The Roland Doe Possession

In the dead of night as people sleep, that is when the spirits creep. As the bell tolls three dark things take power, we like to call it the Supernatural Hour. Hey, welcome to the Supernatural Hour. As always, I am your host Raven.

I am Chad. I'm Drake. And I am Castle. Greetings, everyone.

Hello. So we are... Yes. We are in the throes of spooky season, and it is amazing.

It's been a busy month already, and we're only... well, I guess we're almost two weeks in. I know. And we've got so many investigations to talk about.

It's amazing. We got our website, contact us, fix, and holy cow. This month is going by so fast and full of ghost hunting stuff. So...

Oh, Castle, I got a... I sent you an email. Did you see it? When did you send me this email?

A little earlier today, somebody said how nice the thing looked to the new website. And they said that they just wanted us to know that they appreciated the update of the website and everything. So I thought I would send it on to you so that you could see it. Oh, thank you.

I appreciate it. I put a lot of work on that new website. So now if you want to contact us, you can do so at advancedfurneral.com through the contact form, and it comes to all of us. And guess what?

Weirdly specific complaints? That's the place to do it. That's how they did it, too. Because she sent an email, we're just gonna give her a little shout-out.

Her name is Jodie. So Jodie C. Thank you for the info. That was fun.

Thank you. All right. So today, we are going to dig into, as usual, the eerie, the unexplained and chilling stories. We try to blur the line between history and the supernatural because they can go hand in hand.

When we get into our main topic, we are going to go back to the year 1949 into one of the most infamous cases that started on Halloween night because that's what we're doing this month, this stuff that starts on Halloween night. And this is a case of alleged possession, probably one of the most infamous in American history. It is the story of Rolando. But first, Castle, you tell us a little bit about photo art.

So one of our sponsors for the show is Castle Photo Art, which happens to be yours truly. I am currently booking photography sessions. You can reach me at castlephotoart.com. And we do portraits, we do weddings, we do senior photos, we do photos of grandma.

But we don't do funeral photos yet. I still let's slow-litty. But we do all kinds of photos. So contact me if you let me know that you heard of us through the show.

I will give you a discount. And yeah, castlephotoart.com. So before we get started on our main topic today, I want to talk to you about an investigation that I went on. So yes, we run the West Team, but every now and then, I guess we who reaches out to me personally for an investigation.

And they're usually scary, they're usually demonic in nature. One's already reached out to me personally. And so I took a small team with me and my team consisted of Aurora, who some may remember from the podcast. And then I had a couple other West Team members who cancelled on me last minute.

And then I took Beaker or Tim, who some of our listeners may remember from the podcast. And then it was just a client. So it was a very small team. It was just three of us.

But it was a home in daybreak. And it was a gentleman whose husband, he had passed away five years earlier, taken his own life. But they'd been experiencing for years things inside their home. Specifically, they would see shadow figures in the kitchen by the stove when they'd see the shadow figure materializing to the wall.

The other thing they would see is their dog would be, start acting weird and whimper. And it would look at Tombow Area and Shriller Field, Tombow Area, they'd have some kind of activity happened. They had some really heavy interior shutters inside their home that swung open on their own. They're heavy duty and they'd take quite a bit of force to move.

So it's not something that could have just accidentally happened. They had random bangs. They had like touch-lamps that would turn on by themselves to the brightest setting. But that all kinds of activity.

But like I said, the gentleman's husband, he took his own life about five years ago. And even the activities that happened before then. But the activity has persisted until now. And so they reached out and contacted us.

During the course of our investigation, they showed me some video. They actually have video of the shadow figure that materializes into the oven because they've got video cameras all over inside the home. Anyways, we investigated the home. We found there was three human spirits in the home.

One of the spirits was of the gentleman who'd taken his own life, plus two other spirits. And we found a type three spirit in the basement, which was our shadow figure. During the course of our investigation, we found out that the gentleman who'd taken his own life had dealt with depression his whole life. And we figured the south were investigating not from the client.

And we found out that the type three spirit had actually pushed him over the edge to take his own life. It had actually been working on him. And for those who aren't familiar with them, I do mind accounting. They come in five phases.

One's encroachment, then you get oppression, or actually infestation, oppression, possession and death, or the five phases of demonic haunting. I don't know that possession ever took place in this particular haunting, but the gentleman's at the point where he did take his own life. It's pretty oppressed. Yes, it is.

Through the investigation, we're able to cross over all the human spirits and we're able to remove the types of spirit from the home. And so I was well, I haven't gone through the audio yet to see if I have any EPs, but it was quite the investigation. We had some serious dowsing around activity. We're getting good clear answers.

And then Aurora had a piece of equipment that was kind of like an oveless and we were getting probably some of the most real crazy relevant answers I have ever seen off any device since I've investigated over a decade. As we're trying to get the human spirits to cross over, the demonic spirit in the home kept using the device to help us to go outside, to go outside. It wanted us to leave. It was really trying to get us to leave it and it actually started us wearing at us, it called us filthy.

It was just a really fascinating and good investigation. When I was sent in, there was a lot of tears of joy and it was just a really neat experience. I was very happy with it. Yeah, Aurora had mentioned that she had gone on it when we were at their investigation at Petitney the other night.

She said what a phenomenal investigation. Yeah, it was really good. And I actually never investigated her before. I was actually really impressed.

She did an amazing job. And there may be another demonic investigation that is coming up in November, which we will be embarking on. So in that particular case, there has been an individual that every time he goes over to his friend's house, he gets scratched three times down the side of his face consistently. And for anybody who's familiar, ever studied demonic investigations, they usually do things in three and they like to scratch.

So I suspect it's going to be another one of those. That'll be interesting. All right, so just so you know, we have just a couple more of our patrons sign up perks left. So don't put that before they are all gone.

Once they're gone, we might not do it for a while. So don't think, I'm going to wait until the next time they do it, because I actually ordered some new things today to put in that even that we haven't had before. Some of those little bullet lights, we found some that are flat that can just sit without having to be anything. I think they'll be a lot nicer than the ones that we've had.

And again, we're going to be talking about something tonight that happened on October 31st. It started on October 31st. And our next podcast is also something that happened on October 31st, because it is spooky season. And we do spooky stuff in spooky season.

We do spooky stuff all year round, honestly. But we're just going to keep that going. I do want to give a little shout out to Adele. Hi, Adele.

Adele. Her, I don't know how to say who she is without calling her out. She listens to the podcast and she is going to be coming to the Springville Library for our Dettok. And her mom says that she's an avid fan of Supernatural Hour.

So we are going to call Adele our super fan. And we will see you soon. We are super excited to see you. Also speaking of our Dettoks, we have the Springville and Brigham City Dettoks coming up.

And less people get annoyed that I don't give out details like we did in our last podcast. I've got them right here. So Springville Library is at 6.30 pm on October 15th. And Brigham City is at 7 pm on October 16th.

So head out to those. We also have Indian Hills Horror coming up. The Indian Hills Horror, the Free Haunted House in Provo. There's actually two different kinds of nights.

There's a non-scare night. So if you want to go see it, if you're like, oh, that sounds so interesting, they've been talking about it, but I just don't like haunted houses or I've got little kids and I don't want them scared. You can go on October 23rd or the 30th. That's 7.

I think it goes 7 to 9. Non-scare nights, you can just go. You can see it. You can walk through.

If you're like, oh man, I really love the jump scares. I want to just have a true haunted house. Where are we going? We get scared and there's noises in the actors.

That will be the 24th, 25th and 31st starting at 8 o'clock and isn't it 8 to 10? 11 pm. 8 to 11. 8 to 11 on those scare nights.

Yeah. And last year they had over 2,500 people go through. It is a big deal. So my recommendation is go early.

The later you get there, the lines can get pretty long. They do get everybody through. So fast. The line is long, but it goes pretty quick.

And it is a really enjoyable fun haunted house. And then just to show how well our new website is working, we have gotten so many new gigs. Even just since the last time we talked to you, the last time we podcast, we have an invitation to do two school schools, which are those are commission private events. So we don't put those up on our calendar.

But school is kind of like our dead talk, but it's geared for 6th to 12th grade. The administrators call and ask us to come in. And they're fun. If you've been to our dead talk, it's tamed down, it's age-appropriate.

And then we've just had a radio gig come in. So we are going to be interviewed for our radio spot to do some ghostly Halloween stuff. So look forward to that. All right, let's just jump right in to our main topic.

It is sponsored by the Wild Bessel Cafe, which most of you know as formerly called the Family Tree. And as we said before, this possession is called the Roland Doe possession. It started in 1949 on Halloween night. But possessions as we all know are not just a one-night thing, because if they were just a one-night thing, they wouldn't be nearly as scary as normal, right?

This was something that just, it really shook the family. It shook the community. If I found out that someone was possessed in my neighborhood, I'd be all sorts of shook up. And then I think most people, you might say to yourself, I don't really recognize the Roland Doe possession.

You actually do, because this possession inspired one of the scariest films of all time, which you've at least heard of, the exorcist. So let's get into Roland and find out if he was really possessed. Or was it just a case of a misunderstood illness and some hysteria that came up about that? Which anytime we talk about possessions, we get that question all the time.

Is it mental illness? Is it possession? We even did a podcast on it not too long ago. So let's peel back the layers of the story and see what we can find out.

So if we just jump right in, Roland Doe is actually a student and he wants to protect his identity. That's not his real name. He's been described as quiet, he's quite an intelligent man, kind of lonely, 14 years old, and living in the suburbs of Washington, DC. So his closest companion, one of his best friends, was his Aunt Harriet.

And Cassell and I can kind of relate to that a little bit. We had our great Aunt Krista, who was kind of our best friend. She would tend to swim both of her parents' work. So when I was researching this, I thought, oh, I get that.

Well, his Aunt Harriet was a spiritualist and bless her heart. We know where we're going. I love my siblings heart. It's just like coming to say things about you now.

No, right. Bless her heart. She introduced him to a Ouija board and it fascinated him quite a bit. And you know our thoughts and feelings on Ouija boards and where Aunt Harriet was a spiritualist, maybe she knew how to work with it a little bit better.

But the average Joe doesn't and you can invite nasty things in. And I am just going to say, sorry to interrupt. I would argue that even somebody who quote, quote, unquote, knows how to use one safely doesn't truly not use one safely. I just think they're so incredibly dangerous.

They're just dumbass with them. They're just bad news. Absolutely, that's where I was going to go to. But I'm going to just go out on a limb and say a 14 year old, probably, especially a lonely one doesn't know anything about a Ouija board except that when he uses it, he has friends suddenly, right?

So he was obviously fascinated by the Ouija board and his Aunt Knight unexpectedly. And so understandably, Roland was just devastated. Well, it wasn't long after that the family, Roland's family started reporting unexplained disturbances. They would have things like scratching noises inside the wall.

Just some of the typical things, objects would be by themselves. They would hear footsteps when no one was there. And some of the things I read said that Roland's bed would vibrate at night. And then you'd also get things where you hear a lot with possessions where holy objects, statues, or pictures that are in the house, rattle or fall, they might break.

And so at the time, the family, their aunt, had just died. So the family's thinking, oh, Harriet Spirit is here coming back into our life. But actually, that was something a lot darker. So as we think about these things, I'm going to ask you guys a question.

You know, my thought simple for guys, I think a poltergeist is an adolescent who experiences something traumatic, and then they just, their grief is manifest in different ways. Do you think this could classify as something, these sounds, these things happening created by a psychological need? Or was it a spirit? It's just based on our work with demonic spirits, evil, wegiborgs, etc.

It amazes me the number of people I've talked to, even religious people who think that like demons in the scriptures are just a manifest, they're just a fancy name for mental illness. The demonic spirits are very, very, very, very incredibly real. Mental illness is mental illness, but demonic spirits are demonic spirits. They're not the same thing.

And wegiborg has been shown time and time again to invite in those spirits, especially if you have a 14-year-old boy who doesn't know some of the rules. And even if you do know the rules, they're not safe. But I'm guessing a 14-year-old doesn't know that he shouldn't invite something to come stay in his house or not challenge something. Or I guarantee you probably broke every single spiritual rule in dealing with an evil spirit that there is.

And so I doubt he's have anything to do with his grief. That may have driven him to use the board and the demonic spirit attached to it probably capitalized on that grief and manipulated him through that grief to make bad decisions and create attachments. But I don't think this is just like a poltergeist and his teen angstiness causing issues. Really these demonic spirits, they will seek to look for permissions to enter your life.

They'll look for permissions to attach themselves to you. They will look for invitations into your home. And every time you grant them those permissions, you create a hook for lack of better word and give them permissions. And for every permission that you give an evil spirit to get rid of that, you will have to break that permission.

You have to break that hook, break that contract, if you will. And so my guess is that Rolando probably inadvertently created, if not one, probably dozens of different contracts, different hooks through the use of the swiggyboard that caused this disturbance. And kind of like I mentioned earlier, you've got the five stages of a demonic infestation. And the first one is encroachment.

And that encroachment is using the Ouija board. That's where you make contact for the first time. And that encroachment works into infestation and infestation is going to be your holy object rattling. It's going to be your bed vibrating.

It's going to be footsteps. It's going to be all the little tail-to-ail signs of a haunting. And then from there, the next step is a pressure where things get really bad. So Ouija board, let's just jump into that because that seems to be a catalyst for this story.

You can get into boards. And lots of others. I know, right. Ouija boards, a lot of people think that they're just toys.

I remember being in grade school or in high school and kids would draw them on the back. So they're no books while they're supposed to be listening in class. Do you guys think that they can just be toys? And I think we've already answered this.

Or is it literally Roland and his aunt opening a door? I had an ABC board growing up, which I found out later was Ouija board. It was in our toy room for all of my growing up years. I don't know where it came from or where it went through my next question.

So I was just going to say that answers a lot. That explains a lot. Certain toy company thinks they're toys. Here's the thing.

Can it be just a toy? Can they be harmless? Yeah, honestly. So I've done a lot of study on demonic spirits.

I know what Raven has to. We've had a lot of cases involving demonic spirits and I know some people are like, oh, Castle things are things demonic. No, there's a clear difference. But you know, when you see it, we've dealt with it enough and it's far more common than people actually think it is.

But these spirits are thousands of years old. They're timeless, basically. And you know what? Drake could play with Ouija board and he can buy something in and it could take a decade before it decides he wants to do anything.

For whatever reason, it may decide that Drake is far enough gone that it doesn't want to do anything anyway. It's going to move on to someone else. So they can choose their target. So you could sell 100 Ouija boards as toys and 99 of them may be relatively peaceful, not a problem, but that once the wrong person with the wrong Ouija board at the wrong time and you've got the conjuring.

And with so much with the paranormal and spiritualism and the whole thing that we do when we talk about this a lot is what is the intent. Okay, there was a Ouija board in our basement. We never we had the planchett. I don't know.

I just remember the board itself. There was no intent there. There was no summoning or those kinds of things that we were aware of. And like I said, I don't even remember how it got there.

But so much in the paranormal is done with intent, curses, blessings, all of those types of things. Intent is such an important part of the power of all of these things. I agree, totally agree. And not disagreeing with you.

But if someone says, oh, I'm going to get my kid a Ouija board because I found one on Amazon that has unicorns on it, I still wouldn't because why even bring in that? Why go there? Yeah, why put your foot in the door? You can say, oh, our intent is just to have fun with it.

Your intent might be to have fun with it. But who knows what your kids are going to do when you're not there. And you might be having fun with it and still inadvertently open a door and invite something in that you should not have. Yeah, it's just dangerous.

There's just, I don't know, if I could just reach out through this microphone to shake everyone, sing one of those notes and just look in the night and say, please don't do it. Leave your own hands, slap your face if you're thinking about it. But please don't do it. You do know that if my aunt had just died and I was playing with Ouija board, I'd probably go a little crazy.

Do you have any fun Ouija board stories or? There was that one investigation that we did at my one friend's house that the previous owners kids were playing with one. Do you remember that? That's where we found that one type three that came back like twice.

That was kind of creepy. Well, the crazy thing is that you actually bring up a great point, right? Because let's say we're going to pick on Chad, let's say Chad goes and picks up his Ouija board from the Toys R Us and picks up home a place with a Ouija board and he may invite something in. And he may live in the house for two more years and nothing happens and he moves out of the house to a new city.

And the next family moves in and guess what they just inherited. They inherited whatever it is that Chad just invited into the house because it's waiting for the right target at the right time. Like you said, you're with your body. Somebody else played with it, but he ended up being a recipient of all the good fun times.

But let's talk a little bit more about Roland Doe. So with Roland, the services moved beyond the knocks and rattles. I went from that encroachment to flaw and infestation and oppression. Chair slipped over, bases crashed, and a witness described Roland's body being physically manipulated by unseen forces.

And honestly, when you see someone's body being manipulated, you have to ask yourself is that an outside manipulation or are we into like partial possession at that point? What permissions did Roland give that this is happening? It was reported by like friends and ministers that words and symbols like hail or evil start to appear, scratch and roll and skin rising up like welts. So when we talk about body things before you get too often to other things, when you look at a body being manipulated by a spirit, it's not going to move like a normal body would.

Like you know, when you're watching a football game and you see the football player land on his leg and his leg goes the wrong way and you're like, Oh, that's what these do. It's very disturbing. Yeah, they move awkwardly and unnaturally. And yeah, it's super disturbing.

And again, you have to ask yourself is that an outside manipulation or an internal manipulation? And I would venture to guess in this case, Roland probably gives some permissions that allow things to physically and manipulate him, if not full possession, partial position. And we've seen a lot of cases over the years of partial possessions, we've even seen a couple of full possessions. They're very real.

But anyway, these wealth and scratches have rise up and the friends and relatives, even like I said, church ministers, they claimed to witness these phenomena firsthand. The other thing too is this phenomenon seemed to follow Roland wherever he went. As they moved to different homes when they sent him to the relatives, they actively followed and this is consistent with something that has made an attachment specifically to Roland, which means that it's either inside of him or following with him. And we've actually witnessed this myself and Raven we had a case.

I mentioned earlier in the show, I've had a few instances where people have reached up and personally just had some old side cases where we had an individual who he's been involved in some sex magic, some blood magic and some other things. And he's invited demonic spirits into his life. And it's interesting because this gentleman is autistic and never leaves his home. But when Raven and I were invited over to the home by this individual's parents to come investigate with no foreknowledge that were coming, he was warned by these spirits that he needed to leave.

And he left in the spirits left with him while we were there. Do you remember that Raven? Yes, I do because we saw him drive away. And as he drove away, I said there are at least five spirits in that car with him because I could feel them.

And they did leave, there's like two or three in the basement kind of I want to call him. Look behind to kind of spy. Yeah, just lower level. Just see what we're doing.

Because that's the first time that I've sought a type three. That's the first time I saw one of those evil spirits actually sought in the basement. But the bulk of them, the strong ones went with him. Yeah, and that they were attached to him and I have no doubt that the river that individual goes, those spirits go with him.

So this haunting was centered on Roland and not the house. And again, this would be consistent with somebody who's messed with the Ouija board, somebody who's given permissions. They shouldn't somebody who's lowered their spiritual armor, which we all have. And only we can throw our actions or through express permissions.

We can lower that spiritual armor. But that'd be consistent with somebody who has allowed evil spirits to basically breach that armor. So for you guys, what should these claims like the skin markings, the flying objects, shaking beds, which do you guys think are like most convincing? Which ones do you guys think would be like the easiest like fake?

I'm thinking we're thinking, Greg, it looks like you were gonna jump in. I don't want to talk over you. For me, it's skin markings. They're depending on how they are.

It can be fake, but a lot of the time we've seen them on me, I've gotten scratched. But they go away so quickly that you can't really fake a scratch like that. Yeah, for those who never seen a real skin marking, they're very, very vivid. They're very, very dark.

It looks like somebody just with all their might just scratched three scratches down wherever they're scratched you at. And based on what they look like, they should be there for at least a full day, if not longer. But they dissipate really quickly. I tell people on investigations because we do have some pictures of scratches that we show for our deadtocks.

And I say, if you want an investigation with us, and if you say, oh, I'm feeling a burning sensation, don't be surprised if we whip up your shirt sleeve and start taking pictures. And if you get a burning sensation on a private area, one, maybe you should go see a doctor, but we will respect your privacy if it's on your back last permission. But yeah, those don't last very long. So we're gonna want a picture of it.

Speaking of which, I'm gonna show you guys all one that was sent to me just a couple of days ago, which is going to be an investigation for November. Let's see if you guys can see this through my camera. Oh, it's a bad one. And I heard about this one.

He goes to his friends home at five times. He's been to his friends home. He's been scratched like that five times. So we are going to be looking into that one in November.

Wow, send that one to me. I'll blur out the face. We'll throw it up on TikTok so that listeners can see it too. That sounds like a grand idea.

I like it. Hey, because they're listening. We want to see no evidence for you. We'll throw that up on TikTok.

So wait, wait, wait, wait, I want to turn on the turn. Okay, you can not just speak. I'll be on my own podcast. Well, thank you.

All right. So I'm going to agree with Drake. Someone comes out says, Oh, look, a spirit scratched me or a spirit bruised me. How do I know you didn't do that to yourself?

Right. Chad and I watch a lot of true crimes and there's people that murder someone and they shoot themselves trying to make them look like they were part of the, they were also a victim. But it's right here at Castle. I think you said that some of these symbols and words would rise up like welts in front of other people.

Other people saw it and they said, we saw this and that's something that's going to be a little less likely to believe. And if people are saying I literally saw an object fly off a wall, and I'll give an example, we went and did an investigation. It's one of our very first residential. It was the one in pace and just close to one's house.

I know something when you're talking about. Yeah. And Castle said, I didn't see this because I was somewhere else setting up something that Castle said a dice, like a decorative dice. I wouldn't block probably like two inches by two inches.

Yeah, flew off the shelf and hit you. Yeah, it's probably about seven right feet off of a, yeah, no reason, no remar reason for it to fly towards me. And we even got an AP of me saying, did you throw that at me in here? Yes.

And I didn't see it, but you know, Castle saw it and I trust Castle. And so, you know, it kind of goes to personal experiences. You have to value the persons that told you that. So anyway, yeah, I think seeing fine objects, watching skin markings in front of your eyes, definitely believeable.

Anyway, okay, your turn, go. So let me ask you guys, well, something like this, you got Roland says all these crazy things are happening. He's got welts rising up, scratches, vibrating beds, religious objects, vibrating, falling off the walls, et cetera. And it's reported that multiple people saw this.

What are your thoughts as far as this role? Like imagination, hysteria? What do you guys think? I know for me, I've experienced so many of these things personally that I know it's not imagination.

I know it's not hysteria, just because we've seen them. Raven sent me some video of an investigation a few weeks ago that was kind of mind-blowing for me. And I've got some new video that I haven't had a chance to share with anybody here yet, which is going to be a bit mind-blowing for you guys. But what are your thoughts as far as like hysteria or imagination on something like this?

I don't know that if it's group hysteria, that's not necessarily not paranormal. There's because it's identified that can happen because there's been a number of things along the group hysteria. Things and group hysteria is also known as a mass, high-steria or a mass psychological illness. It's a psychological phenomenon where a group of people collectively experience physical or emotional symptoms without an identifying medical cause.

It's not just panic or fear, it's a contagious reaction that spreads through social or sensory clues like sight, sound, or shared belief. So that sounds kind of clinical in that. But a number of the mass hysteria, things probably one of the biggest ones would be the Salem Witch Trials. What happened with Salem, an example, accusations, people were having seizures among young girls.

It's a classic thing of mass hysteria. So it could be something like that where people are observing something and it's infectious. It's almost contagious. Another example of a mass hysteria that went on for months was the dancing plague of 1518.

We did a podcast on this several years ago and that it was just crazy. People danced and danced and danced to exhaustion. How do you explain that? I don't know if it's demonic.

I'm not saying it is or it isn't. But there's there is a paranormal aspect to some of these mass hysteria kinds of things. And there's other examples of mass hysteria. So could it be a mass hysteria?

Yes, does that exclude it not be in a possession? No, it doesn't. I can't help but hear Abba's dancing queen running through my head as Chad says the dancing hysteria. All right, so all this is going on, whether it's real, whether it's mass hysteria, regardless, the family felt just like they didn't have anywhere to turn.

And so they finally went to the church and they were Lutheran. And their Lutheran minister said, you know what, maybe you should go to the Catholics for this. They deal with this kind of thing because they've got stricter procedures for investigating possessions and if it's possession, the exorcisms, if you're going to be an official Catholic exorcist, you don't just take a course online. You got to go through some pretty rigorous testing for that.

And so they got in contact with a fellow named Father Hughes, who was a Catholic priest. And he attempted an exorcism at Georgetown University Hospital. So when they did this, some of the reports about it say that Roland lashed out really violently and to the point where he actually broke free of the restraints or holding him down and injured the priest. So the case was escalated at this point to the Catholic Church and said, well, this isn't just some, you know, mass hysteria thing or parents who think it could be possessed.

So they took Roland St. Louis and they actually had a team of priests come in. And this team was led by Father William Bowdern. And Father William actually conducted more than 30 sessions over a period of several weeks.

And during these sessions, there were witnesses who claim Roland reacted violently during these rituals. And he would do things like thrashing, cursing, speaking in real guttural voices where if you've heard EVPs, there are some that sounds like whispers and some that sound very guttural. So when I saw guttural voices, I'm like, I know exactly what that means. And Roland would even respond in Latin, despite not being taught the language.

And if you guys have listened to the podcast for any length of time back when Lurch was on, we actually got some texts that came to us in Latin and Lurch took it upon himself to learn Latin so that he could help translate these a little quicker than we could. Usually Google Translate Castle, you're looking like you're chomping at the bit. Oh, as you can say, I still have those text messages. I have saved those.

Oh, I do too. And the verbigenum is spooky. It's not grammar and verbiage that people nowadays would use. Well, and some crazy blasphemous and just vile things that most normal human beings wouldn't say kind of lend some credibility to these messages as well.

They're just very condescending and insulting to God. They're insane. Anybody who's seen these text messages, I don't show them very often just because it's easy to be skeptical of them. But those who have seen them are usually like dang just based on the content of the messages.

Yeah, and people will say to me, oh, I've seen some pretty swearing movies and my friends were like a sailor. This is beyond that. This is something that's just it just oozes evil. Grossly offensive and grossly vulgar or just crazy over the top.

Yeah, and then you put the grammar the way they're grammatically put together. Like I said, you just read it and you go, that is not human. So you have, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut it on you. But as you say, and not only the grammar, but just you can sense the different personality in it.

So it's not like it's Raven going, ha, ha, I'm going to play a prank on Castle and send him some demonic sounding texts. You can tell that you're literally speaking to a whole different person. No normal human can just switch their personality over text like that. I feel a little called out.

So I'm going to go off the subject here for just a second. Investigators, a lot of investigators, myself included, will go put a static moisture quarter and just leave it somewhere all night long. You've got one with you where you're asking questions, but you'll have some sitting around that you just put it somewhere that's there for hours. If I run across one of these, I will usually leave you a little message.

There's no swears in it though. Anyway, I don't know too. I'll leave you in the recorder and then give a message. So who has time to sit and just listen to hours and hours and hours of recording so find an EVB?

Some people do. Some people do. Well, they find it pretty incredible. But anyway, all these things are going on.

And the exorcists, this team that was led by Father William, they actually documented crosses that appeared on his body, bedshaking and objects flying in the hospital rooms, which were very similar to the things that he had said that happened before they called him. But still, there are some skeptics argue that these symptoms could fit psychological conditions such as disassociated identity disorder or psychosis and that the priests own expectations shaped what they saw. I kind of disagree with this. I'm a French not, I'm sorry to cut you off.

I'm going to call bullshit on that as far as the skeptics go. And the reason I say that is because we work with the clinical psychologist who has referred us cases before. And he goes through his checklist of, okay, here's this diagnosis, here's this diagnosis, there's this diagnosis, none of these fit based on what I'm getting. And then that's usually when he calls us and says, you may want to look into this.

And when he has done that, he has been correct in that there's been some kind of negative spiritual influence. Mental illness is real. And there are unfortunately a lot of people who suffer with mental illness. In fact, I think on some degree, most of us have some mental illness.

Look at Chad, but that being said, it's pretty easy to when you're dealing with something like this first fantasy, the difference between mental illness and an actual spiritual problem. And it's easy in my opinion for skeptics who don't want to believe anything to sit back in Monday morning quarterback, stuff like this. But when you're in the trenches, so to speak, dealing with this first hand, experiencing that feeling, I can't even begin to describe the color purple to me. That's like trying to describe the feeling of dealing with these entities.

You can actually feel them. It's an unpleasant feeling. And it's impossible to describe how they feel other than just to say they feel yucky. But you can feel their presence if you have enough experience to know what you're doing.

And it's very clear when they're there. And like I said, it's like trying to describe what orange smells like. You know, when you smell it, but for me to describe someone who's never smelled an orange, what an orange smells like. How do you describe that?

You know what I mean? And I agree with you. I think that there are skeptics out there that don't believe in evil spirits, don't believe in possessions, and they argue that it's a mental disorder. That being said, if you are a reputable investigator, you have to say it could be one or the other and really look into it.

Yeah, they're certainly not mutually exclusive of each other. And it doesn't mean that both can't be happening simultaneously or one or the other independently. And those are things that you need to watch for. And just I think as Castle was saying, I think there are some people that are the non-believing skeptics that it doesn't matter what it is, they're not going to look at it as a paranormal or a demonic kind of entity or that kind of a thing.

It's always going to be oh, it's a mental illness of some kind, because that's the only evidence that they will accept. Let's look back into this exorcism. They did one, it didn't work, and then they had to do 30 sessions over a several week period. Excuse me as I choke on air.

Do you think that repeated failures of the exorcism of the ritual make the possession claim more believable or less? I'm going to say more believable. So I've spent an absurdly long amount of time, and I know Raven has as well, studying demonic haunting possessions, things of that nature. And I think one thing that people don't understand, one thing people think that you just go in, you say, Jesus says go away, and the spirits just pack up their stuff and go away.

And that's actually pretty uncommon for it to be that easy. The reason I say that, and especially someone like Roland, he's 14 years old, he's a mother of a Ouija board. We don't know what permission he's given, we don't know what permission he's given, but demonic spirits are incredibly legalistic. They operate based off these permissions, they operate based on the rules of the universe.

What those rules are, I don't know because I'm not the master of the universe, but there are universal rules. But really think of these spirits as contracts and permissions. And a lot of times you can have a priest, not care what religion is, whether it's Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, even LDS. And I know there's some people who are LDS who think it can just be a one and done, and sometimes it can.

But if Roland has given permissions to these spirits and tell those permissions are broken, those spirits can stay there until those permissions are broken. I've made it a point when I do investigations now to try and find out what those permissions are, what those hooks are, what's keeping those spirits there, and try and break those because until you break those, you can send a spirit packing for a day or two, a week or two. But then they come right back because those permissions still exist. They still have those permissions.

It's like if I have a car and I let Drake use my car, I give him permission to use my car and I give him the keys to the car. And Raven comes and says, Drake, don't use the car. And Drake's like, Castle gave me permission to use the car, screw you. And even if Raven's insistent and Drake's like, fine, I want to drive the car and he takes off for a couple of days and he comes back, he's like, still got the keys, I still have the permission.

So until I take the keys away, until I tell him you can't drive the car anymore, that permission still exists. And I realize that's kind of a crude, that's what I'm looking for, analogy for how these spirits work. But that is how they work with the permissions and contracts and things of that nature. We talked about the case with a kid who's involved in blood magic and sex magic that's invited all these things into his home.

And we've been there, how many times we've been there, Raven? I bet you've been there half a dozen times at least. Yeah. And when we go in, we fix it a little bit and then we go back and it's just as bad as it was and we fix it a little bit.

And ultimately, until we find out what all these permissions are and can get him to break those permissions, to revoke those permissions, it's not a fixable situation until he's willing to set those permissions aside and ask for those things to be gone. Because I can end up by them as many times as I want, but as long as his invite stands, they're going to stay. Exactly. That's just where I was going to go.

I didn't mean to interrupt you. But if the kid that we're talking about that we have been to is lonely, he wants friends, is a hard time keeping friends. Roland in this story was lonely, wanted friends. And so, you know, it's like, it's like an alcoholic.

You can sit in alcoholic to A.A. But unless they want to not be an alcoholic anymore, they can go to A.A. all day long for years and years. It's not going to do anything.

You have to get the person that's possessed has to want to break those hooks. They have to say these are my hooks. And maybe they don't know what their hooks are, but they need to be willing to talk with you so you can figure them out. And they need to actively be working with you to help you.

And that I think you just hit the key right there. And that's not I think the hardest part and the most frustrating part is an investigator. But these types of cases is they have to be willing to break that hook. In some instances, they don't want to.

It's like, hey, your addiction to crazy, weird, obscure pornography and the things you do with that, that's the hook. And you have to give that up if you don't get rid of the spirit. And if they're like, no, I don't want to, you're stuck. Or maybe hey, you're so addled with drug abuse or you're so addicted to using the sweetie board because it's cool stuff you see.

And so you wanted to give that up. The problem's not going to be solved. And in some cases, they're not able or willing to do that. So let's think about this a little bit.

Do you think or why do you think that the Catholic Church took this case a little more seriously than some of the others at the time? I think it might have been to kind of prove that and all the originals that we are, that the Catholic religion is the one that is everything is the master religion in their eyes. And they wanted to prove that no other religion can help with things like this. So more about their reputation than helping the family with the issue?

Exactly. Okay. I think there's a little bit of both. I mean, the Catholic Church and I have a lot of respect for the Catholic Church.

But that being said, they're very reluctant to take cases unless they have a lot of proof that the case is real. And I would say the Catholics probably take this more seriously than anybody. But I, and again, I'm not trying to be grateful to the Catholic Church because I have a matter of respect for the Catholic Church, but they're very hesitant to take cases if they think it may tarnish the reputation. This one was so egregious and so much evidence was happening that again, I think they were a little more apt to take it because it met their curriculum and then some.

I think it was like, oh, wow, this is real. Let's jump on it. But again, I don't know. I don't want to say they're doing it just for the reputation, but there hasn't to take cases unless there's a lot of evidence.

So basically what you're saying it is for their reputation, but not just for their reputation. Reputation? Good or bad. I guess it's the best way to say it.

Because they don't want to do it. Like Drake was saying, they don't want to do it to tarnish the reputation. So therefore, they're very picky and cheesy. What they?

They don't want to take a case that's not real and then look like fools for taking a case. It's not real. As far as the number of exorcisms go, again, I mean, we've been on some cases like the one we're talking about where we've been half a dozen times. And to be honest with you, we're not done with that case.

And I don't know that we'll ever be done with that case because there are so many hooks and contracts. This individual's not willing to let go of that I'm sure we'll try and help. We'll try and help the loved ones around this individual. But this individual, I hate to say anyone's a lost cause, but it's a tough case.

It really is a tough case and that's they're willing to make some serious changes. And that's why some of these cases take a dozen, two dozen, three dozen extra systems because half the time you're trying to find out what those hooks are, you can't break a contract or break a hook until you know what it is. I think it took us three visits just to figure out what one of the many, many hooks are in the case that me and Raven are involved in. And then we went back one time and went back down into his client's living area.

You called the lawyer. It's okay. I don't know. You want to call the lawyer.

It's a lawyer. And as we're looking around, we're pointing things out. It's like, oh, look at that. That's a new hook.

Oh, look at that. Anyway, we're kind of talking to each other out of the sides of our mouths. Did you see that? Did you see this?

Well, it's interesting that particular case, I mean, we went, like I said, about three times. And finally, I just asked this individual point, blank, I can have you ever invited a spirit into your life to do things for you. It's like, oh, yeah, it's like, oh, well, there's a humongous hook, but there's probably honestly, based on what we saw there, I suspect there's probably at least half a dozen different hooks, if not more. Absolutely.

Like we were just saying though, but I still wonder if the church still wanted to do a reputation as part of this and help a little bit, but I think it mainly was to more of their reputation. Yeah, I could see that, especially the 40s and 50s that is a different time. Let's talk about after the exorcism happened though. So once it was concluded, Roland was said to be able to return to normal life, free the behaviors and phenomena.

Roland grew up, he got married, he looked quietly, and he avoided publicity for the rest of his life. The case though, didn't fade into obscurity. So notes from the clergy and reports they leaked to the public, sparking a journalistic interest. And in the early 1970s, an author named William Blattie, William Peter Blattie, to be exact, who's a Georgetown student when the case occurred, he used the story for the inspiration for the novel The Exorcist.

And shortly thereafter, 1973, a film based on the book became one of the most famous war movies of all time, which kind of made this case be embedded permanently in pop culture, who hasn't heard of The Exorcist. Everybody's heard of The Exorcist. To this day, a number of witnesses point to this case is legit, there's a lot of clergy, a lot of witnesses, but honestly with anything, even like the conjuring cases, anything that the warrens did. For as many believers as you have, as many witnesses, you've got just as many detractors, as many skeptics who claim it because of grief, mental illness, or religious expectations which can create illusions.

And honestly, I'm going to call BS on the religious expectations that create illusions. I have seen some crazy, crazy things investigating that I think most people wouldn't believe I know Raven has as well. I'll be honest with you, I don't know Drex history as well, since he's noted the team since I was here last. I know Chad has seen some interesting things over the years, and I know that's not because of religious expectations.

I know I've been with other individuals who have no religious expectations, who have experienced a lot of the same phenomena with me. This stuff is real. So whether supernatural or psychological, rolling story forces to confront how deeply faith, fear, and folklore can shape our human experience. Some of you guys have all the cases out there, why do you think this one was such a big deal?

There's literally, if I was to get a rock, I could probably throw a rock right now and hit somebody going through something similar, and we'll never hear about it. I live in a city of 250,000 people, and in 250,000 people, I promise you, there's a case that probably is pretty similar to this going on in the city right now. If you're in Salt Lake City, there's probably a handful of individuals going through this. So why this one?

Why was this one the one that's kind of been so famous? Because of the book and the movie. The information was there, but it probably wasn't widely known. It was known in certain circles, of course, that it had happened, but it wasn't until the novel was written and then the movie afterwards that it really hit the pop culture, the main culture, and then at that point it brings out more people looking at it, investigating, criticizing, embellishing, bringing it into their lives, all those kinds of things.

I think a big part of it is it was the social media of the day. This was the likes of the day back in the 70s. It was the social clout through social media of books and media. And so I think that's one of the big reasons that it was there is exposure.

Yeah, and I think you're right nowadays and it's hard to know this because now we've got like YouTube and we've got TikTok and we've got Reels and everybody's faking everything. So it's harder and harder to tell what's really cool video that I'm going to show you guys later. But I guarantee if I showed it to the public, they're going to be a godsfaked. I know it's real.

Raven showed me some video that I first was like, what? After hearing the story and knowing the clients behind it, I'm like, okay, it's real. But it's kind of mind blowing video. So for all this case happened today, I would ask was there something that would be diagnosed as a mental illness or possession?

And as I asked this question, I feel like I can even answer my question to say that we have worked with a clinical psychologist and a clinical psychologist who has an open mind, they can rule out mental illness. And in fact, this is one I'll give a nod to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church doesn't even get involved in cases and tell a person to see a psychologist and rule out mental illness. And I think that's the same with this case.

So I don't think that's a psychological. And just to go into your question, if you go and look at surveys and I don't have them pulled up right now, I don't have these numbers pulled up because I didn't think I was going to get into this conversation. But I have seen numbers before and there was a very steep decline in religion up until just recently. And it's just been the last couple of years that religion is starting to do an up take again, especially in the young people.

But I still think that we are in that era of a lot of people pooping religion in general. And so I think for the last several years, I think it would have been more likely to be diagnosed as a mental illness. Because there's a lot of people that are saying, oh no, curses aren't real, hauntings aren't real, evil spirits aren't real, possessions aren't real. But I think it'll be interesting as more younger people are getting into religion again in the last little bit to see if that perception changes.

Well, and along with that, this is the question is this the most convincing case of possession or the most documented case of possession? And I'm just going to argue with my own question that I think it's just probably the best documented because I honestly, I think there's cases of possession every single day. I think when you say the best documented, do you mean the most popularly known, or do you mean that they've got the best documentation about the symptoms and the going's on? So what are you the best known because I honestly think there are many other cases with probably better documentation.

If the Catholic Church was to dive into the records, I think we'd be astounded at some of their cases because I know the Catholic Church has dedicated exorcists that that's all they've looked. I've taken the time to look into some of their cases that they've been willing to release. And again, this is a common phenomena, just as a society, a modern society in particular, a lot of people just want to stick their head in the sand and just pretend like this stuff's not real. And honestly, from a religious standpoint, if you are an evil spirit, if you are Satan, Lucifer, et cetera, what better cover than to just get people to think that, hey, this stuff is mental illness, it's not real, we don't exist.

You know, how better to hydrate activity than to make it be not real. Exactly. All right, so not all possessions necessarily have amazing endings. And we've even talked about some here where there's been a little bit more tragic ending.

And there are several, like Castle said, in any given city that's of a decent size, you're probably going to be looking at it anywhere from one to a dozen cases going on. They could be extreme, they could be a little more low level, but they're out there and they're absolutely real. That being said, I tell people don't lose sleep over it, don't get anxiety because even though they're pretty uncommon. So don't lose sleep over it.

But back to Rolando, luckily, his story had a good ending. He was able to move on and live a good life. But when you think about it, this is probably one of the most scary, like we've talked about, well-known tales of the 20th century. So you can believe it was a true demonic possession.

You can believe in your heart that it's just a traveling... I can't talk. The tragic unraveling of a lonely teenager. And that's up to you.

But one thing's for certain, the events that started on Halloween night of 1949, left a permanent mark on history, on this boy's life, on his family's life, religion, horror culture, not horticulture, which is what that sounded like, horror culture. What is fascinating about stuff like this is just how the lines blur. As we've been talking about this, we've talked about faith, psychology, folklore, Hollywood, all of this are feeding into it. And I don't want to quite call it a legend because it actually happened, but I can make it legendary.

Legend? Derry. You know, and I just kind of want to piggyback on what Raven said. I don't want to scare people about them.

I'll be like, oh, no, I'm going to get possessed. Most, and by most, I mean, all human beings have got spiritual protection from evil spirits and possession and things of that nature. You can make her so... What's that?

That was weird. I got some feedback. You heard that? I did too.

Did we have an EBP? We might have. I don't know. Anyway, so just to piggyback on what Raven was saying, though, we've got so many natural God-given spiritual protections from these kind of spirits that to open yourself up to possession with ease, you have to be giving permissions.

You have to be involved in gross sin. You have to be involved in like knowingly or willingly giving away that protection, knowingly or willingly inviting those kind of spirits to take an active role in your life. So for the vast majority of normal people out there, you have nothing to worry about. Don't lose sleep.

If you're out there, feel fart around with Ouija boards that you're involved in really gross sin, and by gross sin, I'm talking murder, maybe like severe addiction to pornography, like crazy kinky weird stuff, child abuse, just things like that. That can lower those protections. And if you're doing those things, lick your hands, stop your face, stop it. But the reality is that 99% of people out there have nothing to worry about.

Just live your life and don't lose sleep. Don't go like yourself in a closet, never come out, get agoraphobia. Just live your life, be a good person you have nothing to worry about. So before we move on to the next part of our podcast, any closing thoughts, feels, ideas on Mr.

Roland Do. Pretty much everything that Castle just said, I agree with 100%. Awesome. How about you, Chad?

Now I think it's interesting, it shows that people can come through these and recover and live a good solid life. And it's not something that has to impact the rest of your life. If you get caught up into something like this, people can make mistakes and there's repentance and there's point out of it. And as Castle said, breaking those bonds, sometimes you need help to do that.

But it can happen. The bad side of that is people get into those depressions and hold down those tracks. And as Castle said, the ultimate gulf where those kinds of possessions is death. And that's sad when people take their own lives or do things like that because they got caught up in something because they invited something into their lives that they shouldn't have.

And we have had cases that have gone that direction and they suck and I hate them and they're sad. And we have had people who have gotten so far in that they have taken their own lives. It sucks. Chad brought up something that's really important that I do want to touch on before we wrap things up.