It’s the classic temptation pattern: The enemy gives you your pride (ye will be like gods, try the fruit?) and then takes away your resistance somewhere else (and sin crouches at your door). Diabolical magic and sleight of hand do have that pattern in common.

In line with TechieDude, books:

An ever-loving classic of the satire genre, The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. It even made the vaunted halls of the BEST OF BOOKS 2016 around here: https://didacticmind.com/2016/12/the-didacts-best-books-of-2016.html

Dr Heiser, now, unfortunately (for us) diagnosed with pancreatic cancer:
Angels (Who are those allies for the church?)
Demons (Who are those rebellious ones?)

Then fictional, also by Heiser:
The Facade & The Portent. Anyone who enjoys any of the following: Deep state thrillers, paranormal activity, Micheal Chrichton’s ‘group of smart people trying to solve the impossible”, supernatural thinkers, and deep cycle textual analysis of ancient Hebrew will find these books a winner. The editor blew it all over the place but the author brings his A-Game.

I’m not baptist in faith, but I’ve grown up around many of them in my circles in Texas. In my measure, they don’t so much reject the notion of the demonic as try to handwave it away and not talk about it. To many yo-yo teachers keeping people distracted with it for decades left a bad taste in their mouths, so better to just ignore it and skim over it.

Not even two decades ago it was deeply controversial if Harry Potter books were permitted in the homeschool & church circles I was around. Narnia and LOTR were largely embraced, but they were different. They didn’t ask children to dabble in the occult or embrace heroes who did.
That’s mostly faded now in the favor of Harry Potter as the millennials grew up and independent, but it is a concern in line with your thoughts in this post.

That said, some of the best material I’ve read on this is from the Orthodox, who are way more in tune. There are a lot of great writings from their Saints (which, depending when the saint was writing, is also a Catholic saint)

I’ve been enjoying books by Seraphim Rose – Specifically this one: Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future.

The concept that blew me away was – Of course these religions work. The demons allow you to do stuff, have a taste, so to speak, until you’re hooked and they own you, which was the point all along.

We absolutely believe in “daemons”, we just typically don’t use that word as it is merely the Greek word, usually translated as “devils” in our King James Bible.

Mostly its a distinction without a difference. And yes, demonic/devil possession is absolutely a thing that can happen to somebody who hasn’t accepted Christ as their personal Saviour. If you lack the Holy Spirit inside you, then there is room for the devil and/or his minions to take up residence.

Devils are cast out via prayer, fasting, and/or invoking the name of Jesus to rebuke. Only a fool messes with the occult, opening that door and inviting the attention of Satan and his minions. Their power is such that confronting them in your own strength is doomed to failure as the Bible teaches that not even Michael the archangel fought the devil, but instead rebuked him in the name of Lord (Jude 9), causing the devil to flee.

From the time I have been lurking around here (4-5 years), I suspect we agree on very few things doctrinally, however I wanted to at least set the record straight on devils/demons so far as Baptists go 😉

I’ve begun reciting prayers in Latin for this very reason. Satan hates Latin and that’s one of the reasons tradCaths cite Vatican II as evil: the removal of Latin. We were always told it was a dead language and not to bother learning it. Another one of the devil’s tricks.

One thing I’ve taken away from all of the crazy books and shows I’ve partaken of over the years is that YOU DO NOT F*** WITH DAEMONS. EVER. They tend to attach themselves to either places or people, as you’ve noted. If you see signs of one, you get the hell away from it and/or call a priest. Antagonizing it or trying to deal with it yourself only makes it stronger. I’ve never had to deal with one myself (thank God) and hope I never have to.

You ought to check out the first two Paranormal Activity movies. I rather liked them, but they go downhill quickly after the second one, IMHO.