From Forums of the Virgin Mary:

How to detect, recognize and protect yourself.

Apostasy, or loss of faith, begins with the denial of the supernatural world.

And the first thing that appears is the interpretation that the devil does not exist and that it is an invention of men to explain evil.

This amounts to calling the exorcists, who have battled for centuries against these entities, naive or liars and fabulists.

It also ignores the evidence — for example, of the physical objects that the spellbound expel through their mouths: nails, glass, pieces of wood, iron, etcetera.

The devil exists, it is a dogma of faith, clearly in the Catechism.

But there are also souls of the deceased that these exorcists have found in houses as well as possessing people.

Here we will talk about who these souls are, the evidence that they are not demons, the nature of their activity, and how we should act.

The Church has recorded numerous cases of souls from purgatory coming to earth, obviously. with God’s permission to ask for prayers to free themselves and ascend to Heaven.

This is well known and there are several mystics who have received them frequently, such as Padre Pio or María Simma.

But also, thanks to the cases of the exorcists and the numerous testimonies that history, anthropology, and ancestral traditions offer us, we know that after death, not all souls go immediately to Heaven, purgatory or hell.

Some of them are trapped on earth, due to their close link with the material, or because of the hatred and resentment they feel towards their neighbors, or because they have given themselves to the devil.

We can define them as tormented souls, and popular wisdom has called them “wandering souls” or souls in pain.  

The late Father Gabriele Amorth said when encountering these tormented souls, we sometimes discover they are related to a demon.

That calls us to prudence, because although there is the possibility of freeing the soul, it is also possible that it is working with [or a counterfeit of] a demon.

The demonologist and exorcist Father José Antonio Fortea has found himself in exorcisms with human souls inside the possessed or infesting a home.

These souls are of the deceased, not demons or souls of the damned.

Many of them don’t even know Christ; no one told them about Him.

And he says that they speak with a different type of voice than that of demons and do not usually express the aggressiveness or anger of fallen angels. [scroll for more]

And they tend to manifest sadness and melancholy.

If a lost spirit shows anger, it is the anger of a human being who felt abandoned by God; but he begins to understand that he was the one to blame for everything and not God or those people with whom he lived.

They can pray, but perhaps at first they will not do it; finally, they do, and when they pray, they do it without hatred.

The lost spirit can ask forgiveness for the wrong it has done, while the devil will never do this.

A demon can pretend to be any being, but if the exorcist insists with his priestly power on ordering him to say his name, in the end the demon must reveal it — while a lost spirit, no matter how hard it is insisted, will continue to maintain that it was a human being.

If he is told to kiss the Cross, he can kiss it without hatred.

Holy water or anything else blessed does not antagonize him. It does not manifest screaming or convulsions. [scroll for more]

The demons usually come out after a terrible scream or strong convulsions; lost spirits to the contrary come out silently — almost always through the mouth with a long expiration.

Before leaving, most of the lost souls affirm that they see a light and go to it; many even say goodbye to the exorcist and those present.

Father Amorth also encountered these dead souls, who often remain in the place where they died.

And as they are tormented, they torment the new inhabitants.

In one case, he says he faced a man and two women who had died in a house.

And for a time, they had disturbed the new family that lived there.

But he noted that exorcism prayers have no effect on these souls. 

And then he realized that the ideal solution is to adapt some of the prayers that we pray to the dead [into those for expulsion]. 

And at the same time speak to these condemned souls, and make them understand that the disturbed family does not harbor any resentment towards them, that it forgives them.

And during prayer, try to lead these souls to the light of Christ, where God will work according to his will.

He told of a lady who once was going to see him with very strong and very rare pain. He started praying and she fell into a kind of trance.

And then Amorth said to the presence within him: “In the name of God, tell me who you are.”

The spirit claimed to be a Calabrian of Albanian origin, who arrived in Calabria on All Saints’ Day, died at the wheel of a car, intoxicated, and in the accident also had killed another person. 

And Amorth noticed that when he spoke of devils and hell, the soul was terrified.

Then he asked him: “Are you in hell?” And he responded forcefully: “No!”

“Where are you?” he insisted.

“In the dark,” the soul answered, puzzling him.

He asked how it got into the woman, and the soul in great detail told a story that, later on, the possessed woman, when she came out of the trance state, confirmed to the exorcist.

The soul also claimed he was forced into the possession by a cemetery guard, who used parts of his corpse for a curse.

Then Father Amorth asked him if he wants to see God, and he replied with a long “yes,” convinced and serene.

One day the priest talked to the soul about the Blessed Virgin Mary, who didn’t know anything about her; he told Father Amorth that his mother’s name was Carmelina.

Amorth began to instruct him and the soul listened to him with interest. 

And when asked if he was willing to ask God for forgiveness for his sins, he said yes.

Then Father Amorth confessed the soul briefly [with absolution on the condition that it will leave].

When the exorcist asked when he will leave, the soul said, “in twenty days.”

And he asked him “And where are you going?” and he replied, “To expiate my sins.”

Maybe to purgatory?

And that night, when the lady returned home, her inner presence told her: “I have made you suffer too much. It wasn’t my fault. When I am in Heaven, I will pray a lot for you.”

The case obviously raises multiple questions, but let’s remember that Amorth had decades of experience dealing with demons.

And he remembered that according to tradition, Saint Francis resurrected a woman who died in mortal sin, confessed her, and then she rested in peace.

But Amorth also told of the case of having found doomed souls working together with demons possessing a person. [scroll for more]

Demons have their own hierarchy and therefore can order a condemned man to torment a soul.

And this is what he has verified in cases where he has detected a much lower force than what he usually finds when there are demons.

During a difficult exorcism, a woman was possessed by the demons Zago, Astaroth, and the Serpent. But he also encountered four souls of doomed beings.

One was a certain Michelle, who had worked at the Moulin Rouge and who died at the age of thirty-nine from drugs. 

He used to speak French and repeated the phrases he used in the past with his clients.

And then the woman’s face took on a sweet and persuasive air.

Also present was a Moroccan who cut off the heads of three missionaries in 1872 and who had committed suicide out of remorse.

The third doomed soul was Jordan, a Scotsman who had killed his mother. 

And the fourth was Vanessa, a twenty-three-year-old girl, who was going to college, met a young man who was taking her to black masses near a ruined church, and had begun to serve the devil. 

During the exorcism, Amorth asked Michelle and Vanessa if they were baptized and reminded them of the day of their First Communion and they answered him with anger and bitterness.

And then what should we do with these souls when they eventually manifest to us?

We just limit ourselves to asking who they are and what they want, without entering into dialogue.

And pray for them, for God to act.

And out loud, so that they learn about the existence of God, invoke Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. 

Well, so far we wanted to talk about the presence of deceased beings that remain on earth for a while, the different characteristics that the exorcists have discovered about them, and how we should act. [Hopefully this answered some such questions.]

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