Man Tries to Perform Exorcism, Instead Allegedly Murders His Mother
Take that from Alexander Valdez, a 23-year-old man accused of murdering his mother in a botched DIY exorcism in Fort Worth, Texas last week.
Police rolled up to Valdez' house a little after midnight last Friday, tipped off about a "satanic ritual" which he allegedly recorded and sent to his friends on Snapchat. When officers knocked on his front door, a nonchalant Valdez emerged, coated in blood and clutching a bible.
"It was an exorcism," he told police calmly, before allegedly adding — contradictively? — that "I was doing witchcraft to kill my mom."
Asked if there was anybody else in the house, Valdez apparently admitted "there is a dead body in there. It's my mom."
The cops then searched the house, where they indeed found the body of the man's mother, 58-year-old Teresita Sayson, as well as that of the family's dog.
"Thank goodness for the people that were on Snapchat that said that he wanted to do this satanic ritual," Tracy Carter of the Fort Worth Police Department said, referring to the anonymous tipsters who passed the alleged posts off to local police.
The horrifying incident is no doubt the result of a mental health emergency which went unaddressed — an all too common occurrence in the US, where nonexistent social services and ineffective mental healthcare exacerbate a systemic crisis of mental illness.
And digging into the cultural aspect, the alleged murder also fits with a resurgence of the belief in exorcism and witchcraft in the US, a phenomenon which coincides with disruptions in "social relations, high levels of anxiety, [and] pessimistic worldview," according to social-economy researcher Boris Gershman.
As American social norms fray, people aren't just turning to exorcism of their own volition. Rather, they're led to it by a growing clique of pseudo-religious influencers, who use platforms like Tik Tok and YouTube to cash in on wild ritual spectacles via social media.
Sam Kestenbaum is a writer who embedded with Greg Locke, an infamous "Demon Slayer" in Tennessee. In a lengthy exposé on the resurgence of demonology for Harper's Magazine, Kestenbaum notes that Locke has used his sensationalist platform to tout vaccine skepticism, accuse Democratic politicians of being demons, and stoke claims that the 2020 election was stolen — topics which gel a little too well with those already prone to conspiracy hysterics.
"The controversial stuff really drove traffic," Locke told him. The preacher's cushy media empire includes a team of cameramen to film his "exorcisms" as they happen, production assistants, a drone operator, regular demonology seminars, a podcast, and a publishing house peddling books on faith-based wonders — all to keep the magic alive for his flock of eager consumers.
The draw for Locke is obvious enough. But when it comes to growing appeal of exorcism for the masses, Kestenbaum puts it well.
"Who would deny that this cursed land is in need of a deep cleanse with a power washer?" he wrote. "This, our country of suburban satanic panics, active-shooter drills, and jump-scare franchises, of mob riots, hollowed-out downtowns, and tech paranoias... and lo, a cavalry of screen-ready revivalists has arrived to wage the End Times war against the satanic infantry."
More on religion: Atheists Appalled as Elon Musk Embraces "Teachings of Christ'
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