Ahway, it's that guy who asked to pet your dog but doesn't realize how much you want to talk to him about your dog's likes and dislikes and hopes and dreams. Alley Ward back with another spooky episode of ologies. So I've been justshed up a whole month of darkish, pumpkiny topics. And if you've missed out this October, y'all, there are episodes on skeletons, we talk about body farms, we got one on spiderwebs, one on pumpkins that'll warm your whole heart,
and now this one is just right on the nose. Demons, evil spirits, creepy mean beings. Let's get into it, but before we do, a few business items up top. Number one. If you're in LA and you're hearing this before Friday, October twenty fifth, come you hang out in a park and learn about squids with me and Sarah McNaulty, who is our squid expert touthologist, Silverlike Meadow, six point thirty pm, Friday, October twenty fifth, Free. We're just gonna be hang out
in a park talking about science. There's an event bright link in the show notes with more info. Also pay birthday to Fancy Nancy aka my mom, who taught you how to fall asleep better. We all love you, Fancy Nancy. Also thank you to everyone supporting the podcast on patreon dot com, slash ologies and submitting your questions. Thank you to everyone wearing Ologies merch and tagging your photos with
oligi'es merch. Thanks to everyone making sure that you're subscribed and reading the podcast and telling friends, and of course the folks leaving reviews. You know that I read them so that I can pick afresheet every week, such as for example, Eggs ten eighty nine, who says crushed Nana's dinner Convo, says, today I wowed my fam with so much Spiderweb knowledge and pitched the podcast so hard. I told them they can all expect Ologies Merch for Christmas.
Thank you for inspiring me to slow my life down and take genuine interest in things I never thought I would. This podcast is pure gold. Eggs ten eighty nine, Thank you, Thank you Nana for me. Okay, let's descend into the bowels of human culture and consciousness, around the darkest corners of fear and trickery, and delve into demons which come by the way from a root meaning a lesser spirit, which comes from an earlier route meaning to divide. And yes,
demonology is a thing. So this ologist and I agreed to meet remotely at an ungodly hour of seven am. We hopped on the phone. We each recorded our audio. So the sound might be just a wee bit different than usual, just attributed to a demon. It's fine. So this all. Just got a bachelor's in religious studies, a master's in theology and religion, and a PhD in religion with a thesis about the neo pagan Internet community, and is now an assistant professor in religious studies at West
Virginia University. She teaches courses on the history of witches and demon hunts and fear and historical heresy. So we hopped on the phone. We gap about ghosts and gargoyles and possessions and myths and horror films and psychology and Halloween costumes and cross cultural spookiness and dear old demons and devils. So light a candle and watcherback for the historical wisdom of religious studies. Professor and demonologist, doctor Alissa Biel, So you are a demonologist, Yes, I.
Guess sort of, I study people who study demons. Haws that I don't study the demons themselves.
I think it explains why it's hard to find an actual demonologist who is perhaps incredible in their field, right, I think.
Like a practicing demonologist might be difficult. Yeah.
Yeah, there's like one out there in her Twitter account was suspended for unknown reasons, and I was like, oh, dear, there's a lot of them. But how long have you studied people who study demons?
About twenty years now. I guess it started when I was in grad school. I got very interested in just concept of magic and witchcraft historically a lot of Inquisition era stuff, and it sort of went from there. I started teaching a class on magic and witchcraft, which people also thought was sort of a practicum. They thought they were going to learn spells. They were very disappointed when they found out they weren't. So yeah, about twenty years back at Syracuse, I started studying it.
What got you into it before it became academic? Like, what kind of a kid were you?
Oh? Crazy? Absolutely? I tell a story all the time. One of my friends remembers this. I got in trouble on the playground because I told some of the other kids in grade school that I was talking to Athena and I wasn't. It wasn't, let's make that clear, but I was pretending that I was, and they got a little nervous about that.
So Alyssa's parents were avid traveler and she developed an appetite for world history and religion pretty early. So, well, your thing is a kid may have been like micro machines are hopping a skippet in the driveway. Doctor Beale's thing was ancient Greece, and apparently her school administrators did not appreciate her tall tales about talking to ancient deities. So what happened when you got called them to the principal's office for this?
I think at first they were just trying to make sure that I didn't need medical advice. Yeah, but they just basically told me to stop scaring the other kids and stop telling them that I was having conversations with ancient gods. So I did mine.
What did your parents think of it? Were they like, she's our kid?
Oh yeah, yeah, They weren't terribly upset about it. They thought it was pretty funny actually at the time. So, yeah, I was the kid who started playing D and D when she was like ten or so. So that gives you some idea of my personality as a child, I think. Yeah.
So when it came to getting on an academic path, did you realize that you could do this as a job or what was your first intro into it academically?
Oh gosh, I would say I had no idea of what I was going to do. I actually started out in polysci and journalism. That was what I was going to college for, and I ended up taking a really horrible anthropology class on magic, and I just sort of fell in love with the topic and it was just one of those things where you find something out of the blue that you really really enjoy and it sort of brings together all of the different things that you love. So I YEA had no clue I would end up here.
What exactly is a demon versus like a goblin versus bad ju ju?
Like?
Do youon even define?
If you go all the way back, like into ancient Greece? They are not necessarily evil. You might just think of them more like they're not spirits because they have form, but they're not necessarily evil creatures. So have you ever read The Golden compass. No, oh, okay, it's this great fiction, great book. It's sort of a kid's book, but it's a little bit higher end than that.
But it's about demons.
It's about demons, yes, and they're good for their people. They're sort of attached to people and they're very very good creatures as long as the people are good. And demons are originally kind of like that. But when you get into monotheism, all of those kinds of creatures get turned into bad things.
So how far back do you think the notion of a spirit who was like mischievous, who had form? How far back does that go? What are the first instances of that in writing or in drawing?
Wow, that's a big question. Yeah, sorry, Yeah, no, I'm sort of flipping three things in my head. Definitely ancient Greece and I would think in some forms ancient Egypt as well. So that's about as far back as we can really get in some ways textually, at least.
So even before written history, demon idols were in effect, y'all. Like they found an eleven thousand year old mouth, a gape human face carved in a plank of wood. A few gold prospectors discovered it in a Siberian peak bog. They thought it was a lot younger than it was, didn't really realize what a big deal it was, and that it was worth more than its weight in the gold they were looking for. Oops, that's just a demon screwing with your values. So what kind of demons are
we talking about? In ancient myths, you may have heard of Hades, for example. Now, how cute is it that the underworld was just called Hades after the guy whose house it was like Maybe once he had a cute neon bar sign that said MS, but the top half shorted out and no whatever bothered to fix it, so they just called it Hades. Hades places. Hades wasn't a purely evil figure though, just kind of a dickish step
dead that no one liked. But Alyssa explains that those kind of demons are in gods, and they're not sequestered in hell. Mythological demons were whole separate bag, and they were considered to be up here among us, just kicking it anywhere. And as a person whose shoe fell behind the X ray machine at TSA this morning, so she just left it and ran in socks to her gate through lax as her plane was boarding hot Damn, I'm starting to believe in demons.
No, I mean, I think it's more of an idea of beings in the normal world that are not quite gods and goddesses. So some kind of I have air quotes going on here, spiritual beings just sort of creatures in the normal world.
But they're not a person either, right, and they have some kinds of powers. Why do you think that, as human beings we need to come up with stories to explain good and evil? Do you think that demons are essentially just a product of trying to understand that we're shitty people or understand but Freudian super ego or an ego?
I think they vary depending on sort of where you're at, and obviously the time period as well. So demons today, yeah, they're probably oh gosh, manifestations of our issues and that kind of thing. So we try to create these figures that embody the things that we're scared of, dang alone. But since they're not always evil historically, you know, that
question is sort of up in the air. It's it's really I guess they could be manifestations of what people were afraid of or what people wanted or desired, but it's hard to tell because people in the past don't really talk about things like that. So it's our best guess in many ways, why a lot of society seem to create these these things and still today not all of them are bad. So if you go over to for example, Thailand, they have these absolutely gorgeous what we
would think of as demons. They have scary faces and they're very mean looking, but they're actually creatures that protect temples.
Okay, side note, I look this up and I believe she's talking about yaksha, which are nature spirits with demon faces. They kind of look like if a professional wrestler and a dragon had a love baby who dressed up as a circus clown for Halloween, like fierce, snarling, just exploding with bright colors and makeup, but also bearing kind of surprise expressions like holy shit, what are you doing here?
That's kind of what their faces look like. So yaksha can be beautiful though, and they can guard or they can haunt places, so they might protect you or they might devour you. So I guess be nice to them, and I want them to know that the wrestler clown baby thing was like very much a compliment.
They're not bad, but they look like it.
And can you walk me through. I know this is essentially distealing all of your work into like five or ten minutes, but just a tiptoe through the tulips of demons, Like, what are some of your favorites in history? When did they rise and fall in popularity?
Because my period is so sort of medieval, I guess those are kind of my favorite. And medieval demons are so classically what we would think of as demons, right, They've got big horns, and they're all muscly, and a lot of times they've got like six penises and that kind of stuff. So they're just so classically demonic that
you really have to love them. Yeah six. But I also do I have a kind of affinity for the ones that I was just talking about in Thailand, because again, they're so over the top and they are really really beautiful. So I'm sort of equally drawn to the super super scary ones in medieval fieldlogy and they really really pretty ones in sort of Thai religion as well.
Okay, so quick aside, demons like people and lamps and probably butt plugs come in all shapes and sizes. Now, they might not be called demons though us human persons. We've got a lot of names for them, like pre Babylonians call them shadow and in Islamic folklore they're called gins or ephrits or sheatin, and the Japanese have these ogrioni. Jewish mythologies got sheddim Christianity has demons, fallen angels called nephelim, Russian has shorts, and in Algonquin there's this tall, antlered,
blood hungry spirit called a wind to go. So you got a culture, you got demons. Now what about demons with the AE Demons can be nice or they can be the name of a computer program. That's just a little Techi factoid for you. Now, what about Damien? Does that name mean that you're evil? No, the name damien means to tame or to subdue. Also, for a little context,
what was the inquisition you inquire? Well, there were a few inquisition periods, one in the mid twelve hundreds, and they used to torture people to try to find out who was talking about the pope or later in the fifteen hundreds, everyone was poking everyone else to see who was a demon or a witch to combat the rise of Protestantism. So a lot of side eye and suspicion in those days. And now historically, was the Inquisition period, was that like
the hot time for demons? Did demons have a kind of a boom?
Then in the end period of it, it doesn't start out that way. That's what's sort of interesting to sort of summarize it briefly, it seems more like, at first you're not supposed to believe in them as a practicing Christian at the time, it sort of goes against the power of God to believe that demons have power. And the same thing with witches. You're really not supposed to believe that witches are real. In the beginning of the Inquisition, and then as it develops, it seems like they're almost
trying to prove that God is real. It's this sort of period of skepticism that everybody starts getting very nervous about proving whether or not God exists. Yeah, and to do that they have to sort of prove the supernatural, So they end up trying to prove that demons exist. So yeah, so if demons exist, then God exists and everything's okay, We're all good here.
So that is not what I expected at all.
Yeah, it's fascinating to see it really is how it develops, because when the inquisition period starts, they're not going after witches. They're really going after what they would call heretics, people who believe differently from them, and it evolves into this whole actual witch hunt, but it doesn't start out that way. So demons come in relatively sort of light on the scene, so to speak.
And when, in terms of a timeline, when did Monotheism really take root? When did we as a culture, When did certain cultures tea on this idea that demons were the enemy of the One True God?
Probably around the time that Christianity really gains a hold in Rome, so you know, around the three hundreds.
Okay, quick virtual field trip. Alyssa told me that underneath the Vatican there's a huge necropolis where they used to store a whole army of dead people, and there's a
stucco painting of Lucifer down there under the Vatican. Lucifer, of course, draws his name from a bringer of light or the sun of morning, named after a star falling from heaven because Satan's origin story was that of an angel who rebelled and turned into that friend who's always trying to get you to have another drink or order the chili cheese fries, or just delighting in the misery of others.
So it really is around. It starts developing, I would guess early on like one hundred two hundred, when they're trying to sort of beat you know, they're trying to sort of win the battle of whose religion is going to take over this particular area, and so they really turn against the representations of those earlier gods and goddesses.
And so in order to prove their faith to one god in the sky. It's like all these other jabbronis, we don't believe in them anymore. That's yesterday's news.
Or they have to be bad, so instead of them being powerful and possibly good, they can sort of be powerful, but they have to be less powerful than God. So then you get this whole demonic world.
And what properties does a demon usually have? What kind of mischief are we talking do they? Like do they give you cancer or do they just drop something in your food that sucks?
You know what I mean?
Like, how bad are we talking.
I guess it could be that though. Yeah, they could cause illness, that's for sure. Okay, there's one story that I read in one text that was something as simple as this priest blamed a demon for tripping him as he fell down the stairs, and that was his proof that he had tripped and fallen down the stairs, and
that was proof of demonic activity. So it can be anything from really really horrible like killing babies, did you know, making them into stews that's really popular during the medieval period, Or it can be something something as simple as tripping and falling down the stairs. So they can have a lot of power, but they also can do really really stupid stuff.
So a few things a demon might do to you sign your name on an insulting letter to someone you respect, perhaps deposit their own giant bowel movement in your cat litterbox, causing you to take your pet to the veterinarian. Maybe a fix a fuck Cops sticker to your cars bumper. Just kidding, that's not the work of a demon. All three of those are just things that notorious prankster and low key comedic maniac George Clooney has done to his friends.
They weren't necessarily accusing the people of being demonic. They were accusing them of having interactions with demons. And that's where witches were supposed to get their power from.
I'm doing one now that I can't tell you about, but in a year you're going to hear that I've been arrested.
So witches were not powerful in and of themselves. They were powerful through the help of a demon. They often can't even be seen the demons, so the priests are trying to prove that they exist through the witches.
You know what they say, behind every great witch is a supportive, inspiring demon. And do you think that there was You know, back then there were a lot of kind of fables and demons that were made up to explain science that they just didn't get.
Yeah, like even things like crops failing the harvest doesn't come in right, so you have to blame something. I think that's definitely an aspect of it. Sure, or again, like I just said, with the whole connection to babies, Obviously, there were a lot of really early infant deaths during the medieval period, and so people wanted to blame something for that happening. It's better than not knowing what's going on,
or it's better than thinking that you did something wrong. Right, So I do think in a lot of ways it was manifestations of people's fears. You can take them and use it yourself to blame those bad creatures for the bad stuff that's going on.
Do you think that still happens today?
Yeah, definitely, yes, Yes, it seems that we create these sorts of things, sure, even if it's in pop culture, which is a lot of what I also study. I'm really into horror movies, even though I'm terrified of horror movies too. It takes me forever to get up the nerve to watch one, but I love them. So I think we still create these sorts of things in order
to express those fears. Even today in the US, we sort of turn towards certain types of creatures when we're afraid of certain things, so we sort of get you know, vampires are popular for like five years, and then zombies are popular for five years, and then we switch over to witches for a while, and they all are expressions of different things that we're scared of.
I think, are they all a type of demon? Like when it comes to defining a demon, are there parameters in terms of what's a demon and what's not.
I mean, we would think of them today very differently. So I assume that if somebody was going to define demonic activity, especially if you're within the church, it would have to have something to do with the figure of Satan, I would think. So it's not anymore just some kind of evil creature. With the influx of Christianity, we really do have to have that kind of opposition to the One True God. If you think about things like exorcism movies, they definitely have to be able today to take control
of a person. There's that whole possession aspect to it, and I would think that today that would be one of the main sort of markers of what is demonic and what's not possession the lawyers. So we've got things like ghosts and witches and that sort of stuff still in popular culture, but the demonic is something that can like literally take over your body and not give it back. I think that's what people are so scared of. Excellent.
Did you ever watch The Exorcist oh as a child?
Yeah? Yes?
And is that the scariest movie?
Like?
Why is that in the omen? Like why are those so terrifying.
Oh god, the omens scared me even more. Actually, yeah, yeah, it still does. It's still the Exorcist isn't so scary when I show it to students now, though I showed them Exorcism of Emily Rose the other day and a lot of them were really freaked out by that one.
And I.
The devil. I do think that even if people aren't scared by other stuff, possession in particular still scares people a lot. So I can talk through with my students, and we do. We talk about all of these things that people have feared in the past, because at some point vampires were considered to be absolutely real and people were really really scared of them.
Side note also scary. The plague, just infectious flea bites and wet coughs killed up to two hundred million people in the mid thirteen hundreds. And what happens when everyone is dying and barfing blood and has bleeding mouth sorece Folks start thinking, well, shit, vampires are real. What is a bacteria? Never heard of it? But vampires? That's just science.
But now that sounds silly to most people. Whereas you show them the Exorcist and they're really freaked out. So I think it's that idea of loss of control of the body, loss of control of your mental facilities. All of that stuff is terrifying to people.
How do you feel when you see like news items about current day exorcisms. How do you process that in terms of your your skeptical brain and your science brain and your historical brain.
Yeah, I guess for me, anytime I'm studying, really, I do sort of go into this dual mode. Right, So I'm very much a skeptic, and I'm very much into science. I mean, my brothers in aeronautics and aerospace, and you know it's my family is really scientific and not religious at all. But I'm really interested in why these things come up in religions too. So you know, whereas my scientific brain is saying that can't possibly happen, my other side of my brain is saying, well, let's see what
it looks like. So I'm really interested when I hear those types of things, and obviously all over the world, whether it's a monotheistic culture or not, you get these concepts of possession. Sometimes they're good, Like in voodoo, possession is often a really positive thing. It's because it's the way of communicating with the spirit world. So I'm interested
in how that gets carried out in a culture. So why being possessed might be good for somebody, but in our culture it's seen as the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen, at least in a Christian context.
I wonder too, how Christianity regards getting possessed by a good spirit. Like Christianity seems a okay with getting knocked up by God, right exactly, But at the same time, like demon get how dare you make me dance around and speak in gibberish?
Except when people speak in tongues, that's okay. So the whole descent of the Holy Spirit and Pentecostal Christian traditions, it is the influx of the Holy Spirit, and it can make you do things that you don't usually do. So in some cases, in some denominations of Christianity, it's a positive thing to speak in tongues, speaking in tongues what Greek can't. But then it's of the flip side of demonic possession that can make you speak languages that
you're that you don't know. Then I think that's still one of the proofs of possession is that you speak in a language that you have never learned. So it can go either way. Even in Christianity.
I looked into this, and it's true some folks put a lot of pressure on themselves to speak in tongues. There was one ministry's website I read. I found an article that said, quote, I felt like it was my fault, that I was doing something wrong, that something in me was broken. Finally, I just shut myself in my room and said, I'm not leaving this room until I speak in tongues. I'm not letting one word of English leave my mouth. And I think that was my breakthrough. So
Rosetta Stone can help you here. Friends, have you ever looked into those studies and tried to figure out, okay, were these people just speaking gibberish or did they all of a sudden were they fluent in Portuguese? If anyone can explain it.
Do you get the stories that yeah, it's fluency and stuff like Latin or ancient Greek or something like that most people never are even exposed to. But you know, again, the skeptical side of me says, well, who's telling a story? You know, what do they have to gain? By having this out there two sides of the coin, right, does it actually happen or is there a compelling reason for
somebody to be sharing this sort of story? And I don't know if I've ever seen scientifically convincing evidence of somebody talking a language that they have not learned.
Why do you think we need to be scared? Especially like we're coming up on Halloween here? Why do we descend into like a month of like let's be terrified, like goblins, ghosts, spooks, spiders, Like why do we need that?
It's really an outlet, isn't it. I mean, this is the same reason I watch horror movies, even though I get totally scared and I hate the feeling. And I'm one of those people that actually watches it from behind my fingers half the time. Oh got me? Yeah, So I don't know when I'm done watching a horror movie, have I had some sort of emotional release or something. Maybe? Then again, often I can't go to sleep the night that I watch a horror movie either, So that's kind
of silly, But I think it is. It's some kind of emotional feeling that we get out of it that we really want. So we want to be terrified because in some ways it actually feels good, I guess, and it actually I think it also engages a part of our brain that we might turn off a lot. So as I've been saying this whole thing about me being skeptical and I don't believe in ghosts, But at the same time, then why do I get absolutely terrified when I watch something like Hanning of hill House? I, you know,
I do. I get really really scared. But if I don't believe the ghosts, why am I getting that scared when I want? It doesn't actually make sense, So I think it just it gives us some kind of emotional release that we might be looking for.
There's more on this in the Ferology episode, but most experts echo that scary entertainment and horror hijacks or fight or flight response and pokes at our screaming almond of terror the amygdala, which is deep in the brain. So the rush of adrenaline that we would be using to run away from a bloodthirsty moose or a demon in a nightgown instead gives some people an opioid like rush, And then everything that goes bump in the night is kind of a little bump of brain chemicals when you're working,
are you pouring over old manuscripts? Like what kinds of writing are you looking at? And do you ever get freaked out while you're studying.
I do actually get a little bit freaked out by that. I just was writing on Haunting of Hillhouse and I had to watch the whole series again on Netflix, and I had to do it like during the day while my husband was home with all the lights on. So that stuff still does freak me out. The ancient texts and the wood cuttings, they're really interesting and they're really elaborate, especially when you get into depictions of demons and things
like that. So it's fascinating to see what the medieval brain was coming up with.
What was our thing with goats? Why goats and demons? Why is there such a crossover? Stylistically?
I think it's the horns. I think it goes back again to pan in ancient Greece, the sort of depiction of the half human half goat, or at least the horned beings. I do think that comes in from a
lot of the ancient Greco Roman stuff. Again, there was just an exhibit that we saw we were in study abroad with students last summer and we took them to It was in the Israel Museum and they were doing an exhibit on Peter Pan, which sounds strange maybe, but they were actually tracing it all the way back to the ancient Greco Roman god Pan and then how that
came forward. So all of these fairy tales and all of these depictions have their roots in that mythology still, so we're constantly re using the Greeks as everybody has for thousands of years. So now we're using them for these depictions of demons, still using their gods and goddesses.
So for more on this, see the Mythology episode with John Bousche. It's just chock full of gossip about gods and what about how demonology is used in a way to alienate different groups of people, different religions. How has that been in the past and how does that continue now?
Oh gosh, you mean like accusing people of literal I mean sometimes it's actually accusing people of having sex with them. That's one of the major things that the inquisitors do is.
That really Oh yeah, they're Wyman was six dicks.
Yeah, it's not supposed to be fun, right, the inquisitors, the stuff that they write, it's very, very detailed, which is one of the interesting things.
And it's porn. It's demon porn.
It is actually and they talk a lot about demon penises. It's a fascination with the inquisitors. So you know, it's supposed to be often, as I said, lots of lots of dicks, but also like spiked. Yeah, so not like barbed with yeah yeah oouch.
Demons not only horned but also horned. I asked Alyssa about horns and the intersection of religious fear and anti Semitism. Moses is famously depicted by Michaelangelo as having horns. So what in the fiery depths of shee Hades hell is that all about?
And the whole Moses thing, Moses being depicted with horns particularly all of that. It's so weird how this happens. That in particular is a mistranslation of words. So I think it's when what does it say about Moses. It's that he's got rays of light coming out of his head in one particular biblical verse, and somewhere it might be King James version. I'm not sure when it gets translated that gets translated into horns coming out of his head. Yeah,
oh boy. So you do get a lot of those overlaps, but usually it's down to some horribly mistranslated something or another that people then run with. Oh god, yeah, that is awful.
It is one job, right, No one was proofing.
That, No, I know, right, it happens over and over again. Oh man.
So anyone who's who has like a religious based political leanings, who knows you might be working from like a smeared manuscript?
Oh exactly, yes, yeah, yeah, that's terrifying. It is. Well, I'm thinking about how boring it must have been to be like recopying all of these texts. So the people who had to do that, sometimes I wonder if they really just decided to screw around with stuff because they.
Were bored, bored horny monks. Exactly who's the demon now, bitches? And you see this mistranslated something exactly well, persist for eons.
And they make all these little drawings in the margins that are really crazy. So I think a lot of it maybe came in from just bored medieval lunks.
Also, I wondered if some of those celibate religious folks ever wish they could just make out with someone, and if that ever came out in their work, because they get real detailed.
That One of the big proofs they're looking for with both male and female witches is that they're having sex with demons, not just that they're you know, talking to them, they're actually having some sort of physical interaction with them. And it's essentially the most physical you can get with something, right. Yeah, So, especially if you're talking about multiple penetrations, that's pretty intimate with the demon.
How do they explain that there aren't a bunch of demon babies around?
Oh? There are sort of Okay, So this is how it works. Are there's male demons and there's female demons, at least in the Inquisition period, and the way that they breed is that essentially the female demons, this is one of the ways that it works. The female demons have sex with men. Usually the female demons are on top, that's how it works, and they take the sperm into their bodies and then they transmit it to the male demons,
and the male demons can impregnate women. But it's actually with human sperm and not demonic sperm.
I mean, that's just science Emma, right, Oh my god. So it's kind of gets passed around like a baton in a race.
Yes, exactly, yes, racing sperm.
Yeah, and then and then a human female has it, and then she has a demon baby because it's human sperm that's passed through to at least two demons.
Exactly. Yeah, so it's not really physically a demon baby, but it was caused by a.
Demon cursed and haunted zygotes guaranteed to pass through at least two organic demons before implantation. Did you ever see Rosemary's baby?
And yes?
Is that how medieval demon babies were described or was it different?
In the end once she has it, it's actually like scary, demonic looking, right, I think?
So yeaheah, what have you done to its eyes?
He has his father's eyes. Are you talking about guys as are normal? What have you done your many satan missus father?
That guy he came up from hell and beget a son a mortal woman, Pale Satan Alyssa says, medieval demon babies we're just more run of the mill looking.
These end up just looking like normal babies. And that's also part of the fear, is that you never really know, because it just looks like a normal human anyone could have been the product of this kind of bizarre multiple union. You can't tell the offspring of this kind of union just by looking at him. So jerks, demons, demon babies. Oh, I was gonna say, all babies.
Did you cry and they shit on you?
Yes? Yeah?
If they bite your boobs?
Yeah, So I don't think any more than than normal babies.
Colic demon baby doesn't sleep to the night babbling in tongues. What it's the biggest demon flim flam that you want to debunk? What's some real bullshit horsepuckey that you're like, this is? That's not what demonology is about.
I think it's probably the idea that and this might just go for religious studies in general, since that's my field. A. We're not all sitting around like practicing whatever we're teaching, right, you have no idea. How many times, especially with students who take our classes, people think that they're going to be indoctrinated into something. And it's said because in some ways it really stops people from taking those sorts of courses.
And I think they're really useful just for understanding different cultures. So I guess that would be my major thing.
Is that you're not going to walk out of here with demonic powers or.
Yes, I'm not. I'm not going to teach you spells, right, We're not going to have the goat sacrifice practicum at the end of the class. Yeah, that would be my major thing.
Can I ask you questions from listeners? There's so many
of course. Yeah, okay, so before we ask questions from patreons, and there are so many a quick break to tell you about the sponsors of the show, who make it possible for us to donate to a charity of the ologists, choosing each week, and this week, Alyssa wanted her donation to be split between Doctors Without Borders, that facilitates global first responders to emergencies, epidemics, and natural disasters and provides medical relief in conflict zones, and the other donation went
to Planned Pairenthood, which is a nonprofit organization that provides sexual healthcare in the United States and globally. So links to both of those and to these sponsors will be in the show notes.
Okay, well that's get two questions.
Okay, we can just do this like a lightning round. We'll get through as many as we can, all right, so many good questions. Mary Roseby says. Pumped for this, she says, what famous demon cases do you think are true?
If any ooh like actual possession. That's that's that split brain thing again. Yeah, yeah, I mean I want to take people at their word when they say that they're possessed. I believe, And then my scientific brain is back here going no, no, I don't believe you. So I'm not sure about that one. Actually, I don't know how I would answer that. I think extorm of Emily Rose is supposed to be based on a true story, and I would love to sort of dive more into that actual story.
But then again, based on true story, we never know what that means in movies, right exactly? Yea.
Ps. I was unfamiliar with this tale and the Exorcism of Emily Rose was based on the story of Annalise Michelle, who was a woman who had epilepsy and psychiatric illnesses that just didn't respond to treatment, and so she and her family became convinced it was a possession. So she endured a year of exorcism rights in the mid nineteen seventies and in the process, she stopped eating and she died of starvation, and she had shattered kneecaps from kneeling
so much. There's just nothing not awful about what she and her family went through. And her parents and a priest were found guilty of negligent homicide because of what she went through. And I just want to say big thanks to anyone studying how the brain works. That would have saved a lot of people a lot of demonic suspicions. The more we know about how our brain meets work,
the better off we all are. So this next question was also asked, by the way, by Kathleen Sachs Chris Paul's wants to know how many names does Satan Lucifer Metastopheles have throughout history.
So much branding there is, but a lot of it is also mistranslation. So yeah, there are a lot of different names that come from these various sources. So Lucifer back to that idea of light right in the Greco Roman pantheon, So there are a lot of different names that come out of different authors. Lucifer doesn't get popular, I think until like Milton or Dante, one or the other. I can never remember.
Which ps Milton is the poet John Milton who penned an epically long poem called Paradise Lost, and it was about Adam and Eve and the fallen angel Satan. It was published in sixteen sixty seven. Haah, so close, so close, you know his publicist must have been so bist, like
one year earlier. Man, what I mean, good marketing. But yes, some folks wrap up all the names for Satan into one guy, kind of like how I call my dog Gramlin or Grammy Land or Graham's or Grammy or monkey Butt or monkey face or meat beast or Pouci or Rumpel, Snuggles, et cetera. Satan I feel like, probably loves nicknames. Now. Some authors think, though, that there are seven distinct princes of Hell, like in the late fifteen hundreds, Peter Binsfield
thought each prince of Hell represented their own sin. Lucifer was pride, Mammon was greed, as Mudeos lust, Leviathan envy, Diezo Bub was gluttony, Satan was wrath, and Belle fegor good old bell Fegre was sloth. So you have in a real lazy day Belle fi Gore made you do it now? Who asked about the show Supernatural, Quite a few of you have been watching it, including Samantha J. Gunther,
Lauren Harder, Caitlyn Fitzgerald, and Gianna Ruwick. Okay, a lot of people, including Lauren Harder, Samantha Riley mcinness asked about the Supernatural show, and Lauren says, I watch more seasons of Supernatural than I want to admit, and I'd love to know how they did it with all the various and sundry demons and monsters from different cultures. So how where are they getting all of the demons for Supernatural?
Okay, I have a confession to make, which is that I have not watched Supernatural. I know everybody asks me this. I don't know why I never got into it. I watched like the first episode and just said, eh, okay, I know, I know. I feel really bad about that. So I'm sorry to all of the readers who wanted to listeners who wanted to know that. Yeah, I think I stopped with Buffy and then they just me so yes, yeah.
Some people asked about Buffy.
Actually, oh that's good, Yay Buffy.
Laura Durgovich says, everything I know about demons. I learned from Buffy Angel which demons in the Wheden verse are recognizably drawn from known sources and which ones are totally original.
Oh. I think he's really good at doing his research. Actually, yeah, yeah, So I would say that most of the demons in Buffy the Vampire s Layer have some source historically. I mean he gets creative with them, right, He certainly you know, turned them into lounge singers and things like that. First I was afraid. I was petrified. But I think he's done his research. I really do. And I think when it comes down to the shows like Buffy and Angel,
he's done his research. So I would say most of them are historical.
Oh nice, I mean it's I feel like it's in some ways, it gives you more cred if they're historical, and also you probably have to do less work, so bonus.
Yes.
Also I had to stop and ask myself, is Joss Whedon a demon? I have bad feelings about him? And yes, I googled it and in an open letter in twenty seventeen, his former wife laid bare quite a bit of deceit and infidelity on his part. So what's his excuse? Was he possessed. We're just a successful dude in Hollywood being
gross thinking it's the latter. Now, speaking of possession, the following folks wanted to know more about it, including first time question asker Rachel Hartley, Evan Monroe, Lacy net Ducks, Float, Ryan and Jasmine. First time question asker Megan Borossa, Jennifer Downey, Amanda Lango, Lexi Bonafate, Michael Sherman, Celes Lewis, Alexander Remarkinova, Joe Portifido, Emily Deck and Sarah so Erica wants to know what the heck is actually going on in reported instances of demon possession.
Okay, scientific brain first, something ugh, something psychologically unresolved. Maybe my religious studies brain wants to say, whatever demon or God they think is possessing them, I don't want to necessarily write it off as being fake, at least from the perspective of how that person is interacting with their own world. You know, again, the religious studies side of me says, whatever that person tells you is going on is what is actually going on. You know that we
have to take them seriously about it. And then yeah, scientific bran in the back is saying they're not really possessed, but.
I don't know, okay. Side note, there are scientific papers of plenty describing medical conditions like Tourette syndrome, epilepsy, encephalitis or brain inflammation, dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and psychosis that would to some look like demonic possession. And a twenty fourteen article that ran in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry titled quote a Village Possessed by Witches a mixed method, case controlled study of possession and common mental disorders in rural Nepal.
Researchers in this found that quote possessed women reported higher rates of traumatic events and higher levels of symptoms of mental disorder compared to non possessed women, so more anxiety, depression, and PTSD. So some researchers think that the process of letting a spirit or a demon act out through you gives an outlet for distress, so a way to express the pain of mental illness or socio political violence, or
past trauma or oppression. So not unlike our sloth being blamed on belth the gore, a demon can throw things and express anger and pain in a way that the possessed aren't usually allowed to in their regular life, So of course we're still learning how the brain works and who the actual hell knows what the future will unfold about like vaping or staring at cell phones. Who knows what our brains are going through. Several people asked, what's up with pentagrams? That has something to do with demons?
Right, it does. Pentagram It has a lot of different symbolic uses again throughout history, so you can see them all over in Greco Roman art, and they're not evil, they're not associated with anything Satanic. Well, because you know Greco Romans don't believe in the idea of Satan. Greco Romans is that that's a group Greeks and Romans didn't believe in that sort of concept. You start to see
it as a kind of reversed symbol. So sort of like when you flip a cross upside down, it becomes a symbol of evil, right, the same thing sort of happens with the idea of the pentagram. It's usually with point down if you see it in like films about Satanic cults and things like that. Traditionally, the right side up pentagram wouldn't have been a negative symbol it's only when it's reversed that it becomes satanic. It's usually good luck,
sort of the right side up one. And modern day Wicca obviously uses the pentagram as a symbol as well, and certainly not satanic and certainly not evil. So maybe that's one of the misconceptions that I should be clearing up right now, is that witches don't worship Satan. Wickens aren't into that at all. Do you see the same
thing with the swastika. The swastika in ancient India is an extraordinarily positive symbol, good luck symbol, and what you see in Nazi Germany is the reversal of that symbol into the swastika, and it obviously takes on completely different connotations.
And do you think that also plays into this psychological binary that we used to cope with what is good and what is evil? Like, do we need to take something and flip it completely on its head, take some idea of a loving god and then switch it into some guy who lives in the steps of hell that wants to boil our balls and stuff.
Oh for sure, yes, yes. And if you have an all powerful god, that gets super scary too, because if you have an all powerful God, and this is kind of a classic theological question. Why are bad things still happening to us? So we have to come up with some sort of powerful evil to explain that. Otherwise it all has to be God. And nobody is really good with that, Like, nobody wants to think that God is
doing all of this bad stuff. So we have to come up with some kind of reversal of powers there, and then you reverse the symbols.
Right, It's like God wouldn't let me trip, but obviously I've been done by a trickster.
Exactly.
Yeah, A lot of people Laura Stacey, Nikki Finger, and Nadav Leventov asked about sixty six to six being the number of the beast and why I.
Should know that.
I don't know, right, No, I don't know.
Yeah, I should know that, and I do not know that.
We'll look it up. Yeah, And let me just think of how many properties are undervalued because they have six six six in the address? You know, likely as long as we're just tossing numbers around, how about Revelation thirteen fifteen through eighteen, which reads, here is wisdom. Let him that hath understand and count the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred three score and six. Other scholars
are like, hmmm, I think that translation is off. Maybe your math is wrong and it is supposed to be six one six. Oops, everyone in Grand Rapids, you just skirted maybe having the area coat of the beast. But no one scared of six one six like they are
of six six six. No one with six one six addresses is scrambling with the county to change their mailbox numbers, like one couple in spring Lake Park, Minnesota, who recently had to fork over about one hundred dollars in fees to change their address, saying they weren't superstitious, but it
was just hard to get plumbers and electricians out. And the perhaps accursed six sixty six Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which was purchased in what ended up being a terrible decision by Trump and law Jared Kushner, is about to get a makeover that includes new windows and an address change, while still remaining neatly wedged at fifty second and fifty third between a church and a victorious secret. Oh, perhaps that might inspire someone to write a sequel to Rosemary's Baby.
Joshua Harton wants to know where does this Where does the legend that you should sell your soul to a demon at a crossroads come from?
Oh, crossroads again if you sink back into Greco Roman mythology. I know, I keep bringing that up.
No, it has a huge place.
Yeah, it's definitely the site of power, crossroads of all kinds, the site of power. So I assume again it's one of those a fear of particular sites of power and not they're not necessarily evil, but it's sort of like the liminal space between worlds, almost at the crossroads.
What you're afraid of you might encounter.
Yeah, yeah, it's not necessarily evil power. It's power period. Right. If people see something like a crossroads or that type of space as being just innately power powerful, it could end up being something scary. So we're going to develop stories out of that being the place in the world where to put it. Sort of strangely, the veil is thin, so to speak, sort of like on Halloween, right, the veil between worlds is thin.
And do you feel like in your work Halloween is kind of a busier time for you because we're all in that spirit if you will.
Oh. Yeah, it's always fun, especially in the religion classes when Halloween rolls around, and I always want to dress up and go into class and I never do so I really should. It's definitely a fun time of the year. It's probably my favorite holiday. Still.
Do you give extra credit for people who dress as historical demons?
I should. I want to tell my students that you suggested.
That if you had to dress as a demon in history, did you go?
And then I dress us? Uh, the only the only one I've ever dressed as, and it's not really demonic. I did the classic devil with the blue dress one Halloween.
Oh that's amazing.
Yeah, it was a really easy costume though. I was just being super lazy.
So many people asked about demons across various cultures, and I'm going to say your name's with my mouth so fast.
Matt and Crane, Dalton, Becky Woodruff, Hadley, Sarah Jeane Horwitz, Rosie Crockett, Casey Flint, Hennah and Tay Allen, Andy Schuster, Anna Thompson, Julia Sculligan, Liz Johansson, jeffre Kat, Sidney Brown, Donald McLeod rot, Lanny Bauer, Leonna Schuster, Megan Jessica Tuba Sing, Jesse Cole, Meghan Emmanuel Shanchez, Maya Ramon, Josie Gombas, David M. Williams, Clark Bennett, Maria Delcatto, Gomaz, Shay good Ard, Kathleen Sachs,
Katie Nole, Enrique Sarmiento, Ryan Clark, Leon Schuster, Katherine Finney, Alex Ellison, Marissa Nole, Who and Canon Perdy who asked what are some differences between demons across cultures? As in Japanese demons and devils versus Christian demons versus pagan Right, So how do we see those across a lot of different cultures?
Some of them are positive, And I think that's the main distinction, that some of them are really positive creatures, even though they might still get called demons. We have such a negative association with that word in the English language, much like we do with the term possession. But in other cultures, again, their spirit beings, and they can be scary. I mean, they can be scary as all hell, but they're only scary towards evil people. So they're much more
protective than they are attacking good people. So I think that's the major distinction still across cultures is that demons aren't always bad. Like Thailand you get and in Japan you get these protective figures that we would really perceive as being demons because of how they look, and they almost would look like our classic idea of what a demonic presence would be, but they are protective.
So it's like a cool goat bitch having your back. Also, a few of you had sleep paralysis questions, and we do talk about this in a Smnology episode with doctor Chris Winter, but for this one, E Kristin Anderson, Bruce r. Cordell, Rachel Weiss, Katie Nole, and Skull again all asked asked about sleep paralysis and about how that was considered to be a demon sitting on your chest. But yeah, you know,
we know a little bit better now. Are there other ways in which demons have been implicated in ancient or medieval medicine?
Folks want to know, Yes, So crib death for sure. Again, going back to babies, it was often if you had somebody dying unexpectedly, and particularly if children died unexpectedly, that would get attributed to demons in some cases what we would think of today as sexually transmitted diseases. You could link those to demons as well. Infertility for sure, and male impotency. Yeah, always blame male impotency on demons. Right, It's not my fault. It's that demon over there that did it to me.
The old demon makes alcoholic dick trickery. I e. Probably just drank too much meat.
So yeah, a lot of medical stuff got sort of put on the shoulders of demons so that people didn't have to deal with it themselves. Yeah.
I have to say, viagra does sound like a Greek goddess.
Does, doesn't it. Yeah, you wonder why the inquisitors were so interested in writing about this stuff too. I guess we don't have to wonder that much, but yeah, they were very concerned with sexuality.
So well, I understand that that Fifty Shades of Grace started out as Twilight. I know it's all related. Yeah, let's see. Jillian's mom sixteen asked is there a certain kind of person or emotional state that demons prey on?
If demons are real, then I would feel like they would pray on Oh my gosh, I guess people who are having a really difficult time in their lives that would make sense. I would think that would open them up to some kind of demonic presence. If people are looking for some kind of power in their.
Lives, maybe something like depression is almost a thinning of the veil keen darkness and light. So I don't know. Maybe demons are like, he's bummed out, I'm going to go fuck with him exactly. Yes, interesting, what an asshole. A few people, including Raymond J. Deutsche, asked where did God Bless You actually originate? What is the flim flam about the devil and sneezing?
It would be there was a fear in a lot of cltures that sneezing sort of opened yours, allowed your soul to get out of your body, so that all of the different sort of God Bless You and kazoom Tite and all of that sort of thing was supposed to be almost a countermeasure to.
That protection, like keep it in there exactly. It's not off of minute. A few people had questions about famous demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, including one Pager Martinez and Aaron Elizabeth Becker wants to know how you feel about Ed and Lorraine Warren, who were kind of famed demonologists.
Yeah, I don't know. It's sort of like watching ancient aliens, right, It's fun for a while, But I don't know. I don't really have much of an opinion on professional demonologists. I don't know. I want to study them, I guess.
Yeah, sure, I mean you study the people who study demons, which makes sense exactly.
Yeah.
Greg Wallach has a great question our personal demons the scariest of all.
Of course, right, Yeah, And I think it has a lot to do with how we depict these sorts of things cross culturally. It really does come down to we're trying to make our fears things that we can deal with a lot of the time, and even putting that into a super scary form, you know, with horns and big, rest red, musty bodies and all of that, it allows us to sort of confront it in a way that we can't when we just keep it internal. So it's like demons therapy maybe, Yeah.
That makes sense. Yeah. Danielle Vaughn says, I've read that the Vatican has an exorcism division and that the legit have trouble with people willing to do this job. Is that a real thing?
I believe it came back in about a decade ago. Yes, so for a while I think the church had sort of debunked the whole idea of exorcism and possession. But I think it's actually there is now a division, but it's relatively recent that it's come back into vogue, so to speak.
I guess now that the Pope is on Twitter, you could always just ask him about it. Jessica Lee wants to know what is the worst demon horror movie you have ever seen?
Oh gosh, I was just thinking of this the other day. The Prince of Darkness. Okay, it's really old, well, not really old. It's like the eighties, late eighties horror movie. It's wonderful and horrible at the same time. It's all around this concept of a corrupt priesthood surprise surprise calling the Brotherhood of Sleep, and they're they're keeping Satan in this sort of tupperware jar kind of thing anyway, and it obviously finally breaks free.
I look this up and it's a lot of gooey special effects makeup and people vomiting garden hoses of water on each other. Oh oh.
In the cameos, famously, Alice Cooper has a role in it. Oh God, wonderful. So yeah, Prince of Darkness. If you haven't seen that one, watch that one.
Okay.
Yeah.
A few people had questions about D and D. This dungeony dragony question was also asked by Baron and Dion Damlo. James Hales wants to know how accurate are the D and D Monster Manuals in regard to demons.
I still have one sitting behind me right now. Yeah, I do. They're great, No, they really are. There's another sort of people who did their research really well. A lot of them are based on either demigods or all sorts of things from other mythologies. So Monster Manual is a good way to go, especially if you are trying to write a story or write a film. And I love I mean, just the different powers that they all get. It's so great. The minds that created those things are wonderful.
On the topic of books, Mandy Smith has a question, are there any good books where I can learn about different demon, witchy, etc. Symbols? Mandy says, I've been watching a lot of supernatural just don't really want to learn about them. But other than taking your course, I mean, people could always just go to school.
Yes, there are a lot. I mean it depends on the period that you're interested in. Obviously, I love the medieval period for this stuff. There is a fantastic book if you're really interested in how it went down. It's is sort of like, you know how you have like academic crushes sometimes on particular authors. All of this started when I read one particular book called Demon Lovers, a
guy named Walter Stevens. It's just a brilliant book and it's really detailed, and his research is fantastic, but he writes so well, so that would be one of my suggestions. It's not like overly academic. I mean, it's very academic, but it's so well written that you don't really notice it. So Demon Lovers excellent.
Vince Alasha and a few others wanted to know what your opinion is on ghost and demon hunting reality shows. I love Can You Trust Them?
I love them? Yeah, I love watching them, and my husband mocks me for it because again I don't believe in ghosts. But then I sit there watching ghost Hunters, right, makes no sense. I've never seen them show anything that proves it to me. I, for some reason, obviously still enjoy the shows.
I mean it's because they structure it to where you have to watch after the commercial break. That's how they get you you of course.
Yeah, it's going on.
What is your least favorite thing about studying demonology? What sucks? Is it? Grading papers? Is it? Is it a manuscript? Mike graffiche what's something that just sucks about the field or about demons?
Well, yeah, nobody likes grading papers. I've never met a professor who enjoys grading papers, that's for sure. I think probably some of the miss understandings, Like I said, about the field, that's a problem. I've had students end up on prayer circles because they were taking my classes. I've had students get threatening emails because they were taking my classes. Yeah, so there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about that.
So probably one grading papers too. You are never going to make money being in religious studies ever, But the misunderstandings probably the big thing.
And what is your favorite thing about your study of demons? What do you love the most?
It's how it can tie into so much other stuff. So I love traveling, Like I have a real problem with travel. I want to constantly be traveling and this ties into it perfectly because, like I said, you look at the Taie demons and they're so completely different from the Japanese stuff, from the ancient Greco Roman things. So every culture you go into you can find something about this. And so that's really what's fun for me is that I can tie all of this together and have a good time doing it.
When you're traveling, do you ever have to worry about demons trying to hide your passport even diarrhea?
Yes, I'm such a freak about my passport. I always know exactly where it is, and it's usually in my purse just in case I need to sort of make a break for it. Yeah, constant joke that every time we drive past an airport, I'm sort of nudging my husband like let's just go, we don't have to go to Thanksgiving dinner, let's just go do something else.
So I love it you just like you're ready to jam in it totally.
Yes. In fact, I usually keep a little backpack of a change of clothes and stuff in the car just in case I get to take off somewhere.
The travel demon.
I know that's it has it has.
Thank you so much for doing this I'm less afraid of demons. Actually, not that I was really scared, but now I just feel like they're just they just want to watch me trip and fall, and they do also in my own head.
Yes, yes, and you can just you know, go get a little statue of one of the cute Thai rainbow demons and keep that and it'll protect you.
I love them. Yeah, thank you so much for doing this. Have a safe Halloween.
Thank you, Elie, you too.
This has been awesome. So ask smart scholars stupid spooky questions because they are just treasure troves of lore. Now. There are tons of links in the show notes and up at aliward dot com, slash ologies, slash Demonology, and to follow doctor Elisabeel. She's at Alysa dot beale on Instagram. We are Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both, so do follow along there.
Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You are That for managing that, and thank you Eron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting the Facebook Ologies podcast group. Thank you to Emily White and all of the Ologies transcribers
who are making transcripts available. You can go to aliward dot com slash ologies, dash extras for those I'll pop that link in the show notes, and you can join that Facebook group of transcribers if you want to help make transcripts available. You can also search the transcripts on the site if you're looking for particular passages you want
to remember. Thank you also to devilishly handsome assistant editor Jared Sleeper for helping me with some spooky research and driving like fifteen of the sixteen hours on this weekend's road trip to see my family. You're the best. Thank you to the always wonderful Stephen Ray Morris for pulling all the pieces together each week, and to Nick Thorburn
who wrote and performed the theme music. And if you listen all the way to the end, you know I tell you a secret each week, and this week is that I've never seen The Omen or The Exorcist, and they were both so terrifying, But honestly, it's the barfing in the Exorcist that I'm like most afraid of that seems like it would just really stick with you, man. I feel like I saw just a millisecond of a clip,
and I'm like, well that's enough. That's enough of that. Also, I'm just gonna be very honest, I'm hella happy to be finishing this episode because after working on it late last night, getting asked deep and demon trivia, I had nothing but a horror show of LA traffic. Getting to the airport this morning at like five in the morning, there was tons of traffic. My lift driver got lost. I had to run through TSA my shoes alarmed. I
had to throw my shoe on the belt. It fell behind the x Roym machine and all the TSA people were like, sucks to be you man. So then I had to run through LAX with no shoes. I just ditched that shoe like a very haggard, bleary eyed, sad Cinderella. I just left a shoe. I didn't have any other shoes in my luggage, so then I just ran in socks all the way through the American terminal. I finally got to my gate and they're like, we can't let
you on a plane without shoes, you freak. And I was like, whatever, I'll buy shoes and I get to Boston. So then my producer luckily had tossed an extra pair of shoes in her bag. I put on her shoes. Thank you, Stephanie, thank you Carly. You're both the best. I made it on the flight, but I'm still hoarse from panting, and I'm just saying I'm over this demon shit. You guys. I'm sorry, demons. I hope we're all good now.
I'm going to burn a cinnamon stick or something. And I really just hope that George Clooney doesn't try to pull any shit on me either, for that mat or two. Okay, buddy, all right. Pacaderman College Mambiology or doo Zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, bonology, anthology, zereology, elinology. Demons demons, Demons drink them mountain dew.