Ye back. The power of podcasts can tells you to listen to some more podcasts. This is our introductory episode on Exorcisms. We're really lucking out with how how this is lining up with Halloween? Um gosh, so long ago? Do you guys remember this? Well? I do? I do? This is I don't think I was even on the on in the show at this point. Were you recording with us? Well? Yeah, I was certainly probably clicking the button and maybe chiming in for a Knowle's corner or something. Oh yeah, I remember that. Man. I love those times. Oh yeah, you love the times when I when you could mute me Red. I was just joking, you know, I just those were fun because it was it was a brave new world. My my opic focus on segments is going to be the ruin of this ship. No, not at all. But but in this we talk a lot about the Hollywood version of exorcism verse the reality, and that's really what what you're gonna find here, and it's it's fascinating stuff we we certainly hope you enjoy from UFOs two. Ghosts and government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Greetings listeners, and welcome back. My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and this is stuff they don't want you to know. Today. We're gonna be exercising some demons, right then, yes E x O A, yeah, yeah, we're not. We're not gonna be jazzercizing some demons or prancersizing any demons. We're gonna be taking demons out of you through spiritual rituals, and if we are successful, then we will join a long line of uh spiritual and religious officials throughout human history who have sought to cleanse human beings or as we'll find, sometimes objects or even just places of some sort of otherworldly presence. We are talking about exorcism to day, and exorcism is something that has fascinated both of us in our own ways for a long time, isn't it right? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up very religious, and exorcism wasn't necessarily a part of my growing up, however, it was definitely. I was aware of it highly and UH man with films coming out around the time in the late I guess it was the late nineties for me when I really started getting into it and watching movies like The Shining and The Evil Dead, you start to really wonder about some of these things, even if it's just a highly stylized horror movie. Right. Yeah, And we have, uh, we have a great article on our website, how Stuff Works dot Com, our parent website, rather about exorcism and what it is and how it works. In the Catholic Encyclopedia, exorcism is defined as the act of driving out, rewarding off demons or evil spirits from persons, places, or things which are believed to be possessed or infested by them and are liable to become victims or instruments of their malice. So, and there are three types. So you just described the three types essentially. But there are three types of exorcism. I know. The one that everybody is aware of is the real exorcism, and that's its actual name, right, It's called a real exorcism where you're taking a spirit or demon out of a human body that is possessed right through performing the of exorcism, which in the Catholic Church can only be performed um with explicit authorization by the Vatican. Right. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. You you have to show, or the Vatican has to believe with evidence that you provide, whoever you are, the person presenting to the Vatican, that this person is actually possessed by a demon her spirit. And the Vatican does have a head exorcist. However, that head exorcist is more like a person in charge of a department rather than you know, um, an absolute pinnacle shot caller. Yeah. Yeah, he's not the uber exorcist that goes out and performs the exorcisms. Yeah, that is interesting. He's more of a bureaucratic head, right like uh, I believe for a long time the head exorcist was a guy named Gabriel am or Um and I may be mispronouncing that, but he was. He's the one who UM has uh claim to or is reputed to have cleansed tens of thousands of people, places, or things from demonic possession. But as you said, Matt, that when we say real exorcism, that is one of the most rare types of exorcism. And it's the one that you see in all the horror films, right, Yeah, it's the most compelling usually or because you're dealing with a human being. And yeah, and then there's simple exorcism, which is where you bless a place or a thing. Right, So this would be where a where someone a practicing Catholic beliefs that maybe their house or um a nearby ruin of some sort is unholy and a priest comes to bless the area. Yeah, or even a little doll that's creeping out someone's daughter, You gonna come and bless it. Man, you never know, and you mean creepy out, isn't scaring? Not like emerging from her mouth? Because that would be the case for realis that would be just one that's making weird noises, perhaps in the room when you're not around, but your daughter thinks that the doll is really talking to her. And this, this next type is going to be a surprise for quite a few of our listeners, right that this is um, this is the part that creep me out. Uh, if you are listening now, Uh, just let us know if you've ever been baptized, where you baptized? Matter? Right? And Uh? In the in the Catholic Church, a baptism is a form of exorcism, which I did not know. So blessing an infant prior to baptism to clean cleanse it of evil resulting from the notion of original sin. This means that if you have ever been baptized, uh, you probably have experienced one of the most common, statistically common forms of exorcism. And then and then let's let's open it up. There's something even bigger and stranger because exorcism is not just for the Catholic Church, right, No, not at all. Exorcism takes place all over the world. Um. Yeah, I I don't even know if I doesn't. Are there any places where it just doesn't occur? Um? I imagine in some you know what, that's a that's a good question because even in some states that do not have a state religion or widespread, you know, institutionalized religious practices, the traditional beliefs persist, so there can still be ritualized cleansings, which is really what an exorcism is in um places that we wouldn't normally associate with that. You know, Buddhist and Hindu beliefs both have place rituals to cleanse um a place or spirit, and we know that in Islamic culture, exorcism is also practiced Islamic culture. It's a little bit different because in an Islamic possession case, the person possessed is usually being possessed by what they would call a gin and um. You know, that's the root of what we in the West recognize as a genie, but not the not the nice powder blue or purple Robert Williams genie from Aladdin. You know, these are spirits and they can have they're they're pretty much in comporeal um entities that can have uh their own set of religious beliefs, right like, Yeah, that was fascinating. Ben and I were watching some videos earlier this week about Islamic exorcisms and several of them were I guess the exorcist they gut man performing the exorcism was calling the gin a Christian gin that he was trying to get out of this man um and it was fascinating to me. It's it seems very similar to some of the Catholic exorcisms where you're you're reciting UH scripture and basically saying get out, spirit, get out, um, I call you out in the name of this case, and it was fascinating to me just the similarities they were occurring there. And as we know, there've there have been extensive UH scientific investigations into the nature of exorcism, and by far the majority of the exorcism cases that were investigated have been associated in some way with Christianity. Right, what's interesting about the Islamic world, especially in areas of fundamental religious belief. Um. This again, this could be anywhere. From Indonesia, I think that that's still the world's largest Muslim country, UH to Saudi Arabia, and most people who are aware of Saudi Arabia understand that it as a um a very fundamentalist approach to Islam. It also has on the Wahabi sect, which is a little bit different in terms of interpretation doctrine. But um, the part about it that can startle a lot of people is that the idea of the existence of jin in many Middle Eastern countries and in some Middle Eastern universities is accepted as a fact of the universe, primarily because Jenner mentioned explicitly in the Quran. And with this in mind, we have to note that there is a very different relationship between the spiritual authorities and the secular academic authorities on the subject of possession. And stop me if I'm completely incorrect here, Ben, but I feel like there's a connection when when your state, your government, and your religious belief are kind of one and the same or or very similar UM. In the case with Sharia law, it's very interesting to me. It seems as though that would give you, that would make exorcism and the belief in that that you truly can be possessed much stronger. I feel, yes, And that's a good point. And with with this in mind, let's look at some of the some of the ideas or the symptoms of possession, at least the Western world. Now we know one of the big ones would be the ability to have UM, the the ability to speak multiple languages or understand them to be a pologlot and a lot of times it's a language that the person possessed hasn't had any contact with or would have no reason to be speaking that language. Sure, Latin, Aramaic, charl Daan, things like that, And you can find you can find an intense debate between the true believers and the people who believe they're debunking these practices, especially in regards to the language, because the idea that someone could speak another language also depends on the people observing it being able to one identify the language and then be fluent in that language enough to translate it right or to at least record it and give it to an expert who can verify it. And then second the ability of the ability to prove that the possessed person has never had access to it, which can be a little bit tricky. Um, you know the Internet, right, you know, Like if we take the case of Latin, Uh, I guarantee you if you speak any Romance language, then you know far more Latin than you think you'd do. Um. Another thing is is the idea of clairvoyance, the idea that you might be able to know. Like, for instance, let's say, are Sarah goodbuddy Jonathan Strickland is possessed and he would love this. Let Jonathan is possessed, and he knows things that he otherwise wouldn't be able to know, things across time and space, right, Um, accurate lottery predictions or accurate which you know, guys, if that happened, and then people will be clamoring to get their friends possessed, right Uh. And uh he also knows you know things that you have never told anyone about your childhood and stuff. Yeah, that's very sticky to try to conclusively prove and to our knowledge at least, why you and I should go ahead and say this to our knowledge, people have yet to find a universally accepted case of possession. There have been cases where an exorcism was considered successful by the Catholic Church. And again, when we say exorcism, we're talking about all three types of exorcism, including the ritual, the right of exorcism, or the real exorcism. Um. But there hasn't been one at least that the entire world is accepted as a fact. Another thing physical strength beyond the person's natural abilities. We know that human beings are capable of supernatural excuse me, superhuman feats of strength, right, Yeah, the adrenaline. Adrenaline is a crazy chemical. It can just make your your muscles do things that they shouldn't be able to do. There's there are numerous cases of people lifting cars in an emergency situation. UM, Like when I've forget the woman's name, but saving her daughter by literally lifting up her car. That's crazy to mean. It kind of reminds me of our superhuman episode that we were going over, and it just reminds me of the incredible things that we can do without um any necessary intervention, right, without necessarily a divine or demonic intercession exactly. I think that this is where we enter into a fascinating aspect of exorcisms. Um. Now, you know earlier you and I are both sort of armchair folklore's, which just means that we read a bunch of interesting stuff about um traditional beliefs, or as they were called, folk ways often and in regard to exorcism and witchcraft in general, we found some very interesting sociological arguments. If I could just take just a brief sidebar here. Um, When I was earlier, years years ago, I was studying the early American literature concerning on the Salem witch Trials and their European counterpart. It's another other times in which the law and belief in the supernatural had had come together or come and come to loggerheads even And one interesting thing, I can't remember the exact name of the book. I think it was The Devil Where's a Red Dress? Or something like that. I'll correct myself in the future podcast when I find this book. In this book, though, the the author argues that the persecution for witchcraft was a means of a social means of preventing economic equality between genders, because often the women who were quote unquote which is, turned out to be landowners or to have assets of some sort. And we know that in some cases in the European practice of which persecution uh, the inquisitors or the accusers stood to gain, to have a reward for turning in again a quote unquote which so there may also be a sociological explanation for exorcism or its existence in the East and in the West, in the in the East, um or in the nearest at least, if we're going to examine an Islamic um framework for this. One fascinating idea would be that if a possession or an exorcism occurs in a very fundamentalist environment, you know, to take Saudi Arabia again for an example, then there's an interesting argument to be made, and it's entirely speculative on my part, that a woman being possessed by a jin of some sort would be able to directly address concerns that would be otherwise ignored if she were to address them simply as herself. Now, I am not by any means accusing people of intentionally faking possession Um, I am saying that it is much more likely in some cases, depending upon the specifics of the problem of the root of the possessions. So okay, So would that be like spousable abuse or what kind of things do you think that would possibly come up in that or have you read anything? Yeah, it could be. It could be a case of spousal abuse. It could be a case of of husband violating some sort of law regarding treatment of wives or engagement of additional wives. It could also be something between a male relative. So, for instance, let's say if a husband has expired and there is some sort of um, I don't want to say shenanigans, you know, I don't want to make it sound silly, but but some sort of injustice occur ring in the wake of that death, then this, this quality of exorcism and possession, uh, theoretically provides another avenue for justice in a patriarchal society. Now, of course, when we go into this kind of look, we're we're looking at it from an entirely skeptical viewpoint. And this makes me want to return to the to the Vatican Church, which has stood even even as the West modernized over the centuries. And as a cohesive whole, people in Europe and people in Canada and the America's began to sort of drift away from this idea that there are demons or spirits possessing human beings, and instead of going with this, the Catholic Church has long maintained that exorcism is a real thing, and that while the vast majority of purported possession cases have some sort of other Monday and explanation, there are still a few where clearly some sort of demon is in is in a person. And this goes back to you know, centuries of thousands of years worth of beliefs or anecdotes or cases that are taken to be true even in let's see, if we go back to Gabrielle Amour, who said in October two thousand that he had performed over fifty thousand exorcisms. Um. He he has said things that have been controversial to people. Of course, he railed against Harry Potter for its glorification of witchcraft, which is one of those sort of BuzzFeed kind of headlines that makes people want to say, oh, that's so silly. Possession, you know, yeah, it is strange though, if you true, if you hold that belief. Uh, if it's so grounded in just your your worldview, I can imagine that having this multi multimillion dollar series. Yeah kind of you know, teaching not teaching kids God, because it's not teaching kids is a movie, but just showing kids, Hey you this is this is really cool being in this this giant castle that teaches you how to be not a witch, a wizard. But uh, yeah, I can I can imagine how you would be upset with that, if you're stuck in that that bubble of belief. Yeah, and I I can understand that too. And let's to be fair to the exorcist in this case. Um, the number of exorcisms he claimed to have been involved with, I said fifty in two thousand, right, the number continued rising. IS would ask him later, and I should say that he ranked those as once you've been involved with Is At one point he said the ones he personally performed were thirty thousand over nine years. And he said, I know, And he said of those thirty thousand, only ninety four were representing a full blown possession. So still cases I'd love to see. I wonder if he uh, I'd like for him to show his work, you know, if he well, we can learn more about his stuff. In he has a couple of books out. One is an Exorcist tells his story and another is an Exorcist more stories. Okay, so well, yeah, the these are not you know, of course canonical documents. These aren't cannon. But um, there's another interesting story here. He believes that the senior officials of the Nazi Party were associated with Satanism. And we do know you and I know that our listeners know too, if you guys have watched our videos on this that member high ranking members of the Nazi Party in different Nazi departments. The s s for instance, Um, were what we would call cultists of a sword. They were definitely not practicing Christians or any of the you know, Bramaic religions. I mean certainly no Jewish members of that party. This is the full society right there, right, I forget the tenants of it. We can we went over it briefly before that. This is another subject that we can look at. Yeah, this is a going for us to look at. He he believed um and Worth believed that both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by demonic entities, and this explains to him both the violence and the spread of their organizations. So the the idea that, um, the idea that the possession as we understand it in film and in TV and in horror anthologies, which I'm a big fan of. Uh, the the idea that this possession would be common is incorrect. Apparently, according to at least the Catholic Church, most possessions are not the possessions that you would see in the exorcists. Those are those are the other Uh, those are the rare spectrum you know. Um. Of course there are exorcisms in Judaism. Historically, even the Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned exorcisms. Um. There is a rabbi named Yahuda Fitaya maybe mispronouncing that, who also writes on his experience with exorcism and with possession. Now we know, of course that, as we've said, the scientific world, the people writing the d S, M for and all that, don't classify possession as an actual disorder. Um. But there are several disorders that may show the signs of writing possessed. Yeah, perfect right. So schizophrenia is one of them. Multiple personality disorders another just the belief that you were being that the well, just having voices in your head, which is a real thing that can occur to you, Um, if you have one of these mental disorders. Uh yeah, that would probably leave someone who would believe in possession to believe that you are in fact possessed. And I wonder how many times that has occurred in the past where it was just an unknown, scientific, actual disorder that was just misdiagnosed, right, Yeah, Like how how many times throughout history has someone who may be an elderly person suffering from dementia or maybe a person of any age who has a developmental disability perhaps, uh, and they have you know, there's somehow mentally impaired that could be taken as a sign. I mean, as we know, history is history is written in blood, and the people who has a dark man it is dark. And I don't think we should apologize for pointing it out. No, no apologies maybe for the melodramatic phrase, sure, but we know that throughout history all that all we really need for a community of people to turn into violent animals is enough of a difficult enough environment for long enough time and someone to blame. That's all it takes for your favorite neighbor, your niece, your grandparents, or someone to turn into the the source of you know, the poison well or the source of the ruined economy. And then the mob grew with yes, the mob growth. Really, if you wanna, like the old joke on Reddit, one of the surefire ways to get rich quick is to uh own a pitchfork and torch company. Right. We also know that there are quite a few modern cases right of demonic possession. But the thing is that when you and I get involved with these, we often we go down a rabbit hole, and we always find a couple of different sides this story. We find people who say, this is an absolute pile of steamy garbage, and people have confirmation bias and they just want to believe that demons and dangels and spirits are real. And then we have people on the other side who say, um, I knew it, I knew it all along, there was something wrong with this creepy doll, or the was my my child wasn't acting right ever since um they touched that idol or something. And and I think we also have people who don't want to believe that sort of thing, but feel that they have somehow run against an inexplicable paranormal phenomenon and if you're okay with it. Um. As we wrap up today, we didn't get to spend as much time as either of us would like. But as we wrap up today, I think we should ask our listeners what they think. Do you guys have any evidence and and right before you tell us what you think, I just want to remind everybody that science, uh, science proper still has a lot of questions to answer about the nature of reality, about the nature of consciousness, about everything from how our brain functions to whether you know how time works. And there are a lot of questions still that need to be answered in all of these realms. And I would say that keeping an open mind to all of this stuff is never a bad idea. The only thing is, you know, again, not trying to preach, but I guess this is my soapbox, Ben, and I'm sorry, uh for for being on it, but uh just taking a hard stance either way. Hard you know, saying okay, all of that is just poppy cock. And I'm not going to listen to anything that you say from now on because you believe in possession. That's that to me. That's a really bad stance because again, we don't know everything yet and there could be something. There could be some little truth in there that we just haven't found yet. Um. So yeah, just keep an open mind and to show you to we we don't like to do things without also proving something about it. So to let you guys know that we are interested in what you have to say. Um. Of course, if you haven't seen us responding on YouTube, you can expect to see more of us in the future. Always there. But to just to bring this home, let's do a little bit of listener mail right now. All right, let's do it. Okay, Matt, it looks like we have a lot of people writing into us about the new audio show. So I'm going to, uh, let's randomly choose one, pick a number one through thirty three. Wow, there's that many. I'm just well, I'm not going to tell you my calculations. Let's do uh seventeen, Okay, seventeen. This comes from a guy named Steve m and it is called long winded Praise and Suggestions. So I'm going to read part of this, okay, okay, and it is long, so I'm only governing part of this sorry, Steve, but thank you for rayon. Hey, guys, loyal fan here have been following your programs since late two thousand and eleven, and it very much enjoyed much of what you guys have done. I must admit, upon initially discovering your video podcast, I wasn't too thrilled by it, having only watched a few episodes. I left an unpleasant and rather unfair review on iTunes. Most of my gripes had to do with the language of the program, referring to more credible people as skeptics, labeling others as conspiracy theorists when there's little difference in reality. It seems that styles something you all have drifted away from as the show progressed, and for that I'm grateful. Today I'm gonna have if you were a listener and recommend these programs to anyone who will listen. Hey, wow, thanks man Um. I'm really glad you noticed. That is something we've been trying very hard to do, and having been listening to your new audio podcast, I also have to say great work. I'm slightly confused by it, though I know you guys catch a lot of flak for the length or lack thereof of your programs. So why stretch yourself thin with two separate mediums when you could just extend one or the other. I'll eat it up regardless. It's something I was curious about. It's fair point. It's a it's a fair point. I'd like to respond to that one before we continue. Uh, it takes us, it takes us more time to make some video. Um, ideally we would like to if it if it weren't just um, the two of us and a huge community of amazing people putting up with our bs, Uh, then we would we would love to do longer videos. We actually started the audio podcast because it was the most efficient way for us to get more information and also to get more, um, more of our audience involved, you know exactly. And uh, just a note here, it's Steve, Yeah, Steve, we are. We're changing up our video schedule a little bit and instead of putting out too shorter videos every week, new shorter videos, we're actually going to be putting out one longer video every week than of the new style, and they will also have our Digging Deeper series in a classic just to give you that information. It should be starting this coming week after you hear this, and we'll have some more surprises on the way, of course. UM. All right. So Steve goes on also mentions UM nine eleven and why we said we did we haven't covered too much of that, and that is true, and maybe can do that. Also mentioned the Belgian child prostitution scandal UM, which more and more I think we should do an audio podcast on UH. And then he's got some suggestions. I'm gonna read these off to you and to everybody listening. Casper Hauser, the feral boy who emerged in the streets of Europe claiming to be locked in a basement for most of his life, ancient technology, UM. And he named some stuff that we haven't done. Damascus steel, the iron Pillar of Delhi, the lost city of non Mod that's in a N, M, A D D for everybody who just started checking that out on Google. UM, the sinking of three vessels containing thousands of concentration camp survivors by British planes, and the fine days of World War Two. I haven't heard of this. And so Steve goes on to say, apparently documents related to this won't be declassified until maybe we can beat him to the punch. What do you think, um, Henry Kissinger and oors Venue Rasnevsky, Um, And I actually I've read some of their works. I read Rasnetsky's The Grand Chessboard, which I think you can I believe it's Grand Chessboard might be great chessboard. But check that out if you want. Uh, some of the guiding views of American policy, and you can see how we're still doing some of that stuff today. Other secret societies, specifically the assassins Um and the Little Hashish rumor mystery cults from antiquity, and one of your favorites, Matt, the Zeitgeist movement. That's fascinating to me. Oh Man, Zeitgeist. The whole thing adendum I think was my favorite where they really got into the Venus project. That to me, the Venus Project is well, I hope that's our future. I've really hope that is the future of humanity. Well, it sounds like Steve has given us some astonishing and fascinating suggestions. We want to know if you had to pick maybe your top three of the things that Steve just listed, let us know which ones you would be most interested in, and don't forget to tell us if you have any encounters that you think are real life cases of possession, or if you think exorcism and or possession is just uh totally non supernatural and it's kind of a just some way that cultures look at, you know, mental problems or sociological problems. Let us know about that too. We want to, if possible, solve exorcism and possession. I mean exorcism. We know what exorcism is, we know what it's supposed to be. So possession really is going to be our sequel episode. What do you think? Man? Absolutely and one quick point of news or the host of Ghost Adventures the TV show recently purchased a home for some crazy price like dollars that is allegedly, uh, the home is possessed or is in quotes here a gateway to hell. And he's going to be living in that house and investigating it and hopefully he'll be putting out some media on it. I have to say it's um, it's not my favorite show, but it's it's interesting. I like the bravado that guy comes out of. He's just selling it. Ghosts Come at me, ghosts, Yo, ghost come at me. You're talking about Zach Baggins So that's the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures series. And let's just do a little bit of background there. Uh, the houses in Gary, Indiana, who was formerly home to a lady named LaToya Emmons a M M O N s and her three children. They were allegedly attacked possessed by these unexplained demonic forces. What makes this case different from other cases is that the sheriff of Yes said, uh, yeah, I said, this really is possession or demons. Something's going on. I didn't believe it at first, but I saw the kid walk up the wall and people were I heard strange, deep voices emanating from him. Um, but nobody thought to pick up a camera or anything and recorded. I haven't heard any physical evidence anything. Yeah. And I was talking to some of my friends about this over the weekend, and the question that one of the maskment, which is a very good question, was well, he said, Ben, the cynic in me thinks that this might all just be viral marketing. And and then I thought, wow, if that is true, the Marcavellian brilliance, you know, just the cold calculating nature of that. Um. Zack Beggan's yeah, we have never done anything like that. To my knowledge, that's a great idea of put out a local news story, way it a while, then buy a house and yeah, well well we will see, we'll see what happens. Uh. But it sounds like either way we have to return to several things in upcoming episodes. In the meantime, Matt, what's the best way for people to find us? You can always check us out on Facebook. We are conspiracy Stuff. On Twitter, We're at conspiracy Stuff. If you want to find everything that we've ever done, go to Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot com. You can find our blog, our audio podcast, our videos, tons of stuff there. You can even see some weird bios of Ben and I imposes. It's uh, that's pretty awesome. Yes, um. And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three std w y t K. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at I Heart Radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production of i heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Ye back. The power of podcasts can tells you to listen to some more podcasts. This is our introductory episode on Exorcisms. We're really lucking out with how how this is lining up with Halloween? Um gosh, so long ago? Do you guys remember this? Well? I do? I do? This is I don't think I was even on the on in the show at this point. Were you recording with us? Well? Yeah, I was certainly probably clicking the button and maybe chiming in for a Knowle's corner or something. Oh yeah, I remember that. Man. I love those times. Oh yeah, you love the times when I when you could mute me Red. I was just joking, you know, I just those were fun because it was it was a brave new world. My my opic focus on segments is going to be the ruin of this ship. No, not at all. But but in this we talk a lot about the Hollywood version of exorcism verse the reality, and that's really what what you're gonna find here, and it's it's fascinating stuff we we certainly hope you enjoy from UFOs two. Ghosts and government cover ups. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Greetings listeners, and welcome back. My name is Matt and I'm Ben, and this is stuff they don't want you to know. Today. We're gonna be exercising some demons, right then, yes E x O A, yeah, yeah, we're not. We're not gonna be jazzercizing some demons or prancersizing any demons. We're gonna be taking demons out of you through spiritual rituals, and if we are successful, then we will join a long line of uh spiritual and religious officials throughout human history who have sought to cleanse human beings or as we'll find, sometimes objects or even just places of some sort of otherworldly presence. We are talking about exorcism to day, and exorcism is something that has fascinated both of us in our own ways for a long time, isn't it right? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. I grew up very religious, and exorcism wasn't necessarily a part of my growing up, however, it was definitely. I was aware of it highly and UH man with films coming out around the time in the late I guess it was the late nineties for me when I really started getting into it and watching movies like The Shining and The Evil Dead, you start to really wonder about some of these things, even if it's just a highly stylized horror movie. Right. Yeah, And we have, uh, we have a great article on our website, how Stuff Works dot Com, our parent website, rather about exorcism and what it is and how it works. In the Catholic Encyclopedia, exorcism is defined as the act of driving out, rewarding off demons or evil spirits from persons, places, or things which are believed to be possessed or infested by them and are liable to become victims or instruments of their malice. So, and there are three types. So you just described the three types essentially. But there are three types of exorcism. I know. The one that everybody is aware of is the real exorcism, and that's its actual name, right, It's called a real exorcism where you're taking a spirit or demon out of a human body that is possessed right through performing the of exorcism, which in the Catholic Church can only be performed um with explicit authorization by the Vatican. Right. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. You you have to show, or the Vatican has to believe with evidence that you provide, whoever you are, the person presenting to the Vatican, that this person is actually possessed by a demon her spirit. And the Vatican does have a head exorcist. However, that head exorcist is more like a person in charge of a department rather than you know, um, an absolute pinnacle shot caller. Yeah. Yeah, he's not the uber exorcist that goes out and performs the exorcisms. Yeah, that is interesting. He's more of a bureaucratic head, right like uh, I believe for a long time the head exorcist was a guy named Gabriel am or Um and I may be mispronouncing that, but he was. He's the one who UM has uh claim to or is reputed to have cleansed tens of thousands of people, places, or things from demonic possession. But as you said, Matt, that when we say real exorcism, that is one of the most rare types of exorcism. And it's the one that you see in all the horror films, right, Yeah, it's the most compelling usually or because you're dealing with a human being. And yeah, and then there's simple exorcism, which is where you bless a place or a thing. Right, So this would be where a where someone a practicing Catholic beliefs that maybe their house or um a nearby ruin of some sort is unholy and a priest comes to bless the area. Yeah, or even a little doll that's creeping out someone's daughter, You gonna come and bless it. Man, you never know, and you mean creepy out, isn't scaring? Not like emerging from her mouth? Because that would be the case for realis that would be just one that's making weird noises, perhaps in the room when you're not around, but your daughter thinks that the doll is really talking to her. And this, this next type is going to be a surprise for quite a few of our listeners, right that this is um, this is the part that creep me out. Uh, if you are listening now, Uh, just let us know if you've ever been baptized, where you baptized? Matter? Right? And Uh? In the in the Catholic Church, a baptism is a form of exorcism, which I did not know. So blessing an infant prior to baptism to clean cleanse it of evil resulting from the notion of original sin. This means that if you have ever been baptized, uh, you probably have experienced one of the most common, statistically common forms of exorcism. And then and then let's let's open it up. There's something even bigger and stranger because exorcism is not just for the Catholic Church, right, No, not at all. Exorcism takes place all over the world. Um. Yeah, I I don't even know if I doesn't. Are there any places where it just doesn't occur? Um? I imagine in some you know what, that's a that's a good question because even in some states that do not have a state religion or widespread, you know, institutionalized religious practices, the traditional beliefs persist, so there can still be ritualized cleansings, which is really what an exorcism is in um places that we wouldn't normally associate with that. You know, Buddhist and Hindu beliefs both have place rituals to cleanse um a place or spirit, and we know that in Islamic culture, exorcism is also practiced Islamic culture. It's a little bit different because in an Islamic possession case, the person possessed is usually being possessed by what they would call a gin and um. You know, that's the root of what we in the West recognize as a genie, but not the not the nice powder blue or purple Robert Williams genie from Aladdin. You know, these are spirits and they can have they're they're pretty much in comporeal um entities that can have uh their own set of religious beliefs, right like, Yeah, that was fascinating. Ben and I were watching some videos earlier this week about Islamic exorcisms and several of them were I guess the exorcist they gut man performing the exorcism was calling the gin a Christian gin that he was trying to get out of this man um and it was fascinating to me. It's it seems very similar to some of the Catholic exorcisms where you're you're reciting UH scripture and basically saying get out, spirit, get out, um, I call you out in the name of this case, and it was fascinating to me just the similarities they were occurring there. And as we know, there've there have been extensive UH scientific investigations into the nature of exorcism, and by far the majority of the exorcism cases that were investigated have been associated in some way with Christianity. Right, what's interesting about the Islamic world, especially in areas of fundamental religious belief. Um. This again, this could be anywhere. From Indonesia, I think that that's still the world's largest Muslim country, UH to Saudi Arabia, and most people who are aware of Saudi Arabia understand that it as a um a very fundamentalist approach to Islam. It also has on the Wahabi sect, which is a little bit different in terms of interpretation doctrine. But um, the part about it that can startle a lot of people is that the idea of the existence of jin in many Middle Eastern countries and in some Middle Eastern universities is accepted as a fact of the universe, primarily because Jenner mentioned explicitly in the Quran. And with this in mind, we have to note that there is a very different relationship between the spiritual authorities and the secular academic authorities on the subject of possession. And stop me if I'm completely incorrect here, Ben, but I feel like there's a connection when when your state, your government, and your religious belief are kind of one and the same or or very similar UM. In the case with Sharia law, it's very interesting to me. It seems as though that would give you, that would make exorcism and the belief in that that you truly can be possessed much stronger. I feel, yes, And that's a good point. And with with this in mind, let's look at some of the some of the ideas or the symptoms of possession, at least the Western world. Now we know one of the big ones would be the ability to have UM, the the ability to speak multiple languages or understand them to be a pologlot and a lot of times it's a language that the person possessed hasn't had any contact with or would have no reason to be speaking that language. Sure, Latin, Aramaic, charl Daan, things like that, And you can find you can find an intense debate between the true believers and the people who believe they're debunking these practices, especially in regards to the language, because the idea that someone could speak another language also depends on the people observing it being able to one identify the language and then be fluent in that language enough to translate it right or to at least record it and give it to an expert who can verify it. And then second the ability of the ability to prove that the possessed person has never had access to it, which can be a little bit tricky. Um, you know the Internet, right, you know, Like if we take the case of Latin, Uh, I guarantee you if you speak any Romance language, then you know far more Latin than you think you'd do. Um. Another thing is is the idea of clairvoyance, the idea that you might be able to know. Like, for instance, let's say, are Sarah goodbuddy Jonathan Strickland is possessed and he would love this. Let Jonathan is possessed, and he knows things that he otherwise wouldn't be able to know, things across time and space, right, Um, accurate lottery predictions or accurate which you know, guys, if that happened, and then people will be clamoring to get their friends possessed, right Uh. And uh he also knows you know things that you have never told anyone about your childhood and stuff. Yeah, that's very sticky to try to conclusively prove and to our knowledge at least, why you and I should go ahead and say this to our knowledge, people have yet to find a universally accepted case of possession. There have been cases where an exorcism was considered successful by the Catholic Church. And again, when we say exorcism, we're talking about all three types of exorcism, including the ritual, the right of exorcism, or the real exorcism. Um. But there hasn't been one at least that the entire world is accepted as a fact. Another thing physical strength beyond the person's natural abilities. We know that human beings are capable of supernatural excuse me, superhuman feats of strength, right, Yeah, the adrenaline. Adrenaline is a crazy chemical. It can just make your your muscles do things that they shouldn't be able to do. There's there are numerous cases of people lifting cars in an emergency situation. UM, Like when I've forget the woman's name, but saving her daughter by literally lifting up her car. That's crazy to mean. It kind of reminds me of our superhuman episode that we were going over, and it just reminds me of the incredible things that we can do without um any necessary intervention, right, without necessarily a divine or demonic intercession exactly. I think that this is where we enter into a fascinating aspect of exorcisms. Um. Now, you know earlier you and I are both sort of armchair folklore's, which just means that we read a bunch of interesting stuff about um traditional beliefs, or as they were called, folk ways often and in regard to exorcism and witchcraft in general, we found some very interesting sociological arguments. If I could just take just a brief sidebar here. Um, When I was earlier, years years ago, I was studying the early American literature concerning on the Salem witch Trials and their European counterpart. It's another other times in which the law and belief in the supernatural had had come together or come and come to loggerheads even And one interesting thing, I can't remember the exact name of the book. I think it was The Devil Where's a Red Dress? Or something like that. I'll correct myself in the future podcast when I find this book. In this book, though, the the author argues that the persecution for witchcraft was a means of a social means of preventing economic equality between genders, because often the women who were quote unquote which is, turned out to be landowners or to have assets of some sort. And we know that in some cases in the European practice of which persecution uh, the inquisitors or the accusers stood to gain, to have a reward for turning in again a quote unquote which so there may also be a sociological explanation for exorcism or its existence in the East and in the West, in the in the East, um or in the nearest at least, if we're going to examine an Islamic um framework for this. One fascinating idea would be that if a possession or an exorcism occurs in a very fundamentalist environment, you know, to take Saudi Arabia again for an example, then there's an interesting argument to be made, and it's entirely speculative on my part, that a woman being possessed by a jin of some sort would be able to directly address concerns that would be otherwise ignored if she were to address them simply as herself. Now, I am not by any means accusing people of intentionally faking possession Um, I am saying that it is much more likely in some cases, depending upon the specifics of the problem of the root of the possessions. So okay, So would that be like spousable abuse or what kind of things do you think that would possibly come up in that or have you read anything? Yeah, it could be. It could be a case of spousal abuse. It could be a case of of husband violating some sort of law regarding treatment of wives or engagement of additional wives. It could also be something between a male relative. So, for instance, let's say if a husband has expired and there is some sort of um, I don't want to say shenanigans, you know, I don't want to make it sound silly, but but some sort of injustice occur ring in the wake of that death, then this, this quality of exorcism and possession, uh, theoretically provides another avenue for justice in a patriarchal society. Now, of course, when we go into this kind of look, we're we're looking at it from an entirely skeptical viewpoint. And this makes me want to return to the to the Vatican Church, which has stood even even as the West modernized over the centuries. And as a cohesive whole, people in Europe and people in Canada and the America's began to sort of drift away from this idea that there are demons or spirits possessing human beings, and instead of going with this, the Catholic Church has long maintained that exorcism is a real thing, and that while the vast majority of purported possession cases have some sort of other Monday and explanation, there are still a few where clearly some sort of demon is in is in a person. And this goes back to you know, centuries of thousands of years worth of beliefs or anecdotes or cases that are taken to be true even in let's see, if we go back to Gabrielle Amour, who said in October two thousand that he had performed over fifty thousand exorcisms. Um. He he has said things that have been controversial to people. Of course, he railed against Harry Potter for its glorification of witchcraft, which is one of those sort of BuzzFeed kind of headlines that makes people want to say, oh, that's so silly. Possession, you know, yeah, it is strange though, if you true, if you hold that belief. Uh, if it's so grounded in just your your worldview, I can imagine that having this multi multimillion dollar series. Yeah kind of you know, teaching not teaching kids God, because it's not teaching kids is a movie, but just showing kids, Hey you this is this is really cool being in this this giant castle that teaches you how to be not a witch, a wizard. But uh, yeah, I can I can imagine how you would be upset with that, if you're stuck in that that bubble of belief. Yeah, and I I can understand that too. And let's to be fair to the exorcist in this case. Um, the number of exorcisms he claimed to have been involved with, I said fifty in two thousand, right, the number continued rising. IS would ask him later, and I should say that he ranked those as once you've been involved with Is At one point he said the ones he personally performed were thirty thousand over nine years. And he said, I know, And he said of those thirty thousand, only ninety four were representing a full blown possession. So still cases I'd love to see. I wonder if he uh, I'd like for him to show his work, you know, if he well, we can learn more about his stuff. In he has a couple of books out. One is an Exorcist tells his story and another is an Exorcist more stories. Okay, so well, yeah, the these are not you know, of course canonical documents. These aren't cannon. But um, there's another interesting story here. He believes that the senior officials of the Nazi Party were associated with Satanism. And we do know you and I know that our listeners know too, if you guys have watched our videos on this that member high ranking members of the Nazi Party in different Nazi departments. The s s for instance, Um, were what we would call cultists of a sword. They were definitely not practicing Christians or any of the you know, Bramaic religions. I mean certainly no Jewish members of that party. This is the full society right there, right, I forget the tenants of it. We can we went over it briefly before that. This is another subject that we can look at. Yeah, this is a going for us to look at. He he believed um and Worth believed that both Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by demonic entities, and this explains to him both the violence and the spread of their organizations. So the the idea that, um, the idea that the possession as we understand it in film and in TV and in horror anthologies, which I'm a big fan of. Uh, the the idea that this possession would be common is incorrect. Apparently, according to at least the Catholic Church, most possessions are not the possessions that you would see in the exorcists. Those are those are the other Uh, those are the rare spectrum you know. Um. Of course there are exorcisms in Judaism. Historically, even the Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned exorcisms. Um. There is a rabbi named Yahuda Fitaya maybe mispronouncing that, who also writes on his experience with exorcism and with possession. Now we know, of course that, as we've said, the scientific world, the people writing the d S, M for and all that, don't classify possession as an actual disorder. Um. But there are several disorders that may show the signs of writing possessed. Yeah, perfect right. So schizophrenia is one of them. Multiple personality disorders another just the belief that you were being that the well, just having voices in your head, which is a real thing that can occur to you, Um, if you have one of these mental disorders. Uh yeah, that would probably leave someone who would believe in possession to believe that you are in fact possessed. And I wonder how many times that has occurred in the past where it was just an unknown, scientific, actual disorder that was just misdiagnosed, right, Yeah, Like how how many times throughout history has someone who may be an elderly person suffering from dementia or maybe a person of any age who has a developmental disability perhaps, uh, and they have you know, there's somehow mentally impaired that could be taken as a sign. I mean, as we know, history is history is written in blood, and the people who has a dark man it is dark. And I don't think we should apologize for pointing it out. No, no apologies maybe for the melodramatic phrase, sure, but we know that throughout history all that all we really need for a community of people to turn into violent animals is enough of a difficult enough environment for long enough time and someone to blame. That's all it takes for your favorite neighbor, your niece, your grandparents, or someone to turn into the the source of you know, the poison well or the source of the ruined economy. And then the mob grew with yes, the mob growth. Really, if you wanna, like the old joke on Reddit, one of the surefire ways to get rich quick is to uh own a pitchfork and torch company. Right. We also know that there are quite a few modern cases right of demonic possession. But the thing is that when you and I get involved with these, we often we go down a rabbit hole, and we always find a couple of different sides this story. We find people who say, this is an absolute pile of steamy garbage, and people have confirmation bias and they just want to believe that demons and dangels and spirits are real. And then we have people on the other side who say, um, I knew it, I knew it all along, there was something wrong with this creepy doll, or the was my my child wasn't acting right ever since um they touched that idol or something. And and I think we also have people who don't want to believe that sort of thing, but feel that they have somehow run against an inexplicable paranormal phenomenon and if you're okay with it. Um. As we wrap up today, we didn't get to spend as much time as either of us would like. But as we wrap up today, I think we should ask our listeners what they think. Do you guys have any evidence and and right before you tell us what you think, I just want to remind everybody that science, uh, science proper still has a lot of questions to answer about the nature of reality, about the nature of consciousness, about everything from how our brain functions to whether you know how time works. And there are a lot of questions still that need to be answered in all of these realms. And I would say that keeping an open mind to all of this stuff is never a bad idea. The only thing is, you know, again, not trying to preach, but I guess this is my soapbox, Ben, and I'm sorry, uh for for being on it, but uh just taking a hard stance either way. Hard you know, saying okay, all of that is just poppy cock. And I'm not going to listen to anything that you say from now on because you believe in possession. That's that to me. That's a really bad stance because again, we don't know everything yet and there could be something. There could be some little truth in there that we just haven't found yet. Um. So yeah, just keep an open mind and to show you to we we don't like to do things without also proving something about it. So to let you guys know that we are interested in what you have to say. Um. Of course, if you haven't seen us responding on YouTube, you can expect to see more of us in the future. Always there. But to just to bring this home, let's do a little bit of listener mail right now. All right, let's do it. Okay, Matt, it looks like we have a lot of people writing into us about the new audio show. So I'm going to, uh, let's randomly choose one, pick a number one through thirty three. Wow, there's that many. I'm just well, I'm not going to tell you my calculations. Let's do uh seventeen, Okay, seventeen. This comes from a guy named Steve m and it is called long winded Praise and Suggestions. So I'm going to read part of this, okay, okay, and it is long, so I'm only governing part of this sorry, Steve, but thank you for rayon. Hey, guys, loyal fan here have been following your programs since late two thousand and eleven, and it very much enjoyed much of what you guys have done. I must admit, upon initially discovering your video podcast, I wasn't too thrilled by it, having only watched a few episodes. I left an unpleasant and rather unfair review on iTunes. Most of my gripes had to do with the language of the program, referring to more credible people as skeptics, labeling others as conspiracy theorists when there's little difference in reality. It seems that styles something you all have drifted away from as the show progressed, and for that I'm grateful. Today I'm gonna have if you were a listener and recommend these programs to anyone who will listen. Hey, wow, thanks man Um. I'm really glad you noticed. That is something we've been trying very hard to do, and having been listening to your new audio podcast, I also have to say great work. I'm slightly confused by it, though I know you guys catch a lot of flak for the length or lack thereof of your programs. So why stretch yourself thin with two separate mediums when you could just extend one or the other. I'll eat it up regardless. It's something I was curious about. It's fair point. It's a it's a fair point. I'd like to respond to that one before we continue. Uh, it takes us, it takes us more time to make some video. Um, ideally we would like to if it if it weren't just um, the two of us and a huge community of amazing people putting up with our bs, Uh, then we would we would love to do longer videos. We actually started the audio podcast because it was the most efficient way for us to get more information and also to get more, um, more of our audience involved, you know exactly. And uh, just a note here, it's Steve, Yeah, Steve, we are. We're changing up our video schedule a little bit and instead of putting out too shorter videos every week, new shorter videos, we're actually going to be putting out one longer video every week than of the new style, and they will also have our Digging Deeper series in a classic just to give you that information. It should be starting this coming week after you hear this, and we'll have some more surprises on the way, of course. UM. All right. So Steve goes on also mentions UM nine eleven and why we said we did we haven't covered too much of that, and that is true, and maybe can do that. Also mentioned the Belgian child prostitution scandal UM, which more and more I think we should do an audio podcast on UH. And then he's got some suggestions. I'm gonna read these off to you and to everybody listening. Casper Hauser, the feral boy who emerged in the streets of Europe claiming to be locked in a basement for most of his life, ancient technology, UM. And he named some stuff that we haven't done. Damascus steel, the iron Pillar of Delhi, the lost city of non Mod that's in a N, M, A D D for everybody who just started checking that out on Google. UM, the sinking of three vessels containing thousands of concentration camp survivors by British planes, and the fine days of World War Two. I haven't heard of this. And so Steve goes on to say, apparently documents related to this won't be declassified until maybe we can beat him to the punch. What do you think, um, Henry Kissinger and oors Venue Rasnevsky, Um, And I actually I've read some of their works. I read Rasnetsky's The Grand Chessboard, which I think you can I believe it's Grand Chessboard might be great chessboard. But check that out if you want. Uh, some of the guiding views of American policy, and you can see how we're still doing some of that stuff today. Other secret societies, specifically the assassins Um and the Little Hashish rumor mystery cults from antiquity, and one of your favorites, Matt, the Zeitgeist movement. That's fascinating to me. Oh Man, Zeitgeist. The whole thing adendum I think was my favorite where they really got into the Venus project. That to me, the Venus Project is well, I hope that's our future. I've really hope that is the future of humanity. Well, it sounds like Steve has given us some astonishing and fascinating suggestions. We want to know if you had to pick maybe your top three of the things that Steve just listed, let us know which ones you would be most interested in, and don't forget to tell us if you have any encounters that you think are real life cases of possession, or if you think exorcism and or possession is just uh totally non supernatural and it's kind of a just some way that cultures look at, you know, mental problems or sociological problems. Let us know about that too. We want to, if possible, solve exorcism and possession. I mean exorcism. We know what exorcism is, we know what it's supposed to be. So possession really is going to be our sequel episode. What do you think? Man? Absolutely and one quick point of news or the host of Ghost Adventures the TV show recently purchased a home for some crazy price like dollars that is allegedly, uh, the home is possessed or is in quotes here a gateway to hell. And he's going to be living in that house and investigating it and hopefully he'll be putting out some media on it. I have to say it's um, it's not my favorite show, but it's it's interesting. I like the bravado that guy comes out of. He's just selling it. Ghosts Come at me, ghosts, Yo, ghost come at me. You're talking about Zach Baggins So that's the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures series. And let's just do a little bit of background there. Uh, the houses in Gary, Indiana, who was formerly home to a lady named LaToya Emmons a M M O N s and her three children. They were allegedly attacked possessed by these unexplained demonic forces. What makes this case different from other cases is that the sheriff of Yes said, uh, yeah, I said, this really is possession or demons. Something's going on. I didn't believe it at first, but I saw the kid walk up the wall and people were I heard strange, deep voices emanating from him. Um, but nobody thought to pick up a camera or anything and recorded. I haven't heard any physical evidence anything. Yeah. And I was talking to some of my friends about this over the weekend, and the question that one of the maskment, which is a very good question, was well, he said, Ben, the cynic in me thinks that this might all just be viral marketing. And and then I thought, wow, if that is true, the Marcavellian brilliance, you know, just the cold calculating nature of that. Um. Zack Beggan's yeah, we have never done anything like that. To my knowledge, that's a great idea of put out a local news story, way it a while, then buy a house and yeah, well well we will see, we'll see what happens. Uh. But it sounds like either way we have to return to several things in upcoming episodes. In the meantime, Matt, what's the best way for people to find us? You can always check us out on Facebook. We are conspiracy Stuff. On Twitter, We're at conspiracy Stuff. If you want to find everything that we've ever done, go to Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot com. You can find our blog, our audio podcast, our videos, tons of stuff there. You can even see some weird bios of Ben and I imposes. It's uh, that's pretty awesome. Yes, um. And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three std w y t K. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at I Heart Radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production of i heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.