Ralph and Joan Volmer lived in a small town in Australia called Antwerp. It was fairly remote,

situated in Victoria, northwest of Melbourne. There were only 63 residents at the time, and the place

had been settled by Protestant missionaries, so religion played a significant role in life in Antwerp.

When Ralph began witnessing troubling behavior from his

wife, he called on some of the locals for help with the situation. Unfortunately, with those

people being quite fundamentalist, the help they offered would only go on to hurt Joan. This is Monsters. Now, when I saw that the people involved were fundamentalists, I wasn't surprised.

That's not just my opinion. Several individuals involved in Jones' treatment had previously been expelled from established

churches due to their extreme beliefs.

Those outsiders found acceptance within the Volmer household, bringing with them their

radical views on spiritual warfare and demonic possession.

Among them were self-proclaimed exorcists who reinforced Ralph's suspicions about his wife's condition. Those were that Joan

was clearly possessed. In the weeks leading up to Ralph's cry for help, he had witnessed

alarming changes in his wife, but those changes shouldn't have been a surprise.

They should have been expected if Ralph hadn't ignored the doctors they had seen previously.

Joan had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which involved a stay in a psychiatric hospital in 1990.

Her previous husband had taken his own life, and she had a history of

childhood abuse, which likely complicated her mental health issues. She had been prescribed

medication, but she eventually stopped taking it. That resulted in her mental health declining,

and she began dancing around the house, using foul language, and acting

in a way Ralph described as provocative. Then she started mimicking animals, usually acting

like a dog or a pig. Ralph tried to control the situation by tying her to the bed and

later locking her in the basement.

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