Prior to discussing the film, as a person educated at different points by Catholic nuns and priests, Jesuits, Christian Brothers, and Franciscans, I though I could help you bone up on the inspiration for the movie and exorcism in general.
William Peter Blatty, the author and screenwriter of The Exorcist, was also educated by various factions of the Catholic Church (he graduated from Georgetown and considered becoming a Jesuit). In 1949, the Washington Post printed a story about an exorcism in a D.C. suburb (originally, it was thought to be Mt. Rainier, but author Mark Opsasnick has revealed that, in fact, it was in Cottage City, Maryland) of a 14 year-old boy, the son of a government worker. Blatty read the story and conceived his novel, also using a 1928 Romanian exorcism and various parts of the Bible as pulp. In 1971, his book "The Exorcist" sold 13 million copies in the United States.
Thomas B. Allen, author of "War Games" and "CNN: War in the Gulf" wrote "Possessed" in 1991, a crisp, emotionless recounting of the Mount Rainier (and later, St. Louis) exorcisms of the boy based on interviews with participants, witnesses, second-hand accounts, a case study, and a diary of one of the Jesuits present. It is a short read, and I recommend it as an incisive and unmuddied assessment of a peculiar event. It is also very creepy in an unintentional way.
From the book:
"There is a vast, worldwide literature about events like these - bizarre, inexplicable happenings that people experience and attempt to describe. The accounts radiate out in concentric circles, with the frightened stammering witnesses at the hub. Around the hub, in the first tight circle, are stunned relatives and friends, hearing and wondering, trusting but disbelieving. In the second circle, beyond those first auditors who know the witnesses, are the neighbors and the rumormongers, telling what they heard or what they imagined they heard, garnishing the distant happening with erroneous details plucked from other stories or from their own inspirations. From that weak and ever widening circle usually comes the account that reaches the back pages of newspapers to be read with smirks by skeptics. Eventually, the accounts find their way into the magazines and books of true believers, the zealots whose faith in the unexpected is not matched by a demand for the facts. But something different was to happen in the accounts of the happenings in the Mannheim [not the true family name] house. In the first circle would be not only relatives and friends but also ministers, psychologists, and priests who would write down what they heard and saw. Through their testament, the events whirling around Robbie would be soberly recorded."
Those events are rather frightening, even for the least superstitious of readers. The boy had a Ouija board. He was taught to play it by his aunt, a spiritualist, who died shortly thereafter (the National Spiritualist Association of the United States of America was founded in 1893, and by 1923 there were 682 Spiritualist churches in America with a membership of 126,000). Thereafter, in the beginning period, the following occurred to the boy: mysterious scratchings under his bed, rappings, thuddings, squeakings of the floorboards, telekinetic and/or unexplained movement of desks, chairs, drawers, smaller objects, and doors near the boy (in one instance, relatives saw a rocking chair spin like a top near the boy).
The family - Lutherans - believed it was the ghost of the aunt. They called upon their minister, who assumed the boy was playing pranks, or possibly, a poltergeist (German for "noisy ghost") was at play. The minister, Luther Schulze, took the boy to his home to spend the night. While there, the minister witnessed the boy's bed shake. He led the boy out of the room and into a chair. The chair flipped over. He placed the boy on the floor. The next day, the minister told the parents, "You have to see a Catholic priest. The Catholics know about things like this."
Indeed, they do. As written by J. Ramsey Michaels, a prominent New Testament scholar, "Nothing is more certain about the ministry of Jesus than the fact that He performed exorcisms." Exorcism has roots in 3 of the 4 books of the New Testament (interestingly, in all 39 books of the Old Testament, there is only one instance of an evil spirit coming upon someone - Saul - that spirit is sent by Yahweh, and all Saul has to do to rid himself is sing some of David's music). Jesus comes upon one man chained down due to the demons writhing in him. Jesus asks the demon his name, and it retorts, "My name is Legion: for we are many." Jesus orders the demon out, and it is hurled among a herd of swine, which runs into the sea and perishes. Jesus also exorcised a man in Capernaum (after which the people said, "He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him"), a boy who was frothing and gnashing (modern physicians believe the boy was epileptic - Jesus spoke to the demons, "Be quiet and come out of him") and he cast seven devils out of Mary Magdalene.
The rite of exorcism is in the Rituale Romanun (the official book of Catholic rituals), 58 pages long. Catholicism took Jesus' experience to heart and doctrine, and exorcism was not uncommon up through the Middle Ages.
The introductory paragraph of the Rituale on exorcism is instructive:
"Man, above all the Christian, must reckon with the realm of the prince of darkness, and his legions, not presuming that Satan ha no existence outside the product of fable, superstition, or figment - an error endemic in materialists of any age - not minimizing his power over the human person or in human affairs, without on the other hand seeing him lurk in every nook and crevice, like some of the ancient desert fathers, or for that matter like certain exotic cults of the present day. There is a world of demons, as revealed religion teaches, and even if revelation were not so absolute, we could conjecture that the devil is a real person and that his sway is tremendous - a legitimate inference from the magnitude of evil to which our times, no less than past history, bear witness."
FATHER HUGHES
Enter Father Hughes of St. James. He spoke to the mother, offered to pray for the boy, and gave her holy water and candles. He thought that would be the end of it. The mother called again and informed Father Hughes that the bottle had been smashed, one of the candles shot a flame and a telephone table had splinted into pieces. Hughes promised to visit, and when he did, by some accounts, he witnessed the boy speaking Latin to him (the boy allegedly said, "O priest of Christ, you know that I am the devil. Why do you keep bothering me?"). By other accounts, however, he never visited the boy's home. Under the Rituale Romanum, a sign of possession is "the ability to speak with some facility in a strange tongue." Either way, Hughes was suitably impressed. He spoke to the Archbishop of D.C., Patrick O'Boyle.
O'Boyle, busy with other things (i.e., the voluntary desegregation of all area Catholic schools, including my high school alma mater, Gonzaga) was not keen on having the Catholic Church of 1949 look like some bizarre backward cult. He kept Hughes silent, but authorized him to perform an exorcism. The boy was admitted to Georgetown Hospital, where, during the exorcism, the boy ordered the priest to remove his cross in a strange voice, a tray carried by a nun sailed across the room, scratch marks appeared on the boy's chest and the bed shook. Some reports have the boy becoming violent, and slashing Father Hughes' arm (Allen reports yes, Opsasnick casts doubt). The exorcism was ended. The family took the boy to St. Louis to visit relatives.
ST. LOUIS
In St. Louis, the cycle repeated itself and Catholics were called in. Father Bishop, a Jesuit at St. Louis University, came to see the boy. He witnessed the mattress moving back and forth while the boy exerted no physical effort. He witnessed an "R" appear on the boy's stomach. He then witnessed various zigzag scratches on the boy's abdomen. Bishop left the house and consulted with an older colleague, Father Bowdern. Bowdern agreed to visit the house, and with him, he took two holy relics - including a piece of bone from St. Francis Xavier (a missionary who died in 1552, was dug up, and, reportedly, had not decayed in two months). Bowdern thought the relics might give comfort to the boy.
Bowdern placed the relics on the boy's bed. While downstairs visiting with the parents, they heard screaming from the room. Rushing upstairs, the boy was upset and said he felt a presence in the room. The other relic - a medal - had been hurled into a mirror. The boy held up his left arm and showed scratches in the form of a cross. The priests calmed the boy down and left to discuss the matter.
Bowdern and Bishop were not keen to exorcise. They considered that demonic possession was a possibility, but so was a hoax perpetrated on the part of the child and the family. In the end, however, the priests decided to ask the Archbishop Ritter of St. Louis for permission. They had seen enough.
Soon, three Jesuits were performing an exorcism of the boy, after receiving grudging authorization from the Archbishop. One of the exorcists - Father Bishop - began to keep a diary and, in speaking with family, started a case study (interestingly, but not surprisingly, the family did not tell the new exorcists about the previous exorcism at Georgetown Hospital; one can speculate that they feared the priests might balk when learning of the attendant violence). The Archbishop, however, demanded that the exorcism be done in complete secrecy (he too was dealing with tougher issues, such as desegregation of schools, and he was not interested in public reports of witch-doctoring on the part of the Jesuits). It was performed at the boy's home in St. Louis. Unlike poor Father Hughes, several Jesuits were involved, and they had an entire community of Jesuits to draw from for counsel and advice.
THE JESUITS
Jesuits are trained in rigorous fashion, though exorcism, as late as 1949, was not a staple field of study. Indeed, Jesuits are by nature iconoclastic and independent, and historically, have often been at odds with Rome on issues of ecclesiastical teachings and social justice (the head of the Jesuit order was often referred to as the "Black pope"). If there were an order less inclined to buy demonic possession, it would be the Jesuits, who, as Allen points out, traditionally have "more interest in this world than in any that may lay beyond."
Jesuits, however, are also a rather fearless order. The founder of the Jesuits in 1540, Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a Basque nobleman and soldier. While recovering from a battle wound, he read the lives of the saints and was inspired to create an order of soldiers of Christ . . . assertive, missionary and bold. By 1949, full Jesuit credentialing was a 13 year process little changed from the 16th century - called the Ratio Studiorum: a few months probation, a 2 year novitiate devoted to prayer and meditation and menial chores, 2 years of Greek and Latin, 3 years of philosophy, 2 to 3 years of teaching, and 4 years of theology.
EXORCISMS PAST
Father Bowdern - assigned as the exorcist by the Archbishop of St. Louis - boned up on exorcism. He learned the works of a Jesuit in 1599, Martin Del Rio, who set down a description of 18 kinds of demons or demonic apparitions (the 16th included "specters which in certain times and places or homes are wont to occasion various commotions or annoyances . . . with clattering of pots and hurling of stones, and, having pulled away his mattress, turned him out of his bed"). They learned of the alleged possession of 17 nuns in 17th century France (see Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon). The Jesuits assigned to those exorcisms were doubters in almost all of the cases, but one gave them pause: Sister Jeanne des Anges, who claimed she was possessed by seven devils. The sister exhibited bloody crosses (one on her forehead for 3 weeks) and "Joseph" was written by welts on her body.
Interestingly, the exorcist, a Jesuit named Father Surin, soon found himself possessed. Surin offers a description of the ordeal: "I feel as if I had been pierced by the pricks of despair in that alien soul which seems to be mine . . . . I even feel that the cries that come from my mouth come from both souls at once." Surin was tormented by the experience for 25 years.
Bowdern also found a pamphlet on the exorcism of an Iowa woman in the 1920s. She had been periodically plagued by demonic voices. She was taken to a convent and exorcised by a Father Riesinger. During the ceremony, according to the pamphlet, she unloosed her restraints, levitated and eventually clung to the wall. She let out screams that sounded like wild beasts. She frothed and spit and vomited. She became horribly disfigured with swelling and eye protrusion and bloat.
John Livingston Nevius, a missionary in China in the late nineteenth century, encountered many instances of shamanistic possession in his ministry. He treated them as demonic, and found that they could be broken up fairly rapidly by simply prayers of exorcism, or even in some cases simply by the persistent reading of Scripture in the vicinity of the possessed person, creating an unpleasant environment for the possessed spirit.
To Bishop's mind, he'd seen evidence of pre-possession, but not actual possession, whereby the body suffers and speaks and begins to emote as if a demon were within. Still, it was in the hopes of averting actual possession that he had sought the Archbishop's consent.
THE EXORCISM
On March 16, Fathers Bowdern, Bishop and a Father Halloran (chosen because he was physically strong) began the exorcism when the boy went to bed. The mattress immediately began to move. The exorcism took hours. At one point, the boy exhibited long welts across his chest, abdomen and throat. Across the boy's chest, the words "HELL" appeared. Later, "GO" on his stomach and an "X" on his leg (Bowdern hoped that this meant the demon would leave at 10:00 am the next morning or in 10 days). By the night's end, Bishop counted 25 separate welts and scratches. When the boy became conscious for a respite, he told the priests he had dreamed that he had been fighting a huge red devil so as not to be thrown into a dark pit. The rite continued and the boy became violent. He lashed out at the three priests and spit in Halloran's face. They ended at 5: 00 am. As they left the room, he boy sat upright and sang "Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away." He then swung his arms violently and went into "Old Man River." Bowdern felt he was being mocked.
On March 17th, the three priests continued their rigorous ecclesiastical duties. Bishop was a teacher, Bowdern a pastor and Halloran a scholastic. They all worried about the toll if the exorcism continued for a long time. They arrived at the house at 9:30 that evening. Bowdern began again and the boy immediately spat in his face. He then spat at everyone. As Halloran recalled, "He was an utter marksman at the distance of four or five feet. His eyes were closed and he'd spit right in your face." The boy was delirious one minute, asleep the next, and combative the next, spitting, thrashing and singing garbled "Swanee River."
On March 18, the priests returned at 7:00 pm. The three priests chatted with the boy and played a game with him. He then went to bed. The process began again. The mattress began to shake. The boy contorted. Bishop's diary states, "The contortions revealed physical strength beyond the natural power of [the boy]." He spit and fought and pitched. Bowdern held a consecrated host by the boy's foot. The boy, according to Bishop's diary, "stood up in bed and fought all those around him. He shouted, jumped, and swung his fists. His face was devilish, and he snapped his teeth in fury. He snapped at the priest's hand in the blessings. He bit those who held him." Soon, however, the boy began to heave in what Bowdern hoped was an expulsion of the devil. The boy asked someone to open a window. Suddenly, he screamed, "He's going. He's going. There he goes." Bowdern led the group in a prayer of thanksgiving. It was 1:30 am. The priests left, but were called at 3:30 am by the parents. It had begun again. They headed back to the house and began the prayers of the exorcism. The boy drifted to sleep at 7:30 am.
On March 19, the exorcism rite began anew. The boy barked like a dog. He urinated copiously. He stated that his throat and penis were on fire. He sang "The Blue Danube" in an unnaturally beautiful voice. He broke into "The Old Rugged Cross." The prayers continued. He began to turn against the priests verbally, screaming "Get away from me, you assholes!" and "Go to hell, you dirty sons of bitches!" It ended at 2:00 am.
[As an interesting sidenote, some of the boy's relatives were entreating the family to go another route during this time period, and Karl W. Bubb, Sr., a professor of mathematics and physics at Washington University in St. Louis came to see the boy during the exorcism. Bubb had a keen interest in the paranormal and later told people that he'd seen a table hover and rise at the house and a chest of drawers move. Bubb jotted some notes and told Halloran (as recounted by Halloran) "This isn't my territory." Bubb had worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII and he chaired two departments at the University. He died in 1961 and his papers on parapsychology were destroyed to protect his scientific reputation].
THE ALEXIAN BROTHERS HOSPITAL
The Jesuits suggested that the boy be taken to Alexian Brothers Hospital, an institution for the mentally ill in St. Louis. They knew the Alexian Brothers would respect Archbishop Ritter's demand for secrecy. The family agreed. A room was set up at the rectory and the boy was soon being instructed in Catholicism. Over the next 2 weeks, the boy was exorcised at night and welcomed into the Catholic faith by day.
The circle of witnesses became wider, including hospital staff, and another Jesuit, Father Van Roo (recruited as an assistant to Halloran). On his first night, the boy broke Halloran's nose and bloodied that of Van Roo. Over the next several days, along with contortions, bodily emission, and welting, the following was witnessed and/or recorded: The boy began to laugh diabolically, and once screamed "I'm in hell . . . I see you. I see you"; his language became increasingly taunting and sexually graphic (in his diary, Bishop recorded that "[h]is expressions were lowly and smacked of the abuse of sex"); and, the boy predicted Bowdern's death in 1957. Regardless, the boy became better and was returned home, where he had two uneventful nights. Relieved and hopeful, the family planned to go back to Maryland. But the boy soon lapsed, and began writing oblique messages such as "God is getting powerful" and "The last day when it quits it will leave at sign at my front" and Fr. Bishop - all people that mangle with me will die a terrible death." The priests were recalled.
Bowdern began to regularly fulfill two requirements of the Ritual: asking when the demon will leave and asking the demon its name (recall Jesus' asking the demon, who replied "My name is Legion, for we are many"). The Ritual also required that Bowdern state, 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&.
Bowdern also continued the Catholic indoctrination of the boy by day. But when the boy was brought to the Church for baptism, he struggled for the car wheel, screamed, fought and had to be baptized in the rectory (the family recalled that static came from the radio in the car, even though it had been turned off, and since this is the film thread, see Damien's aborted trip to church in "The Omen"). First communion proved as difficult, as the boy spit the host out repeatedly. After he finally accepted the host, Bowdern read in Latin, which the boy aped, ending with "Stick it up your ass." The exorcism continued, with greater indignities for the boy, his family and the priests. The boy threatened his uncle, singing his cousin's name "Billy, Billy, you will die tonight."
TO MARYLAND AND BACK AGAIN
Eventually, the boy's father had to return to Maryland. The father took his family, and the priests accompanied them the train. In Maryland, the boy continued (again, Bowdern needed permission form Archbishop O'Boyle, which he received). The exorcism continued at the boy's home, welts appeared to shape various numbers, "HELL", "SPITE" and "CHRIST." The boy became more and more violent. Bowdern impressed upon the family to bring the boy back to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis.
The priests and the boy returned to St. Alexians. The exhaustion was taking its toll. Father Bowdern had developed boils. The exorcism continued. The physical manifestations of the boy continued. He welted "HELL" gain.
He also became more abusive. At one point, he grabbed Bowdern's testicles. His voice changed. He told Bowdern that he was the devil. He attacked many who came into his room. He continued to spit in the face of those who approached him. Finally, after an extended period of violent contortions, the boy screamed, "He's gone." The boy told the priests he had a dream where he was delivered by an angel from a burning pit or cave.
POSTSCRIPT
The story got out first from the first Lutheran minister, Schulze. He told an August 1949 meeting of the Society for Parapsychology that he had seen a poltergeist in a D.C. suburb. The Catholic Review published a blurb on the story, the Washington Star-News picked up on it and the Washington Post followed with a story. Blatty had his inspiration.
The best modern sources for facts on this exorcism are interviews with participants; the articles; Blatty (and his conversations with the priests); Halloran; second-person accounts of the exorcism; Bishop's diary and "Case Study"; notes given on a lecture by Father Hughes to Georgetown University on May 10, 1950; Opsasnick's work, and second-person accounts from the official reports of Hughes and Bowdern to their archdiocese (unreleased to date by either diocese).
Father Bowdern died in 1983 at the age of 86. Father Bishop died in 1978 at the age of 72. As of 1990, Father Halloran was living, as was Father Van Roo. Father Hughes, as stated, had a breakdown, but returned to St. James in Maryland in 1972. He died of a heart attack at the age of 62 in 1980.
The boy's identity was known to Blatty, who never spoke to him, and, as far as I know, the boy has not spoken publicly on the matter. As Blatty stated in an interview, "I knew the address, everything . . . But [Father Bowdern] was so sensitive about the possibility of inflicting trauma by any connection between my novel and his case, and so I forbore it." There is evidence that Allen misidentified the home of the boy in "Possessed" and Opsasnick states unequivocally that the boy graduated from my high school - Gonzaga - in the 1950s.
Archbishop Ritter of St. Louis later appointed a Jesuit examiner to review the case. The examiner concluded that the boy was not possessed, but rather, that he suffered from "a psychosomatic disorder with some kinesis action."
Opsasnick delves deeper into the alleged possession from a local angle, and through interviews of Cottage City residents, he found a boyhood friend of the "Haunted Boy", who commented:
"Well, with this pair [the boy and the speaker's brother], I noticed that one of the common bonds between them, they found this very clever way of doing it, they could spit with great accuracy up to ten feet. It was a common thing. They'd keep their mouths closed and raise their lips and spit through their teeth and they somehow developed a way to do that. I saw them do that all the time. Another thing was with the bed moving about. In those days the beds had wire springs and were on wheels and it was not too hard at all to make the bed bounce and move about-it was harder to keep it in one place and his bed was like that. A lot of these things can be exaggerated to make a story and that is exactly what happened."
The friend continued to Opsasnick, "No, I don't think he was ever possessed. I think it was psychological. As far as any real possession or anything like that, I don't think so. There are some interesting psychological aspects to it. They were German Lutherans and he was an only child and I think the grandmother is actually the central figure. She played a very influential role in all of this. You had this old world religion superstition and the mother got caught up in it and the father just kind of stayed in the background-I think he could see what was going on which is why he is never mentioned. The true story is much more intriguing from a psychological point of view. The basis of the real thing could be a damn good story, no doubt about it in my mind."
Opsasnick soon found the friend of the boy, who told him:
"Since the movie came out I've never said his name in front of anyone, not even my wife. We were playmates and classmates. We were playing together from the time we first moved in here when I was three years old and we went all the way through school together-Cottage City Elementary throughout the '40s into Bladensburg Junior High . . . . People ask what he was like back then and I can tell you that he was never what you would call a normal child. He was an only child and kind of spoiled and he was a mean bastard. We were together all the time and we used to fight all the time . . . . One thing happened regarding all of this and I have a hard time clearing it in my mind. We were in eighth grade, it was the '48-'49 school year and we were in a class together at Bladensburg Junior High. He was sitting in a chair and it was one of those deals with one arm attached and it looked like he was shaking the desk-the desk was shaking and vibrating extremely fast and I remember the teacher yelling at him to stop it and I remember he kind of yelled "I'm not doing it" and they took him out of class and that was the last I ever saw of him in school. The desk certainly did not move around the room like that book [Possessed] said, it was just shaking. I don't know if he was doing it or what was doing it because I just can't clear it in my mind. I put everything together. It was very closed-mouth in the neighborhood at first-no one knew anything . . . .
I hadn't seen him for some time and I was wondering what happened to him. I would still see his father around and I remember going to his house and his German grandmother came out and she could barely speak English and she told me he was in St. Louis visiting relatives and he would be there for a while. He hadn't been in school and from what I saw I knew something strange was going on but I didn't know what. When that Washington Post article came out later that summer I knew from the details that was him. No one else around Cottage City knew that it was him, then, a year or so later his mother told one of the ladies at a local ladies club meeting and that was like broadcasting it over a loudspeaker. The story went out in Cottage City but then it died out shortly after that."
Opsasnick also contacted Father Halloran, whom he asked whether the boy was possessed. Halloran responded " "No, I can't go on record . . . . I never made an absolute statement about the things because I didn't feel I was qualified. I hadn't studied the phenomena and that sort of thing. All I did was report the things that I saw and whether I would make a statement one way or another wouldn't make any difference because I just don't think I was qualified to do so."
Opsasnick concludes in skeptical fashion: "Personally, I do not believe [the boy] was possessed. There is simply too much evidence that indicates that as a boy he had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life. There is not one shred of hard evidence to support the notion of demonic possession. The facts show that he was a spoiled and disturbed only child with a very overprotective mother and a non-responsive father. To me his behavior was indicative of an outcast youth who desperately wanted out of Bladensburg Junior High School at any cost. He wanted attention and he wanted to leave the area and go to St. Louis. Throwing tantrums was the answer. He began to play his concocted game. For his efforts he got a collection of priests (who had no previous exorcism experience) who doted over him as he lay strapped to a bed. His response was that of any normal child-he reacted with rage, he wanted out. Without delving into the dynamics of psychosomatic illness, there is no question there was something wrong with Rob Doe prior to January 1949, something that modern-era psychiatry might have best addressed. Rob Doe was not just another normal teenage boy."
Father Bowdern, however, told Blatty, "I can assure you of one thing - the case in which I was involved was the real thing. I have no doubt about it then and I have no doubts about it now."
As for me, the work of Satan? Who knows? I rely on the words of Dr. Thomason Hudson: "The man who denies the phenomena of spiritism today is not entitled to be called a skeptic; he is simply ignorant."
THE FILM AS LORE
The film has always been surrounded by great lore, and follows a tradition of man versus the devil in American literature, as evidenced by the final chapter of James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain:
. . . Something moved in John's body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and, in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he could never in his life have imagined, that he surely could not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and filled him in a moment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.
He wanted to rise - a malicious, ironic voice insisted that he rise - and, at once, to leave this temple and go out into the world. . . . In his turning the center of the whole earth shifted, making of space a sheer voice and a mockery of order, and balance, and time. Nothing remained: all was swallowed up in chaos.
John
saw the Lord for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light he could not fear. Then, in a moment, he was set free; his tears sprang as from a fountain; his heart, like a fountain of waters, burst. Then he cried: Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, Lord Jesus! Take me through! . . . Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had been beaten back. He moved among the saints. . . ., one of their company now; weeping, he yet could find no words to speak of his great gladness; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for his hands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in a new Heaven-bright air.
Baldwin's story is transposed by director William Friedken and Blatty in "The Exorcist." To the extent you have such titanic and creepy battles in your own backyard, it is all the better.
The alleged home of the boy in Mount Rainier was visited regularly by teens and identified as haunted (turns out, they were freaking out at the wrong house). As a young kid, I would sometimes go "The Exorcist" stairs with friends (for visitors, the stairs are at the intersection of M Street - on the edge of Georgetown - and Key bridge, and this is an open invitation to a guided tour by 109109), These are the stairs where Father Karras is hurled or hurls himself, depending on your view. I recall drinking one night at the Tombs, a nearby bar, and leaving with friends rather late. When we alit from the bar, the area was shrouded in fog (an occasional happening). Of course, we went immediately to the stairs and scared ourselves silly, continuing to a friend's to discuss the heart of evil and other such matters.
