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May 13, 2023 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:04:02
Richard Gallagher
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Well, welcome to this week's podcast guest, Dr. Richard Gallagher.
I'm really excited.
I know I always say I'm excited about my special guest, but I really am.
Because you are one of the world's greatest experts on demons.
Is that fair to say?
Well, I guess it's fair to say.
I never volunteered for this field, but I probably have seen more cases of possession, certainly, than any doctor in history, maybe anybody in history, because of electronic communications these days.
So I have a lot of experience with this field, let's put it that way.
Yeah, and unusually, I've spoken to a Catholic priest who specializes in exorcism before, But you're quite unusual.
Actually, I have heard, I have spoken to one of the psychiatrists with experience of demons.
Have you come across Jerry Moszynski?
You know, I think I think I'm familiar with the name, but I don't know.
I don't know the man.
I mean, I've dealt with psychiatrists all over Europe.
There are other psychiatrists in England who get involved in this stuff.
And there are a number of people like me Who evaluate such cases around the world from a, you know, more or less Orthodox Christian perspective.
So, I'm not quite as singular in the field as some people think.
Right, okay.
But I know that, just before we go on, tell us briefly about your background, your psychiatric background.
Well, I was born a Catholic.
I was born and went to high school in Manhattan and then I went on to Princeton where I studied classics.
I was very impressed as a avid student of history how throughout history all sorts of cultures not only believed in evil spirits, they believed in possession.
I didn't really think I would come across these cases But after finishing my psychiatric training at Yale University, I was on the faculty of a place called New York Hospital Cornell in New York, and an exorcist walked into my office and said, Dr. Gallagher, I'd like you to evaluate a case we think has a demonic component to it.
And I said, look, with all due respect, Father, you know, our field of psychiatry has gone through what we call the satanic panic.
Where people were seeing Satan everywhere, and to some extent in America, that subcultural hysteria still exists.
Having said that, he sent me a case of a woman who was literally claiming to be beaten up by invisible spirits.
And I couldn't find any medical or psychiatric disturbance.
And I said to the priest, well, there's certainly no medical or psychological reason why this person would make up this story, which was witnessed, by the way, by numerous people whom I also interviewed.
And he said, well, that's that's good confirmation, doctor, because That we thought this woman was suffering, not from a possession, but from an oppression by spirits.
And after that, he and his colleague, who at the time were one of the few, as well as foremost, exorcists in the United States, began to show me a tremendous amount of patience.
So within a few years, I had seen a lot of cases and this was done pro bono.
And with all that I saw, I became absolutely convinced that certain people, rare people, this is not common, did get directly attacked by evil spirits, either possession or what we call oppression.
Have you been marginalised within your profession?
Because I know it's a bit of a taboo in certain sectors, isn't it?
It's all thought to be kind of mental illness and demons are thought to be a sort of medieval thing that we've grown out of.
Well, I think the atmosphere in America is a little more open.
People tend to be a little more tolerant of these ideas.
I mean, certainly my whole role is to rule out mental illness.
I'm not naive in any way about mental illness.
I'm a professor of psychiatry at a medical college, New York Medical College, and also on the faculty at Columbia.
So, I'm a pretty mainstream, you know, well-trained and well-respected psychiatrist.
I just happen to see these odd cases.
When people say, how does it feel to be out of the mainstream?
I often say, well, exactly what mainstream are you talking about?
Throughout history, most people have believed in evil spirits.
Throughout the world today, most people believe in evil spirits.
Not in certain pockets of the Western world, but even in America, you know, surveys show most Americans believe in evil spirits, and they also believe that evil spirits have the ability to attack a few select individuals.
So I don't feel marginalized.
I don't even feel out of the mainstream.
Sometimes I say to my colleagues when this topic comes up, I can't say it comes up a lot with colleagues.
But when it does come up, I say, you know, maybe maybe you're out of the mainstream, at least in terms of world history.
So.
So suppose I mean, actually, I'm I'm I'm well on board with the idea that demons do walk among us.
But suppose I didn't.
Suppose I just thought that, hey, we're living in the 21st century.
Get real.
Demons don't exist.
What would you say to me to persuade me otherwise?
Well, I don't really try to persuade people, but I do present a lot of evidence, and there's just a tremendous amount of evidence.
I mean, number one, from a psychiatric point of view, I'm well aware that certain psychiatric patients, even many psychiatric patients, are deluded into thinking, you know, that their hallucinations are caused by demons or something like that.
There are other people who suffer from various dissociative disorders or just have a very strong sense of evil or destruction inside, like a patient with sociopathy or With borderline personality or something.
So I'm well aware that many, many people are mistaken in thinking they're attacked by spirits when they're not.
But, you know, I also go on to say to people, well, how many patients do you know who all of a sudden can speak fluent Latin, have hidden knowledge of all kinds of esoteric things in the lives of the people they're talking to?
Occasionally even levitate seem to have enormous strength far beyond even what a manic or psychotic patient would demonstrate.
And of course, nobody can answer that question because first of all, those things are not in the realm of psychiatry.
You could say they're in the realm of paranormal and a lot of people believe in the paranormal.
So those people are generally open to what I'm saying.
But the paranormal is a modern term.
It's merely a sort of pseudoscientific term that indicates what people in past eras would have called either the supernatural or the pre-natural.
And, you know, people have been believing this stuff for millennia.
So once again, I don't regard myself as out of the mainstream.
Certainly in the Catholic and Christian community in America, which is very large, and as a psychiatrist, you know, I'm not naive about people ascribing things to demons that are simply wrong or delusional, but we're not talking about those patients.
I sometimes mention to people what surprises people.
I'm a very, very experienced psychiatrist.
I used to be the The County Emergency Psychiatry Director.
I've evaluated, James, about 27,000 cases in my life as a psychiatrist.
These are people who were patients that I saw in one context or another.
And I asked people to guess how many of those patients I thought were possessed.
Take a guess.
Take a guess how many people, James.
Ten?
I'll answer the question.
Zero.
Zero.
Of those 27,000 patients who just sort of came into my office to be evaluated, now these are people who are sent to me because they have psychiatric problems.
None of those patients were possessed.
The reason I've seen so many cases, including I think more than any psychiatrist, any doctor in history, Is because people from all over the world already have these odd features that are not explainable by normal psychiatric symptoms, and then they want my opinion about them.
So, on the one hand, it's a rare thing.
It's like a rare cancer.
I mean, even a doctor may not see a rare cancer during the course of their life, but a particular type of rare cancer.
It's just that I've had so much experience because I've seen people all over the world But these are not these are not patients of mine, and they're not people who came to me originally as patients So that that distinction is very important for people to understand because you have to understand that On the one hand possession if we're talking about possession possession is rare but on the other hand the features the evidence for it goes so far beyond anything medically or Right.
psychiatrically possible, that it cries out for some kind of explanation.
And in a certain amount of these cases, the explanation seems to me the traditional one in the Western world and in the Muslim world as well, that these are people possessed by evil spirits.
Right.
So when you're trying to differentiate between demonic possession and just mental illness, are the differentiating factors the big ones you've mentioned, like levitation, speaking in tongues they like levitation, speaking in tongues they don't know, knowledge they could never possibly have had, and superhuman strength?
Are those the tells?
Well, those are the classic features because And again, when you say speaking in tongues, there's a lot of people in what's known as the charismatic movement who speak in tongues.
They speak a kind of gibberish.
I'm not commenting on that.
I'm not necessarily a big believer in that stuff.
What I'm saying is they're speaking a fluent language.
It's often Latin, but it can be pretty much any language.
And they're speaking it fluently.
They've never been exposed to it.
I could give you many examples of that sort of thing and everything I'm talking about, actually.
You also often will have the person will go into a trance as a voice comes out of them that is clearly using their body and even their vocal cords, but sounds kind of distinctly different.
Very hostile, very vehement in their antagonism towards sacred things.
You also have to take a good history because this stuff doesn't just arise out of the blue, usually arises in people who have turned in some serious way to dark occult practices in their life and or, you know, very evil or at least extremely sinful behavior.
So you put it all together, you know, and you get a kind of syndrome Which is the medical term.
You never take one feature and say, Oh, that proves it.
It's always the combination of these.
I would call them signs and symptoms that indicate something much more than a common medical or psychiatric illnesses is going on.
I'm very well aware that throughout history, people have Sometimes ascribed possession to people who are psychotic, to schizophrenics, to people with neurological problems like these bizarre types of epilepsy, like temporal lobe epilepsy.
But again, in today's world, at least in the modern world where people have access to advanced medicine, it's not that hard, James, to rule out the medical problems.
And then You're left with these features that, again, on a more popular level, people call paranormal.
And, you know, it's quite, in my opinion, it's quite obvious to the objective observer that something is going on beyond simply some kind of illness.
I've got to ask you, did you find your having done a Classics degree, has that helped you when they start speaking in Latin?
Well, I do know Latin and I suppose it does help me.
A lot of times during an exorcism, the demon will either understand the prayers of the priest in Latin and comment on it, sometimes sarcastically, Or they will speak some Latin themselves.
Now, people say, well, you know, isn't that odd that demons only speak Latin?
But...
Oh.
Oh.
Oh, there you are.
Sorry.
Don't know what happened there.
Yep.
I'm hearing you.
Are you hearing me?
Yeah, I'm hearing you.
Yeah.
So you were saying that people think it's odd that they should speak Latin.
Well, people often think, you know, that, you know, by Latin people are reading the priest's mind or something.
But it's really, it's really...
Demons are highly intelligent, as far as I can tell, most of them.
And they've been observing human beings since the dawn of history.
I do believe in evolution.
It's interesting that I've heard demons call people monkeys, which I assume is what they kind of think about human beings, that we're just sort of these evolved monkeys.
But I've been to exorcisms where many other languages have been spoken.
For instance, I went to an exorcism once as an observer.
I'm not an exorcist.
I'm simply a scientific advisor on these issues.
And the woman went into a trance and she was speaking a language that sounded to me vaguely Slavic, even though she had no Slavic background whatsoever.
knew no Slavic languages.
And we were all, all of us observers were a little puzzled by what was going on until after the exorcism was concluded.
The priest said, Oh, well, she was speaking to me.
And she was speaking Bulgarian because I grew up in Bulgaria.
So cases of possession all over the world, and this includes outside the Christian orbit, in the Western orbit have traditionally been known to speak different languages.
So when people say to me, well, how come these possessions only happen in sort of fundamentalist Christian circles?
I mean, nothing could be further for the truth.
There was a famous historian, psychologist, German professor about 100 years ago, who wrote a magnum opus on
Possession and he found cases of possession and pretty much every culture in history And of course you reported a lot of the things that you know, I report in my in my book I wrote a book about this called demonic foes and I wrote it in part to educate the public but also because you know I can only see a certain amount of these cases as far as I know there were only 24 hours in a day and
I'm a busy psychiatrist, so, you know, I only have a certain amount of time to see people.
But, you know, I discuss in my book, Demonic Foes, his book as well, which really reported throughout all history exactly the sort of things that I'm observing in these modern cases.
And do, I mean, you've seen presumably exorcisms conducted by religions other than Christianity, by imams and things like that?
Thank you.
Well, yeah, they don't necessarily call them exorcisms.
They may call them, you know, prayers to deliver people and stuff like that, and I've seen this not just in the Catholic Church, but in the Orthodox communities and the In the Protestant communities in America, and I have worked with some occasional Jewish religious figures as well as Muslims who do conduct these things.
I haven't actually seen an exorcism in those cultures, but I have certainly talked to people who claim that they've gotten some help.
I do think that the most severe cases tend, for reasons people can speculate, tend to get referred to the Catholic Church and that the Catholic Church, as well as I would say the Eastern Orthodox Church, tend in my experience, some people would probably disagree with me, but tend to have the most success.
That's interesting.
And so they sort of hate God, presumably, and they hate the Bible, they hate the Psalms.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, demons have made their choice.
You know, the way we understand evil spirits, and this includes in the Muslim religion as well as the Christian religions, they made their choice to rebel against God.
They basically didn't Didn't want to follow God's will for whatever reason.
It's a fundamental principle of Catholic theology that God does not force himself on people.
So people are free to reject God.
These angels rejected God, just as human beings can do.
And they sort of, you might say, went to their own place, you know.
That place, I don't think, is a happy one.
I don't think anybody knows too much about it, but it's essentially the absence of God is where they are.
And that's not a happy fate for any creature.
Yeah.
Well, I was going to ask you about this.
I'm glad you sort of steered the conversation in that direction.
But what What is your understanding of these entities?
I mean, are they, are they fallen angels?
Is that?
Yes, they're fallen angels.
So they're basically Lucifer's followers?
Yes.
And you know, certain angels, like certain human beings, you know, we all have free will.
Sometimes free will is a little limited, but By and large, people have free choice and people can either, you know, follow the plan of God or try to come up with happiness on their own.
So these angels chose not to follow God.
They seem to want to be their own little gods, you know.
Something that may surprise people is even prior to the Christian era, the Jewish thinkers, especially of what's called the intertestamentary period between the end of the Hebrew Bible and the beginning of the New Testament, they basically interpreted pagan deities as demonic.
You pointed out that I studied classics and I always puzzled about that because I wondered what evidence the ancient people had that that was sort of a belief that didn't just sound kind of superstitious.
And it's it does come from the fact that, in my opinion, that these demons have pretended to be all different kinds of things throughout history, including including gods and goddesses.
I had a guy who came to me who was unequivocally possessed, and he claimed to be possessed.
It sounds kind of ludicrous, but he claimed to be possessed by Zeus.
And he said, Dr. Gallagher, you know, do you want to speak to Zeus?
Because he felt that he could go into a trance and Zeus would manifest itself.
And I said, well, not particularly.
I don't normally like to engage with These evil creatures.
And it is discouraged, by the way.
Now, he was convinced that Zeus, and again, this is an intelligent guy, sort of what we would call a neo-pagan, and there is neo-paganism in the Western world at this time.
Paganism, you know, has never entirely died away, although you don't have too many strong Followers of Zeus.
But he eventually was allowed himself to be exorcised and Zeus flew the coop.
But what happens in exorcisms, which I find quite interesting, is that these demons pretend to be a lot of different things.
They may pretend to be Hitler, or they may pretend to be Judas Iscariot, or they may pretend to be, you know, sort of odd and evil Uncle Harry in the family.
They often pretend to be dead souls.
But under the influence of the exorcism, they are compelled.
And, you know, Catholics would certainly say they're compelled by God or by our Lord.
They're compelled eventually to acknowledge who they are.
And then they admit that they lie.
And that, you know, then they give a demonic name.
So it's quite common for demons to fool people.
And I think they've done so.
Again, I'm a great student of history.
I think they've done so in many different cultures throughout history.
They have attempted to actually make people superstitious by believing that there are all kinds of different things.
I'll give you another example of a woman who was not I mean, I could give you so many examples, but I'm trying to choose something that really illustrates what I'm talking about.
So this woman came to me and she said, she was not possessed.
She was what we call oppressed.
She was a perfectly sane woman.
She had already been evaluated psychiatrically.
And she said, Dr. Gallagher, a priest sent me to you because, and that's often normally how I see somebody, a priest sent He sent me to you because he wanted to make sure I don't have mental illness, although I'm sure I don't have mental illness.
And I said, and why did the priest send you to me?
And she said, well, it's because angels are talking to me.
And I said, well, what do you mean angels are talking to you?
And she says, yes, I, it wasn't like a, it wasn't like a psychotic individual.
She said, I get these very strong, coherent messages.
Unlike sort of psychotic voices.
And they tell me they have a great mission for me.
And I said, well, what do you believe about that?
She goes, well, I'm a very ordinary person.
I certainly don't believe that God has got this great mission for me.
So I said, well, keep following the priest's advice and see what happens to these messages you're getting.
It was sort of like a prophet.
And, you know, there have been many people throughout history who have set themselves up as prophet.
They're often subject to the exact same type of messages, which are most of the time are pretty bogus messages.
So then she comes back to me a month later and she says, Dr. Gallagher, you know, I think you were right because you were trying to tell me that they're not angels appearing to me or giving me messages.
They tell me that they're dead souls.
And I said, well, what do you think of that?
She said, well, I've never invited dead souls to talk to me.
I know that's condemned in the Bible as spiritualism, and we're not supposed to channel spirits, as many of the New Age gurus still do to this day, right?
And I said, well, I think that's pretty perceptive on your part.
You know, come back when you When you want to consult me again.
And eventually she did come back and she said they finally revealed who they are.
They say they're demons and they were just pretending to be angels and dead souls.
I found that.
And eventually she was, you know, she was liberated from whatever influence these demons had over her.
And I find that a pretty instructive story, though, because I personally believe that throughout history, demons have tried to pawn themselves off as other type of creatures or dead souls or whatever.
And, you know, there's still a whole industry of spiritualists all over the world, including in America and in England, who think that they're in touch with either dead souls or some other type of spirit entities.
And I personally think they're fooled by demons.
So, when they, before they reveal themselves, when they're pretending to be other things, I mean, so the ones, for example, you mentioned they do, do they literally impersonate Hitler?
They sort of speak in German and sort of give speeches or what?
How does it work?
Well, I mean, I've never actually heard, you know, an evil spirit speak in German.
They're certainly capable of it.
And they do, yes, they do things like that.
Or they may imitate the voice of somebody.
You know, as people who go to, you know, paranormal practitioners, you know, fortune tellers and that sort of thing, they will often reveal information that they would have no way of knowing.
So, you know, for instance, there's one woman who was hearing a voice, a message.
A lot of these people don't hear voices like with their ears the way usually schizophrenics do.
So it's one of the criteria that you look for.
Although, again, you never take just one criteria because some people can just be very imaginative and think they're getting messages when it's just their imagination.
But this woman came to me and she said, you know, I got this message from, again, she was not possessed.
I guess you could call her oppressed in some way.
And she said, I got this message from It was my uncle and my uncle was telling me, you know, about how he used to enjoy, uh, you know, going to Central Park with me and taking these walks.
So she said, I know that this, this was really my uncle Harry.
And, um, I said, well, I think you should be skeptical of that, but why, why are you coming to see me?
And she said, because another voice told me, um, that I'll never get married.
And she was devastated by that.
You know, she was a young woman.
And I said, well, first of all, I don't believe this is Uncle Harry, and I don't believe that any other creature has the ability to tell your future.
I mean, it's widely taught.
Believe it or not, James, I teach a course at a Catholic seminary on this subject.
You know, these are the kind of things I discuss with these young seminarians.
It's another one of my jobs.
I wear a lot of hats.
And I said to this woman, first of all, it's widely believed, number one, that evil spirits can pretend to be all kinds of things, and this is what they're doing for you.
And it's also widely believed, again, by knowledgeable people, that demons do not know the future.
I mean, only God knows the future.
No creature knows the future.
So I said, you don't have to believe that for a minute, that you'll never get married, that, you know, somebody can tell you what your future will be.
And she came back to me about six months later, and she said, you know, Dr. Gallagher, you were right.
I'm engaged now, and I'm glad I listened to you because it was getting me very, very depressed.
Again, an indication of how these creatures, you know, I mean, they have a personality.
It's an unattractive personality.
It's not only very hostile to sacred things and God, you know, they sort of hate God, but sadism, which is staggering.
I mean, most of us, you know, come across a couple of really sadistic people during the course of a long life.
Certainly, when you think of someone like Hitler, Or Stalin, you know, these people were megalomaniacs with a great sadistic streak.
But these evil spirits are pretty much unattractive and sadistic personalities.
And, you know, that seems to be how they get their pleasure.
Yeah.
Well, do you think, I mean, given that God made us in his image, do you think that the reason that they attack us is a way of getting at God?
Yeah, I mean, it's a...
Thank you.
Hi. - All right.
Hi.
Yeah, I mean, essentially, evil spirits and presumably Lucifer are primarily, you know, they feel they actually feel rivalrous with God.
I mean, in many ways, they want to they want to be worshipped themselves.
They want to be their own gods, as I said before.
So they hate God.
And, you know, since we're made in the image or likeness of God, and because You know, we have the capacity still to return to God and to meet God in heaven and all that.
But they are trying to...
So to continue, they mostly hate God. they mostly hate God.
They sort of... You can hear me, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, they mostly hate God.
You know, they think of us as almost like pets or like dogs, you know, we're far beneath them.
I've talked to some Satanists who do exist.
They're very rare, but you know, they act like, oh, I'll be rewarded in hell and stuff like that.
And I say to them, Demons think you're a piece of crap.
Don't think that you're going to be admired by evil spirits.
They think you're just a dumb beast that they can prey upon.
Yes, I can imagine that.
You mentioned at the beginning that you were raised a Catholic.
Have you remained a faithful Catholic through your life or did you go through periods where your faith lapsed?
Well, I don't think I ever went through a period where, you know, I said there's no God or anything like that.
But I certainly, like I think most young people, you know, I certainly question my faith.
So I certainly went through a period where there were things about it that I felt I didn't understand well.
I never entirely left the Catholic faith.
And of course, as I've gotten involved with this field, It certainly underscores a very traditional way of believing.
So it is certainly, by the grace of God, intensified my faith, put it that way.
Well, yes, I'm with you on that one.
I mean, as Christians, we're not supposed to demand proof all the time.
We're not supposed to be doubting Thomases.
But nevertheless, your experiences must have It strengthened your belief.
I mean, it is pretty much physical proof, isn't it?
I mean, no question about it.
I mean, you know, a lot of modern Christians and Catholics, you know, we accept maybe a certain amount about the faith just from what we've imbibed as young people, and then we begin to question it.
And sometimes we question it in the areas of things like evil spirits and heaven and hell and all that.
So to have been immersed in this endeavor, again, something, James, I never volunteered for, and I don't think it is a good idea to volunteer for this sort of thing.
I mean, you know, my identity is as a doctor.
You know, I'm a physician.
I try to help people.
And when these people have been sent to me because they're suffering tremendously, and don't kid yourself, these are very, very suffering individuals, human beings.
You know, I wasn't going to say, oh, well, this is a controversial area.
You know, I'm too reluctant to get involved in it or something like that.
I tried to be of help.
And in the process, I think I developed a certain unique knowledge about this field that I then felt I should share with other people through writing this book, Demonic Foes.
Do demonic entities ever try and have a go at you?
I would say not really.
I mean, I think that they, don't get me wrong, I think that they particularly hate anybody who is attempting to speak openly about their realm, you know.
So it's like nobody is entirely free.
But it's not like there's If there's been anything overt, you know, I think maybe minor things have happened.
If you speak to an exorcist, they will often say, you know, well, sometimes my phone doesn't seem to work well.
You know, it's interesting to me that without being superstitious about it during this show, we've had a lot of trouble with the electronic communication.
Yeah.
That may be a type of harassment, not only of me, but of you for having this show.
But again, again, you wouldn't know for sure.
I mean, you know, strange things happen.
But I do think I do think that anybody, you know, I mean, in many ways, anybody who tries to be a good Christian, let alone talk about this sort of thing, might come up with some minor harassment.
But, you know, it's not something that, you know, preoccupies me in any way.
And it's never been it's never been anything that I feel has No, I think what you say is true.
I've had too many of these experiences.
You're the first person I've ever had those The problems where you couldn't get into the studio.
And these things strike me as... I mean, I know the demons don't like me.
Because, like you, I'm a man of God.
But they can't really get you.
They just do sort of niggling things.
Because we're kind of bulletproof.
They do kind of annoying things.
Yeah, I remember, I remember somewhat analogous experience I had about two years ago, I was invited on a American television show.
And, you know, a very sweet woman calls me and she says, you know, Dr. Gallagher, we still want you on today.
But we've had enormous problems with our recording equipment today.
And, you know, somewhat similar to the problems you and I just had for the last 40 minutes or so.
And so, yeah, you never want to jump to that conclusion because, you know, you don't know absolutely.
But as you point out, sometimes this pattern occurs too often to think it's happening just by chance, you know.
Yeah.
So you've come to the conclusion that all those classical gods and goddesses that you would have studied on your Classics course are essentially manifestations of demonic manifestations?
Well, you've got to remember, like a lot of phenomena in life, it's very complicated.
For instance, the ancient Greek playwrights, you know, they would often tell stories about the gods, they would change the details.
So, in some ways it was kind of, you might say, imaginative myths.
But beneath the myths, you know, even a very intelligent person like Plato and Socrates, you know, they did believe that there was some kind of gods and goddesses.
The classic story I tell in this area has to do with the Delphic Oracle, because if you know the story of the Delphic Oracle, I mean, they would take these young peasant women and she would go into a trance and out of her voice would come the voice of Apollo, the great British scholar at
I think both Oxford and Cambridge, one or the other.
E.R.
Dodds, who wrote, and again, not a Christian guy.
In fact, he was somewhat into spiritualism himself.
He pointed out that it's clear that the Delphic Oracle went into a possessed state.
And so out of her mouth would come the voice of Apollo, and it would be the repository or the expositor of enormously
Valuable data that people from all over the world all over the Mediterranean world came to hear the Delphic Oracle man, you know representatives of the Emperor Generals and now again as with all communication from evil spirits They're not always they're not always accurate and they're not always They're certainly not always
sensible or worth following their advice.
But there's no question that what would happen is the poor peasant girl would go into a trance, this voice would come out of them, all the people who would go to the Oracle, I've been to Delphi in Greece, all the people who would flock to see her would say, you know, this is not this woman just pretending to be Apollo, this was the voice of Apollo.
And so They themselves, you know, were believing, I think, you know, certainly from my classical studies, as well as E.R.
Dodds, who was, I think, the professor of Greek, I think, at Oxford.
And he said, you know, there's no question that this woman fulfilled the criteria that we would now say constitutes a possession.
So, yes, I do think that at least Some main emphasis.
And again, there were ancient people who believed in the gods, there were others who didn't.
But an awful lot of people certainly had some notion of the divine.
And certainly part of the impetus for that belief, in my opinion, was that these demons at times would pretend to be gods and goddesses.
You sort of suggested earlier that one shouldn't try and Get too interested in these entities and what they tell you about themselves.
The one you mentioned was Zeus and you didn't want to hear what Zeus said.
But have you sort of formed a sort of demonology?
Are there key characters who keep recurring and is there a hierarchy?
How does it work?
Yeah, like in human nature, like in heaven, different sorts of angels, there undoubtedly is some kind of hierarchy.
You know, it's kind of a disreputable and murky realm.
So, you know, I'm not acting like we know a heck of a lot about it.
But like almost any other society, there's some kind of society, I'm sure there are some demons that are more powerful than others.
And, you know, they've chosen They've chosen this society.
It's not a society, I think, a truly rational creature would want to be a part of.
Yeah, I think, I agree that they've made a bad call, but I suppose that they get sort of what satisfaction they can by persuading people to worship them.
I mean, like Moloch and Baal and people like that, demons like that.
Right, they do.
At least maybe the more prominent ones, you know, seem to want to be like God.
You know, they want to get worshipped and, you know, they're often quite intelligent and I suppose on some level they think they're powerful enough that they deserve some kind of reverence or worship.
I mean, the whole thing is sort of wacky, but that seems to be their attitude.
Absolutely.
You look at some of the world leaders today, and you mentioned Stalin and Hitler.
Do you think there's anything in the theory that a lot of our leaders are actually influenced by demons?
Well, you've got to remember, and you would probably agree with me, James, that on the one hand, you know, demons probably have a little bit of influence on all of us.
You know, you can't go to the extreme of saying, you know, they take away most people's responsibility.
Even the great theologian Thomas Aquinas said 90% of human frailty, 90% of human evil is probably just our own frailty.
So you don't want to be over-ascribing the influence of spirits.
When people turn to evil, Again, I don't necessarily think those people are possessed.
You know, some people say, Oh, what possessed this serial killer, you know, Hitler or Stalin must have been possessed or something.
I don't believe that.
I believe people have the capacity to become, you know, very good person.
And they also have the capacity to become an evil person without being possessed.
I'm sure there is some Unknown level of demonic influence on that person.
But again, I don't I don't think that that absolves them of their free will.
You know, the the interesting Christian English writer CS Lewis used to say, you know, it's important not to disbelieve in evil spirits, because it's a reality of the cosmos.
But it's also just as important not to become over-preoccupied with them or act like, you know, the devil made me do it and everything is caused by the devil.
I think that's a very sensible, balanced position.
I've certainly heard Christians say this, that they advise against becoming too interested in demons, because it sort of gives them More power, in a way.
Yeah, I suppose.
I just think it's unhealthy to, you know, emphasize their influence on people to the exclusion of the free will and the responsibility we all have as human beings.
I don't think the majority of world problems are caused by demons.
Right.
And in your experience, what do they... are there any... I know that Jerry Malzinski mentioned to me that the demons that he dealt with seemed particularly averse to the 23rd Psalm.
I don't know what number it is in Catholic.
You know, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want that one.
Is that something you've noticed?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know that specific if that's there.
They are specific of Gatinois, but it certainly is a beautiful psalm.
It is the 23rd in I think most Christian denominations, it's a beautiful prayer about the confidence in our Lord.
So I could imagine it's certainly one among several that they particularly hate.
Yeah.
And it's nice and short as well.
It's punchy, so it's quite easy to learn.
That was exactly my thought.
It's short enough that people actually know it and can recite it.
And anything of that nature, anything sacred, Sacraments, the Eucharist, prayers, you know, reverence for holy people.
I mean, all that stuff they hate.
I remember I took a religious medal once.
I was testing a guy who was possessed and I put it near him.
I may have attempted to put it on his forehead because I sometimes use certain things to test people.
And he grabbed the relic.
It was sort of a relic in a metal.
He grabbed it and he threw it across the room before I could even have it touch him, touch his forehead.
And I said, here is a rare case in which I did say something to what I thought at that point was the manifestation of an evil spirit.
And I said, I guess you didn't like that, huh?
And he said, oh, no, no, no, it was fine.
I mean, you know, it's like talking to somebody, you know, they're lying.
And yet, you know, they continue to lie.
It's a bizarre experience to have with another human being, let alone a demon who just lies about the obvious.
Well, I suppose the guy in charge of them is the Prince of Lies, so it would make sense that they're pretty accomplished at that kind of thing.
Well, and that goes beyond the point we spent a fair amount of time talking about how they pretend to be other things.
I mean, that's a lie.
Yeah.
And they're, you know, like certain human beings we know, they don't seem to think lying is anything to be foregone if it achieves their purposes.
You've had, I mean, you've been doing this for Quite a few years, I imagine.
Is there any particular experience that just completely blew you away with its weirdness, in a world of weirdness?
Well, one of the cases I write about in the book that I wrote was particularly flamboyant.
In fact, Hollywood is going to make a movie out of it.
So, careful what you wish for, right?
Yeah.
So this is a woman who's actually fairly notorious over the Internet because the case has been commented upon by every Tom, Dick and Harry who thinks he knows something about this field.
And I call her Julia.
I always use pseudonyms in the book, but every story I tell in the book, is there to illustrate a point, number one.
And number two, nevertheless, I disguised their identity.
So Julia was not her real name.
But this was by far the most flamboyant exorcism and case of possession that I ever saw.
And again, I want to reiterate what I said about the beginning, you know, as a well trained psychiatrist, I was very aware that There's a certain amount of subcultural hysteria about Satanism, you know, as if there are Satanists everywhere.
I do not believe that.
Having said that, this was one of the real deals.
She was a Satan-worshipping woman who called herself the queen of this, you know, sort of nefarious, pathetic cult.
And she was possessed, and of course she didn't like that, even though she worshipped Satan.
Now I was in my house in my bedroom with my wife at three o'clock in the morning before I met her.
And we had two cats who were very well behaved.
And they just went berserk in a way that we never had seen before or ever saw since.
And we had to separate them.
And we didn't think too much of it.
Maybe they had Bad food or catnip or something, who the heck knew?
But it was the very next morning that this exorcist who had sent me the original woman, who was beaten up by evil spirits, and did very well, by the way, eventually.
And he brought her, he wanted me, I knew he wanted me to meet her, but I'd never met her yet.
So he brought her to my house.
Uh, which was a little bizarre.
I, you know, I said to him afterwards, you know, please, uh, father, I call him Father Jacques, not his real name, although a lot of people know who he is.
Uh, it was a prominent exorcist at the time.
And I said, look, uh, father, you know, with all due respect, please do not, do not bring a Satanist to my neighborhood.
Okay.
Uh, it's not, not good for neighborly relations.
But she comes to the door with the priest and the first words out of her mouth were, well, Dr. Gallagher, I've heard a lot about you.
How did you like the cats last night?
Never met the woman before.
Now, you can understand I was pretty annoyed.
I later told, well, I told her, I said, look, This priest has asked me to see you.
They wanted me to evaluate her, not because this was an incredibly dramatic possession.
They knew she was possessed.
But they also knew she was ambivalent about getting help, in part because she was afraid of leaving the cult, and in part because she was afraid of... She had certain psychic abilities that she ascribed to Satan as gifts, and she really didn't want to give that up.
So, it was quite a dramatic case.
Eventually, she actually dropped out because she was, I think, mostly scared that the cult would punish her, maybe kill her, in her mind at least.
And I said to her, look, Julia, not her name, I said, I'm perfectly willing to talk to you.
We did actually wind up talking quite a few times.
I learned quite a bit from that case.
I said, but if you have a repeat of that, you know, and I'm already thinking, what the hell am I, what the hell am I saying?
How could she have had anything to do with it?
But I said, if there's a repeat of that type of thing, you know, um, I want nothing to do with you.
And she, she respected me.
I think she liked talking to a doctor.
Uh, she kind of disparaged priests.
So she liked having a conversation with a, A doctor who knew something about possession.
She actually gave me permission to write about her and to talk about her.
And this was such a dramatic case that, you know, I said I'll highlight her in the book.
And she's now free of these?
No, no, no.
She refused to leave the cult.
I mean, that's another misconception that people have because they often think, well, if you get a few exorcisms, you're going to be delivered.
That often does occur, although sometimes it's quite a protracted process.
But you have to work at it.
I mean, you know, she wanted to have her cake and eat it too.
I mean, you can't remain in a satanic cult and expect that you're going to get help from God.
You know, it just doesn't work that way.
He doesn't like that.
Well, it just doesn't work that way.
You know, you have to reform your life.
You have to renounce your evil ways.
Otherwise, you're just not going to be delivered.
Exorcism is not like the mumbo-jumbo of a witch doctor or something.
You say the right mumbo-jumbo prayers, and everything is going to be fine.
It's not magic.
You've got to work at it.
You've got to work at reforming your life.
And in conjunction with the prayers, again, of the church, No exorcist will say, I'm the person responsible.
They say, you know, it's God who delivers people.
But she would not go through that process in a satisfactory way.
So she was never delivered.
Right.
And your cats, they haven't misbehaved since?
Well, they're long gone, but I don't think that had anything to do with, you know, her.
They never had any episodes like that, either prior or after that.
Right, right.
It's been really fascinating talking to you.
I'm very keen to read your book now.
So tell us where people can find you and where they can read you.
Well, the book is widely available.
It's interesting, I had a very good Jewish friend of mine who read the book recently and he said, Rich, how come you never told me about this side of your life?
I said, well, I don't go around talking to everybody about it.
And I said, what did you think of the book?
And he said, he's a physician himself.
And he said, Rich, you cannot read that book without believing that a scientifically trained person with a lot of observation has convinced you that there seem to be evil spirits.
So and that was, you know, he's an educated reader.
That's precisely who I am the book for.
So you can get that book sort of anywhere really, you know, is a compilation of all my Thoughts and experiences over the last 25 or so years.
People can find me.
I'm a little busy, so I don't make it so easy to find me.
That's all right.
It's allowed.
You know, it's not like I have a website.
It's not like I'm prominent on social media, though.
I am all over the Internet.
If you really need to get a hold of me, you'll find a way over the Internet to find me.
Well, it's been great, great talking to you.
Thank you very much.
And I would like to apologize to everyone for the demonic attacks which made this... which kept interrupting us.
Well, crazy as it sounds, James, I think you're right.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's a good way to end.
Thank you for the invitation and for a very thoughtful interview.
It was a very high-end interview.
You asked a lot of good questions.
Oh, thanks very much.
That's a beautiful compliment.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, and I wish you all the best.
Thank you.
God bless.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Take care.
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