Face to Face with Exorcist

Politics, August 1997 

The exorcist has long loose hair and is eating an apple. There are, in the exorcist's past "over ten thousand documented cases of driving evil spirits from people's bodies". The exorcist has been dealing with ghosts for twenty five years and is a woman.   

"It started when my mother was dying and I couldn't reconcile myself to it. One night she appeared before me and asked me to let her die. From that event on I have involved myself with ghosts though I hadn't believed earlier that they exist at all," she says. She describes an exorcist as "someone who draws out ghosts and bad energy". "We probably have a predisposition to work with energies from birth," she says.

She got to know exorcisms and the world of ghosts over a number of years and the hardest thing was to overcome her own fear. Anyone can be possessed, nothing protects a person from ghosts except a belief that nothing can happen to him or her. In pathological places like slums and prisons everyone carries within them a murderous ghost. As does every alcoholic, drug-addict and criminal.

Exorcists identify ghosts which enter into people with those who, after death, did not pass through to "the other side". There are various instances. Sometimes, a possessed person can be "bent double" when there are several ghosts inside them.

The American film "Ghost" was very realistic. Most often the wandering ghosts are those of people who died in a sudden manner. (...) Also, a person who was evil during their lifetime will be afraid of the punishment which might come after death and their ghost will drift trying to put off the moment of transition.

The exorcist's accounts are extreme and have an adults only certificate. For example, that of the ghost of an 82-year old man who raped his 76-year old wife after his death. When she was called to her, the victim had traces of nails on her hands. The ghost came in the night and tormented the old lady. The cleansing takes a short while if the ghost which entered a person is an unknown ghost. But the ghosts of people close to the person possessed can take two or three months to cleanse. What is dramatic is that ghosts provoke people to commit suicide or murder. And ghosts raping women happens all too often.

If there are ghosts, "the other side" and a fear of punishment, then does the exorcist believe in God?

"I believe in a universal God. Orthodox Christians come to me, as do Jews, Catholics, and I have even cleansed a couple of priests," she says, and adds that if she took any notice of what people said then she would never drive ghosts out of people.

"I don't do it for the money. If that were my motivation then it would not work and I wouldn't be able to help people. And now we're approaching the end of the millennium, people are turning to the secret arts, they fear the unknown. That's how it was a thousand years before Christ. I've studied it."

The exorcist lives in the country. She has two grown-up children, a large farm, "a rich family". And how does the family treat you? "They treat me like I was a witch."

Author: Iwona Trusiewicz