Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you. All of us here at Horror Press have a love for found footage horror movies, which inspired our latest lesson. Today we’ll be revisiting Blumhouse’s powerhouse franchise and the king of all found footage films (box office wise, at least). That’s right, we’re tackling Paranormal Activity.

With tons of time travel, loads of lore, and one hard reboot under its belt as of 2021, we need to answer quite a few questions about this series’ enigmatic villains: the (mostly) unseen force Tobi, his minions, the Midwives, and his much more recent counterpart Asmodeus.

The Paranormal Activity Franchise Explained

What is Tobi?

An immeasurably old demon (because when are they ever young demons?), Tobi is the main antagonist in the Paranormal Activity series. Feeding on the suffering and fear of his human victims, he is an inscrutable evil that communed almost entirely with children to torture their families. Once he had succeeded in breaking his victim’s minds, he would possess them and “pilot” their bodies to further his own goals.

For much of the series, Tobi doesn’t have one defined form and is usually massless and invisible. Our only hint in the original Paranormal Activity of what he looks like are some strange footprints. In Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, he manifests on spirit photography as a shadowy cloud of vaguely human-shaped energy. He had a gaunt, pale face that was barely visible and used tentacles of shadowy energy to manipulate objects and attack people.

We also learn that Tobi’s strength waxes and wanes based on the suffering he can get out of his victims. This manifested in him growing and shrinking over time, implying he has to feed on misery to reach his full potential literally.

What is Asmodeus?

Taking the name of the biblical demon, Asmodeus is the antagonist of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, and is presumably that same demon.

At some point in history, the Norwegian village of Beskytter was beset by the demon, who caused a mass slaughter by driving villagers into a violent madness. The village elders managed to subdue the demon by forcing it into a body, forming an isolated cult. From there, Asmodeus was forcibly transferred down a long matriarchal line from mother to daughter as a means of trapping the demon and keeping it from reaching full strength.

It would escape by the end of Next of Kin, though, free to walk the earth in the body of the villager Samuel.

Asmodeus’ true form is never revealed, unlike Tobi, although we do see the end stage of demonic possession from Asmodeus turns his victims into gaunt, pale monstrosities with superhuman strength and speed similar to the Marked Ones.

Wait, so Tobi and Asmodeus Aren’t the Same?

No, not at all. If the people who had popularized this claim had seen these films, I don’t know how they would have thought this.

As far as the movies are concerned, there is no connection between the two demons outside of the possibility that they share the same universe, and even that is dubious at best, given that Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is a hard reboot. Fan wikis assert with much misplaced confidence that they are the same entity. Still, the cult of Beskytter from Next of Kin doesn’t practice any of the same rituals as Tobi’s Midwives and seems dedicated to containing a demon rather than giving it new forms to walk the earth.

What Can Tobi Do?

Outside of a human body, Tobi is a disembodied spirit with all the classic abilities that would entail. He has telekinetic abilities that allow him to move people and objects, famously dragging and throwing his victims to torture them; still, it takes time for him to build up these powers and reach the level of flinging people around. At his strongest, he can instantly impale one of his victims with his tentacles and even liquefy them from the inside out, as he does with Skyler in The Ghost Dimension.

This is the exception, however, and usually, he has to act through living beings or be given a physical “real” form. Victims who are bitten and then possessed by Tobi, known as the Marked Ones, exhibit superhuman strength, telekinesis, levitation, teleportation, and take on a demonic appearance marked by visible blackened veins.

However, Tobi’s most prominent power is in his ability to manipulate time and space, making pathways to other points in history out of even normal doorways and walls that are inscribed with his demonic runes. It’s possible this is simply a trait of the Ghost Dimension that Tobi can utilize as a spirit, as humans are also able to travel through portals that bear his markings.

While it isn’t outright stated, it’s possible that being divorced from the natural flow of time allows him to possess multiple victims at once, as with Oscar, Jesse, and a young Katie & Kristi being possessed simultaneously in The Marked Ones (circa 2014) while Tobi was terrorizing Katie and Micah in the first film (circa 2006).

Who Are the Midwives?

The Midwives are an international coven of witches who do the bidding of Tobi. The most prominent of the Midwives was Lois, the grandmother of Tobi’s favorite victims Katie and Kristi. Though only a few people such as Ali Rey and Oscar were aware of it, there is a throughline in many kidnapping cases that connects missing children to the Midwives coven. It’s clear that they conscript the children to serve as members of the cult and enforcers, but what this army will be used for other than recruiting more people is uncertain.

The Midwives have a diverse set of abilities themselves. They not only are granted wealth and power among humans but also have access to dark magics. They can curse their victims, mentally and physically control others, and create dimensional portals. Of course, all this comes at a cost: namely, the firstborn son of their family, and pledging an undying loyalty to a black cloud that hucks people like footballs.

What Does Tobi Want?

If we go by what Micahs’ super thorough research says in the first movie, demons like Tobi cause suffering for their amusement. But we do know there is a greater plot at hand due to the actions of the Midwives, Tobi’s faithful witch acolytes.

He spends most of the series grooming Katie and Kristi Featherston to be his “brides” as part of a demonic ritual that spans through time. It’s eventually revealed in Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension that there is an ages-long prophecy to open a door to, you guessed it, the Ghost Dimension, so that Tobi can walk freely on Earth.

The ritual involved using a young Katie and Kristi to find Leila Fleege, who would be born on the same day and time as Kristi’s son Hunter Rey. Father Todd says this is significant because they were born on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the millennium, which marks the number of the beast for the ritual.

…Even though she was born in 2005, not 2006?

Look, it’s demon math; it doesn’t make sense, that’s what makes it scary.

Using Leila’s blood to open the gate, Tobi can take on a human host, presumably one of the many Marked Ones the Midwives made. From here, who knows what happens. Some references to a passage in Revelations during Ghost Dimension make it seem like Tobi is trying to usher in the apocalypse in some way, but who knows since the movies only give us the cut-and-dry answer: he wants a body.

Because he’s a movie demon. Of course he wants a body; it’s all they ever want. And as of the latest film, he got one.

Where Is Tobi Now?

Everywhere? Kind of. And everywhen, for that matter, given the whole time travel thing.

We also know there are sects of Midwives all over the world from Oscar’s conspiracy map, so if there are Marked Ones internationally, Tobi would have to have some level of omnipresence. And assuming that body of his burns out, he’s got plenty of backups. If we’re lucky, a future film will explore this.

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And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content concerning horror movies, television, and everything in between!