Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans (Paperback)

by Malachi Martin (Author) "When the search party reached the disused grain store known locally as Puh-Chi (One Window), the bombing of Nanking was at its height..." (more)
Key Phrases: diocesan exorcist, alpha layer, higher prayer, New York, Uncle Ponto, Father David (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post
"In the barrage of books on possession and exorcism, this is undoubtedly the most authoritative and convincing."

Review
"Martin's polished contemporary sense of traditional theology entices even the skeptical.... Stunningly pertinent ...Will set you thinking-and thinking-and thinking." -- -- Detroit News

"Martin is above all serious. He is not speaking about madness, about illusions or the irrational, but about the real beyond all reason.... He presents exorcism as ... a titanic clash of wills that threatens the lives, the sanity, even the souls of all attending." -- Newsweek

"Martin's polished contemporary sense of traditional theology entices even the skeptical.... Stunningly pertinent ...Will set you thinking-and thinking-and thinking." -- Detroit News

"The most shattering book on demonic possession isn't fiction at all but Malachi Martin's spellbinding work of interpretive reporting." -- New York (Sunday) Daily News

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (November 20, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006065337X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060653378
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (149 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,441 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece of Religious Reporting by a Masterful Author and Priest, October 27, 2005

By	Rick (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews

A Masterpiece of Spiritual Insight by a Masterful Writer and Priest, October 27, 2005
Reviewer: Rick (Beijing, China) - See all my reviews


First, a confession: I am on the verge of becoming a member of that nearly lost legion--the reborn Roman Catholic. Second, a minor revelation: this book brought me back to the Faith. Rather than scare the reader into submission to the Will of God, Father Martin stirs one's dormant and perhaps deeply buried awareness of what is altogether pure and holy and ultimately victorious in the seemingly eternal struggle between Good and Evil. In an age of jaded youth media culture, comedians and pundits who relish in their cynicism, and unabated Hollywood hedonism, it is a breath of fresh air after the rain to read and ponder on Martin's accounts of personal travail and utter spiritual anguish.

This is not an "easy read;" it requires concentration and an appreciation for intricate prose style. In five lengthy and detailed case studies, written in stirring narrative style, the author carefully chronicles the slow descent of otherwise unusually clever, sensitive, and gifted people into the pit of demonic possession. Father Martin does not sensationalize, nor does he intend to appeal to the reader's emotions. Nor does he harangue or cajole or attempt to make us feel guilty. Instead, his very sure hand and deft writing leads us to realize that whether we wish to confront it or not, evil and its dark kingdom of demons thrives in this soiled earthly domain, guised and cunning but here nonetheless.

Some have attempted since the untimely death of the author to dismiss him as a fraud or, worse yet, one possessed himself. He has been variously branded an adulterer and hypocrite by his detractors and depicted as something of a pariah in his own Church. Martin, however, despite any human frailities, led the truly elusive Examined Life. He intimately understood the workings of the Church and its leadership in the Vatican, and was for some time a participant in some of its most important proceedings. Moreover, the author was granted permission to leave the Jesuits
by the then Pope and to pursue a more worldly path of literary exploration which led him to the conservative side of his Faith. This conversion, as it were, put him at variance with the popular surge toward greater secularism in the Church following the Second Vatican Council. And the discerning reader of those negative reviews posted here would do well to read the eulogy by Father Fiore, a longtime friend, and to consider Martin's book within the period in which it was originally published.

When the mainstream media plunged into a pseudo-psychological exploration of exorcism following the box office success of the screen adaptation of Blatty's novel, "The Exorcist," Martin attempted to set the record straight--or at least very sober. The resulting work, this book, enabled the actual records (including taped recordings and extensive interviews) to come to the fore, albeit in flourishes of paraphrase, the handiwork of a master storyteller in the best sense of that word.

Yes, Father Martin ascends the pulpit from time to time in this book but not during the course of the retelling of the events of those who became possessed. He reserves personal commentary for the introductory and concluding chapters, where his prose is at its most eloquent and impassioned.

If you read this book with an open mind and heart, regardless of whether you are Christian or, more narrowly, Catholic, you will at least discover why so many parishioners wholeheartedly believe that we are literally in a fight for our lives or, more accurately, our souls.

In his lifetime, Father Martin was hounded by celebrity-seekers, including women who attempted to frame him; he was also an object of ridicule within the extremely liberal fringe of the Jesuits, about whom he had written a scathing indictment. And he was scorned in much of the leftist British press, inclined to take an anti-Irish, and hence anti-Catholic, stance in its reportage on the author, including a would-be obituary in The Guardian. Beware, too, those who claim that reading this book is a sinful indulgence and a twisted tinkering with the satanic. Far from it: "Hostage to the Devil" is spiritually fulfilling and uplifting. The hostage the devil seeks is not the perfectly possessed or those vulnerable to his tricks and deceits but the very priests who, like Martin, risk life and limb and sometimes faith to wrestle with him.

Never have I read such a compelling account of spiritual odyssey and perhaps you will feel the same. Buy it to own and read and reread and contemplate in all the precious years ahead.

204 of 231 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Staggering Examination of Evil Merits Grave Attention!, October 24, 1999

By A Customer

Father (Dr.) Malachi Martin's staggering examination of evil--HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL--merits serious, grave, and immediate attention by the mental health establishment, religious institutions, and for that matter, any person who values spiritual growth, psychological health, salvation, or recognizes the supreme worth of a single, individual soul.

Fr. Martin's work--based on the very hellacious experiences of five Exorcists and their demonically-possessed victims--affirms as truth his own encounters with the demonic, as well as those of modern-day health professionals such as the imminent Psychiatrist, Dr. M. Scott Peck (who dedicated an entire chapter to this subject in his ground-breaking, best seller THE PEOPLE OF THE LIE).

HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL paints a vicious, vivid picture of the unmitigated existential dislocation that possession wreaks, in the lives of its victims, as it intensifies in stages--manifesting an attendant array of bizarre, preternatural phenomena that leaves no one in the vicinity of the afflicted unaffected--and completes its dark process of spiritual disintegration in the nefarious nadir of "Perfect Possession."

The book also delineates the ever-widening circle of despair and confusion that often encompasses those who must suffer by association with, or close proximity to the demonized, as they come to exhibit increased fluctuation of mood, change of personality, and loss of humanness, in their progressive "take over" by evil spirit.

On a macro level, Martin's work sucessfully confirms, sustains, and supplements--with depth of empirical factuality and verifiable accuracy--the universal, timeless, veracity of the Bible's accounts of the Devil and his fallen angels, as personal, intelligent, evil beings bent on man's destruction. It also explores the many twisted forms and faces that their moral, religious, and aesthetic perversions of truth manifest as the lie, and are used to co-opt men into joining them in their continuous rebellion against the Creator.

On a micro level, HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL demonstrates the weaknesses and vulnerabilities within us all--as innate components of our imperfect, carnal, human nature--and how the predatory demons utilize these deficiencies to captilize on the frailties of the flesh, and gain our attention through fascination of the senses. Once they have our attention, they can attempt to fixate our thoughts on the glittering prize of a sinful pleasure.

By willfully acting on these thoughts we committ sin. The more we sin, the easier it becomes and the harder it is to do good. Eventually we no longer recognize sin as the transgression it is, or are rendered too lazy or incapable of resisting its allures. The distinction between good and evil blurs until finally, we conclude that evil does not exist because we cannot see it. Actually it is we who become spiritually blind to its reality. We may then concur that we are under no obligation to resist the temptation to sin because their is no such thing: "it's all in the mind."

In essence, we are disarmed against the "wickedness and snares of the Devil," and he may gain a toehold...then, perchance, a foothold on our souls. The will to resist evil falls away as a reality because the reality of evil is thought not to exist. But so does the terra firma of our faith, our moral high ground, and eventually, reality itself slips into the abyss...till we haven't a leg to stand on. This is the fertile soil in which evil takes root. Possession is its fruit!

Martin demonstrates how the process of possession varies considerably, depending on one's unique personal, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual disposition and/or pre-dispositions, and how the demonic focuses its dark energies on a person's better, positive, personal qualities (gifts as we Christians say) as one of its strategems to approach someone from the good or "light" side and catch him/her unaware. Hence, the demonic often comes as what St. Paul terms "...an Angel of Light."

What should be a fully human, healthy and continuous willingness to grow spiritually through virtue and consistent acts of selflessness (known as the "Syndrome of Growth" or Biophilous Personality) is replaced by an evil, alien, anti/unhuman (St. Ignatius calls the Devil "the enemy of human nature") and dynamic, downward transcendence into the utter willfulness of a self-centered-self, and the ensuing moral vacuity of unbridled selfishness (known as the "Syndrome of Decay" or Necrophilous Personality, as Erich Fromm termed it).

Such complete, interior desolation is truly a living replication of the Devil's very own suffering caused by his self-imposed exile from truth. It is also a reflection of this once-brightest angel, in his original sin of rebellion --through pride--against the One, True, Living, God. It is professed with his dark and pensive plaint, whose cold cosmic throes of spiritual death unfold--like shockwaves from a stone thrown in a lake reverberate--through the the boundless expanse of the universe, in words of hate: "I will not serve!" One cannot serve (love) one's fellow man or God without accepting his will; hence, the prayer, "Thy will (not my will) be done."

In the final analysis, the success of HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL lies in the hope it offers mankind: that in our brief sojourn here on earth, it is in faith, through Christ, that we are able to freely explore the wide-open airy vistas of our own inner-spirit, and through Grace that we can ultimately transcend time and space--to apprehend the totality of Truth in eternity--and finally, experience the expansive mysteries of God's loving being, forever, face-to-face!

The choice is yours, mine, ours: good or evil; God or the Devil...

Many thanks to the late Father Malachi Martin for the courage to write HOSTAGE TO THE DEVIL.

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, thorough, revealing, disturbing., July 10, 2001

By A Customer

I picked this book up because Scott Peck recommended it in his book, "People of the Lie." Martin describes the stories after having extensively interviewed everyone involved, even those who have been out of the victims' lives for years. The result is a book of unusual insight, scope, and drama. It paints a frightening picture of the seduction, subtlety, and danger of evil spirits. I have no background in possession. Haven't ever even seen "The Exorcist," but this book has provided me with a new awareness of the force of evil in the world and respect and thankfulness for those who fight it. As Peck said, I am left with more questions than answers. But the book is worth being read by anyone with interest and an open mind. The basic point seems to be that evil will use anything, our minds, egos, intellect, and even our desire for connection with God to get a foothold inside us. Beware of anything that asks you to deny the God of Love and Compassion. Judgment, denial of our dependence on a benevolent God, individualism, atheism, hatred, and most disturbingly, Satanism, are all expressions of evil in the world. Beware of intellectualism that denies the soul. Most importantly, deny a sense of a spirit or voice that asks you to invite it in, "marry" it, or surrender. The power and protection in these situations seems to be Jesus. I'm not a practicing Christian, myself, but this book has made me take a hard look at my spiritual path over the last eighteen years. Finally, never take on evil or a possessed person yourself. It will destroy you. Seek out a Catholic exorcist who will use the power of God and Jesus to banish the spirit. Another reason to read this book is the beautiful prose. Martin's writing reaches a level few authors even aspire to attain. His eloquent prose touches and inspires.