It was June 6th of 2013 when an old Bavarian home went up in flames.
Some would claim that they could see the outline of a person in the smoke.
Could this be the spirit of a young girl from nearly 40 years ago?
A girl who many believed was possessed by up to seven demons and who both lived and
died in the same building?
Let’s look at what once took place in the now destroyed property in this episode of
The Infographics Show, The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel.
Anneliese Michel was born in West Germany in September of 1952 to a middle-class family
who lived in a white house with green window frames.
She had three younger siblings, all girls.
Her parents were Roman Catholics and she was raised religiously, attending Mass each and
every week.
However, her seemingly normal albeit strict upbringing veered off course when she turned
sixteen.
This was when she had a sudden and debilitating seizure and was diagnosed as having temporal
lobe epilepsy, or TLE.
This condition causes seizures that last between one and two minutes.
It is possible for those diagnosed with this disorder to remain fully conscious.
They will then have hallucinations of the senses, visual distortions, dissociation,
déjà vu, amnesia, anxiety, and other strong emotions.
The seizure may end there or progress to an impaired awareness type in which consciousness
is affected.
This may cause individuals to stare, unmoving, move reflexively, or be unable to speak, read,
or understand words.
They may also feel confused or struggle with communication.
This seizure may even spread further to become a generalized type where the whole body will
tense up and jerk.
After seizing someone may be disoriented for a span of minutes to days.
Clearly the condition can be life changing.
The good news for Anneliese is that though she had more than one, she still didn’t
have very many.
Though the few she had in combination with other problems were enough to destroy her
very wellbeing.
It was June of 1970 when she had her third.
At the time she was a patient in a psychiatric hospital and was given anticonvulsant medications
to help her with her symptoms.
However, these didn’t seem to work.
In fact, her situation became worse.
She started to hallucinate and see the faces of demons.
Further, she would believe that she was smelling fire or feces that weren’t really there
as well as develop paralysis of both arms.
Based on this, doctors added the drug Aolept to her anti-seizure medication.
This was typically effective for cases of schizophrenia and other forms of delusions.
As many with TLE do, she became depressed.
She started to hear voices as well while she was praying.
These would taunt her and say she was damned and destined for Hell.
Despite the doctor’s best efforts, by 1973 her mental health only continued to grow worse.
She also became more and more depressed.
After years of medications and treatments and without any improvements, she considered
an alternate prognosis that required an entirely different form of intervention.
She believed that she was possessed by demons and could only be saved through an exorcism.
The reason she believed she was possessed was because her mother had had a child before
marriage and so the curse for her infidelity had been passed on to her.
The illegitimate child was seemingly cursed too as she died while undergoing surgery in
1956.
Others supported this idea.
A family friend was convinced of Anneliese’s possession once she visited her and displayed
oddly religiously intolerant behavior.
This included the refusal to walk by a crucifix or drink any holy water from a spring.
In fact, she couldn’t even enter the shrine that the spring was in as she had the sensation
that the ground was burning under her feet.
Those praying also looked to her as if they were frantically gnashing their teeth and
the pictures of the holy trinity sparkled blindingly.
These symptoms convinced many beyond her family that there really was an evil spirit in her.
Her parents began to contact priests in hopes of saving her with an exorcism.
At first, their requests were met with refusal and the suggestion of seeking only medical
forms of treatment.
Further, the priests explained that such rites required the bishop’s approval.
This would only be granted in the case of several specific circumstances.
In other words, certain conditions would have to be met that helped determine whether or
not an individual was truly possessed before any action could be taken.
The Catholic Church’s term for possession was infestation.
And some of its documented first signs included feelings of repulsion for religious or supernatural
artifacts.
Clearly, as far as this, Anneliese fit the bill.
However, she was still not given the exorcism that she wanted so badly.
Instead, she developed several further unusual behaviors.
She began to act violently and bite her family and also hurt herself.
Further, she started to consume her own urine as well as flies, spiders, and coal.
Rumors are that she even bit off and swallowed the head of a bird and went under a table
and barked for days.
Not very surprisingly, considering what she ate, she would have periods of diarrhea and
vomiting.
She believed that all of this was due to her past wrongs and began sleeping on the hard
stone floor as a self-imposed punishment.
Her situation was becoming quite desperate.
In late 1973, she began the medication Tegretol meant to stabilize her emotions as well as
prevent her seizures.
Like before with the other drugs, it did little to help.
Ernst Alt, a pastor, ended up contacting Bishop Josef Stangl on Anneliese’s behalf in support
of an exorcism.
His support was based upon his observations of her in which he concluded that she didn’t
seem like an epileptic and had never, as far as he had noticed, had a seizure.
Instead, he believed her symptoms were due to the work of demons.
Finally, in 1975, the bishop gave his approval to the Michel’s family’s third request
for an exorcism.
The procedure was to be performed by priest Arnold Renz and he was to do it in complete
secrecy.
The first session took place in September of 1975.
Sixty-six further sessions would follow, up to twice weekly for four hours each and over
the span of around ten months.
These would consist of Father Renz and Pastor Alt moving crucifixes back and forth, burning
incense, and chanting prayers.
Then Anneliese would scream, for hours, in unreal and primal sounds.
It seemed to be working when the many demons within her vanished except for one.
Until the next day when the rest returned.
Somehow, they didn’t give up.
In fact, Anneliese asked her family to discontinue looking to doctors for medical treatments
in favor of relying only on the exorcism.
They followed her wishes.
Eventually, as her treatments went on, Anneliese stopped eating or drinking.
She said that the demons would not let her.
According to some sources, Annelise eventually requested the exorcism to end.
She claimed that the Virgin Mary had come to her in a vision and asked her to stay possessed
to benefit mankind and to become a martyr.
She obeyed.
Quite eerily, she apparently knew the day she was going to die and accurately predicted
it beforehand.
She died on the 1st of July in 1976.
The official cause of death given was malnutrition and dehydration.
It was determined that she had been in a state of starvation for almost a year.
In fact, her corpse weighed only 68 pounds, or 30 kilograms.
Not long before, she had become so weak that she could no longer move on her own and the
motions required for her exorcism had shattered both of her knees.
She may also have been suffering from pneumonia.
She told her exorcist to beg for absolution and her mother that she was afraid.
Those were the last words she would say.
She was only 23 when she died.
Her parents and the priests involved were prosecuted and accused of negligent homicide
upon her passing.
It was suggested that intervention could have saved her life at any point up until days
before she ultimately died, such as through forced feeding.
Doctors gave testimony that Anneliese was not possessed but her symptoms were only because
of her epileptic episodes mixed with her religious beliefs.
Some experts suggested that she had a very severe case of schizophrenia.
However, it was revealed that at least one such doctor had told Anneliese that there
was no type of medicine that could fight the devil, destroying his credibility.
As proof of her possession, tapes were played in court of the exorcism sessions in which
Anneliese spoke in different voices as if demons were arguing.
These evil spirits claimed to be Nero, Hitler, Judas Iscariot, Cain, and Lucifer.
In other words, her body was not just possessed by one demon but many, and at certain times
this was up to seven.
She would also speak in various languages such as Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.
Ultimately, those directly involved believed that the exorcism had been successful as these
strange voices ended right before her death.
Whether or not this was true, lawyers argued for freedom of religion and against any sentencing.
However, the stakes were not as high as they could have been.
The state pushed for fining the priests and the prosecution believed that the parents
had suffered enough already.
Therefore, no parties faced jail time for what they had done.
They were originally convicted of manslaughter due to negligence and given a six-month jail
sentence, however this was suspended.
They ended up with only three years’ probation, which was a greater sentence than the prosecution
had asked for but was far from the worst punishment possible.
After it was over, the body of Anneliese was exhumed at the request of her parents.
She was then placed in a better coffin.
However, that was not the real reason her parents wanted access to her body.
It turns out a nun from Bavaria had a vision and afterwards contacted Anneliese’s parents
to share it with them.
She had supposedly seen their daughter’s remains unchanged and perfectly preserved
in her coffin.
They had hoped that this was actually true and that it would show that she was really
possessed and ultimately saved through the exorcism.
Her body, however, as any other body would do, had begun to decompose with time.
Despite this finding, interest in her case continued.
Her grave even became a revered site where many visited on pilgrimage.
Then the buses came.
Stuffed door to door with tourists who were eager to see where Anneliese had lived, her
grave, and the chapel erected in her memory.
These people who had a fascination with the case came by in droves and quite overwhelmed
the small Bavarian city.
The Church was dealt a blow through the negative publicity.
It did eventually have a change of opinion and state that she was likely mentally ill
and not possessed but damage had already been done.
The rate of exorcisms declined.
This likely won’t change anytime soon.
As recently as 1999 the new pope made the rules governing exorcisms tougher and approval
much harder to get.
But were they ultimately right, or were they wrong after all?
It may be just a coincidence, but in May of 2013, the garage of the chapel built for Anneliese
burned down.
While a faulty light was found nearby, a police spokesman later claimed that that would be
a very odd and atypical way to start a fire.
Then three weeks later, the home in which she both lived and died was engulfed in flames.
Fortunately, it was empty, and had been since her family no longer lived there.
Rather unsurprisingly, no one else wanted to move in.
While some think demons are to blame, the mayor of the town claimed it was arson committed
by teenagers.
If it was the work of children, all we can say is that they picked quite a day to burn
down the home.
June is the sixth month of the year, that Thursday was the sixth day in the month, and
the sum of the digits in the year 2013 give you 6.
That’s three 6’s, or 666, the biblical sign of the devil.
Is it just another coincidence or is it really an indication that what others feared could
be true really was all along?
What do you think?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called True Scary Stories - TRY NOT TO GET
SCARED CHALLENGE 2019!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!