Et Spiritus Sancti

People entering the Islamic medical centre in Grozny. The exorcists receive hundreds of patients every day.

Vice: Hi Olga, what’s going on in these pictures you sent us?

Olga Kravets:

Wait, the women start talking with a different voice, having a conversation as if they were a devil?

What happens next?

Did you try to talk to the women?

This couple brought a female relative and are waiting for their turn to be received by an exorcist.

How come only women are brought there?

Do the women believe in it?

How common is this practice?

How did you find out about it?

So how did you take these pictures?

He invited you to go on a witch hunt?

Jeez. Are you going on that?

For more of Olga Kravets’ work, visit olgakravets.com. She has also founded the first Russian photo collective together with some photographer friends in 2009, versoimages.com.

This woman was young and unmarried and her family refused to speak. Here she is going through the process of exorcism that usually takes between 30 minutes to an hour, but some of the women I met there had been treated for eight months.

She got hysterical, so the exorcists covered her eyes, because they didn’t want her to see what they were doing to her—reading the Koran and trying to negotiate with Jinn (an Arabic word for devil, from the Koran) while pressing her down and beating her when she was shaking badly.

This is when the exorcists had just finished and freed her hands to let her rest. She was totally exhausted.

This is Musa, one of the exorcists. After the procedure, they switch on the stereo playing prayer CDs while the woman is resting, so that they can go out for a smoke.

A patient described this view from one of the medical centre’s windows as marvellous, while going through the process of expelling an evil spirit from her body.

Musa always wears a silver ring, as he believes the Jinns, or devils, are afraid of silver.

This is Musa’s desktop. The stick is used to beat the women if they move too much. I never saw him using the syringe, but he has it for some reason.

I asked both Musa and Mairbek, two of the exorcists, to draw what they think a devil looks like.

This is Musa’s drawing of a Jinn.

And this is the devil Mairbek drew.

Many leave the Islamic medical centre in the night and there is always at least one healer on overnight duty.