How to get rid of the fear of evil spirits. Will spirituality help?
From my childhood, I was fearful of supernatural evil entities: ghosts of dead people, witches, ugly demons, satanic forces. I had an apprehension that they’ll appear to me in reality.
Before going to bed, I was often alarmed. I thought “what if I’ll see them behind the window, or they’ll touch my hand or my leg when I am relaxed”.
It caused me a lot of disturbance when I was around nine years old. During my mom’s night shifts, I was staying at home alone and had to sleep with the light on. I was holding a knife in my hand. It gave me a bit of relief for some reason. That’s how I was falling asleep.
After I turned 11 my phobias weren’t prominent as much, but I still had a problem: horrible nightmares.
Besides, episodes of intense fear sometimes had occurred. For instance, in my teenage years, I was reading “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov, and I couldn’t read it to the end. I had almost gone mad because of a talking cat, although this character seems funny to me today.
I’m not ashamed to tell you that I had this problem accompany me even in my 20s. In fact, I am familiar with a few grown people who still have some sort of fears related to supernatural evil creatures.
Eventually, I figured out how to deal with all these stupid phobias. But, before I share with you the remedy from phasmophobia, let’s talk about the origin of this phenomenon.
I traced three reasons for my condition at that time:
1. The biochemistry of my brain: I had a predisposition to anxiety.
2. I watched a lot of horror movies as a child.
3. I believed in the reality of ghosts.
The first point doesn’t concern everyone. But, the other two can happen to any person.
Even Our Ancestors Were Victims of that Plague
My grandmother had told me that when she was a little girl she was afraid of a witch and other creatures from Ukrainian folklore. It caused her sleep deprivation.
In addition, while her parents were at their works, she was horrified to stay alone. Despite that there was poverty in Ukraine at that time, she had to give her breakfast to the neighbor girl. That allowed her not to stay alone, although only for a short time while the girl was eating her meal.
Nevertheless, my granny was too ashamed to inform her parents that she was afraid of such silly things.
Our nation historically was very superficial, they believed in all kinds of magical creatures. Although they didn’t have a TV in the 1930s, they still had remnants of rich Slavic mythology.
Given that, I’ve been thinking about the evolutionary reasons for the fact that people are afraid of ghosts and demons. Of course, some sorts of fears was beneficial to humanity by making them avoid dangerous places. But, what the benefit of fearing it at home, in your room?
I came to the conclusion that it’s only a side effect of survival instinct. These fears are similar to biological viruses: it doesn’t help us to live better or survive, but it importunately accompanies us through history.
Fears and Religion
Horror stories may have a particular impact on you, but not as strong as reinforced with a religious context.
For example, when I was 17 years old I worked in a port as a watchman. They put me to guard an old empty building.
One of my coworkers, an aged man, told me a story that there was a watchman who drowned recently. After his death, he came to one of our colleagues and claim that it’s his watch now. But, the amazed man recalled that this was the drowned person only after he went away.
That night I wasn’t scared too much. The thing is that I’m not stupid enough to not notice the slightest smile on the storyteller’s face. I got that the lousy coworkers wanted to make fun of me. However, it was a bit scary.
Now let’s consider cases when similar stories are a part of your religion in which you believe with all your heart. What if the person who offers you this tell is your spiritual authority, and he indeed believes in this nonsense? That works much “better” at that rate.
My spiritual leaders had always told me stories of how they had encounters with real demons and sorcerers who tried to kill them. Also, they claimed that Van Helsing, the horror movie, reflects very precisely what’s going on in reality somewhere.
Regular Believers Pouring Gas on the Fire Too
My friend Daniil, a strong believer, has told me that since he started his spiritual path, demons had persecuted him a number of times. They stomped behind him while he was trying to pray. Once, they even kicked his balls when he was lying in his bed.
Another time, the demons called him from the bushes, when he walked along down a deserted road. They called him with a disgusting wheezing voice “Daaaniieel”. In all these cases he called the name of Christ and He was saving him from this evil.
I know it sounds crazy and ridiculous, but l couldn’t suspect Daniil of dishonesty or madness. The young man was my peer but was better than me in numerous ways. He had a strong personality, a muscular body, rich experience in different jobs, and better social skills.
Thus, those stories had freaked me out. But, I kept listening to them, because they were supposed to open me to “the reality of the spiritual world”.
I’m not claiming that my brothers and sisters put as a goal to increase my phobias. In fact, they wanted to help me to grow as a warrior of Jesus. Our teaching implied the antidote against fears and spiritual attacks — faith.
You were expected to utter “in the name of Yeshuah, get out, you demons! You will not scare me! I’m a child of God!” The demons would presumably run away from such counterattacking actions.
Indeed, it worked. I had practiced this method many times. But, the thing is, that it didn’t always work. As I understand it now, it depends on your brain biochemistry, the weather, and mood swings whether your battle is going to be successful. In case you have a bad mood and you pronounce the words, but the fear doesn’t vanish away.
How to Fight the Demons?
What really helped me is not trying to overcome fears and be brave in confrontation with evil spirits. I simply stopped believing in them.
For the first time, it happened sometime after I left the cult. I joined a group on FaceBook related to Messianic Judaism. There were a lot of educated theologians whom I still respect for their intellectual labor. Their approach to religion is not strictly emotional, they don’t disdain scientific data on the development of ancient Judaism and Christianity.
To recover it was enough for me to read in one of the discussions in the group that there never were any demons. The commenter also claimed that the word itself was borrowed from Babylonian religion and was used to describe certain spiritual processes, but one shouldn’t take it literally.
The author of this comment was a theologian and pastor, so I decided to do some research. It turned that Jewish “shedim”, the name for demons — were indeed originated in Mesopotamian mythology.
As soon as I familiarized myself with this information all fears vanished without a trace.
Studying the Jewish conception of Satan was also helpful. From the perspective of ancient Judaism Satan is not an enemy of God. Jews didn’t believe in dualism and didn’t consider Satan as some kind of evil version of God.
Satan just does his work of putting people before a choice of making morally right or wrong decisions. He doesn’t appear people to scare or torture them.
When I stopped believing in all these testimonies about the Devil raping poor women, laughing from dark corners of your room, and so on, I began to analyze people who were telling me this. I realized that in fact, they all were weird, or obviously crazy if I considered other aspects of their lives.
For example, Daniil, although I still see him as a good father, husband, worker, and positive person, he believes in all kinds of junk.
He likes to watch documentary movies where aliens, in reality, are angels of Satan, dinosaurs lived once among people, and giant mutants are still hiding somewhere on the planet. I realized that he just lacks critical thinking and he’s a very impressionable person.
What about stories of real possessed people?
With my own eyes, I saw a variety of possessed people who screamed when ministers of Christ cased evil spirits out from them.
They also forced the demons to call their real names following the example of Jesus. However, I didn’t see people who were really cured after those performances.
Christians tell me that they observe the reality of the spiritual world when they have real interaction with spirits.
For instance, a shy girl started to talk with a voice that was not her own. That day a group of Christians had a conversation with obviously another person that talked using her mouth. In these cases, I ask them how does the person, from which you have cast out demons, feel now? The answer is the same every time, “I don’t know”, or “he is not cured yet”.
Thus, in reality, those “possessed people” have psychological problems. They are overloaded with information which they got in the Christian environment on how demons should behave. So, they act according to their notions on that, including revealing the names of the demons.
In conclusion
If you want to get rid of the fear of supernatural evil forces, stop believing in them. Don’t trust fairytales. Rely on verified information, not on spiritual gurus or regular people who have magical thinking.
Quitting watching horror movies also would be beneficial. However, I do watch them sometimes. They do cause me to feel anxious for a while.
For example, after I watched “Pet Sematary” the movie of 2019 for a few days I was under the impression of it. But, since I know that it’s fiction, I forgot about it soon after.
So, my main advice is to stop staying in the information space which promotes you to develop phobias.
