ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I examine Third Wave deliverance ministry and its accompanying demonology through the gothic trope of haunting. The Third Wave is a form of Protestant Evangelicalism—especially prominent in, but not exclusive to, the United States—that concerns itself with removing demons from human bodies, material objects, buildings, places, and even entire geographical regions of the world. Practitioners frequently come from Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Evangelicalism and call their demon fighting a form of “spiritual warfare.” I am interested in how the Third Wave’s demons—like ghosts—haunt the present because of what has happened in the past. According to the Third Wave Evangelical worldview, a person’s sinful past activities and/or the generational curses they have inherited create “openings” and “invitations” for individuals to become subject to demonization. The movement’s exorcistic rituals of demonic deliverance thus become methods for banishing demons and breaking historically inculcated forces of habit. In effect, the exorcisms of spiritual warfare function for practitioners as “gothic therapeutic” that seeks to banish what was once repressed, but is now a returning past.
