Exorcisms these days seem like the stuff of pure fiction — or at least modern-day fiction. History has recorded people across the world getting up to all kinds of bizarre rituals over the centuries, exorcisms included, but that can't be something people still really try to do... right? You might think no, but these three examples beg to differ. These stories of supposedly possessed people include two modern-day examples and one historical village-wide fit that inspired one of the most notorious horror movies. From Bobby Jindal's dance with the devil to the Loudun possessions that inspired "The Devils," as well as the story of Brother Hermes Cifuentes, these are 3 bizarre tales of people being possessed in real life.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00An innocent soul being possessed by the spirit of evil sounds like something you'd only find
00:04in an early 70s horror film. But history is rife with such strange, spooky tales,
00:09and these are some of the strangest and spookiest of all.
00:13Best known as the inspiration behind the 1971 film The Devils, one of the most notorious
00:17instances of satanic possession is said to have occurred in the French village of Houdon.
00:22In the early 17th century, an entire convent of nuns appears to have been possessed by a
00:26number of different demons. These nuns appeared during a series of trials that
00:30accused the parish priest, Urbain Grandier, of having made a pact with Satan.
00:35You've probably worked out that the priest had not, in fact, signed away the nuns' souls,
00:39despite how convincing their so-called evidence might have looked.
00:42The more likely story is that Grandier had been doing some not-very-priestly things with the
00:47daughters of some powerful men and quickly found himself in a lot of trouble. In a series of public
00:51trials and exorcisms, the nuns barked, screamed, convulsed, and spoke in a devilish language.
00:57These sights led to a public hysteria that ultimately ended in Grandier being burned at the
01:01stake. The events of the Houdon possessions were immortalized in Aldous Huxley's 1952 novel The
01:07Devils of Houdon, which was then adapted into The Devils a few decades later.
01:12You might have heard of Bobby Jindal. He was the governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016.
01:17He was running for the vice presidential nomination in 2008, gave the response to
01:21President Barack Obama's 2009 State of the Union address, and was a contender for president during
01:26the 2016 election. What you may not know, however, is that he was also the most prominent exorcist
01:31this side of Damian Karras.
01:33The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!
01:40No, really. While he was in college, Jindal apparently performed an exorcism on an intimate
01:45but non-romantic friend named Susan. And while this may sound like flimsy slander concocted by
01:50some unscrupulous politician to discredit their rival, the fact is that Jindal started this story
01:54himself. He wrote all about it in a 1994 article from the New Oxford Review called Physical
02:00Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare. Noticing that Susan was acting strange, Jindal decided to
02:05perform an exorcism together with members of a school group called Campus Crusade for Christ,
02:10the members of which reportedly restrained the woman, despite her attempts to escape.
02:14They rubbed crucifixes and Bibles in her face, only growing more alarmed when,
02:18for some reason, she kept swearing at them. Sadly, there appears to be no clear answer
02:22as to the cause of the sullen mood and the smell of sulfur that allegedly led Jindal and company
02:27to suspect Susan of devilry. Then again, maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that she was undergoing
02:32treatment for skin cancer at the time, and Bobby and friends thought a little bit of holy water
02:36would sort the problem out. How many exorcisms is too many exorcisms? Well, if you go off the
02:42movies, then three over the course of 20 years sounds about right. Maybe you've got to do two
02:46at once every now and then, but surely that's plenty. Well, don't tell Hermes Cifuente.
02:52Otherwise known as Brother Hermes, this so-called exorcist claimed in 2012 to have
02:56exorcised a staggering 35,000 demons in the previous 25 years. Let's do some math on that.
03:02That number would amount to 1,400 exorcisms a year, or nearly four a day.
03:08Max von Sydow never hit those numbers, that's for sure. Brother Hermes lives in La Cumbre in the
03:12West Andes of Colombia, which presumably looks like that one scene in Ghostbusters all day,
03:17every day. And naturally, when you've got so many exorcisms to do in such a short amount of time,
03:22you'll want to keep your process simple. A little sprinkle of holy water, a little yelling,
03:27and then on to the next one, right? Wrong. Brother Hermes' process involves painting
03:31the allegedly possessed black and placing them inside ritually drawn circles set on fire with
03:36chicken eggs in each of their hands. Rinse and repeat some 35,000 times,
03:41and hey, presto! You've got a lot of wasted eggs.