The phone in the rectory doesn’t ring with the usual requests for baptismal certificates or wedding dates anymore. It rings with a different kind of desperation. It is the sound of a mother who says her son’s voice has changed into something gravelly and ancient. It is the sound of a man who claims the air in his bedroom turns to ice even when the radiator is hissing.
Father Vincent Lampert, a Vatican-trained exorcist based in Indianapolis, has seen the call volume shift from a trickle to a flood. He isn't alone. Across the United States, the demand for the rite of exorcism is skyrocketing, outstripping the number of priests trained to perform it. This isn't a scene from a 1970s horror film with pea soup and rotating heads. It is a quiet, modern crisis of the soul. Learn more on a similar issue: this related article.
We live in an era that pridefully claims to have outgrown the supernatural. We have high-speed internet, gene editing, and telescopes that can peer into the birth of galaxies. Yet, beneath the surface of our digital sophistication, a profound spiritual hunger is gnawing at the American psyche. When the traditional structures of faith and community crumble, something else moves into the vacuum.
The Protocol of the Extraordinary
Before a priest even picks up a crucifix or opens the Rituale Romanum, he opens a file folder. Modern exorcism is not a leap into superstition; it is a grueling exercise in elimination. Further analysis by BBC News highlights similar views on the subject.
The Church’s first move is rarely to assume a demon is present. The protocol is clinical. A person claiming to be possessed is first sent to a gauntlet of professionals. They see a general practitioner. They see a psychologist. They undergo neurological testing to rule out temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder.
"The exorcist is the last person you see, not the first," Lampert often explains.
But what happens when the doctors find nothing? What happens when the brain scans are clear, the blood work is perfect, and the psychiatric evaluation returns a verdict of "sane," yet the patient is still screaming in a language they never learned? This is where the dry statistics of a "skyrocketing demand" become a haunting reality. The Church is finding that after the science is exhausted, there is a growing pile of cases that science cannot touch.
The Modern Open Door
Why now? If we are more "enlightened" than our ancestors, why are we more plagued?
Consider a hypothetical woman named Sarah. Sarah doesn't go to church. She finds it stifling. Instead, she seeks "connection." she buys crystals from a shop downtown, she uses a divining board she found at a flea market for fun, and she follows "spiritual influencers" who promise to help her manifest her desires through ancient, poorly understood rituals.
To Sarah, it’s a hobby. To the exorcist, it’s an invitation.
The spike in exorcism requests tracks almost perfectly with the rise of "spiritual but not religious" identities. When people abandon organized religion, they don't necessarily become rationalists. They become shoppers in a spiritual marketplace. They pick and choose practices without understanding the traditional safeguards that used to accompany them.
The door is left ajar.
The priest sees this as a breach of spiritual hygiene. In his view, the rise in demonic activity isn't because the devil has grown more powerful, but because the average person has grown more vulnerable. We have traded the "boring" protection of a Sunday liturgy for the "exciting" thrill of the occult, unaware that we are playing with high-voltage lines.
The Weight of the Ritual
The actual rite is not a battle of magic. It is a battle of wills.
When a priest finally enters the room to perform a Major Exorcism, the atmosphere is heavy. It is an exhausting, multi-hour ordeal of repetitive prayer and command. There is no Hollywood drama, but there is a psychological and physical toll that lingers for weeks.
The priest is not a superhero. He is a man standing in a breach, often feeling profoundly small. He carries the weight of a person’s entire life—their traumas, their sins, and their hopes—on his shoulders. He is trying to untangle a knot that has been tightened by years of spiritual neglect.
The demand is so high now that the Vatican has had to host international conferences specifically to train more priests. In the U.S., the number of exorcists has more than quadrupled in the last two decades, moving from a handful of specialists to well over a hundred. Even so, the waiting lists are long.
People are suffering in the dark, waiting for a man with a stole and a bottle of holy water to tell them they aren't crazy.
The Invisible Stakes
We like to think of our problems as biological or social. We have a "mental health crisis." We have "political polarization." We have "economic anxiety."
But the exorcist looks at the same world and sees a different map. He sees a world where the primary struggle is invisible. He sees a society that has forgotten how to protect its own spirit. The skyrocketing demand isn't just a quirky news item or a religious anomaly; it is a flashing red light on the dashboard of our civilization.
It suggests that for all our progress, we are feeling more haunted than ever.
Loneliness.
Isolation.
Meaninglessness.
These are the environments where the shadows grow longest. When we stop believing in the divine, we don't stop believing in everything; we become capable of believing in anything. And sometimes, those beliefs have teeth.
The priest hangs up the phone. He sighs. He looks at the calendar, which is already full through next month. He prepares to drive to a suburban home where a family is terrified of their own basement. He isn't thinking about the "market trends" of the supernatural or the sociological implications of his work.
He is thinking about the person. The human being who feels like a stranger in their own skin. The soul that is crying out for a peace that the modern world, with all its gadgets and theories, simply cannot provide.
The light in the rectory stays on late into the night. Outside, the world continues its frantic, digital hum, oblivious to the fact that the oldest war in history is currently trending.
Shadows.
They don't disappear just because you turn off the lights. They just wait for you to look away.
