Probably due to the number of TV programs that point to the Demonic in paranormal occurrences, I still get loads of mail from folks who want to know more about the true nature of these frightening phenomena. Starting with William Peter Blatty’s novel, The Exorcist, America has been fascinated with the topic. Today, there are those among us that see a demon behind every closet door, in every basement or attic, which has been a source of great amusement for me, given the fact that over my entire career I have only had three truly demonic encounters.

Blatty’s book was based loosely on a true event that began in Georgetown, a suburb of Washington D.C. and came to a conclusion in St. Louis in 1949. The victim was a young boy, born and raised Lutheran and began with a Ouija board session in his parent’s home one evening. Blatty, while still an undergraduate student at a Jesuit university heard about the case and later decided to make it the centerpiece of his novel. That one book and the motion picture that followed threw the entire nation into frenzy. Blatty had opened the doors to a largely unknown world where the Devil was playing, only kept in check by a handful of the religious who were in constant conflict with hell.

Blatty, like every Jesuit educated student was aware of the practice of exorcism and the Rituale Romanum, the Latin text used in the rites. The Jesuits were well known in the church as the most likely people to perform the rites, having a reputation as some of the top academic talents with strong training in the sciences; these “no nonsense” priests knew what to look for and how to handle it, unlike the normal parish priest, who would be totally unprepared to do battle with the residents of the kingdom of the underworld. Only a Bishop or above can sanction an Exorcism, and most defer to the Jesuits.

As noted, the victim was from a strong Lutheran background, so why was the Catholic Church involved? In essence, most religious organizations agree that this kind of “dirty work” is best left to the experts and the local Lutheran hierarchy quickly deferred to those who knew the process best. In most cases, the Rites of Exorcism are performed by Catholic priests, and only with the written orders of the head of a Diocese. Eastern Orthodox, some orthodox Jewish sects and a handful of fundamentalist ministers also claim to do the same, but the heavyweights in this category are the Jesuits. The Rituale Romanum has been translated to English after the second Vatican Council, but even after that translation was made available, the rites that I have witnessed where performed in the original Latin. Rule number one in a exorcism is “Stick to the script!” This is not the place to ad lib. The ritual is to be followed exactly as written and is performed over and over and over again until the supposed demon departs.

While Blatty made his fortune and fame on the novel based on the Georgetown case, the first public release of the details of that Exorcism were printed in FATE Magazine years before. That article opened the door to questions about the true nature of a possession case, pointing out the similarities between the religious perspective and the secular poltergeist. This is an issue still at the center of discussions today because of certain similarities. Using the Georgetown case as a primary example, the first signs of something wrong came after a mindless hour with a Ouija board. The following night, the family became aware of a scratching, thumping sound coming from the attic of the house. This is also classic poltergeist phenomenon. As the days progressed, the noises grew in strength and intensity; and the taps and rapping noises became commonplace, although there were no signs of rodents or small animals in the attic when checked.

This was followed by the movement of objects, a picture of Jesus Christ on a wall began to vibrate and was later hurled across the room, then the bed in which the boy slept began to vibrate and move on its own. This was quickly followed by the entire bed levitating off the ground and hovering in the middle of the room. All of these activities are fairly common in the literature of the paranormal; in fact there are well documented cases that go far beyond this sort of thing. In another case, a young woman was flung from her bed to a doorway, where she hung above the door for several minutes like a fly, before three large men were able to pry her from that location.

In most of these possession cases, things only go downhill from there. Many are found to be fluent in foreign languages they never knew previously, some in languages only identifiable when sent to a language lab for analysis; for example there has not been a fluent Aramaic speaker on earth for about 1,500 years, but there are at least three cases where the subject spoke it fluently… Aramaic is the native language of Jews in Palestine at the time of Jesus Christ. While such is intriguing, there is nothing romantic about a possession case. Projectile vomiting, physical deterioration, skin eruptions, strange scratches and wounds that can spell out warnings on the human body are all part of this phenomenon’s bag of tricks. The possessed person has super human strength, and tends to become more confrontational as time goes by; they are usually abusive, verbally and physically and their vocabulary sometimes includes vulgarities that would be unknown to the victim.

This is the world of demonic possession, and just like the experiences in poltergeist activity, there is a time limit on how long it will continue; unfortunately, there are cases where the phenomenon ends in death or otherwise the exorcism takes hold and the demon departs on his own, leaving the victim with no memory of the events that took place. In the case of the Georgetown possession, the boy survived and to this day says he has no recollection of his months of torment.

While I get a plethora of letters asking about my position on demonic possession, I am certainly not the expert in this field. The Catholic Church recently admitted that even as they train priests in the rites, they have a growing manpower problem. When I was a child my parish had eight priests, today most parishes have just one, and all too often he is shared by more than one parish thus their presence out in the community is very limited. To counter this, the Church has recognized that paranormal investigators are more likely to be the first called in these cases and they welcome our input. Within the ASUP the rule is and has always been that you take the cases as they come; and if you find one that has the earmarks of possession, field investigators are advised to back out calmly and let the Coordinator make the necessary referrals and explain the reasoning for calling in religious to the clients. Once that is done, we walk away, unless specifically asked to participate, which would be rare.

The biggest part of the problem is recognizing the differences between a demonic attack and a common poltergeist. Obviously, if the victim is hanging off the walls like a fly, that might be a good sign, but more often the lines become blurred. First and foremost is the well being of the victim, if there is signs of physical deterioration, then medical advice is mandated. While psychologists as a whole tend to reject such play, when indicated, psychological or psychiatric assistance might also be prudent. The victim’s family has to be kept in the loop and the final decisions are with them. You can suggest outside aid and even facilitate that contact, but when dealing with a family, it is always best to confer with them before taking action. Of course, if you feel that the victim is in danger physically, you must advise a director, who will most likely take it to the next level. This is sometimes a tricky field to maneuver.

That being said, let’s look at the similarities of the poltergeist vs. possession. In the poltergeist case, you look for the center of the activity, the focus usually falls to the prepubescent female first, but statistically, it could well be a young man near the age of puberty as well. These are the majority of cases, but it is not unusual to find poltergeist activity centered on an adult man or woman, who fits one of several categories, including those who depend of drugs, alcohol, are mentally unbalanced and unstable at times and even some with physical impairments that might lead to excessive stress. If you haven’t already guessed, we are drawing a picture of a person more likely to exhibit early psychokinetic (PK) ability, but most probably one’s that are unaware of it!

The assumption is that the poltergeist is PK related, albeit taking place subconsciously, beyond the control of the target personality. There are literally hundreds of cases every year that can be traced back to one member of the household who exhibits such talent; they are also often the principal victim in cases where the poltergeist becomes hostile. In fact this is so true when looking at the archives of past cases that they are sometimes hard to distinguish between poltergeist and possession cases.

So, are we suggesting that all cases reported as demonic possession are actually over-active poltergeists? No, not at all, in fact once you see a few, the differences are very striking. While they tend to start out in similar ways, the paths quickly separate as a true victim becomes evident. So, who is most likely to become a victim of possession? Generally speaking, he or she will be from a religious family background; a church going person who has never shown any real signs of antisocial behavior, but possibly introverted. Of course after several thousand years of possession cases, these are generalities and in theory anyone could become a victim, although more recent statistics suggest that atheists are not high on the demonic hit list, nor do people possess post graduate credentials, as a rule. So, it is reasonable to assume that the victim will not be a middle-aged, non-believer who has a doctoral degree in Engineering; they would be more likely to be the victim of a plethora of other psychological and physical problems. All that as a given, the victim will probably be young, inexperienced in the ways of the world and from a church-going family that stresses religion first in life.

The possession victim runs a fine line between common paranormal boundaries and religion and this will always be questionable in the minds of the grounded psychologists; I tend to think that this is because many of those nay-Sayers have never seen a real demonic case to begin with.

One of the most repeated questions I hear concerns just how common a possession case might be and the answer sometimes surprises even well versed investigators. If we subscribe to the logic of religious experts, once you dispossess a demon from its host, It goes out to find a new one almost immediately. In theory the demon in the Blatty story could have been the same one as a case in Milwaukee a few months before, etc. If you subscribe to the theoretical number of demons cast into hell, and assuming that number remains constant, you could expect a few thousand cases every year, which is way above the statistical average reported, but third-world countries would rarely devote resources to that sort of statistical analysis, thus we rely on religious sources and some medical doctors for the numbers in these areas. Allowing for false reports, misdiagnoses of things like schizophrenia, etc. my best guess would be perhaps a thousand true cases of possession a year worldwide.

The one fact to remember is that the similarities of true possession cases mirror the poltergeist in about 80 percent of the cases reported and also remember that all poltergeist cases have a relatively short lifecycle, at most a few months, so a severe poltergeist case is easily misidentified as a possession case. The difference however are remarkable! A poltergeist is not capable of apportation, it deals with objects already within its sphere, usually the household or at best, a small neighborhood. In true possession cases the sudden appearance of objects never seen before is commonplace.

The issue of multi-lingual abilities in people who have no rudimentary understanding of a language is another that is common in possession cases as well and while the common poltergeist can shake or move a bed, you never see the victim being thrown to a wall and sticking to it like it was covered with a super-weight flypaper, which is a common theme in possession. Finally, when you have a poltergeist of this ferocity, it is there to stay for a while, but in possession cases the victim often has long periods of normalcy between attacks. Many say that the possession case is a form of epilepsy or some grand hysteria, but the literature fails to show an epileptic has ever exhibited multilingual talents without training, etc.

In the final analysis, it is my opinion that these are two completely different phenomenon that do share certain paranormal keys, most likely rooted in PK ability and possibly a sensitivity to Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) but those alone do not answer all the questions that divide the two phenomenon.

When I do get letters about possession, I usually give some brief examples of well known cases in both poltergeist and possession cases and then recommend some further research, including several books by D. Scott Rogo as well as ones by experts like Fr. John Nicola, Bill Roll of Duke and Ray Bayless, to mention a few. If you had only one book to look at I would think Rogo’s The Poltergeist Experience would most help someone learn the difference between possession cases and the poltergeist. It is also a great handbook for all paranormal investigators to discern the common haunting from the poltergeist as well, they are sometimes remarkably similar in appearance.

In closing, I have to once again say that even the best trained investigator is ill equipped to deal with the true possession case; if well educated psychologists and medical doctors defer to the handful of experts in such situations, one can only question the sanity of any paranormal investigator who thinks they can deal with the experience and return unscathed. In cases where the uninitiated have succeeded, the majority were not true possessions to begin with, they were poltergeists. Remember, except for some very unique situations, “ghosts” can’t kill you, nor can a poltergeist, but there have been deaths contributed to possession cases, both among initial victims and rescuers who underestimated the powers at hand. So when you come upon such a case, your job is to document it, exit quietly and get further assistance. Do not engage the victim, do not assume anything and once you are reasonably convinced it is something other than a particularly nasty poltergeist, turn it over to the people who know how to handle it. Messing with a real possession case is like willfully walking into a room full of rattle snakes in a loin cloth, you will get bit, it will hurt and you could die.

© 2009 by Rick Moran & the ASUP, Inc.     All rights reserved    Reprint with permission.