Demons

Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions retain formal procedures for discernment and exorcism. We catalogue the documentary record without endorsing any particular theological frame.

The demon, as distinct from the classical daimon from which the word descends, is the malevolent spirit of the Abrahamic frame — though comparable figures appear across cultures, from the shedim of Jewish tradition to the jinn of Islam and the hungry or vengeful spirits catalogued in Asian and African belief. The phenomena reported under this heading divide conventionally into oppression, infestation of a place, and possession of a person, and the surviving record is overwhelmingly a record of testimony: the depositions of witnesses, the case notes of clergy, and the formal procedures of discernment that the major churches still retain.

Contested modern cases sit at the centre of the file. The Enfield poltergeist of 1977 to 1979, investigated at length and disputed ever since, remains the most heavily documented English instance — and also the most cautionary, having produced both sworn witness accounts and admissions of fabrication from the children involved. We hold every such claim against the documentary trail and against ordinary explanation: sleep paralysis, with its long folklore of the night-hag pressing on the sleeper’s chest; the suggestibility of frightened households; carbon-monoxide exposure and other environmental causes of dread and hallucination. Where these account for a case, we say so. Where the record resists them, we say that too, and preserve the testimony unembellished.