Warning, this podcast may be disturbing to some listeners due to the graphic nature. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome from wherever you are. This is the Demon Inside podcast. I'm your host John Benham. If you would like to review another episode of The Demon Inside, you can go to Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio and any podcast platform. And please don't forget to subscribe and rate US with five stars. A new episode will come out once a week. We will be.
Right back after a word from our sponsors. Hello, my demon insiders, and welcome back to The Demon Inside. I'm your host, John Venom, and today we are going to be talking about the Demon Inside James Holmes. Now before I begin, I just wanted to say that James Holmes actually wrote a journal and in that journal, I could probably diagnose that journal for a
whole season of shows. I mean, it is something that got me going down the rabbit hole, and the way it was described from a psychologist basically meant that James believed that if he would kill someone, he would gain their strength, power and things like that. They're in their source, their entity. Now, the way I described it is it's the demon inside of him that's trying to figure himself out, and not just himself, but other demons as well.
And I know for you true crime people, you all don't want to hear this, but let me just get past this and then I'll start with the true crime stuff. So I believe this demon being inside of James Holmes had never seen this side of humanity, which was intelligence. Usually these demons get into people that are not exemplary. I mean, they're smart, sure, and they're, they're fascinating people, whatever.
But, and I'm not trying to talk down on anybody, but James Holmes was actually a neuroscience scientist. He was that's what his PhD was in. He hadn't graduated yet, but he was a very intellectual person who was trying to figure out what was going on in his own mind. So with that, let me start off with a little bit of his history.
James Holmes was born in December 13, 1987 in San Diego, CA and he was raided raised in Oak Hills which is a community in Monterey County near Castroville, CA where he attended elementary school. Now he got friends and he had like a group of friends that he he really enjoyed spending time with. But then his father actually got a job and had to move. So they ended up moving. James started going to a different high school and before. OK, so let me let me get to this
first though. According to James, during his childhood, this was like his whole childhood, and he was frightened of what he called nail ghosts that would hammer, that would hammer, listen to this nail ghost that would hammer on the walls at night. James saw social worker Margaret Roth once before she sent him to the psychiatrist Lynn Fenton. And James was depressed and obsessed with killing for over a decade. So James had this in his mind from the time that he was pretty much 11.
So he went to Westview High School and graduated in 2006. Very smart guy. He played soccer, ran cross country, basically your typical young man. When he when they moved when he was younger and he started school, he was very withdrawn. He was very to himself. He didn't make friends like he did when he was younger. So despite these issues, he graduated from high school in 2006, and he worked as an intern at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Now remember, this guy is super
smart. This is where he was assigned to write computer code for an experiment. So James wrote of his first experience at the Salk Institute in a college application essay. He said I had little experience in computer programming and the work was challenging to say the least. None the less, I taught myself how to program in flash and then construct a cross temporal calibration model. Completing the project and presenting my motto at the end of the internship and was
exhilarating. So you kind of get the gist. This was him as a senior in high school and he had this internship and then he started college at the University of California on Riverside in the summer of 2008. He worked as a counselor as A at the a residential summer camp in Glendale, CA, where he actually watched children ages 7 to 14.
And he was responsible for the for 10 children and he was great at it. This guy has no history of anything that his parents were great, his life was great, his sister was great. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better family. So in 2010, he received his undergraduate bachelor's degree in neuroscience with highest honors. He was a member of several honor societies, including by Beta Kappa and Golden Key. He also graduated in the top 1% of his class with a 3.949 GPA.
That is impressive and he completed a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Riverside. So in and that's that happened in 2010. So he decided to pursue a graduate degree in neuroscience at the University of Colorado and move to Aurora. And this is something that I got out of his notebook. He started taking the neuroscience classes and everything to self diagnose what was wrong with him because he knew there wasn't something, there wasn't something right.
And This is why this case is so interesting to me, because he's looking at his mental status from a scientific view. And it's very interesting to me. And I'll explain a little bit more about that and, and why it's so interesting. Holmes identified himself as an agnostic. I don't know if you know what agnostic is, I really didn't. But agnosticism is the view of belief that the existence of God, the divine or the supernatural, is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact.
It can also mean an apathy towards such religious beliefs and refer to personal limitations rather than a worldview. So this definition is pretty much saying that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist. So in 2011, he enrolled in a PhD program for his neuroscience.
He, this guy was actually going for his PhD. And according to an agency, the National Institutes of Health, it diversed installments for a grant that he actually received. It was like a $22,000 grant or something like that. And he was going to get that plus free tuition. He ended up declining it. And he really didn't specify why he did that. And this was in 2011, when he began Graduate School. He says that he started seeing shadows and flickers at the corners of his eye.
Now, in 2012, his academic performance started to decline. He did very badly on his comprehensive exam, and he was pretty much failing out of school by this time.
So on July 20th of 2012 was when this incident happened, and I'm going to describe it. Holmes was identified by police as a suspect in the Colorado shooting that killed 12 individuals and wounded 70. The incident took place at a movie theater in Aurora, Co, a suburb not far from Denver, where theater patrons were watching the newly released Batman series film The Dark Knight Rises. Police identified 24 year old James Holmes as the suspect and arrested him shortly after the incident.
Now, according to media reports, police officers who responded to the scene found Holmes near the theater wearing a gas mask and body armor. Holmes's hair had been dyed red, resembling OK. You know, they, they say it resembled the Joker from Batman. I don't think he did it for the reasons that people think he did it. Holmes had allegedly begun planning the movie theater shooting approximately 4 months before the incident and that is
also on his notebook. So I know I've been talking about this notebook, so let's get into that. So in a brown spiral notebook titled and it has his name where it's his name, it says James Holmes. And then it says about and he puts of life in this he asks the questions of what is the meaning of life and what is the meaning of death? And then the first page it says insights into the mind of madness.
What is equal? Equal to all men are created equal regardless value of murderer does not equal to the dead equal is not one murderer. Values may be equal to dead, equal my prices. So OK, it sounds really weird, but what he's doing is he's taking a formula and trying to figure out about the people, the murder, how people die, the deaths. And the way I started looking at it, because I started looking at it from his point of view.
And that's why I kind of like was interested in it so much because his point of view, according to the psychologist was what I had told you. He kills a person, he gains strength, he kills another person, he gains more strength. He would envelope their essence in a way. Now for me reading this, because some of it didn't make sense. And I know everything in this notebook to James has to make
sense. It has to be a reason because you don't write a manifesto and be like, Oh yeah, you could skip that. Or you could, you know, skip this part. Everything in this thing, everything in this notebook is there for a reason. And I wanted it to, I wanted to figure it out. So when he starts talking about these equals and and that
Infinity equals a person. And the way I saw it, if you look at it from a demon's point of view, let's say this is James's Holmes. And inside of him is this demon that wants to figure out us people. I mean, think about this. Demons have been here for centuries, eons, whatever. They know human behavior. They know how to manipulate us. They know how to turn us.
They know how to change us. Whatever thing is, I don't think anybody has ever thought that demons could learn more by a possession of somebody like James Holmes. James Holmes was trying to figure out his own mind and and I think this demon was learning more about himself. So there's pictures of a little stick figure and there's five more stick figures and five more.
So there's 10 stick figures and one of him and then underneath that is like circles which identifies as murder and then underneath that is dead bodies, ten of them, and then underneath that the Infinity sign. So a demon was comparing himself and saying that he is equal to 10 human beings and then as murder happens, they're equal to dead through murder. And those souls are the Infinity signs.
For me. That's what that means because he starts talking after all the little symbols and everything. He starts talking about can a person have both no value and be ultimately good and or ultimately evil. And this is a question that he's asking. He says, why does the value of a person even matter? I was looking up through souls and there's a guy that did a column and he talks about the power of a soul.
And for me, maybe these demons are collecting souls because it gives them more power, it gives them a strength. This guy wrote this and and I quote. Yet a word of caution. While the couch sounds sweet, there is a lot of practice, discipline and courage needed in order to master the art of soul power. You could almost say that in order to operate from your soul power, you have to become someone else, your higher self,
your higher self. And remember we did a show on Milam, on Garland, Ray Milam, who was called the Soul Eater. And he says that when he killed face to face and strangled these people and they died, their soul went through him and it was something that he had never expected and was better than any kind of drug. So now we talk about his hatred for mankind because he says it different times in his journal that he has a hatred for mankind.
And so this is one of those reasons that I see that it could be a demon in him. Now, we've heard that before, a hatred for mankind. And one of those episodes was actually Tyree Lincoln Smith. And Tyree Ate the man's brains and eyeballs, and he said that he had a hatred for mankind as well. And by eating these specific things, he could see into the mind of the human that he was trying to learn about humankind. We know the demons are very smart. They've been with us since the
beginning of time. They know everything about us. They know how to manipulate us. They know how to lie to us. They know how to cheat. They know how to get us to kill each other. The thing is, is it from all of my time that I've been doing this podcast and and even before, I have never known one to jump into someone like James Holmes. Now, James Holmes, like I said, was an exemplary student, graduated at the highest in his
class for his bachelor's degree. He was going into neuropsychology or neuroscientist, and he analyzes everything. He also sees black shadows fighting on the side of his peripheral vision. He sees these shadows as dark shadows and he says that for a short time there they were gone and then they would appear in front of him and he didn't know what these things were. Same with back in the day when he was a child and he saw those
nail ghosts. NAIL ghosts because he says that they were hammering and he can hear them pounding into the walls. For me, that's demons. Then we get into his planning for this massacre because he planned it in advance. He planned for there to be fear, panic. He planned for there to be just all these different emotions that are going to come out of
this act. So when I started looking through this case file and I started realizing something because I'm not going to go by what he says after the fact, because sometimes after the fact the demon is gone and they don't know what he's talking about. He doesn't even know sometimes. And for instance, in his journal he talks about. A lot of his journal, except for portions of it where he cannot
remember why. And now the psychologist, when you listen to the interviews, the psychologist is always going to try to bring it back to are you able to distinguish good from bad? Are you able to attend court? It's not about what are you thinking? Who are you? It's not about why do you want to know certain things, Why do you want to know about life? Why do you want to know about death?
I believe this demon was trying to learn about humankind through James Holmes. Now as I started looking into it, the two demons are two deities that I found in Greek mythology. Demas and Phobus were twin gods of fear and terror. Demas served to represent the feelings of dread and terror that befell those before a battle, while Phobus personified feelings of fear and panic in the midst of battle. Basically, James Holmes was Demas who was the dread and terror.
Now in the description, Dimas had these red eyes, like fiery red eyes. In real life James Holmes, his eyes were bulging out of his head. If you listen to an interview by his sister, she'll tell you that those were not his eyes. His eyes came back into the sockets, believe it or not, later on. And the psychologists of course, are trying to reason that it is schizophrenia or any of this stuff.
Thing is, I've never seen people's eyes bulge like that just because of a sickness or a mental disorder. She says also that it wasn't him, and we've heard that so many times before. And this afternoon, the most emotional testimony yet. Cardio News Channel 13's Rana Navini is following the trial. And Rana, This is the first time we've heard from one of Holmes family members. Right. His sister took the stand today
in his defense. She's testifying in hopes the jury will spare her brother's life. We used to be very, very close and that I love him a lot. Sitting just feet away from her brother, Chris Holmes describes a very different person than the killer jurors convicted of murdering 12 people in an Aurora theatre. She just always was looking out for my mom and wanted to make sure that my mom was OK and taken care of.
Chris describes a normal childhood filled with family vacations and a close relationship with her brother Did. You ever think growing up that he was mentally ill? No, but I didn't know anything about mental illness. Her testimony comes on the heels of a new survey showing the majority of Coloradans support the death penalty for Holmes. 63% say they want a death sentence, but public support doesn't mean anything in the courtroom. All 12 jurors have to agree or
Holmes gets life in prison. Defense attorneys hope Holmes mental illness will save his life, even though jurors found he was legally sane at the time of the 2012 massacre. Even psychiatrists who testified for the prosecution say he suffers from schizophrenia. His eyes seemed a lot different, they were almost bulging out of his head. Chris Holmes says she noticed a change in her brother when she visited him in prison last year. Coming. Down and feed her night coming. Down.
And despite the horrors he caused, she still loves him. Do you? Think he loved you? I think he loved me very much. You think he still loves you? I think so. What I believe is that these two deities were in that movie theater in creating all this havoc. Now, it doesn't excuse James Holmes from doing what he did. That's what he did. But when there is tragedy and violence and a war like situation, these two deities are going to be there.
And they knew he was going to be there because he had planned it for two weeks in advance, maybe even longer. Everything in that notebook, to me is a demon trying to figure out itself through the eyes of the human being who is a neuroscientist or is going to be a neuroscientist. The only problem was that he had to do it fast because he didn't want to be ejected. Maybe this guy, James Holmes, was on to something and the demon didn't like it because now what can he do? He's in prison.
He can't do any more experiments. He can't do any more research. This demon that was in him created this havoc. James Holmes never had any type of sickness. Now, let me tell you this. He did go to a psychologist when he was 11. They said that he tried to commit suicide. Now, I couldn't find anything in the records about that.
What I did find was that his family did take the family, all of them, the mom, the dad, the sister and the brother took all of them to a counselor because they were having a hard time adjusting to the move when they moved when he was 11 or 12. Now of course the news media wants to focus on and and skew the the news a little bit, but you don't have to because it makes it even more factual that he had no type of psychological
problems. And then he goes and creates all this death and destruction and for what? So that he could gain more life? Why did the demon do it? So that the demon can get more souls. There's power in a soul. The more power, the more souls that this demon creates that gets, the more power the demon gets. We as people don't work that way, but demons do. Now, we could always go back to the Greek mythology. Do you believe that it could be Greek mythology? These were two deities, and I'm
telling you deities. That means they were worshipped. At one time, the strongest warriors that worship them were the Spartans, because Spartan was war. Now if you don't believe in deities like they did, how did they come out with this? OK, and let me take this a step further. Can a spirit or a deity be made through the worship of men, women, children, somebody believing in it so much and so many people believing in the same thing so much that they created a deity out of thin air?
Is that possible or that they create this story of a deity of these two deities, these these twin brothers and a demon just walked right into the story and picked up where they believe they created. I believe that one more because I believe that the demons have been around here all the time. And if a person believes in something so much and a demon decides to use that against them, why not? And if you don't believe me, think about this.
Remember the two little girls that wanted to meet Slender Man and they ended up killing or trying to kill their friend because they believed in the Slender Man so much that was created on the Internet? How do we know that wasn't a demon talking to those little girls? Thanks for listening guys, have a nice one. Take care. Don't forget to subscribe to the Demon Inside podcast on any podcast platform. A new episode of The Demon Inside will be released every
week. Let us know what you think of the episode on all our social media platforms. If you have any questions or comments, go to thedemon.insidepodcast@gmail.com or click on the link down below. We would love to hear from you and to become a Demon Insider, go to our website thedemoninsidepodcast.com. Thank you for listening and hope you will join us next week for a new Demon Inside podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends I am John Venom and I'll see you next
time if I don't get possessed. The Demon Inside was written and created by James Porter. It is a production of Venomous Entertainment. Background music is by Lucas King and the title song Demon Inside was produced by Rice Kroger.