My Demonic Experiences: Why You Don't Dance With The Devil

From the occult to redemption

The occult has never been more culturally normalized. Entertainment glorifies it, social media glamorizes it, and young people experiment with spiritual practices that promise power and enlightenment. But spiritual warfare is real. Demons are real. And the cost of dabbling in darkness is higher than anyone wants to admit.

I've been asked to write about my occult past and demonic experiences and how I found God again. To understand this story, you need context: I survived childhood abuse under a mother who twisted Christianity into something unrecognizable. She died when I was 14. I'm autistic, was isolated from peers, homeschooled, and utterly unprepared for the world.

When you're that broken and that lost, you're vulnerable. I got into really bad things, not because I was evil, but because I was hurt and confused. This is my testimony of what happened, and how God refused to let me go. Fair warning — parts of this are hard: abuse, self-harm, real spiritual darkness.

When the Battle Began

We lived on the family farm until I was about four. One day, walking from the kitchen to the living room, I let out a scream that my mother said was blood-curdling. She came running and found me at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. She didn’t see anything, but I sure did. A demonic female figure at the top of the stairs zeroed in on me, mumbling and wanting me to come to it. 

After that, we experienced many things in that house. Once, we left the living room and heard loud banging; when we went back, it was destroyed, walls and pictures included. Another time, I watched kitchen chairs slide out from the table on their own and move across the floor to the wall. I also remember trying to put things in front of my door at night to keep “them” out.

The Escalation - Preteen Years

For a while, nothing major happened that I remember. We’d moved several times by this point. I don’t recall which house this was, but things started coming back, at first just once in a while. A black, shadowed entity would stare at me from the corner, then from the foot of my bed, until it progressed to pinning me down one night.

Most people would call this a nightmare, but I was wide awake. I hadn’t even gotten into bed yet. I’d barely walked into my room when I was thrown into the air, hit the ceiling, and then landed across the bed with this heavy black figure on top of me, snarling, “Come to me, come to me, come to me,” over and over inches from my face.

That encounter left bruises, and I was so terrified I crawled into the closet, buried myself under whatever I could find, and stayed awake crying through the night. After that, strange things began happening in the house (objects moving, noises, cold spots), but it never attacked me like that again. Every so often, though, I’d still see it during the day, watching through the window at different hours, just standing there and looking at me.

We moved a few more times and then, eventually, to our first real home, where I’d end up living the longest. As the moving truck was unloaded and people helped carry things inside, I remember looking at the house and knowing something was in it. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t have to.

As we were unloading, a couple of us were inside doing different things when chaos erupted upstairs. My dad and a couple of the men headed up cautiously, and true to form, I snuck in behind them. Every box and piece of furniture we’d put up there had been tossed, contents dumped out and broken, and the attic door stood wide open.

I got yelled at to get out of there, and trust me — I did. The men came down and told us kids and women, to wait outside. One of them turned out to be a pastor, and he, my father, and two others prayed before going back in to deal with whatever was in that house. After that, things stayed quiet for a long time. The place felt peaceful again, at least in terms of anything demonic.

The Choice That Changed Everything - Teens

I had my first and only so‑called “alien” encounter. (aka a demonic one for anyone wondering). It scared me so badly I peed myself. I was with two friends, and we tore back to my house in a panic. My dad didn’t see it, but he saw us, and he still remembers the way we came running and the fear on our faces.

After that, things took a turn. I started having regular encounters again, seeing demonic entities, and dealing with objects moving and noises in the house. The nightmares were the worst; they left bruises and scratches in places you physically can’t reach on your own. Around that time, a boyfriend and his friend introduced me to occult practices, and that became the starting point of my occult years.

Not being too bright at the time, I tried a Ouija board with friends and learned how to channel these things, talk to them, and get them to respond. Before long, I was holding late‑night séances in the woods next to our property.

Some Memories Never Leave You

I remember one night vividly. There were six of us in the woods doing our usual thing when something far bigger than anything I’d ever encountered showed up. Even now, it amazes me that no one was hurt worse. That night reminds me just how serious the situation was and how much danger I put myself and the others in. I am responsible for that, and it humbles me.

The first thing it did was talk. I couldn’t understand the language, but it was talking. Real words, real sentences, real inflection, just not one I recognized. That went on for what felt like a couple of minutes, but was honestly probably less than a minute. 

By then, I was scared, like deep down in the pit of my colon scared. And then my dumb a$$ asked it for a sign. It chose my finger, of all things. My hand and arm wouldn’t move, but my third finger was yanked straight up and bent backward, and later I found a puncture-type wound in my hand.

Then it went after my friends before I could scream. One friend was clawed across his back, another had her shirt sleeve nearly torn off and her arm, wrist, and hand scratched, and another was hit so hard they flopped to the ground. Then we heard what sounded like dogs coming at us. We helped up the one friend and ran like the dickens. When we got back out on the road, we thought it was over.

Chased By Darkness

Walking back to our cars, we started to hear heavy foot stomps behind us. A couple of us looked back and saw this huge black figure coming at us. We all ran and got into vehicles. This next part is insane; if it hadn’t happened to me, I would be skeptical. If you don’t think demons have power, you’re so freaking wrong.

I ran to my car and jumped into the driver’s seat while a couple of friends piled in behind me. As I tried to start it, something slammed into the back of the car hard enough to move the back end into the ditch. I was frantic and crying; they were yelling at me to go, but the key wouldn’t turn. When it finally did, and I was about to hit the gas, I froze. We saw a thick, black, freezing-cold mass moving inside the car. No one moved; I don’t even think I was breathing. 

The next thing I knew was my foot was forced off the brake, I was physically shoved into my door and cracked my head on the window so hard I was bleeding, and the gas pedal was pushed to the floor. We went flying toward the other ditch. If I hadn’t turned the wheel when I did and hadn't had those few seconds of delay because the back end of the car was in the ditch, we would have hit a tree. 

I remember screaming, “God, help us!” Then it was gone, just like that, and I had control of my car back. I will never forget what that felt like. The anger, the hatred, that stench, and the physical strength it had. It practically sat itself on my lap and tried to take over my car.

The Internal War

After that, I cooled it a bit, but trust me, I still got into things later. This is also when I started to look at the Bible more on my own, not what my mother had “taught” me. Oh, I still get things screwed up, though.

But even then, I still remembered my first encounter with God. I always knew He was real, that Scripture was true, and that He was with me. I just didn’t understand yet, and I was constantly fighting what the secular world taught me against what the Bible said, all while trying to make sense of it with an autistic, traumatized mind. Frankly, it sucked.

📖 Recommended Read: The Day God Shielded My Mind tells you about the moment God shielded my mind as a child and how He became the anchor that kept me grounded through this recollection.

I dropped out of high school and graduated through a homeschool program, moved in with my boyfriend, and got a job waitressing. By then, I believed in God more firmly, but I was still deeply traumatized and searching for answers. One day, bored and wandering around town, I found a ceramic shop where you could buy a piece and paint it right there. I became friends with the people who worked there and eventually learned they practiced “white” witchcraft, as they called it.

And Down Again I Went

During those years, I didn’t experience the physical severity of what I had before, but I did experience A LOT of the “smaller” things again, like seeing demonic entities, things being moved around, and nightmares, a lot of nightmares. I also started having “premonitions” that became scarily accurate in very demonic ways.

I participated in and conducted rituals, dated both men and women, practiced blood magic, spell casting, did seances, read tarot cards, used scrying, and consumed a lot of pot and alcohol. This is also when a hard internal struggle began in me. 

There was something in me that refused to let go of God or the Bible. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I kept trying to justify it, kept trying to blend God and the occult together. Looking back, I recognize that internal struggle as conviction. What I was diving into felt like taking a rusted cheese grater to my soul. Because of this and my openly questioning things, I was challenged on refusing to turn completely away from God by coven members and ultimately attacked and assaulted for it. 

Truth Broke Through

After that, I sat back and saw everything for what it truly was. My eyes were opened to the fact that God did not exist to them, but He existed in me, and I couldn’t walk away from Him.

I slowly started pulling myself away from that group. I had just started dating my daughter’s father around the same time, and when we moved, it helped put distance between me and all of that.

I still dabbled, still did things, but inside I was miserable. Part of me wanted to hand everything back over to God, but the New Age ideas kept telling me that I could create my own reality. The battle inside me was horrifying and exhausting.

When I became pregnant, everything in me shifted. I knew she’d be a girl, and even though I was young and unmarried, I was absolutely set on being her mother. I knew she would shape the rest of my life, and that certainty came from God. She was my everything, and feeling my love for her helped me understand God’s love for me. Despite everything I had done.

Choosing God Over Darkness

I still struggled, though. It took me a long time to realize I couldn’t stay friends with even the ones I considered “better” if I wanted God in my life, and one day I finally made that choice. I walked away from all of it. My daughter’s father was furious that I left the group completely, even though we weren’t together. At the same time, I was dating another girl, and I ended the relationship because I knew I was identifying with my trauma, not my biology.

I walked away from everything I had known for years, everything I thought was safe, and the people I had considered family. My ability to be a mother was attacked more than once because of walking away. I’d had postpartum depression and had admitted myself to the hospital twice because I was in such bad shape mentally, and that was used against me. But I chose God, medication, and therapy, not rituals and crystals; they did not like that.

I was investigated and found to be a good, stable mother, especially once I explained that I had just walked away from a toxic friend group and that my daughter’s father was angry at me for choosing help and peace instead of staying in that environment.

From Darkness to Authority

Those years were the darkest years of my life. I carried so much grief, anger, and hatred over what had happened to me as a child, deepened by spiritual darkness and demonic influence. It was also the period when I had two unsuccessful suicide attempts. The pull toward darkness was relentless, twisting and manipulating everything in me.

I started going back to church again and had my daughter dedicated. I was still far from who I am now and still had moments where I messed with things I shouldn't have, but over time I broke away from all of it. And in the years that followed, I raised a beautiful Christian young woman.

Many people will read this and assume I made it up or exaggerated it. I didn't. And if someone is skeptical, that's fine. It means you're at least thinking about what I've shared. These things really do happen to people, or we wouldn't have an entire entertainment industry built around them.

As much as God has kept an eye on me, so does satan. The fallout from my occult past still shows up in my life, and it's clear that the enemy loves to stir the pot around me. He's mighty pissed, not just because I walked away, but because of who I've become and what I write about. If you've read my work long enough, you know where I stand and that I don't give two hoots what any person tells me to be, believe, or do. I stand on Scripture and with God.

I wouldn't give up my past even if I had the chance. God used my occult past to train me, to equip me, to give me the authority to speak on these matters frankly and bluntly, without sugarcoating it or feeling shame. Because I lived through these experiences and more. And in a culture that's romanticizing spiritual darkness, someone needs to tell the truth about what it actually costs.

If you're in darkness right now, know this: God hasn't given up on you. He didn't give up on me, and I was far gone. The occult promises power, but only God offers freedom. I've lived both sides of that battlefield, and freedom wins every time.

And if you're a parent who thinks this could never happen to your child, that church attendance alone would protect them, you're wrong. I was going to church when I got into this stuff. My father had no idea what I was doing under his roof. Your kids are curious enough and young enough to play around with darkness without understanding the cost. Talk to them. Not to scare them, but to prepare them. Because someone needs to tell them the truth: the occult doesn't deliver what it promises, but God does.

© 2026 Jane Isley

If this testimony raised questions about spiritual darkness, demonic forces, or how to recognize spiritual battle, these articles explore what Scripture says and what these battles actually look like:

📖 New Testament Demons Are the Old Testament Elohim — Understanding what the Bible actually reveals about demonic entities and their nature.

📖 The Spiritual Battle I Never Saw Coming — Recognizing spiritual warfare when it's happening around you.

Press Ctrl + P (Windows) or Cmd + P (Mac) to print this article or save it as a PDF.