October 27, 2020 • 39 mins
You're probably familiar with the horror film version of exorcisms: a righteous priest reciting holy verses as a demon-possessed person writhes and exhibits unholy powers. But what are exorcisms, really? How do they function across cultures? Is there any proof that they're real? Join Ben and Matt to find out in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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?
(00:24):
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.
(00:45):
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,
(01:09):
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,
(01:33):
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
(01:53):
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,
(02:15):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:03):
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
(03:26):
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
(03:47):
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,
(04:09):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:49):
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
(05:12):
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
(05:35):
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
(05:56):
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,
(06:20):
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
(06:40):
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
(07:01):
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,
(07:26):
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
(07:46):
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
(08:08):
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
(08:33):
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
(08:53):
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,
(09:15):
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,
(09:38):
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
(10:01):
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
(10:23):
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
(10:48):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:30):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:14):
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
(12:37):
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
(12:59):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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,
(14:03):
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,
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
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
(15:15):
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
(15:39):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:07):
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
(17:28):
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
(17:50):
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.
(18:14):
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
(18:34):
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
(18:56):
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
(19:17):
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
(19:40):
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,
(20:00):
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
(20:22):
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
(20:47):
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
(21:10):
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,
(21:32):
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
(21:56):
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
(22:19):
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,
(22:41):
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,
(23:04):
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.
(23:25):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:12):
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
(24:32):
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
(24:55):
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,
(25:21):
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
(25:44):
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
(26:05):
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
(26:27):
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.
(26:50):
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
(27:11):
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
(27:32):
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,
(27:54):
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
(28:19):
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
(28:42):
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
(29:04):
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
(29:26):
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
(29:48):
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
(30:09):
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.
(30:33):
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,
(30:55):
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
(31:16):
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.
(31:36):
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
(31:57):
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
(32:21):
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.
(32:44):
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
(33:05):
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.
(33:29):
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
(33:50):
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
(34:11):
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
(34:32):
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
(34:55):
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,
(35:18):
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
(35:42):
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
(36:03):
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
(36:26):
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
(36:47):
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
(37:09):
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
(37:29):
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
(37:50):
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
(38:11):
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,
(38:32):
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.
(38:53):
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
(39:15):
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?
(00:24):
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.
(00:45):
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,
(01:09):
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,
(01:33):
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
(01:53):
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,
(02:15):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:03):
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
(03:26):
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
(03:47):
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,
(04:09):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:49):
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
(05:12):
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
(05:35):
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
(05:56):
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,
(06:20):
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
(06:40):
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
(07:01):
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,
(07:26):
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
(07:46):
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
(08:08):
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
(08:33):
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
(08:53):
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,
(09:15):
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,
(09:38):
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
(10:01):
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
(10:23):
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
(10:48):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:30):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:14):
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
(12:37):
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
(12:59):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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,
(14:03):
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,
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
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
(15:15):
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
(15:39):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:07):
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
(17:28):
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
(17:50):
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.
(18:14):
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
(18:34):
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
(18:56):
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
(19:17):
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
(19:40):
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,
(20:00):
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
(20:22):
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
(20:47):
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
(21:10):
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,
(21:32):
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
(21:56):
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
(22:19):
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,
(22:41):
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,
(23:04):
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.
(23:25):
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
(23:48):
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
(24:12):
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
(24:32):
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
(24:55):
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,
(25:21):
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
(25:44):
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
(26:05):
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
(26:27):
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.
(26:50):
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
(27:11):
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
(27:32):
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,
(27:54):
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
(28:19):
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
(28:42):
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
(29:04):
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
(29:26):
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
(29:48):
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
(30:09):
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.
(30:33):
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,
(30:55):
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
(31:16):
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.
(31:36):
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
(31:57):
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
(32:21):
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.
(32:44):
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
(33:05):
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.
(33:29):
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
(33:50):
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
(34:11):
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
(34:32):
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
(34:55):
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,
(35:18):
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
(35:42):
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
(36:03):
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
(36:26):
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
(36:47):
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
(37:09):
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
(37:29):
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
(37:50):
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
(38:11):
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,
(38:32):
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.
(38:53):
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
(39:15):
your favorite shows.
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