Meet the priest whose paranormal encounters will ‘make your skin crawl’

Jason Bray may seem like your normal Anglican priest.

At Cardiff’s Llandaff Cathedral where he is now the Dean, he starts each morning with a brisk walk down a set of stone steps which lead from his home to his workplace.

It’s a picture of peaceful contentment, but the priest’s work also has an unpredictable side.

Jason is a deliverance minister, which is essentially the role director William Friedkin portrayed in the 1973 horror film ‘The Exorcist.’ Terrified audience members were said to have fainted or fled during screenings of the film, which tells the story of a girl possessed by an ancient demon.

While he says the film paints an unrealistic picture of exorcisms, Jason admits he has had several experiences which made his ‘skin crawl.’ There was the family plagued by a ‘ghostly monk’, a woman terrified rats were ‘eating her insides’ and a man who had spotted his dead boyfriend stark-naked in his shower.

‘You never know what you’re going to be presented with,’ Jason, 55, tells Metro, as he sits in a meeting room in Llandaff Cathedral, where ancient gravestones and tall trees border the nearby window.

‘There’s no walking in going “hello, I’m the exorcist” in a scary low voice, though. People are usually quite frightened to begin with. I try to be as pleasantly disarming as I can be, so they don’t feel the need to be nervous.’ 

Jason sips a cup of strong black coffee as he discusses his work. Today he’s in a trim black suit and red waistcoat; the type of outfit he’d attend a call-out in. A copy of The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behaviour Disorders sits on his desk as a constant reminder that mental health, not mysterious spirits, could be the cause of a case.

‘I’ve had some really creepy experiences,’ the dad-of-two says. ‘There have only been a couple occasions where I’ve turned to a colleague and said “RUN.”‘

There are three types of call-outs which a deliverance minister deals with, he explains.

First, poltergeist activity, which can cause lights to flicker or shoes to vanish. This is a negative spirit energy caused by ‘someone who is struggling to communicate their distress’. A teenager bottling up stress about a parent’s divorce could cause the behaviour; as could an older person suffering with the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

In one poltergeist case, a woman rang up Jason and blurted out: ‘It’s these rats, they’re eating my mother alive. She woke up and felt like her insides were being eaten away by something, but when she turned the lights on there wasn’t anything there at all.’

Jason raced to the home and proceeded to walk from room to room and speak the Lord’s Prayer while he held a wooden cross. The woman’s rat-based problem thankfully vanished and it later emerged she was awaiting results from a bowel cancer screening. Jason thinks this pent-up anxiety caused the experience. 

The second type of call-out deliverance ministers respond to is ‘place memories’. This is where a building ‘relives’ something dramatic which took place years before. An example of place memory can be found at Treasurer’s House in York, where heating engineer Harry Martindale saw ‘Roman soldiers’ march through a basement wall in 1953. Excavation work later found that the building was located on top of a former major road which led to the Roman city of Eboracum.

Jason points to one notable ‘place memory’ experience he had, with a family who felt the need to take a large step at the bottom of their staircase. It turned out a previous resident had fallen down the basement stairs and had broken his neck at the bottom.

The third type of call-out is ‘true hauntings’, which see a dead person try to communicate with loved ones. If you catch a whiff of your late grandmother’s perfume; or see a shadow of a dead relative – this could be a true haunting, Jason explains. He will often carry out a ‘requiem mass’, also known as a Mass for the Dead, to encourage these spirit to move on.

This was the case when Jason was called to the home of his friend Pete; who had been left terrified after the ghost of his dead Australian boyfriend Craig appeared in his shower. After gentle questioning from Jason, Londoner Pete explained how he struggled to let his ex-partner go. This could have led to the spirit struggling to ‘move on’.

But isn’t there a fourth category – what about exorcisms? Does Jason ever pin a possessed person to a bed and shout the Lord’s Prayer while thunder and lightning crashes outside? No, is the swift answer.

‘The movie [the Exorcist] has ruined the word “exorcist”,’ Jason says. ‘A major exorcism would mean someone is possessed and the deliverance minister is casting the demon out. But we do that on vanishingly rare occasions. It’s a last resort.’

Jason adds that he has never conducted an exorcism in his 12 years as a deliverance minister and dislikes the term ‘exorcist’ due to the negative connotations it brings up.

He continues: ‘What people see in the films influences their opinions quite strongly. People we come across talk about “orbs” a lot, I think Most Haunted has inspired a large part of that. I’m convinced these “orbs” are dust specs which get picked up on night vision cameras.’

When Jason does attend a call-out his ‘ghostbusting’ bag includes candles, prayer books, holy water, hand gel and a crucifix. Some deliverance ministers bring a radiator key he adds, in case trapped air is the cause of strange sounds.

Like a doctor, Jason listens to symptoms and provides treatment in the form of house blessings and prayers. Then, like a therapist, he asks questions to help the homeowner find a deeper reason behind negative energy in their home. Finally, like a detective, he works out if his services are even required – if it’s a mental health matter he will signpost accordingly. 

‘If you were possessed you wouldn’t know it,’ Jason, originally from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, insists.

‘You definitely wouldn’t go looking for help. Hearing demonic voices, something I have been called out to, isn’t a symptom of being possessed – it’s a sign of schizophrenia. I usually ask people if they are on medication or have a diagnosis. Sometimes, I tell them they need to see a doctor as soon as they can – not me.’

Today, deliverance ministers go out in pairs for safety. But that wasn’t always the case, and Jason recalls one incident during the Covid pandemic when he felt at risk.

‘I was called to a guy who was really into his conspiracy theories and essentially had gone stir crazy,’ he explains. ‘Like many people at that time, he hadn’t seen anybody for months and was cut off from the world. He had worked himself up into a complete state worrying his house was bugged. When I walked in, I could almost feel nervous energy pour out of him as he paced his tiny living room. I blessed the house and he said he was better afterwards, but I admit I did not feel safe there at all.’

Jason’s personal journey into deliverance was spurred by a strange encounter in 1997. After studying theology at Durham and a PhD in the Old Testament at Cambridge, he got ordained and moved with wife Laura into a three-bedroom house in South Wales. They welcomed a son, Tom, the same year and soon realised something was very wrong.

‘I was away for a couple days on a training course,’ Jason recalls. ‘I came back to Laura – who is a very level-headed person – hugely concerned. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she told me, “but Tom’s bedroom is like a freezer. Something is not right.” We bled the radiator as you do, but it was still so cold.

‘A few nights later I got up to go to the toilet. As I made to leave the bathroom and touch the handle, there was a sudden feeling that someone was standing on the other side of the door. I somehow knew, despite not seeing him, that he was my height, had grey eyes and wore a round wooden mask. I eventually opened the bathroom door and there was no-one there, so I ran into bed and dived under the covers. Laura saw my face and said “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”’

With Laura’s encouragement, Jason approached the local vicar – his boss – at a cheese and wine event and nervously explained what he had experienced.

A visit was arranged to bless the Bray home. After the vicar splashed holy water in each room and gathered Jason and Laura to say the Lord’s Prayer, everything changed. Almost instantly, the sun streamed in and Tom’s room became warmer. Inspired, Jason embarked on a training course to become a deliverance minister.

In his very first house visit, Jason came across a ‘very bored’ family who seemed ambivalent as he walked around their house and blessed it. He later learned that they’d told the council the flat was haunted in an attempt to get moved to a better home.

‘You know it’s real when they’re frightened,’ Jason adds knowingly.

Eager to put the work of a deliverance minister out into the world in his own words, in 2021 Jason published his book Deliverance, which brings together his various encounters with the supernatural. Since then, the film rights have been purchased, and Jason suggests with a smile that Welsh actor Michael Sheen would be a shoo-in to fill his boots.

Jason’s work as a deliverance minister has also led him to act as a consultant on ITV’s Midwinter of the Spirit, which tells the story of a country vicar played by Anna Maxwell Martin who is called to a strange murder with supernatural undertones. He’s also explained his job to actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds in an episode of their TV show Welcome to Wrexham.

For now though, the priest has no plans to hang up his crucifix anytime soon. 

‘I suspect there will always be a role for the deliverance ministry,’ Jason says. ‘Interestingly, there are now more atheists than people who believe in God, but a surprising number of atheists who believe in ghosts. There’s a bit of a lack of logic in the whole thing there.’

To buy Deliverance, click here. An Audible version is also available.

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