'Carrie' and the monster who raised me



The devil and his minions have haunted me all my life.

As far back as I can remember, I've been visited by the unquiet dead, the hungry ghosts, and even Old Scratch himself in my dreams. Perhaps these nighttime visitations were spiritual attacks, perhaps they were the predictable manifestation of the violence and instability of my upbringing.

Like Piper Laurie in 'Carrie,' my mother forced me to kneel while she stood above me bellowing. 'Humble yourself before me!' she shrieked. 'GodDAMN you, humble yourself!'

Maybe they were both; maybe the kind of moral derangement that afflicted my parents was a kind of demonic possession.

The devil I know

I'm not sure I believe in God, but I'm getting closer to believing in the devil. That's a confused position, admittedly, but that's what you get from a guy who believed as a child until it was punished out of him and then spent too many years as an obnoxious "new atheist" adult.

Whatever the answer may be, I've been terrified and fascinated by the supernatural, the uncanny, and the grotesque all my life. The kinds of spooky stories that gripped me were the type you find in Victorian English ghost story anthologies. Authors like E.F. Benson, M.R. James, and Elizabeth Gaskell.

If you like these too, no one reads them better than English podcaster Tony Walker. His "Classic Ghost Stories Podcast" is one of the few I find so good that I voluntarily pay for it. This is no amateur sideshow; Walker's narration is professional grade. Why he's not rich reading books for Audible, I'll never know.

Weeping and wailing women in veils who glide down hallways. Rain-bedraggled brides hitchhiking on the side of the road who disappear from their ride's passenger seat as he drives past Resurrection Cemetery. Fingerprints that appear on the windows of automobiles that cross the railroad tracks where a locomotive hit a school bus long ago killing the children on board. Their spirit fingers gently push your car along to make sure you don't meet their sad and untimely fate.

In search of ... belief

Like many kids of the 1970s and 1980s, I grew up watching shows like the cryptid/aliens/spook-filled "In Search Of," narrated by Leonard Nimoy. My library card was full many times over with every book on Bigfoot, extra-sensory perception, telekinesis, poltergeists, and the Bermuda Triangle.

Have you heard about the moving coffins of Barbados? That's top-quality spine tingles. As the story goes, a wealthy family living on the Caribbean island built a family vault in the cemetery. Every time a member died, the crypt was opened to accept a new coffin. And every time the crypt was opened, the coffins that were already there were tossed about helter-skelter.

Maybe it was flood waters. Except that there was no evidence of water incursion. Maybe pranksters did it. But the family sealed the stone door and sprinkled sand on the floor, and there was never a footprint betraying a (living) human presence.

For a proper classic haunting, you can't beat the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. Nearly everyone with a passing familiarity with the spirit world of 20th-century popular culture has seen the photograph of this long dead woman, a translucent, begowned figure descending the grand staircase of the palatial home in Norfolk, England, built during the reign of James I in 1620.

According to two photographers who were documenting the inside of the estate in 1936, as they were setting up a shot, they looked up at the stairs in astonishment. A veiled specter was float-walking silently down the stair treads, and they had just enough time to open the shutter on their plate camera and capture the most famous ghost photograph of all time.

Was she the shade of Lady Dorothy Walpole? Lady Walpole was said to have been immured in a room in Raynham Hall for the rest of her life at the hands of her husband, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, who was angered by her unfaithful dalliances.

Or was this just the first and best example of trick-ghost photography, a double-exposed photographic plate? In the early days of photography, the public was not wise to the trickery available to a skilled image-maker. Long before Photoshop and AI, the public believed the camera never lies.

I want to believe. There's something magnetic, romantic, and almost erotic about the possibility that a curtain separates us from the realm of the dead and that it thins at certain times, like now. As a child, I delighted in being scared so badly I didn't dare turn off the flashlight under the covers I used for my clandestine and very-much-not-allowed post-bedtime reading.

Joy interrupted

Yet the possibility of an ethereal realm where the dead who refuse to acknowledge their condition "live," a plane where real devil cavorts are not merely fun and games. If that plane exists, and if it's populated by any of the henchmen attributed to Satan, then the other side is very serious business indeed. I'm not so sure I want to believe, in that case, but I'm also not so sure that I don't.

When I was 8 years old, my family took a rare trip to a sit-down restaurant on Christmas Eve. We were poor, and a night out at Demicelli's Italian Restaurant was so special that Christmas would have been joyful even if we didn't get a single present. As we walked toward Placentia Boulevard in Fullerton, California, I looked at the night sky and saw the brightest star I'd ever seen.

"Mommy, look!" I said, tugging at my mother's sleeve. I pulled on her cigarette hand, which annoyed her. "It's the star of Jesus, Mommy. It's the star that guided the Wise Men to the baby Jesus!"

It was wondrous. It made me feel light-headed with a joy I'd never felt.

My mother made a derisive sniggering noise as she blew out smoke. "Oh, no it isn't, Josh," she mocked. "It's just a star. Probably Venus."

My face went red with embarrassment, and I stayed quiet the rest of the night. I felt stupid. Unsophisticated. Dumb. Childlike. Naive. And substandard. This was a problem that repeated itself over the years. My mother was the resentful "victim" type, and she was at war with God.

I convinced her to take us to the Presbyterian church where I'd been (to her reluctance, as she recalled it) baptized as an infant for Christmas Eve services in 1986. Mother spent the walk home railing about those "Goddamned hypocritical Christians! Where were they for this single mother when I needed a little help to put food on the table?"

I can't repeat the rest of what she said in a respectable publication.

Maternal monster

It wasn't until my 40s that I realized why I had been captivated to the point of obsession with certain dark characters in disturbing films like 1976's "Carrie." This was an adaptation of Stephen King's debut novel of the same name, a book that still ranks among his finest work. It's only nominally about a teen girl with telekinesis, the psychic ability to move objects with her mind. The story is really about a frightened girl who grew up with a maternal monster.

If you've seen the movie, you remember Piper Laurie's almost kabuki performance as Margaret White, a religious fanatic tormented by her own sense of failure and sin. Seeing herself as a fallen woman who fornicated with a man, she uses extreme interpretations of scripture to berate and subjugate the result of that union, her daughter, Carrie. Just as Margaret believes she can never be forgiven, she can never forgive her daughter for being born, for embodying her mother's sin in too-real flesh.

So she screams at Carrie, beats her, forces her to confess sins the girl has never committed (they were Margaret's sins), and worst of all, locks her in a "prayer closet." The scene that terrified me the most was the vignette in the dining room when Margaret forces Carrie to her knees as she intones about how God had loosed the raven on the world, and the raven was called sin.

"Say it, woman! Say it!" Margaret screams. "Eve was weak. Eve was weak!"

She drags Carrie to the prayer closet, a black cloak whirling about her like the wings of the raven, and babbles insanely while her daughter screams for mercy. Lighting a candle in the dark, Carrie looks up to a figure of St. Sebastian on the wall, a grotesque effigy with agonized eyes reflecting the pain of his arrow wounds.

Fascinated by fear

Margaret White obviously had a severe condition called Borderline Personality Disorder, which also afflicted my mother. While my mother was not a religious fanatic, she treated me the way Margaret White treats Carrie. Just as in the movie's dining room scene, my mother forced me to kneel while she stood above me bellowing. "Humble yourself before me!" she shrieked. "GodDAMN you, humble yourself!"

My mother did not want what she claimed she wanted: respect and filial piety. She wanted to be worshiped. My mother created herself God in her own image.

So I prayed to God to be delivered from my mother's prison, but I never got an answer, or one I recognized. I was more certain that the world was full of angry entities, though, and to say I felt haunted wouldn't go far enough.

That which terrorizes also fascinates. Over my life, I've tasted and re-tasted the fear through movies like "Carrie" and "Mommie Dearest." Fictional versions of my real-life horror were a poison candy; they hurt so good, like the compulsion to thrust the tongue repeatedly into a canker sore that won't heal.

I still don't know what I believe about God, the soul, heaven, or hell.

I knew what I saw

No Halloween story would be complete without a personal anecdote of an encounter with the unexplained. This is the first time I've told this story to anyone, let alone in print. Like I do myself, you may doubt me. I admit that I was halfway to drunk when it happened. But in the moment, I knew what I saw and heard, I knew I was only buzzed on three beers, not falling-down drunk. I wasn't hallucinating pink elephants or anything else.

It was 1992. I was 18 years old and sharing an apartment with my best friend, Lisa. It was movie night in the living room, and it was my turn to fetch fresh Molson Goldens from the refrigerator. I put the sweating bottles on a round cocktail tray with a rubber no-slip bottom I'd brought home from the restaurant I worked at.

I was a skilled waiter who could hold a tray with four entrees and several cocktails without spilling. And though I'd had a few beers, I was not drunk. In the hallway as I was about to enter the living room, one of the standing beer bottles on the tray violently flipped over to the horizontal with a thud. It wasn't the kind of soft thud that happens when something tips over. It was a THUD, as if someone had thrown the bottle into the tray.

Remember, it was a rubberized tray. It was actually difficult for a glass on such a tray to slide, let alone tip over. I had not tilted the tray; I was not weaving drunkenly as I walked. The other beer bottle didn't tip over. The two mugs on the same tray didn't move. More, the same thing happened a few minutes later in the living room. My (replaced) beer bottle on the side table, three feet from reach, loudly tipped over on a perfectly level table and made a loud rap.

I remember so clearly stopping still as the blood drained from my head. Did I really just see what I thought I saw? I did. And I felt it, too.

In that moment in the hall, I said this in my head: "What you just saw and heard really happened. You're not drunk, and you're not hallucinating. But no one will believe you, and over time, you will not believe you either. Your memory will soften, and you will convince yourself that you were drunk and that you somehow caused these bottles to tip over in apparent defiance of the laws of physics and friction."

That's exactly what happened. As I tell you this story, I doubt myself. At the same time, I remember the warning I spoke to myself in my head about doubt there, in the moment, and I know I wasn't crazy.

Happy Halloween.

Halloween triggers psychiatric disturbances — especially in alleged satanic ritual abuse survivors



Halloween may be marketed as a harmless night of costumes and candy — but mental health experts have been warning for decades that the holiday can unleash very real psychological trauma.

“We need to understand that Halloween can actually amplify some of the psychiatric disturbances of people who were either victims of satanic ritual abuse or who were just traumatized by the fear and the just depravity that some people like to showcase on Halloween,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey explains.

A 1991 Washington Post article documents how Halloween has historically triggered emotional breakdowns, suicidal episodes, and violent behavior among patients suffering from multiple personality disorder (now classified as dissociative identity disorder).

Many of those patients linked their trauma to childhood abuse — and in some highly disturbing cases, alleged satanic ritual activity.


“Patients with multiple personality disorder (MPD) exhibit bizarre behavior in which personalities with distinct histories and voices — called ‘alters’ — emerge from a ‘host’ personality under the influence of severe stresses. The illness is believed to arise most often as a defense against child abuse that is typically sexual and physically painful,” the article reads.

“Of the 12 patients in the hospital today, six are having trouble with memories related to Halloween," said Bruce Leonard, a psychiatrist who treats child abuse victims at the Columbine Psychiatric Center outside Denver, the article continues.

In the article, Leonard explained that a former patient of his was flying to Colorado from her home in Michigan to spend Halloween in the hospital, after “physically threatening her psychiatrist in Michigan” for the weeks leading up to it.

Another psychiatrist, Bennett G. Braun, told the Washington Post that “patients become increasingly suicidal, increasingly agitated” around Halloween.

Five of Braun’s hospitalized patients were “reliving Halloween trauma,” while one of his patients “with a history of satanic cult abuse” was being kept in the hospital until the holiday was over.

Another patient of his attempted suicide on Halloween the year prior and claimed to have been a childhood participant in “rites involving human sacrifice.”

“About 20% of MPD patients ... claim that their childhood abuse involved organized satanic rites. Although few psychiatrists treating these patients today deny that their patients have a history of child abuse, there is great debate about whether the ‘satanic’ events actually occurred or are fantasy grafted onto recollections of more conventional abuse,” the article reads.

“So we don’t actually know if they actually endured satanic ritual abuse or if it had something directly to do with Halloween, although some of them seem to be able to cite specifically what happened to them on Halloween, or if this is a symptom of their psychiatric problems,” Stuckey says.

“But I think it’s an interesting phenomenon, and I do think that we should give more weight to presenting very scary, gruesome, morbid things to children before they have the ability to be able to understand it,” she continues.

“I don’t think it’s lighthearted to scare children and to present them with things that celebrate death and darkness and fear. I do think that you are setting them up for some kind of trauma. ... And I think we do need to take that seriously,” she adds.

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Demonic or Christian? How Believers Should Approach Halloween | Ep 1257
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Demonic or Christian? How Believers Should Approach Halloween | Ep 1257

Satan has a mix tape — and Taylor Swift is on the playlist



Taylor Swift is back with a new record, and with her return come the old accusations.

For years, people have suggested that she hides strange symbols in her songs and videos. Even other pop stars have said the same thing — and they’re not wrong. From the serpent motif that slithered through her "Reputation" era to the witchy forest rituals of "Willow" and the tarot-like imagery of "Midnights," Swift has long played with the language of mysticism.

What faith once offered in family and devotion, the industry now mimics through sexualization and self-display.

It’s seductive, deliberate, and deeply disturbing.

Rock once wore its rebellion openly. Ozzy Osbourne feasted on bats. Led Zeppelin flirted with the occult. Alice Cooper strutted across stages like the devil in drag. But pop is subtler, sweeter — and far more dangerous. Rock shouted “Hell!” for the shock of it. Pop smiles, takes your hand, and leads you there.

Billie Eilish, the Beetlejuice of pop, floats through a fog of depression, her music drowning in melancholy: songs about mutilation, numbness, and detachment from reality. Lil Nas X, a raving homosexual who seems to revel in depravity, enjoys grinding on Satan. Doja Cat smears herself in blood and calls it expression.

None of this is random. The industry has learned that darkness sells because emptiness is a vacuum that needs to be filled. Rhythm reaches where reason can’t, and belief can be rewritten one beat at a time.

Unfortunately, no audience is more vulnerable than young girls.

They listen on repeat, absorbing lyrics like liturgy. Pop has always known how to reach them. In the 1960s, the Beatles sang of love as liberation. By the 1980s, Madonna turned it into a marketing campaign. Britney Spears wore innocence like a costume, then tore it off — literally and figuratively — knives in hand. There is something unmistakably demonic in her descent, a possession of the spirit that fame so often brings.

The same story repeats itself across the pop pantheon.

Once the cherubic choirboy of global pop, Justin Bieber now fluctuates between repentance and relapse, his body scarred by tattoos and abuse. There’s also Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, and Ariana Grande, each one a pathetic version of their former selves.

The pop idol is no longer a musician but a model for imitation. The results are visible: depression, anxiety, disordered eating, and a generation that sings about love but cannot define it or identify it. Young people are raised on a rotation of heartbreak and hedonism, told to celebrate the very things that destroy them.

Pop today preaches a gospel of transaction. Every desire is for sale. Love is no longer a covenant but a contract. Sex is not intimacy but advertisement. Artists sing about bodies the way brokers talk about stocks — measured in clicks, hype, and fleeting returns.

The message is clear: Everything is currency, even the body.

RELATED: Taylor Swift's 'Life of a Showgirl': The same sad sound and fury

Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

What began as entertainment has evolved into indoctrination. The language of romance has been replaced by the “logic” of the marketplace. Pleasure is product, people are platforms, and purity is just another brand to discard once it stops selling. The line between pop music and OnlyFans is straighter than most want to admit. Both peddle illusion — connection without commitment, desire without depth.

What faith once offered in family and devotion, the industry now mimics through sexualization and self-display. The result is a culture fluent in indulgence, obsessed with pleasure but ignorant of purity. What once pointed upward now drags us down. The language of heaven has been rewritten in the dialect of hell.

Even the visuals echo it. Neon crosses. Angel wings stitched from latex. Horns hidden beneath halos. The symbolism, evident to anyone with functioning vision, is always dismissed as “art.” But art without virtue stops telling the truth and starts selling the lie. And history reminds us that deception has always been the devil’s favorite instrument.

Pop’s greatest trick is pretending it’s harmless. Rock scared parents into vigilance. Pop lulls them into complacency. It sounds innocent enough, but beneath the cute choruses lies the same poison. When every song preaches self-worship, when every lyric mocks modesty, when every beat celebrates bondage, the playlist becomes a pilgrimage into perdition.

The industry calls it entertainment. But look closer and you’ll see a darker design: music that numbs, not nourishes, and beats that bind, not liberate.

It’s no accident that the idols of this age are called “idols.”

Tens of millions stream them, worship them, and defend them with evangelical ecstasy. They shape the moral mood of the young more than any preacher ever could. And yet while they sell songs about love and light, the world they create grows darker by the day. Broken homes. Hookup culture. Teenage pregnancies. Gender confusion. Isolation and self-harm. Faith mocked. Fatherhood maligned. Motherhood treated as an outdated inconvenience.

The irony is that Swift and several other artists were raised in the church. They know the cadence of a hymn, the thrill of a crowd, the longing for transcendence. They just redirected it. The altar became a stage, and the worship didn’t stop but changed direction.

But here's the truth: Mocking religion is a poor substitute for meaning. You can dance in devil horns for only so long before realizing there’s nothing on the other side of derision and disdain. No culture that mocks the sacred can remain strong.

The industry calls it entertainment. But look closer and you’ll see a darker design: music that numbs, not nourishes, and beats that bind, not liberate. The melodies are catchy because the message must be smuggled in softly. That’s the genius — and the evil — of pop music.

And so we arrive where we began. Taylor Swift has released another record. Millions have listened. But few have stopped to wonder what’s being worshipped.

Satan no longer hides in the dark. He performs under a spotlight.

Cross-dressing rapper Bad Bunny to headline Super Bowl — will it be DEMONIC?



Bad Bunny is a cross-dressing Puerto Rican rapper who has never released a song in English, and yet he’s starring in the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show.

Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck isn’t an expert on the rapper’s work, but BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock is well aware of who he is — and tells Glenn exactly what’s going on.

“Obviously they’re trolling Donald Trump. Obviously, they’re trolling ICE raids and the whole illegal immigration policy enacted by Trump. … They want to make a statement about illegal immigration. They want to make a statement about diversity and Spanish-speaking people. They want to make a statement about transgenderism and sexual fluidity, and Bad Bunny checks all those boxes,” Whitlock begins.

“This has nothing to do with football fans. This is about the left’s control of popular culture and control of the National Football League, which is the strongest thing in popular culture, and they’re using it to make a big, bold statement about how they feel about Donald Trump,” he continues.


Though there is one man more important than President Trump whom they’re attacking, and that is Jesus Christ.

“They didn’t have to pick someone who is so closely associated with demonic activities, so closely associated with promoting gender fluidity and the cross-dressing deal. They didn’t have to pick someone who’s so outspoken against Donald Trump in his illegal immigration policies. This is the poster boy for Trump hate, and this is the poster boy for sexual fluidity and redefining masculinity,” Whitlock says.

“And so parents will be having discussions with their kids on Super Bowl Sunday. ‘Mommy, Daddy, why is this man out here dressed as a woman during some part of this act? Why are his fingernails painted? Why is he taking subtle shots at Trump?’” he continues.

“This is, to me, part of it’s a reaction to the Charlie Kirk memorial service,” he adds, explaining that this is because it “was such a powerful pro-Jesus Christ deal.”

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Super Bowl platforms anti-ICE DRAG QUEEN rapper Bad Bunny to troll MAGA



From Bruce Springsteen to Britney Spears, the NFL used to platform legends at Super Bowl halftime shows — but that has irrefutably changed.

In 2026, rapper Bad Bunny will headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes the choice is a slap in the face to not only President Donald Trump and MAGA supporters — but to Americans everywhere.

“They have selected a Latin, gay, hip-hop, gangster, trap music, no-english-speaking rapper to perform at the Super Bowl this year. His name is Bad Bunny. I had heard the name,” Whitlock says.

“And once you start going down the rabbit hole, this is a demonic rapper selected by Jay-Z and the National Football League to promote demonic activity. And I think it’s a reaction in part, partially, to what the Charlie Kirk assassination sparked,” he continues, noting that it was a “terrific moment of religious revival.”


“And the Super Bowl this year is in Northern California, and that is the headquarters of Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and just this whole revolutionary Marxist left-wing. That’s their headquarters, Northern California,” he explains.

Whitlock loves football but unfortunately is having to come to terms with the NFL now being “a part of a demonic movement” that’s been run by Jay-Z since 2020.

“This is an unapologetic drug dealer,” Whitlock says of Jay-Z. “Says that he was involved in violence and murder, but we’ve placed him on a pedestal. Him and all of his demonic music. We’ve placed him on a pedestal in the National Football League. The most powerful force in American culture.”

“And so Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican rapper, not one song does he sing in English. Not one. So we’re about to have a halftime show where most of the audience will have no idea what’s going on,” Whitlock adds.

“But I guarantee you, Bad Bunny’s going to put on a drag show at halftime because that’s how he got there. By redefining masculinity, by dressing in women’s clothing, by pretending, well, ‘I’m not gay, I’m sexually fluid,’” he continues.

In one music video, Bad Bunny does dress in drag, going as far to wear what appears to be pounds of makeup and giant fake breasts.

“The National Football League is going to put on a halftime drag show,” Whitlock says, disturbed. “I can’t do it. And I’m telling you, I love football, but I fear God more than I love football. They’re grooming our babies. We’re going to pay a price for this.”

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The TRUTH about spiritual warfare and the battle for America's soul



The world is engaged in a spiritual battle, which Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and Catholic YouTuber Taylor Marshall believe requires immediate action — and not through a political avenue.

“The biggest failure of our time is that Christianity has become more political or more social. And it’s not an interior renewal. It’s not an encounter with Jesus Christ risen from the dead. And ‘How do I live for you daily?’” Marshall tells Glenn.

“It’s too casual,” Glenn agrees, noting that many people are held in high esteem within the church despite their clearly incompatible views.

“In my church, there was Harry Reid. He was for abortion. How the hell does that work?” he asks.


“Part of the problem is, because of original sin and our concupiscence in our flesh, we’re all in a battle ourselves, right? We’re all tempted towards evil, selfishness, power grabs, control. Natural man is an enemy of God,” Marshall says.

“That’s one of the things we’ve lost in Christianity is the concept of war, battle, spiritual struggle ... we need to get back to this understanding that we are in a spiritual battle and our enemies are not principally other people,” he continues.

“Our enemies are the dark evil principalities. The demons, the diabolical. That is ultimately what we are fighting against,” he adds.

And with this understanding, Marshall believes it’s time to really “unite.”

“Not just in a generic way, ‘unite,’ but we need to unite structurally,” he says.

“I mean, think of like, the Republican Party. We’re 45,000 different groups. Nothing, I mean, nothing gets done anyway, but nothing would for sure get done. There needs to be a unity. There needs to be a Christendom,” he explains.

“And as a Catholic, I think this is the way forward,” he adds.

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‘Demon-possessed’:  Why spiritual darkness is behind recent killings



The past few weeks have seen multiple terrible tragedies — the Catholic school shooting, the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And BlazeTV host Rick Burgess believes they all have one thing in common, and it’s definitely not guns. Rather, the killers are “demon-possessed,” he tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

“You go to kill children in cold blood, just because they’re gathering and while they’re praying, and you seem to be repulsed at even the mention of Jesus Christ, as the demons always are in Scripture,” Burgess explains.

“Why do you think that these demonic forces feel like they’ve been invited here? We’ve been killing babies for how long now? This was a pagan practice of slaughtering babies, and now we’ve taken human life and we’ve dumbed it down so much,” he continues.


Burgess cites video games and Hollywood as a reason that an increasing number of people don’t see killing as “real.”

“Look at them sitting down on these video games with blood and guts, and they’re being dumbed down to the killing of people like it’s not real, like they’re playing a video game. They’re watching movies by the same people who lecture us about guns as they all slaughter people like it’s no big deal,” he tells Glenn.

“We have lost our ever-loving minds, and then we turn around and can’t believe that we’re living in darkness,” he adds.

“The guy who, you know, killed Iryna in Charlotte ... was he mentally ill, or was he demon-possessed? ... How would you know the difference?” Glenn asks.

“I know what Scripture says, and I know some of the markers. Let me be perfectly clear, because I’m telling you what I’m saying, but I want to be perfectly clear on what I’m not saying. I am not saying, nor do I think it’s accurate to say, that all mental illness comes from demonic forces. That’s not true,” Burgess explains.

“The brain is just like any part of the body. It can be sick. It can have a chemical imbalance. And we have wonderful doctors. Now, do we need to address how we take care of the mentally ill? Yes, we do. It needs some work. But there are people that their brains are just sick just like your heart would be,” he continues.

However, Burgess believes someone like Decarlos Brown was demon-possessed.

Brown said in a recorded phone call to his sister that he didn’t know her name, didn’t speak to her, and that he just took out his knife and killed her. After explaining what he did, he said, “What kind of person does that?”

“That’s demon possession,” Burgess says, adding, “He is under the control of something else.”

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‘The fruit of a demonic culture’: Whitlock dives deeper into the cause of Charlotte train killing



Iryna Zarutska’s suspected killer wasn’t a productive citizen who just snapped one day — the man had over a dozen prior arrests — yet somehow was still walking the streets freely.

And the crime he is suspected of committing is not an isolated incident.

“I don’t even know his name. I’m not that interested in his name. He’s unimportant individually, but what he represents is very important,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

While Whitlock admits it might sound crazy, his major takeaway after watching the video of Zarutska’s horrifying murder is that her killer was “demon possessed.”


“And because we have become so secular, we don’t even understand demons and the wickedness, the evilness that we’re seeing. We don’t interpret things the way that we used to interpret things previously … when our worldview was much more Christian, much more biblical, much more rooted in the spiritual nature of this world,” he explains.

“Now everything is very secular, and so we don’t think this way,” he adds.

Many Americans have responded to the tragedy by pointing to the need for mental institutions or fixing the justice system that let a violent criminal out to do what he pleased, but Whitlock notes that the solution is much deeper than that.

The entire “culture” that the alleged killer was created by is “demonic” in itself — and needs to be completely changed.

Whitlock notes that rap music has long glorified murder within the black community, saying, “It flirts with all this demonic, devil worshipping, all of this stuff.”

“And then we look out and see someone like Decarlos Brown Jr., who clearly to me, if he were trying to rob this woman, and kill her, I think we’d all sit back and say, ‘Oh man, this is a terrible tragedy, lock this dude up for life, give him the death penalty’ … but just killing a young woman that got on a train and sat in front of you, and then saying something about ‘I got that white girl,’ this is demonic,” Whitlock says.

“And it’s the fruit of a demonic culture,” he adds.

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VIRAL video: Emerging rapper recounts bone-chilling illuminati encounter at creepy mountain photoshoot



Music originates in heaven. Scripture tells us that angels sing and play instruments. Life in heaven centers around eternal worship. Revelation foretells a time when, after Satan’s ultimate defeat, joyous songs of victory and triumph will resound in heaven, celebrating God’s glory.

It’s inarguable that music is a good gift from God that serves a purpose in His kingdom. But like all good gifts, it can be corrupted by Satan — and it has been. Today, a staggering amount of music, especially popular music, contains demonic messaging.

But it goes even deeper than profane, debaucherous lyrics and sin-promoting artists.

“Behind a lot of musical success are demon-possessed people,” says Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters,” a podcast that explores spiritual warfare.

The pervasive darkness in the entertainment industry has fueled a widespread conspiracy theory about the illuminati — a secretive, occult group believed to control the music industry, manipulating culture through artists, lyrics, and symbolism to advance a satanic agenda.

But is it really a conspiracy theory?

Rick plays a recent viral clip of an emerging American rapper and producer from Atlanta, Georgia, named Lil Tony, whose full name is Tekai Elijah Key. On evangelist and street preacher Bryce Crawford’s podcast, the artist shared the terrifying experience that convinced him that the illuminati, God, and Satan are all real.

“I got booked for a photoshoot. They took me all the way up this mountain. I was on top of the mountain. We finished the photo shoot. They have OD cars. They got a three-seater McLaren. They got a Ferrari. And I’m asking them, like, ‘How y’all get all this money?’ They like, ‘We do demonic rituals,”’ Key recounted.

When he pressed the crew on how they really obtained such wealth, believing their original answer was a joke, they doubled down. “The illuminati never talk to you?” they asked him, claiming that Leonardo DiCaprio conducts the initiation ceremonies, which involve sexual acts.

Weirded out, Lil Tony tried to call an Uber to pick him up, but because he was in the mountains, he had no cell service. He was forced to drive back with another person who was part of the photoshoot. On the way down, this driver suddenly took a different route.

“His face changed,” said Key, comparing the scene to how Spider Man’s face morphs into the sinister visage of Venom. “It threw me all the way off.”

Right as his creepy driver was backing into somebody’s driveway, his saving grace came in the form of a mailman.

“I start running up to him like, ‘Hey bro, let me get in the back of your truck,’” Key recounted, admitting that he resorted to practically begging the mailman to help him get off the mountain.

“It was God. He took me down to the bottom. ... The people on camera, you ain’t gotta believe me. I don’t care. I’m not lying. I really saw this. That’s what made me know that the devil and God was real,” he told Crawford.

“I don't know whether that is true or not true. ... Now, do I know that these things are out there? I feel very strong about that,” says Rick.

To hear Rick’s in-depth analysis of the darkness in the music industry, as well as other topics, like spiritual house cleaning, watch the full episode above.

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