Celebrity Exorcism: Chatting with real-life exorcist Rachel Stavis

Rachel Stavis is a real-life exorcist recently featured in the Tubi Original Celebrity Exorcism. She helped three celebrities, Shar Jackson, Metta World Peace and Jodie Sweetin, learn to cleanse spaces and connect with their spirituality.

1428 Elm had the chance to chat with Rachel about her work on the show, tips for those interested in learning more about entities and communicating with them, and much more!

1428 ELM: How did Celebrity Exorcism come to be? Was it something already in the works, or were you involved from the beginning?

RACHEL STAVIS: I have been asked to do unscripted shows and series for, I don’t know, a decade now, and I usually always say no, but in this particular case, they did contact me and said, here’s what we want to do, and we want to get into this wonderful space, and we’d love to see what you can do in terms of helping people with their gift.

These are things I love to do, and they were also part of a show that I really loved back in the day called MTV’s Fear, which is one of my favorite unscripted shows of all time. They won me over, and they were like, we’d really love if you came in and helped us create the show, in a way, so I did, and here we are!

1428 ELM: Is this something you would consider doing again? Like a recurring special with different celebrities?

RACHEL STAVIS: Maybe, yeah, we have to see how things go and what people’s reactions are and how they feel about everything. I am also working on a series where I go into some of the darkest places on earth and cleanse them, so I love doing that.

I think it’s really important actually to be able to go into these spaces and do the work that I do. I think it’s on a large scale when you go into spaces versus working on individual people, not that I don’t love that as well, but working in the spaces, you get to make a big change on the planet, so that is my goal.

1428 ELM: I was reading another interview you did about the taxonomy of entities and how Realm Walkers are what you call the big, theatrical presences that want to wreak havoc on a global scale. In the special, you mention the Cecil Hotel is home to something significant? Is it what you would term a Realm Walker? Can you expand on it more?

RACHEL STAVIS: Yeah, you know in the special we worked with what I call a Collector, which I think is explained pretty clearly in the special itself, but the worst of the worst, the “big bads,” if you will, are what I call Realmwalkers, which I think is what most people consider the Devil.

It’s the worst of the worst, the most malignant, the most intelligent, and oftentimes will hold spaces of high foot traffic, like hotels, places that have been very dark on the planet in general, and that is what is in the Cecil Hotel. It is my absolute mission to go in there and take it out.

1428 ELM: Do you watch those types of films or steer clear of them in general?

RACHEL STAVIS: No, I love it. But I’m the worst person to watch them with because I’m the one who is yelling at the screen like, that’s not how this is done. This is incorrect!

1428 ELM: Have there been any movies or shows that you felt have gotten the process right?

RACHEL STAVIS: I always say this, I give Scott Derrickson a lot of praise because I think Deliver Us from Evil is one of my favorite ones, Veronica also, Veronica is great with entities. You really can see how that works, which you still watch Veronica on Netflix, I’m pretty sure [Editor’s note: You can!]. But also, I’m very lucky because we are working on a series now with FX, so you’ll get to see how it works in my world pretty soon.

1428 ELM: What are some of the biggest misconceptions you’d like to clear up about what you do versus what you actually do?

RACHEL STAVIS: I think one of the things that people don’t realize is that it really all works on energy, and I talk about this a lot in my book because it’s so much to cover in such a little amount of time. But everything works on energy, and how attachment works is based on trauma and low frequency.

So a lot of people come from the religious aspect of it and think just because I work in a non-denominational way, or I should say, more multidenominational way because I work on everyone, that that can’t be because it’s all about religion and that’s just not so.

1428 ELM: Do you have any tips or advice for people who want to try opening that pathway to communicate with entities or to look into local haunts near them?

RACHEL STAVIS: One of the major things I think is a major misconception about that, too, is we’ve always been taught through fictional and sometimes even non, I guess, but that opening yourself up is what makes it dangerous for you and a lot of people shut down opening these great aspects of self through spirit because they’re afraid they’re going to let something in that’s negative, so I always tell people, listen, everything that is good in the world of spirit respects your free will and everything that is not, does not.

So you can be as closed up as possible, and you’ll still get attachment. In fact, that’s the best way to get attachment, you know, is by being completely unconscious of it and pretending it doesn’t exist. The more you open yourself up and the more you trust, the more good things come in. The more meek and mild of your relatives come in.

High beings come in, and all of these wonderful things that are in the realm of respecting when you’re ready will finally be able to communicate with you. I think that’s a big thing that people worry about that I wish that they wouldn’t.

1428 ELM: Was there anything significant that you Shar, Metta and Jodie discovered or experienced while making Celebrity Exorcism that didn’t make it into the final cut?

RACHEL STAVIS: If I can just say an overall thing that happened throughout those few days—I mean we get to see some of it, so I won’t say [not all of it], but what we don’t get to see too much of is how deep that connection and how big that journey was for them.

In the beginning, everyone had their own ideas about where they were spiritually, what they wanted to pursue, what they didn’t want to pursue. Metta, for example, was really nervous about the whole thing and like, “I don’t know if I want to go here, I don’t know if I want to get involved in this,” but to see him go through a journey over a few days and really start trusting what was coming in and really start listening and paying attention to everything and questioning things.

It was so great to see because by the end of the week when we really got into our most difficult part they were ready. They felt ready. They were strong and confident to do it. It may not always look that way because they did go through some scary things, I think the camera just didn’t pick up, but they were there. It may not always look that way, but they were. They became very powerful in their abilities to communicate.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Rachel’s book Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist is available now on Amazon. You can keep up with her and her latest projects on Twitter and Instagram. Celebrity Exorcism is now streaming free on Tubi TV.