The Rev. Christopher Crotty once witnessed someone rise a couple of centimeters off the floor and, with the click of the heel, float 50 feet across the room.

Another time, a person who had not graduated high school instantly knew seven ancient languages. Once, after dabbling in witchcraft, a young person suddenly knew details of his parents’ dating life, things that happened before he was born. Additionally, his hands became very heavy, and he could barely lift his pinkie finger.

Those experiences, Crotty says, can be signs of demonic possession – the hostile takeover of the body by the devil.

As Halloween approaches, people have fun with the idea of hauntings and demon possession, but to some, it’s a very real, very serious phenomenon.

“This is a very real experience,” said Crotty, a Catholic priest at Fathers of Mercy in South Union.

Similarly, Pastor Mac Adwell says he has witnessed demonic possession. Adwell is pastor of Living Faith Church in Glasgow, a branch of the Church of God.

“I was called to a home where an individual had welts across their back where they’d been thrown up against the wall,” he said. “And they had welts on their body in places they couldn’t inflict on themselves.”

Another time, he worked with a woman who spoke in several different voices at the same time. In such instances, Adwell prays over the person and tries to drive the demon out of them with the word of God.

“It’s called an exorcism,” he said. “If they want to be set free, it makes it a whole lot easier.”

Others claim the demon can be cast out by reciting specific prayers, reading certain biblical passages and using the holy cross.

Some doctrines claim that certain actions – such as murder, direct contact with the occult, desecration of the body and sexual perversion – open the door for the devil to enter someone.

A possessed person may have hidden knowledge of certain things, experience abnormal strength or be absolutely disgusted by anything that is holy, such as Bibles and crosses.

When someone is possessed, the person is not simply angry, Crotty said.

“You have a sense of something greater,” he said, “and it’s more malevolent than your average human brokenness.”

But demons don’t only possess people. They can also dwell in places where a traumatic experience or anti-Christian movement has occurred – it’s where the concept of haunted houses come from, some say.

“The demon revels in the desecration of the body; the demon revels in despair; the demon revels in suicide. It shows that God for some reason didn’t treat them,” Crotty said. “So, he likes to remain in those places where he’s successful.”

Years ago, Crotty was called to a mobile home in the area, where a person claimed the blinds were opening and closing by themselves and items were bouncing across the floor. The tenant never went into the back room.

“The temperature in the rest of the mobile home was in the 80s,” Crotty said. “We walked into that room, and it was 65 degrees.”

He later discovered that the previous resident had molested children in that room, he said.

In several biblical scriptures, Jesus talks about demons, “and I take our sacred story for what it is,” said the Rev. Michael Blewett of Christ Episcopal Church in Bowling Green.

Over the decades, medical conditions such as epilepsy have explained many episodes that people once thought were demonic, “however, Jesus makes a distinction in the scriptures about curing the sick and casting out demons,” he said.

The Rev. Charles Zmudzinski of St. Helen Catholic Church in Glasgow has never witnessed a demon possession, but he believes that it can, and does, happen.

“These things do happen,” he said, citing several biblical scriptures that refer to the devil influencing people. “All this points to the fact that devils are not only in hell, they’re here on Earth … we human beings are kind of a prize in a battle between God and the devils.”