Secrets of the real-life exorcist: He’s the vicar who’s been specially trained by the Church to banish poltergeists…
…and this is why he’s certain that supernatural hauntings are real
Twenty-seven years ago, after the Very Reverend Dr Jason Bray was first ordained, he and his wife moved into a small house in a churchyard in Abergavenny, where he was to be a minister. It was chilly, dark and dank, but it was also January, so that figured. By July, however, it still hadn’t warmed up. Areas of the house were unbearably cold, particularly around his newborn son Tom’s cot. When he was away on a trip, Bray’s wife, the ‘very level-headed’ Laura, went to check on Tom in his room, and described it as ‘walking into a freezer’. From then on, she insisted the baby should sleep in their bed.
Bray thought nothing of it until his own ‘strange experience’ some nights later. ‘I was in the bathroom and put my hand on the door. I had the impression of someone on the other side. He had grey eyes and a wooden mask, and looked at me with hostility. When I opened the door, there was nothing there.’
Terrified but embarrassed, Bray told his boss, the vicar, who agreed to come and bless his home. ‘He said some prayers in Latin and splashed some holy water, and the house immediately changed. It was a light, pleasant place to be.’ Later, a churchwarden asked Bray if he liked living in the house. ‘You know, when they built it,’ Bray’s colleague told him, ‘they disturbed an old Roman graveyard.’
It was these spooky goings-on that inspired Bray, now 55, to become what most people know as an exorcist. (He calls himself a ‘deliverance minister’, given it’s less daunting for those who need help.) He trained in 2003 with around 20 other ministers on an intensive course run by the Church of England and led by a team of expert priests and psychiatrists. Aside from theological training, including prayers, the course focuses mainly on how to distinguish the signs of mental illness (which might also make people hear voices) from supernatural cases. There are around 44 exorcists in the UK – one for each diocese.
Between more traditional ceremonies such as marriages and christenings, Bray has been banishing poltergeists for more than 20 years, and in 2021 wrote a book, Deliverance , about his work. Every year, he is contacted for around 12 cases, he tells me, as we sit in Cardiff’s 12th-century Llandaff cathedral, of which he is now Dean. With its gothic carvings and stained-glass windows, and Bray wearing a blood-red waistcoat, black suit and dog collar, it’s hard to think of a more fitting setting to discuss ghostly occurrences.
There are a few ‘common symptoms’ of a haunting, according to Bray. The most typical is poltergeist activity, in which spiritual forces telekinetically move objects: ‘It’s usually shoes that move, or TVs that turn on and off.’ Seeing a ghost is less likely and tougher to handle. ‘People hallucinate because of mental-health issues or medication, so the first step is to ask if more than one person has seen it. These people are often vulnerable, so you have to ask without denying what they’re feeling.’
Bray will then conduct a home visit, always with a colleague, he tells me rather ominously, ‘in case anything untoward happens’. Bray will sit and discuss what’s troubling people before starting any exorcising activity. ‘Even if we don’t suspect supernatural activity,’ he says, ‘I always bless their house with holy water – salt and water mixed together after being prayed over separately – because it’s a reassuring thing to do.’ It takes around an hour to go room by room praying and sprinkling the water (not including the cup of tea Bray usually stays for afterwards).
Sometimes, however, Bray is almost certain there is spiritual disturbance. ‘If I pay attention to my breathing,’ he says, ‘I just know something’s happening.’ A few years ago, Bray was approached by a lady whose parents had died and she wanted to sell their home. She told the reverend she had always been worried about the top floor, as when she took her young son to visit Grandma and Grandpa, he’d sit up there constantly. When she asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘I’m talking to the man on the stairs.’
Bray visited the home and remembered ‘walking around the top floor. Everything was fine. But there were two stairs on the landing, and as I walked over them, I couldn’t breathe. It was like there was no oxygen.
I did it again, and the same thing happened at exactly the same spot. I went downstairs and asked the mother, “When you say he sat on the top floor, do you mean on the stair in the middle of the landing?”’ She said, “Yes, that’s exactly where my son said the man was”.’
When a ‘person’ is seen (a step up from items moving on their own), it takes a bit more work to banish them. Bray will again bless the house with holy water, but he also celebrates the Eucharist, the Anglican version of the Catholic Mass, with bread and wine and the most sacred Latin prayers. ‘When I went to the top floor afterwards, I could breathe again,’ Bray says. It’s one of the only times on the job he’s been truly scared.
There are times in people’s lives when they’re more likely to experience hauntings. ‘Poltergeist activity is usually caused by stress,’ says Bray. ‘Negative energy builds up and then it’s like static electricity – it must ground itself.’ He says teenagers are vulnerable as they struggle to express themselves, as well as people undergoing treatment for severe illness and those in the early stages of dementia. Spiritual activity is more likely during people’s dying days, and Bray says most care-home residents and workers have stories of ‘slightly odd’ occurrences. ‘These people have so many feelings bottled up, and that energy grows and grows and it has to release itself somewhere.’
These goings-on aren’t necessarily evil, but they’re certainly ‘spooky’, Bray says. One of the worst involved a parishioner needing help for her mum, who felt like she had rats inside her. ‘She’d lie in bed, and she could almost see the rats under her bedclothes and feel them eating her insides.’ He blessed the house and only after did the daughter reveal the mum was waiting for a cancer diagnosis. ‘At that point, it made sense,’ Bray says. ‘The poltergeist sensations were her extreme reaction to cancer, something that eats you inside. That fear has externalised and created these psychokinetic effects.’
Weird enough in itself, but Bray remembers one particularly chilling detail from that day. ‘I was standing in the kitchen with the holy water in front of me and the lights above me just started going out.’ The daughter, oddly, seemed relaxed, and said it was probably just a dodgy bulb, but Bray wasn’t convinced: ‘It was exactly the time I started to say the prayer.’
Fans of The Exorcist needn’t get too het up, though. Bray says possession – in which people become a vessel for an evil force, as in the film – is ‘vanishingly rare’. (He does get calls from people suggesting someone they know is possessed, he says. Usually it’s their mother-in-law.) And whatever these spirits are, Bray doesn’t think they’re ‘evil’, just manifestations of anxieties within us. ‘How do we keep them away?’ I ask, conscious of the walk home through the cathedral graveyard in the dark. ‘You have to acknowledge it, to release the tension,’ says Bray. ‘If you can talk about what’s causing the supernatural activity, or even laugh at what’s happening, you defuse all that built-up energy. You make it go away.’
Deliverance by Jason Bray is published by Coronet, £10.99. To order a copy for £9.34 until 15 December, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.