I Was NYPD—Now I'm an Exorcist

My wife and I came to the church over a decade ago. For a long while we had followed the Christian and Catholic teachings, but in 2009 we really started to see our bigger purpose—helping people on a spiritual level.

I was working as a police officer and we began a ministry providing food and religious support to the homeless in Harlem, which really took off over the course of the next ten years.

Eventually, I became a missionary in Africa, where I came across a man who I believed was demonically possessed.

This person was acting in a very strange manner, slithering around on the floor and making unusual noises. We locked eyes, and I saw what I perceived to be pure evil. It was an evil that over all my years in law enforcement, I had never seen before.

The volunteers I was with believed he was having a seizure, but I have seen and treated hundreds of seizures, and this was nothing like them. In that moment, I saw the spiritual aspect of my faith in a whole new light.

I saw it as the battle between God and the devil, good and evil.

That feeling stayed with me until I traveled back to the United States, where I began educating myself in the field of demonology.

I joined the New York City Fire Department as an EMT in the mid-nineties. After a few years, I wanted to gain a little more knowledge and step up in the department, so I became a paramedic.

During this period of my life, I had some amazing experiences; it's a very busy area where I saw all manner of illness, disease, and mental health issues. For a short while, I worked at JFK Airport, which saw people coming in from all over the world with all sorts of medical emergencies.

In 2003 I joined the NYPD, where I worked predominantly on the midnight patrol and had a stint in a plain clothes unit for a few years before returning to my initial position. It was a very interesting and exciting time for me because it offered the opportunity to go deeper into how the department goes about stopping criminal behavior.

During my time in the plain clothes unit, we were seeking out criminals in their own element; quality-of-life offenses like gambling in public or drug deals. But many times, as I learned through experience and from officers before me, when you're in this kind of environment, there's a very good chance that a weapon is involved as well.

So it taught me to be very aware of my surroundings and to learn how a criminal may think.

Now, in the field of demonology, when I receive calls from people during a spiritual emergency, the first thing I do is put those paramedic and police skills to work. I take down all of the initial medical information and really do my homework in terms of questioning them and analyzing the caller as I'm speaking to them.

I try to get as much background information as I can on the person, because many times the caller themselves may be suffering from some kind of mental illness that I have to diagnose or investigate a little further.

My police work really comes into play when my wife and I visit locations all over the country. Unlike typical ghost-hunter television programs you may have seen, when we visit a house, I investigate not just the claims, but the people.

I'm very alert and on guard; I'm using all those skills I obtained over the years to formulate if there is a danger. I feel as though God prepared me for where I am now.

In the early days of working in demonic haunting and oppression, things were relatively slow, but now that I'm a recognized name in the field I receive up to 100 calls a month. Our aim is to fill the gap of the church because there are many people who are having spiritual problems who can't find any help.

As I did when I was a paramedic, I triage incidents by categorizing calls into green, yellow, and red, with the former being the least urgent and the latter being an emergency situation. I don't take calls in order, and always prioritize vulnerable people.

For example, I recently had a call from the family of a young boy who I believe was being targeted by a demonic entity. After doing an investigation and deeming that this was real, we ran straight over and tried to help rid him of what we considered a demonic possession.

I have experienced plenty of memorable cases, notably an incident in Connecticut with a young grandmother and her 4-year-old granddaughter, who had special needs. They had moved into their dream house in a beautiful part of the area, but hadn't known that the previous owner of their property was a Satanic witch.

We interviewed neighbors and did background checks; we found this grandmother never checked the attic when she purchased this house because it was very difficult to get to, there was no ladder, it was just a cut-out high in the ceiling.

One night she heard walking and banging in the attic and called her sisters, who came over the next day and discovered demonic sigils and markings all over the walls, bloody hand prints, animal skulls nailed around in a circle, and other witchcraft tools.

Shortly afterward, they discovered the 4-year-old child had been having some kind of invisible relationship with this creature and knew things we felt were impossible for a child of that age to know.

She had her own specific name for this entity, which we later discovered was the name of a real demonic entity that's written down in history, and was drawing the outline of what it looked like. This entity makes a certain noise, which the child was mimicking.

We knew we were dealing with something serious, so after we did the investigation around the house, which was a few hours, we proceeded into the attic to perform the Catholic ritual. We recorded some horrific activity.

There was a smell coming up from the ground as I was reading and the family recorded downstairs a growling, roaring sound around the entire house. At the same time as the ritual, fighting against this demon who she called her friend, the little girl was apparently giving a play-by-play of what was happening.

That was a very memorable case. It was a textbook case that is right out of the movies, but it doesn't always happen like that. There are many occasions when we don't feel or see anything, but then go back and see lots of spiritual activity on footage.

It's tough to know exactly how many cases are due to mental health issues, and how many are down to what we believe to be spiritual problems. I came to demonology very aware that mental illness paired with poor religious leadership could facilitate a platform for some people to live out a religious delusion or a fantasy.

What I have found myself doing today is educating people on the correct ideology of the Bible, how to live rationally, and also leading them to a mental health counselor or a psychiatrist, and I've done that many times.

The other tough aspect of this kind of job is making sure you don't lose contact with the person, because all it takes is saying the wrong thing once, and you may never hear from that person again.

Today I'm doing a lot of educating, going deeper into psychology, and trying to be sure if it is a mental illness or a spiritual issue, because I feel that at times they could be working together. To be involved in this field, you have to be educated as well as spiritual, because you're dealing with people's lives.

The last thing I do is to deem a problem spiritual; I want to go down every avenue before I make that claim.

The reason I am speaking out about my career is because with many people who are afflicted by these sorts of issues, the signs of danger are there and nobody believes them.

I believe that generally, if people were educated and made aware of these warning signs, and knew to alert the authorities immediately, we could largely stop crimes caused by this type of delusion taking place.

When I get cases and people call me and tell me they believe a family member is possessed, I take it very seriously, but I try to bring a very rational and sensible aspect to the spiritual world, rather than exacerbating someone's situation.

I believe we need to be responsible in the spiritual field, and that pastors need to really be aware of the congregation and the beliefs they hold.

We need to make sure we're actually helping that person, and that mental health professionals and clergy can work together to help the mental and spiritual state of people.

Chris DeFlorio is a former paramedic and NYPD officer who works in the field of religious demonology. You can visit his LinkedIn profile here.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek's My Turn associate editor, Monica Greep.

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