Show Notes
In 1949, a thirteen-year-old boy living outside Washington, D.C., began experiencing something his family couldn't explain.
Scratching sounds came from inside the walls. Furniture reportedly moved on its own. Strange marks appeared on the boy's skin.
His family believed something supernatural was happening.
Eventually, they turned to the Catholic Church.
What followed was a series of exorcisms conducted by Jesuit priests in St. Louis, Missouri, and documented in a diary that would remain largely hidden for decades.
The boy became known to the public as Roland Doe.
And more than twenty years later, his story would inspire one of the most terrifying films ever made: The Exorcist.
But the real events were very different from what appeared on screen.
Tonight, we're investigating the 1949 exorcism case, the priests who claimed to witness extraordinary events, the evidence that raised serious questions about their accounts, and the boy who grew up to become a NASA engineer while trying to escape the most frightening chapter of his childhood.
Welcome to Day Fifteen of 31 Days of Halloween*
More from Haunted American History
In 1967, the RMS Queen Mary arrived in Long Beach, California, after more than three decades crossing the Atlantic.
In Savannah, Georgia, ghost stories are everywhere.
On November 13, 1974, a young man ran into a bar in Amityville, New York, shouting that his parents had been shot.
In 1907, a wealthy Boston businessman named Thomas Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth.
In 1891, a jeweler in Salem, Massachusetts, began selling a silver souvenir spoon decorated with a witch on a broomstick.