This post is part of a larger series for the 2023 Spooky Season (or, as some call it, “October”): Bar Chaplain’s Guide to Demonology. For the first post in this series, click here. For a dive into the “bargainer demon” trope, click here. If you’re curious about possession and exorcism, read on…

I’ll never forget the time I received a call to a patient’s room late one night and was intercepted in the hallway by an uneasy family member with an odd question: “Pastor, do you do exorcisms?” A little taken aback, I responded honestly that I had some knowledge of the subject from a class in div school but that the need had never arisen. As this family member began to describe the patient’s strange behavior in recent days, I braced myself; whatever was on the other side of that door would surely be strange. Once inside the room, I met a patient who was pleasant and upbeat but also clearly troubled. He shared that he could commune with the dead. “Your mother wants you to know she’s okay,” he told me with a sympathetic smile and maudlin tone. Of course my mother is okay, I thought to myself, I talked with her by phone earlier today; she’s alive and well in Memphis, Tennessee. My patient proceeded to deliver a series of clearly false messages “from the other side,” spoke with extreme paranoia about his neighbors, and then described a detailed hallucination of Superman present in the room with us.

So, was my patient possessed by a demon? While I would never 100% rule that out, it’s highly unlikely. The much more probable scenario was an undiagnosed mental health issue (perhaps schizophrenia) exacerbated by isolation, recent difficult events in the patient’s life, and cognitive changes coming with the patient’s age. I elected not to call an exorcist. Instead, I did my best to comfort the patient and his worried family member before checking with his nurse about a mental health consult.

The Bible features multiple accounts of possession by demons or evil spirits, and there is a long tradition of exorcism in Christianity. The Catholic Church famously trains and employs exorcists, something which has been captured in popular media like The Exorcist, Evil, and most recently, The Pope’s Exorcist. American Pentecostalism has a robust history with exorcism as well, with countless books on the subject and traveling ministers who practice the craft. Though not as known for exorcism, Evangelical and mainline Christian denominations have leaders who observe this rite too (including a few of my div school classmates). Looking outside the European and American contexts, some other parts of the world (especially Asia and Subsaharan Africa) speak more freely of spirits and possession, and thus exorcism is more commonplace. In fact, on a personal note, a friend of mine regularly travels to a small town in India to teach at a seminary, and he has shared that, while he does not lead exorcisms himself, his participation in the practice is expected while he’s there.

But none of this stuff is real, right? Biblical possession is just a metaphor for mental illness, right? And modern exorcism is either dangerously misguided or just a ploy to amass money and power from the gullible and desperate, right?

Well, unfortunately, there really is a long history of mental illness being misdiagnosed as something supernatural— demons, changelings, werewolves, etc. If we take the New Testament accounts to be factual, could the demoniacs in those tales have actually been mentally ill? Maybe. It’s hard to know. As far as modern mental illness being mistaken for demon possession, some would-be exorcists have committed major abuses over the years, so anyone who takes the practice seriously also needs to be well schooled in mental health if they’d like to avoid lawsuits and arrests.

In general, I’m always a believer that there’s stuff in this world we don’t understand, so when it comes to possession and exorcism, I stay open to the possibility even if I haven’t seen any firsthand evidence. My rule of thumb on this (as with most supernatural things) is “Just because I’m skeptical doesn’t mean I’m going to mess around with it.”