How many people are possessed

Cast Out All Witches and Devils. England Servants possessed by the devil on the 3. And what does this resurgent interest tell us about the figurative demons tormenting contemporary society? In , a German psychologist named Traugott Oesterreich collected historical eyewitness accounts in his book Possession: Demoniacal and Other. One incident that crops up again and again involves a young woman named Magdalene in Orlach, Germany. Late in the winter of , Magdalene began seeing strange things in the barn where she tended cows.

By the following year, she was being tormented by voices, sensations of physical assault, and, according to witnesses, spontaneous outbursts of flames. According to some accounts, a priest conducted an exorcism on Roland at Georgetown University Hospital, a Jesuit institution in D. Roland and his parents eventually left their home in Maryland to stay with extended family in St. There, priests carried out at least 20 exorcisms over the course of a month. He reportedly vomited so profusely that the exorcist performing the rite had to wear a raincoat, and he fought so violently that 10 people were required to hold him down.

In April , several hours into an exorcism, Roland finally surfaced from his trancelike state. Louisa had recently given birth to their first child, a son, who was tucked between his parents in bed. At one point during the night, she awoke and found herself paralyzed. All she could move were her eyes, and they darted around the room in horror.

When Louisa told friends and family about the episode, most shrugged it off. Some suggested that it might have been a lingering effect of having just undergone a strenuous delivery she had needed a cesarean section. Louisa decided they were probably right. For a required internship that fall, she chose to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal, to work for an organization that provides aid to impoverished women and children in the region.

After a month in Kathmandu, Louisa became infected with E. When she was discharged, she debated flying home right away. But now she was drained and weary of her surroundings. The night after she left the hospital, Louisa locked the door to her apartment, secured the window with a wooden bar, and went to bed. It seemed close: She could feel the hot exhales on the back of her right ear and her neck.

How is this possible? Her grandmother, who was both an American Indian and a devout Catholic, had warned her about them. If Louisa ever encountered evil spirits, her grandmother had told her, she should do her best to ignore them, because they feed on attention. Louisa tried, but the breathing continued, a heavy, rhythmic rasp. Then, after a minute or so, she felt a hand brush against her collarbone.

At that sensation, which to this day she cannot account for, Louisa leapt out of her sleeping bag and ran to turn on the light. She swears that as soon as she flipped the switch, she heard a pack of stray dogs break out in wild yelps.

By dawn Louisa had cleared out, walking several miles to the U. Embassy in Kathmandu. She took the next flight back to Orlando. Louisa had yet another incident in , just after giving birth to her second child, a daughter. This episode was more like the first—she woke up abruptly, only to find her body locked in place—but with the added shock of what seemed to be visual hallucinations, including one of a giant spider crawling into her bedroom.

Louisa was so jolted that she barely ate or slept for three days. So Louisa turned to the internet. Sleep paralysis seemed like a promising explanation.

Hovering near full consciousness, the person can experience paralysis and hallucinations. She started to wonder whether something was pursuing her. Amid consuming fear, she waded into some darker internet waters: elaborate descriptions and YouTube testimonials of people who claimed that a demon or some other evil entity had dragged them down to hell.

When she told him that she had used a Ouija board after her grandfather had passed away a couple of years earlier, he told her to get rid of it, along with anything else that could be construed as occult: tarot cards, amulets, pagan symbols, even healing crystals and birthstones. Any of these things, he told her, could serve as a doorway for a demon. It may surprise some Catholics to learn just how literally the modern Church interprets Satan and his army of demons.

While many people today understand the devil as a metaphor for sin, temptation, and unresolvable evil in the world, the pope consistently repudiates such allegorical readings. In sermons, interviews, and occasionally in tweets, Pope Francis has declared that Satan—whom he has referred to as Beelzebub, the Seducer, and the Great Dragon—is a literal being devoted to deceiving and debasing humans. Exorcisms also occur in some Protestant and nondenominational Churches, but the Catholic Church has the most formal, rigorous, and long-standing tradition.

The Church sees the influence that demons and their leader, the devil, can have on human beings as existing on a spectrum. Demonic oppression—in which a demon pressures a person to accept evil—lies on one end. The most you get is some really bad play-acting by the person who is being exorcised.

In an interview, Novella went further and criticized any therapist who believes his patient's delusions. Telling a patient who is struggling that maybe they're possessed by a demon is the worst thing you can do. It's only distracting them from addressing what the real problem is. Driscoll, the Catholic priest who wrote a book about possession, is not a skeptic like Novella.

Still, he says, it's not unusual for people on drugs or during psychotic episodes to display abnormal strength. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa, Illinois. That doesn't mean he thinks possession isn't real. He says the New Testament is full of accounts of Jesus confronting demons. Yes, I do," he says. I don't know why it would be totally eradicated now. Gallagher agrees and has answers for skeptics like Novella. He says demons won't submit to lab studies or allow themselves to be easily recorded by video equipment.

They want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence, he says. Nor will the church compromise the privacy of a person suffering from possession just to provide film to skeptics. Gallagher says he sees his work with the possessed as an extension of his responsibilities as a doctor. In a passage from a book he is working on about demonic possession in America, he says that it is the duty of a physician to help people in great distress "without concern whether they have debatable or controversial conditions.

Gallagher isn't the first psychiatrist to feel such duty. Scott Peck, the late author of "The Road Less Traveled," conducted two exorcisms himself -- something Gallagher considers unwise and dangerous for any psychiatrist. The referrals are almost invariably from priests. It's not like someone is walking into my office and I say, 'You must be possessed. What happened to Satan's queen. He may not have asked to join the "hidden" world of exorcism, but he is an integral part of that community today.

He's been featured in stories and documentaries about exorcism and is on the governing board of the Rome-based International Association of Exorcists. He says he's received thanks from many people he's helped over the years.

Some wept, grateful to him for not dismissing them as delusional. As for letting a journalist talk to any of these people, Gallagher says he zealously guards their privacy. Belief in possession exists in many religious traditions. Here, a man enters a state of possession during an African voodoo ceremony. Julia, though, gave him permission to tell her story. But it didn't have a happy ending. He and a team of exorcists continued to see her, but eventually, she called a halt to the sessions.

She was too ambivalent. She relished some of the abilities she displayed during her trances. She was "playing both sides. About a year after she dropped out, Gallagher says, he heard Julia's voice on the phone again. This time, she had called to tell him she was dying of cancer.

Gallagher says he offered to try to help her with a team of priests while she was still physically able, but her response was terse:. He says he never heard from her again. Inevitably, there will be others. His phone will ring. A priest will tell him a story. A team of clergy and nuns will be summoned. And the man of science will enter the hidden world of exorcism again. Join the conversation. The critics, the souls that aren't saved, the creepy encounters -- they don't seem to deter him.

Catholic Online says a possessed person may be bound as the priest traces the sign of the cross over them and sprinkles them with holy water.

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Image source, Reuters.