Are Demons Real

[Brian Johnson]

I belive that demons are real entities that inflict harm upon and torment the minds of humans.

[dwalters]

Of course they're real, just look at my neices and nephews.  Just kidding. I really do beleive in demons though, just as someone would believe in Angels and Saints, demons are the complete opposite. If you believe in black, you must believe in white...ying & yang, positive & negative, good & bad. In my opinion, that's just how it works....for every action there is an opposite and equal re-action, I know that's a little off course, but it still follows the basic guidelines.

[asmith]

If by demons, you mean poltergeist, then yes I believe. What I don't believe is that demons are little chupacabra like creatures, at least not yet... 

[Brian Johnson]

I don't think that chupacabra is a demon either that delves into cryptozology.

[PPI Karl]

Sorry. I don't believe in angels either.  I do believe that humans are not the only creatures on the planet capable of sentience, though.  So, why not other forms of sentience in other realms of being?

The Australian aborigines, the oldest continual culture on the planet (the latest research says they're--wait for it--at least sixty thousand years old!!!) believe that humans and animals occupy two realms, and that some percentage of what we are exists in that other dimension.  (I'm not an expert, but I think this is what the aborigines mean by Dreamtime.) That means, some of the physical creatures (or individuals) you see in this life are like the tips of icebergs, the greater part of them existing in some other dimension.   Of course, it begs the question even to say that other dimension (call it the "spirit realm" if you want) is real.  Accepting for the time being that it is, however, why shouldn't the spirit realm be occupied by all sorts of creatures, or by beings who exist entirely in that dimension, rather than partially . . . the way aborigines claim we do?

Well, at least the mythology helps me to look at the paradox, no?

[Joshua]

I think this all centers around your belief structure and your faith, if any.  As for me, being Catholic, and having seen all that I have seen in my lifetime thus far, you bet your booty I believe in Demons...and Angels.

[PPI Karl]

"I think this all centers around your belief structure and your faith, if any."

Fair enough, Joshua.  Different belief systems just put different names to their common phenomena.  (I think the angel/alien comparison is a good example of that.)  If people can look at the mythology of their religions with a more objective eye without necessarily losing their faith, they'd see just how many of the different names given to the spirit phenomena actually resemble one another:  angels, ghosts, genies, spirit ancestors, bogeymen, and so on.  Carl Jung even admitted the archetypal beasts and spirits of the subconscious that take these many different forms and faces might actually have some common basis in reality, albeit an alternate reality. Even the father of psychoanalysis married psychology to his own system of belief!   I was blown away when I read that.

Speaking of demons, it's time for me to go to work.  ( Talk to you all later!

[Joshua]

Karl, what do you do, and what is your education level?  Your posts are some of the most well thought out, well versed, most put together pieces of writing in a paranormal forum that I have ever seen.  I am quite impressed.  Have you been studying the paranormal long, or is it a recent hobby that you have taken up?  What got you motivated to start studying this field?  Please forgive me, I'm just naturally nosey.

[dwalters]

Joshua, Karl is a professor at a college down here in San Diego  that explains the very professional structure to his posts.

[PPI Karl]

  I guess the cat's out of the bag.  Thank you, Joshua, for the props.  I'm an English instructor, just as David says.  My background is  actually in creative writing, but I teach composition, rhetoric and logic quite a lot.  I try to practice what I profess, but I've been known to compose more than my share of convoluted juggernauts.  Thank you for your kind remark, though, and for caring enough to enquire.  I really appreciate that.

I teach a course down here called Views of Death and Dying in Literature, which isn't really the sole reason I'm interested in the paranormal.  It's a pretty popular course, however, and we always delve deeply into the culturally diverse ways in which we express our anxieties about death.  Yes, ghost hunting is more a hobby for me, but I think I'm into it for the soul-searching (literally and figuratively).  Or, it's just my midlife crisis talking.

It's a complex question to answer, Joshua.  In fact, I thought I'd have an easier time answering it than this.  I'd like to think that a staunchly rationale mind could advance the area of parnormal study by giving it an air of credibility--and I know that's what PPI is committed to--but I also realize that the most vocal critics of paranormal investigations are often people who "believe" there is no post-mortal identity, and so begin with the a priori assumption that there can never be convincing, rational evidence to disprove them.  That kind of immovable, dispassionate sort of intelligence just pisses me off; and its sophistry to boot.  If ever there were a subject that called for the clearsighted use of logic to work in tandem with emotional conviction, I think the afterlife is it.

I'll have to wring this one through the ol' noggin a little further, though.  Thanks for the challenging questions, just the same, Joshua.  (And, I don't think it's nosey at all )  Cheers!

[Brian Johnson]

I think this all centers around your belief structure and your faith, if any.

I think you'd have to have some kind of religon;be it Catholic, Jewish or what have you to belive in demons, because (in my opinion) it would be an omission of a higher power of somer kind.

[dwalters]

In my opinion, we are all right. The truth of the matter is this...whether we believe in demons or not, there are hauntings out there that are just evil in nature. We can't explain the reasons either. Spiritual people will label it a demon, scientific people would probably label it psychosis, people that don't have a religion would just call it scary s**t. The truth of the matter is that religion is a huge part of humanity, and an even larger portion of human history. There's so many different religions that I wouldn't know where to begin....so naturally, "demonic" is the most common term used for a haunting with an evil nature. Let me stress that this is just my opinion. Another one of my opinions is...believe in demons or not...there is something out there that is evil, some malicious hauntings can be downright harmful to humans, bites, scratches, slapping, pushing...you name it. That is just what we're faced with...I don't care what people label it, it's real no matter what it's called.

[Joshua]

I would agree with that David.  I think it would be safe to assume that just as some people are just plain evil in nature, the same would hold true for spirits, ghost, entities, etc. As you said, some of us label these as "demons".  Wether they are in fact demons remains to be seen.  Just another reason why there are no "experts" in this field.

[asmith]

If by demons, you mean poltergeist, then yes I believe. What I don't believe is that demons are little chupacabra like creatures, at least not yet...?

I felt I should ellaborate more on my short answer --

Do demons exist, I'm not sure. I've never seen one, and personally, I hope I never do.
While researching poltergeist, it seems that demons were intermixed. Both poltergeist and demons seem to share common elements and stereo types. But then there's the stories of demons that hold people down in bed and materialize on their chests. As well as the documented stories regarding females that claim to have had intercourse with demons and/or satan himself.
Just the other night on Coast to Coast, I heard a broadcast regarding demons and the people that were possessed by them. The show zeroed in on the exorcisms and the recordings that were created from some of them. Some of them were questionable, but others were amazingly scary. I would be frightened to find out that there is something so powerful and unknown that it could possess and control another person. The one thing that makes us stand out from all other creatures is our "free will" and control, if you don't have that -- what do you have.

[Dreamer]

Yes, I do believe that demons are real. Dealt with one in my last home. It was centered around me.  Had it in my home for close to a year.

It was vicious and hateful. It tried in the end to get me to kill myself.

Yep, oh yep, I know they are real

[asmith]

Yes, I do believe that demons are real. Dealt with one in my last home. It was centered around me.? Had it in my home for close to a year.

It was vicious and hateful. It tried in the end to get me to kill myself.

Yep, oh yep, I know they are real

Hi Dreamer, welcome to the boards....
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I hope it's solved now...
What made you suspect it was a demon? What are some of the things that happened?
Were you able to get rid of it? How?

[Dreamer]

Yes, I do believe that demons are real. Dealt with one in my last home. It was centered around me.? Had it in my home for close to a year.

It was vicious and hateful. It tried in the end to get me to kill myself.

Yep, oh yep, I know they are real

Hi Dreamer, welcome to the boards....
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I hope it's solved now...
What made you suspect it was a demon? What are some of the things that happened?
Were you able to get rid of it? How?

Thanks for the welcome Tony

Yea, the problem with it was solved.
I used my faith in God and His word, Psalm 91 to get rid of it.

[jrieber]

Completely agree with you both. Demons are among us. As are Angels.

My friend Ryan has a mom (Sam) who use to be a nurse. She tells a story about an incident where she was caring for an elderly women who was on her death bed. The women was refusing to eat one day, so Ryan's mom gave up and begin to walk out of the hospital room. As she stood in the doorway she looked back momentarily and the women. She lay in the bed, upright, with her head down- chin touching her chest. In a fast and violent manner, the women's head turned sideways and stared straight at Sam. Sam claims the women had red eyes. She said it was the most frightening thing ever, and she fled- refusing to continue as the nurse caring for the woman. She is convinced to this day that the woman was a demon.

She has also claimed to be in the presence of demons at other times in her life. They were not distinguished by red eyes, but she had this awful, dreadful feeling in her gut that made her sick when she was in their presence. She is a very intuitive woman. (It runs in Ryans family)

Sam is a very religious woman. And cerainly the last person to make up something like this. (She can't stand "nonsense".   

[Brian Johnson]

Wow, thats a great story. Its got an exorcist feel to it.

[PPI Karl]

I confess, I'm not a big advocate for the concept of demons, mostly because of the way they have been invoked historically to hurt, oppress or kill people unjustly--to villify the simple nonconformist; to excoriate philosophers and scientists; silence outspoken and independent women; warehouse and torture the mentally ill; justify capricious legal punishments; and rationalize whole social agendas against minorities.  In brief, demons are "conjured" as an instruments of propaganda all too often, concealing the real agenda to oppress.  For me, there's something kind of morally lazy about the concept.

However, I do believe it's reasonable to think of a "spirit entity" as the sum of the energies it devotes to its motivations and intentions.  If those motivations are uncivil, inhumane or animalistic, and a spirit is the outward manifestation of its internal reality, then I can certainly understand why people might call it a demon:  if it behaves like a demon, then it must be a demon.

But, traditional demons are assumed to be evil because they act with evil intelligence.  What about spirits that act without intelligence or sentience?  Spirits that are the sum of their amoral and instinctual motivations?  I'm speaking, of course, about animals--the wild ones, and not the more socially evolved ones like dogs, cats and other companion creatures, dolphins, parrots, and so on.  Organic life on this planet has been around for 3.5 billion years.  There are no rules but those written in religious dogma that state humans are the only animal privileged to enjoy a post-mortal existence.  What we ascribe to demons might, in fact, be very old animal intelligences.  Whether merely coincidental or some Jungian expression of our psychology as human beings, the way we imagine demons to look is downright dinosaurian at times.  Look to gargoyles and religious art for examples!  The place you're sitting right now, reading this, was a million years ago occupied by life so hellishly different to what it is now.

I sometimes make the mistake of imagining the afterlife as a dimension made in humankind's own image:  a place where people, and only people, go when they die.  However, it stands to reason that we are animals first, and humans second, no matter how much we rely upon religion or philosophy to make us feel otherwise.  We die because we are animals, and we return to the biosphere in one form or another (with a few exceptions, like Carl Sagan and James Doohan).  Surely there must be as many feral qualities to the afterlife as there are to mortal existence, and some of those spirits are bound to be wild energies, no?  Might it not be possible that our realm of existence overlaps at times with theirs--that one encroaches upon the other sometimes?  In the world of the living, this is called the ecotone:  that frontier zone between two separate ecosystems, one civilized and one wild.  I think at times we wander into the ecotone of the spirit realm, and then panic like villagers who, once they settle beside waters known to fester with crocodiles, discover one of them has acquired a taste for human flesh.

That's why I'm loathe to call them "demons," since "demons" so easily demonizes what might, in fact, be innocent and amoral (albeit at times dangerous).  Perhaps "hostile entity" or "feral entity" are less prejudicial terms for what we don't as yet understand.  Dunno.  Sometimes I feel like we're New World explorers calling the indigenous people "savages."  But, that's just me.  What's your take, y'all?

[Brian Johnson]

Sorry Karl, but I tend to believe that there is a type of hell spawn out in the world to harm our immortal souls and sometimes our living bodies. Call them what ever you like but there is (in my opinion) supernatural evil out in the world besides some angry joe that died and has somehow crossed paths with our dimension.

[Avariel]

K, I know this post is old as hell, but it touches on a subject near and dear, and since none of you know me from Adam then I figure what a GREAT way to introduce myself, by expressing my thoughts on demons!!

....

lol, anyway.

Honestly, I have a real hard time coming to grips with people's spirits (ghosts) being "stuck" on earth.  My personal belief is that people go somewhere when they die; but I also can't ignore the fact that almost everyone on the planet has had some sort of paranormal experience in their life, so something causes these incidents.  I've had my share, o' course.  My way of explaining it, until better evidence presents itself, is that the spiritual activitey that people are sometimes caught up in is the work of Angels and Demons, and not actual leftover spirits of living people.   Could I be wrong?  Well, yes, I'm wrong all the time    But it's a theory that I think is feasible; after all, who says the ghosts that people see or hear are actually telling the truth about who they are?   

If I was a demon, it'd be a great way to mess with someone.  And if I was an angel (ha!) it'd be a good way to get a message across to someone without scaring the pants off of them. 

Just a theory of mine.   8)  And one of the many, many reasons I have the irresistable compulsion to poke my nose into the paranormal. 

[PPI Brian]

Sorry. I don't believe in angels either.? I do believe that humans are not the only creatures on the planet capable of sentience, though.? So, why not other forms of sentience in other realms of being?

The Australian aborigines, the oldest continual culture on the planet (the latest research says they're--wait for it--at least sixty thousand years old!!!) believe that humans and animals occupy two realms, and that some percentage of what we are exists in that other dimension.? (I'm not an expert, but I think this is what the aborigines mean by Dreamtime.) That means, some of the physical creatures (or individuals) you see in this life are like the tips of icebergs, the greater part of them existing in some other dimension.? ?Of course, it begs the question even to say that other dimension (call it the "spirit realm" if you want) is real.? Accepting for the time being that it is, however, why shouldn't the spirit realm be occupied by all sorts of creatures, or by beings who exist entirely in that dimension, rather than partially . . . the way aborigines claim we do?

Well, at least the mythology helps me to look at the paradox, no?

I agree, Karl.

I believe there are hostile non-human entities that have been around a lot longer than we have. They choose to interact with us in ways that derive the most severe emotional responses. Why they do so is open to speculation. Various cultures around the world describe them in ways that make sense to their people and their belief system. But it appears to me that there is a common thread in the descriptions of these hostile entities in all cultures. Most people in our culture would label them demons for want of a better term.

I also believe there are positive non-human entities that also choose to interact with us in ways that derive strong emotional responses. Again, their reasons for doing so are open to speculation. Just as all celestial bodies (with very few exceptions) exhibit positively charged and negatively charged magnetic fields, I believe that such polarity exists for everything in the universe. Call them Angels for want of a better term, but if we acknowledge one class of entity, don?t we have to acknowledge the other class as well? After all, for every action in the known universe, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Could these non-human entities be different aspects of the same being? Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle...

Regards,

Brian Miller

[Renae]

Being a born again Christian of 25 years, I definitely believe in God, angels and demons, but here's where I veer off the usual beaten path of born again Christians: I also believe in fairies , gnomes, dwarves, and other nature spirits. I even talk to my roses when I am pruning them.

I believe that if there is a God that is omniscient and omnipresent, that that god would also have to be infinite. I also believe that a God who would make 40,000 different kinds of daylilies would not me limited by what dimensions His creations would live in, nor be limited what kind of Creatures He made. I dunno if that's flawed logic, but it's why I don't necissarily believe a spirit is either good or evil, any more than a cat , or a dog or a bear is good or evil.

Demons, however are, by definition, evil. I am not all knowing, so I am not absolutely certain, but I think they are fallen angels. I also believe that Demons are the reason why believers are admonished to not attempt to comunicate with the dead. You may THINK you are having a chat with dead Uncle Fred, but in fact you are talking with a demon who is impersonating Uncle Fred better than Uncle Fred could impersonate himself. Again, I am not absolutely certain, but I don't think demons , or angels are omnipresent, in that I don't think they are able to be in two places at the same time.

As a Christian, I am involved in "spiritual warfare" and have had a few very enteresting experiences when I have bound spirits in the name of Jesus Christ. What experiences with the supernatural I have had have been in the context of prayer, and prayer teams. One thing I avoid is anything seriously dramatic. I have learned over the years that if I am ecited enough to get an adrenalin rush in a situation I am in trouble. It has also been my experience that what God does seems very "normal" and expected, until you think about it, and other supernatural entites do often seems extrordinary until you examine it and then you discover it is ordinary, or fake. For instance, When I used to take food down to "The Oasis" in Hollywood, a mission focused on feeding and ministering to the homeless, and runaways, I would bring enough food to prepare and serve @ 200, and frequently the tally of people served would exceed 300. While we were busy in the kitchen preparing and serving the food nothing would seem extrordinary, until one of the volunteers, a compulsive bean counter, would do the math and bring it to our attention that we had not brought that much food with us. Almost everyone I know who has worked with feeding the poor and homeless have had similar experiences. On the other hand I automaticly suspect something being foul when there is a dramatic situation. I sort of automaticly go into prayer mode. It might be why I haven't encountered any ghosts.

Renae

- edited to remove gross typos I did not catch the first time I re read what I wrote - now that I KNOW Karl is an English prof I will have to try harder to use more propper English.

[bellalaghoste]

Demons are real but not like people think.  I believe that spirits are like people there are good a bad and there just plain evil.
The just plain evil spirits are or where probaly just evil and that why they are.

[Allie]

In my opinion Demons are not real. This is because where I come from I have never heard of Demons. In Scotland we don't hear of cases where there are demons.


Regards,
Allie. 

[Kristen]

If there is truth in exorcism, then I believe there are demons.  I also believe that demons are just another name for an entity or something that isn't seen.  With that belief, demons would be both good and evil, similar to how witches are mostly deemed evil although there are good witches out there also.

[dwalters]

Of course there is a lot of debate on whether or not demons are real. There will always be some who disagree. I, for one, believe that demons are as real as can be. There is good and there is bad, the ying and the yang, black and white, positive and negative, north and south, up and down....you get the picture.

on another note...you can't have a good disney animated feature without a kick ass villain now can you?

[Kristen]

Exactly!

[TAPS Jen]

I was the kid who rooted for the villains. Well, at least in Snow White!  My mom took me to a play and there was a scene where Snow White runs around trying to get away from the wicked witch - I got in the aisle and tried to trip her so the witch would get her!  What can I say? Snow White annoys me!

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