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. What would you do if you thought your house was haunted or had come into possession of a cursed item? One valid option would be to contact your local Catholic parish and ask for a blessing. Or you could contact a demonologist, an individual who studies the habits of dark and evil forces and how to protect from their influence. And for the first time, I have a practicing demonologist to interview.
But before we get into the heart of today's episode, which will be a two-parter, I wanted to announce something. I have recently gained my second Patreon subscriber. And to celebrate the occasion, I am offering a giveaway. From today, May 2nd, until May 22nd, see the symbolism. I will be giving away a t-shirt from our merch store to two lucky winners. And for this giveaway, I'm using the app Gleam to offer multiple ways to enter. Check out the description and the direct link. Or go to the website, southerndemonology.
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Will is a demonologist by trade. You can actually find him on Facebook underneath the username Paranormal Will, or you can actually find him also in our Discord channel if you happen to join up. Will, thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Oh, this is an honor for me. Will emailed me a couple of days ago, one of the nicest emails that I have ever gotten, and I knew we would immediately hit it off. So I asked to uh speak to him mainly because A, he seemed like a great guy, which I've been talking to him for a little bit now, and I can confirm that.
But more importantly, he is someone that I always like to interview people and which I can learn from. Uh, I have said it many a time on the podcast. I don't try to be anything more than I am, but I am a mere academic. I know ancient languages, I like to read the source material, I like to infer from that and see how it can branch outwards into modern days, but that's kind of where my knowledge begins and ends. Will is a practicing demonologist, and so I wanted to get the skinny and because I've been asked quite a few times as of late, how could I become a demonologist?
And I said, Well, I know how you can do what I do, but I don't quite know everything else. So, Will, thank you for being on again. And if you don't mind, we'll go ahead and get into some good questions for you. Okay, so what got you started in this field?
Just like anybody else who's actually in the paranormal, I grew up in a house that was haunted, but I also grew up in a Christian family, so I wasn't allowed to talk about it. They always tell you, you know, it's just your imagination, all this, you know, you were half asleep, sleepwalking, whatever. But in my mind, I knew what I saw. I could not believe my family at all.
So, what kind of things did you experience, if you don't mind me?
Well, I I'm from southern Indiana, and sadly enough, there was slavery there. And the house I lived on is used to be part of a bigger farming plantation, and where our house was built is where the slaves lived. So I can see them like their their clothing and everything to the bonnets on their head passing through our walls. Now, in this field, when we say whenever they pass through a wall, is because they're still going through their house, the way their house was built. Right. And you know, this is a completely different home and all this.
And then, like, the the more I acknowledged it, the more I felt like they could see me, some other things started going on. And this is about the time we started going to church. We had one room where my uncle, when he used to live there, he it was his room, it had no latch on the doorknob. And one night I decided I'm gonna sleep in there, and I left the door open because it was kind of scary. My my room of the house had it was in the middle, so I had no windows. I was so comfortable in the dark, oddly enough. And his room had a window, and the window always scared me.
So I left the door open, and this door slammed shut, and I could not get it open. And there's no latch, there's the handle, but no latch. Oh, wow! And eventually, like I was raised by my grandparents, my grandpa was a preacher, uh, non-denomination, but he was like yelling at me, like, Why are you making all this noise? It's like the door was locked, and of course, nobody believed me. So, years and years and years of this, up until my teenage years, I had another uncle who got kicked out of the military.
So him and his family moved in with this, and they put their son, who was a year old, in my bedroom, and I was in the eighth grade at this point or seventh grade on the track team and all this. So, like going to school, going to track practice, trying to do my homework, dealing with a basically a newborn in my room at 13, 14 years old. It was rough. I could only um begin to imagine. Yeah, every time we went to church, his wife would stay behind for some reason.
Come to find out, through an event, we found out that she was practicing black magic and not knowing what she was doing, messing with Ouija boards and all that stuff. This all led to her son being possessed, and I had kidding me. No, like people are like, Well, how do you know it just wasn't him acting up? I was like, Yes, kids bite, kids spit, kids scream, but how many one-year-olds do you know that could speak Latin?
Most of our costs, and I only know this because in my school in sixth grade, they give you like a crash introductory course to Latin to see if you'll be interested in it in junior high and high school. So I recognized some of the dialect, but I never spoke it because I wasn't interested in it at that time. My grandma, she was raised Catholic, and she called a priest, she turned her back on Catholicism before I was born. She eventually called this priest because she knew something was going wrong. And he came in. I had no idea what was going on. Everybody's acted frantic.
I'm like, what is going on? He asked to use the phone, he makes a phone call. Then he hangs up, like half an hour later, the phone rings, they ask for the priest, and now I know he got he was calling to do permission for an exorcism, right? Right then and there. So we all had to sit basically in my bedroom with him and his crib and everything, and the priest doing an exorcism. And knowing what I know now, it had to be a minor right because it only took one, and my cousin's been fine ever since.
But after the exorcism and everything, everybody else is like crying and all this, and the priest is looking around, he sees me. I'm not acting like a normal teenager. I have a smile on my face, like, oh my gosh, this is real. And he could tell that in front of everybody, he looks at me, he goes, This did not happen. Because this this was a time where you know the church kind of wants to hide that they have to do exorcisms and stuff. Oh, yeah, they still do, yeah. But this is like this is back in the early 90s, also. He tells me that, and I'm thinking in my head, I was like, Oh, bull crap.
It's like, dude, you just opened up my eyes to a whole new world that I knew was there, but was told wasn't every time we go to church, I get my family in trouble because I'm asking, you know, you're they're always preaching about God and the angels. It's like, I want to know more about hell, about Satan, about his horde, his demons, not because I want to worship them, because I want to learn about them, and they couldn't differentiate that. They thought I was on my way to becoming like a Satanist or starting to study demons.
I think it's called demonolatry, which is the like the the worship of demons. And I was like, no, as like that my eyes have been open and I know my path in life now.
Yep, I know I have seen the enemy and I know him exactly.
As like growing up, having all this happen and not being able to talk to anybody, it killed me basically. I'm surprised I never ended up possessed because I was my self-esteem and everything was so low because I was thinking maybe I am crazy, but that the exorcism happened, but my family never talked about the fact that side of the family doesn't even talk to me anymore because of the path that I chosen.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Uh I mean, I I'm I'm at terms with it now, but it yeah, it hurt. But yeah, besides watching these movies and finding out Catholics were the ones that could do it and trying to become like a Catholic or anything, and trying to get sent to the Vatican to learn how to do exorcisms. I didn't know anything about demonologists until I was in my mid to late 20s. Then I joined a paranormal team, and one of their members suggested that there's a priest in Kentucky who gives online classes, and I was like, Yeah, it's it only costs like 50 bucks.
He doesn't pocket the money, it actually goes to help a women's shelter for beaten and battered women. So I was like, Oh, I've got to do this, like I have to, and that's that's when it started. I was about I think 29 or 30 years old at that time. I'll be turning 40 next month, and I have not stopped learning about it since then.
That oh my gosh, that's absolutely phenomenal and heartbreaking at the same time. Sorry, it took so long to get to the point. No, no, no. I mean, uh honestly, I mean it's it's not the question that so much really matters, it's yeah, half that actually got there. Uh so if you don't mind, can I ask you just a few follow-up questions around that exercise? Go ahead. Go ahead. In most cases of exorcism, there's the need to do a full physical and mental evaluation, as well as judging if you know the person in question knows secret knowledge, has major temperature drops, etc.
Yeah, because of the age, I would imagine that you know the mental thing just could not come into play, and the physical one probably in the exact same boat. Did the priest do any kind of preparation to the room in you know, in order to uh perform the exorcism, or was it dove into it?
He was in my room for a while without anybody else in there. So, like I keep saying, from what I know now, I think what he probably did was bless the walls because my cousin was still in there, my cousin didn't leave the room. I think he just blessed each of those walls. So whenever this thing would get out of my cousin, it had nowhere else to go but back to where it came, it couldn't escape my room, which was oddly enough the center of the house.
Did did the priest bother to make sure that there was no movable objects around? Did he latch things down, have things removed?
I did have to have my I had like a full-size desk where I did my homework and stuff. We had to remove everything from the top of it. My lamp, all all my pens and pencils that were inside the desk did have to be removed. Anything that could be used, like to stab somebody with, kind of like the lamp, you know, you could hit somebody over the head with the lamp, right? But yeah, nothing, nothing had to be like pinned down or nothing.
Well, at least he took precautions. I mean, that's all yeah, yeah.
I think this was actually probably his first time having to do something like that, uh, or at least the first time have to do it. We're raised to believe that that children are born into innocence, correct? And and to have this this baby possessed is like if if I came across it now, I would be in shock, and I've already witnessed this once in my life.
I I I could not even begin to imagine. I mean, just uh folks, there's another reason why you never go opening doors and you don't know how to close them. I completely agree. Is this your primary job being a demonologist, or is it something that you do on the side?
I I actually wish it was because I just I have this need where I have to help anybody who feels like I did at that point. Where you know, I I helped a team. I live up in the Fort Wayne area of Indiana now. I helped a team up here, they had no idea what was going on with these one the one of their clients, and I came in, did a little investigation during the day and stuff like that, and I was able to pinpoint what was going on. They thought it was a full out demon, it really wasn't.
But I suggested to them if you can, there's so many Catholic churches around where they live, just pick one, ask them, you know, for holy water. Because if you go into a Catholic church and ask for holy water, they'll give you holy water, right? And then ask to talk to the priest to see if the priest would come in and bless your house, and you know, let them know what's going on, why you want this. They basically got escorted out of every church that they went to. What? Yeah. So, like the churches around here apparently don't want to help with stuff like that.
I don't know if it's because of how how big the paranormal field has gotten, or if they just don't the priest around here don't know what to do. I mean, they were just asking for a simple house blessing. But I ended up getting busy with work. I told the group that I was helping, it was like, you know, if you guys want somebody to come do it, I know how to bless a house and stuff like that. But then I got, like I said, busy with work and I wasn't able to do it.
I forwarded basically a step-by-step instructions with prayers, you know, holy water, blessed salt, all this stuff. It's like this is what you do to the house, and this is how you could like basically bless the kid that this entity, this dark spirit, it was it was a mean spirit. It I mean it was human, but it was still mean. It's like this is what you could do to bless the kid to make sure he's protected and stuff so he doesn't get harmed anymore and stuff like that. Yep.
When you do these types of blessings, do you do you follow the Roman ritual and do an exorcism of place, or is this more of a generalized blessing?
I actually have the book, the Roman ritual book, which uh a lot of people aren't supposed to have, but there are some Christian bookstores that have them. Oh, yeah, I've got a so yeah, I I will say if if you could find one, I highly recommend it. You could probably actually find it on Amazon now. Yeah, I go by what they do when I was taking demonology classes. That priest he told us how to bless a house never to do an exorcism, because as demonologists, that's not what we're supposed to do, right?
Another priest of mine believe that though, actually. Do you believe that it requires the authority of the Catholic Church in order to perform an exorcism? I'm actually glad you asked that. I used to. Oh, it's changed. Yes.
Do tell I would if you can't. This will be coming up after I've taken the classes and everything, after I studied stuff that I and things like that. There's a place that used to be open for anybody to come investigate up around here that it was a dark place. They actually have video footage of a possession at this place on YouTube, and they used to open it up for to the public. Come investigate this place 25 bucks this night once a month. And I found out about it, and I was like, you know, that's only 40 minutes away. I want to go check it out.
The first few nights I went, it was fine, but the more times I went, the more of the backstory of this land I was learning, and the the more things were starting to know what I was. So the backstory of this land was apparently, I'll say apparently, because I'm not completely for sure, I can't find proof on it. But there was a witch that was murdered on this land way back when, and she was back during the witch hunts and stuff, so she never hurt anybody or nothing like that. But you know, you're a witch, you're gonna die at the stake or be hung.
Right when they killed her, she cursed the land, and right before. She actually died, priests bound her soul to the land. And once I found out about the video on YouTube, there was an individual who was possessed. And when they asked the its name, he goes, I am seven. And I'm I'm looking at that or listening to it, I was like, I am seven. I was like, shouldn't it be we are seven? So I start doing more research. I start talking to friends of mine who are pagan exorcists. And apparently a witch, if she knows she's gonna die, could summon a demon, but she has to use a seven-appointed star.
And this demon is basically supposed to feed off souls of the weak and then turn around and feed her, mostly like a mother bird feeding its baby. I think after about a year of me going to this place, there was a group of women, like a whole group of women that came. And we used to do this method called I called it the Gonsfeld, it's called the Estes method now. Basically, you blindfold yourself and you're you got noise canceling headphones on that's just pumping white noise into your head. And people around you are asking questions, and you're the conduit.
You can't see people, you can't hear people, but you're supposed to be able to pick up the answers through the white noise and answer our questions that the spirits give you. I never realized how wrong this method was at the point until somebody got possessed doing this. They're in a chair, and then all of a sudden, like I think they went through like four or five different telltales from the Catholic Church of being possessed. They start laughing uncontrollably, and they're thinking, like, they add they say out loud, I don't know why I'm laughing, I can't stop laughing.
And then they start talking about wanting to hurt people, and then the girl who's in the chair who's talking like this, her sister screams bloody murder. And then she's screaming at the top of her lungs, Where'd my sister go? Where's my sister? That is not my sister. So I pull the girl out from doing all that and everything, and she's got this strength. I was trying to get her out of the house. She had this strength that I can't comprehend from this tiny woman. So I call a friend of mine. Yeah, I call a friend of mine. I was like, Hey, I might need you to come check it out.
They were busy, but then I remembered what another friend of mine, who's a priest in the Catholic Church, he was supposed to go to the Vatican to learn how to do exorcisms. They denied him. He said, You know what? I have the knowledge, I know the I got the know-how. I'm I'm gonna do them anyways. And he's the one that told me, You do not need permission to do exorcisms. And I was like, All right, this is gonna be the test, I have to do it. So I had to actually perform a minor right on this woman, and as far as I know, she's still fine.
It scared her to the point where she actually moved out of state, she lives in Florida now.
Well, that might be a scarier place to go, but yeah, I can understand.
So, yeah, I the way I see it is if if you think you can handle it, do it. If you think that this is going to be more powerful than you and you're gonna get the person hurt, ask for help.
Have you ever read uh Malachi Martin's hostage to the devil? It's supposed to be in the mill on Tuesday. Oh no, you know, one of the stages of the of the exorcism he writes about is called the clash, where after you've identified the demon, then there is you know supposedly a uh a direct confrontation between the priest and the uh person being exercised. Have you ever experienced something like that? I have with the demon we were just talking about. Like what happened if you don't mind like what kind of sensations did you have?
Um I've been insanely curious to ask anyone that's gone through this.
That this thing actually tried to take me over one night. The feelings I had, I don't want to go through again. Oh, yeah. I'm certainly not trying to bring up bad. No, no, I mean I could I could talk about it, but I I don't I don't want to actually experience the feelings ever again. So hopefully I never try to be taken possession of again. It was at the same building, it was actually my birthday weekend this time, and I walk into the building, there's already a group of people in there.
I walk into the building, and everything to me just went dark, and it's not even dark out yet, like the sun was just setting. I kept getting these images of killing everybody with my own hands. Oh my gosh, like something was trying to force me to do this, it was wanting me to do this because it needed those souls, and I the best way I could describe it is I was on I was to the point of blacking out, but I still had control. So the girl I was dating at this time in the other room, and I yell at her, I was like, get everybody out now, please, and don't want them near me.
I was I was to the point, like you can probably hear it in my voice. I was to the point of almost crying. I was like, get everybody out of the house, don't come back in. And this one girl looks at me, it's like I'm not afraid of you. I was like, This thing takes me over, you're going to be afraid. And she says, The look in my eye was not me. My eyes were black, and like it was a battle. It like, like you said, it was a complete conflict.
And luckily enough, I had another friend there that night who was a demonologist, also, and he he's got the Roman rights books and everything as well, but he also knows Latin. And he came bursting through the door, and he pushed me in a chair and he started speaking Latin. And when he was speaking Latin, I couldn't control myself. I wanted I I was starting to attack and I couldn't stop. I had to get him to stop speaking Latin.
Wow. Okay, well, I'm I'm glad that you are okay.
I mean, uh a piece, a piece of that creature is still sadly with me. Almost every investigation I go through, I'll get his name, and also that building is now condemned, it's shut down, nobody's allowed on the property, which is why I won't say the name, even though you know, yeah.
I I don't blame you because tempting people with curiosity is uh yeah, yeah, that's not certain I'm I'm trying to do. My god. Okay, so I have to ask. So I was recently on a internet radio talk show, and the host had asked me, Well, if someone is interested in becoming a demonologist, what advice would you give them? Or, you know, in terms of education and what they need to know and any tips that you have. And you know, I answered it from an academic perspective, but now that I have a practicing demonologist, um, what would what would be your answer?
Don't go by what you see off TV, the movies and stuff like that. Find books. They're they're our greatest weapons, just like you know, there's an episode, I'm a nerd, I'm a geek, and everything else. There's an episode of Doctor Who with David Tennant as the doctor, where you know, people are asking for weapons to fight off this werewolf in this castle. He's like, We're in a library, we have the best weapons here, and that's that's what I tell everybody get any book you can find. There's a there's a lot of them on Amazon.
That's I mean, I do a lot of ordering off there online and just keep studying. But also, if you if you want a beginner's course in a direction to go, you can contact Bishop Long through the old Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky at like the paranormalclergy at gmail.com. I think he's the one that does the classes. Like I said, it's only fifty dollars. The first class, like you go through everything that he has learned. The second class, you take a test, the third class is a face-to-face on computer because a lot of times he can't travel, especially right now.
He's he's not been doing really well after the many exorcisms he's done. He, I think he's done like 20 something of them.
Oh gosh, yeah, and it's taking a toll on his health. I can imagine, like, whether it's through you know interactions with him or even through your own interactions, uh, one of the things that is often described is that every encounter with the demonic can seem to rob you of your love of life, it's like you're it's almost being sucked out. Yeah. Is that does that ring true for you or from you know your experiences? It does.
And the first time I actually there's a there used to be, I wish it was still on Netflix. There was a documentary on Netflix of hostage to the devil about Malachi. And you know, whenever I think it was him that says, you know, whenever you do an exorcism, it takes a little piece of your soul.
Okay, there is a discrepancy there. I really want to know why.
Like, I I wish I could know the truth.
I I do too.
Um like I friends with a couple of people that knew him, and I it's just it's something I'm even afraid to ask them because I don't want to start a controversial thing and stuff like that. Right. I know whenever I go into a house and there's actually actually a a demonic or something, and I have to do a even a blessing of this home or something. I get me personally, I mean it affects each one of us differently. I get these headaches that cannot be explained. The first time it happened, I had I was in the hospital for a while.
Oh god, and they couldn't figure out what was causing these headaches. Like they drawn so much blood, did all these scans and stuff like that. At first, they thought it was like cluster headaches or cluster migraine. Then they thought it was stress. It was like, I'm not really stressed. I was a stay-at-home dad at that point, but then it went away. Then I go to somebody else's house and who's got the same problems, take care of their house, then the headaches back. I was like, Okay, two out of two. Maybe there's something going on here, and it still happens.
Whenever I do that, I get these headaches, they don't last as long. Like that first one was like it lasted a month. Oh, bless your heart. Yeah, now, like, now the longest one I've had has lasted a week and it just will not go away, but they'll usually last about three straight days, and yet you still persist in doing this. I have to.
What drives you? I really want to know, and I'm not questioning you. I understand this all too well. Like, I want it to become a priest in order to make this my mission, so I get that drive. But what drives you personally? I have to help people.
I'm not a cop, I'm not a fireman, I'm not superman. There's other problems that people deal with that none of these other heroes in our eyes, you know, could do. I mean, I'm not calling myself a hero by no means. Please don't think I am. But you know, when they're being turned down by the police because things are going on in their house, it's not human. A lot of police laugh at them. There's more policemen now that believe in it than what we all think. And, you know, like like with that one group that I was telling you about, when they're even shunned away from the Catholic Church.
No, I'm not going to bless your house. You know, these people are thinking that they're legit crazy and they have nobody else to turn to to talk to to help them. Somebody has to be there to help them.
That answer paired with bringing Doctor Who up earlier, you are a hero to me. 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.