0:00 / 0:00
Father Malachi Martin, ex-Jesuit priest and former advisor to three popes, joins Art Bell for a sprawling conversation about the reality of demonic possession and the rituals used to combat it. Drawing on decades of performing exorcisms, Martin describes the process in chilling detail, from the initial psychiatric screening to the moment everyone in the room senses an inhuman presence that wants them dead. He explains that possession is never sudden but progresses through incremental surrender of the will, often beginning with a Faustian bargain made in a moment of desperation.
Martin reports an 800 percent increase in exorcism cases since 1975 and reveals that generational possession, passed through families for centuries via deliberate Satanic training, is more common than most would imagine. He distinguishes between full possession, obsession, and harassment, noting that the perfectly possessed often appear entirely normal in daily life. Over 50 percent of cases referred to him were previously misdiagnosed as psychiatric disorders.
The conversation turns prophetic as Martin warns of approaching global chastisements and connects rising environmental damage, social disintegration, and spiritual warfare into a unified vision of accelerating crisis that mirrors Art Bell's own concept of the quickening.
Martin reports an 800 percent increase in exorcism cases since 1975 and reveals that generational possession, passed through families for centuries via deliberate Satanic training, is more common than most would imagine. He distinguishes between full possession, obsession, and harassment, noting that the perfectly possessed often appear entirely normal in daily life. Over 50 percent of cases referred to him were previously misdiagnosed as psychiatric disorders.
The conversation turns prophetic as Martin warns of approaching global chastisements and connects rising environmental damage, social disintegration, and spiritual warfare into a unified vision of accelerating crisis that mirrors Art Bell's own concept of the quickening.
Key Moments
Hardest case: a possessed young priest in the Bronx, 1983: Asked for the toughest exorcism of his career, Martin names a 1983 case in the Bronx involving a young priest with a shock of red hair who had yielded piece by piece, not to sexual temptation but to pride and arrogance, and describes the rite as long, bloody, and disgusting.
Aftermath: priest cured, then dies; Martin says a piece of him died too: Martin says the young priest emerged from the exorcism cured and saved but died shortly afterward, and that Martin himself came out of the rite with 'a little bit of me dead,' something he believes he cannot get back until eternity.