A boy, his face ashen and distorted, violently writhes on his bed.
With incomprehensible strength, he breaks out of his binds. In a guttural, evil voice,
he growls something incoherent. The priest holds up a cross, momentarily repulsing the boy.
“The power of Christ compels you!” shouts the Priest.
The boy growls back, his black teeth gnashing between his snarling lips.
“THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!!!!” That priest is about to get hurt. He doesn’t
fully know what he’s up against, but this, he thinks, has got to the work of the devil.
And if that opening scene sounds a bit like a movie you once watched, perhaps one featuring
a girl with a screw-top head who doesn’t mind using rather colorful language, it’s because the
exorcism we are talking about today served as the basis of that movie. Yep, we mean “The Exorcist.”
The makers of the Exorcist didn’t pull the plot out of a hat. It was actually very
closely based on the exorcism we are featuring today. In the real version,
the priest really did get hurt. That boy did things a little boy shouldn’t be able to do.
But we’ll come back to the actual exorcism later. First of all, we won’t blame some of you more
scientifically-minded folks for saying there’s just no way anyone could be possessed by the
devil. The majority of the world, we would assume, thinks such a thing as demonic possession
making little boys go mad, is a made-up story created by folks who’ve allowed the idea of Satan
to go to their heads. That’s a good thing. Amen. After all, we used to burn witches on this planet,
something that is a disgrace to humanity in modern times. So, first of all, let’s have a look at the
people behind this exorcism. Were they, as the British might say, completely off their trolley?
Stark-raving mad. Deranged, fanatical nut jobs who liked bullying children with mental health issues?
You probably already know that exorcisms are a real thing and can be performed provided
the exorcist gets the green light from the church. According to news reports,
the number of exorcisms in the USA has been on the increase of late. In 2018, the BBC reported that
the Vatican has invited 250 priests from all over the world to attend an exorcist
training course. We kid you not. In 2020, the Associated Press called exorcisms “commonplace.”
We’re telling you this just so you understand that exorcisms are taken seriously by the
church and aren’t just something undertaken by lunatics suffering from meth psychosis.
So, when we tell you that a priest named Walter Halloran was there for the exorcisms in today’s
show, you can bet he was a real priest who earnestly wanted to rid the boy of the devil.
There were a bunch of priests who saw that young boy do some incredible things,
but not too many of them have talked in depth about it. The church was pretty hush,
hush, about the matter, with Halloran once saying, “I can’t go on record,
I never made an absolute statement about the things because I didn’t feel I was qualified.”
The priest, Raymond J. Bishop, was also there, and he took notes. This is how we
know what happened during the exorcisms, of which there were quite a few. When the devil
squats in someone’s head, he usually hunkers down. It was Bishop - a great name for a priest by the
way - that really went into detail. He said 14 priests attended the exorcisms in total,
and all of them were somewhat surprised by what they saw, with some also being skeptical.
We’ll come back to the skepticism. Ok, so in 1949 in the middle-class
neighborhood of Bel-Nor, of St. Louis, Missouri, a 13-year old kid living in a
grand colonial era house on Roanoke Drive decided he wanted to play around with a Ouija board.
Once this kid was talked about for his dealings with the devil and subsequent meetings with those
priests, the press called him Ronald Doe or Robbie Mannheim, but his real name was
Roland Hunkeler. The family was German-American. Young Roland was devastated after hearing that
his beloved aunt Harriet (Tillie) had passed away from complications of her multiple sclerosis. She
was the one who’d taught him how to use a Ouija board. She was apparently a bit of a spiritualist.
Not long before she kicked the bucket, the boy started hearing and seeing strange things
around the house. According to the diaries of one of the priests, both the kid and his
grandma started hearing a dripping sound, although there was no source of water.
The date was January 15. That same day, the boy started hearing scratching noises, again,
with seemingly no source. They seemed to be coming from somewhere under the floorboards. You
could blame mice for that, but not for a shaking picture of Jesus Christ that was hung on the wall.
This went on for 10 days, after which, there were three days of “silence”,
according to what the priest wrote. Then the boy said for another three days, every night, he heard
the sound of “squeaking shoes” on his own bed. January 26 was the day his aunt passed,
and that’s when things started getting really crazy. The sounds around the house got worse, and
now the boy thought it must be his dead aunt. He, along with his mom and grandma, got out the Ouija
board and tried to make contact with the aunt. The mom asked, “If you are Tillie, knock three
times.” A gush of air then hit all of them, and three bangs came from under
the floorboards. The mom then said, “If you are Tillie, tell me positively by knocking
four times.” Four knocks were heard by all the party. They also heard a scratching sound on the
blanket on the nearby bed. Roland’s bed. These strange goings-on kept happening,
and so on February 17, Roland went to stay at the parsonage where minister Reverend Shultz lived.
He wanted to see if anything strange happened around young Roland. So far, when weird things
did happen, he was always close to the source. His mom thought the spirit of his aunt or possibly
something worse was inside of him. That night at the minister’s house,
some strange things indeed happened. Shultz said he also heard scratching sounds close to Roland,
along with hearing vibrations coming from the bed. A chair, said the minister, also tipped over.
February 26 was the day things really kicked off. Not only were scratching sounds heard,
but actual scratches appeared on Roland’s body. Sure, he could have done this by himself,
but the diary states that the mom was there when some of those scratches happened as if by magic.
She said it looked as though they’d been done by claws. This was in the diary, anyway. It’s
a pity she wasn’t around when the story became well-known after the making of The Exorcist.
She went to see Father Albert Hughes of St. James Catholic Church in Mount Rainier,
who told her to pray and bless the house with holy water and blessed candles.
That didn’t seem to help matters. The diary states that when the mom
had just lit some candles, a comb flew across the room and knocked them over.
The mom and Roland started seeing all sorts of unexplainable things.
At one point, some fruit flew across a room. Another time, a kitchen table just flipped.
One day Roland was sitting in a chair, and it turned around by itself.
Then a coat took a trip across a room and a bible ended up at Roland’s feet.
Was this a case of collective hysteria? Was Roland somehow furtively making all these things happen?
Even the school sent him home one time because the teacher said his desk started spinning
around. Remember, this was all in the diary, so you have to take the priest’s word for it.
Mrs. Doe didn’t question that something out of this world was going on.
She saw things for herself. One day she was filling a bottle with holy water, and it flew
across the room. Somehow it didn’t smash. A bit later, she was lighting a candle next to Roland’s
bed when the bed moved with her and him on it. The mom did what any ultra-pious person would do
and took her son to be baptized again, only during the process, Roland went absolutely mad. She then
sent him to stay with relatives, and according to the diary, scratch marks, what the diary called
“brandings”, appeared on the boy’s body. At one point, Roland had a three-day stay
at Georgetown University Hospital. This is where the first of the exorcisms happened and the priest
who performed it was Father Hughes. He would later relay what happened to other priests.
As per the start of this video, the boy slipped out of his binds. He then ripped a spring out
of the mattress and used it to cut the priest’s arm. Due to this injury, the exorcism was aborted.
After that, Hughes kept mostly quiet about the matter and secluded himself from society
for a fair few years. It was later said that the event caused him a considerable amount of trauma.
On March 9, Father Bishop saw the seemingly-possessed boy for the first time.
He too said he saw the mattress moving by itself and young Roland looking worse for wear.
Two days later, both he and another priest, Father Bowdern, visited the house again. This
time they both said prayers above Roland’s bed and blessed him with a religious relic
stated as “a piece of bone from the forearm of St. Francis Xavier.” Relatives of Roland
were also in attendance. In all, it’s said 49 people witnessed the possession of Roland Doe.
After leaving a special crucifix under Roland’s bed, the priests took off. A few hours later,
banging could be heard from his room. When the relatives opened the door,
the sight that greeted them was an overturned bench, a moved bookcase, and that crucifix was
on the other side of the room. The mattress was shaking at this point, with Roland screaming,
“Aunt Tillie, stop! Please stop.” A few days later, the two priests performed
the ritual prayers of exorcism over Roland, but it seems that wasn’t good enough. According to the
diaries, Roland was moved around a lot, and now with permission from Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter,
other priests performed the rites of exorcism. Some rituals happened in Alexian Brothers
Hospital in South St. Louis and others at various houses of relatives. Priests would stand above
Roland’s bed and usually recite the words: “I cast thee out, thou unclean spirit,
along with the least encroachment of the wicked enemy and every phantom and diabolical legion.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, depart and vanish from this creature of God….”
The diaries state that during some of the rituals Roland would writhe around as usual like a beast.
Scratches appeared on his body. He would often curse at the priests, a la, The Exorcist girl,
and he’d sometimes spit, vomit and pee in the bed. He’d also use Latin, even though Roland
on his better days couldn’t speak Latin. If you think this story can’t get any more
unbelievable, the diaries said during one of the rituals a picture in the form of scratches
appeared on Roland’s calf. It was described as the devil with webs stretching from his arms.
During other exorcisms, it was said a pitchfork would snake down Roland’s leg. The priests also
said at times an “X” would appear on his chest. Roland was later taken to another town by train.
Father Bowden was his caretaker during the journey, who, it’s said, was whacked
in the balls by Roland out of the blue. The Father said Roland laughed and said to him,
“That’s a nutcracker for you, isn’t it?” April 18, 1949. The night of the last exorcism.
In attendance were relatives, who watched Father Bowdern perform the ritual.
On this occasion, the father tried to ascertain who it was that was inside of the boy.
The diary says Roland said he was one of the fallen angels. The priest shouted back:
“Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael! I command you, Satan,
and the other evil spirits to leave this body, in the name of Dominus, immediately! Now! Now! Now!”
Suddenly, after one last violent spasm, Roland just slumped on the bed in a heap. Then,
as if coming out of a dream, he looked at the priest and feebly uttered the words, “He is gone.”
Roland later explained that at the moment of Satan leaving his body he had a vision of Saint Michael
wielding a fiery sword and vanquishing the devil. But had Satan gone? Was he ever even there?
The thing with this case is for many years it remained a secret.
In 1949, The Washington Post talked about an exorcism but there were very few details,
not even a name for the victim or the priests. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the news picked
it up again and started giving the story more details. One of the stories said,
“The only physical remains of the exorcism in Mt. Rainier are the steps and wall surrounding
the house where the boy lived. The house burned down years ago and the lot is vacant.”
This was not true. Many things the media said about the case weren’t true, which is why
investigations into the matter later took place. Then in 1985, The Washington Post wrote a story
titled, “Youth’s Bizarre Symptoms Led to 1949 Exorcism.” Later, in 1993, “Possessed:
The True Story of an Exorcism” was published. Everything was then brought into question. Sure,
there was a boy who might have looked to have been possessed at times,
but the authors of the investigation said people had joined up a lot of dots after hearing stories.
Father Halloran had indeed been there during some of the exorcisms, and he did say he saw scratches,
but he also noted that those scratches appeared when he wasn’t looking. He told the press the
words “evil” and “hell” formed on Roland’s body. He also said he saw the mattress move,
and at one point, Roland flew at him and broke his nose. That was all true.
But was Roland just an out-of-control maniac kid who likely in his adult years went on
to graduate from pretending to be possessed to committing serious crimes or being locked up in
an institution where the walls are soft and they feed you buckets of valium with your breakfast?
In 2004, father Halloran passed away. He was the
last of the priests who’d attended those exorcisms.
In one of his last interviews, he said Roland had gone on to live “a rather ordinary life.”
Maybe the boy was just mentally unhinged and enjoyed getting off school.
As for Father Hughes, the investigators couldn’t find any proof that he had attended an exorcism
and after had a nervous breakdown, nor could they find anything that showed the kid had
been taken to those hospitals we mentioned. As for the secret diaries, they were real enough,
but the priest much of the time relayed what he’d only heard. He might also have
made some things up. We’ll never know, because they all died once the story got some legs.
Sure, the priests and the parents might have seen scratches and things flying around,
but skeptics think Roland was a clever little devil and managed to orchestrate everything.
Why priests would believe this was a demonic possession was explained by one of the many
skeptics. He said, “To psychiatrists, Rob Doe suffered from mental illness.
To priests this was a case of demonic possession. To writers and film/video producers this was
a great story to exploit for profit. Those involved saw what they were trained to see.”
The only person who could maybe explain the truth of what really went down is Roland himself,
who if he is still alive, will now be creeping towards the age of 90. Let’s hope when we say, “Is
there anybody there. Is there anybody there”, old Roland might leave us a comment below this video.
Now you really need to watch “The Real Life Exorcism Even Scarier Than The Movie.”
Or, meet the big man himself in “50 Things You Didn't Know about Satan.”