Taken by the devil, or undiagnosed mental illness? Stories of possession have been passed down for
centuries, but is it possible your favorite horror movie could be more real than imagined?
"What an excellent day for an exorcism."
Exorcisms may have been going on centuries before Jesus came around,
but the demon-busting he does in the New Testament has proven to be foundational. In Matthew 8:28-34,
he has a hair-raising encounter with two men. They don't directly fight Jesus; instead, they plead
with him to let them take up in a herd of nearby pigs. Jesus lets them do just that, upon which
the demons cause the whole group of swine to throw themselves into the ocean. The swineherders tell
everyone what they just saw, causing a crowd to come to meet Jesus... and then ask him to leave.
Mark 5:1-17 retells a very similar story, only with even more chilling detail. This time,
it's just one possessed man living amongst the graves,
though he seemingly manages to approach Jesus on his own. When Jesus asks the spirit's name,
it replies in a phrase that may be familiar to pop culture fans:
"My name is Legion"
It's not just modern readers or townsfolk who were unnerved by Jesus' exorcisms. In Matthew 12:24-32,
the Pharisees make the claim that Jesus is so good at casting out demons because
he must be in league with them. Jesus stamps that idea out pretty quickly,
but it's clear that word of his activities had ruffled feathers.
The trouble began in 1632, per "The History of the Devils of Loudun." That's when hotshot
priest Urbain Grandier rolled into the French town of Loudun. Grandier was intelligent,
compelling, and very un-celibate. So when the local nuns began experiencing
"supernatural" activity, the priest's enemies saw an opening.
The nuns reportedly levitated, spoke in languages the possessed shouldn't know, and contorted
themselves into uncomfortable positions. Soon, their exorcisms became public spectacles. Several
nuns worked Grandier himself into their visions, which detractors used to publicly condemn the
priest. Grandier was arrested, tortured, and, in August 1634, he was burned at the stake. During
his trial, prosecutors presented a pact that had supposedly been made between the priest
and which bore the signatures of several big-name demons, including Lucifer himself.
Though some believed that the nuns were really possessed, others were far more
skeptical. Perhaps the isolated, cloistered nuns had pulled a prank out of boredom.
Others have pointed to old-fashioned hysteria, or even political ambition.
"Whatever you may see or hear, keep your eyes forward. And don't stop praying."
Barbe Hallay worked as a servant in the household of Marie Regnouard,
a local major landowner in what's now Quebec. Per Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality,
it was around 1660 when she began to exhibit symptoms of possession: thrashing, groaning,
and hallucinations. Priests had attempted to banish the devils, but they would always return.
According to historian Mairi Cowan, a local man named Daniel Vuil was targeted as a witch
who had masterminded Hallay's torment. He was executed, but the girl's episodes continued.
One evening in October 1662, Regnouard had enough. When Hallay began exhibiting
the symptoms of possession again, the older woman made her way into the servant's room.
But she wasn't going in unarmed. Regnouard carried a relic that she hoped would get rid
of whatever was plaguing Hallay — a human rib bone. It had once belonged to Jean de Brébeuf,
a Jesuit priest who had been killed in 1649. Regnouard laid the rib on Hallay and began
questioning the demon. It eventually escaped the girl's mouth, and she was believed to be free.
The incident was made all the more remarkable not
just because Regnouard had procured a bit of priest in the wilds of colonial Canada,
but because she had performed a successful exorcism as a layperson and a woman.
The case of George Lukins, also known more colorfully as the "Yatton Daemoniac," all began
around 1770. In a letter written to the Bristol Gazette by the Reverend William Robert Wake,
Lukins' troubles were said to have started during Christmas of that year. While out with friends,
he abruptly fainted. When he came to, Lukins said that he thought he'd been hit by someone.
Thereafter, he was plagued by violent convulsions, fits of singing,
the desire to insult bystanders, and singing hymns in reverse. Even the
mention of God or church was said to be enough to agitate the possessed Lukins.
This went on for 18 years, though Lukins managed to become a tailor while being hounded by
demons. In 1788, he was subject to an exorcism conducted by Anglican and Methodist ministers,
which seemed to finally cure him. Yet, while the tale of the Yatton Daemoniac spread,
many readers were not quite so believing. Some said that Lukins was afflicted by epilepsy,
while others concluded that he was merely a fraud.
In a 1936 issue of TIME magazine, an article appeared that told the story of
a dramatic exorcism held in Earling, Iowa. A middle-aged woman had been
suffering from symptoms of possession for over a decade. When doctors couldn't diagnose her,
the local bishop gave the go-ahead for an exorcism. The woman was escorted to
a convent, where seasoned exorcist Father Theophilus Riesinger conducted the rite.
The woman was bound to a bed, but when the exorcism began, she broke away,
flew through the air, and ended high up on a wall. When she was pulled down,
the woman claimed to be possessed not just by demons, but also by her abusive dead father.
When she sensed that holy objects were near, the woman screamed and claimed that she was
burning. She also suffered physical effects — her body bloated in response to prayer,
and she "ejected" unspecified effluvia in the priest's direction.
After a grueling 23 days, the exorcism ended and the woman seemed to be her own
person again. Although, by some accounts, she suffered from possession again shortly
thereafter and continued to receive regular exorcisms for several years.
So who was she? While TIME was coy about naming her,
a variety of other accounts identified her as Emma Schmidt, aka Anna Ecklund, or Mary X.
It was the priests at St. Louis University who conducted the exorcism in 1949. According to first
hand accounts, the troubles of the teen known as "Roland Doe" started in January of that year:
He first heard scratching noises from inside his room's walls and floor,
while objects nearby moved on their own. The activity intensified until one
Lutheran minister told the boy's family to find a Catholic priest. That priest,
Father Edward Hughes, eventually asked his archbishop for permission to hold an exorcism.
The boy wasn't just screaming and flailing. He was also being physically attacked and
bore the scratches to prove it. When one set of scratches spelled out the word "Louis," the
boy's family took it as a sign to travel to his mother's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Once the priests in St. Louis began the exorcism, it took nearly a month of nighttime
rites to banish whatever possessed the boy. He exhibited a number of hallmarks of possession,
including an aversion to holy objects and what appeared to be seizures. He even broke
a priest's nose, but he never seemed to remember what happened the next day.
By mid-April, he was seemingly clear of the force, whether it was ultimately demonic or mental.
According to priests, he went on to marry and lead a normal, devil-free life. An August 1949 article
published in The Washington Post retold the story, which later inspired author William Peter Blatty
to write "The Exorcist." The book was adapted into the classic 1973 horror film of the same name.
Perhaps the most infamous case of deadly exorcism is that of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old German
woman who died in 1976 after 67 exorcisms. Raised in a conservative Catholic family, Michel was
highly religious and often said that she had to suffer in order to atone for the sins of others.
She had been diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 16 and was receiving treatment for the condition.
But when Michel began having hallucinations of demonic faces and disembodied voices,
her family sought a religious explanation. Eventually, her behavior grew to include
disrobing and barking. She ate spiders and drank her own urine. The Michels and their
priest concluded that she was possessed, and in 1975 the Catholic Church agreed to an exorcism.
The two priests who conducted the exorcisms recorded a majority of the sessions. On the tapes,
Michel made animalistic noises and spoke in eerie voices that presented themselves as a
bevy of demons and evil historical figures, including Judas Iscariot, Adolf Hitler,
and Lucifer. As the sessions continued, Michel stopped eating and seeing any doctors.
She died of starvation, weighing a shocking 68 pounds at her death.
The affair did not end with the young woman's demise. German courts went
after both the priests and Michel's parents. They were convicted of negligent homicide,
though they all served minimal sentences. Decades later, Anneleise's mother, Anna,
told The Telegraph that she still believed that her daughter had been
possessed by demons and that an exorcism was necessary to save the girl's soul.
There's a good reason exorcisms aren't televised. Taking a long-entrenched holy rite and throwing
it up on a screen for the public to consume in lurid fashion isn't exactly respectful to the
whole affair. Neither is it generally considered acceptable to take a person who is suffering,
either from the symptoms of mental illness or an infestation of demons, and put their
pain on display for entertainment. Yet, it's clear that not everyone agrees on this front,
as evidenced by a 1991 exorcism of a teen girl that was broadcast on ABC's "20/20."
The girl was pseudonymously known as "Gina." Her exorcism was conducted by two priests: a likewise
unidentified "Father A" and Father James LeBar, a consultant on cults for the Archdiocese of New
York. Gina was tied to a chair, where she thrashed and snarled sometimes incoherent nonsense.
"Help! I don't wanna go! No more! Please! I don't wanna go! Do something!"
Gina's mother had reportedly been led to believe that exorcism was the next step after
more medically-approved psychiatric treatment didn't alleviate her daughter's disturbed mental
state. But though the priests involved believed that this sort of spiritual infestation needed
to be shown to the masses, others wondered if the slickly-produced episode was exploitative.
There were rumors that Gina's immigrant mother was pressured into participating by church officials,
while it was unclear if Gina herself understood her torment was being broadcast to the nation.
Though exorcism may be deeply old-fashioned, that doesn't mean the rite isn't performed
well into the modern day. And while some exorcisms can seem almost casual — like
those performed over the phone, per Reuters — others can become so intensely personal
and physical that lives are lost. Such was the tragic case of Romanian Orthodox
nun Maricica Irina Cornici, who died in 2005 after an agonizing exorcism.
At first, as CBS News reported, Cornici appeared to be suffering from schizophrenia.
As psychiatrist Gheorghe Silvestrovici told the outlet, she first sought help in April
2005 after she began hearing voices. Doctors told her that this was a schizophrenic hallucination,
but it was difficult for Cornici to shake the idea that it was actually the Devil
telling her that she was full of sin. She was sent to the Holy Trinity convent in Tanacu,
with the plan that she would soon be under medical supervision again. She would never return.
The convent's priest, Daniel Petru Corogeanu, quickly moved to exorcise
Cornici. He later told a court that she had become violent and had to be restrained,
while she also refused food and drink. Where a hospital might introduce a feeding regimen and
round-the-clock supervision, Corogeanu and the convent's nuns left Cornici alone and
without sustenance. She eventually died, due to dehydration and suffocation from
a gag placed on her face. Corogeanu and four nuns were charged and jailed for her death.