Long before people developed a better understanding of mental illnesses and psychological disorders, people had a much different way to explain strange behaviour.
Conditions like schizophrenia, psychosis and split personality disorder would have been dismissed as demon possessions, and instead of calling a psychiatrist, they would have called a priest.
But even today, belief in demons is still very common across all religions, cultures and geographies, and there are still plenty of exorcists making a pretty penny out of relieving people of demon possessions.
But what are demons? Most if not all cultures seem to agree that they are supernatural beings that are conscious entities but are not necessarily bound by the same rules of space and time that constrict humans.
They’re often associated with witchcraft and paranormal activity, and might even be confused for ghosts, aliens or gods from ancient mythology.
References to demons or demon-like characters regularly appear in Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Babylonian hieroglyphics and manuscripts, as well as in Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures.
In the Islamic context, they are called jinns, or genies, and they can be forces of good as well as evil, but contacting jinns for the purpose of carrying out witchcraft is strictly forbidden, no matter what the intention.
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Horror movie The Exorcist was a big hit when it was released in cinemas in 1973 and absolutely terrified audiences about demon possession.
But little did most people know that the movie was actually based on the true story of a 14-year-old boy known as Roland Doe, who was supposedly possessed by a demon, or several demons, in Cottage City, Maryland in 1949.
As the story goes, Roland, who was born into a strict German Lutheran family, started to experience paranormal activity in his house after his aunt bought him a Ouiji board for his birthday.
The novel by author William Blatty, upon which movie was based, was written with the assistance of Rev. William Bowdern, the priest who performed Roland’s exorcism.
But sceptics would explain Roland’s experience as some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain, or a manifestation of some kind of mental illness, because of course, for them, demons do not exist.
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