The other X Files

I see that there's to be a new tv series brought to us via the Catholic church and the Discovery channel ... The Exorcist Files.

Discovery, Catholic Church behind exorcism series

(EW.com) -- Discovery Channel is teaming with the Vatican for an unprecedented new series hunting the deadliest catch of all: Demons.

"The Exorcist Files" will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican's case files, as well as interviews with the organization's top exorcists -- religious experts who are rarely seen on television. "The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we're not going to try to tell people what to think," says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting.

Bunting says the investigators believe a demon can inhabit an inanimate object (like a home) or a person. The network executive says he was initially skeptical when first meeting the team but was won over after more than three hours of talks. "The work these folks do, and their conviction in their beliefs, make for fascinating stories," Bunting says ...

Holy mackerel! :(

This reminded me of a past X-Files episode, The Calusari, in which a little Romanian-American boy was believed to be possessed. What was interesting about the episode was the reference to the Căluşari, who were called upon by the mother of the boy to act as exorcists. Here's some of what Wikipedia says of them .....

The Căluşari (Romanian pronunciation: [kəluˈʃarʲ]) were the members of a Romanian fraternal secret society who practiced a ritual acrobatic dance known as the căluş .... Due to their connection with the fairies, the Calusari were believed to be able to cure the victims of fairies and for around two weeks - from three weeks after Easter till Whitsunday - would travel to all the local communities where they would dance, accompanied by a few fiddlers, in order to do so ...

I can appreciate demonic possession as fiction, especially when it's interestingly done as in The X-Files, but to see the church involved in a reality exorcism tv series just makes me feel somewhere between sad and disturbed.