A few years ago the Barna Group, a market research firm specializing in religious beliefs, conducted a survey in which it emerged that more Americans believe in Satan than believe in God.

On a superficial level, the results seem counterintuitive. In a nominally Christian society, God and Satan

seem to go hand in hand. But it's important to remember that the Satan figure of the Bible also appears in Islam and Judaism and that demons, whether real or imagined, predate the Abrahamic religions and can be found in ancient cultures

around the world. But whatever his origins, Satan and his demons have inspired countless movies and TV shows and there are numerous

instances of people arguing that these demons can and do possess people even today. In this episode I speak with four people, an academic,

the Vatican Exorcist, a fundamentalist Christian, and a man who believes demons can be tackled through science rather than religion.

I began my investigation by talking to Lubo, an academic from Croatia.

He's written a thesis on exorcism and studied the work of Ivy League Educated

and renowned New York psychiatrist Ritchie Gallagher who not only believes in demonic possession

but has used MR rights to attempt to differentiate brain activity in the possessed versus the mentally ill.

But Luevo's own research, which also attempts to view things from the scientific

rather than a spiritual perspective, began with a disturbing experience in Croatia.

In Croatia, there are a couple of places where you can go and pray.

That was happened when I was maybe 14-15. I was a secondary school and

when my priest offered me to go with him. I thought it would be the normal thing, nothing special, and really during the day it was everything was

normal like praying go to the confession or pass your since some mindful trainings and stuff like that then

during the night it happens a lot of strange things for example after the prayer it was maybe 30 40 people in a row.

One person just started to speak in some language what I never heard, I suppose it was an ancient Hebrew language.

And he started to make some strange noises and the body was shaking like some bad thing happened you know in that

moment maybe three or four priests just arrived to the place they started to pray above him. The guy started to laugh.

Maybe in this moment when I'm speaking about it seems like, I don't know, like a ceremony or acting or stuff like that,

but trust me it wasn't acting it was really real was

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