A prominent Roman Catholic exorcist claimed during a Thursday interview with former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan that entities claiming to be extraterrestrial or interdimensional are demonic, and that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was likely heavily engaged in occult activity.
“Obviously some of the UFOs can be explained, some of them, by governmental experiments and things of that sort, which people are not necessarily used to,” said Father Chad Ripperger, who is a priest, theologian, philosopher and exorcist serving in the Archdiocese of Denver.
During his wide-ranging, four-hour conversation with Ryan, Ripperger went on to claim that most “alien abduction” scenarios have all the trappings of demonic possession intended to spiritually deceive and enslave.
Father Chad Ripperger on UFOs, aliens, and what the Bible actually says about extraterrestrial life and abduction phenomena. pic.twitter.com/1cmbZ9p02d— Shawn Ryan (@ShawnRyan762) March 3, 2026
“I actually did a conference on this more recently, where I parse out 10 different ways in which … those abduction scenarios, if you actually look at what the ‘aliens’ are supposedly doing, is identical to the same things that demons do to people who are possessed.”
“So, if you strip the veneer of the alien aspect of it off, in point of fact, what you’re dealing with is, they’re just demons,” he added, and recommended the bestselling book Alien Intrusion by Christian apologist Gary Bates.
Ripperger noted that in Bates’ book, which debunks many alleged UFO and extraterrestrial sightings, there are accounts of abduction scenarios that abruptly cease when the individual cries out to Jesus Christ.
“So there’s a lot of demonic stuff on that level,” the priest said.
Ripperger explained that the accounts of UFOs appearing to defy the laws of known physics also suggest their demonic nature.
“There’s some that speculate, too, that some of the craft that we see moving in ways that are contrary to physical laws is also just a diabolic mirage, which they can cause. That type of stuff is extraordinarily rare, because God doesn’t usually permit it, but that can actually happen.”
“A lot of this stuff, not all of it, but a lot of this stuff is just diabolic in nature,” he added.
Ripperger further noted that the messages typically relayed by alleged aliens to abductees relate to providing salvation to humanity without Jesus Christ, which he observed is also demonic.
The layout of Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, which has a strange temple-like structure, “gives an indication that it was heavily involved in the occult,” Ripperger also said, adding that the late sex trafficker’s unusually depraved sexual behavior suggests a satanic element.
“It’s the same thing that we’ve seen elsewhere, where guys who suffer from homosexuality and they’re very heavily active, it very often degenerates into ritualistic sex. It’s the same kind of a thing there,” he said. “Satan ends up just driving them, because they’re so disordered that he gets involved, and then he drives it more towards a ritualistic kind of an approach.”
“So if it wasn’t ritualistic, I’d be surprised,” he said of Epstein, whose emails reveal he purchased books related to sex magick, tantra, Kundalini yoga, Kabbalah and the Thelema philosophy of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley.
Ripperger later claimed he personally agrees with a viral quote misattributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Western governments are run by “satanic pedophiles” who are addicted to the thrill of power that Satan offers, which Ripperger said is all that demons and those who worship them have.
“If the veil drops too much and people start rising up to take the power away, that’s when it’s going to get ugly,” he said. “These people have their hands on the levers of power, and they’re going to use it to take us out if they think that their power’s going to be jeopardized.”
