My private texts with Tucker Carlson that I have never revealed: What he told me about being attacked by a DEMON, the exorcists I sent to him… and their disturbing discovery

In the late fall of 2024, Tucker Carlson announced to the public that he had been attacked in his bed by a demon that left him unable to breathe, as well as scratched and bleeding. Lots of people laughed. I did not. I believed him. I still do.

In April 2023, Carlson, then a friend and host of the most popular cable news show in America, reached out to me with a problem. Knowing that I, a practicing Orthodox Christian, believe in demons and had written about the work of exorcists, Carlson told me about the demonic attack.

Carlson recently credited an Evangelical colleague of his with connecting him to an Orthodox priest to deal with the matter. In fact, I was the one who made the introduction. 

That priest is my confessor and a trained exorcist. He brought in a Catholic exorcist to help him counsel Carlson. I wasn’t privy to all of the conversations the priests had with Carlson, but they didn’t get very far.

Shortly after I made the introductions, Carlson texted to thank me, but to say that their work seemed like ‘witchcraft’ to him and that he would be fine simply reading the Bible alone. 

After this polite rebuff, the Catholic priest of the exorcist team told me that Carlson was in ‘grave danger’ and that he had no idea of the power of what he was dealing with.

I have been writing about the occult off and on since 1992, when I witnessed an exorcist and his prayer team cast evil spirits out of a haunted house near New Orleans. In that session, I saw a large woman lifted up and thrown backwards over a chair.

If you talk at length with exorcists about their work, demonic reality becomes impossible to deny. Sometimes they enter into your own life, or the lives of people you know. 

In my book Living In Wonder, I write of a possessed Manhattan friend, through whom demons manifested during my visit. A psychiatrist appointed by the Catholic archdiocese could find no natural explanation for what she was suffering. She was at the time awaiting exorcism.

Eventually my friend, a faithful Catholic, was freed from the demons, which entered her life through occultist grandparents.

In Rome in 2023 for Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral, the metal desk chair in my hotel room collapsed into a twisted heap as I stood nearby tying my scarf. It was a new chair, with nothing resting on it. Later, recounting the strange story over lunch with two journalist friends, the unoccupied chair at our table flipped over backwards.

After the meal, I texted a Vatican exorcist friend to get his take. The priest replied: ‘That’s just “the Enemy” letting you know he’s watching you.’

I spoke no more to Carlson about his scary 2023 attack. Later that spring, he parted ways with Fox News. In December, Carlson launched his own online podcast network.

After some time, Carlson’s longform interviews began turning thematically darker and edgier. For example, in September 2024, Carlson hosted Darryl Cooper, whom he described as ‘the most important popular historian working in the United States today.’

On that broadcast, Cooper, who has no historical training, denounced Winston Churchill as the true ‘villain’ of World War II. He characterized the Holocaust not as the planned extermination of European Jews, but as an accident of poor Nazi war planning.

Since then, Carlson, who denies being anti-Semitic, has hosted ever more openly anti-Jewish figures. Troubled by his trajectory but trying to be loyal, I decided that if he hosted the Hitler-loving, Holocaust-denying Gen Z livestreamer Nick Fuentes, I would have to speak out.

That day came in late October 2025, when Carlson brought Fuentes, whom only months earlier he had described as ‘this weird little gay kid in his basement in Chicago’ – onto his program for a two-hour softball interview.

On my Substack, I called out Carlson, once a sharp and skeptical questioner, for helping bring this perverted Jew-hating troll into the mainstream. In that essay, I warned that ‘Jews are the canary in the civilizational coal mine’ – following Hannah Arendt’s warning that a rise in anti-Semitism is a clear sign that a country is preparing itself for totalitarianism by normalizing conspiratorial thinking.

Carlson’s response was swift. He texted me an angry denunciation. Our friendship was over.

Since then, Carlson’s descent into anti-Semitism, which is not the same thing as opposing the Israeli government, has only grown worse. So too has the embrace of Jew-hatred among younger Americans of both left and right.

A month later, I watched a clip of a Carlson exchange in which he discusses the ‘spooky shit in the woods here’ behind his Maine house. Carlson discusses feeling the presence of evil spirits when he goes hunting there. He cites local legends about the area as being haunted, and ‘spiritually dangerous.’

Then it hit me: Tucker Carlson is living out ‘The Witch’!

Set in 17th century New England, the 2015 Robert Eggers movie is about a prideful man exiled from his Puritan community to a cabin at woods’ edge. A demonic force living in the forest infiltrates the man’s family through his arrogance, eventually destroying them all. It seems all too familiar to some who have watched Carlson’s bizarre public unraveling.

Is Tucker Carlson possessed? I can’t possibly know, but I doubt it; exorcists say true possession is rare.

But is he oppressed by demons, who are using him to spread hatred of Jews? I think so – and, I’ve discovered recently, so do others who know him and are trying to make sense of what happened to the journalist they once admired.

He is no longer the man I used to know – and it all started with some baleful entity assaulting him in the night. That, and his proud refusal to accept help from priests with the training and experience to deliver him from that evil.

Let’s be clear: Tucker Carlson is not the enemy here. He needs prayers to escape the jaws of the real Enemy, a devouring dragon whose insidious nature he does not comprehend.

The Daily Mail offered representatives of Tucker Carlson an opportunity to comment on this article and they did not receive a response.

Rod Dreher writes the daily newsletter Rod Dreher’s Diary, and is author of the forthcoming book ‘Weimar America.’