Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. While this particular episode is coming out the day after the event, I'm still recording this particular section on Mother's Day. And so I want to take a moment to wish all moms out there a very happy day.
But I want to call out my mom in particular. To those who have listened to my back catalog know, I was raised by my mom and grandmother. And my mom did that without the benefit of child support or any other type of help beyond the wage she earned as a telephone operator for the phone company. Yet, in spite of this, we never wanted for anything. I don't know how the heck she pulled that off, but she did. And more than that, she filled my childhood with light and laughter. Heck, did you ever have a friend whose mom was just so awesome that you wished she was your mom? Well, that was mine.
Everyone loved her and still do. She is my best friend. Mom, I cannot thank you enough for everything that you have done and continue to do. You are beyond amazing, and I love you. Happy Mother's Day. Today's episode continues on with my last part of the interview with Will, a practicing demonologist. As a reminder, you can find Will on Facebook under the username Paranormal Will or in Southern Demonology's Discord server. But before we cut over to that, there's two pieces of housekeeping I want to get through.
First, we do have a giveaway going on where two lucky winners will be able to choose a t-shirt from one of my designs in the merch store, and that will continue until May 22nd. Details for how to enter will be found in the description of this episode, in addition on the website Southerndemonology.com. Second, Will and I do get into some horror movie favorites at the end, and he mentions a movie that I have now watched since speaking to him. So after this interview, I will do a brief review of it from my perspective.
With all that out of the way, let's continue onward with a demonologist beats. You seem to have bumped into some quite well-known celebrities in the paranormal world. Can you go through a few of those encounters? I'll go through the good ones.
Yeah, because some of them they're like their their ego is so up there that they think they're better than you. But I can't stand that. Like I don't care how long you've been in this field or what you do in this field, nobody's better than everybody else. Like, like I tell people, I'm almost 40. I've been sneaking off in ghost hunting, not knowing what I was doing as a team at 14, you know. Like I've been doing this for that long, but some of the things that I learned the most are from teams that have been doing this for a week, a year, a month, you know. Right.
So Michelle, most people call her Bellinger. It's Bellinger from Paranormal State. She was the first one I've ever met. That is awesome. Yeah. Paranormal State, when it was on TV, that was that was my show. I loved it. I didn't care about any of the other paranormal shows, but that one, because they strictly did people's homes to help people and stuff like that. That's what I want to do. So why not learn from people that are doing that?
Of course, you know, she she went to college, she's she could be considered also an occultist and stuff, but she knows so much about demonology that somebody I was with at the time let it slip out to her because I don't just tell everybody that I'm a demonologist, they're like, Oh, he's a demonologist, and she put me through a ringer, mostly because a lot of these people out there becoming demonologists now are just wanting a title, and there's really no no degree or anything you can get in this, from what I've learned.
And most people who do get a degree or create a certificate stating that they're a demonologist are the ones trying to get money from clients. Like I was saying, she she put me through a ringer of questions and everything, and then at the end of it, I guess I answered them to her satisfaction. She smiles and she's like, So you're not just after the title. I was like, No, I'm not. And she proceeded to give me an autograph book of her dictionary of demons that she put together, which has she's got a new version out now, but it's exactly what it says.
It's a dictionary, they're all in their alphabetical, like it gives everything about these demons that she's learned, like what when they're associated with their basically demonic bosses, you know, what what their hierarchy is in the kingdom of hell.
If you don't mind, can I ask you a question about that? Yeah. So, and this is something that I personally am wrestling with. So I'm not trying to cause any kind of a controversy here. You know, a lot of the stuff around the the hierarchies of hell was kind of established back in the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church was attempting, well, not just the church, but you had a lot of these mages who are going around uh crafting grimoires, and God only knows, you know, how truthful or valuable they happen to be.
Do you put a lot of stock into the information that's out there around the hierarchies or not?
I I'll say honestly, I don't want to, but from so many different things that I have learned, mostly from the church, is hell is basically made to mimic heaven, from what I have learned. So, like well, I yeah, I mean, like I said, this is just from what I've I've learned. I I wrestle with it too. So I do not take offense to you not agreeing with it at all.
It's not that I don't agree with it, it's it's it's actually just an open question. I don't I I really have no idea, and it's something that you know I I want to know the enemy as well as I possibly can.
So yeah, it I'm I'm the same way. It's like how how could I be what I claim to be without knowing it so well, which is why my biggest struggle even now with everything that I've learned is what exactly is a demon? Because I I'll go through a little just a a little things of what I have learned demons could be. Please. So one class I sat through on YouTube. I say set through, I wasn't I didn't attend or anything, but somebody filmed a class in a Catholic school for exorcists in Sydney, Australia. And they went through, and these are what they say demons could be.
So it could be like the spirits of a deceased evil person could become a demon, spirits of humans that existed before Adam, which any of us who were raised Christian, we were never taught there was anybody before Adam, even though I always questioned that and got trouble for it because where were the dinosaurs? And then, like you talk about uh the offsprings of angels and women on some of your other shows. And then there's like there's somebody out there. I wish I could remember who I was trying to find it all weekend when I had time.
There's a person out there who teaches that in Judaism that God creates a certain amount of angels every day, and every day a third of them fall because a third of the angels rebelled during Satan's rebellion, and that I can't agree with for some reason. And then back to what I was about to say earlier is from what I also learned in Judaism, they taught that demons were the old gods, like the pagan and the Norse gods to scare people into converting into Christianity. So, like, I'm at a loss for that, and that's that's what I want to learn.
I was like, What I want to know what exactly is a demon, because every every faith, every religion on this earth, it may not be called a demon, has a dark entity or dark entities.
Yep, except for ancient Judaism, which started off with me, you had lying spirits, uh, which could be considered like twisted angels. You have spirits of destruction, but yeah, it wasn't until Second Temple Judaism, in which it developed a dualism, and suddenly you now have like a quest to figure out who's the major enemy going to be now.
So, yeah, see, I feel I feel like me and you could get lost in a whole weekend just chatting this up and like just bouncing things back and forth to each other.
Uh nothing would fill me with greater pleasure than that. That is fantastic. So, let me ask you this do you have any particular cases that you have gone through that you would feel comfortable sharing anything about that with us?
I talked about it on the Discord. On the Discord, I just aged myself putting the in front of that.
Dude, I've done that on Discord.
I mentioned that I have this certain box. Uh oh yeah, yeah. I would so really wanted to ask you about that. Yeah, I I actually call it a Dybby box for lack of a better term. Uh it's nothing that's connected to the Jewish faith or anything like that. But one sadly, one of one of my top 10 favorite movies is The Possession, which is based off a true story about a Dybby box.
Yep, and that is a phenomenal movie.
Yeah, and uh I had one friend, I was working two jobs at this time. I had this one friend whose brother got kicked out of the Marines. Funny how a lot of these stories start for practicing some dark stuff that they didn't really a lot of his other marine friends and everything didn't accept, and also he was also doing LSD and mushrooms and stuff like that. So between his collection of dark things that he's collected around the world and doing drugs, he got kicked out. Apparently, one night him and his brother got into it.
He had this one box that was just you look at it and you didn't want to be around it. I got off for my second job, it's two in the morning. I'm 10 minutes from being home, and I get a phone call, and it's him. He is frantic. He's like, I just had to kick my brother out. He gathered all his stuff except that box. He spoke in some language, like he couldn't pinpoint it, he didn't record it, so I couldn't hear it to try to see if I could try to see what it was. And he's like, Our apartment's going crazy. Things are happening here that should not be happening.
And I've I've he was a friend of mine. I've been to this apartment for a while. I like I he took me to it when he first bought it or rented it, and I was like, Well, let me turn around. So I turn around. As I turn around, I get off the phone with him. I call a friend of mine who's an exorcist down in Tennessee. And I was like, I was telling him what was going on. So he was telling me how to properly remove this from a house. I get there, and the feeling of this place is something I've never felt before.
And I tell him, This is what I gotta do to get it bound and put up, and then I want to talk more to you about what happened. So I go through this process of binding this box, and I shove it inside a little safe that I actually just got from a boss of mine for some odd reason. I shove it in there and I lock the safe and I take it out to my car. I go back to the apartment. I was like, so what exactly happened?
And he was telling me everything that happened, and then he proceeded to tell me his brother over in Egypt bought that box, and he made a deal with two demons and a pagan goddess Hecate, who he claims a part of Hecate, and those demons were in that box. And the deal was he'll travel around with that box and spread knowledge about those three entities, I'll call them. And as he's telling me this, there there are lights going off and on of the apartment, and we're standing in the kitchen. It's me, him, and his fiance. That's it.
And then he starts talking about his back's hurting, and I lift up his shirt and I'm watching these scratches form in his back, and it's not human because it wasn't five fingers, there were seven of them going down his back, which, of course, with me, I was like, Oh, well, that's an odd number because of what I dealt with in the past. But right, like I said, I've I've been to that apartment, I know there's no electrical failure at all, so the light should not have been going off and on. That was something I absolutely could not explain.
And watching the scratches on his back, that was something that was happening where I was like, I wish I was home instead of working two jobs, so I could have at least grabbed a camera because nobody's gonna believe me on this, right? Dang, yeah.
And the only other case I've ever heard about that involved right scratches on the skin were the OG exorcist case.
I I've I've seen it happen before being in the paranormal field. If you're in it for a while, you'll end up coming across it a couple times. There was another client case where a team I was on, my lead investigator at that time, he actually filmed scratches appearing on this mom on the mom of this family's back. I wish we, yeah, I wish we were still friends so I can get a hold of that footage, but we had a pretty bad falling out. Gotcha. I think he posted it. If I could find that it's posted, it might be on his YouTube.
If I could find it, I might I'm gonna try to find it and see if I can't share it on Discord.
Yeah, that would be beautiful. I would love uh all right. So you have mentioned horror movies. I have to ask you, what are some of your other favorite horror movies? Because you you know me. I I love them.
Like I said on Discord, my all-time favorite is Sanatorium, it's a found footage which has become a favorite genre of mine because I get lost in the story. I forget that I'm watching a movie, I think I'm actually watching somebody's documentary. Yep, it's about a team that's filming for their show. I'm not going to give specifics on what happened. They go into this haunted place. That's all I'll say. Another one I didn't think I like that I absolutely fell in love with was Grave Encounters. Yeah, I really when I first got Netflix, I learned about Tucker and Dell versus Evil.
And like you, I love comedic horror. And that just I was like, nothing beats this movie, and I'm so upset it wasn't on Netflix. I actually got rid of Netflix because of that. I can understand. I have to say, a lot of people look at me funny for this, but I like paranormal activity movies, except for the last one that came out on Paramount Plus. I wasn't a fan of that one.
I I enjoyed the first few, like it really did feel like an adult wears Waldome. Yeah. But I mean, they were pretty well done, like you can't whatsoever.
I know a lot of people stopped liking it because they thought it was real, kind of like when Blair Witch first came out. Oh, yeah, and then they found out it wasn't real, and then they were like, Oh, well, I don't like that movie anymore. It's like, how can you not? I mean, even further down, they got a little crazy, but the way they brought the whole story full circle before this new one that came out is like it was great.
Exactly. I I still remember going to watch that in Kindle Square at MIT, and my god, it was yeah, besides like half the theater going out to throw up because of all the janky camera movement, but yeah, everything else was awesome.
But yeah, last October, I decided I think every October, every day of the of the month, I want to start posting some of my favorite horror movies. I started that last year and I gotta start thinking about what I want to post this year. I need to go through what I did last year because I don't want to overlap any of them. So if anybody goes to my Facebook page and goes to last October, they could see like my top 31 from last year.
I will have to do that because actually I had never heard of Sanatorium, so I'm really looking forward to watching that.
Actually, it is a nobody's heard of it. It was introduced to me to a guy I met in the paranormal field who was in the air force when I lived in Ohio for a while. He's like, You ever heard of this movie? I was like, No, he's it's an independent movie. He sat me down and watched it as soon as it was over. I was like, Let's watch it again. Because I was like, he said he couldn't, it was his favorite movie, also, and he couldn't pay attention to the movie because the wonder and look in my eyes. I was on the edge of the couch and just like leaning into the TV, like trying to see in the background.
I was like, Okay, can I see what's going on here?
That is awesome. See, that's me, my one of my favorite, and it's also a found footage is not only the curse. And yeah, I want to watch someone watch it for the first time just so I can relive that moment through their eyes.
Yeah, you listening to your past episodes, like I said, I just found out about you last week. I think it was yeah, about a week ago, and I was like, Oh my gosh, why did I get rid of Netflix? Now I want to check out some of these.
Well, um, I think not only you can only find on Shutter. That yeah, that one that was on Shutter. Yeah, but uh oh it yeah, I can't highly recommend that one enough. It's that's good stuff. I well, is there anything else before we uh go that you would uh like to share or any questions I should have asked, which I didn't?
I can't think of any questions, but you know, like like I tell anybody, uh if they have any, they could find me on Facebook or even use paranormalwill at gmail.com. You can email me if you have questions about like if you're an investigator and you have questions about a case that you're doing. Can you help me with this or help guide me to a book that I need? I'll say join Discord, ask on there because oh my gosh, the amount of people on there that help out is amazing.
Yeah, I I really love that. I I lucked into that. I mean, we have four moderators, we have never once had to use a single moderation action. We're like the nice corner of the internet.
It's my favorite place to be on the internet. I'd rather be just sit here watching that Discord page instead of being on Facebook any day now.
So on that one, man. Well, again, I want to thank you. This has been such a pleasure getting to speak with you, learn more about you, and hearing about all of your amazing experiences. Uh, again, you can find Will on Facebook at Paranormal Will, and hopefully we'll have you on again to talk about some more stuff. Oh, I would love that. I thought it would be fun to do a small review of the movie that Will mentions in the last part of the interview, namely Sanatorium. Overall, I agree that it is a very well-done movie.
If you enjoyed Grave Encounters and don't mind a very similar plot, then it's well worth the rental. I was able to purchase it to rent on Video Prime. The fact that many of the special effects are very low-key until say the last 25% of the film was refreshing. I won't go into too many details as I wouldn't want to spoil it, but I will call out one thing that did bother me about the film. There's a scene where the main actress steps on a board with a nail that pierces her foot. Yet there's only one follow-up scene where you can see her visibly having issues walking, and that was minor at best.
Otherwise, she's running around as if nothing had happened at all. Have you ever had a nail embed itself into your foot? I have. When I was a kid, I accidentally stepped on a nail while wearing a pair of sneakers, and it dang well went straight through my foot. And I know from personal experience that there's no way in heck a person will then proceed to walk around like nothing happened at all. Horror film. I know that you dread removing content, especially if the scene in question has a practical effect in it.
But if that effect breaks the plot line of your movie, then it's best to just let it go. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.