Demonic Foes
My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal
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4.1 • 18 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The world’s leading psychiatric authority on demonic possession delves into the hidden world of exorcisms and his own transformation from cynic to believer over the course of his twenty-five-year career.
Successful New York psychiatrist Richard Gallagher was skeptical yet intrigued when a hard-nosed, no-nonsense Catholic priest asked him to examine a woman for a possible exorcism. Meeting her, Gallagher was astonished. The woman’s behavior defied logic. In an instant, she could pinpoint a person’s secret weaknesses. She knew how individuals she’d never known had died, including Gallagher’s own mother, who passed away after a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. She spoke fluently in multiple languages, including Latin—but only when she was in a trance.
This was not psychosis, Gallagher concluded. It was, in his scientific estimation, what could only be describe as paranormal ability. The woman wasn’t mentally disturbed—she was possessed. This remarkable case was the first of many that Gallagher would encounter. Sought after today by leaders of all faiths—ministers, priests, rabbis and imams, Gallagher has spent a quarter-century studying demonic activity and exorcisms throughout history and has witnessed more cases than any other psychiatrist in the world today.
In this eerie and enthralling book, Gallagher chronicles his most famous cases for the first time, including:
A professional who claimed her spiritualist mother had “assigned” her a spirit who “turned on her.”A petite woman—”90 pounds soaking wet”—who threw a 200-pound Lutheran deacon across the room to the horror of onlookers in a church hall;And “Julia,” the so-called Satanic queen and self-described witch, who exhibited “the most harrowing” case, a “once-in-a-century” possession.
Going beyond horror movies and novels, Demonic Foes takes you deep into this hidden world, sharing in full details of these true-life tales of demonic possession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychiatrist Gallagher combines experiences from his practice and from witnessing exorcisms with academic interpretations of exorcism accounts in this beguiling memoir. Putting his "professional qualifications on the line," to write the book, Gallagher, a devout Catholic, recounts how he first became interested in "psychosomatic medicine" after his brother claimed to be healed of various physical ailments by a witch in France. The author first observed possession firsthand after an American Catholic priest asked Gallagher to evaluate a patient in a psychiatric hospital who described her condition as "demonic oppression." True demonic oppression and possession, Gallagher contends, are rare and feature several distinctive attributes superhuman strength, aversion to sacred objects, and "speaking foreign languages or possessing hidden knowledge." Gallagher details cases, five of which he gives a personal account, like that of Anneliese Michel, who received a Catholic exorcism in Germany in 1975, and his engagement in the early 1990s with the hair-raising Satanic priestess "Julia" who "was never delivered from her demonic presence." A lack of verifiable empirical evidence about any of the cases covered, however, will fail to convince skeptics and critics. Regardless, Gallagher's piquant accounts should appeal to believers.
Customer Reviews
Scarier than I imagined it would be!
Scary, credible, and hard to put down
Not believable
There were many things in this book that were a stretch— and I’m not even talking about demonic possession. In taking into account all the authors credentials, and their experience, I had a hard time taking this book seriously.
For example: they author is attending an exorcism for someone they describe as your average housewife. They’re quick to conclude they don’t have any psychological problems or conditions that could be the cause of their “possession.”
Yet they then detail how this possession could have occurred: the innocent homemaker and mother had previously joined a satanic cult in her youth and sacrificed aborted fetuses to satan.
I’m sorry..... what?
You’re telling me that someone who would join a satanic cult and purposefully abort their child so they can sacrifice it to Satan does not suffer from any observable mental illness?
On that premise alone I could not take this book or author seriously.
The book was also sparse on details and accounts described were mostly 2nd and 3rd hand.