I’m pleased to announce that a new book is available starting today, The Penguin Book of Exorcisms by Joseph Laycock. From the promotional material made available by the publisher:

While researching The Penguin Book of Exorcisms, Professor Laycock discovered sources and translations that haven’t been previously reported or published, including:

·         The most “unpublished” text is The Earling Possession Case which literally begins with the words “These are not to be published through the press or through the pulpit.”  This is a well-known case and there was a secret church account of what happened that contradicts that the story that was published (the exorcism was not, in fact, successful).

·         The diary of Joseph Pitkin has never been transcribed and reproduced in full before.

·         The hadith of Ahmad b. Hanbal is an original translation.

Plus, an interview with Laycock, also made available by the publisher:

Which of your resources and research discoveries are being revealed for the first time in THE PENGUIN BOOK OF EXORCISMS? Did anything you came across upend commonly held beliefs about demonic possession and exorcism?

I was granted permission to reproduce a letter from a Catholic priest to his bishop requesting to perform an exorcism.  That exorcism took place in Gary, Indiana, in 2012 and the case was subject of the 2018 documentary Demon House by ghost-hunter Zak Bagans.  I am interested in this letter as someone who studies church history.  Priests must receive permission from their bishop to perform an exorcism, but I am unaware of any other example of a letter like this that has been made available to the public.

The text I am most excited about is a secret account of an exorcism that occurred in Earling, Iowa, in 1928, written by a priest who was friends with the exorcist.  That exorcism is well known, but the “official” version of the story was that the exorcism was a success.  This text shows it wasn’t––the woman’s possession kept going.  Furthermore, she was delivering prophecies that world would end in 1955!

Another famous exorcism is that of a Zulu girl named Clara Germana Tele in South Africa in 1906.  I was able to find the original account of the exorcism written by the missionaries involved, which had been nearly lost.  I was also able to access a handwritten diary from 1740 by a merchant named Joseph Pitkin who encountered a possessed woman on a business trip to Boston.  Historians knew about this diary but to my knowledge this was the first attempt to type up the full account.  Pitkin’s handwriting is beautiful but hard to decipher in places! None of this would have been possible without the work of professional librarians who maintain archives and work with researchers.

How does your background make you uniquely qualified to write this book? Have you ever witnessed an exorcism?

I’m a professor of religious studies.  No academic field is well equipped to study the phenomenon of possession.  It would be unethical for scientists to do laboratory experiments on allegedly possessed people.  Historians struggle to interpret accounts of things like levitation that are normally understood to be impossible.  If a text reports a natural phenomenon like a flood or a disease, historians know what kind of evidence could corroborate or contradict that report.  But we’ve never seen someone levitate, so we have to either assume out of hand that the story is false or concede that we don’t know what kind of evidence to look for.  Religious studies isn’t much better at these problems, but we have at least acknowledged that it is important to be think critically about these sorts of accounts without being dismissive or smug.

I have spoken with people who have performed or assisted in exorcisms but I have never observed one firsthand.  To me, this would feel like spying on someone else’s therapy session.  Whatever is happening to people who undergo exorcism, I don’t believe it should be a spectator sport.  In early modern Europe, public exorcisms often preceded executions and political intrigue.

Why do you think we remain endlessly fascinated with demonic possession?

A foundational assumption of our society is that we are stable, autonomous individuals who go about making rational choices.  But I don’t believe we know our own minds as well as we think we do.  Nietzsche wrote, “A thought comes when ‘it’ wants, not when ‘I’ want it; so that it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think.’”  We can’t always explain how we suddenly get brilliant ideas, or why we do things that we know will have bad consequences in the future, or why we sometimes snap at our friends for no good reason.  Whether or not we attribute these experiences to the influence spirit entities, I think we see something of ourselves in possessed people: Sometimes we all act as if possessed.  Possession stories remind us that we are haunted by parts of ourselves we do not fully understand.

Carlo Maria Vigano, an Italian archbishop of the Catholic Church who once served as the Vatican’s diplomatic representative to the U.S., called on his fellow clergy to perform a “mass exorcism” on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday 2020, in order to quell Satan’s “frenzy” during the coronavirus pandemic. Are exorcisms more prevalent during times of strife and panic? If so, what accounts for this?

These kinds of public exorcisms seem to occur in times when something has disrupted the social order.  The “golden age” of the demoniac in Europe was not the dark ages, but the centuries following the Protestant Reformation.  During Europe’s wars of religion, public exorcisms became a way of proving which religion was true.  Previously, church authorities had taught not to listen to demons, but suddenly everyone wanted to question possessed people and hear what the demons had to say!

In the United Kingdom, law enforcement has issued a warning that the Covid-19 pandemic may lead to people hurting children during exorcisms.  Religious responses to Corona include both claims that it is a punishment from God and an attack by Satan.  Both explanations are comforting because they imply that there is some intelligence controlling the pandemic and that it is not a random event that was likely inevitable in a globalized world.  Attributing the pandemic to supernatural beings also implies there is much more individual people can do to control it, either by appeasing a wrathful God or waging spiritual warfare against Satan.

What are some of the signs of demonic possession? How can you tell the difference between authentic possession and hoaxes or mental illness?

Some of the classic signs of demonic possession include the ability to speak in languages one has never studied or to know things one could not possibly know, aversion to holy objects, superhuman strength, and levitation.  However, some contemporary “deliverance ministers” will claim anything from diabetes to a stubborn personality can be evidence of demonic influence.

In some cases, there is overwhelming evidence of mental illness or hoaxing.  Martin Luther reportedly once exorcised a girl simply by kicking her––apparently the kick caused her to lose interest in playing the role of a demoniac.  But even when there is no evidence of these things, it doesn’t prove the presence of demons.  One of the themes of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is that there is no way to empirically prove demonic possession is real. Father Karras invites the demon into him and his body is found with a look a peace on his face––I always thought this was because the only way a skeptic can be certain demons are real is to actually be possessed!

What is the most extreme case of demonic possession you came across?

One of the cases included in the book is testimony from a murder trial that occurred in Sudan in 1913.  A family believed their daughter was possessed and handed her over to a man claiming to be an exorcist.  The exorcist tied her to a tree and beat her for days, eventually strangling her to death.  At that time Sudan was under British control and the British judge is struggling to understand local beliefs about spirit possession.  He keeps asking witnesses why they saw a man beating a tied-up girl and did not intervene.  They answer that he said he was an exorcist and seemed like he knew what he was doing.  Eventually the exorcist tells the judge that he was possessed too and that his spirit went to war with the one in his patient.  The judge was not impressed by this explanation and the man was executed.

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF EXORCISMS takes a global and historical look at demonic possession. Briefly, what are the differences in how major world religions view demonic possession and exorcism?

Nearly all cultures believe in some form of spirit possession but the types of behaviours that are attributed to possession are different.  In many cultures ordinary illnesses such as fevers might be attributed to spirits.  This is true even in early Christianity.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus heals a woman who has been “crippled by a spirit” for eighteen years.  Christianity is somewhat unique in framing possession exclusively in demonic terms.  (From an anthropological perspective, speaking in tongues is a form of spirit possession, but Pentecostal Christians would not define it this way).

The book has several examples from cultures where exorcism is more about solving a problem than conquering the forces of Satan.  In Haitian Vodou, spirit possession is a normal part of the religion.  The exorcism described in the text was necessary only because sorcery was suspected.  In Hasidic Jewish stories about the miracle-worker the Baal Shem Tov, the Baal Shem Tov uses exorcism to restore harmony instead of casting demons into hell; spirits of the dead are helped to move on and demons are relocated to a well where they will not bother humans.  A psychiatrist observed a family from a Yakima Indian Reservation who performed a sort of exorcism ritual when their daughter was experiencing hallucinations.  The family believed ancestor spirits were calling their daughter to become a healer; the ritual essentially communicated to the ancestors, “Thanks, but no thanks.”  The psychiatrist did not assume the spirits literally existed but he reported that the hallucinations ended.

Many of us have read the William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist or have seen the subsequent film. Was it based on a true story? If so, what parts of the book/movie were true and what was created for dramatic effect?

In 1949 Blatty was a student at Georgetown University and he read an article in The Washington Post entitled, “Priest Frees Mt. Ranier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.”  Blatty was a doubting Catholic and his spiritual doubt is reflected in his character Father Karras.  Blatty wanted the story to be true because if demons were really possessing people that meant God might exist also.  We now know that the boy was from Cottage City, not Mount Ranier, and that the exorcism was performed at a Jesuit hospital in Saint Louis.  Georgetown University (where The Exorcist is set) is a Jesuit school.  Blatty persuaded the priests to show him a diary of the exorcism.  They also tutored him in demonology for about two years and so The Exorcist contains features from several famous exorcisms.

The boy in the Cottage City case experienced words that appeared to have been spontaneously carved into his body and this is depicted in the film.  The tradition of “testing” demoniacs with fake holy water dates back to sixteenth-century France, as does the idea that possessed people are extremely flexible and can contort their bodies (Blatty did not like that in the movie Regan’s head can spin all the way around, objecting that this would be impossible.)  Blatty studied the 1928 Earling case, which featured a woman tied to a bed, extreme projectile vomiting, and a form of levitation.  Finally, I think the ending was inspired by the exorcism of a convent of nuns in Loudun, France, in the seventeenth century.  In that case, Father Surin, one of the exorcists, believed he had become possessed himself.  All these cases are featured in the book.

Nearly everything in The Exorcist is based on something from Blatty’s life.  Chris MacNeil is based on Shirley MacLaine, who was once Blatty’s neighbor.  When I saw Blatty at the SXSW film festival in 2000 someone asked why the demon was Pazuzu.  He answered that he saw a statue of Pazuzu in a museum while he was working for the Foreign Service in the Middle East and that “it scared the hell out of him.”  

The possession of an entire convent of Ursuline nuns in the French town of Loudun in 1634 is one of the most famous and spectacular cases of exorcism in history.  Fueling the case was the trial of the Lothario priest Urbain Grandier, who was ultimately burned at the stake for witchcraft. Is there a plausible explanation of how an entire convent was allegedly possessed? What were some of the behaviors the nuns exhibited?

This was a very famous case and it has had numerous adaptations including Ken Russell’s film The Devils (1971) and Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun (1952).  The exorcisms went on for months and numerous people were invited to watch.  During these exorcisms the nuns made noises like animals, blasphemed, exposed themselves, and said things that, according to one observer, “would have astonished the inmates of the lowest brothel in the country.”  It was also alleged that they could understand languages they had never studied and could levitate.  Some of them vomited up bizarre substances including, in one case, a contract that had allegedly been signed by Grandier and several demons.

For all this, there were plenty of people who observed the nuns and concluded nothing supernatural was occurring.  Medical doctors diagnosed the nuns as suffering from furor uterinus––essentially a form of hysteria.  At one point several nuns confessed that they had faked the whole thing and begged for the exorcisms to stop––but of course the exorcists interpreted their confession as a demonic trick.  There is evidence that the phenomena in the convent began with innocent pranks that were likely carried out by teenage nuns who were extremely bored with life in a convent.  Grandier’s many enemies saw an opportunity and coached the nuns both into acting as though possessed and into accusing Grandier of bewitching them.  Grandier’s demonic pact was almost certainly planted and “vomited up” using slight of hand.  At the same time, some nuns seemed to genuinely believe they were possessed, especially Jeanne des Anges, the convent’s young mother superior.

Huxley felt that what happened in Loudun was an important case study in social psychology that could be used to interpret the fascist movements of twentieth-century Europe.  He concluded that on some level we do not want to be free, rational beings who are responsible for our actions and that sometimes we desire some larger force to engulf us and obliterate our personalities.  Huxley saw this as the motivation for people joining radical political movements and participating in mobs.  I actually find his conclusion more disturbing than demonic possession.

What historically has been the Catholic Church’s position on demonic possession and exorcism? Has it changed much over the centuries?

In medieval Europe exorcism was understood more as a disease of the body than a disease of the soul.  If someone was sick and wanted an exorcism there might be a number of different people or rituals that could help.  After the Protestant Reformation, Protestants mocked these practices an unbiblical and essentially “witchcraft.”  One way the Catholic Church responded was to make official protocols for exorcism that were published in the Ritual Romanum in 1614.  These specified there was only one way to do an exorcism—that it could only be done by priests, and only with the permission of their bishop.  During the Counter-Reformation, demonic possession was re-imagined as a spiritual condition and it came to be associated with saintliness.  The idea was that demons attacked deeply religious people because they saw them as more of a threat than sinners.

The Catholic Church is designed to be a unified global church that also has different local expressions.  This is why the decision to approve an exorcism is left to the discretion of the local bishop: In one country an exorcism could be an embarrassment for the church and in another it could be a political asset.  In early modern France there were examples of bishops and cardinals who saw exorcisms as opportunities to advance their political goals, such as pressuring the crown to condemn Protestant Huguenots.  But in the Unites States, Catholics have been a minority and Protestants have portrayed them as superstitious immigrants.  Accordingly, American bishops have traditionally viewed exorcism as an embarrassing matter that should be kept secret.  When news spread of the 1928 exorcism, many American Catholic authorities were horrified.

All this changed after the movie The Exorcist came out in 1973.  Suddenly everyone thought they were possessed and wanted an exorcism.  And if the Catholic Church wouldn’t do it, there were now plenty of Pentecostals and Evangelical “deliverance ministers” who were happy to cast out demons.  In a few decades exorcism went from being a liability for the Church to being asset and the exorcists were invited in from out of the cold.  The International Association of Exorcists is a group founded by Father Gabrielle Amorth in 1991 (Amorth was also a huge fan of The Exorcist.)  In several interviews Amorth claimed his organization was being snubbed by The Vatican.  But in 2014 it was given recognition by the Vatican’s Congregation of Clergy.  Currently, exorcism seems to be coming back in a big way, especially among more conservative Catholics.