Exorcist Explains How NOT To Get Possessed This Halloween

Okay, first before we give you the facts of the day, run hide fight infadels is streaming now only on daily wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s, there's even a love story which nobody expected, and you can support daily wires mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. What polls tell you what voters said at one moment, which how she gives you another way to follow a race, a live market that moves as traders respond to new information. In Michigan, Abdul Al Sayed and Mike Rogers are competing in one of Kalshi's most traded midterm matchups. You can visit Kalshi's midterm's hub to track how the market views the race and then trade an event contract on the outcome you think is going to happen. If you're right at settlement, each winning contract is worth $1. See the market, make your call, trade what happens next on Kalshi, use code daily, D-A-I-L-Y to get up to $25 when you trade $25. It's Kalshi K-A-L-S-H-I Kalshi trade on anything, 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply, event contracts trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions, prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, you can go see kalshi.com/regulatory. This episode is brought to you by Alloy Health. Menopause is inevitable, spending years trying to find relief from the symptoms shouldn't be. Menopause can bring disrupted sleep, hot flashes, brain fog, weight changes, and a lower libido, and women often spend years trying to find relief. Alloy makes it easier to get specialized care without leaving home, complete a quick online intake, and you'll be matched with a menopause specialized physician who can create a personalized treatment plan based on your symptoms and needs. You'll also have unlimited messaging with your doctor, and once approved, your prescription ships directly to your door. No waiting months for an appointment, no standing in line at the pharmacy. Head to myalloy.com and use the code DailyWire and tell them all about your symptoms, and you'll get a fully customized treatment plan and unlimited messaging with your doctor. Plus, you'll get 20% off your first order today. Head to M-Y-A-L-L-O-Y.com and use code DailyWire to get 20% off your first order. Use code is valid on products only. Demons are liars. Their world is the one of Mirage's smoking mirrors. You have the power as an exorcist to compel him to tell the truth about this situation. That was Father Carlos Martins on his hit podcast The Exorcist Files, which he co-hosts with Ryan Buffet, for which he draws on his decades of experience as an exorcist for the Catholic Church. In this special spooky episode, we sit down with Father Martins to ask our most burning questions about exorcisms, including about their authenticity, how often they're deemed necessary by the church, and why they're more prevalent now than ever. I'm DailyWire, executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Truth is under attack in our culture. People are embracing lies about gender, they're rejecting the sanctity of every human life, and the government is even punishing people for saying what is true and right. But the biblical principles on which our country was founded still matter and they must be defended. Alliance defending freedom is on the front lines of this fight. They're standing in courtrooms across the country upholding truth and your right to speak it. But they rely on help from friends like you to do this work. Your gift to ADF will be matched by a special grant while funds last. So visit joinadf.com/wire or textwire to 83848 to make twice the impact. That's joinadf.com/wire or textwire to 83848. Joining us now is Father Carlos Martins, host of the popular podcast, The Exorcist Files and also the author of the book with the same title, The Exorcist Files. Great to have you on the show. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. So first, tell us about the podcast, how did it start and what is it all about? You know, how it started was the results of my reading to survey findings. The Pew people surveyed the population and they divided that population into 10-year age segments. And in the 18-29-year-old demographic, what they discovered is that in a five-year period, 18-29-year-olds, the number of those folks that abandoned religion altogether increased by one-third, which is simply staggering. At the same time, 62% of them answered that they believe it is possible for someone to become demonically possessed. So in that demographic that is increasingly abandoning religion, something is occurring in their lives that is making them conclude the devil is real and no one is speaking to this. So I took my experience as an exorcist working with a bunch of really good people, people in Hollywood that could turn this into a high-quality podcast production and that's what we did. All right. So you just mentioned something, of course, that is crucial to this. Your experience as an exorcist, will you give us a little bit of background? How did you come about doing that? What is that entailed? Yeah, sure. So when I was ordained a deacon, I was assigned to a parish in Texas. That parish, the priest there handled all the exorcisms for the diocese. I'm coming on as a deacon. I'm a deacon for a year before I'm ordained a priest. They were so busy with cases involving people, people who were demonized that anything lasts like the house infestation, where the diabolical phenomena is happening within somebody's home or business, all those cases went to me. And so that's how I started, once I was ordained a priest, then I gradually started being asked more and more to take on cases involving people. And then eventually that turned into a whole lot of cases. And here we are. A podcast then and my book are an outflow of that where I share my experiences and teach the craft, if you will, in the sense of my goal is to take out the mystique that Hollywood has put in it. And frankly, a lot of the church's silence about it has put in it. I want to take out the lore that's there that is not useful and put in the truth. As an apologetic, as a way to explain what it is we do. So we have a lot of questions to unpack with that. But first, most people are familiar with exorcisms from Hollywood. What do you feel is accurate and what do you feel is inaccurate from our general perception that we probably already have? Sure. Well, the two-part answer to that. So the classic is the movie, the exorcist, that's the granddaddy of the mole. Everything in that movie is accurate. In the sense that everything that's in there you might see with one exception. And that is the 360-degree head turning. Now the devil may cause that to appear. Like for example, one time in one of my cases which I discussed in the book, for a fleeting moment, it looked like the victim's canines increased to two inches in length. Like they looked like the teeth from a cat coming out of his mouth. But it was just for a few seconds. Like it was just for a fleeting instance and then it was gone. So to me, I saw it. It looked like those teeth increased in length, but they didn't. So the devil can create an illusion, he is perfectly capable of bending light. And so a 360-degree head turn, he's perfectly capable of making it look like that that's all correct. But a neck can't undergo that and still be a neck. So it's not within his power to do that. So that part is accurate. Where Hollywood falls short? See, Hollywood is enthralled by demonic power. By his ability to make things levitate, to throw something across the room, to anticipate your next move, for the priest who's praying the ritual, the devil will repeat the words as he prays out. So any might be one or two words even ahead of the priest, as a way to kind of to just get into his head and shake him. But where Hollywood falls short, so Hollywood's enthralled with that. It does that part in spades, what it doesn't do well is understand the demonic mind. And that's the real scary part. Because you're dealing with a being that is older than time. He doesn't share eternity with God. He is a creature, but he is older than time. And that being gave up his eternal happiness and is still giving it up in perpetuity, in order to battle against humans simply because God loves them. And now that's scary. So you did not help my childhood trauma after watching stupidly the exorcist when I was really young. So most of this is true. So look, I got to be honest, I'm coming in with a lot of skepticism. Sure. I think a lot of people probably do approach your show with the same skepticism. I got a few questions. So, first of all, the Catholic Church has. has an entire system of addressing exorcisms. Does any other major denomination do this? - Absolutely, the orthodox do. And we love the orthodox, they love us. We are two lungs of the same church. They have a valid priesthood, they have a valid Eucharist, valid meaning we trace our succession back directly to the apostles. And so they have bona fide exorcists and bona fide rituals and bona fide success. - Do you guys ever work with them on a specific exorcism? - Absolutely. Yeah, one of my best friends is an orthodox priest. I love him to death, love working with him, have done so always look forward to it. And yeah, I have nothing but the highest respect for him. - So you said the church was overwhelmed by the number of exorcisms of humans. That's why you're brought in for spaces, which have questions about that too. But I mean, how many exorcisms are actually happening each year in the US? - Oh good, I couldn't begin to tell you, lots. But I just want to correct one word you said that you said the Catholic church is overwhelmed. And I wouldn't say that that's true. We're not overwhelmed. There are many cases. They every, by the church's own law, internal law, which we call canon law, every diocese must have an exorcist. And so that individual, or maybe they have to have at least one, they could have 30. The point is that those people, the priests assigned deputed to do exorcisms, they're the ones handling the spiritual need. And the thing, the one thing I wanted to spell is, look, most people's notion of exorcism is that a priest comes in with some almost a magical right, a magical book and he reads these prayers over the devil and they kind of work a magic in the sense that he's clobbering the devil over the head. He may yell those prayers out Adam. He may be forceful with great emotion. None of that is accurate. The job of the exorcist is not to cast out the devil. The job of the exorcist is to find out, why is the devil there? What rights has he obtained? You don't get the devil by sitting next to someone who has a devil on a bus. You don't get a devil by making too many peanut butter sandwiches. So you get the devil by entering into a relationship and agreement a covenant with him. And the vast majority of such relationships agreements, covenants are done without the individual even knowing. But you've committed some sin that has forged a relationship with him and that's given him rights. And so my job as an exorcist is to find out what rights has the devil obtained. Once I discover those, then I need to work with the victim to rescind those rights. Because as long as the devil has those rights, I don't have the right to kick him out. But once he's lost to them, once the victim himself herself has renounced them, now it's a different story. Now he's lost his rights. And now, he can be expelled. But until that happens, he can't. I don't have the right to kick him out. We've all heard plenty about what AI might do someday. For business owners, the more useful question is, what can it take off my plate right now? That's what caught my attention about NetSuite Next. AI is built into the tools your business already relies on. It can bring important information to your attention, handle routine work, and let you ask questions about your business the same way you would ask a colleague. But figuring out how AI changes the way an entire team works is a bigger question. So NetSuite created a free guide called Aligning for the Agentic Era, how AI is changing every day work. It breaks down how AI could change work across your organization and how businesses can make the most of that shift. If I were running a growing business and trying to separate what's genuinely useful about AI from all the noise, this is exactly the kind of resource I'd want. If your revenues are at least into seven figures, go to NetSuite.com/mourningwire. Get your free guide at NetSuite.com/mourningwire. NetSuite.com/mourningwire. Now, you described one instance where you saw the canine teeth grow to look like they were two inches long. Can you describe some of notable examples of things you've seen or whether they are placed being haunted or whether it's an individual who's requiring an exorcism? Just some examples for our audience. Sure, I mean, in a home, inanimate objects moving. I set my car keys on the counter here, turn around, grab a drink out of the fridge. Now the car keys aren't next to me. They're on the other side of the room. There was a woman I had. She spent all afternoon looking for her winter coat. She knew it was in the house. She thought she just misplaced it. And she was the only one who lived in the home. So it was gone for an entire day. She found it the next day stuffed into her freezer. So she didn't do that. But just things like that. And they're usually connected with mind games, with a teasing. So it isn't just a kind of playfulness or a tricksterness. It is combined with a malice in order to get inside your head. So there'll be a kind of malicious teasing in an exorcism in a room. In inanimate objects flying, I remember once I used holy water clandestinely. So holy water in a hidden way as a diagnostic. So I left a glass of water on a shelf. It was half full, but it was holy water. It would have drawn no one's attention. But it just looked like I put my glass of drinking water on the shelf. So but as I was walking behind the alleged possessed, and that's all I knew at the time. This person had been sent to me because it was surmised that this person was demonically possessed. Of course, I didn't know that. The only thing I knew is that there's this claim. But on one of the trips as I was walking behind this individual, and I knew he wasn't looking at me. I have a glass of water here. So I just dipped my finger and I took, I took essentially one drop of water that was on my finger. He was wearing a bulky sweater and I flinged it onto the sweater. He shot up out of the chair and looked backwards at me with turning his head upside out. This is the individual that had the elongated fangs or at least who appeared to have that. So at that point, what I established is the fact that there was a bona fide possession. How did I do that? Because on a human level, there is no way that this individual would have felt a drop of water on him. He had a bulky sweater on. So this water hit his person, it didn't hit his flesh directly, but it didn't have to. The sweater is part of his person and the holy water going on the sweater means the holy water itself is in relationship with him. And so the demon inside felt that and the demon reacted. So on a human level, there's no way this individual could know this. So I've established a preternatural knowledge present within this individual. That checks off the box. Look, this is beyond the level of nature. We've entered into the realm of super nature. Let's move on with the exorcism. Now, how do you know if it's like a real demonic possession or psychosis or something else? Obviously, the example you just shared seems like it defies physics, which probably a big clue. But I imagine there are three classical signs, classical signs. They're not limited to these three, but this gives you a flavor. So all three of these demonstrate an ability beyond the realm of nature, a display of superhuman strength. If a nine-year-old girl picks up a 250-pound man and throws him across the room, well, we've escaped the realm of nature. So something else has to account for this possibility, other than the regular laws of nature, because they've just been defied. The ability of the individual in question, the victim, to know foreign languages that he or she has never been taught. So not just knowing one or two words or a couple of sentences, but the ability to speak in those languages with perfect fluency and perfect grammar. And then knowledge of the occult, knowledge of hidden and distant realities, such as, for example, what I've just demonstrated, the fact that the holy water went on this individual, well, that's a knowledge that there has just been holy water put on that individual. On a human level, he couldn't have felt it, so you have to revert to something else. But your question is a good one and I have a whole chapter in my book devoted to that because the diagnostic is always the most difficult part. The most difficult part of an exorcism is not casting out the devil. It's finding out, is he there? And if he's there, what is his character and nature? What are the rights that he has obtained? And I'll go further than what your question posited. It is possible for someone to be mentally ill, to have a mental pathology and to be demonically us at the same time, right? So they're not mutually exclusive. So this is how it makes it critical to distinguish. And so our job is to do that. So there are ways we'll do this. I'll share one standard method, right? One standard. So if I'm meeting with an alleged victim, so I have no idea whether this person is possessed or not, maybe there's not even full possession, but there's a partial possession or there's a severe obsession or oppression going on. While I make the appointment with the individual, say at 11 a.m., and I will have someone in an adjacent room hidden in some room in the building, and I will coordinate with that person at 1117, exactly. I want you to start praying against any and every evil spirit in this individual coming to meet with me, right? So this the person comes in, my visitor comes in, we sit down, we start chatting, we chat about innocuous things, right? Baseball, waffles, the weather, so forth. Such that I'm watching the clock, and I wait and I see at exactly 1117, is there a change in the behavior of this individual in front of me? Am I seeing agitation? Am I seeing anger? Am I seeing an overt discomfort? And if there is there, because the devil is now receiving direct prayers against him, and prayers are kryptonite against the devil, right? He doesn't like them. There's a toxic experience that occurs in the demon when that happens. Well, that gives me a lot of information, so I've just established knowledge of the hidden. So there's an obvious display at the precise time when I coordinated it. There's an obvious display of a changed behavior. Well, that gives us a tremendous amount of information. How often do you, I'm an idiot when it comes to exorcisms, how to have ever researched this topic? Well, I'll tell you how often they don't don't ever get possessed. As tempting as it might seem, never get possessed. It's not worth asking about that. It's not stick to watching the movie. Stick to listening to my podcast. I'm not going to go back and watch the exorcist again, though. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you how often do you find rough percentage? How often is it not a case of exorcism? It is a case of mental illness or somebody psychosis of some sort? How often do you find that? That's a really good question. So these are my own statistics, but they are corroborated with my colleagues. The world of exorcism is very small, and we tend to know one another. In my experience, and that of my colleagues, 60% of the folks who come forward and say, "Look, I think I have a demon." 60% of them do not have a demon. So it might be mental illness. It might be. It might be some other illness. For example, once it was a tumor that was just behind the ear in a gentleman, and it was affecting his afferent nervous system, and so there were physical sensations he was feeling on his back that felt like two hands pushing on him. So it's not mental illness, but there's an illness there. There's a logical medical cause causing that. It could be an emotional illness, and I think we all know people like this. Somebody who has such an acute imagination, it's not that they have an illness, but their sense of imagination is so acute, so broad internally, that they at times have a difficult time distinguishing between imagined reality and actual reality. So they never grew up from that phase of a kid, for example, where the imaginary playthings become real. For example, I think we've all known people that they imagine a conversation in their head. Two days later, they think that conversation actually took place. How do you avoid becoming possessed? You mentioned that certain sin patterns can enter you into a covenant that will put you in this situation. What are some of the top ways you see people catching this problem? So the devil possesses because he's gained the right to. The 99% of those who become possessed become so because they committed some serious sin. Now that can take on a tremendous amount of different expressions, but in the Catholic Church, we distinguish, and this follows from the New Testament distinction, some sin is deadly, some is not deadly. So any violation of the Ten Commandments would be a deadly sin. It evics grace outside of us, so from us. So we're left again in the state of nature. So in the state of nature, when we were conceived inside our mother's womb to all of us, until our baptism, we belong to the enemy. This is the this is the follow from original sin. Baptism is what reverses that. So you gain Christ within you, gain Christ as a Savior, the Holy Spirit, your sanctifier, God's your Father, and that state remains which protects you. It makes you literally belong to God, which you didn't until you were baptized, right? All of us are God's creation, but only after baptism are we God's children. Well, any mortal sin, right, a violation of the Ten Commandment and act the fornication, a blasphemy that that evics grace from within you, and it makes the devil once again your Lord. He's your master. He has the right to possess just from that, right? One sin. So and the two most common in our experience that we see by which possession is becomes a reality is dabbling in the occult and sexual sins, right? Why dabbling in the occult? Well, it stems from two things and they're both of them are replications of the original rebellion of Satan, right? So what did Satan do? The first thing he did is he doubted God's goodness. I'm not going to obey him because I'm not going to get what I want by doing so. That's why. Secondly, he usurped or attempted to usurp God's predetermined limits. So when we go to the occult, you go see a fortune teller. Hey, your sister died and you want to make contact with her again. So you go to a source where a necromancer. Well, what you're doing, A, you've just doubted God's goodness that he's going to provide for you, regardless of the death, two, you've tried to usurp and bypass those limits that he has naturally erected. Well, you've just imitated the rebellion of Satan and imitating his rebellion, you are now Ipsil facto in relationship with him. So you've described how a person could become possessed, but you also said that you address like locations, homes and businesses that have some degree of possession. How would a home or business become possessed? Yeah, through evil activity done inside it, you know, in short, through sin being done there. So your property, your possessions are in a relationship with you. If you become in relationship with the enemy, then he's in relationship not just with you, but everything in relationship with you. And this is why, for example, you know, sometimes when when an adult, when a parent, or say both parents, if they're into something dark, they would, the surprising thing for them, it's not for us, for us, actually says, but for them, the first people who will be attacked in the home is their children, not them. The enemy doesn't want to disturb them. The enemy wants them to keep doing what they're doing because they're his disciples. But what will happen is it starts with kids having nightmares repeatedly, repeatedly. As time progresses, they'll wake up with marks, bruises, cuts, sometimes teeth marks. And so the the devil has gained a jurisdiction to be there. And he is afflicting pain upon the innocent. And and the parents may not catch until it becomes quite dramatic that that there is a demonic ministry happening within their house. And of course, they'll come to us. The when when I see that when when they when that is explained to me, look, my children are being attacked. The first thing I do is is I don't want to talk to the children out. I want to talk to you, Mom and Dad, you tell me what you're into. And I'll talk to them separately. So as to as to as to get to the truth because until you get to the truth, you're you're not able to get rid of the devil. Like I don't practice magic. I don't I don't practice Catholic magic. I'm an agent of Jesus Christ. I'm a priest. Who in when I'm working in this ministry, I'm a deputed exorcist. And and and I want to go in and be able to apply the grace of Christ. But to be able to do that, I need to know the picture. You you've got to be honest with me because otherwise, I could go there and and and 10,000 times and my work, my ministry will do nothing. So so I want to know what is the picture here? Tell me about your life. Tell me about where your life isn't right. And and let me see if if I can if I can find a core. between between you're having your your life not being right in that area and this the demonic stuff will query. So really exorcism really is it's it's it's like a really intense form of confession in many ways intense form of confession That's one way to look at it. The other way is it's very juridical. It's very legal. Demons are very very legalistic They gain rights. They live by rights and they want to retain those rights And so what what you what you have to do is is be an advocate for For the victim and say look here And and and and the big part of our work is explaining to them look this is This is why this is happening and you're you're showing how logical it is for them and how there was a cause and a fact between something The victim did and the state that he finds himself in people are getting ready to trick or treat we want to have some Halloween questions here. Look, there's different perspectives from different Sex of Christianity about this holiday From the official exorcist perspective. What do you think about Halloween? Well, I I mean, I'm not an official spokesman for exorcist, but I can certainly give you an opinion So look Halloween today has a different meaning than it had at its beginning So at the beginning it was a mockery of all saints day, and that's what Halloween means all Hallows Eve the Eve before All Hallows or all saints day. That's the word hello. Just means holy or saint And that's in the our father. We say hallowed be thy name holy be your name So at the beginning it was a reaction against Christianity and Christianity celebration of Of those brothers and sisters who who have merited a place in heaven But the meaning has changed So so over time It's become an occasion an opportunity Especially for children to dress up and go trick or treating and and so it's become a kind of a social custom now So do I think parents should let their kids go out trick or treating I I think I think it would be fine in in the vast majority of the instances Provided that the costumes they wear Do not celebrate sin darkness death So provided that the macabre and the evil are Separated because that would be a celebration of darkness But to dress up as a cowboy dress up as a princess. There's nothing wrong with that. Have you seen correlation of The need for more criticisms in the month of October or November? I mean, does it is there any correlation with this holiday and you know a Resurgence or a surge in demonic activity. Honestly. No. I've never seen a surgeons with regard to this there There's a there's a there's a surge in just Diabolical activity in the sense that people doing evil things people Covens sects This is a big holiday for them, but it doesn't mean that there's an increase in the number of possessions It might be an increase in activity, but that doesn't necessarily equate to possessions per se Fascinating her father Martins. Thank you so much for coming on. We'd love to talk to you a lot longer More and more questions. Maybe we'll do a follow up. Thanks so much for coming on. You're welcome. Thank you. God bless you That was father Carlos Martins on his hit podcast the exercise files plus make sure to watch his appearance on Michael and dropping this weekend on the Michael Knowles show page and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire Well, some races draw attention others become the race everyone watches in Texas James Tallerico and Ken Paxson are facing off in one of Kowshi's most traded midterm markets Follow the race in real time on Kowshi and then trade on the candidate you think is gonna win each correct contract is worth $1 at settlement. Don't just follow the midterms trade what happens next on Kowshi use code daily DAI LY to get up to $25 when you trade $25. That's Kowshi KAL S H I Kowshi trade on anything 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply event contracts trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors Kowshi products are not available in all jurisdictions Prices values and available markets may differ from those mentioned for more information see kowshi.com slash regulatory