Riley Kehoe was in Los Angeles doing a masters program when she claims two ‘demons’ came into her room at night to attack.
Like Tucker Carlson, who awoke with claw marks after a demon attack as he explained on a podcast this month, Sewell came face to face with malevolent entities who aimed to harm her, she explains – but she fended them off and the creatures disappeared into the night.
She was just 22, and had moved from New Zealand to go to school. Halfway through semester, she woke up in the middle of the night, and was instantly aware of two presences in her room.
Two dark figures were standing over her bed. One introduced itself as The Thief and the other The Joker – one was out to deceive and one to steal from her.
The creatures were as tall as humans, but dark and ‘cloud-like’ and Sewell felt too terrified to look directly at them.
‘I could feel them, and could also see them in the corner of my eye,’ she said, saying that there was an enormous sense of evil and of wanting to harm humans.
‘I just knew my mom had always said you ever have an experience like this, rebuke them in the name of Jesus.’
She said she grew up in a family where her parents openly talked about spiritual matters, including ‘spiritual warfare’ and people being freed of demons.
Riley Kehoe was in Los Angeles doing a masters program and studying demons when two of them came into her room at night to attack (Riley Kehoe)
She had travelled to Africa with her parents, where she said that people talked about encounters with demons as freely as we talk about the weather in Western countries.
Scientists have suggested that people who make the claims were suffering from sleep paralysis that leaves them feeling temporarily paralyzed while asleep.
This phenomenon occurs when someone is transitioning between sleep and wakefulness, and can be triggered by sleep deprivation or stress.
Sleep paralysis can be accompanied by extremely vivid physical sensations – a distinctive smell or being touched, for instance – and there are episodes of people reporting to have a ‘night visitor.’
Traumatic experiences can also cause dissociative episodes, in which people feel disconnected from their bodies or reality.
But Kehoe has never waivered with her story, sharing the frightening experience to this day.
Explaining her encounter, she revealed how she sat on the end of her bed, frozen.
She began praying and rebuking the demons – and said she was terrified and alone.
The creatures loomed over her, and she knelt over praying – she said she knew they were coming to attack her and play with her mind.
Two dark figures were standing over her bed, and she knew instantly they intended to harm her, then and there (Grok/Rob Waugh)
She said: ‘30 minutes passed by, and all of a sudden I just had this thought, “These demons are so dumb. They don’t know who I am, and I have so much authority as a daughter of God, as a Christian. They’re just so silly to even try to attempt to attack me.”’
She started laughing, and the two presences just left.
‘I felt peace wash over me, and it made me realize how powerful we are in Jesus.
‘After, I was honestly a little scared to walk back home. So I would play worship music as I watched back.
‘But what gave me so much relief was thinking, Satan you are so dumb you can’t mess with me.’
Sewell’s demon experience was not the only extreme experience of her life – along with her family, she narrowly survived the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, aged just nine.
The family had to run for their lives to escape the waves – but afterwards her parents stayed on to help people on the island in Thailand, and also enrolled her in lifeguard classes to help with her fear of the sea.
She said that the events of that day are etched into her memory: ‘I just saw the most bizarre sight.
All the water had receded, leaving fish flopping around on the sand. People who had been on boats were stranded, and snorkelers were walking around in their gear, unsure of what to do.
Riley has written about a book about her tsunami experience
‘Then I heard my mom’s voice. She was shouting at the top of her lungs. She had seen the water receding and instantly knew what to do. She had no idea what to do, but in that moment of chaos, she prayed and heard one word: “Flee.”
‘As we ran to the other side of the island, the wave was like a 50-meter tsunami coming at us at a rapid speed.
‘It felt like it was coming from all directions, about to destroy the entire island. In that moment, I saw a man climb out of his boat and start running towards us, trying to reach higher ground.
‘He realized he wasn’t going to make it, so he turned and ran back to his boat. He and his boat were obliterated.
The family ran up a path on one of the hills on the island, watching the huge wave crush everything in its path, destroying buildings and killing everyone it touched.
She said, ‘I focused on my dad’s voice shouting, “Riley, run!” There was one moment when the wave was as close as a car’s length away. I think about how if we hadn’t run, we might not have survived. Thousands of people lost their lives that day, and we were that close to death.
‘We finally reached the top of the mountain, which was thankfully high enough that the wave couldn’t reach us. We stayed up there for six hours.’
She has now written a book about her experiences, and hopes to inspire others to conquer their fears – after her lifeguard lessons empowered her to overcome her fear of the sea.
She said, ‘It starts with that story, but it kind of proceeds to share the journey of me figuring out, what does it look like to have experienced something so traumatic at such a young age, and witness people die and be terrified of the ocean, and then my parents, six months later, After surviving the tsunami, enrolled mean beach lifeguard training. It taught me that the more that you face your fears, the less power fear has over you.’
