Amy Stamatis’ Real Exorcism
KATV/YouTubeCindy Lawson with Amy Stamatis.
In November 2006, Amy Stamatis jumped out of her second-story window in Searcy, Arkansas. Paralyzed below the waist and recovering in the hospital, she was visited by Pentecostal evangelist Cindy Lawson. Lawson, who claimed to have performed 10 real-life exorcisms before, told her that she knew demons possessed Stamatis.
“The Lord spoke to me and told me to go to the hospital to cast the demons out of her,” said Lawson. “I could feel something churning.”
Stamatis’ trouble began after a shift at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock. The 49-year-old nurse had just finished writing a report and inexplicably forgot how to do her job. Her skills were gone entirely, leading her to quit. A lifelong runner, she was suddenly unable to do even that. Psychiatrists prescribed antidepressants.
KATV/YouTubeThe second-story window that Stamatis jumped from.
Stamatis worsened over time, randomly taking her clothes off in public, screaming at friends, and once climbing a seven-story parking ramp to jump from. While the police managed to talk her down, she ultimately tried again in November from her own home and succeeded. Paralyzed and with voices still haunting her, she put her trust in Lawson.
Stamatis had suffered through hearing voices whisper suggestions to kill herself for seven months before she jumped out the window and was unable to find help anywhere she turned. Ultimately she agreed to let Lawson perform an exorcism.
“In the medical world, they need to put a name to it,” said Stamatis. “They don’t understand because they have never dealt with these types of demons. So how are they going to fight against something that you don’t know how to fight, that you don’t understand?”
Lawson performed her first real-life exorcism on a nine-year-old boy and said that he levitated during the ritual. She claimed to have seen subjects change their eye color mid-exorcism, foam at the mouth, or speak in guttural, demonic voices. She said her vocation was initially “terrifying,” but that God had called her to it.
While Stamatis doesn’t remember her real-life exorcism, the family members who attended all agreed that there had been an instantaneous change when it finished. While the former nurse remained paralyzed, her exorcist is convinced that God will eventually even heal her of that, too.
