More than a decade ago, Alex Crow was yet to turn 20, fronting a band called “Alex Crow & The Altar Boys,” a blues, rock and pop cover band which played venues in the Mobile area including The Soul Kitchen, The Shed, Boo Radley’s and on at least one occasion a McGill-Toolen High School homecoming dance.

Now, he’s a 30-year-old defrocked priest whose duties were stripped after the Archdiocese of Mobile said he had “abandoned his assignment” and his behavior was “totally unbecoming of a priest,” with reports circulating he had left the U.S. with an 18-year-old female, a recent graduate of McGill-Toolen.

Crow himself graduated from McGill-Toolen in 2011, then attended Spring Hill College from 2011-2012 before dropping out to form his band.

Ultimately, however, Crow said he was called to the priesthood and attended St Joseph from 2014-2018 and received his Master of Divinity degree from Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana and a Bachelor of Sacred Theology from San Anselmo, Rome.

Much of Crow’s adult life has centered around the study of demonology and exorcism, subjects he has lectured on extensively, both in videos and podcasts posted online and to students.

In a two-part podcast entitled “What In The Dang Heck” posted in July 2022, Crow talked about his childhood and what he seemed to suggest were incidents with what he now believes were demonic spirits.

“I grew up in a weird home, both familially, but also a lot of weird stuff happening in the house,” he said. “You’d hear things moving around or banging in different rooms. I’d see things from time to time as a kid, always assuming I was kind of, hyper, or just looking too much into stuff.

“Looking back, it’s a lot of the same stuff I have reported back to me.”

Crow also discussed on the podcast a period of 3-4 years when he was suffering from mysterious health issues, with chest pains and “migraine-like” headaches among his symptoms.

A battery of tests revealed nothing, nor did examinations by psychologists and psychiatrists.

“I was like ‘Then why do I feel like I’m going to die all the time?’” he said. “Why do I have this chest pain? Why are my headaches so splitting I can’t get out of bed in the morning? Or why when I step into church I feel like I’m going to pass out?”

Ultimately, Crow said a priest performed what he described as a “minor exorcism,” or a deliverance prayer, on Crow, who said he had “a reaction — a negative reaction — but also I felt immediately better when it was over. That started a long process with me needing deliverance from a priest.”

Crow’s interest in demonology and exorcism led to him writing a thesis on the subjects while in seminary, noting that the subjects are not taught as there’s still a “resistance” to speaking of them publicly.

He also spoke of a summer spent at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, the nation’s oldest hospital, where he spent time working in both the hospital’s prison psychiatric ward, which houses inmates from Rikers Island prison in need of psychiatric care, as well as the hospital’s psychiatric ward for the general public.

“I worked with people who were psychologically ailing, psychologically very sick, hours on end, both in the criminal sector and everyday people,” Crow said.

“So I know psychosis. I know what it looks like. I’m not formally trained, per se, in clinical psychology. But I’ve been given the tools to differentiate the two.

“Long story short, I don’t have a lot of experience, given I’ve been a priest for only a year (he was ordained in June 2021), but this stuff just seems to sort of conglomerate around me.”

In the podcast, Crow touched on several other topics, including astrology, which he called “Pagan idolatry” and yoga because of its Hindu origins.

In another video posted to YouTube, entitled “Garabandal: What is the Story?” Crow discusses with a class the apparitions of Saint Michael the Archangel and Virgin Mary which reportedly appeared to four girls ages 11 and 12 from 1961 to 1965 in the Spanish village of San Sebastian de Garabandal.

That video is noteworthy due to reports that Crow has left the U.S. with an 18-year-old female, a recent McGill-Toolen graduate, on a trip to San Sebastian de Garabandal.

The nature of the relationship between Crow and the female has not been confirmed, nor has the purpose of their trip to Spain, although, again, speculation has centered around the possibility of Crow performing an exorcism on the female.

In announcing Crow’s departure from the diocese, officials also noted they had reported his actions to the Mobile District Attorney’s Office “due to the circumstances of his departure,” although it’s unclear what the nature of any investigation of Crow’s actions would entail.

Thursday, the district attorney’s office again said they were still awaiting “more information.”

Although often depicted in popular culture as centering around demonic possession, exorcism has become commonplace in cultures and religions around the world.

In an interview with the Associated Press in 2020, religious studies professor Andrew Chestnut of Virginia Commonwealth University said that while movies such as 1973′s “The Exorcist” depicts exorcisms as rare and secretive, it’s now such a common practice some exorcists use their cell phones to combat demons remotely.

Pope Francis has acknowledged the legitimacy of the practice of exorcism and a Vatican-sanctioned university in Rome has been conducting exorcism training during Francis’s papacy for priests from around the world, according to the AP.