There’s a number quietly climbing in the background of ordinary parish life, and almost nobody outside the diocese has been tracking it. Requests for exorcisms in the Pittsburgh diocese have gone up sharply over five years. Not doubled once and leveled off. A steady climb, year over year, reported by the person whose actual job is to field the calls.
That person is Adam Blai, the lay consultant who screens and assists with exorcism requests for the Pittsburgh diocese. He also trains exorcists at the Pope Leo XIII Institute at Mundelein Seminary and belongs to the International Association of Exorcists — which means when he says the requests are rising, he’s not guessing from the outside. He’s the one taking the calls.
What Blai is actually reporting
According to EWTN News, Blai has watched the volume of requests climb steadily over the past five years in his role with the Pittsburgh diocese. The report was independently picked up and corroborated the same week in secondary coverage, which matters here — this isn’t one outlet’s framing of a vague trend.
He names a specific driver, too, and it’s not the one you’d expect. Ouija boards. Not horror movies, not internet rumor mills — a game sold in toy aisles for decades, still showing up as a starting point in the cases crossing his desk…