Demonology intrigues the hell(no pun intended) out of me. I never really gave it a second thought until my group got involved with a case that had some history of "black magic" and "voodoo" and ended up getting some of the best evidence I could ever hope for (for more info on this case, I did write a blog about it caled "my favorite investigation so far"). Ever since then, I've been insanely interested but from a distance. I am extremely skeptical. I have been hunting ghosts ever since I was old enough to know what one is, and I have yet to see something that absolutely has proved to me that they exist. I don't claim any particular religion and have no real opinion on the reality of a heaven or hell. However, I do know it's not something I want to mess with. In my opinion, no one (or not many) know for absolute certain what happens when we die or what exists as far as Gods and Goddesses. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for anyone that has faith in religion. I'm just too stubborn. I guess I just want to see some kind of proof before I pick a side. At the same time, because no one knows for sure, I know that I need to tread with respect. And I think that's why "demons" have been on my mind so much lately. I'm so intrigued, but don't want to dig too deep and open up anything I can't handle or shouldn't be messing with, in case it IS all real.
Anyway, I came across this article and thought it was pretty interesting. Broad, but gives a good stance on both sides.
This article was taken from www.dw-world.de
**I do not agree or disagree with what they're saying, but demonology has been a pretty hot topic lately and this article did a pretty good job of covering both sides of the fence. **
The First College Course on Exorcism
by Megan Williams
The course is not quite as dramatic as Hollywood-style exorcism
The first college course on exorcism is being offered at a Catholic university in Italy. Already, priests from around the world are flocking to Rome to participate and study psychology, law and a history of satanism.
The university on the outskirts of Rome is about as far from Hogwarts as it gets. Sunshine streams in from a huge skylight above as a janitor pushes a broom across a slick, shiny floor and students mill about with coffee before making their way to class -- in black cassocks and dangling crosses.
Because beneath its modern veneer, the Vatican-backed Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, or UPRA, is grappling with demons. For the first time, this conservative Catholic university is offering Exorcism 101 this year.
"People are experiencing these things more for various reasons, but they are starting more and more to come to the priest and say I need some help," said Father Christopher Barrack, a priest from Lincoln, Neb., who was sent to Rome by his bishop specifically to take the 8-week exorcism course.
In one room, Father Piedro Barahan is giving a lecture to a class of 80 students -- almost all men. Forget Bibles and rosaries. With the aid of his laptop computer and a microphone, Barahan gives a power-point presentation on the theology of demons. Another 50 or so students follow the lecture through videoconference links with three other Italian cities.
"Most of these people here are priests and most of them in their pastoral work deal with people who feel that they have a problem of possession and they don't know whether it's really supernatural or psychological," he said. "I think they want criteria with which they can distinguish if it's really the supernatural action of the devil or a psychological sickness."
Barahan is an expert on demons and satanic worship. It's an especially hot topic these days in Italy. A sensational murder case involving teenagers who practiced demonic worship and Satanic rituals has got the country worried about the spread of such cults, especially among young people. One Catholic sociologist who was a guest lecturer here claims these cults are on the rise, with up to 100,000 young people involved.
There's no proof to back up the claim, but the alarm is real. And if this crowded classroom is anything to go by, there's certainly interest in exorcism and the devil among Catholic priests.
Like many Catholics, Barahan is convinced that the devil is a real, very powerful entity and not simply a symbolic representation of evil. He's assisted in numerous exorcisms and says he's learned to tell when someone is truly possessed as opposed to mentally ill.
"This is not so easy, but we have signs," Barahan said. "For example, the aversion against religious objects -- a cross or a rosary or blessed water. Sometimes these people have a lot of strength, not natural strength, against these kinds of signs. Sometimes they speak languages without having studied them before. Sometimes they know the future of other people. So there's not one sign, but several signs, especially, psychologically. You have a lot of instability as if you have two souls in one body."
Barrack explains he isn't an exorcist himself -- only priests appointed by their bishop can conduct exorcisms -- but he said his parishioners back home do come to him for help with a range of battles against evil: Anything from special prayers against temptation to protection against strange noises in their homes. But, he cautions, it doesn't mean the devil has taken them over.
"Certainly there could be a lot of temptation and oppression from the devil on a person," he said. "That does not mean possession. Possession is when a devil actually takes control of the person and the person does not have its own free will, so the devil is using the person to speak and act without the person freely consenting to that. That would be possession."
Barrack also said he believes that the devil is behind some of the New Age and other alternative spirituality groups. Even parents can be involved.
"I've noticed, from some people they've said maybe one of their parents dedicated them to Satan when they were born," he said. "There are many satanic cults or Gnostic groups, some that are well-respected in society, but behind the scenes there is this connection with Satan."
But not all priests are so convinced. Father Gerry O'Collins is a renowned theologian at the Gregorian University in downtown Rome. He says there's a real danger in Catholics focusing too much on demons. He cites the witch hunts of the 16th century as an example of how people can get carried away.
"There's definitely a risk of people seeing the devil's hand all over the place and being superstitious," he said. "You can become caught up by that and even obsessed by it. And certainly official church leaders don't want freelance priests and others to play games. They want a wise old priest who's the official exorcist and who's skeptical and who knows what he's about and I think that's a happy situation."
O'Collins does believe that possessions can happen, but of all the people claiming to be possessed, most Catholic theologians estimated only a tiny number is the real thing.
"Yes, it can happen, but it's extremely rare," Collins said. "Maybe 2 percent of the cases you should take seriously."
For the dozens of priests who are following the exorcism course in Rome, that percentage is enough to study exorcism. And at the very least, Barahan said, priests can help people who are under the illusion they're possessed by getting them psychological help.
Showing posts with label demonic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demonic. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
My favorite investigation so far....
A few months ago, we investigated a private residence in Nashua NH. From the beginning, we knew it was going to be an interesting case. With experiences of mangled full body apparitions, growling, scratching, flying objects and voices, everything seemed to point to the possibility of a demonic entity. The client had some family history of voodoo and "black magic" and had received a demonic name through a Ouija board at one point. She had tried to do a blessing on her house with holy water and it only seemed to intensify the activity. I'm extremely skeptical so I took everything I was told with a grain of salt, but there was no denying the negative feeling inside the house.
While setting up, I picked up the small bottle of holy water that we keep in our kit (just in case) and eyed one of the other investigators. As soon as the bottle was in my hand, the client called from the other room that she had a really bad feeling about all of this. She said that all of a sudden, she had a heavy feeling of dread and her heart started beating rapidly. One of my investigators had her sit down and got her some water. I put the holy water back into the kit and as soon as it left my hand, she took a deep breath and said that it had passed. We told her it was probably just anxiety from everything that was going on and left it at that.
We had everything pretty much ready to go when we noticed on our monitor that one of our cameras had fallen. The camera was in one of the bedrooms, duct taped to a shelf in a closet. Falling cameras can happen. There are knobs in two places that help to adjust the angles of the camera. If you don't tighten the knobs after adjusting, it will very very slowly tilt down and then the weight of the camera will just bring it down. So Liz went up to retape it and make sure that everything was tightened. When I came up with some more duct tape, she told me that as she was holding the camera in place, it felt like someone was ripping the camera out of her hands. We had an extra handy cam, so we set it up on the other side of the room, facing the IR camera so that if it happened again, we could pin point why it was happening.
Naturally for the first round of investigating, Liz and I took that bedroom. After about ten minutes of asking some questions and getting a feel for the room, I asked "If that was you that moved our camera, could you give us some kind of sign that you're here. But... can you not touch our cameras because they're really expensive?!" As soon as I said it we heard "RRRRRRRRRRIPPPPPPPP" and the camera came FLYING off the shelf and then dangled by the cord. Now, I've seen cameras come untaped and fall, but this was nothing like that. When I went back and listened to the audio from it, you hear me take the biggest gasping breath and I'm pretty sure you could probably hear my heart beating out of my chest. Liz and I didn't even move. We just looked at the camera and then at each other in silence. After we had a minute to collect ourselves, we turned on the light and examined where the camera had once been taped. We checked to see if maybe the shelf wasn't level and the weight of the camera had somehow caused it to come down, or for a piece of tape that may have ripped. But we found nothing. In fact, the shelf was actually uneven, but in the opposite direction that the camera had fallen. So it would've had to have pulled somewhat against gravity when it came down.
We debated even putting the camera back up, those things do not come cheap. But finally we retaped it in the same spot, but made sure to go extremely heavy on the tape and triple check all of the knobs. This is the picture I took of the base of the camera to prove that we had used enough tape to hold it down:
After a about a half an hour, Ashleigh (one of our lead investigators) came into our room and told us that we had to hear something. Her and Darin were doing evp work in the bedroom next to us and every time they would ask a question, they would hear a distinct growl answer back. Ashleigh was acutally almost to the point of tears. She said she had never heard anything like it. So I went into the room with Darin, and Ashleigh stayed with Liz in our room. I sat for a few moments while he asked questions, but for some reason, we could no longer hear it.
Liz decided to have a sort of group meeting, so we called everyone into the flying camera room and updated the group on what had been going on. We turned the lights on and quietly discussed all the experiences we were having, while I rewound the handy cam to see what we had caught when the camera flew. Not even five minutes of us all being in there, we heard it again. The camera had once again ripped, had almost hit Darin in the head, and was dangling from its cord. At this point, I wish we had taken the hint that this thing did not want to be taped.
Throughout the rest of the night, we all had some little personal experiences. Whistling, a few voices, some scratching, but for the most part it was pretty mellow. We packed up quickly and didn't mention to the client the experiences we had had. We wanted to look over the evidence first to rule out anything obvious before breaking the news to her that she really did have something going on in her house.
I was laid off at the time and extremely anxious to see what we had caught, so I brought home the DVR (the computer system that records what we capture from the IR cameras) and hooked it up to my t.v. as soon as I got home. But when I plugged it in, it wouldn't work. The red light that lights up when the DVR is turned on was now flashing (which I had never seen). I tried a different AC adapter, but still got nothing. So mad. So the next day I brought the DVR back to Liz's house and tried it there, still nothing. We went to radio shack and had the guy that worked there try a few power cords, but nothing would work. We called the manufacturer and we still had a warranty, so we sent it back to be looked at. The next day the guy called and told us that we had lost EVERYTHING. He said that when he opened up the computer, everything inside was melted. Literally melted.
That day was definitely one of the worst days of NHP. Not only did we lose the evidence from that investigation, but everything from the past six months. We had plenty of room left on the hard drive, so we hadn't gotten around to dumping each case onto a disc. Not only that, but I was scheduled to do a presentation at a high school the next day and now I had nothing to show them. Luckily, we were still covered under our warranty as far as getting everything fixed, but we were heartbroken.
The night was not a total loss. We did have to cancel the presentation, and lost a lot of video evidence, but we caught some of the best audio I have ever heard. On Kerrie's (investigator)voice recorder, you hear her say "I'm not very happy with whoever you are, you're scaring the little kids that live here." Clear as day, a little boy voice answers back "We didn't do anything!". A few minutes later, you actually hear the duct tape ripping from the camera upstairs and the little boy says "That's in my sister's room!". About twenty minutes later, Kerrie is having a conversation with the other investigator in the room and the entire time she is talking, you hear an extremely deep voice in the background. I couldn't make out what it was saying because Kerrie is talking too. We need to get some audio software that will lift her voice. Liz swears she hears "Shut the f--- up or I'll go in you.", but I'm still skeptical of it. No matter what voice recorder you listen to throughout the night, you can constantly hear growls, scratches, whistles and children laughing and singing. At the very end of the night, Liz actually fell asleep in one of the rooms and began to snore and you can actually hear little kids laughing at her snoring.
We were supposed to go back to the house last weekend, but the client ended up cancelling because her kids were sick. I can't wait to return to this house, but I don't know if I want to risk melting another hard drive...
While setting up, I picked up the small bottle of holy water that we keep in our kit (just in case) and eyed one of the other investigators. As soon as the bottle was in my hand, the client called from the other room that she had a really bad feeling about all of this. She said that all of a sudden, she had a heavy feeling of dread and her heart started beating rapidly. One of my investigators had her sit down and got her some water. I put the holy water back into the kit and as soon as it left my hand, she took a deep breath and said that it had passed. We told her it was probably just anxiety from everything that was going on and left it at that.
We had everything pretty much ready to go when we noticed on our monitor that one of our cameras had fallen. The camera was in one of the bedrooms, duct taped to a shelf in a closet. Falling cameras can happen. There are knobs in two places that help to adjust the angles of the camera. If you don't tighten the knobs after adjusting, it will very very slowly tilt down and then the weight of the camera will just bring it down. So Liz went up to retape it and make sure that everything was tightened. When I came up with some more duct tape, she told me that as she was holding the camera in place, it felt like someone was ripping the camera out of her hands. We had an extra handy cam, so we set it up on the other side of the room, facing the IR camera so that if it happened again, we could pin point why it was happening.
Naturally for the first round of investigating, Liz and I took that bedroom. After about ten minutes of asking some questions and getting a feel for the room, I asked "If that was you that moved our camera, could you give us some kind of sign that you're here. But... can you not touch our cameras because they're really expensive?!" As soon as I said it we heard "RRRRRRRRRRIPPPPPPPP" and the camera came FLYING off the shelf and then dangled by the cord. Now, I've seen cameras come untaped and fall, but this was nothing like that. When I went back and listened to the audio from it, you hear me take the biggest gasping breath and I'm pretty sure you could probably hear my heart beating out of my chest. Liz and I didn't even move. We just looked at the camera and then at each other in silence. After we had a minute to collect ourselves, we turned on the light and examined where the camera had once been taped. We checked to see if maybe the shelf wasn't level and the weight of the camera had somehow caused it to come down, or for a piece of tape that may have ripped. But we found nothing. In fact, the shelf was actually uneven, but in the opposite direction that the camera had fallen. So it would've had to have pulled somewhat against gravity when it came down.
We debated even putting the camera back up, those things do not come cheap. But finally we retaped it in the same spot, but made sure to go extremely heavy on the tape and triple check all of the knobs. This is the picture I took of the base of the camera to prove that we had used enough tape to hold it down:
After a about a half an hour, Ashleigh (one of our lead investigators) came into our room and told us that we had to hear something. Her and Darin were doing evp work in the bedroom next to us and every time they would ask a question, they would hear a distinct growl answer back. Ashleigh was acutally almost to the point of tears. She said she had never heard anything like it. So I went into the room with Darin, and Ashleigh stayed with Liz in our room. I sat for a few moments while he asked questions, but for some reason, we could no longer hear it.
Liz decided to have a sort of group meeting, so we called everyone into the flying camera room and updated the group on what had been going on. We turned the lights on and quietly discussed all the experiences we were having, while I rewound the handy cam to see what we had caught when the camera flew. Not even five minutes of us all being in there, we heard it again. The camera had once again ripped, had almost hit Darin in the head, and was dangling from its cord. At this point, I wish we had taken the hint that this thing did not want to be taped.
Throughout the rest of the night, we all had some little personal experiences. Whistling, a few voices, some scratching, but for the most part it was pretty mellow. We packed up quickly and didn't mention to the client the experiences we had had. We wanted to look over the evidence first to rule out anything obvious before breaking the news to her that she really did have something going on in her house.
I was laid off at the time and extremely anxious to see what we had caught, so I brought home the DVR (the computer system that records what we capture from the IR cameras) and hooked it up to my t.v. as soon as I got home. But when I plugged it in, it wouldn't work. The red light that lights up when the DVR is turned on was now flashing (which I had never seen). I tried a different AC adapter, but still got nothing. So mad. So the next day I brought the DVR back to Liz's house and tried it there, still nothing. We went to radio shack and had the guy that worked there try a few power cords, but nothing would work. We called the manufacturer and we still had a warranty, so we sent it back to be looked at. The next day the guy called and told us that we had lost EVERYTHING. He said that when he opened up the computer, everything inside was melted. Literally melted.
That day was definitely one of the worst days of NHP. Not only did we lose the evidence from that investigation, but everything from the past six months. We had plenty of room left on the hard drive, so we hadn't gotten around to dumping each case onto a disc. Not only that, but I was scheduled to do a presentation at a high school the next day and now I had nothing to show them. Luckily, we were still covered under our warranty as far as getting everything fixed, but we were heartbroken.
The night was not a total loss. We did have to cancel the presentation, and lost a lot of video evidence, but we caught some of the best audio I have ever heard. On Kerrie's (investigator)voice recorder, you hear her say "I'm not very happy with whoever you are, you're scaring the little kids that live here." Clear as day, a little boy voice answers back "We didn't do anything!". A few minutes later, you actually hear the duct tape ripping from the camera upstairs and the little boy says "That's in my sister's room!". About twenty minutes later, Kerrie is having a conversation with the other investigator in the room and the entire time she is talking, you hear an extremely deep voice in the background. I couldn't make out what it was saying because Kerrie is talking too. We need to get some audio software that will lift her voice. Liz swears she hears "Shut the f--- up or I'll go in you.", but I'm still skeptical of it. No matter what voice recorder you listen to throughout the night, you can constantly hear growls, scratches, whistles and children laughing and singing. At the very end of the night, Liz actually fell asleep in one of the rooms and began to snore and you can actually hear little kids laughing at her snoring.
We were supposed to go back to the house last weekend, but the client ended up cancelling because her kids were sick. I can't wait to return to this house, but I don't know if I want to risk melting another hard drive...
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