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THE TRUE STORY
It began in January 1949 and involved not a little girl [as the movie portrays], but a 13-year-old boy named Roland [called Robbie in many accounts to protect identity] who lived with his parents and grandmother in Mt. Rainier, Maryland. Roland was very close to his aunt who visited the family frequently from St. Louis, Missouri. She was a medium and attempted to communicate with the spirit world. Not only did she spark Robbie’s interest in this practice, she also taught him how to use the Ouija board.
After the aunt died suddenly on Jan. 26, Roland continued to use the Ouija board to communicate with her and others. Strange phenomena began to happen. The family heard bangs and scratching on the walls, but exterminators found no evidence of pests. Then stranger things began to happen.
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Items would move around the room, the mattress the boy was on would shake slowly and then violently. Tables would turn over and chairs would move across the room. A vase would toss through the air, and a picture of Christ would visibly shake, and many other like things.
At first everyone thought these were pranks, but they started to become convinced otherwise after the events continued for some time. The family thought the dead aunt was attempting to contact them. They spoke to her and asked for signs. At night Roland felt scratching in his bed and suffered nightmares frequently. Moreover his disposition changed and he became unsettled, agitated, and angry. Because his personality was changing, the family called in Reverend Luther Schultze, a Lutheran minister, because they now believed there was a poltergeist tormenting their son.
Over several nights Rev. Schultze witnessed that the boy was having awful nightmares where he would tear at the sheets and thrash in agony all night. Being a Lutheran, Pastor Schulze was very skeptical. Upon his recommendation, the family took Roland to the Mental Hygiene Clinic of the University of Maryland for testing. After two rounds of testing, nothing abnormal was discovered. Night after night, the thrashing in agony continued. Scratches started to appear on the boy's body, and that's when Schultze decided it was more of a job for the Catholics.
Roland and his parents visited Father Albert Hughes of St. James Catholic Church in Mt. Rainier. While interviewing Roland, the boy cast obscene and blasphemous remarks at the Father in a strange diabolical voice. The room became eerily frigid. Father Hughes was skeptical and reluctant to get involved in the matter, but during the visit Roland addressed the priest in Latin, a language that he did not know. Shaken, Hughes applied to his archbishop for permission to conduct an exorcism. Father Hughes was convinced that Roland was possessed. After reviewing the facts of the case and the medical evidence, Cardinal O’Boyle authorized an exorcism.
Roland was admitted to Georgetown hospital, where Father Hughes began a ritual of exorcism. The boy became violent, with spitting and screaming obscenities and blasphemies at Father Hughes. Although restrained to the bed, Roland broke loose and wrenched out a metal spring with which he slashed Father Hughes from his left shoulder to wrist. The wound required over 100 stitches to close it. Hughes left the exorcism and soon after had a breakdown. Roland seemed calm after this attack, not remembering the ordeal. He was then released and sent home.
A family cousin, a student at St. Louis University, talked with one of her priest professors, Father Bishop, S.J., about the situation. Father Bishop then contacted one of his close friends, Father Bowdern, S.J., pastor of St. Francis Xavier Church.
The two priests and a young Jesuit scholastic Fr. Walter Halloran went to interview Roland on March 9, 1949. They noticed bloody zig-zig scratches on his chest. They saw all the phenomena in the boys room. The priests petitioned Cardinal Ritter for permission to perform an exorcism. After reviewing the evidence including medical and psychiatric exams, he granted permission on March 16.
As the priests began the Rite of Exorcism, Roland became violent. He made howling and growling noises. The bed shook up and down. On his chest appeared bloody scratches with the words hell and devil. Roland spit at the priests as he hurled obscenities and blasphemies, with intermittent fiendish laughter.
For his own safety and for the family’s welfare, Roland was then transferred to the Alexian Brothers Hospital and placed in the psychiatric ward. Father Bowdern, continued to perform the exorcism there. Bishop kept a diary of the events, in order to help in future exorcisms. Bowdern started the exorcism by reciting prayers from "The Roman Ritual".
Once he began, the boy needed to be held down much of the time. The boy would scream out in pain at the prayers. Each time the name of God was mentioned, in any form, scratches or welts would appear on the boy's chest and stomach. In Bishop's diary the demon was recorded as saying to Bowdern, "I'm in hell. I see you. You're in hell. It's 1957." The remark seemed to have some effect on Bowdern.
The boy would spit at the people in the room. "He was an utter marksman at a distance of four or five feet," said Halloran. "His eyes were closed, and he'd spit right in your face." The prayers would continue until dawn for many nights, and then the boy would fall into a natural sleep. He was getting worse. The boy would sing and yell and curse and make sexual references about the men in the room.
One night during the ritual, spitting in the faces of the priests who knelt and stood by his bed, he punched and slapped the priests and the witnesses, and he broke Fr. Halloran's nose. He constantly urinated, belched and passed gas. He confronted the priests with information about themselves that he could not possibly have known. His body thrashed and contorted into seemingly impossible shapes and would continue during the night time hours.
Each morning though, he would appear to be quite normal and would profess to have no memory of the events that took place after dark. He usually spent the day reading comics or playing board games with the student assistants.
The exorcism was now at an impasse. Seeking a solution, Bowdern again plunged into literature regarding possession. He learned of an 1870 case that took place in Wisconsin that seemed similar to Roland’s plight and he devised a new strategy.
On the night of April 18, the ritual resumed. Bowdern forced Roland to wear a chain of religious medals and to hold a crucifix in his hands. Suddenly, Roland became strangely contrite and he began to ask questions about the meaning of certain Latin prayers. Bowdern ignored him though, refusing to engage the entity in conversation, and he instead demanded to know the name of the demon and when he would depart. Roland exploded in a rage. Five witnesses held him down while he screamed that he was a "fallen angel", but Bowdern continued on with the ritual.
There are instructions in the ritual that command the exorcist to “pronounce the exorcism in a commanding and authoritative voice.” The Roman Ritual of Christian Exorcism reads: “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….” He recited it incessantly for hours until Roland suddenly interrupted in a loud, masculine voice, identifying himself as "St. Michael the Archangel".
The voice ordered the demon to depart. Roland’s body then went into violent contortions and spasms. Then, he fell quiet. A moment later, he sat up, and spoke in a normal voice and told the priests of a vision that he had of St. Michael holding a flaming sword.
Roland left St. Louis with his parents 12 days later and returned to Maryland. He wrote to Father Bowdern in May 1949 and told him that he was happy and had a new dog. He was, by last report, still living in Maryland with three children. He has only dim recollections of what happened in 1949.
Father Bowdern believed until the end of his life that he and his fellow priests had been battling a demonic entity. His supporters in this maintain that there were many witnesses to the alleged supernatural events that took place and that no other explanations existed for what was seen.
A full report that was filed by the Catholic Church stated that the case of Roland Doe was a "genuine demonic possession." According to Father John Nicola, who had the opportunity to review the report, he noted that 41 persons had signed a document attesting to the fact that they had witnessed "paranormal phenomena" in the case. Many feel that Roland suffered from a mental illness and not demonic possession. He may have been hallucinating or suffering from some weird psychosomatic illness that caused him to behave so strangely, to curse and scream and to thrash about so violently. The people who have suggested this are all people who were in no way involved in the case.
A 1988 interview with Father Walter Halloran; a priest who aided Father Bowdern in the exorcism of Roland Doe in 1949.
Fr. Walter Halloran
"The little boy would go into a seizure and get quite violent," Halloran said in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "So Father Bowdern asked me to hold him. Yes, he did break my nose."
SD: What was the most striking physical phenomena that you witnessed yourself during the exorcisms?
Fr. H: I think the markings on the boy's body. I didn't think there was any way they could have been self-induced, the marks, the scratches, the words, the numbers and that sort of thing that appeared in blood red. When the evil spirit took over the child, there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
There were a couple of times when something very dangerous might have happened and he had no recollection whatsoever of anything that took place when he was in one of these sieges. And that affected me, the power that someone or something has over someone.
SD: Did you see anything fly across the room or furniture move?
Fr. H: Yeah. The first night I was there I was kneeling at the bed on which the boy was lying and the bed started going up and down and then I just about got hit with a holy water bottle that was sitting on the dresser and came flying across the room and just missed me by an inch or two.
SD: How high was the bed going?
Fr. H: Oh, I'd say eight inches.
SD: Was there any particular prayer that the evil spirit seemed to react to the most?
Fr. H: Yes. It was more elements or words or phrases in each prayer. Whenever Our Lord's name - Christ, Our Lord, or Jesus --the child would get very, very agitated when that was said; and the same thing with Michael the Archangel. He'd become very, very agitated with holy water. With some of the prayers you sprinkle the person with holy water and he'd become wild, physically wild, flying arms around and that sort of thing.
SD: Flailing around with his hands, that sort of thing?
Fr. H: Yeah.
SD: Did you see the 'Exorcist' movie?
Fr. H: I saw it right after it came out. I went with Father Bowdern and I thought it was a typical Hollywood, glitzy thing, real bizarre, trying to bring people to be fearful or to scream. I was disappointed with it. I thought it was a mess. And Father Bowdern did too. He gave sort of a running negative commentary throughout the whole movie. I thought the two of us were going to be thrown out of the theatre.
SD: So there was no neck craning around?
Fr. H: No. It was just ridiculous, and the gross one where the little girl is ing with a crucifix. It just didn't happen; that's all, and the huge amount of green vomit: Nonsense.
SD: There was some spitting, though, wasn't there?
Fr. H: Yeah, there was spitting, and when I think back on it, it amazes me, his accuracy. He'd spit right in your eye from about eight feet away.
SD: Did you fast during that whole thing?
Fr. H: On and off I did.
SD: Bread and water?
Fr. H: No, things like just taking a cup of coffee and a piece of toast and skipping a meal and at that time we were still practicing abstinence during Lent.
SD: Did Father Bowdern fast?
Fr. H: He did quite a bit, and sometimes he would go off because he was getting worn out [the exorcism lasted six weeks].
SD: How old were you?
Fr. H: About 28.
SD: Anything else that sticks out in your mind when you think back about Roland?
Fr. H: Well, when they baptized him -- it was a conditional baptism, because he had been baptized a Lutheran as a baby -- when they went through the ceremony again, on the way down to the church from his uncle's home, he kept grabbing the steering wheel of the car. He had the car up on the boulevard and some close calls of hitting or being hit by other cars. Then when they were giving him first Holy Communion, and I was present for this, he really fought that, he was flailing around and he'd open his mouth and then as soon as Father Bowdern came close with a Host, he'd swing at him. And I was supposed to be holding him all this time. But he'd relax and I'd relax a little bit and then he'd get an arm free and the voice would keep yelling, "No! He will not receive" or -- and his eyes were closed! -- he'd take a swing at Father Bowdern in the groin, and then it must have been 15 or 20 minutes of this carrying on and he relaxed and received Communion.
SD: Did you fear for your life.
Fr. H: No, not really. But I wondered why me, what purpose I was there for. There was one time he asked us to stop and took his pajama top off and he was covered with these marks, scratches, and he said they hurt. It was Holy Thursday and I was telling him about Holy Thursday and he started writhing around in pain and he said, "look, I can't stand this."
SD: What a confirmation of the power of our faith, and the powers that struggle with each other on this earth.
Fr. H: Yes. That's what affected me most, and I guess that's why I was so disappointed with the movie.
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