that allowed people to really dig into it. Ladies and gentlemen, the book's called demonic foes. And if you get a chance, I promise you, if you read it, not only will you be entertained, you'll probably be a little frightened,

but you'll be happy that you read it, at least I was. And Dr. Richard Gallagher, we're coming up on an hour right here, and I just want to say thank you for your time. And what do you got coming up? Do you have any speaking gigs coming up? Where can people find you?

And what are you excited about? Well, I am pretty excited that Jason Blum, a Blumhouse approached me. And he's a pretty big mocker, if you know, the term in Hollywood. And he's done a lot of, a lot of good genre movies. And he said this is the hottest topic he's ever,

he's ever encountered. So we are putting out a movie. I always do some speaking. George, in some ways, sad to say, I don't always make it so easy to get a hold of me because I would be inundated. You know, I guarantee. Hundreds of calls.

But, you know, I'm always writing and seeing patience. And trust me, I keep myself busy. I can imagine. Are you going to be able to, the movie sounds exciting. And I'm curious, are you going to be able to retain

some sort of oversight to kind of keep as authentic to the book as you can? You never know. You're dealing with Hollywood. You're dealing with corporate America. I obviously expect that it'll be a credible movie because otherwise I think it destroys

the whole point of the movie. And I think Jason is on board with that. I am executive producer. Nice. But executive producer is sort of whatever they decide to make of it. So, yes, I certainly have input. I'm trying to help make it a very credible movie. We'll see.

Maybe you and I can talk in two years or so when it comes out and I'll tell you whether I'm happy with the movie or not. Oh, I would love that. I would love it. I think it's important to probably give some credit to your wife and your family here. Had I brought Julia to my house, my wife would have punched me right in the face. Well, I didn't want to tell the neighbors.

I'll tell you that. Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. And there's, for everyone listening, we just barely scratched the surface of what's in this book. It's a great read. You should pick it up. Usually the books are better than the movies,

but I have no doubt with who's the executive producer and the people making the movie. The movie's going to be awesome. I'm looking forward to it. I would love for you to come back sometime, and you always have an open line at the True Life podcast. Dr. Richard Gallagher, is there anything else you want to leave people with before we go? I appreciate you doing a very thoughtful interview for us. So thank you for the invitation,

George. The pleasure's all mine. And ladies again, ladies to Jim, one more time, the book is called demonic foes. Check it out, Dr. Richard Gallagher. You're going to love it. It's going to be scary, you know, so it's going to make you think about things that you may not want to think about. And as a disclaimer, there is some stuff in there that's pretty disturbing. I'm not saying that Dr. Richard Gallagher purposely tried to disturb you, but some of the things that he dealt with would be mind-blowing. I had to set the book down for a minute and just quick. Okay, I got to stop. So ladies and gentlemen, go buy the book. You're going to love it. Check out the movie and keep an eye on Dr. Richard Gallagher. He's an amazing man. Doctor, thank you so much for your time today. I hope

you have a fantastic day. Very welcome. Very welcome. Same to you.