Possession or Mental Illness

And dead of night, that is when the spirits creep. As the bell tolls three dark things take power, we like to call it the supernatural hour. Welcome to the supernatural hour where you're back. I'm Raven.

This is Doc. Emmet and Chad's here. We're excited to be back with you today. And Rogue wasn't with us today.

She'll be back in the near future. She got to go hang out in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving and now she's super tired. All the party and she did. Okay, the business is brought to you today by Castle PhotoArt.

We just want to say hi to our patrons and thank them for their support. We're really excited to have them participate with us and help us on this fun adventure. I'm just a little heads up. I know that Castle happened to get some really cool new equipment.

So give them a ring of being. Yup, Castle PhotoArt. So we don't have any public investigations in December, but we are encouraging everybody to donate to the Utah Food Bank. UtahFoodBank.org.

So go on out to their website and donate directly to them. Yeah, that's because of the time. So let's spread some love and cheer to those that might be struggling a little bit this year. That totally rhymed.

You're so talented. We should put music to that. So I understand we did have an interesting investigation. Raven, why don't you tell us about that?

We did. This one was interesting. A lot of times we will get tenants from the Foreplex and apartment building and they're concerned that the landlord will find out. This time it was the landlord that was concerned that the tenants would find out that we were there.

So we actually met and we sat in the car in front of the apartment building and did an investigation from the car. And we did let her know, you know, this isn't going to be a super in-depth investigation. From the car? Probably not.

I have to hand it to the client. She contacted me. You know, of course, I don't just randomly search out people. Hey, we saw your apartment here.

Hey, your house looks haunted. Can I come in? Exactly. No, she contacted us and some of the issues that she had been having was she just had a bad feeling.

She just she's pretty sensitive and she could tell that something wasn't quite right. And then they've had some damage done that they can't explain how this damaged and she didn't go into detail in the damage. And I didn't ask much about that again because we were in the car. One of the things that I did find interesting and it was the way that before she explained different things, you explained to her what you were feeling.

Yes. So go into that because I think that's interesting because it wasn't her telling us it was you telling her what you felt and how that went down. Right. So there was me and then we have a new investigator.

Her name is Kristi and she and I both felt the same thing, just kind of a heaviness, angst, anxiety, and not malevolent. Just anxious would be the best, but like a heavy, anxious, like really, really extreme, heavy, almost like I'm trying to do something and I can't and I'm just stuck. I seriously drove up to the property or just in certain areas. Just as we drove up because again, we drove up and I think I only got out of the car to get in the back of the car to get out.

And we were there a few minutes before she was and so Raven was kind of, you know, put out the feels. We don't want to get out and walk around because it's a tenant. These people walking around so it was all done, you know, kind of mission impossible ask. Was this like a single unit or was it a multi-unit?

Fourplex, fourplex. Or just picturing you, burning sage outside. It's probably best that I didn't show up with a telephoto lens and a parabolic microphone and probably a couple of eyebrows. The policeman would have come by and said, hello.

So I have to give credit to this lady. I texted her and I said, hey, we're here and she texted back and said I'll be there in just a couple of minutes. And then I said, when you get here, stop in the car with us. I thought, how creepy is that?

I've never met these people. I'm just going to hop in their car with them. Can you get in the white van? We have for you, Kim.

But she was so nice and she kind of explained to us apparently back in the, because she said the building was built in the 60s and apparently sometime between the 60s and the 70s, someone had died in there, a young man and they weren't sure if he was murdered or killed. They weren't sure what the situation was. Yeah, I guess murder killed to do the same thing. Suicide or killed.

And I, you know what, did we ever determine which one? Did we ask that question? We did and they didn't have the information. She tried to get the information.

I don't know that we asked that. I don't know that you asked that through the tools, but I don't think we did. Yeah, and I'm blanking out that because this young man, because we didn't contact with him, he was the one that was feeling the heavy, heavy anxiety because he wanted to cross, but he didn't know how. And I tell you what, usually we'll give the spirits a name so that we can talk to them and not just be like, hey, dude, and we'll ask them, you know, do you like the name?

But he was so anxious to be crossed that they're just, I just didn't even feel like I wanted to ask him a lot of questions because I felt his best interest was just to cross and continue on. He was ready. So he couldn't, he couldn't find a place to cross or he was just apprehensive about it. Yes, he couldn't find it.

I've never had a spirit cross so fast. Boom, he was gone. Cool. And like I said, I just had the feeling of don't interrogate him just letting go is the feel I got.

But the interesting thing is when we first got there, we didn't, since we were sitting in the car, we didn't pull out a ton of equipment. I had the K2 meter, I had the ghost meter pro and I had my dowsing rods and I always used the dowsing rods last. And as soon as I pulled up, turned on the K2 meter, it was lighting up, lighting up, lighting up. And I thought, oh, it's got to be something in the car.

So we turned the car off. But if it was something in the car, it would have just stayed on, but it would go all the way up, but then I'll go down. And then I mean, you could almost have the feel I've had. Well, it was probably in the car.

It just wasn't the car. It wasn't. It wasn't. And the play that I was getting on the K2 meter was the same when on occasion I've run into a child that just likes to play with it and see the pretty lights.

And so we asked if there was a child there and there was. It was a little girl. So you've already crossed over the male spirit. Yes.

So that was out of the way and done. And we were still getting activity and there were still some things. Touch based just a little more on the landlord, the woman. And after you gave her your explanation, she like said, yeah, that's exactly it.

She was surprised at your coming to that conclusion without any information. Right. Because Kristi and I both told her what we were hit experience and what we felt. And she was, you could tell that she was impressed and not like we're trying to be on press.

It's just nice when everyone's information kind of gives us some credibility to where the clients go. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

You know what you're doing? You're feeling it validation? Yes. Yeah.

From her and there wasn't any prepping of her beforehand or that kind of stuff. It was it was her. Raven and Kristi gave their explanations of what they were feeling and you could see the whole time when they were talking her just shaking her head. Yeah.

And I couldn't see her because she was sitting right behind me. I was looking and she was shaking her head. You could see her just going, yeah, they, you know, they completely are on on this as far as what, you know, what she had experience. Right.

So the little girl is about nine. She wasn't attached to the land. She just kind of, you know, the apartment building anyway. She just kind of showed up and like that.

There's a five year old boy that lives with one of the tenants, one of the children there that she likes him, not like likes him, but you know, it's another child. Apparently she has been the one that's been causing the damage and not, she's not doing it purposely. She's a nine year old girl. And I don't think she realized, I think she was trying to get some attention.

I think she was trying to be funny because she was kind of a precocious little thing. Not trying to be me, not trying to be a jerk. Just a nine year old tease. You know, just a kid trying to be funny and not realizing that the funny was causing damage.

And so we had a chat with her. The tenant said she could stay as long as she quit doing damage. And you know, we told the client, you can just set boundaries and spirits will follow those boundaries. And we actually made, and the little girl said she would abide by those boundaries.

One thing I haven't told you yet, because it came through on text, is apparently this little girl followed the tenant's husband home and is kind of been messing with the husband a little bit husband, doesn't like it. So we're probably going to go to their home, the landlord's home and we might have to evict the little girl because it's given the husband the creeps. She's cleaning the apartment, she can cleanse it too. Yes.

Next time, you know, the shampoo and the car bits are on, they're just sneaking real quick. Right, because we told her we said, you know, there could be spirits, spirits can be very territorial and there could be spirits that are just hanging out in someone's closet. They're not going to come out to the car to talk to us. Oh, hey, there's people here to talk to us.

Come on, honey. Go sit in the car with everybody. So when we go in, we might find some more, some different ones. We don't know.

So we've got one at least, maybe two more investigations coming from this one. Interesting. That was a very interesting investigation. It was a different investigation.

But we've done different. We've done zoom investigations. We've done car investigations. Very flexible.

Yeah. You think you got something going on? Call us. We'll find a way.

It's interesting. We have discovered we can do zoom investigations. The one that we did, the spirits can't manipulate the equipment. But Charles can talk to the stair guys so we can use the dalsiurons.

So it's not an in-depth investigation, but it gives us a good idea for where to go. We did one in Indiana and we had to call some people to go help her that we're local because she needed some more help than we were able to give. But we were at least able to come to that point over zoom. So.

Well, virtual investigations. That's amazing. So what COVID will do. Our main topic is brought to you by OTAOs.

It's fabulous, fabulous, Mexican. And it's a little different Mexican, but you'll love it. There's two locations, Linden and Orm. Look it up.

Go out to their website. So that Mexican food is high and it is delicious. It is beautiful and it's delicious too. I'll have to go again soon and we'll talk about a specific dish.

Okay. Our main topic tonight is mental illness versus possession paranormal activity. Now I have to give a little disclaimer before we do this. I'm so excited about this topic.

I think this topic is fascinating and Castle never let me do it. Did you hear that Castle? I'm doing it. And I get why this is a topic that can be very sensitive.

It gets into a topic that's difficult. I've dealt with mental illness in my family and it's not a pretty thing. It's not an easy thing to cope with. It's nothing to make fun of.

It's nothing to make light of. So one thing when I took my demonology course and one thing that any good paranormal investigator should be asking if someone is exhibiting signs of possession and or seeing things as. And I've actually had to ask this question a couple times of, you know, are there, are you taking any medications that could be hallucinogenic? And we're not trying to say you're crazy.

This isn't paranormal, but you just want to give the client the most accurate information. And you know, if they're being possessed, we want to take care of the possession. If they're being seen things through the medication, we want to make sure that that's what it is so they can contact your doctor and maybe have some adjustments or something on that. I'll add as well.

You know, I've seen a lot of people in psychotic states and a lot of times they'll be hyper-religious. There'll be references to paranormal things. They're, you know, you'll see a lot of that overlay. And I'm a fairly open-minded skeptic.

So when it comes to a lot of this stuff, you know, if I can pin it on mental illness, I'm probably going to be non-mental illness. Sometimes there are things like making it rain inside, which may be a little difficult to pin on mental illness. So before we jump into the topic, I want to just touch on just a couple other things. I think another reason why we haven't discussed this topic yet, besides the fact that it's sensitive.

And you know how we are. We joke. We want very, very, we want you to know that if we do make light of something, it's just a lighten up a heavy topic. We are in no way, shape or form, making fun of mental illness like I've said before.

I've dealt with it on a personal note and it's not pretty. And it's, you know, my heart goes out to anybody that deals with that. I think we all have mental illnesses to a certain degree, every single person on the planet. But one reason is that it's such a broad, broad topic.

So tonight, you know, we might do another round down the road. But tonight we want to talk about kind of three specific things, which are generalities, but this is a good place to start. So the first theory does mental illness lead to possession? Kind of the second theory, this possession leads to mental illness, so kind of which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

And then a third idea of do culture still play mental illness or things they don't understand on the parallel. And spoiler alert, I think yes to all, but let's delve into it. OK, so let's go ahead the theory, the first one. And honestly, the first one was the hardest one to find much stuff on.

I had to kind of go from my own experience, but does mental illness lead to possession? The little bit of research that I did, the time I had available, it was what I found was that the medical industry, medical science, the medical profession, every time we're studies done comparing like paranormal episodes to classic psychotic episodes. And but they would always try to, when they were different, while they were differentiating it for the study, they would always try to find some other cause for the paranormal episode. Like it was brought on by delusion or something.

So I got the feeling that they were never really comparing a classic psychotic episode to a real paranormal episode in the first place. They were trying to blow the paranormal episode off as something else, something behavioral and not paranormal. Right, like I said, of the three kind of talking points I wanted to hit on tonight, this one was the most difficult to find kind of where I wanted to go with it. That being said, two things.

When we go and talk to a client, the phrase we will use is these demonic entities, these type three's will always find the weak link. We use the phrase the low hanging fruit, which has a negative connotation to it. And it shouldn't be low hanging fruit. It just means the fruit that's on the bottom of the tree.

That's the easiest to get. And these types of entities, they don't want to work very hard. They're super patient. They'll wait forever, but they don't want to work very hard.

They'll ignore skeptics completely. You know, you're right. You know, it's interesting too. And you'll probably go into this, but mental illness is such a broad category.

There's going to be anything from depression to anxiety to social phobias to. Seeing little green people. It's a pretty interesting psychosis. Right.

They're all there's all there are all varying types of mental illness. And I guess if you ask the question, can mental illness, but you at risk for a possession? If you believe that negative entities feed on negative energy and you deal with depression, yeah, I guess it seems plausible. Exactly.

And that's kind of where I was going with it is if the mental illness, a chemical physical issue with your psyche is your weak link, these entities are going to work on that. We've seen it. We had an investigation in South Utah County and this has been several years ago. There was a 14 year old boy there who was autistic and there was a demonic entity that was absolutely targeting him because his autism is also on a huge spectrum and he manifested as being a little younger than his age, you know, mentally and in the way he presented.

I thought I know it starts with it. The way he presented himself, he wouldn't have thought he was 14. He would have thought he was much younger. And so the entity, you know, was making itself known to him and being his friend.

And this young man was convinced that it was his friend. And no fault of this boy. I mean, you know, he was autistic, he very trusting, very kind, very, very kind-hearted. And these entities, as you well know, if you followed us at all or followed this on any, you know, good ghost hunting group will tell you that these entities, the first step of possession is to get your trust.

And we will tell you on public ghost hunts, if you're talking to little Sally Sue in the corner, she wants to come home if you don't take her home because she's probably not little Sally Sue. It's probably Igor the Undine that wants to come home and try to possess you. And so Igor the Undine was in this 14 year old boy's home and was trying to convince him that he was his friend and he was not his friend. We actually have some EVPs from that home and it doesn't sound like any friend I want to have.

One little thing I did find online, I thought was very, very interesting. And I found a couple of things online and a lot of people like to post things online and not cite who they are. So this had no name to author, but it's from a website called Spiritual Science Research Foundation. It's online, it must be true.

That's right. I read it on the internet. I didn't even see it. I'm sure he did.

I read that on the internet. He, he had a system, he's an unknown author from the Spiritual Science Research Foundation kind of talked about about this mental illness leading to possession and he gave an analogy of a castle being attacked under siege. And so he kind of talked about how the defense system included walls and archers, food it had in the greenery. So kind of think of a person with all these different assets and the whole process could take a day.

It could take years. It just kind of depends on how strong your defenses are, how many lines of defense you have and everyone's going to be a little different. But once the castle's breached, the enemy is going to concentrate on expanding that breach and taking control of the castle, right? So how long is it going to take to breach these weaknesses, two factors, vulnerability of the person being possessed.

Are they vulnerable at a physical level or a mental level? And tonight we're kind of working on that mental level. So where are they mentally? And he actually went into a comparative spiritual strength.

And I found this interesting. They kept saying ghosts. We're going to say demonic entities because of ghosts. And he sounds nice.

It said that these entities cannot attack or possess a person with 10% more spiritual strength than their own. Spirits of higher spiritual strength can possess a person of lower spiritual strength very easily. And spiritual strength is obtained through spiritual practice. What does a 10% thing come from?

You know, he talked about it and it was confusing. So I... There's a spiritual strength meter. They just statistical runs with die rolls.

It's like borrowed from Dungeons and Dragons. It was a Dungeons and Dragons thing. Ah, I'm a power 19. There you go.

I think of it like muscles, you know, if you're 10% muscularly stronger, you can overtake someone 10% less. But it was more like a mental thing. How do you measure that? Yeah, so you quantify.

It's just weird that you would give a number, but then like, I don't know how you actually measure that. Right. And you know, and everyone's going to be different. Everyone's, you know.

That's even hard to measure, you know, from a, you know, human to human standpoint, even say intelligence, say you're 10% more intelligent. I mean, there's, you know, some IQ tests and there's things that you can do, but it's pretty hard to see you're talking about completely different entities. Right. And the idea is the stronger the spirit is, the more, you know, a weak spirit is not going to be able to take over a strong mind.

Right. It's your well fortified individual. If you're well fortified, something's not going to be able to overtake you. Right.

As easily as easily because we run into some demonic entities that we prefer to as little gnomes and they tuck tail and run pretty fast. You know, they're not going to be taken over anybody, but you know, the stronger you are, the stronger of a entity you're going to need to take you. Well, old age and treachery beats youth and exuberance every time and these, some of these demons are pretty old, pretty treacherous. Right.

You know, they, they're patient. They'll wait till they find someone that they're 10% stronger than. Or wait until they are. Exactly.

Only 9%. I don't know. Wait. Give it an extra percent or what have we got on the on the strength of the leader.

So first they have to create an environment for the possession. And so they're going to take advantage of situations that you stabilize the mind. You're also going to say, okay, this person, you know, has a weakness in their defense in this area and they're going to exploit that. They might do something along the lines of, you know, physical things, the skin rash, they're going to take advantage of that or make it a baby cryo night so that the parents are tired.

And that's straight out of a hell right there. I mean, this is where the mental illness would come into play. They notice something, you know, whether it's autism, whether it's anxiety, you know, whether it's something a little stronger than that. They're going to work on that and start to create the weakness in that foundation.

The next step would be point of entry, which would be breaching the castle. And a big part of this is personality. So if the personality of the possessed person is weak or the hoping to be possessed person is weak. The target.

The target that entity can possess that person at any time. So people are very vulnerable when they're overcome by desires, passions, being an emotional state. And again, if you're, you know, whatever your mental illness may be, if it's really wearing on you, if you're having an episode, and I mean that in the very kindest way, you know, if you are presenting your mental illness or the person's presenting their mental illness, that is a good time that where the sentinel is going to say, you know what, now is a good time because they're really struggling with anxiety today. Or this is a great time because there are questions getting them in the butt this afternoon.

Or exhaustion or right now. Now, I don't want people to go, Oh my gosh, I have depression and I'm having a really bad today today. Here come the demons. Here come the demons.

That's not what we're trying to say. This is actually extremely rare. So so please don't. For me, the demons are more of a stomach thing.

So right. So since if the possessed person has a strong personality, the entity has to wait for an opportune moment. So the stronger you are and anybody that has a mental illness, which again I said earlier, I think as all of us, I think we all have issues to one degree or another. And if you have that bad day or that bad week or that bad month, it's not all over.

You're not, you know, like, no, I'm possessed because everyone's got a really strong fortitude. And again, these are very, very, very, very rare. So please don't worry about anything. Yeah.

These may be risk factors, but it doesn't mean you're going to have problems necessarily. Right. So if a, if a, and this isn't just for mental illness, this could be for physicals, physical issues, or even just bad habits. For example, the example he gives is a spirit could possess an otherwise honest person, you know, if they have a moment of a dishonest thought.

And the possession as we've talked about before, isn't going to be instantaneous, but they're going to work on you. Oh, this honest person, they're thinking some dishonest things. So we're going to kind of scrape away at that foundation. I even think of things like sleep deprivation.

You know, they mentioned making the baby cry all night, but that physical, you know, an emotional toll that a lack of sleep is going to take on you might be caught in a moment of weakness. Right. So really when it came to the idea of mental illness leading to possession, is it a possibility? Absolutely.

And I don't know if it's more leading to possession or becoming more open to possession. Correct. It's just the whole point that I'm trying to make is if you're, if you're suffering with a mental illness and it's wearing on you, you could be open if an entity comes across and says, Oh, I found this person. This is their weak link.

We're going to work on that. But everybody on the planet has a weak link. Right. But I would also add, you know, if you want the best thing you can do is to focus on your mental illness and take steps to, you know, control or, you know, alleviate the symptoms that you're experiencing.

Right. And for me, if you're suffering with a mental illness, that mental illness does not define you. That mental illness is not who you are. You are who you are.

That happens to be struggling with this weakness. With the condition. Right. And there's therapies, there's doctors, there's medicines, there's systems, there's help out there.

So if you're struggling with a mental illness, please do what you can to find some help. And not just because of demonic, again, a demonic possession is so rare, but just for your own peace of mind. Because again, I deal with it often, not me, family member, and it's rough stuff. So the part that I found online that they talked about the most was the theory to, which does possession lead to mental illness.

And this one gets very religious, but I found it extremely interesting. By definition, if you're possessed, wouldn't you be mentally ill? Yes, that's what I would think. That would be my general take to or from the perspective of the scientific community, right?

Right. Anybody who is exhibiting. You're not of a sound mind. Right.

If you're exhibiting symptoms of possession, yeah, by default you would have some degree of instability. Right. And if you are possessed, your mind is being suppressed. And it's entities' behavior that's coming out.

Okay, so the second theory, if you Google this, this is what the internet has blown up with. We could talk about this one by itself for hours. What about though? So never fear.

So does possession lead to mental illness? And we already kind of discussed, you know, if you're being possessed, it's not your mind that's working. It's something else's mind that's working. And they're not going to be possessed for a reason.

And they don't know how to work a body. And they're angry and they're mad. But we're going to make some scripture here. Anyone opposed to some scripture?

So Matthew 828 in the New Testament. And when he was come to the other side of the country of your jesennies, they're met him to possess with devils coming out of the tombs, succeeding fears so that no man might pass by that way. And behold, they cried out saying, what have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

And there was a good way off in them and heard of many swined feeding. So the devils besought him saying, if thou cast us out, sufferst to go away into the heart of swine. And he said unto them, go. And when they were come out, they went into the heart of swine.

And the whole, the whole heart of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea and perished in the waters. And they that kept them fled and went their way to the city and told everything. And what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. So that's in Matthew.

So we know, if you believe in the Bible, that there are spirits and they do possess entities. I found it interesting. That was a story in Matthew. Matthew is like me.

He gives you just the facts. You can read the exact same story. I was either in Mark or Luke. I thought I wrote it down, but I didn't.

He gives more detail. Same story, more detail. And I won't read the entire thing to you, but I'll give you just the other details that you're missing. Jesus came out of the ship and they met him out of the tombs in man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs and no man could bind him, no, not with chains, because that he had oft been bound with fetters and chains and the chains had been plucked to sunder and the fetters broke in pieces and neither could any man tame him.

So he was wild and he had superhuman strength. He could break any any bounds that held him. And always night and day he was in the mountains and the tombs crying and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, ran and worshipped him.

And then they talked, we've already discussed this. Then he said, what is thy name? Jesus. And he answered, my name is Legion, for we are many.

So, you know, the rest of the story we've already talked about. But just, you know, some of this, and if you don't believe in devils and you see someone that's breaking these chains and just crazy and wild, you know, you would think, that man has some serious mental issues going on. So, in Acts 19, 13, there's another story. Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits in the name of the Lord Jesus saying we adjourn you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.

And there were seven sons of one, Sevica, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so. And the evil spirit and answered and said, Jesus, I know, and Paul, I know, but who are ye? And the man in whom the evil spirit was leapt on them and overcame them and prevailed against them so they fled out of the house naked and wounded. So there's another man that has possessed of a devil.

The devil came out and said, when I say the devil, the demonic entity, you know, knew who Jesus was, knew who Paul was, didn't know who the other men were, jumped on them, attacked them, and they, you know, attacked them to the point that they had no clothes on anymore, apparently, because they left the house naked and wounded. So that would be little de-devil, not big de-devil. Yes. Here we go, another story in Matthew, Matthew 1714.

And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man kneeling down to him and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic, and sore vexed, and off times he followed into the fire and off into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples and they could not cure him. You know, so there we've got falling down, he's a lunatic, he's falling into the fire, he's falling in the fire, he can't walk normally, you know, and they're not sure what's wrong with him either. Then Jesus answered him and said, oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?

How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Apparently it's Mark.

So here's the same story with a little more detail in Mark. And I won't read the whole thing because I just read it, but he said, Master, I brought into thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit. And wheresoever he take at them, he teareth him, and he fometh, and gnashes his teeth, and pineeth away. And so they brought unto him, they brought him unto Jesus, and when he saw him, straight away the spirit to tear him, and he fell on the ground and swallowed foaming.

And he asked his father, how long is it a ghost since this came to him, and he says of a child? And oft times it has cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him, but if thou can't see anything, have compassion on us and help us. And then people came running to see, and then when Jesus saw the people come running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, now dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried and rent him sore and came out of him, and was as one dead.

And so much that they said he is dead, but Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up in heroes. So there's several accounts in the scriptures, and I didn't even read all of them because this is not... Did Jesus hour? Jesus hour.

But if you google this, and if you want to see more stories and more talks of spirits possessing people in the scriptures, there are those are just some of the ones that I found interesting. Do I think that this is a thing? Yes. You know, I think that people who may not have a diagnosable mental illness that are possessed for whatever reason, I mean this one that we just read about was a child, why did it?

Why was this child possessed? Well, we don't know if we can talk about that. But just because someone is acting like a... As it says here, allunatic, doing strange things, filming at the mouth, falling into the fire, attacking people, breaking chains, it can absolutely, if you believe scripture, be a possession.

From a medical perspective, especially in the case of this child, last night in the man, it's just having seizures, right? And the reason for that is the, you know, acting as if you were dead afterwards, the filming at the mouth, a lot of times they get crazy confused and they get combative, either before or particularly after a seizure-like episode. And so, you know, I mean, I would assume this was some form of possession if Jesus casted it, you know, the doubles out and everything was fine. But it is interesting that, you know, everything that they listed, they're like, I can see this in people, they have seizures all the time, they're from the mouth, they're crazy, sometimes they try to fight me when I try to help them.

And then eventually after they have these long, they'll have these long, post-cacal phases where they just will link out and just lay there and you're like, you know, waving your hand over their eyes, are you still alive? What's going on? Yeah, I could definitely see that as epilepsy. And the scriptural passage did even present it as something evil, you know, it just described it as symptimatically, just as, you know, the Lord comes along and says, get out of there.

You're cured. Yeah, and maybe epilepsy is a demon. I don't know. I mean, I mean that in the sense that, you know, people talk about how they deal with their demons, you know, that they have a problem and, you know, maybe that's maybe that's a medical issue that Jesus cured.

Like a blindness, yep. And saying that's why this to me is so fascinating is because it's the whole, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Science says it's the chicken. I saw you two video on that the other day.

Oh, we're going to get to chickens and then science. Well, chickens is coming up. Perfect. We have more chickens.

All right. Do we want to discuss any more about this aspect? Yeah, just, you know, even a couple of the other cases that you mentioned, the one that was cutting himself with stones, we see a lot of self-injurious behavior and things like borderline personality disorder, for example, you know, and people that are full blown psychotic. I mean, they're people that, you know, just gets it funny and sometimes will go psychotic.

People who have bipolar disorder go into manic episodes. And so even in each of these cases where Jesus came and healed an individual who is exhibiting, you know, demonic possession, as you read through those stories, I mean, I can definitely pin, some medical diagnosis to almost each and every one of those. Right. And I tend to be a very religious person.

And, but I don't discredit the first theory that we talked about. That being said, I absolutely believe that Satan, the actual devil, the big D devil, doesn't want the world to know that he's around, doesn't want to know that possessions by these entities can happen. And so I think he loves to downplay it. Now, I'm not saying that epilepsy is not a thing.

It's absolutely a thing. Is it sometimes caused by a negative entity? A negative entity, I believe. Yes.

Is it also caused by purely physical, chemical things? I also think yes. So what you're saying is could there be symptoms that would be easy to pin on epilepsy that aren't necessarily epilepsy? Yes.

That means that if I were in the medical field, I wouldn't just say demon because Damn, that would make my job so much easier. I don't think I have a code for that. Is there a way to build that demonic possession? Yeah, I know there's no problem.

Evil aisle. Yeah, you got me out of the oh, but there's not one for demons. No, I don't think I will look. That is, I mean, there's this gigantic, you know, ICD 10 code thing.

I'm going to put in demonic possession and just see what comes up. I'm going to put it in the search bar. I'm interested. We want to hear about this.

All right. I will return and report. Inquiring minds want to know. So, but that is, you know, this could be one of two things.

And so as an investigator in order, you know, just like Doc doesn't want to say you have a demon and go home when it could be fixed medically because it's a medical issue. If we go into a house, we don't want to say, Oh, it's absolutely demon because we're ghost hunters and we want that to happen. And then, you know, the next week they die because they didn't go in. So, one day we'll have to have a license to do this and we don't want that.

Right. And so that's why, you know, we have to say, are there any medications that you're taking that could possibly be? Any medications you should be taking an arm and, you know, we always preface it with, you know, we just have to ask for your own safety and, you know, to give you accurate information. In methamphetamine, this encounter is a medication, but you should still let us know.

We have done with that. We have done with that. We had one guy. I told Castle, I said, you need to get here because she is either higher possessed.

And he did the sobriety test and it was nice. She was like, Hmm. So, I say, we don't know which jumped a demon. There's one more little aspect.

I want to talk about this. My mom, when she found out, if you've listened to us at all, you've heard the story of Time or Two, but we'll go into a little more depth. There's a, when Castle and I first started doing this, my mom was pretty convinced that we were evil and going to hell. And she brought us a book called Into the Darkness, I believe.

And in this book, she thought that she was going to show us, we'll post this up on YouTube. We'll have a picture of it in there so you can see it and I'll put a picture of this book on TikTok. But she was going to convince us out of our evil ways. And so she gave me a copy for Christmas and Castle a copy for Christmas.

And it's a pretty easy read. I mean, it's very interesting. It's a good book, but it's an easy read. And so, and it's not very big.

And so I was able to finish it in about two hours. And I gave Castle a call. I said, Mom, you do the same book. She gave me?

And he goes, yep. I said, did you read it? He goes, yep. I said, it kind of validates everything we're doing, right?

And he says, yep. And I said, I don't think she read it. He says, no, I don't think she did. It's a book by an LDS author and he is a seminary teacher.

And he actually dealt with over the course of his career, two or three kids that had been, you know, possessed and, you know, working with them on getting that taken care of. Just the things that he said, you know, that they were presenting to him could have been misdiagnosed as a mental illness when in the case of these two or three kids, it was actually possession. So it's just something that, you know, whether you're in the medical field, whether you're in the paranormal field, you really want to figure out so that people can get the proper help. Well, that's where his, you know, knowledge of the family came in handy, I'm sure.

Yes, absolutely. Kind of our third little concept. And again, I know we're really kind of breezing over this. Our purpose isn't to help you get your doctorate in any topic ever.

We just kind of want to get you thinking and toss around some ideas for you. If you guys want to hear more about this and want to hear more in depth, you can just let us know. Just email us, drop us a line and comment on our YouTube and we can get a little more into it. But the third kind of topic we're going to hit on tonight, do culture still play mental illness, possession or things they don't understand on the paranormal?

Absolutely. Aliens. Yeah, I guess that's kind of the modern take, right? Aliens.

Everything's aliens. If you don't know what it is, it's aliens. I can say, you know, I spent a little time in Tanzania and there's not very many, you know, the established medical system there is not very developed. And so most people, when they don't feel well, their first stop is to go to the witch doctor and overwhelmingly guess what a witch doctor is going to tell you.

Demons. Yeah, you're possessed by something, right? And here's a mixture of herbs or whatever that you need to take. Like a cure.

Right. And so, you know, when I was working at the National Hospital there, helping with the residency program, oftentimes I would see people come in and they were throwing up. And what I saw looked like coffee ground emphasis, that stuff we worry about in terms of, you know, we think that people may have cash from testimony. And the first time I saw it, I was taking back a little bit and one of the Tanzanian residents and doctors and I worked with our sister, that's what they do.

So I do know that people blame, you know, mental illness on the paranormal for sure, or not even necessarily mental illness, just any type of ailment. Anything? Can't be blamed on. Just bad luck and misfortune.

Exactly. You know, that it can be attributed to some form of spirit. Your cow died. Your chicken died.

You have headaches, you whatever. You know, there's that's kind of the first step in some of these rural parts of Tanzania. So getting back to the witch doctor thing with some of these are some of the remedies and I know you're didn't go into this thoroughly, but may some of those remedies, some of the things that they suggest be helpful or placebo. I mean, I see what could be a part of it, but may years and centuries of hand down information of other exhibiting this, you know, eat these roots.

Yeah. And it's like, oh, you know, it's a celic acid, you know, it's a form of aspirin and they learned it through trial and error and that kind of thing. Evil spirits, just what they call bacteria. Right.

You know, I think you're right. Some of these remedies, you know, I don't know because I obviously didn't follow it up on the success of these treatments, but the fact that they continue to be used throughout time may give some credence to an active ingredient that may be curative for what the element is. Right. I know that's how we discovered a whole bunch of medicines.

One guy 10,000 years ago pulled through. So that's the stuff. They kept trying it. You know, over time, you know, it's anecdotal evidence at that point.

I try this and this is what I see, but once you get enough of it, you know, you can start. It's a dream. Yeah, you can start reels it out. I could either try it or not.

It wouldn't surprise me. Right. There's actually a study done by Nooner, Fife, Shouse, or Kaiser, Odenwald in 2012. Just based on the name of the poem.

I believe it. You believe it? Yeah, whatever it is. Incredible man.

They actually investigated the prevalence of sin, CEN, which was a local variant of a spirit possession in Uganda. And a sin is a form of a spirit possession where the ghost of a deceased person visits the affected individual and replaces his or her identity. So basically just a possession. The study was done in youth between the age of 12 and 25 and war affected regions of northern Uganda.

And they compared them to youths who had been abducted and forced to fight as child soldiers. They had an army called the Lord's Resistant Army. And they waged this long brutal war to overthrow the government of Uganda. And they compared them with youths that have never been abducted.

So they reported that spirit possession was significantly higher in the former abducted child soldiers than in the non-abductees. They also found reports of the spirit possession were related to trauma, exposure, such as sexual assault or being forced to kill, to psychological distress, and to high rates of suicide and post traumatic stress disorder. But this still goes back to me to the chicken or the egg. Were they weakened because of all of the stuff to the point that they were just very, very vulnerable to actual spirit possession?

Or is it just so traumatic that it affected their psyche? I don't think either is possible. Absolutely. Or likely.

Yeah, that's interesting just to say, hey, people who have been through some serious stuff, people who have cause for the rest for psychological pain and torment are reporting possession at a higher level. I mean, this is a study that was done that showed that, right? Right. The basic conclusion was that areas of the world where beliefs about possession are widely held, they're usually the standard consequence for psychological trauma.

So there's an association there. Right. And then again, is that the actual thing? Or is Satan trying to downplay it?

Or... Oh, Castle, I could talk about this until now. So there's many ancient civilizations such as Egypt, China, Babylon, Greece, I believe that people exhibiting symptoms of psychopathology were possessed by bad spirits. Actually today we call it as demonology now.

And that the only way to exercise those bad spirits was with elaborate ritualized ceremonies that frequently involve direct physical attacks. And the idea was they would force the demons out. You punch in the face, the demon will just fly out the back of your head, sort of thing. Punch this demon out.

Oh, that's like the Japanese people that step out in front of moving cars to try to scare the demon away that's possessing them, right? Yeah, they said it's a torture, flaw game starvation. But not surprisingly, set-sactions usually just make it worse. With your action.

Some people already messed up, we're going to mess him up a whole lot more. We don't care if it's physical, mental, demonic, we're just going to make it worse. So yeah, if you're trying to exercise someone... Don't punch it out.

Don't do that. Don't do that. So here's just a little interesting tidbit. I'm talking about exorcists.

The United States, and this is hilarious how they wrote this. The United States is home to about 50 stable, and they put it in quotation marks, exorcists. 50 stable, exorcists. There's a lot of crazies out there.

So like 50 people you actually invited in your home? Yes. Okay. Is this through the Catholic Church?

Are these accredited? This is... I'll just read it. The United States has honked about 50 stable exorcists, those who have been designated by bishops to combat demonic activity on a semi-regular basis.

And this is actually up from just 12, 10 years ago. And this is according to a gentleman by the name of Reverend Vincent Lambert. He's an Indianapolis-based priest, exorcist, who was active in the International Association of Exorcists. And he himself on a personal level receives about 20 inquiries a week, double the number from when his bishop appointed him in 2005.

And I have noticed that just as an investigator, it seems like our investigations on a residential seem to get a little crazier every year. So I don't know if people are just having more issues with mental illness. I don't know if there's an uptick in demonic activity or a little bit about... That's probably COVID.

A little blank, COVID. I bet you could draw parallels with the increase in the homeless numbers. Probably. It's just a general transfer feature in society across a wider spectrum.

In conclusion, I'm going to talk about just two brief little things jumping if you want. There's a man by the name of Chris Cook. He's an honorary professional fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, formerly a consultant psychiatrist working in the field of alcohol misuse. That's a mouthful.

And he said, these three questions, meaning the three we talked about, are by no means exhaustive, but I do touch upon chief points that you should explore as you seek to determine the source of a person's problem. We need to have high regard for the scriptures and not be afraid to identify sin when we see it, whether in ourselves or in others. But we should also have a high regard for the good gifts that God has given in the creation of humanity such as mathematics, science, literature, and even medicine. Psychiatry is a medical science, one devoted to the study, diagnosis, and treatment of the human mind, one of the most fascinating organs of the human body.

We should not be too quick to dismiss the diagnosis of a medical physician, especially if we are not trained in medicine ourselves. I liked how initially that felt like medicine was an also ran. Yes, and even medicine, guys. And the thing I like to do is to write above reading bones or whatever.

Hold on, you're had tea leaves. So I actually misquoted that. That wasn't Chris Cook. That was also a no-named author, but it was on the Westminster Seminary California page.

And there was initials VFT, so I think VFT might have been the author on that one. But what I liked about that is he said both. It could either be physical or it could be spiritual. Go figure out which one it is and get the proper help.

And honestly, that is where that is what I feel. So what I want to do, before we finish our main topic and go on to Jump Drawer, I want to kind of hear everyone's thoughts. Who wants to start? I'll start.

Yeah, I think there are aspects of both. That mental illness can lead to possession because if someone is weak because of a mental illness, if there's something that's going on, they're more likely to be a target by entities looking to take advantage. But I think the other way can also go in. I think that entities can target someone and work on them and break them down and get them to the point where they're middle-ins.

But I think in both cases, it's not just the spiritual end of it. There's also the physical end of it. If your body is healthy and working correctly, this gets back to how strong are you. And this can be actually not just spiritually strong, but how strong is your body when you're whole?

Well, spiritually and physically, you have much higher defenses. Yeah, exactly. And I'm going to add to that because someone's going to be listening to this thinking, I'm not a strong person. I can guarantee anybody listening to this.

And I'm going to say anybody on the planet, you are much stronger than you think you are every single person out there. Doc, what are your conclusions? I've seen awful lot of psychosis, either induced by things like methamphetamine or people who have schizophrenia and are having an episode. I don't know.

I think it would be hard to distinguish sometimes because I've seen some stuff where I'm like, oh my gosh, this does not seem normal. Generally healthy doses of sedatives help in either of them. I wish I could share stories, but probably won't right now. It's right.

I finally can't get there. There's been times where people who suffer from psychotic episodes tend to be hyper-religious, tend to be hyper-sexual. And when we think about demonic possession a lot of times, there's a focus on spiritual things. And sometimes we're very vulgar stuff, right?

That's something that seems to be a key aspect of demonic possession is that people tend to save vulgar things. And I see that even with psychosis, so I think it is hard to tease out. Right, we've actually gotten, we've dealt with a couple of actual full-on possessions, a time or three, and we've actually gotten texts from demonic entities. And you can tell just by the language, just the words they use, the grammar they use.

It has all the same, the Latin they use. Written backwards? I don't know. It's, you know, every time I've seen it or heard it, you just go, oh...

You know what the data rates are to hell? Yeah, that's bad. That's why they're text-messaging. They're usually short.

They're stuck back in like 3G. That is hell, right? Video, you can't get video. They're using Nokia phones down there, guys.

Thanks for having a load up. And what are your conclusions? Earlier I was thinking, as you were referencing scripture, I wonder what, if there was the equivalent of a cat lady in Judea, you know, back then. So, I'm sure there wasn't.