Yes. Satan is a paranormal force for death in the modern world.
The answer is a fairly confident, yes. I cannot recount the number of times I have heard pastors note that "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist." It is hard exactly to pin down the origins of this quote, but it's prominent use by Protestant Pastors is representative of the dual facts that (1) Protestants believe Satan and demons are hard at work today, and (2) many in the West suspect part of their work has been to disguise their presence. As such, it is not uncommon for Protestants to connect (not conflate) certain physical and mental disorders with the work of Satan. I know pastors overseas who claim to have performed exorcisms on those that were in their opinions, clearly possessed. Meanwhile, professing protestants and long-standing medical professionals in the West have pointed to the possibility of schizophrenia's origins in demonic influence. For example, Dr. Matthew Sleeth writes in his 2021 book, Hope Always:
The woman, Araceli, lived in a mud and thatch hut. Although in her early twenties, she weighed about sixty pounds. She lay in a contracted fetal position. She was nonverbal. Her only activity was to bang her head against the wall...Her distressed parents...had lost two other children around the same age from the same mysterious malady..."If ever there was a woman possessed by seven demons, I was looking at her," John [a volunteer Doctor] said. Perhaps this was schizophrenia. The diagnosis, much less treatment with the drug, was uncertain. However, she was going to die within days if left untreated, and Providence had seen to it that the team had antipsychotic medicines with them. The medicines were started, and they worked. Araceli began to eat...I have before and after pictures of Araceli. Even though I know it is the same person, I wonder when I look at the change. I have a picture taken several years later, which shows a quite woman standing beside one of the Sunday school children she now teaches. She is a modern-day Mary Magdalene: a woman possessed of a demon that surely would have killed her had not the Lord intervened. (93-94)
This is but a clearly documented case of a protestant Christian in the West attributing at least partial responsibility for life-destroying mental illnesses to the direct influence of demons. Dr. Sleeth's book is on the topic of suicide, which, despite the increasing success and application of suicide prevention measures, is almost inexplicably on the rise in the West and around the world.
