Along with turning water into wine, Jesus was also said to have the power to cast out demons. That means exorcisms have been around for at least 2000 years, terrifying people throughout history. Surprisingly, the Catholic Church didn’t really establish any guidelines until 1614. But in the modern world, and no doubt thanks to the influence of pop culture, exorcisms are more popular than ever. Seems like everyone is getting possessed, and that means a lot of exorcisms, include a few novel ones, are being performed all the time, based on the belief that spirits can possess humans.
10. The Home Depot Exorcism
If you’ve ever had to shop at Home Depot, you might have assumed the store was cursed. That doesn’t necessarily translate to being possessed, though. Still, your mileage may vary and, to at least one group of people, the idea that the store was beset by evil spirits was all too real.
In 2021, police had to be called to a Home Depot in Pennsylvania when several people decided to perform an exorcism in the store’s lumber aisle. They were responding to a call about “disorderly people” and discovered a pair of individuals performing an exorcism for the dead trees. Whether that meant they were exorcising the trees themselves or they were doing it on behalf of the trees is not entirely clear.
How does one exorcise a lumber aisle? The chief of police told the local paper two men in black were “chanting and moaning.” Sadly, after the men were removed, they didn’t indicate why they thought the wood was possessed in the first place or if they’d managed to save its soul.
History is littered with horror stories like this, read on!
9. Hawaiian Bible Beating
The modern world didn’t corner the market on unusual exorcisms, by any means. Though movies depict the “real” ritual as something somber and terrifying with strict guidelines, when people have tried to do it in real life, it hasn’t always gone so smoothly or seriously. Take, for instance, the case of a Hawaiian exorcism dating all the way back to 1903.
According to a news report from the time, a man they refer to as a kahuna, which the paper equated with sorcerer, although the true meaning is a little more diffuse, was charged with manslaughter. He was called in to treat a man who was suffering from malaria and was already receiving medical attention. However, the kahuna declared that the man was not sick so much as possessed by devils. The solution? A severe beating over the head with a Bible until the man died.
When taken before the magistrate, the kahuna apparently defended his actions, pointing out that it was the right way to deal with someone possessed by devils.
8. The Snake Possession
One of the great tragedies of exorcism stories is that, while they come across as goofy to people reading them, the truth is there are often real victims who suffer serious injury and even death as a result. It’s all fine and good to say Katsumi Nagaya was convinced his son was possessed by a snake back in 2013 and chuckle about it. But when you find out his 23-year-old son Takuya Nagaya died as a result of his father trying to “cure” him, then you see where these stories become truly dark.
According to reports given to police, Takuya was visiting his parents and began acting strangely. They claimed he was being erratic and even violent and saying “I am a snake.”
Rather than perhaps taking their son to see a mental health professional, the elder Nagaya began assaulting his son over the full course of a day. He beat and even bit his son until he finally collapsed from his injuries.
Some reports state that the beating and biting lasted more than an entire day, and the father’s only defense was that he was trying to drive out the snake.
7. The Texting Demon
In the movie Poltergeist, the restless and evil spirits contact the little girl in the film through a TV. Evil, it seems, is tech savvy. This point is bolstered by the opinions of Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a Catholic priest and prolific exorcist who has seen text messages sent from demons.
Rossetti is based out of Washington, DC, where he performs up to 20 exorcisms every week. He claims to have seen one victim’s eyes turn yellow like a snake, and another’s turn pitch black. But undoubtedly, the most sinister expression of evil came in the form of demonic texting.
The father of a possessed young woman began receiving text messages described as “snarky” from the demon possessing his daughter. How snarky? They said things like “she belongs to us!” Rosetti did some digging and the texts came from, you guessed it, the daughter’s phone. But there was no evidence of her having sent the messages, according to Rosetti. So a demon did.
Luckily, Rossetti and some others were able to dedicate six months to exorcising that particular demon and freeing the victim’s soul.
6. Kassam Stadium
Few people in the world are more superstitious than sports fans and athletes. Word is Serena Williams refuses to change her lucky socks before a match. Bill Russell’s lucky charm was throwing up. So the idea that some people might believe their favorite team was cursed in some way isn’t that hard to believe. But Oxford United did push the envelope a bit when they ended up on the receiving end of an exorcism.
In 2001, the team was having a spot of bad luck and underperforming in their new stadium. Naturally, talk turned to curses rather than any problem with the team’s performance. Word is that the land their new stadium was built on had been cursed several years before the thing was even built.
In an effort to get the team back on track to win, the Bishop of Oxford performed an exorcism on the site. The ritual was at the request of the team’s chaplain, who wanted the grounds blessed at the same time. That way, they could even perform weddings there without fear of evil creeping in.
So how did the land get cursed? According to the chaplain, it had once been a farm. The farmer had hired gypsies as day laborers. When the land was sold, the gypsies lost their jobs, so they cursed the place. Sounds reasonable.
5. Exorcism From Above
Buenaventura, Colombia, has a serious problem with crime and violence. It’s one of the most dangerous cities in the world. A drug dealer turf war in 2021 saw over 30 murders and 40 disappearances in a month. The poverty level is double elsewhere in the country. There is little medical care and even functional water and sewers are barely present. And it’s been that way for years.
In 2019, Monsignor Rubén Darío Jaramillo Montoya decided that there was only one solution to purge the evil from the city – an exorcism. But how do you perform a city wide exorcism? If you’re the Bishop of Buenaventura, you take to the skies. The plan was to fly over the city in a helicopter and douse the land below with holy water.
The army was actually providing the helicopter for the ritual, so there was some serious government backing to the plan. On the downside, since that was scheduled for 2019 and the issues in Buenaventura are ongoing, it looks like the plan didn’t work.
4. All of Mexico
If exorcising a city doesn’t seem extreme enough, then don’t worry, things get bigger. The entire country of Mexico was on the receiving end of an exorcism in 2015.
Because of high crime rates, which included violence and drug cartel activity and, according to the Catholic News Agency, a high abortion rate, the church felt the need to take action across the entire nation.
The archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara performed the ritual which had the very cool name of “Exorcismo Magno,” and only told people after it was done. So it was a country-wide stealth exorcism. While it’s hard to say if the exorcism changed much across Mexico, crime rates have actually dropped a bit with murder rates in 2019 and 2020 being the lowest they’ve been in over a decade.
3. The Summer Camp Exorcism
Lots of kids go to camp over the summer and experience something between the best and worst time of their lives. They make friends and learn new things but also probably endure terrible sports, subhuman living conditions and bullying. It’s a time tested ritual that most people love and/or hate depending on the day. But what typically does not occur at camp is a full on exorcism. Not even Camp Crystal Lake did that, and those kids had Jason Voorhees on site.
Over 1,000 kids were attending a three-day religious camp in Poland so they could learn more about God and their spirituality. To this end, the police conducting the camp decided to bring the students up on stage and perform hands-on exorcisms, invoking the holy spirit and causing the children to faint, scream, or otherwise freak out.
Some of the kids described it as being like a “mental asylum” and mentioned they didn’t show up the following day out of fear of what might happen. For his part, the priest claimed no one complained about it.
2. Most of Italy
In recent years, the Vatican has had to up its exorcism game. Exorcisms are on the rise, so presumably demons are very busy these days. But just how busy? According to an Italian priest, upwards of 500,000 people per year were claiming to be possessed in Italy alone. That sounds intense, right? It’s worse than you think. Italy has a population of just under 60 million. That means about one in every 120 Italians is possessed. But that stat is for a single year.
So… what happens on a 10 year timeline?
That’s five million possessed Italians, or one in 12 people. At some point, in a relatively short period of time, pretty much everyone in Italy will have to be possessed by a demon based on these numbers, or some people are getting possessed repeatedly.
1. The Case of Latoya Ammons
When it comes to exorcism stories, there are typically two responses people take. Most people will dismiss such a thing out of hand as nonsense. And some people believe firmly that there are demons and possession and anything is possible in Heaven and Earth. And the world typically doesn’t debate this anymore. People who believe in spiritual matters are, for the most part, free to believe whatever they like without being harassed for it.
Every so often though, you’ll find a story with so many baffling and troubling details that, even if you’re not a believer, you’ll start to wonder “what if?” The story of Latoya Ammons is one of those tales.
Over 800 pages of official records were obtained by the local paper to detail the story of Ammons and her family’s plight that, genuine or fraudulent, is still as disturbing a tale as any you’ll read.
Ammons moved to Gary, Indiana in 2011. They claim awful things started happening right away. The doors were swarmed by flies. Wet footprints were found in the house. The kids were levitating. A psychic would later tell them their house had demons. 200 of them. It still hasn’t gotten all that weird yet.
Ammons and her three children were possessed, but her mother was fine because, according to her, she’s immune to that sort of thing.
Now so far this could be any possession movie. But professionals got involved in this. Not Ghostbusters, but their family doctor, the Department of Child Services, as well as psychiatrists and the police. And it kept getting weirder.
An official DCS report says medical staff told them that Ammons’ son flew across the room without being touched. This was after speaking in tongues. The staff called ambulances and police. Later, a nurse witnessed him walking backward up a wall. Again, this is all apparently in a DCS report.
Her children were removed from her custody and placed in emergency care. They concluded that the youngest boy was being forced to participate in the delusions of his mother. Meanwhile, the local police had already become convinced that there were evil spirits in the home after recording equipment failed and strange images showed up in photos.
The family and the home underwent exorcisms, some of which were attended by police and DCS officials. At this point, many of the attendees had become believers and claimed to have suffered their own ill health and accidents after the fact.
Ammons eventually got custody of her children again, and moved from the house. Apparently nothing happened again afterward, either. The landlord of the house claimed no one before or after had any issues there. He asked the local police to stop driving by so often, because it was scaring the new tenants.