Norwegian Care Facility Reprimanded for Hiring Exorcist

A residential care home in Norway for developmentally disabled people has been reprimanded by a judge for hiring an exorcist. A few staff members reportedly brought in an exorcist after they got spooked by flickering lights; a dueling group of staff members, upset by what they saw as blasphemy, complained to the city.

According to English-language news outlet The Local, the staff at Madshaven residential care home contacted Bent Egil Albrechtsen in November, an artist and self-proclaimed (is there any other kind?) exorcist. It’s not clear what exactly spooked them besides the flickering lights; Albrechtsen told the Local, rather ominously, “When the employees worked there at night, they saw things and they were very scared. There were cosmic radiation lines there which were very bad because one of the lines went through a graveyard.”

An appalled group of Christian staffers called the city and got the exorcism quickly shut down. That was a bad decision, Albrechtsen said, considering that the staff at the facility had gotten sick when spirits “invaded their bodies.”

“When they asked me to stop, that’s when the problems really started,” he told the Local. “They didn’t understand that this was not a normal place. This building was so heavy in bad energies and spirits that I had to handle it in a special way. I had too many to send home to the other side, so when they asked me to stop I had to send the spirits back into the building.”

It all sounds like a very hostile work environment indeed, but a local politician issued a report slamming them for “poor judgment,” virtually ensuring that the whole place stays ghost-infested from top to bottom.

Routing paranormal beings is a surprisingly big business in Norway: the Local reported in 2011 that many clairvoyants were seeing an uptick in customers following a number of popular ghost-centered reality shows. Princess Martha Louise publicly holds exorcisms in collaboration with British medium Lisa Williams, claims to be able to talk to the dead, and co-founded something called “Soulspring,” which she referred to as an “angel school.” The school’s new management has since clarified that they don’t talk to the dead.