In The Presence Of Evil: Demonic Perception Narratives With Supernatural Folklorist Victoria Jaye

Speaker A: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles. Before we introduce today's podcast or guest, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving a review. It costs nothing, but it helps share news, the podcast, and guests I feature with others interested within the paranormal. It's a simple and easy way to help the podcast continue to grow and be a space for people to chat and come together. If you haven't already found us on the Haunted History Chronicle's website, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, you can find links to all social media pages in any of the notes for an episode. Come and join us to get involved and gain access to additional blogs, news and updates. And now let's get started introducing today's episode. Joining me today is Victoria J, a supernatural folklorist who specializes in demonic narratives, experiences and phenomena. Currently, she's working on her first book about demonic folklore, which started during her thesis research. Her thesis is available online through the USU. Library called in the Presence of Evil demonic Perception Narratives. Her podcast is called Demon Folklorist and is available on most platforms through Paranormal Buz Radio. There and on her website, she talks demons, horror and folklore. We were able to chat about types of possessive spirits, the differences between negative supernatural experiences and something else why demons may inhabit someone's life, some of the beliefs around the origins of demons, and we dive into Victoria's own research and classification system and what she hopes to bring to this area of study. We were also able to look into the Roland Doe case and touch upon some other instances. It's a case that Victoria herself has spoken about at quite considerable length on her podcast. As always, you can find links to Victoria's podcast website and everything else on the Haunted History Chronicles website, in the guest information and on podcast description notes. I think there will be many people listening wanting to head over to see more from Victoria. A special thank you to contributors on the Facebook page for the Haunted History Chronicles website, where not so long ago I asked people to suggest some questions that they might like me to put towards Victoria. I had some fantastic responses, some of which I might try and save for future guests and episodes, but I've certainly used some as part of this conversation today with Victoria. So get comfortable and let's introduce today's guest, where we can explore some of these really interesting and intriguing topics and questions.

Speaker B: Hi Victoria. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Speaker C: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Do you want to just start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Speaker C: Sure. So I got my Master's in Folklore in 2021 from Utah State University. I am a supernatural folklorist, but I generally identify myself as a demonic folklorist because my speciality is demons. So I look at experiences, narratives and phenomena. I organized a classification system of phenomena of the different behaviors that we saw in demonic related narratives, published ones, and organized all that information so that we could figure out the different ways that demons act. It also gave me information on how to recognize demons, and then I found.

Speaker D: Out quickly that the public doesn't really.

Speaker C: Know how to do that. So it's like, this is why I'm here, I guess.

Speaker B: So what inspired you to kind of take that up as your area of study?

Speaker C: So I had had an experience with possession that I believed was a demon until I got through my research. It was only after I had submitted my thesis that I was like, this didn't behave like a demon. Maybe it's not one. So unfortunately, there is a mistake in my original thesis. It's available online. It's called in the Presence of Evil demonic Perception Narratives, and I relate that.

Speaker D: Experience and how awful it was.

Speaker C: I was 19, and I didn't originally think I was going to do anything with demons. When I started my research at USU. I wanted to do something with horror movies and fairy tales because there's definitely a link. But I wrote the paper for a class and just got over it, so.

Speaker D: Didn'T really want to write that one.

Speaker C: And I had a bad experience with an expert on the campus who would have helped me with that project, and I nearly cried walking away from it.

Speaker D: And I was just like, okay, let's.

Speaker C: Not get too upset here, because I had to go to class. So I was like, all right, what do you know about what do you know an awful lot of information about that you could possibly turn into something else? And it arrived almost immediately. It was like, oh, you know a lot about demons because you did a lot of research after your own experience.

Speaker B: I think it's one of those topics and certainly one of those words that there's so much misinformation and a lot of perception around it, and it kind of means that there's a lot of blurred lines and a lot of kind of wading through the mud. If you like to try and really get to the heart of some things because it's actually such a big topic area in itself. It's vast, isn't it? I mean, it's something that crosses culture, religion, geography, and so kind of this very broad, big topic. You're coming at it from so many different standing positions and viewpoints, and I suppose the first thing to really kind of ask you is to just kind of, what is demon folklore? What do you kind of define that kind of area of that study of?

Speaker C: Definitely a great question. So folklore, really, we just have to go back to yeah, like, originally, what even is folklore? It means you divide the word lore meaning stories, folk, meaning people, so they're the stories that we tell. I looked at experience specifically and memorized so memorates are first person narratives. And I was very interested in what did it feel like to be in the presence of a demon, what did it sound like? What sort of things would you see in these experiences? What sort of things? Like were your senses pinging off? And that's how I created my system. Demonic folklore, really. It's just any story that is said to be about demons. So it's very broad. But I focus more on that experience because that was what was most interesting to me as someone who has been possessed. And then what were the behaviors, what were the patterns? So that's how I define it. Just any story that happens to be about demons and then kind of break.

Speaker D: It down from there.

Speaker C: Does that answer the question?

Speaker B: It does kind of broad, no. But I think it's an interesting kind of position to take in piece of research to do. Because as I think we go into this discussion, what I think is very apparent is this overlap and this crossover with other types of entities and experiences that people may have. And so therefore, there is this kind of murkiness to it. And you do almost need some kind of a system, a deeper understanding. Because, again, there's so misinformation about this that you do need this deeper understanding to be able to truly understand what I think you might be reading or if somebody is experiencing something, to be able to start breaking it down to, like you mentioned, understand the patterns. And having spoken to a member of the church before as part of a previous podcast, where we looked at possession, we looked at exorcisms, we looked at the types of things that he does as part of his role as a Deliverance minister. He's very clear. This type of thing is so incredibly rare. He's been doing it for a long time and he's never had any experience of it. Nor does he know anyone else who works in that same capacity who's had to do it, because it's so exceptionally rare. He gets asked all the time saying I'm possessed and I need someone to.

Speaker C: Come and help me.

Speaker B: And he's like, no, you're not.

Speaker C: Because if you are telling me that.

Speaker B: You'Re possessed, you wouldn't be experiencing what you think you're experiencing.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's an interesting topic because there is so much out there that I think for the public who doesn't know, it means that that's their reference point. And so the fact that you have this system which helps to break down the patterns, the traits, the characteristics, to make it clearer is to really kind of give that picture to something that without that is just essentially what they might know about and have experienced and seen through TV shows or the like. It makes it much more clear, I think.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, that was really the.

Speaker C: Entire point I wanted to help. I had had this terrifying experience and I didn't want people to feel like they were alone if they had had something similar happen. And it is very true what he's saying. It is so rare. There are only maybe, I want to say maybe ten cases I've ever heard of that are separate from each other that were actual demonic activity. And you start to recognize it pretty quick, because there's one question I start with always when somebody comes to me, because it used to happen a lot more when my thesis was first published and I didn't have my website out. So people lightly stalked me a little bit on Facebook and were like, hey, I'm having this experience. And I would start with the preliminary questions. The first one is have you ever felt during this experience you were in the presence of evil? If their answer is no, it is not a demon automatically. Because something that comes up in every single narrative I have ever seen, heard or read is that they feel this intense horrific feeling of evil and danger emanating from something they usually can't even see at first. They feel they need to leave and run. So if that's not present, you're dealing with something else. And then there are other markers too, like intense temperature drops. Generally, they can also turn it the other way and go into boiling temperatures. But it's most common to have the room suddenly freeze. And it could be on a hot summer day and every other room is like 70 degrees, or horrific smells follow you around the house. Or they don't have a discernible source, things like that. Right, they have other markers. But yeah, I was very interested in that perceptions of patterns, I guess because people kept having the same perceptions and I was really interested in figuring basically what is the behavior of a demon, what sort of things would they do? And they do a lot of the same things. Some of them have different abilities but they are not as mysterious as they'd like to believe.

Speaker B: But I think we see the same type of evidence, don't we? In other types of experiences, whether it's pulse activity, for example, you see the same patterns, you see the same characteristics that aren't just native to one country or one type of culture or religion. There's that crossover which again then in itself poses interesting questions because how can you expect things to be so similar when they can be separated by geography, by time, by so many different factors? And yet there are these traits, these patterns that you do start to pick up on and that's I think the interesting then research aspect and kind of discussion and kind of work that needs to be done around these particular types of topics.

Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah. So there will be things that are present in almost every haunting of any kind like hearing footsteps. That one's a really common one. There were even times because demons and ghosts, poltergeist, that sort of thing. They can exist in the same space because demons are thought to attach themselves sometimes to human spirits. Sort of like something else to feed off of, to manifest into our world. Because obviously they're not here. If they were here, we would see them every day, several times a day. Right. Not because they're so prolifically, like there are so many of them, but because they would exist here. Right. So there's a veil of some kind separating us and supernatural activity. And when the veil is thin or there's enough energy to manifest onto our plane, then we see them, we experience them, and it takes time. Almost never. Is a demon, just like, POW, here I am, I'm going to throw things around the room and do all this stuff. It usually is a progression of supernatural activity. Now, this isn't always true, but for most demonic narratives that is true. But yeah, there are still similarities even just cross culturally right now. So I finished my book on demonic phenomena and it'll be out probably sometime next year. I unfortunately can't announce anything just yet because it hasn't been formally announced, just that I have a book that will be coming out and now I'm working on a book on Gin and classifying gin activity to see if I can figure out things about them.

Speaker B: But again, this is where I think it does become confusing because there are lots of other possessing type spirits and entities. That does mean that you have to have something to try and discern from something that's happening between something else that it could be. And having those markers, like you mentioned, having things that you can specifically look for and identify then becomes an important aspect to, I think, the work. Because in order to know what something is and how to kind of deal with something, you have to know, first of all, what it is. And if we're getting that fundamentally wrong, if we're misunderstanding these different types of experiences because we're not looking into them closely enough, whether that's a poltergeist activity, whether this is something else, without that information, again, we're not really coming at it from a perspective of the full picture to then know what to do, if that makes sense.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So that's basically the core of all of my work as trying to figure out what it is so we can best deal with it. Because I'm a researcher. I don't go into these places. I'm a little too psychic and it affects me deeply. And I think I would just be a hindrance to anybody who's going in there to help people who are possessed or who have an entity in their home. So what I think, though, is important about my work is trying to identify it not only for paranormal investigators because it's written for both paranormal investigators and the public so they can have a greater understanding of what are the things you need to be looking for if you are having a supernatural experience, like Gin, for instance. I believe that the case of Annalise Michelle was not a demon. I looked into it extensively for American Paranormal magazine. It's their November 2022 issue. And hers was interesting because I was doing something weird. It was in the middle of the night, and I was listening to her recordings on the Internet of her possession. I don't know if this is something everybody can do or if it's like a psychic thing, but I call it the spine separating effect. When it is demonic and you hear it over a recording, your spine literally wants to separate you from it and get as far away as you can. I didn't feel that way about her recordings. I felt they were OD and strange. But what I originally thought was that she might have had a form of dissociative identity disorder and that it was manifesting through religious trauma. So I looked into her life and her phenomena, and I just kept coming across this barrier of, this doesn't quite sound like a demon. There are some things that are like, okay, a little bit, yeah, maybe it is. And then other things that made me go, this isn't intense enough. What really marks demonic activity is when it's like a 20 on a ten point scale, the phenomena, and it just grows in intensity because the demon then manifests off of that fear that it's creating by torturing the people in the house or the building or whatever.

Speaker B: And I know that you've examined other cases, and again, I hope we can kind of touch on some of those, but I think you're right. I think that's what we've been saying, that it's a word, it's something that can get attached to so many things. And I personally think that that's quite damaging. I mean, from my perspective, I think it's something that gets overused and sadly, in many cases for ratings, it attracts viewers, it gets attention, it gets people listening. And the damage that it does is quite profound because it scaremongers to an extent. That's one aspect. I think it detracts then from real research and debate and discussion and furthering any kind of dialogue around something when again, people just tarnish it all of the time by throwing words out without really kind of thinking about the consequences of it. And I suppose one of the questions that I've got, first of all, is just kind of what do you think that kind of popular culture and media representation has had on the representation of demonology demon folklore, from your perspective?

Speaker C: So I'm part of the paranormal community. It's mostly like paranormal investigators. Since I'm not part of that. I'm sort of like on the fringes. But I have a friend who is.

Speaker D: Active in the paranormal who likes to.

Speaker C: Bring me into these conversations a lot, especially on Twitter. So the problem with what's happening. And I've had to talk about this quite a bit because there is a very real effect of what TV and movies are saying and also what people are quote unquote, investigating in paranormal TV. Right? So demons up the ante. They make it so much more exciting because the stakes are much higher. It is not just a ghost. It's not just a gin. It is a demon. And demons, as everybody knows, even if you know nothing about demons, you know that they're dangerous to humans. So I think that's what that's about. And some people in the paranormal, I will not name names, because most people will probably know who I'm talking about, are fear junkies. And these are the people that have TV shows. It's not everybody. There is some very real research going on and people in the paranormal who want to talk to whatever spirit is there and aren't trying to impose the word demon on it. Most people in the paranormal feel the exact same way I do about it and basically just roll their eyes every time a new demon movie comes out. I can't even sit through it. And I would never watch a demon movie with me because I'm just like, this is no, that's not right. That's inaccurate. How dare you? Just on and on and on for me, because I have trouble with the fact that Hollywood feels the need to sensationalize demons when I could probably write them a better demon movie based on actual phenomena.

Speaker B: We should be clear here that there is that going on because, you know, we have had films like The Exorcist, we have had various versions of this type of phenomena being put out there. And so, like we've said, it doesn't muddy the water.

Speaker C: Absolutely. And the real research yeah, it goes either unnoticed. I don't have a huge following. I only started really like it took a while for my confidence to come back. When I got out of grad school, I didn't want anything to do with this anymore. It was psychologically damaging. Going into demonology is not for the faint of heart, and it's not something that's always like, it's fascinating, but it's not enjoyable. It is dark and it can start to mess with your life. That's what every exorcist who's ever dealt with the demonic will tell you. And I can say that it's true as well. There were several roadblocks to my thesis not even being published that happened. And the same thing is happening with my book right now. Just random things going wrong. So I think the real research will hopefully come more into play with because.

Speaker D: It'S always going on all the time.

Speaker C: Behind the scenes. Demonologists are hard at work translating old documents, going into these places and witnessing it firsthand. What I do is like the folklore side of it, but I've been told by other demonologists that it's very useful what I'm doing.

Speaker B: So just to kind of come back to this as a kind of a discussion point, what demonology is. Do you want to just kind of elaborate on the reaps of demonology? Because obviously I think most people would understand that it has its origins in religion. But again, what that means is where it begins and ends. I think they might have perception of, well, there is heaven, there's hell, and there's these things that can cause evil in our lives. But beyond that, I think there is very little information about the true origins of where these come from and the theories that surround it. So do you want to just kind of elaborate on some of that? Because again, I think that's an interesting starting point of where I think misunderstanding starts to happen.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course.

Speaker D: So if we're really going to go back, we're going to have to go all the way back to Sumerian, Babylonia, that sort of thing. So this all begins with, I wouldn't even say the Jewish people, but there's a lot of phenomena that seems to surround Jewish people. I happen to be Jewish, not in religion, but in my heritage. Like we're from Israel, and so that's.

Speaker C: A good place to start.

Speaker D: But really the story goes as far as Christianity is that God made angels. Some of them rebelled because of Satan, the head angel who didn't want to worship God. He wanted to be God, and then he was cast to earth with these other fallen angels. And that's what demons are, right? So Babylonia and Samaria and Canaan, all of these places during this time period, they definitely believed in the existence of demons in day to day life. Now everything past a certain point. I don't have exact dates. I tend not to think in dates. So I apologize if I just sort of circle around. It's just how my mind's full of rabbit holes. But they all connect eventually. So what ended up happening was everything that was not of God, once monotheism had been introduced, was lumped into the characteristics of, oh, it's just a demon. This happened so long ago, that classification became impossible. And I think jinn, she dim. So a djinn is a creature made of smokeless fire created before humans. According to Islam. This is a pre Islamic entity, but Islam definitely acknowledges the existence of them. They were made of smokeless fire and they had free will. They were not human. They lived longer than us, they're bigger than us. They do not live on this plane.

Speaker C: With us, but they are spirits.

Speaker D: They have families and they do eventually.

Speaker C: Die and they do cross into people's.

Speaker D: Lives through sometimes it's because they fall.

Speaker C: In love with a human.

Speaker D: Sometimes it's because a human accidentally hurt them and they're out for revenge, that sort of thing. But I think a lot of jinn were mistakenly called demons because of that overarching umbrella of oh, well, it's not of God. Just like the old gods that were worshipped in pre Christian times, they got all lumped together under the umbrella of demons. So that's really where the story begins. And I study the Abrahamic religions because that's where demons become very important. And I was interested because I come from a Christian background in how demons are perceived and how that religious aspect informs everything. My approach is to try to be more universal. The truth is, we don't know where demons come from. We don't know very much about their origins. We have theories, and that's where religion comes into play. Otherwise, we have no real evidence of where they come from. All I truly know is that they are deeply malevolent towards humans. They hate us like that. Hatred is talked about in these narratives as emanating from them. Nobody in the presence of a demon, when it's a real demon, wants anything to do with them. They want to run.

Speaker B: But it's fascinating hearing that, because not that long ago, I was speaking to Professor Irving Finkel, who is the curator at the British Museum, and his specialism is ancient Sumeria, the Babylonian culture. And he spent a lifetime researching this culture, what it tells us. And, you know, he translates the tablets and what they tell us. And, you know, he's written about the first ghost, and he talks about in depth in his book, and he speaks about it all over the world, about how, as part of this culture, this was just rooted in their everyday lives, this belief in demonic beings that could have such an impact, a profound impact on your daily life. Ghosts were so commonplace that they were part of everyday culture. There was not one single person in their society who didn't believe in it, who didn't think about it, who didn't do all that they could to prevent becoming a ghost, or they would know how to deal with troublesome ghosts. They would have rituals and prayer and all manner of things to deal with, to deal with these subjects. And they had people who were exorcists within their culture. As I say, they had all manner of things. And he's kind of said, this is the earliest examples of this type of representation of the supernatural, of the spiritual, of ghosts, of all of these different things that fall under that umbrella. And it's only later, with things like religion, that these things then start to be shaped and molded and brought into other things. And I think what you were saying is fascinating. This is something very, very old that we really don't necessarily understand because all we have are theories. But they're also theories that have then been shaped by other people and their need to quantify things or their need to try and rationalize things or to control or so many other things of the day that I think has shaped some of these large questions that existed thousands of years ago that still exist today.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's honestly quite daunting if you think about just the level of work it takes to be able to understand a concept like a demon. Demons also, I'll have to address the fact that the word itself has gone through several shifts as far as what it means. Originally it came from Greek, the word demon, which meant a spirit of great power. And then over time, it became much more malevolent. So when things were put under the umbrella of demon way back when in ancient times, it didn't necessarily mean they were evil when you read the Bible in its context of the time period, because it wasn't really written for us now. It was written for the people then, because there were things that they understood implicitly about their world, like that spirits are just a fact. It's not something to be debated. They're here and they're dangerous. But if you read about the sort of things that they would do, demons are not actually mentioned very often because of that cultural knowledge, because they didn't really feel the need to talk about that everybody knew. But when they are talked about, because I've had to read and reread the Bible several times to try and understand exactly what it's saying about them so that I could write my thesis or my book. This cultural knowledge, it really defines how you even see the Bible when it got to about medieval times. So angels and demons were not even associated with each other until about the second or the third century, and it randomly happened. Theologists don't know why it happened. There isn't a specific reason. It started to show up in the literature of the time. The apocrypha. And apocrypha, for anybody who doesn't know, those are the books that were written during biblical times that are not considered canon to the Bible. The Bible is considered like the law of Christianity, but the apocrypha were written.

Speaker C: Around the same time and not considered to be fully accurate.

Speaker D: But accuracy is difficult to understand. But somewhere during medieval times, the word changed from Damon into I can't remember exactly what the word was, but it immediately had a malevolent bent to it. And then over time, that just got worse and worse and worse. And there's even the argument from witches that because I'm friends with a lot of witches, pagan, Satanists, I think they're wonderful people and very deeply misunderstood. And witches are like, yeah, no, I work with demons, and I'm like, okay, tell me about that, because I truly just want to understand their point of view because I'm trying to create a more universal approach to demons. So it's like I find their knowledge to be quite fascinating. They're like, well, it could be that demons are showing you a face of theirs because of the way they were perceived.

Speaker C: So they sort of have a dual.

Speaker D: Structure of maybe the old God that they once were, and now this. Thing that has a frightening face called the demon. The approach with witches is that demons are not something to be feared and.

Speaker C: I would have to do a lot.

Speaker D: More research and it is a future project. But I don't think that we are talking about the same entity. When I say demon and they say demon, I actually think they're working with Gin or something really similar, something that can be friendly towards humans because demonic behavior literally 100% of the time is never friendly towards humans ever.

Speaker B: And again, it kind of comes back to what we were talking about, isn't it? That there's difficulty in in identifying something. You know, someone might say a word like demon, but because there's again much misunderstanding and very little in terms of data that people have helped quantify this and to really kind of put this out there for people to understand, it kind of means that we can kind of start associating things with particular types of words. And then we're creating, in a sense, our own folklore, we're creating our own stories that are ground in an experience but maybe not referenced with the right types of terminology. And I think we see this all the way through history when it comes to accounts and folklore, where there's similarities and crossovers between these different types of stories and the wording for them and the name for them changes over time. I mean, again, I think it's something that I've spoken about before, just when we're thinking about the word poltergeist and those types of hauntings, that word only came into the English language a couple of hundred years ago. And so before that, all of these types of experiences were being referenced and spoken about in different ways. And so when you look at other things that come through through folklore, are they examples of poltergeist or are they this? There's that kind of question because we haven't always had that same way of talking about it and having that same kind of dialogue around it.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's definitely something that just keeps shifting over time and folklore loves to.

Speaker D: Look at that sort of thing.

Speaker C: So what comes to mind is Newfoundland, up in Canada, we have the folklore of the old hag or Mara experience where you wake up and either you see some type of shadow or form in your room and you start to choke, either because it is kneeling on your chest or your neck and widely.

Speaker D: Now it's thought that that is a.

Speaker C: Medical thing that ends up happening because your brain and your waking up process have not synced.

Speaker D: But it's widely known as the old.

Speaker C: Hag experience because people believed that witches within the community were sending the old hag after them and they would do things like pee in bottles with nails and all sorts of things they're called witch bottles to stop this from happening. And that has come up many, many times. They're called apocryphaics. I believe where you do something with the intention of protecting yourself from evil. So, yeah, just the wording and the way we talk about that is fascinating just from that example. Right. And then we also have nowadays people are just calling it sleep paralysis and I've had hypnogogic hallucinations, they're very weird. And it's just because my mind wasn't fully awake yet when my body did. I saw, like, a bunch of spiders crawling up the wall. Or I've started to wake up and think about something or do something that had to do with the dream I was having. Like, oh, I need to close the door because of whatever was happening. Right. So, yeah, there's definitely like a process happening there. But the process of folklore will keep telling the story as we gain more information about it, it's going to keep evolving and shifting and hopefully my research inspires somebody to take it further.

Speaker B: And again, back to your research. I think what you've done is we've kind of touched on it a little bit. You've started to do something that identifies those traits. You're using these markers of common sight, sound, smell, feeling and so on, to use that alongside the phases that you see come to demonic activity. Do you want to just kind of talk us through those five stages and how you've used your research alongside that, that kind of process of what you were doing?

Speaker C: Sure. So I believe that those phases of a demonic infestation come from the Warrens. Ed and Lorraine Warren were originally investigators. They were probably the first ones as far as being in the public eye. They definitely weren't the first ones to ever look into paranormal activity. And then eventually it turned into demonology and they became very, very famous and worked on cases like Amityville and the Enfield Poltergeist, haunting, that sort of thing. But they identified five different stages of demonic activity in someone's life. The first one is encroachment. This is when a demon is looking for a foothold in somebody's life because demons can't just come in. If they could, I think they'd be much more common. They have to find a big doorway to go through. I had been talking to a friend of mine at grad school about demons. He was like, well, don't they come through the cracks of sin in our lives? And I'm like, no, they don't, because if they did, wouldn't you know more about them, wouldn't you hear more about them? So that's like a common Christian folklore idea that they can come in if you're a sinner, but everyone's a sinner, so obviously that can't be true. The way that demons do come through is through a big open doorway. So if you invite them in, if you are doing something so sick and heinous that they become attracted to your soul because it's so dark, all sorts of things can fall under that, like serial killers, child molesters, anything you can think of that violates humanity itself, but that also becomes dangerous. That Caveat of well are all serial killers then influenced by demons? Like, no, they're not, because humans are evil too. So you got to be careful there. But encroachment, they're looking for that foothold. They're looking for that doorway that maybe it's not open fully, and they're trying to just get the foot in the door so they can push it open some more. The next stage is infestation. This is when they're already in they're in your life now, or they're in the space that you currently live. So maybe they were there originally and you moved into this beautiful house that just came on the market, right? But if a demon is already living there, technically you're encroaching on them. So that rule, that first rule doesn't exist. So they claimed this place, and now they're going to start to mess with you infestation they start to do all the classic things you see in demon horror movies. Like they throw things, they do what are called negative miracles. So you could literally see anything happen in a demonic infestation, anything you can imagine, and even things you can't, like a big heavy fridge that takes two men to carry is thrown across the room. Doors that are locked and bolted are somehow open with the locks still intact. Physics doesn't apply in a demonic household. That place literally comes alive and you start to usually it starts with feeling. You start to feel things. Your body knows something's wrong, even though your mind is maybe not wanting to admit that because it's such a beautiful house, why would you want to give it up? Or maybe it's in a great place or that sort of thing. Or you start to hear things after that. Maybe you start to smell things right along this time. It's only when people see phenomena in front of them that they're like, okay, maybe this is supernatural because you would be surprised at the things that happen before. They're willing to admit that people can ignore a lot, but then it goes into oppression. The demon then singles out the most psychologically vulnerable person in the house and begins to work on them in order to go to the next stage, which is possession. And this is a very long process of breakage. To create breakage in a person, you have to break their will down, maybe frightening them out of their minds and weakening them to the point that they cannot resist anymore. This happened to me, this process. So what that shows me, because mine wasn't a demon, is that that process is similar no matter the spirit, because I was psychologically vulnerable. I had been through a few heartbreaks and I wasn't doing very well. And then something came into my life, and I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep because I kept having nightmares about demons. I was throwing up food, and this lack of sleep caused psychosis and heavy anxiety about that. And the adrenaline coursing through my veins was three times the normal amount, that sort of thing. So oppression is when they break your mind down for possession, which is when they get inside. Now, demons don't just hang out inside you for ten years. The body begins to break down and that is shown through the phenomena because people stop looking like themselves, they stop feeling like themselves. They no longer even look the same as far as their looks. Sometimes vitality is robbed. Sometimes they feel old and decrepit inside as a part of that oppression. And then the possession comes and something comes inside, but then hops back out. Sometimes it's because the will comes back and people regain themselves sometimes, but also because of the body and it's breaking down. There have even been interviews, I suppose, where you could see that something was sort of shifting underneath their face. I believe you can sort of see it in the one with Maurice. What was his last name? I don't really think in terms of names, unfortunately, but he was one of the Warren's cases where he had been.

Speaker D: Filmed at one point and you could.

Speaker C: Literally see his face shifting. So it's a very scary thing to watch somebody be possessed because really what it is, is just they stop being themselves and start to be absorbed into this entity. Even their personality changes. And then the fifth step is death. And that, I personally believe, is what the big demonic goal is. I've had people, when I told them what I do, tell me, oh yeah, demons want your soul. Demons don't want your soul, they want you dead. Because that has come up in almost every narrative, because people seem to be careening towards death unless they get help from an exorcist to get it out. And people have died under exorcisms and also from demonic activity. But once again, it's not like so common.

Speaker B: I think it's an important thing to realize that those different stages, the different elements to it, because again, there is crossover with other types of supernatural experiences.

Speaker C: Right, exactly. And that's my whole goal. I just want to be able to separate the experiences and also eventually figure out what happened to me. I'm still not sure.

Speaker A: We are about to celebrate hitting our 100th episode of Haunted History Chronicles on the last Friday of April 2023 to say thank you. For the months of May, June and July, there are going to be daily paranormal podcasts available to enjoy on all tiers over on Patreon, as well as the usual additional items available over there. Signing up now will gain you access to these as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy and more and know that you're contributing and helping the podcast to put out another 100 episodes. You can find the link in the episode description notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website, along with other simple and great ways to support the podcast directly. It's all truly very much appreciated. And now let's head back to the podcast.

Speaker B: Kind of like take one area, say, for example, common sites, but to then start pulling in all of this research of different experiences, of what people have seen, how it manifests, what colors you might experience, shapes, all of those things to then have almost like a list, a category, is something much more quantifiable. And the fact that you've broken these down into the different kind of sensory experiences that someone might have and what they might feel again, is just, again, just helping someone to put a picture to something, that is quite a difficult concept because there's so much to it. Again, we've kind of talked about this. It's such a broad area and there is a lot of crossover and misunderstanding. Here you are helping to shape what this is really for someone who maybe doesn't understand or doesn't know or have those reference points.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm trying to remember how that even came to be because I think it was simply shaped by my desire to map it out. And then my folklore research and my wonderful advisors and teachers at USU, they were able to help me shape it so that I could make the point that I was making, which is these things are not mysterious. There is so much information out there, but my main issue with it was that it was choppy.

Speaker D: I wanted it organized, so I took it on to organize it myself.

Speaker C: I read everything like a data, but.

Speaker B: It almost became a database because like you mentioned, there are so many things written about it, but you got to wade through it all to really get to it. And even then you're having to find that piece of information amongst all the rest of it. And so having someone pull these threads makes it again, just something simpler and a reference point. And like we just said, a database. It's much easier to follow and to understand and to kind of then see the patterns and the similarities with other experiences that someone might be having or might not be having.

Speaker C: Yeah, that was exactly my point. To bring all the threads together into something cohesive, so maybe we could create something that would make them easier to understand. So I looked at the common like there are different senses that we have as humans.

Speaker D: And there was something that had been.

Speaker C: Brought up during my first ever and actually it was my last ever academic conference.

Speaker D: It didn't go so well, but I.

Speaker C: Did have somebody ask something interesting. They were like, okay, well, what about balance?

Speaker D: What about memory?

Speaker C: And I'm like, well, those things unfortunately can be filtered into feeling and then memory is malleable. So with every single experience you have to take it with a grain of salt. But I think terror makes us remember a little better. Even if it's not exactly correct, there are things about it that I think are correct.

Speaker D: So I was like, what are the.

Speaker C: Things that people see, hear, smell and feel around demons? And using all of that, yeah, I was to create a database, but really to also create a checklist.

Speaker D: That was really the whole point of it. And then over time, it became a.

Speaker C: Database because I realized, especially from when I began to want to publish my work, I wanted just the checklist. That's all I wanted. Because in my original research, in my thesis, I had to include examples of each, every single bit of phenomena. And I was like, that's not that important. People want the checklist.

Speaker D: And what I was told by publishers.

Speaker C: Is, no, people want examples of how this phenomena could manifest.

Speaker D: And I was like, yeah, that's probably.

Speaker C: Correct, so that they know some of the different ways that this could happen. Like, for instance, something incredibly common is when you see a large dark figure.

Speaker D: So it's usually taller than 5ft and.

Speaker C: Is black, blacker than black, the darkest.

Speaker D: Night that you could imagine, and then.

Speaker C: Seemingly negative space within that as well. So I have maybe 20 different references to how that can manifest. And sometimes they end up being animal human hybrids. I think whatever they think will scare the people the most. They interact with the environment, they beckon towards people. Sometimes they just stand there menacingly. Sometimes they fade into the wall. All of these different things that I kept reading about, I would write down.

Speaker D: And put in the system.

Speaker C: And now it's become a database instead of just a checklist, but it'll be a checklist in the book with literal boxes. So if somebody picks up my book and thinks this is happening, they can go through, but if they're not checking anything off, it means it's something else.

Speaker D: So I guess that was kind of.

Speaker C: Like the theory behind it.

Speaker B: So we kind of spoke about earlier how obviously you've spent time examining different cases. And I know you have looked at the Roland Doe case, which personally, I think it hits every marker, doesn't it, really? When we're thinking about this type of activity or how this gets referenced, do you want to just talk us through that case? Because it is a really interesting case and I think it kind of highlights a lot of what you've been talking about and referencing that have come through your research and so on. Because like I said, I think this is a case that defies any other sense of rationality to it, if that makes sense.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Have you taken a look at my podcast? I did have an entire episode about it.

Speaker B: I have listened to it. It's a fascinating one. And again, it's just one of those ones where I think most people don't understand the case. They hear about these things, but they don't necessarily understand them. So I think it'd be interesting to just kind of highlight some of those markers that you see that are part of that case that fit your research, if that makes sense.

Speaker D: Yeah, so that one was a very fascinating case. I recommend anybody who is interested in that case.

Speaker C: You can listen to my podcast.

Speaker D: I'm not going to be like, yeah, you got to listen to my stuff to know this case. It's like, no. I got most of my information from Troy Taylor's book, which I believe he really tried to look past the folklore and find proof and talk to the people who lived through this case and their diaries and that sort of thing. He really tried to find a paper trail. And I seriously respect him. I've published with him before in Morbid Curious, his journal. So anybody who's interested it's called The Devil Came to St. Louis, I believe. And he actually talked to Roland Doe. His name was Ronnie Hunkler, and it was after his death that he was like, yeah, you can publish under my real name. So that case was OD because there was a, I think personally, because demons, sometimes there is like an original demon that's involved in something, and then other things come through to sort of strengthen what's happening. Maybe a much stronger demon. I'll explain what I mean by that in a second. So what originally happened was the same phenomena over and over again. It was the knocking, moving furniture, scratching him, and it was just that for a really long time. And then I think another more powerful demon came in and started to really make things happen. And this case became the basis of the exorcist, which then terrified the nation. And it became everything, I think, to demonology, or rather the perception of demonology because of the way his name is, what William something Blatty had written about that case. So then in the actual case, Ronnie was being tortured. This poor kid, he was 14 years old, and it's unclear how it came into his life. That's something that I couldn't really get my head around, because that whole tale about his aunt playing with Ouija boards and that sort of thing, that's not true from what Troy Taylor had found. So she may have never even come across a Ouija board or even known what it was. And the mom, Ronnie's mom, thought it was his aunt doing all this because she had died recently. But the activity started weeks after she had died. So most likely not. It's probably not even related. But I don't know how it came.

Speaker C: In because, yes, in some cases, I suppose a Ouija board could help something.

Speaker D: Come in because it is an invitation. But there are safe ways to use Ouija boards. I don't personally, because I have no interest in talking to the dead. It's no offense to anybody who does?

Speaker C: You do you?

Speaker D: It's not really my thing. I like narratives and experience and that sort of thing. But yeah. So Ouija boards, not everything you meet on the other side of a Ouija board is going to be a demon. They're not common enough for that. You might have a frightening experience, but it could be anything. And you could be talking to a person, you could be talking to a gin, you could be talking to this, you could be talking to that. But if you don't end the session safely, usually by saying goodbye and doing some sort of protective thing, then yeah, something might be able to come through, but it's almost never a demon. So that is a major thing that we've had to combat in demonology. But because of the prevalence of how many exorcists, how many demonologists are Christian, I feel that has persisted. That myth that Ouija boards are a direct link to demonic activity, they aren't actually. So that story, it's an easy way to explain what happened to Ronnie. We don't know how this thing came across him, how it got into his life. He was from a Lutheran family. I bet he didn't even know what a demon was, not really. And it's hard to say how it came in. It could have just been living in the area. Sometimes it is as easy as that. Or maybe it was in the house already or something like that. Usually when it comes to these sorts of cases, there is an opening of oneself up to an outside influence, but I really doubt that Ronnie did that. So this one's a little bit of a mystery for me, but maybe in the future I'll have a better answer. But over time, it sounds like from the phenomena, a much more powerful demon came in and started to wreak real havoc. And that's when the possession happened. And each time that this entity was in him, he would exhibit a lot of the same behavior. He would thrash violently all over the place, he would say horrible things, he would just sort of know things about the people in the room that he should not have known. That's one of the markers that a demon is involved when they start to exhibit unnatural knowledge of things they couldn't possibly know. Unnatural strength, all sorts of different things. And I created a separate classification system that is not currently on my website specifically for possession, because everyone's fascinated with it. It's one of the most common questions.

Speaker C: I get about just about possessions in general.

Speaker D: So I wanted to classify all that information.

Speaker C: But it is separate from my original.

Speaker D: Classification system because when you have infestation and oppression and encroachment actually happening, it's happening around you. When you have a possessed person, that phenomena is emitting from them. So I felt it was different enough to warrant its own system. With Ronie, there were things about it that were fascinating that even lined up with Christian ideology.

Speaker C: Like, this thing would sing in perfect imitation the Blue Donnabe Waltz. I think that's how you say it, Donnabe, but it's spelled D-A-N-U-B-E.

Speaker D: This is a song everybody knows, but they sort of don't really know that they know it that you've heard in any classical music.

Speaker C: And this thing was able to mimic it perfectly, even though Ronnie had never heard that song in his life, when.

Speaker D: It was played for him later, he.

Speaker C: Was like, oh, what's this? This is nice. He didn't even know what it was. So it kind of lines up with that idea that these were maybe something that was involved. It was once an angel because they were music makers in heaven, but then it would launch right after that as like a display of power into a horribly racist song. Or it would sing holy songs but change the word so it had a dirty meaning. Or was making fun of nuns and priests and all sorts of things.

Speaker D: He would do very disgusting things that.

Speaker C: Are not known to be something humans do. He would urinate all over everything. He would be able to spit, vomit and mucus onto the priest, and it would always be a lot more material.

Speaker D: Whatever it was that he was doing.

Speaker C: Than was natural for a human.

Speaker D: So if he was urinating everywhere, it.

Speaker C: Was a lot more than what should have come out of a 14 year old's body. If he was spitting mucus, they'd be huge globs of it. And he always spit with horrific accuracy right into the priest or exorcist or their assistant's faces.

Speaker D: Everything he did was dialed up to a 20 on a ten point scale. And that's how you generally know it's a demon, because they never do anything by the half. It's always bigger, better, scarier than anything you can imagine.

Speaker B: And again, this is where I think if anybody hasn't listened to your podcast and seen you break down the whole kind of reporting around this case, because it is such a big case. I mean, it's huge, and there were so many elements to it and what happened to him and the experiences that he had through that process. It's one certainly to go and listen to and then have a look at, I think alongside the classification system that you've got that's up on your website, because I think seeing them side by side really does help you to have this understanding that this is something again, coming back to what we were saying, this is the rare thing. This is not the thing that people are going to be experiencing every day of their life. This is the extreme. This is something different. And I think this is, again, work coming back to what we've been talking about. We've got to have this better dialogue around these types of experiences, between the different types of spiritual experiences that people might be having with different types of entities and so on. They can feel the same, but they're not the same. They can manifest in similar ways, but they're not the same. And I think understanding these patterns and traits and characteristics is really fundamental, I think, to furthering the discussion.

Speaker C: I think so too. I think what I offer to the field of demonology, to the paranormal, to folklore, is I'm trying to find the things that make something special, that it's like, oh, this is not a demon. This is a dibbic type of thing. Because, yeah, there's so much misinformation right now, even just about demons talk to anybody who is actually active in the paranormal and they will straight up roll their eyes and be like, oh yeah, no.

Speaker B: And again, I think this is partly why I want to talk to you, because I think it is a word that is so overused, it gets used to the point that it does. It becomes meaningless and the discussion becomes one where people roll their eyes or there's so much sensationalism and stereotyping and misinformation that it kind of means that you have to kind of push all the way past all of that to be able to have a rational discussion of well, what are the origins or the beliefs of where these things originated from? What evidence is there? How and where do we see this kind of discussion and stories? How far back does this go? We don't even have those types of conversations and dialogue. It simply becomes someone putting out their own narrative and creating this other type of phenomena, this new type of narrative of that's a demon. Let's run around doubting that word. And it totally detracts, I think, from something of a much more rational discussion. Let's actually talk about this. Let's understand this. Let's understand the narrative around it and really begin to tease apart the details and see what we think.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I think because the word is thrown around so much yeah, it is starting to lose meaning. And I know plenty of paranormal investigators are like, yeah, that's not even a real thing. And I can see exactly why they think that. If you have never come across one, why would you believe in it? Because it's crazy sounding, right? And then these stories like Rolando's that took on an entire life of its own to the point where books are written about it, that have no basis in reality. Because folklore sometimes gets larger than the original story, because people's fears around the case. And if you tell it because if you tell any story, something they teach us in folklore studies, if you tell any story, you are telling it differently than the person who told it last. Unless you are reading it word for word, you're going to tell something differently because you're filtering it through your own experiences, your own perceptions, to make the story better. And. Then the folklore replaces fact. It happened a lot in when the pandemic first started. You remember online there were a ton of, oh, if you do this, you won't get COVID or you can cure COVID with this type of lore. It proliferates because of fear. And when you got like a bigger, stronger, faster thing that can kill you and get inside your body and do horrible things, that seems to be the ultimate fear for people loss of your bodily autonomy, of your soul, of your mind. So I think that's really what happened. These stories took on a life of their own, and then paranormal TV got involved and realized that they could boost ratings simply by saying the word demon. And it is now, but it's about.

Speaker B: Then pulling it back a little bit, I think. And actually just looking at this a little bit more rationally, let's look at it and kind of have this discussion from a theological perspective. Let's have this discussion from what does the folklore narrative show us? What are the common traits? Let's look at it from a rational point of view of does this have crossover with this, these types of experiences? Let's get back to that rather than the running around with the headless chicken type of approach, because that's exactly what I'm saying. It doesn't kind of do anything other than perpetuate certain types of perspectives. And that's where I think it becomes a bit ludicrous. But that's just my own personal you.

Speaker C: Wouldn'T believe some of the basic questions that I get about demons and how people will come to me and be like, yeah, I have a demonic experience, and then I listen to it. I'm like, no, it's not. And then they try to convince me that it is. And it's like, I'm not trying to be condescending that you have no idea what you're talking about. It has become a real problem where not that I expect any person off the street to understand the phenomena and the narratives enough to know the differences, right? I know now, for a fact, most people don't understand the difference at all. And I don't have a large following, but I'm out here doing the best I can to unravel those things, just like demonologists and exorcists are, because the folklore is now far beyond what we can even control. So we're trying to explain the narrative, explain what we know in order to unravel it from the folklore. But what's insane is that if you really go deep into these narratives the way I have, you realize that most of the folklore is just as scary, even scarier than what people are out here imagining. Like I said, I think I could write a better demon movie based off actual folklore.

Speaker B: Maybe that's something that you could add to your projects for the future.

Speaker C: Maybe not today, somebody is like, hey, I'm writing a demon movie. I'm like, I'm on board. No further questions. Let's do this, because I have a real problem with that. The inaccuracies. It is really upsetting because as a researcher, I'm watching people say things that are causing fear. Demons are not common enough to fear, not to the level that people fear. And it's mostly Hollywood's fault. It's paranormal TV's fault. It is also Christian centric worldviews fault as well. Not to say that Christianity is a terrible thing or anything like that, except when it targets people who are not like them, that's when it becomes a major problem. And that's why I don't personally call myself a Christian anymore. Even though I do believe in God, I also believe in other things, too. Our world is far stranger than we understand. So I'm like, okay, well, let's go through the folklore and try to figure out what's actually happening instead of what you guys think is happening. Because those Christian narratives they'll put out, things like this was a big thing last summer. Some news network had put out it might have been Fox News, I'm not super sure, but they had put out the idea that a mass shooting had happened because of a demonic possession. And I lost my mind on Twitter. Then I wrote an article about it for Haunt John's, because it was like, how dare you start to blame something you don't even understand when people are evil and mentally ill, it's not like it's impossible. It's that out of every single narrative I've ever read about anybody who's ever been possessed, only three of them, I believe, had murder that happened directly during the time of possession. It's not something that's common enough for people to point that finger. Yeah, it's just monstrous kind of how people want to blame anything but themselves and the systems that fail us as humans.

Speaker B: And I think, again, we've seen it with other things. If we're just referencing Ouija board use Satanic panic, there are things that have always been targeted by other people to further particular agenda, and it can be done in very harmful ways that have very real ramifications for people in their everyday life. And it gets perpetuated then by Hollywood, by films, by TV. And again, we need to kind of strip away all of that. And again, just come back to looking at these things a little bit more rationally and calmly and seeing them for what they are really, rather than what other people would like us to perceive them to be and interpret things from their own position, their own standpoint of, in many cases, trying to actually create fear, I think, which is terribly sad.

Speaker C: Yeah, it is. I mean, you mentioned Satanic panic. That was what I was getting at.

Speaker D: I had just kind of forgotten that.

Speaker C: I was going to mention it. But we're here anyway.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker C: So Satanic panic is a major problem because it's happening all over again. People believe that if you use crystals or you engage in Eastern thought or literally anything that deviates from the norm of Christianity is thought to be evil. And it's even been thrown around the word demonic. These things are demonic incense and yoga and black heavy metal and all these random things that you're like. Those things are not connected. Are you insane? And it's like they don't know the difference, because Satanic panic, which if anybody doesn't know who's listening to this, it was something that happened in the where the FBI started to investigate satanic ritual abuse, because people kept coming. Out with these stories. And then it grew into something much bigger, where people were actually put in prison for crimes they did not commit. Because people were like, oh, my gosh, it's Satanic. It's happening again with witches and pagans. Anybody who doesn't follow Christian thought or Christian ways is now called demonic, pretty much. And I'm doing the best I can to dispel those things, but I just don't have the reach. And I'm hoping my book will help with that, but I guess we'll see.

Speaker B: I think it's just people like yourself, other people with different perspectives, having a platform where they can speak from their position, it's having the chance to hear different people talking about this. And I think so much of what we do can come from learning and discussing and having these open types of dialogues, even if someone disagrees, have a discussion about it. That's really what we should be doing, rather than simply inserting what we believe to be fact onto something because we think we're an expert, we don't necessarily know. And that's where it can become quite harmful and terribly sad, I think. But yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with a healthy debate and a healthy discussion and go from there. And like I said, having the opportunity to listen to someone with a different perspective, an expertise that maybe someone else doesn't really understand, but just take that chance to listen, be open minded to it. And I think there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker C: I have a friend of mine who I'll have on my podcast at some.

Speaker D: Point when I have better WiFi, but.

Speaker C: Me and her got into a discussion.

Speaker D: Because we talk about this all the time.

Speaker C: She follows the left handed path, which.

Speaker D: Is a form of witchcraft.

Speaker C: She works in the astral realm. She has gotten rid of spirits for me that were attached to me, that.

Speaker D: Were making my life a living hell. And it has actually helped.

Speaker C: And I personally don't see anything wrong with engaging her help whatsoever. And other people might be like, you paid a witch to help you.

Speaker D: And it's like, yeah, I did. And you know what?

Speaker C: It worked. So me and her get into this.

Speaker D: It's not even an argument, it's just.

Speaker C: A discussion of, well, maybe demons aren't actually evil, it's just the face that they're showing you. Because from her perspective, these are the old gods that she's worked with and I'm like, yeah, that's true. It could be. But from the narratives that I've examined, they have no love for humanity. They want destruction. And their behavior says that every single time.

Speaker D: So me and her just sort of, like, agree to disagree and are just.

Speaker C: Like, yeah, I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

Speaker D: And she's like, we may not be.

Speaker C: And one of my lines of inquiry.

Speaker D: From my own research and my own.

Speaker C: Understanding is I'm going to have to interview witches and pagans and anybody who has worked with a demon or a so called demon. Maybe they call themselves that when they aren't demons, that sort of thing, to fully understand that perspective. Because even in demonology it's very Christian centric and nobody seems to go outside of that. And they, in a way, are demonized for that, for going outside of the Christian perspective of demonology. I want there to be a more universal approach, something that even if you don't believe in demons, you can be like, oh, the folklore, though, is saying this and that's fascinating.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And again, this is kind of why I wanted to chat with you, because I think it's something that certainly resonates from especially that point of view that you were just making this need to have this kind of almost universal kind of way of looking at it that takes away these kind of separate things that might muddy the water or make it a difficult concept, if that makes sense. Let's actually just our own biases, if you like. Let's take our own biases out. Let's look at this and examine this for what it tells us without these things interfering in some way. Our own belief systems, whether it's religion, whether it's our own supernatural belief systems, what we think about what happens to us after death, whatever it is, let's take all of these things away and let's just talk about it. And again, I think that's what you're doing that's slightly different. You are just really looking at this from the perspective of what do these narratives tell us? What do they show us? What can we glean from this? What do we understand about these things? How does it then fit into what you believe? How does it fit into what you see or you're experiencing or you're investigating or how you maybe perceive that word of demon. You can kind of take from it what you need to, if that makes sense.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love folklore for that exact reason, because here's the truth. In folklore, it does not matter if it's real or not. The story is real. Yeah, we call it in folklore, the story is true because it is told as true. Doesn't matter if you made it up. If you're telling it is true, it becomes true in someone's mind. So that's how, like, urban legends tend to proliferate, because somebody believes that story, but it's just a little bit too good. It has polishing, even if you don't realize it. We know these things as folklorics. And that's what I think I loved about it, is that somebody could easily.

Speaker D: Come up to me and be like.

Speaker C: Oh, well, demons aren't real. And I'm like, okay, we don't need to have this conversation. Not because I dismiss their point of view, but because I cannot convince you that my belief is real. I will present you with the evidence of the folklore and just tell you, okay, this is just folklore. This is what is said about it. Do I need you to sit here and believe in demons with me? No, it's folklore.

Speaker D: So I've actually never had that question, though I've heard a lot of paranormal.

Speaker C: Investigators get that you don't really believe in ghosts, do you? But for some reason, in my entire couple of years of doing this, no. Have I never gotten that question. You don't really believe in demons? No. For some reason, probably religion, they're widely.

Speaker B: Believed in, which, again, and I personally think things like this are on the rise. This type of kind of interest is continuing to be on the rise. And like you mentioned, it's I think in part down to what is put out there by mass media. But it certainly creates this other type of hype that, again, I think is just part of that evolution. It's the thing that kind of drives it and helps to feed it, but at the same time then is kind of like looking at it from below, what's happening below the surface. Let's actually pair it back. Let's have that real discussion rather than the hype.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So I know several paranormal investigators.

Speaker D: One of them is a friend of mine.

Speaker C: I was talking to him and he was like, hey, I was using your classification system, but actually I'd love to get your perspective. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I live for this. Tell me everything. He's like, okay, I'm not sure if this is demonic or not. I'm like, okay, tell me the phenomena, what has been happening? And he tells me, and systematically, through the knowledge that I've gained through this, I'm like, I think it's this because of this, this and this.

Speaker D: And his mom was a very Christian.

Speaker C: Centric person, and she had read what.

Speaker D: I said, and she was like, no.

Speaker C: I'm convinced that she's right, just because I was looking at it in a way that wasn't fear based.

Speaker D: It was based on, okay, I don't.

Speaker C: Think it's this because of this, and this because of this, because this is what I know about demonology. Here's the 15 reasons why I could tell you this isn't a demon, but something religious is happening.

Speaker B: But again, it comes back to what we were saying. It's just coming at it from a different perspective where biases and other things that can influence get taken out. And instead, what you're looking at is what these accounts, what folklore tells you, what you can learn from how you've classified all of that and put it together to collate it altogether in terms of, well, what does that then give you as your perspective? What do you think it then shows from your position of having looked at this in detail? And again, that's just kind of a different take in the sense that if we could do that with a particular type of phenomena, say, for example, someone's experiencing something and different people with these different experiences brought their knowledge to the table to examine what's happening and have that discussion, how amazing would that be? What would that kind of mean in terms of our understanding of what's happening, if we were able to share our different experiences, our research, our knowledge, to just understand something that's being presented in that way rather than everybody sitting on that and safeguarding the information that they have or just not having that dialogue to begin with?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it'd be amazing.

Speaker D: That's exactly the reasoning behind me.

Speaker C: I want to talk to everybody about this, about what do you think is happening. I like to talk to just like, people who are theologists.

Speaker D: I like to talk to pagans or.

Speaker C: Whoever, it doesn't matter who it is, or even if you're from a cultural background that's different. It's like Irish people. Tell me what you think about this, have you ever seen this before? Type of thing. Because I think all of the views are valuable, even if they're not completely correct. And we can't truly prove what is correct and what is not in the paranormal, but through a systematic way of looking at things, maybe we can get closer to the truth.

Speaker D: And I would just love it if.

Speaker C: There wasn't as much anger and fear.

Speaker D: Behind people being like, no, I'm right.

Speaker C: Because I am this religion or that religion. Why does it have to be about us being right? Why can't we all search for the truth in our own way and bring it all to the table?

Speaker D: I think it'd be amazing if everybody.

Speaker C: Could sort of lay down their arms and just sort of be like, so this is what I think about this. What do you think about this?

Speaker B: Absolutely. With that in mind, I would say that I'll make sure that all of your information is put on the website when the podcast goes out so that people can be signposted to you. Because I do recommend they take a listen to the podcast that you've got up on your site, take a look at the material that you've got up there, and you're easily accessible. It's something that you can have a look through and again, take from it what you need to take from it from your position. Just have a look, be that open mind. And yeah, I very much recommend that people do that. Go and find you have a listen to some of the things that you've got to say on some of the different podcasts you've got up there and take a look at the different material that you've published on your website and beyond that, because like I said, I think there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's a helpful and very useful thing to do to broaden our kind of mindset and broaden our own positions and understanding sometime and question and critique what we think. There's something, again, healthy in that, I think, to deepen our understanding. And thank you so much for this incredible chat. Honestly, I think I said at the beginning, it's something that once you start talking about it, it really can branch off into so many different areas.

Speaker D: Just come down the rabbit hole with.

Speaker C: Me anytime you want.

Speaker B: It is that. It is a rabbit hole. But I think so much of this area is like that because there is so much crossover. And so, again, just be open minded, be that person that kind of questions and raises questions and has that dialogue. And I think we'll all benefit from that kind of approach. Really.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time, Victoria. Honestly, it was incredible to chat with you and I appreciate you spending the time to do that with me today.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I really enjoy the different things you were asking me because every single podcaster is different and I love hearing from different people about the things that my research brought up in you specifically. Thanks for having me and I will.

Speaker B: Say goodbye to everybody listening.

Speaker C: Bye, everyone. Bye.