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WORK TITLE: Sister of Darkness
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 3/5/1980
WEBSITE:
CITY: Hollywood
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2004046054
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2004046054
HEADING: Stavis, R. H.
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670 __ |a Stavis, R. H. Daniel’s veil, 2004: |b ecip (R.H. Stavis)
670 __ |a Sister of darkness, 2018: |b title page (R.H. Stavis) about the author (Rachel Stavis is a screenwriter for film, television, and video games. She has published four horror novels under the name R.H. Stavis. She is also an exorcist)
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PERSONAL
Born March 5, 1980.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Screenwriter and novelist; also works as exorcist under name Rachel Stavis.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
R.H. Stavis, who also works under her full name Rachel Stavis, is the author of two novels and two graphic novels of horror fiction: Daniel’s Veil, Demons of Mercy, Adera: The Soul Stone, and Something Monstrous!, and of the memoir Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist. In the latter book Stavis, who works occasionally as what she calls a nondenominational exorcist, tells stories from her career removing demons from clients who seek her services. “Rachel has very different ideas about exorcism than say, the Catholic Church, which still has priests who perform exorcisms today,” said Eliza Thompson in the introduction to an interview with Stavis in Cosmopolitan. “For starters, Rachel doesn’t work within any particular religion, and she doesn’t call demons ‘demons’ — she calls them ‘entities,’ and she has her own taxonomy of various types.” “I don’t work in any specific religious or even spiritual way,” Stavis explained in an email interview found on the Paul Semel website. “I’m not affiliated with a church, I’m not a shaman, I don’t carry a specific belief, other than that of Spirit itself. That gives me the opportunity to see and work with everyone from all backgrounds, as well as work with High Beings of all kinds. It’s expansive, not limited.” “Rachel says she’s never been called out by anyone from the Catholic Church,” Thompson continued, “but she does occasionally work with clients who are nervous about accepting her help because she doesn’t work within their religion.”
In Sister of Darkness, Thompson explained, “Rachel recalls how she came to realize she had a talent for seeing entities and explains her philosophy on religion and the spirit world.” She describes her childhood as littered with visions of dark spirits and other images she couldn’t explain. They attached themselves to the people around her, feeding off them, she says,” declared Emily Gaudette in Newsweek. “Later, she discovered that entity removal and exorcism is simply something she’s good at. Her first exorcism, which she performed on her then-boyfriend at 31, was a rush job. But after she got her footing, she started performing two exorcisms a week. She doesn’t consider her skill as an exorcist as exceptional, and she says it certainly doesn’t give her any agency over others. She doesn’t even charge her clients.” “Mix a little churchly incense with some New Age ideas and perhaps some quiet Valley Girl talk,” stated a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “and the scene is set for this oddly entertaining … memoir.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Cosmopolitan, February 7, 2018, Eliza Thompson, “7 Things to Know about Being a Professional Exorcist.”
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2018, review of Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist.
Newsweek, February 7, 2018, Emily Gaudette, “Exorcist Rachel Stavis Wants to Remove Your Demons without the Power of Christ.”
ONLINE
Paul Semel, http://paulsemel.com/ (June 14, 2018), “Exclusive Interview: Sister of Darkness Writer R.H. Stavis.”
7 Things to Know About Being a Professional Exorcist
Rachel Stavis talks about her highly unusual career.
by ELIZA THOMPSON
FEB 7, 2018
108
DEY STREET/MICHELLE X STAR
When most people hear the word "exorcist," they tend to think of the movie of the same name, particularly the parts where Linda Blair is walking backwards down the stairs or throwing up green goo. No one knows this better than Rachel Stavis, a Los Angeles–based screenwriter and novelist who also works as an exorcist. Rachel has very different ideas about exorcism than say, the Catholic Church, which still has priests who perform exorcisms today. For starters, Rachel doesn't work within any particular religion, and she doesn't call demons "demons" — she calls them "entities," and she has her own taxonomy of various types, based on how seriously they affect the humans to which they're attached.
While the Church considers possession to be very rare, Rachel believes that almost everyone has had an entity attached to them at one time or another, some of which require an exorcism like the ones she performs in her Spirit Room, a cottage located behind her home. In her new book Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist, Rachel recalls how she came to realize she had a talent for seeing entities and explains her philosophy on religion and the spirit world. Here, Rachel talks about what her typical work day is like and shares tips on how to avoid having to call her in a crisis.
1. Exorcisms are so draining that she usually does them only one day a week.
"It’s easier for me to do six a day than to do one for six days because it takes so much work to get my own energy into a place where I can continuously do [them]," says Rachel. When I’m working on people, a typical day would be an eight-hour day of back-to-back people coming in, and then maybe the next two days literally not being able to move. Performing an exorcism is very exhausting — when it’s done I could eat a whole pizza, like I’ve run a marathon. I probably shouldn’t eat a whole pizza but I won’t say I’ve never eaten a whole pizza afterward."
2. Attachments are more common than you think they are, but they're still not responsible for every "haunting."
"Deceased people and entity, at least in my vernacular, are completely different," Rachel explains. "Deceased people are people who lived and then died; entity is what people call demons. They’ve never existed as people. Many buildings are simply haunted, simply have deceased people. That’s not something that I necessarily go in for. For me, I only go into buildings that have entity, so it’s a completely different situation."
One such building is the Cecil Hotel, the infamous L.A. hotel that served as the inspiration for American Horror Story: Hotel and made headlines in 2013 for the mysterious death of Elisa Lam. Rachel believes it is home to a powerful entity she calls a Realm Walker.
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3. Though Rachel doesn't subscribe to any religion, she does incorporate elements from organized religions and has plenty of religious clients.
Rachel says she's never been called out by anyone from the Catholic Church, but she does occasionally work with clients who are nervous about accepting her help because she doesn't work within their religion. "People come to an exorcist as a last resort because they’ve tried everything else," she explains. "When very religious people come in, sometimes they’ll want to talk to me first because they just feel so much anxiety about going outside of the church. They feel like they’re going against what they’ve been taught in order to heal themselves. What I try to explain to all people, but especially those people who are very panicked and nervous, is that it’s never going against god to try and heal yourself. All you’re trying to do is be better. How can that be bad? And even though I don’t work in any specific religion, I do work with high beings [from] all kinds of different religions."
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4. She never sees clients against their will.
If you think someone in your life needs an exorcism, you can't enlist Rachel's services for them. "It’s never a good situation," says Rachel. "Even though I will be able to remove the entity, if it’s against the person’s will, they’re just going to go out and attract something else because they weren’t ready to remove it. There are many different entities that form symbiotic relationships with their hosts, where people think it’s an angel or a deceased love one or an imaginary friend. They have to see the negative aspects of it before they’re willing to get rid of it."
DEY STREET
SHOP NOW Sister of Darkness, $18
5. Pets can sense things that you can't, but there are easy ways to comfort them.
Like some other people in esoteric, spirituality-based professions (pet psychics, for example), Rachel believes that pets are capable of seeing or at least sensing entity. "If you’re seeing that your pet is uncomfortable, there’s something going on in the space," says Rachel. "I always tell people when that happens that it’s time to burn something." She recommends things like palo santo and frankincense, which "raise the frequency of the vibration in the space."
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6. The best way to prevent attachment is positive thinking.
"We’re talking about exorcism and we’re talking about demons, but it’s very logical," Rachel explains. "Most people are walking around in an unconscious state. They don’t think about how many negative thoughts they have a day, or how they treat people, or what they say or what they do. They think it means nothing, but the reality is that we’re very powerful." Rachel recommends focusing on the positive even when the negative threatens to take over, because negativity increases the chances of attachment. "The lower your [energy] frequency, the more they see you, the more they're looking, the more they attach. The higher your frequency, the more grateful you feel, the nicer you are to yourself and to others, the better you are on the planet, and the less likely you are going to have attachment, because there’s nothing negative to feed so essentially the entity starves."
7. Even exorcists like Hello Kitty.
It's not all demons and exorcism at Rachel's house, which has a hot pink bar and is full of crystal chandeliers. "I love flowers," she says. "I love Hello Kitty. I have the most romantic bedroom...I’m very girly. Crystal chandeliers. I love The Mindy Project."
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Rachel Stavis has seen demons her entire life—she only started tearing them out of people a few years ago.
"My clients worry that they're losing their minds," the 38-year-old exorcist writes in her new memoir, Sister of Darkness. She says her exorcism service is usually the last resort for tormented people, and that 60 percent of her clientele are public figures, or "names you see in Variety." Before visiting her home-made safe space for expelling entities, most of Stavis's clients have already tried therapy, medication, drugs, energy healing or other methods of self-care. They've been trying to shake off fatigue, negative self-talk or the constant sense that something is wrong.
"The truth is that something has taken over these totally normal, sane individuals," Stavis writes. “What I call an entity—and what people through history have called a demon—has attached itself or burrowed into their bodies, and now it's [...] living off their fears, depression, anxieties."
Stavis is not alone in her beliefs. A 2017 study from Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion noted that 54 percent of Americans "absolutely believe that demons exist." That same study, though, found that believing in demons is one of the "strongest (negative) predictors of mental health.”
Exclusive Interview: Sister Of Darkness Writer R.H. Stavis
Despite what INXS may have insisted, not every single one of us has the devil inside. Which is good news for R.H. Stavis, an exorcist who also works as a screenwriter, and thus doesn’t have time to cast the demons out of your extended family. Though she did, oddly, find time to respond to my email questions about her new memoir, Sister Of Darkness: The Chronicles Of A Modern Exorcist (hardcover, Kindle), which she co-wrote with Sarah Durand.
R.H. Stavis Sister Of Darkness
Photo Credit: Michelle X Star
Sister Of Darkness is a memoir. But for those who don’t know you, who are you and what to do you?
My name is Rachel Stavis, and I am a nondenominational exorcist. I remove entities from people and places.
And what does ” nondenominational exorcist” mean?
I don’t work in any specific religious or even spiritual way. I’m not affiliated with a church, I’m not a shaman, I don’t carry a specific belief, other than that of Spirit itself. That gives me the opportunity to see and work with everyone from all backgrounds, as well as work with High Beings of all kinds. It’s expansive, not limited.
Memoirs take many forms. What tone did you strike with Sister Of Darkness — serious, light-hearted… — and why did you feel this would work best for it?
I think it’s a bit of all, to be honest. I felt like simply telling my story, in my own words, would work best because the subject matter is so controversial and has been, for the most part, told in dark, sinister terms. But there’s so much more to it than what people know, and not all of it is terrible and tragic.
Is Sister Of Darkness instructional at all? Like, will I learn how to conduct an exorcism from reading it, or will I just learn what makes you tick?
I definitely wouldn’t recommend that people try this at home. It’s an incredibly specialized thing that, even with my gift of sight, took years to cultivate and do correctly. But people will learn how to protect themselves from attachment and what they can do if they feel they have it already. That was the goal: telling the world about entity, why entity attaches, and how to help heal yourself and your life.
In writing Sister Of Darkness, did you look at anyone else’s memoirs to see what you should do?
No, and it’s for the same reason I won’t read works of fiction while I write fiction: I don’t like to be influenced in any way.
Now, you had help on Sister Of Darkness from Sarah Durand, who previously worked with professional soccer player Alex Morgan on her memoir, Breakaway, as well as pro basketball player Elena Delle Donne on hers, My Shot. First off, what exactly did Sarah do for the book? Did she co-write it, push you in the right directions, what?
She did both, really. It’s difficult to go through everything I know and pick out what’s most interesting, what needs further explanation, details, etc. She was an incredible guide through that process, because I’ve lived this life every day since day one.
So what made you think Sarah would be a good collaborator for Sister Of Darkness?
Sarah is great. She’s so easy to talk to and asks all the right questions. She also captures the story beautifully. I will write all my books with her.
Prior to writing Sister Of Darkness, you wrote some movies, TV shows, and video games. Why did you decide to write Sister Of Darkness as something else?
I felt like the audience I wanted to reach would be book first because there is just so much to explain, and so many details.
So has there been any interest in adapting Sister Of Darkness into a movie, TV show, or video game?
There has, but I can’t actually talk about it just yet. We are figuring everything out.
And if it was up to you, who would you cast in the lead role of, uh, you?
Well, I called dibs on Kristen Ritter before Jessica Jones, but now that she’s so fabulously busy, I’ll have to find someone else.
That reminds me, is there a movie, TV show, or game that gets exorcisms, right? Or close to it?
To be honest, not really. Exorcism shows and movies have really only shown one type of exorcism, the “movie style” kind, and that really only works for one kind of entity. There is so much more. What we see — or at least what we’ve seen so far — is just the tip of the iceberg.
R.H. Stavis Sister Of Darkness
Finally, if someone enjoys Sister Of Darkness, what real-life story of the demonic would you suggest they read and why that?
Though it’s “based” on a true story and is a work of fiction, [William Peter Blatty’s] The Exorcist is actually my favorite book. I know how that sounds, but it’s an incredible read. And if people want to expand on that further, they can look into the exorcism of Roland Doe, which is what inspired the story.
Print Marked Items
Stavis, R.H.: SISTER OF DARKNESS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Stavis, R.H. SISTER OF DARKNESS Dey Street/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 2, 6 ISBN: 978-
0-06-265614-8
Of gonad-grabbing goblins, hard drive-erasing hauntings, and other such modern emanations from the pit of
hell to keep a freelance, decidedly nonsectarian exorcist's appointment book filled.
Mix a little churchly incense with some New Age ideas and perhaps some quiet Valley Girl talk, and the
scene is set for this oddly entertaining--but still, to a skeptic, not entirely convincing--memoir by horror
novelist and screenwriter Stavis (Adera: The Soul Stone, 2013, etc.), who, in her off hours, will do what she
can to rid a client of supernatural squatters. We're not talking the William Peter Blatty, priest-out-thewindow
thing, at least for the most part, inasmuch as Stavis is not licensed to pack a cross and holy water.
All the same, she claims an ability to see "entities" and to send them out the door--and there are plenty of
entities to be chased off: "99 percent of people are walking around with entities now, totally oblivious to
them," warns Stavis. Why blame bad bosses, marriages, vibes, and presidents when you can attribute the
malaise to such entities? Well, take out your composition books--Stavis prefers them to electronics, since
entities like to mess with technology--and follow along: there are different kinds of apparitional critters out
there, including Wraiths; Realm Walkers; Furbies; the Sandman, who "wants a very specific type of energy,
and it has to be sudden, intense fear--the kind that electrifies you from your head to your toes"; the Crystal
Dragon, which "appears as pieces of crystal as it floats through space"; Poofs, which "are just there, and
they're never really a nuisance"; and "the smallest, least harmful entities out there," Clives, which "attach to
you in an effort to suck as much of your energy as possible."
The otherworldly inclined will enjoy raising their frequencies, connecting with the spirits, and reading this
offbeat yarn.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Stavis, R.H.: SISTER OF DARKNESS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520735749/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fdca08c9.
Accessed 20 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A520735749