A priest had to perform between 20 and 30 interventions of the old exorcism to be freed from the demon that possessed him, the case was published in the Washington Post in 1949.
50 years ago, the movie “The Exorcist” was released, considered the best horror movie to date, now we tell you the story in which it was inspired.
In August 1949, the media received information about a shocking case that had been kept under wraps, but it was revealed on August 20 of that year in a Washington Post publication revealing that a 14-year-old teenager had been exposed on several occasions. to an exorcism trial and the result had been successful.
“In what may be one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind in recent religious history, a 14-year-old from Mount Rainier was freed from demonic possession by a priest,” Catholic sources said yesterday. .
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The publication assured that 20 to 30 interventions were required to be freed from the devil: “Only after between 20 and 30 interventions of the old exorcism, here in St. Louis, was the demon finally expelled from the young man.”
According to the chronicle, the responsible religious was the chronicler Bill Brinkley, and it was he who accompanied the young man for several months.
In all stages except the last three, the adolescent exploded in an onslaught of shouts, insults, and shouting of sentences in the Latin language unknown to him, when the priest reached the culmination of the ritual and said ‘in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit I drive the devil out of you ‘”, the text described.
The ecclesiastical authorities hid the young man’s identity to protect him, the case was known under the pseudonym of Roland Doe, and over time the amazing and unusual story was known.
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In the chronicles they reported that the young man began to show strange behavior after the death of a woman in his family who was devoted to spiritism. Among other things, she heard noises in the house, walked around at night and had several attacks, including screaming and crying.
The young man’s family began to contact several medical experts, but none of them gave a concrete diagnosis of what was happening.
According to the Washington Post article, the young man was initially transferred to Georgetown University Hospital and another in St. Louis, both Jesuit institutions.
“Finally, according to the priest responsible for the intervention, both hospitals confirmed that they were unable to heal the child naturally,” the article said.
The exorcism was performed “by a Jesuit priest in his fifties who devoted himself to the task through prayers.”
The publication describes, “In a show of his total dedication to his mission, the priest personally witnessed various manifestations of the young man while he slept.”
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The priest practically lived in the young man’s house because he was with him day and night. He also accompanied him to hospitals to evaluate the best time to start new sessions of the rite. According to the publication, the teen’s reactions during the ritual sessions were similar: he insulted and spoke in Latin, and was not only irritable.
The story had a happy ending, because after the last session the young man had no other strange episodes. The suitcase became famous all over the world and now has all kinds of versions.
William Peter Blatty and the Movie
“A priest frees a young man from the clutches of the devil” was the headline of the Washington Post 71 years ago and the one that caught the attention of William Peter Blatty, a college student in Georgetown, in the US capital.
Photo Warner Bros.
Nobody expected the headline of one of the country’s major newspapers to be the kicker for a story that would come to light two decades later.
For years, Blatty was so obsessed with history that he became drenched in the topic looking for information in the archives, church documents, interviewing priests, even though he knew a lot about religion and especially Catholicism through his studies at Jesuit University.
As he said in several interviews years later, over the course of several months he read “all the books on property that had been published in English since 1940.”
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However, it was difficult for him to reconstruct the case as it had happened. So he chose fiction. He even changed some details about the newspaper story he read in his youth and wrote about a girl who was subjected to an exorcism.
In 1971, the novel “The Exorcist” would hit bookstores, selling 13 million copies in the United States alone and remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 consecutive weeks.
Two years later, starring actress Linda Blair, he adapted the novel for the film version of one of the most remembered horror stories of all time.
Few knew then that those scenes that shook everyone off the screen had happened in real life.