Gay TikToker’s parents hire preacher to ‘exorcise demons’ from his bedroom
Andrew Hartzler had put hidden cameras around his room and shared footage of the exorcism on TikTok. (Credit: TikTok / Andrew Hartzler)
A gay TikToker secretly filmed a preacher, hired by his parents, supposedly exorcising demons from his bedroom and replacing them with angels, in an attempt to change his sexuality.
The bizarre exorcism experience was documented in a video posted to the social media app by 25-year-old Andrew Hartzler, from Kansas City, Missouri. He claims his parents previously forced him to endure years of conversion therapy
In the TikTok, Hartzler explains that his parents hired the “exorcist” because they believed the demons were making him gay.
He caught the experience on video with cameras he’d hidden around the room.
The video shows a man, identified by Hartzler as evangelist John Jacobs, the founder of body-building Christian group The Power Team – known for incorporating displays of strength with preaching – holding a bible and walking around the room yelling into closets and at Hartzler’s clothes.
“Devil, you have no more place, you can never enter this room again,” the preacher shouts at t-shirts and vests.
“I plead the blood of Chris over this closet, over every piece of clothing in here.”
A camera hidden in the wardrobe catches the preacher claiming it was now full of angels, while another shows him putting oil on the TikToker’s bed so that “every person that touches this bed shall be saved”.
At this point, a woman can be heard off-camera saying that the other side of the room had also seen “just as much shenanigans”.
Speaking to Insider about the experience, Hartzler said he grew up in a conservative evangelical household, as part of the religious sect, International House of Prayer.
Dad claimed ‘identity issues were a demonic stronghold’
He came out to his parents when he was 14. In turn, they sent him to conversion therapy until the end of high school, then to Christian Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they thought he “wouldn’t be around any other gay people”.
Instead, Hartzler said, there were “a lot of kids with similar situations”.
The TikToker set up cameras in his room because he was concerned about his parents going through his belongings when he returned to school.
Although the exorcism happened several years ago, Hartzler said he posted the video now because he felt it was “really important for people to see that there are right-wing Christian fanatics” who believe being gay “is something profoundly evil” that can be changed with such rituals.
He no longer has a relationship with his parents and was not surprised Jacobs was called, saying his dad thought his “identity issues were a ‘demonic stronghold’” and that his father used similar language regarding his sexuality.
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