In the spirit of the Halloween season, Hollywood is doing their part to keep audiences scared, paranormal shows on TV are becoming extremely popular, and obsession with the unknown and unexplained is at an all-time high. Emerging from the manufactured and the camp is real-life exorcist Rachel Stavis. Keeping her abilities undercover and by word of mouth, she has come out, so to speak, to share her story and mental health awareness with the world. Some people call them demons, and some people call them entities, but yes, according to Rachel, they are real and they are everywhere. She is the only non-denominational exorcist with her level of power and whether or not you believe in what she does or what she sees, her views on life can serve as inspiration for anyone as she talks about coming to understand the negative energy within, how it can manifest itself from grief, trauma, and life’s experiences, and how raising your frequencies are instrumental in improving your physical and mental health.
She has over 10,000 cases on record and has worked with rockstars, Oscar winners, politicians, members of royal families, cult survivors, molestation victims, those suffering from addiction, old and young, and the list goes on, her healing room has seen the gambit. She has also been called in to rid negative energies from movie sets and assumed haunted spaces. A number of celebrities have endorsed her power to exorcise and her life story up to this point has been cataloged in her book, Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of A Modern Exorcist, now being developed as a film. She is part of the queer community which has given her a unique perspective into the world of exorcism. Her field of work may come with religious stigma and dark assumptions, but she is a source of high vibration, optimism, and light as she has helped people on their journey in life, love, health, career, healing, and holistic spiritual health. She is not the exorcist that movies are made of.
Rachel sees dark entities affix themselves to people in a variety of ways. She can visualize these demons, or entities, physically. Different entities have different appearances, and she’s been able to catalog them according to the level of severity and ways they affect a person. She has been seeing these entities since she was a kid.
I think this was a very early realization for me because I would often talk about “monsters” everywhere. I was born with the ability to see entities with my eyes. I see them almost as clearly as everybody. At a certain point growing up, I learned that other people didn’t see these same “monsters” and that it was something odd about me. For me, it just never went away. And I learned very quickly that if you talk about this, you’re crazy. My mother was a very difficult woman, so she was like, you don’t want to be weirder than you already are. And so I stopped talking about it and I tried to push that sight out, you know, as much as possible. I didn’t think it was a gift at that time, but as I started using this ability to help people, I realized it was.
It wasn’t until Rachel was in her 30s that she started to embrace her abilities after a pivotal moment occurred by chance, or maybe not so chance.
I had one of those weeks where it was just so many stressors at once, and then I had a fender bender. It wasn’t life-altering or anything. Like you hear where someone’s like having this deep, like shamanic work or whatever, it was literally a fender bender. I could not suppress my sight anymore. So now I was seeing entities everywhere. I always say it started sort of with the person who’s screaming on the corner at nothing. I could now see what they were screaming at and couldn’t push it away. I was at that point that I sat down with a scotch and was like, okay, y’all up there, whoever gave this to me, either I’m checking myself in or you’re going to tell me what to do here. And obviously, we went the other direction and here we are 10,000 cases later.
Without a handbook or instruction, she started forming her own ritual, using her intuition on how best to exorcise people of their demons. The fact is every religion has its own process in place to perform an exorcism. The Vatican first established its ritual in 1612 and inexplicably updated it in 1999. And while Rachel continues to educate herself on practices and philosophies, her process remains her own. She is adamant about keeping her view of exorcism and ritual non-denominational.
My exorcism work is for everyone. Religion, quite frankly, is not. There are many people who have experienced abuse, discrimination, and pain from organized religion, and I want people to feel safe when they come to me. I work with all High Beings – what people commonly refer to as angels – and they have no religious affiliation, they just want to help people as well. So, I consider my practice spiritual, but without the trauma. I didn’t want to pick up anything from anywhere else. I wanted it to be authentic and anyone who knows me or follows me knows that I’m authenticity above everything else. I was never in it for any fame or fortune or notoriety or any of that. In fact, I stayed away from that for a really long time.
She started off helping friends in need, those who were being weighed down by the entities that latched on to their struggles and lower frequencies. But she did keep it a secret, only recently making her experiences public.
I honestly never intended to come out of the broom closet, but here I am! I was very happy just being word of mouth and maybe working with four people and two spaces a month. But you truly can’t hide in the shadows forever, and people started spreading the word. From there I was offered an opportunity to write my memoir – and even then, I wasn’t sure. Because this is a strange thing to tell the world. But my desire to help more people and share the information won out, and now I’m glad it did.
Though Rachel does not subscribe to a religion, she does connect and draws her ability from what she calls “Spirit.”
My catchall word is Spirit or Source. Sometimes I interchange them, but that’s everything – all the big leagues. All the things that we call spirit guides, ascended masters, high beings, God, even, however you think about it that is all spirit for me. Obviously, in different religions, we have different kinds of high beings. Different things like Christ and so on and so forth, without getting too religious, everybody has a thing, right? People don’t like to hear this, but high beings work together. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, and it doesn’t matter what religion worships what being, they all work together, and everybody hates that, especially when they’re super religious. But that’s the truth. All these high beings that you’ve never even heard of, or probably that you were taught to dislike, or you think they’re not real will also be helping. It’s all just a team effort.
How has being connected to Spirit and higher shaped her outlook on the afterlife and spirituality?
Well, firstly, deceased people never stop talking! They LOVE when people can hear them – sometimes it’s annoying. Honestly, though it’s really been a comfort. Such a strange thing to say – seeing monsters all my life has been comforting. I guess I mean it’s everything else I can see, hear, and feel – that we absolutely do go on in spirit (including animals, because everyone wants to know), we all have a divine purpose, even when we can’t see it yet, and there are beings “out there” that want to help us and stay connected.
If you believe in what Rachel does, great. If not, great. She doesn’t care. She maintains that regardless of what you believe, she will get the entity out. In her upcoming second book, she will be covering her most extreme cases, knowing there will be doubters.
I’ll get so many comments saying I don’t believe this. I’m like, I don’t care. I’m not a church. I’m not trying to convert you. Nobody’s going to believe this because it’s easier for people not to. I don’t find that offensive. I understand that you don’t want to believe this is real. I completely understand. It doesn’t stop my work, but also it’s not the life I live. I don’t get the luxury of just ignoring it.
Though Rachel has a certain look and style, she does not look like the exorcist you see on film. She also doesn’t walk around with a black veil or Holy Water.
I think people expect me to be extremely dark because I work in darkness all the time. But I don’t consider myself dark at all, totally the opposite! And when it comes to the work, I think people don’t realize that exorcism isn’t always “movie style” entities (though I exorcise those as well!). Sometimes it’s much smaller, more subtle things – like infertility, feeling blocked or stuck – and even addiction.
According to Rachel, being in tune with yourself is the number one way to understand and know when an entity is present in your life. Sudden mood shifts, darker thoughts, and behavioral changes are all indications that something not so welcome may have affixed itself to you. Manifestations like what we’ve seen in the movie The Exorcist are rare. Rachel states that everyday demon attacks latch on to your lower frequencies – depression, addiction, anxiety – and amplify them. An entity can’t make you commit suicide but can elevate those thoughts to put it within your reach.
Know yourself. Be conscious and aware of how you feel in your body and spirit. When something feels “off” to you, do the work to raise your frequency by being kind to yourself and others, burning copal and frankincense, getting into nature, and connecting to the Spirit! Entities can’t attach to someone’s high frequency because there’s nothing to feed off of, so let’s all aspire to that. I hate to say this, but 80-something percent of everyone walking around has an entity or has had one at some point in their life.
According to Rachel, we all have the ability to connect and while she may have the upper hand, we can all take a moment and explore our spirituality. Though she is not a medium, connecting with the deceased is a big part of her job. Loved ones who have passed, ancestors we’ve never met, and figures from the afterlife come through to help in Rachel’s exorcisms. But speaking to the dead is not an ability special to just Rachel.
I think the best thing everyone can do, and I wish everyone would do it, is open up their ability. There are a few Source-given rights to people when they come in, and that is the ability to speak to your spirit guys, the ability to speak to deceased loved ones, and the ability to speak to Spirit as a whole. A lot of people don’t believe that because, in this world, we don’t believe in these things. If you notice when children come in, they’re always singing, they’re always talking to people who aren’t there. It’s because they know how to raise their frequency very easily. It’s a right. We know how to do that. But then as we get older, we’re taught to forget about this stuff. What I want people to do is open up their abilities again. Because oftentimes grief is so terrible for people that it can really make you change. You could be like, I lost this person, or I lost whatever, someone close to me, and now I’m hard now and I’m bitter and I hate everyone, I hate everything. It’s so sad to me because if they just did a few simple things to start practicing that opening up, they would find that that person is there. You know? When we talk about most deceased people, they’re not stuck anywhere. They go back and forth. You can call on them. They also have their own things to do, but they will be there if you want them to. So, if you’re like, hey, I really want to open up my abilities, I really want to try this, I really want to hear from you, they listen to that. It’s all about saying, I’m ready, I’m open, let’s go.
Rachel’s queer identity is also something she has embraced later in life.
What’s weird is that I’ve always known and, like seeing entities, thought absolutely nothing about it until someone told me otherwise. So I think like everything else, I didn’t really speak about it. I wanted to fit in and be “normal,” but let’s be real – that was never going to be my path anyway!
How does being queer affect her gift and abilities?
Honestly, I think it makes me more empathic, and maybe a bit more fiery. Being who I am and having the experiences I’ve had, plus seeing and experiencing what others in the community go through, makes me want to fight harder for people. For us. And mother harder for us, too.
Rachel is recently married, with a wedding that looked like it was out of a movie, meshing all the elements of Rachel’s life. How does she maintain a healthy relationship while surrounded by the world of exorcism?
I literally just got married, so I guess we’ll see! But even when dating, I brought it up very quickly, because you can’t be with me without paranormal activity. It’s impossible. Things fly off shelves, there’s a ghost cocktail party in my house at 3 am several times per week (absolutely true), and I have entity visitations that my partner has experienced as well. So, I guess love me, love my demons.
And Rachel’s message to the queer community?
Don’t listen to the bullshit, low-frequency people in this world who claim they speak for “God” – they DO NOT. I am someone who speaks directly to Spirit every single day, so I’m going to shut up and simply share what Spirit truly wants to say directly to you:
“You are moving in the world exactly as you are meant to be. You are perfect. You are beautiful. You are divine. And you are loved.”
Sister of Darkness is available wherever you buy books.
Follow Rachel on IG: @RHStavis
Last modified: October 18, 2024