November 4, 2017 • 20 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, is the idea of possession a misunderstanding of physiological and psychological conditions, or has science failed to account for unknown, legitimate factors? Learn whether exorcism and psychology are mutually exclusive in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Chuck here for my weekly Stuff you Should
Know selects pick and this week I'm going with January
six through thousand nine, two thousand nine Exorcism How Exorcism Works.
And I'm sort of just tagging this on because in
real time, it's right around Halloween, and I remember the
(00:21):
Exorcism episode was pretty cool and we talked about the
real kind of exorcism. We obviously talked about the movie
The Exorcist a little bit, but we try to break
it down into what's really going on there with real
life exorcism. So enjoy how Exorcism Works. Welcome to Stuff
(00:43):
you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's Chuck, and
this is stuff you should know. We're about to tell
you some stuff you should know, aren't we, Chuck? We
are you ever intro? Our title like that? I like
that it's new. I tried it before. I know that
(01:04):
you like it, which institute I had loved it to
the late and arouse you. Yeah, moving on, Chuck. Have
you ever heard of a guy named Philip Kate Dick. Yes? Absolutely,
he's an author. Correct, he wrote Blade Runner. Correct? Well,
I do Android's dream of electric cheap right, which was
(01:26):
made into Blade Runner exactly. And he wrote a minority
report and um a scanner darkly. Some other ones have
heard him good stuff. Um. And if you can't tell yet,
he was a science fiction writer. Um. But one of
the more notable things of Dick's life, one of the
more one of the more notable aspects of Dick's life
was that, Um, at one point he became possessed by
(01:50):
a being, another intelligence. He called it like a super
alien or something like that. And uh, it basically took
him over and got his life in order. He was
a total pill head, loved drink wine, really just kind
of chased friends off. He just wasn't a really pleasant
soul to be around. And this alien kind of comes
(02:13):
in and takes him over, and all of a sudden
he's like getting you know, back pay from publishers. He's
like writing more. He his office is cleaner. I think
he started wearing ties and just all around. Basically, this
thing got his life in order. And he wasn't scientology
or anything no interesting. As a matter of fact, I
think he may have been a critic of scientology. I'm
(02:34):
not sure. Um, but he uh, he was possessed. He
he believed it till the day he died, that something
had taken him over and at the very least was
helping him. I've never heard that. Yes, so, um, that
kind of I think is a really good segue into exorcism. Right,
this is an exorcism that actually benefited somebody. Well, he
(02:55):
wasn't exercise, and I don't think he needed to. Sure, sure, now,
you know, I think for the most part, when people
feel like we're inhabited by something, we feel like it
needs to be exercise, right, right, Yeah, the demons running
through yet exactly so um, we kind of in in
the Western world in the twenty one century, we don't
(03:18):
really believe in spirit intrusion much anymore, right, some of
us do, some do, true, but for the most part,
the average American walking around probably doesn't believe that they're
going to ever be, you know, taken over by a
demon or something like that, or even an angel probably, um,
But this isn't the case for much of the rest
of the world. It's very commonly held spirit intrusion can occur.
(03:43):
I remember when we were talking about carrying a bride
over the threshold. Spirit intrusion. It can be a bad thing,
It can cause a disease, illness, and um, it kind
of makes you wonder, there's this dividing line that crops up.
Is this really just to misunderstanding of a psychological problem
or is psychology missing the point when there actually is
(04:06):
something going on right at ending? A lot of uh,
demonic possessions are really people that are psychologically distressed or
sometimes even physically uh. And epilepsy and things like that.
A lot of times you're mistaken in parts of the world. Well,
with epilepsy in particular, you can you can tell you
can throw somebody in an m R I machine and
(04:28):
I look at the parts of their brain and see,
you know, oh yeah, this person is definitely epileptic. Of
course the convulsions often give them away as well. But
with you know, UM schizophrenia, say exactly, for many many eons,
that was viewed as a spirit intrusion or spirit possession, right,
which makes sense. I mean, you know, these people with
(04:49):
dissociative personality disorder are UM different people at different times,
So you can understand how that would be mistaken as
a UM possession. Sure in the past I could, sure,
but still today I kind of wonder is it just
a clash of world views? You know, maybe so is
a psychological disorder just another term for spirit possession when
(05:12):
they're really both talking about the same thing and doesn't
matter so interesting angle, Thanks buddy. So the point is this,
UM psychology has its own methods of exorcism any deepressants
UM psychotherapy. Yes, uh e c T. Electro convulsive therapy,
which is still used to this day. Did you know that?
(05:36):
I didn't. I think we have the method refined a
little more than we used to write, but yeah, it's
still they still hook people up at the electrodes and
juice them. Actually I did know that because it happened
on six ft Under and don't tell me, don't tell me.
I'm in season three, don't tell it definitely does not
happen on six Thank you, thank you for that. Sorry
about that. But so we've got this method of dealing
(06:46):
with disturbance UM through psychology. We also have it through spirituality,
and specifically, the Catholic Church is really really big on exorcism.
They're the only church that I know if it really
still practices it. And yeah, I was raised Catholic, and
and as you get older. Every you know, when you're
(07:06):
raised in the Catholic Church, everything seems totally normal. This
guy is wearing a robe and chanting and burning frankincense,
and everybody else you know is responding with you know,
some weird you know, mystical words. The thing is is like,
as you get older, it becomes stranger and stranger, because,
as any Catholic knows, the older you get, the further
(07:27):
you get away from the church. Right, Um, so you
get a little more objective, you get an objective view
of it. I think it's not necessarily true for all people,
but certainly. Uh So, you know, when you look at
the Catholic Church objectively or Catholicism, it's deeply rooted in mysticism.
And it doesn't strike me as odd at all that
the Catholic Church is still very much believes in exorcism,
(07:51):
in demonic possession. Yeah, I believe it, which we should
probably give an actual definition of demonic possession as the
Catholic Church sees it. Uh while possession or exorcism possession,
Uh well, I know some of the telltale signs. Yeah,
let's hear about um speaking in tongues a lot of times,
(08:12):
just considered No, no, pardon no, no, it's not considered
part of a demonative. Speaking in tongues is considered a
an expression of religious ecstasy. Speaking in foreign languages that
one's never encountered or dead languages. Right, that's that's an example.
I actually said. I actually said speaking in foreign tongues.
I just said it very quietly. The foreign was the foreign?
(08:35):
Was it? Silent um? That is true? Uh, knowing things
that a person has no way of knowing. Yeah, Like, um,
you know what the pope's wearing at any given time.
I bet he's wearing a robe and a tall hat.
That's what I underneath the robe, if you can call that.
I imagine they're going to be like, yeah, I won't
go too much physical strength beyond what you normally would have,
(08:58):
which we've addressed as well, right in a violent aversion
to God, the Virgin Mary or across or other you know,
religious images. Yeah, so that's you know pretty much it.
If you can fit all these, then you know there's
a chance that you are possessed by the devil. As
far as the church is concerned. I didn't see in
here head spinning around or vomiting p soup or the
(09:18):
Spider Crawl. No, and of course Chuck's referring to the
classic horror film The Exorcystem, which I watched actually this
past Halloween. Not as scary as I remember, but psychologically thrilling.
Great and um after researching this, I found that if
you take Linda Blair out of the scenes, yes, uh,
(09:39):
and you just have the exorcism, the rights of exorcism
that are performed by um Max von Sideau and the
other guy. Um, it is it's very accurately. Uh, it's
it's pretty much the opposite of the website Garfield minus Garfield,
where if you take Garfield out it turns out that
John is either schizophrenic or a the meat or possessed
(10:01):
by the devil possibly full circle. Yeah, so it's UM's
it's the it's the opposite of that. It really a
Catholic exorcism or right of exorcism is a series of
special prayers, and actually it's a combination of fairly familiar prayers.
There's a lot of call and response. Um. There's dousing
the possessed individual with holy water, using crusifixes and relics,
(10:26):
which can be anything anything associated with the saint, including
a body part. There's actually the saints. If you were
a saint several hundred years ago, you were destined to
be chopped up and do as many little pieces as
possible and said to churches around the world. Yeah, relics
are huge. Interesting. Yeah, well there, you didn't know that either. Well,
before this all happens, there's an investigation. I mean, this
(10:47):
is when there's a real threat of a possession, you
can actually lodge in uh a query to the Catholic
Church and they'll send someone out. A lot of times
that priest will come with a psychological evaluator just to
rule out other things. Sometimes I'll go to a medical doctor,
but they actually do a full fledged investigation, and they said,
I think one in five thousand turns out to be
(11:10):
what they consider to be a real demonic possession or
at the very least worth worth using an exorcism for
a Yeah, I didn't want you to to get the
impression that I think that the Church's approach to exorcism
it's hokey in anyway. I think they take a very
methodical approach and they rule out everything else that it
could possibly be. Um. I think if you decided to
(11:33):
perpetrate a fraud. Uh, you know, like you're you're possessed
by the devil. You're in for a really long, painful
evaluation process where you really have to be committed to
the bit to follow it through and finally get to
the exorcism. And if you're basing it on movies, you
probably be really disappointed. Um. There's this book that this
(11:54):
guy wrote. I cannot remember his name or the name
of the book, but he was a sociologist to who
you know, basically went to exorcisms performed around the country
for several years during his research period. And he describes
one where a guy named Warren, who is basically depressed,
drinks a lot. Really his life is pretty out of sorts, um,
(12:17):
and he's come to believe that he's he's possessed by
a diabolical presence I think is the the church vernacular
for it. Um. And basically the priest just praised for him, um.
And you know, there's the Holy water and the crucifix
and all that, and Warren just kind of sits there
looking a little gloomy the whole time. And then that's
about that. And apparently in the book, Warren reported feeling
(12:40):
like something had left him, which is good. It's a
good thing, is he said, he felt fine, But it
was a fairly anticlimactic spinning or anything. I had that
book title if people want to read, it's called American
Exorcism Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty by Michael
uh c u n eo quin Kuno kunio. Can you
(13:01):
let's go with catch cary cary um. So, yeah, they're
(13:32):
they're kind of anticlimactic, right, But if if at the
end people like Warren feel like that their their life
has changed, that, you know, if it's if it's just
using their faith to maybe manipulate them, even even if
there's no intentional manipulation. But if that's really what's going
on in the most objective view, how could how could
(13:54):
it hurt? You know? Why? Why don't we just run
around performing exorcisms all the time? I have an answer
for you, playing on me sort of, because there aren't
enough priests relate to go around that are they're capable
of doing this? The Catholic Church actually UM appointed ten
priest and I think there was already previously one the
only guy doing exorcism, So there's now eleven um at
(14:17):
that time at least and they have a group called
the International Association of Exorcists. Yeah, they meet every year
and only newsletter. Do you know what I would do
to get my hands on that newsletter? Apparently they shared
tricks of the trade tips for one another fcisms. Yeah,
I would love to get my hands on that, right,
I'd love to sit on one of those meetings. But
(14:38):
that's a lot of a lot of fun, it is,
you know, the the the that's one reason why you know,
we just don't have or the Catholic Church just doesn't
have the manpower to go around performing exorcism, right. Um.
But also there's there's a couple other problems with exorcism
as far as you know controversy generated by them. One
is what we've talked about, the the psychology versus religion clash,
(15:02):
which has been going on pretty much since medicine came
about um and basically labeled everybody else's witches or you know,
at the very least um simple or what have you,
archaic primitive. And that's one problem. If if we just
ran around performing exorcisms, uh, and there were people who
(15:23):
had very treatable psychological disorders, you know, would the exorcisms
work or would would pharmaceuticals be better or some sort
of you know, immersive therapy be better for him? Um,
so we could actually do damage, which is why the
church I imagine, has psychological evaluations done. And these are
done by professionals from my understanding as well, It's not
(15:46):
like the priest is like, hey, are you crazy? Right,
they get a psychiatrist or psychologist outside of the Catholic Church.
The the other problem is the there there are groups
that that do x orcisms for profit. Yeah, and this
is where it gets a little uh, I don't know, greedy,
possibly fake. Maybe there's one. There's one group, um that
(16:11):
is well known for their exorcisms. There's a guy named
Bob Larson, Bob Larson Ministries. He actually has a show
called The Real Exorcist on the Sci Fi channel. UM.
That should be your first clicker right there, exactly he Um.
He runs the Spiritual Freedom Church as far as I know, UM,
and he does exorcisms. I don't know that he actually
(16:33):
charges for exorcisms, but I think he's he's really good
at um drumming up donations. Well yeah, and he and
he does this in front of a crowd, and he
charges for tickets. Does he really, Yeah, because apparently you
can get a family rate on your tickets to go
see these exorcisms. Okay, it gives you a break if
you bring the kids along. Well, I was. I was
reading on the Spiritual Freedom Church website a testimonial from
(16:57):
a girl from named Autumn, from my dear esteemed hometown
of Toledo, Ohio. Let's hear it. Apparently the spirit spirit
for Spiritual Freedom Church rolled through town and held a
mass you know, exorcism or whatever spectacle, and Um, Autumn,
it turned out, had been possessed by a several centuries
old African woman, uh named Mushita. Now Mushta apparently means
(17:24):
horror and whatever ancient African vernacular this that her name
comes from. And um, she basically was pretty much into
committing acts of hord um in you know, uh, reverence
for an African deity. So she became promiscuous. Yes, it
was really Mushita, but it was it was Autumn who
(17:47):
was running around committing acts of hordem. This is not
my word, by the way, I actually didn't realize hordam
was a word until this is very afternoon. Is that
her right there? That's her she's kind of cute. Yeah. So, um,
Autumn goes to see Bob Larson, who exercises the the demons,
and apparently you could see a an immediate change in
(18:10):
Autumn and she was very grateful. So again we we
come to this this fine line. As far as I'm concerned,
if Autumn is no longer running around being promiscuous, as
you said, she no longer feels like she's out of
control with her life, does it matter whether it was
an exorcism or antidepressants, whether she paid for this or not.
(18:34):
Come to Jesus moment and a seeing of the light.
Does it matter? Now, there's all kinds of ways of
reaching that moment of clarity. I agree, If you ask me,
I agree. So uh, As far as I'm concerned, to
each his own, that's our motto. You want to pay, Yeah,
it pretty much keeps us out of hot water. So
if you want to pay for your exorcism, there's plenty
(18:54):
of places you can do it. Just go on to
a Google search, and I believe type in exorcist and
you will find what you're looking for and good luck.
So stick around because we have a new bit here.
We like to fill up time as much as possible.
We're gonna call it correction time. Right, it's a good title.
It's coming up right now. Um, So, Chuck, we have
(19:17):
a correction from one of our listeners. Right, this was
in from a couple of our podcasts. We mentioned this
famous study in Massachusetts. Let's go to a clip of
Chuck being wrong. So what they've learned is that there
was this big study. I know that you love to study,
the Farmington heart study. I love this study. It's enormous,
it's sweeping. This is what a study should be like. Right.
(19:38):
So that's that's me, and that's my voice. And it
is not Farmington's. No, it is actually Framingham, not even
there's no Ton involved, there's no farm It is a frame.
And this is pointed out by one of our listeners,
Glenna Carpenter rhotas in thank you Glenna for pouring that out. Yes,
warn yourself a new Ford focus actually pointing it out. Yeah.
(19:59):
So if you want to point out something that we've
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or hate us, Yeah, I'm more like us though, you
can send an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it, how stuff works? Dot com m
Hey, everybody, Chuck here for my weekly Stuff you Should
Know selects pick and this week I'm going with January
six through thousand nine, two thousand nine Exorcism How Exorcism Works.
And I'm sort of just tagging this on because in
real time, it's right around Halloween, and I remember the
(00:21):
Exorcism episode was pretty cool and we talked about the
real kind of exorcism. We obviously talked about the movie
The Exorcist a little bit, but we try to break
it down into what's really going on there with real
life exorcism. So enjoy how Exorcism Works. Welcome to Stuff
(00:43):
you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. That's Chuck, and
this is stuff you should know. We're about to tell
you some stuff you should know, aren't we, Chuck? We
are you ever intro? Our title like that? I like
that it's new. I tried it before. I know that
(01:04):
you like it, which institute I had loved it to
the late and arouse you. Yeah, moving on, Chuck. Have
you ever heard of a guy named Philip Kate Dick. Yes? Absolutely,
he's an author. Correct, he wrote Blade Runner. Correct? Well,
I do Android's dream of electric cheap right, which was
(01:26):
made into Blade Runner exactly. And he wrote a minority
report and um a scanner darkly. Some other ones have
heard him good stuff. Um. And if you can't tell yet,
he was a science fiction writer. Um. But one of
the more notable things of Dick's life, one of the
more one of the more notable aspects of Dick's life
was that, Um, at one point he became possessed by
(01:50):
a being, another intelligence. He called it like a super
alien or something like that. And uh, it basically took
him over and got his life in order. He was
a total pill head, loved drink wine, really just kind
of chased friends off. He just wasn't a really pleasant
soul to be around. And this alien kind of comes
(02:13):
in and takes him over, and all of a sudden
he's like getting you know, back pay from publishers. He's
like writing more. He his office is cleaner. I think
he started wearing ties and just all around. Basically, this
thing got his life in order. And he wasn't scientology
or anything no interesting. As a matter of fact, I
think he may have been a critic of scientology. I'm
(02:34):
not sure. Um, but he uh, he was possessed. He
he believed it till the day he died, that something
had taken him over and at the very least was
helping him. I've never heard that. Yes, so, um, that
kind of I think is a really good segue into exorcism. Right,
this is an exorcism that actually benefited somebody. Well, he
(02:55):
wasn't exercise, and I don't think he needed to. Sure, sure, now,
you know, I think for the most part, when people
feel like we're inhabited by something, we feel like it
needs to be exercise, right, right, Yeah, the demons running
through yet exactly so um, we kind of in in
the Western world in the twenty one century, we don't
(03:18):
really believe in spirit intrusion much anymore, right, some of
us do, some do, true, but for the most part,
the average American walking around probably doesn't believe that they're
going to ever be, you know, taken over by a
demon or something like that, or even an angel probably, um,
But this isn't the case for much of the rest
of the world. It's very commonly held spirit intrusion can occur.
(03:43):
I remember when we were talking about carrying a bride
over the threshold. Spirit intrusion. It can be a bad thing,
It can cause a disease, illness, and um, it kind
of makes you wonder, there's this dividing line that crops up.
Is this really just to misunderstanding of a psychological problem
or is psychology missing the point when there actually is
(04:06):
something going on right at ending? A lot of uh,
demonic possessions are really people that are psychologically distressed or
sometimes even physically uh. And epilepsy and things like that.
A lot of times you're mistaken in parts of the world. Well,
with epilepsy in particular, you can you can tell you
can throw somebody in an m R I machine and
(04:28):
I look at the parts of their brain and see,
you know, oh yeah, this person is definitely epileptic. Of
course the convulsions often give them away as well. But
with you know, UM schizophrenia, say exactly, for many many eons,
that was viewed as a spirit intrusion or spirit possession, right,
which makes sense. I mean, you know, these people with
(04:49):
dissociative personality disorder are UM different people at different times,
So you can understand how that would be mistaken as
a UM possession. Sure in the past I could, sure,
but still today I kind of wonder is it just
a clash of world views? You know, maybe so is
a psychological disorder just another term for spirit possession when
(05:12):
they're really both talking about the same thing and doesn't
matter so interesting angle, Thanks buddy. So the point is this,
UM psychology has its own methods of exorcism any deepressants
UM psychotherapy. Yes, uh e c T. Electro convulsive therapy,
which is still used to this day. Did you know that?
(05:36):
I didn't. I think we have the method refined a
little more than we used to write, but yeah, it's
still they still hook people up at the electrodes and
juice them. Actually I did know that because it happened
on six ft Under and don't tell me, don't tell me.
I'm in season three, don't tell it definitely does not
happen on six Thank you, thank you for that. Sorry
about that. But so we've got this method of dealing
(06:46):
with disturbance UM through psychology. We also have it through spirituality,
and specifically, the Catholic Church is really really big on exorcism.
They're the only church that I know if it really
still practices it. And yeah, I was raised Catholic, and
and as you get older. Every you know, when you're
(07:06):
raised in the Catholic Church, everything seems totally normal. This
guy is wearing a robe and chanting and burning frankincense,
and everybody else you know is responding with you know,
some weird you know, mystical words. The thing is is like,
as you get older, it becomes stranger and stranger, because,
as any Catholic knows, the older you get, the further
(07:27):
you get away from the church. Right, Um, so you
get a little more objective, you get an objective view
of it. I think it's not necessarily true for all people,
but certainly. Uh So, you know, when you look at
the Catholic Church objectively or Catholicism, it's deeply rooted in mysticism.
And it doesn't strike me as odd at all that
the Catholic Church is still very much believes in exorcism,
(07:51):
in demonic possession. Yeah, I believe it, which we should
probably give an actual definition of demonic possession as the
Catholic Church sees it. Uh while possession or exorcism possession,
Uh well, I know some of the telltale signs. Yeah,
let's hear about um speaking in tongues a lot of times,
(08:12):
just considered No, no, pardon no, no, it's not considered
part of a demonative. Speaking in tongues is considered a
an expression of religious ecstasy. Speaking in foreign languages that
one's never encountered or dead languages. Right, that's that's an example.
I actually said. I actually said speaking in foreign tongues.
I just said it very quietly. The foreign was the foreign?
(08:35):
Was it? Silent um? That is true? Uh, knowing things
that a person has no way of knowing. Yeah, Like, um,
you know what the pope's wearing at any given time.
I bet he's wearing a robe and a tall hat.
That's what I underneath the robe, if you can call that.
I imagine they're going to be like, yeah, I won't
go too much physical strength beyond what you normally would have,
(08:58):
which we've addressed as well, right in a violent aversion
to God, the Virgin Mary or across or other you know,
religious images. Yeah, so that's you know pretty much it.
If you can fit all these, then you know there's
a chance that you are possessed by the devil. As
far as the church is concerned. I didn't see in
here head spinning around or vomiting p soup or the
(09:18):
Spider Crawl. No, and of course Chuck's referring to the
classic horror film The Exorcystem, which I watched actually this
past Halloween. Not as scary as I remember, but psychologically thrilling.
Great and um after researching this, I found that if
you take Linda Blair out of the scenes, yes, uh,
(09:39):
and you just have the exorcism, the rights of exorcism
that are performed by um Max von Sideau and the
other guy. Um, it is it's very accurately. Uh, it's
it's pretty much the opposite of the website Garfield minus Garfield,
where if you take Garfield out it turns out that
John is either schizophrenic or a the meat or possessed
(10:01):
by the devil possibly full circle. Yeah, so it's UM's
it's the it's the opposite of that. It really a
Catholic exorcism or right of exorcism is a series of
special prayers, and actually it's a combination of fairly familiar prayers.
There's a lot of call and response. Um. There's dousing
the possessed individual with holy water, using crusifixes and relics,
(10:26):
which can be anything anything associated with the saint, including
a body part. There's actually the saints. If you were
a saint several hundred years ago, you were destined to
be chopped up and do as many little pieces as
possible and said to churches around the world. Yeah, relics
are huge. Interesting. Yeah, well there, you didn't know that either. Well,
before this all happens, there's an investigation. I mean, this
(10:47):
is when there's a real threat of a possession, you
can actually lodge in uh a query to the Catholic
Church and they'll send someone out. A lot of times
that priest will come with a psychological evaluator just to
rule out other things. Sometimes I'll go to a medical doctor,
but they actually do a full fledged investigation, and they said,
I think one in five thousand turns out to be
(11:10):
what they consider to be a real demonic possession or
at the very least worth worth using an exorcism for
a Yeah, I didn't want you to to get the
impression that I think that the Church's approach to exorcism
it's hokey in anyway. I think they take a very
methodical approach and they rule out everything else that it
could possibly be. Um. I think if you decided to
(11:33):
perpetrate a fraud. Uh, you know, like you're you're possessed
by the devil. You're in for a really long, painful
evaluation process where you really have to be committed to
the bit to follow it through and finally get to
the exorcism. And if you're basing it on movies, you
probably be really disappointed. Um. There's this book that this
(11:54):
guy wrote. I cannot remember his name or the name
of the book, but he was a sociologist to who
you know, basically went to exorcisms performed around the country
for several years during his research period. And he describes
one where a guy named Warren, who is basically depressed,
drinks a lot. Really his life is pretty out of sorts, um,
(12:17):
and he's come to believe that he's he's possessed by
a diabolical presence I think is the the church vernacular
for it. Um. And basically the priest just praised for him, um.
And you know, there's the Holy water and the crucifix
and all that, and Warren just kind of sits there
looking a little gloomy the whole time. And then that's
about that. And apparently in the book, Warren reported feeling
(12:40):
like something had left him, which is good. It's a
good thing, is he said, he felt fine, But it
was a fairly anticlimactic spinning or anything. I had that
book title if people want to read, it's called American
Exorcism Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty by Michael
uh c u n eo quin Kuno kunio. Can you
(13:01):
let's go with catch cary cary um. So, yeah, they're
(13:32):
they're kind of anticlimactic, right, But if if at the
end people like Warren feel like that their their life
has changed, that, you know, if it's if it's just
using their faith to maybe manipulate them, even even if
there's no intentional manipulation. But if that's really what's going
on in the most objective view, how could how could
(13:54):
it hurt? You know? Why? Why don't we just run
around performing exorcisms all the time? I have an answer
for you, playing on me sort of, because there aren't
enough priests relate to go around that are they're capable
of doing this? The Catholic Church actually UM appointed ten
priest and I think there was already previously one the
only guy doing exorcism, So there's now eleven um at
(14:17):
that time at least and they have a group called
the International Association of Exorcists. Yeah, they meet every year
and only newsletter. Do you know what I would do
to get my hands on that newsletter? Apparently they shared
tricks of the trade tips for one another fcisms. Yeah,
I would love to get my hands on that, right,
I'd love to sit on one of those meetings. But
(14:38):
that's a lot of a lot of fun, it is,
you know, the the the that's one reason why you know,
we just don't have or the Catholic Church just doesn't
have the manpower to go around performing exorcism, right. Um.
But also there's there's a couple other problems with exorcism
as far as you know controversy generated by them. One
is what we've talked about, the the psychology versus religion clash,
(15:02):
which has been going on pretty much since medicine came
about um and basically labeled everybody else's witches or you know,
at the very least um simple or what have you,
archaic primitive. And that's one problem. If if we just
ran around performing exorcisms, uh, and there were people who
(15:23):
had very treatable psychological disorders, you know, would the exorcisms
work or would would pharmaceuticals be better or some sort
of you know, immersive therapy be better for him? Um,
so we could actually do damage, which is why the
church I imagine, has psychological evaluations done. And these are
done by professionals from my understanding as well, It's not
(15:46):
like the priest is like, hey, are you crazy? Right,
they get a psychiatrist or psychologist outside of the Catholic Church.
The the other problem is the there there are groups
that that do x orcisms for profit. Yeah, and this
is where it gets a little uh, I don't know, greedy,
possibly fake. Maybe there's one. There's one group, um that
(16:11):
is well known for their exorcisms. There's a guy named
Bob Larson, Bob Larson Ministries. He actually has a show
called The Real Exorcist on the Sci Fi channel. UM.
That should be your first clicker right there, exactly he Um.
He runs the Spiritual Freedom Church as far as I know, UM,
and he does exorcisms. I don't know that he actually
(16:33):
charges for exorcisms, but I think he's he's really good
at um drumming up donations. Well yeah, and he and
he does this in front of a crowd, and he
charges for tickets. Does he really, Yeah, because apparently you
can get a family rate on your tickets to go
see these exorcisms. Okay, it gives you a break if
you bring the kids along. Well, I was. I was
reading on the Spiritual Freedom Church website a testimonial from
(16:57):
a girl from named Autumn, from my dear esteemed hometown
of Toledo, Ohio. Let's hear it. Apparently the spirit spirit
for Spiritual Freedom Church rolled through town and held a
mass you know, exorcism or whatever spectacle, and Um, Autumn,
it turned out, had been possessed by a several centuries
old African woman, uh named Mushita. Now Mushta apparently means
(17:24):
horror and whatever ancient African vernacular this that her name
comes from. And um, she basically was pretty much into
committing acts of hord um in you know, uh, reverence
for an African deity. So she became promiscuous. Yes, it
was really Mushita, but it was it was Autumn who
(17:47):
was running around committing acts of hordem. This is not
my word, by the way, I actually didn't realize hordam
was a word until this is very afternoon. Is that
her right there? That's her she's kind of cute. Yeah. So, um,
Autumn goes to see Bob Larson, who exercises the the demons,
and apparently you could see a an immediate change in
(18:10):
Autumn and she was very grateful. So again we we
come to this this fine line. As far as I'm concerned,
if Autumn is no longer running around being promiscuous, as
you said, she no longer feels like she's out of
control with her life, does it matter whether it was
an exorcism or antidepressants, whether she paid for this or not.
(18:34):
Come to Jesus moment and a seeing of the light.
Does it matter? Now, there's all kinds of ways of
reaching that moment of clarity. I agree, If you ask me,
I agree. So uh, As far as I'm concerned, to
each his own, that's our motto. You want to pay, Yeah,
it pretty much keeps us out of hot water. So
if you want to pay for your exorcism, there's plenty
(18:54):
of places you can do it. Just go on to
a Google search, and I believe type in exorcist and
you will find what you're looking for and good luck.
So stick around because we have a new bit here.
We like to fill up time as much as possible.
We're gonna call it correction time. Right, it's a good title.
It's coming up right now. Um, So, Chuck, we have
(19:17):
a correction from one of our listeners. Right, this was
in from a couple of our podcasts. We mentioned this
famous study in Massachusetts. Let's go to a clip of
Chuck being wrong. So what they've learned is that there
was this big study. I know that you love to study,
the Farmington heart study. I love this study. It's enormous,
it's sweeping. This is what a study should be like. Right.
(19:38):
So that's that's me, and that's my voice. And it
is not Farmington's. No, it is actually Framingham, not even
there's no Ton involved, there's no farm It is a frame.
And this is pointed out by one of our listeners,
Glenna Carpenter rhotas in thank you Glenna for pouring that out. Yes,
warn yourself a new Ford focus actually pointing it out. Yeah.
(19:59):
So if you want to point out something that we've
done wrong, or tell us how much you like us
or hate us, Yeah, I'm more like us though, you
can send an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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