Scott L. Smith ”Real Exorcisms” pt. 2

[00:00:00] From the darkest reaches of space, to the deepest corners of your mind, welcome to From The Void. Welcome back to From The Void. We're back with part two of my conversation with author Scott Smith on his book about real Catholic exorcisms.

[00:00:26] If you haven't listened to part one yet, pause, go back and listen to that first and then come back to this episode. If you've already heard part one, then welcome to part two of Real Exorcisms on From The Void. Unbelievable.

[00:00:48] So this poor girl is just retching nonstop and as you said, what's the most mysterious piece about it is that she's not intaking, she's not eating enough to give her sort of the ammunition to be able to do that. So that's bizarre enough as it is.

[00:01:06] And then of course you have the Spider Woman moment where she's left up into the sea laying and is clinging there. So all these horrifying moments, but ultimately it does seem as if the exorcism is successful in the end.

[00:01:22] And so talk a little bit about how they were able to resolve that particular case. Yeah, he, Father Theophilus in the exorcism and if Father Carlos Martin is also the Relic Priest, so he does this a lot too, Father Theophilus had a relic of the True Cross.

[00:01:47] Which you know there's still a good bit of that, a good bit of those to be had and exorcists kind of have, you know if you think about Neo when he's getting in the matrix, right?

[00:02:00] And like all that armory comes at him, you know and he can just like pick and choose. I think about the exorcist priest being able to do that with relics, right? Because I think a relic of True Cross is always going to be effective in an exorcism

[00:02:17] because that is the sign of their defeat, right? Oh hell where is thy sting? Oh death. But also anytime you have a relic of the Blessed Mother, right? Which is that's its own interesting story because we don't, you know a first class

[00:02:38] relic of a person is a piece of their bone or hair, fingernail clippings even. You know I think people look at Catholics like what are y'all doing? Keeping all this stuff. But it's amazing how effective these things are and we see biblical support for that.

[00:02:56] But you don't have a first class, you can't have a first class relic of the Blessed Mother because she was assumed in the heaven bodily and you know maybe not all Christians believe

[00:03:09] that but whether they believe it or not there's no first class relics of the Blessed Mother. Right. And the Blessed Mother, not you know I'm kind of going to law field in the Schmidt, it

[00:03:21] was the True Cross but the Blessed Mother you'll see and I've spoken to you know authorities about this that she appears at the end of most at the turning point at the final inflection point of most exorcisms.

[00:03:41] Not all but most and it's almost like when she comes in and the demon sees her it's like the trap door to hell just opens up and it's like loony tunes where they're just like hanging there for a second you know then poof they plummet.

[00:03:59] What's interesting is there are some other denominations out there that are kind of anti-Mary, anti-Catholic however you want to describe it and they also note the appearance of the Blessed Mother in exorcisms at the turning point but they describe her as the Queen of Heaven.

[00:04:19] And say that she is the Queen of Demons, that she is herself a demon. You know it's like what they said the same thing about Christ and the Gospels they said you are Beezelbub you are casting out demons because you yourself are a demon.

[00:04:36] So I'll leave y'all to the conclusions on that but it's amazing when you can find out the demons antagonist in heaven Father Martins talks about this and if you can find a relic of that saint and press it to the possessed person's head literally all hell breaks

[00:04:58] loose right? Yeah, yeah. It's just fascinating but yeah so Father Theophilus, I'm trying to cuss but B.A. right? He's an awesome bad Mamma Jamma and you know it's just he kind of ends kind of simply departs ye fiends of hell begun Satan the Lion of Judah reigns.

[00:05:22] All right then if you know the Lion of Judah that's the ancient prophecy of the coming Messiah was the Lion of Judah right? But in Revelation, Revelation 6 you know all the all in heaven and earth are unable to open the seventh seal right?

[00:05:42] But lo the Lion of Judah approaches and big surprise it's a lamb right? The Lion of Judah is a lamb standing as those slain and that's one of the fascinating things is when they would prepare the lambs for Passover, Saint Justin Martyr, one of

[00:06:00] the Church Father's rights about this, they would crucify the lambs and there would be hundreds of thousands of lambs crucified in the temple right? And then every head of household would carry out a crucified lamb on a staff right?

[00:06:16] The lamb would be crucified wooden staves down its backbone and shoulders carry them back to their homes and so that's the conquer the Lion of Judah conquers as a lamb. Yeah that's wild.

[00:06:34] One of the other ones that you talk about in the book is sort of the other major inspiration for the film The Exorcist. Right yeah. And of course the inspiration also for the novel that the film is based on by William

[00:06:46] Peter Bellatti and that is the 1949 case so we'll move forward a couple decades to the case of and again this is another pseudonym, Roland Doe. And so one of the things you mentioned earlier in this podcast and you also mentioned the

[00:07:00] book that I think is worth noting is the fact that we're talking about the early 1970s here and at this point as you mentioned Vatican II and sort of like the societal changes

[00:07:09] in the way in which we view evil and the demonic and as you said viewing the devil is more metaphorical in the sense that you know evil can exist within all of us and therefore

[00:07:22] we can carry the devil within all of us to some degree until this book comes out then ultimately when the film comes out and that really serves as a renewal. I mean the Catholic Church could not have had a better you know piece of media to utilize

[00:07:40] you know so talk about that case and then ultimately the impact of that going into the sort of public consciousness. Yeah and I think you know it took a little while for the

[00:07:50] impact of it to really be filled. You know the church I always kind of compare the Catholic Church to the ints you know from Lord of the Rings right? The Hobbits want to move so quickly

[00:08:06] and the ints move they get together and they're like have you decided are you going to go to the battle? It's like no we have just finished saying our names you know it's been days.

[00:08:16] The church often is the ultimate like conservative force because we are slow moving we're glacial and it immediately got the devil immediately returned to people's imaginations which was good. Now imagination to reality maybe took a little longer but with this yeah so

[00:08:44] we call him Roland Doe that you know as a boy that the primary inspiration for the exorcist was a boy not Linda Blair you know not a girl Reagan and what's cool is that he's since

[00:09:01] well he's passed away I think maybe 10 years ago something like that but his now we know his name now too instead of Roland it was Ronald Hunkler which kind of reminds me

[00:09:16] of the Onceler you know from the war accident. Yeah yeah but yeah and so we kind of we know now because we know who it was based on we have some testimony from some of his schoolmates from that

[00:09:31] time not a lot because he's born in 35 and by the time we knew who he was a lot of the other witnesses besides the primary sources which is what I write from the diaries of his exorcists

[00:09:48] you know we're the main source of testimony but now we do have some bits from kids that knew him one of the really fascinating things if I think if we had known about this I might have gotten into

[00:10:00] the movie was Ronald right Roland now we know him as Ronald was sitting in his desk you know think about like the old wooden desks in school you know with the desk attached to the seat and

[00:10:19] he started vibrating like supernaturally vibrating and the teacher got upset like why are you doing this you're just disrupting class like the teacher was kind of oblivious to what was happening but the student next to him saw like he was shaking as though like an earthquake was happening

[00:10:39] just for him so I thought that was a really interesting little tidbit of testimony that we just now kind of got about him but so what happened was I think it was his grandmother

[00:10:53] who provided him with a Ouija board and yeah I mean so the there were some articles in the in magazines in the 70s that kept the anonymity but still told us to give some insights into

[00:11:15] child's um the diary from Father Bishop which is kind of an interesting combination he's Father Bishop he's not a bishop he's just a father but his last name's Bishop um January 15th 1949 a dripping noise was heard in his grandmother's bedroom by the boy and his grandmother a

[00:11:35] picture of Christ on the wall shook and scratching noises were heard under the floorboards not good from that night on scratching was heard every night from 7 p.m until midnight this continued for 10 consecutive days after three days of silence the boy heard nighttime squeaking

[00:11:53] shoes on his bed that continued for six consecutive nights and there's just um there's a lot of really interesting descriptions of what the boy is experiencing that come from the um the records of the exorcists the diaries um there was an Aunt Tilly uh Roland slash Ronald

[00:12:18] had an Aunt Tilly who had a deep interest in spiritualism and had introduced Roland to the Ouija board uh she died at a young ish age 54 of MS but ma Roland's mom believed that there was

[00:12:37] a connection there like um I don't know if we actually have it from Roland about the Ouija board but that's what the parents suspected there's some other things too that that sort of begin to happen but initially what's interesting about this case is that

[00:12:56] um initially they go to a Protestant minister who yeah that's right he's sort of fascinated by it but I think pretty early on realizes he's out of his depth and then he actually refers them to a Catholic priest

[00:13:12] yeah um and so in the movie you know they're right next to Georgetown University which is a Jesuit university still is um and so the first priest that they encounter is just a a diocesan priest

[00:13:30] which can be you know very holy men very effective but not necessarily trained as exorcists and and really during the 70s and 80s um Jesuits were kind of leading the charge theologically against the the reality of the devil so this poor boy

[00:13:52] not in the uh bet there was no father theophilus nearby for him basically but I mean his not to to diminish the impact that he found some good Jesuits basically that were um willing to exercise

[00:14:09] him and it continued all the way to st louis it kind of began near dc in the Maryland area and it continued um but yeah so it began with father Hughes and then we eventually get he also

[00:14:25] gets some um psychological help which uh psychologist was not effective in this situation as you might expect and then the second round of uh exorcisms begins and like well my favorite lines from the

[00:14:42] movie you know i'm gonna be an old priest and young priest yeah that's that's what he had yeah yeah that's in comes uh father Raymond j bishop and father William sporing uh boadern

[00:14:56] who I think we get correct me if i'm wrong but we do get a lot of um sort of commentary by a guy who joins them later who was not a priest at the time but would become a priest later

[00:15:08] father walter halloween I think a lot of um sort of the accounts uh that we know today are kind of come from him if I remember uh correctly there yeah so um father halloween or to be father halloween

[00:15:23] was he was a Jesuit scholastic at the time when they when they moved to st louis so you've got st louis university and then creighton university are both um Jesuit universities and so that's why

[00:15:37] they have this nexus of Jesuit priests and I can talk with this with some um knowledge because I used to be a Jesuit uh I was a Jesuit novice and then I left seminary and now I have

[00:15:51] six children but so what you do is it so halloween was a scholastic you start as a postulate the novice scholastic and that regent so it's one of the stages it actually takes about 1415 years

[00:16:09] to become a Jesuit priest you become a priest but then to become a full fledged Jesuit priest it takes a long time and most every Jesuit priest is going to have um a doctorate in theology or some

[00:16:24] other kind of doctorate so that's probably the reason it takes you know such a lot of education but yeah so that's that's why he had um that's kind of the Jesuit background for rolling

[00:16:41] yeah and one of the other things I think it was worth mentioning too that that's kind of um a strange and unusual occurrence during his particular exorcism are the writings that sort of manifest on his skin talk about that a little yeah and that actually appeared in the

[00:16:57] book I think so you know it's been a while since I read um the exorcist book but I um and and like I say I could be confused with some of the sequels but that actually I think occurred um that

[00:17:11] was something they picked up which is not something I've seen really in in any other exorcist uh exorcism so that's a unique element to to to Roland O oh another unique thing is that um because they they originally went to a non-catholic pastor because they weren't Catholic

[00:17:37] and when all this is said and done they convert to Catholicism probably the most Catholic of any of the Catholics currently I would imagine yeah yeah that's so um the one I kind of want

[00:17:54] to end on is um another very famous case so you have three of like the biggest ones that most people would probably know just by virtue of at least the movies made adaptations and so this was one that I

[00:18:08] saw the movie first and then didn't realize until after the fact it was actually based on a real case uh was the exorcism of Emily Rose um or in real life the uh the case of Annalise uh is it

[00:18:21] Michael or I say Annalise Michelle okay but you know she's German-Austrian so I really don't know I need to get that right yeah well we'll go with whoever can can tell us the correct pronunciation

[00:18:37] you went to price but uh 1976 uh so this one's a little bit after uh the last couple so another couple decades forward um and this one has kind of an interesting uh controversy uh that

[00:18:52] lingers over it that they I they mentioned in the the movie as well but um in this one does not have such a happy ending the other two uh both individuals obviously make it through

[00:19:03] the exorcism it is for all intents and purposes successful and this one kind of a sad ending and it also results in both the parents and the priests being accused of negligence so talk about

[00:19:17] why this one's so unique compared to the other ones that we've covered so far yeah this one god there's just so many parts to this one that are fascinating um so Annalise Michelle um she was a particularly holy girl right she received her sacraments like

[00:19:39] she had the protection she needed um and as is shown in the the dramatization the exorcism of Emily Rose uh it appears that this was allowed to happen to her for the glory of god

[00:19:59] uh in the movie she was given a choice whether to have the torments continue and be free of this or to continue to suffer and in as Catholics we believe in redemptive

[00:20:14] suffering like it's not like we're adding or taking away anything from what Christ suffered on the cross but more our prayers when fortified by fasting or suffering they can be extremely effective for other people uh you know whether it's bringing them to Jesus or healing them

[00:20:38] you know that's that's how we really uh I say all the time don't let good suffering go to waste right there's a there it can be a reason and a purpose for all the hurt in our lives we can do

[00:20:51] something with it and ultimately that's um Annalisa because she was she's a really holy uh young person she decided to continue with the torments uh in part I think there's a um and the the gambit

[00:21:12] or the the choice is given to her by the blessed mother um and so some people have even put forward her cause for canonization or well you know beatification and canonization that um because

[00:21:27] she died a martyr's death um but it's you know it's it's weird because you just don't see this kind of thing in exorcism so it's a very unique kind of situation and you can even see

[00:21:42] in the manner of her suffering in the manner of her torments like the the demons hated her for her piety one of the things that will always stick with me when I was reading through this

[00:21:59] you don't have to just read through this like the recordings of her exorcisms many of them because there's almost a hundred sessions are available you can find them online

[00:22:11] but the demons would make her um genuflect up and down up and down up and down up and down up and down like rapidly like in a um supernaturally rapid way to the extent that her the ligaments in her

[00:22:26] knees eventually ruptured and they had to hold her um assistants had to hold her up on both arms but part of the reason all this was made public is because it became the subject of a trial in Germany

[00:22:42] that her parents were prosecuted by the german government for neglect because ultimately Anna Lisa um died of starvation because um the demons would not let her eat and Germany at that time

[00:22:59] maybe now too um you know all this supernatural hogwash they didn't believe any of it so the only possible way somebody can die of starvation is if the parents are inflicting this on the child and so the parents and the exorcists were criminally prosecuted and convicted

[00:23:22] and so the recordings of her exorcisms that's why they became a matter of public record and that's why they're available even to this day so there's there's a lot just there I think in

[00:23:37] which part which direction do you want to go on this one yeah that's that's what's most remarkable I think you know it's it's harder it's it's uh easier for I think for people to kind of have

[00:23:49] that suspension of disbelief when we're talking about exorcism that happened hundreds of years ago but when we have one that's a little bit closer to modern day and there's recordings and there's

[00:23:59] there's pictures I mean I've seen pictures online of her and it is it's hard to hard to look at um and beautiful girl you know yeah she was like very pretty and by the end it was just a shell

[00:24:12] of her former self um real quick though before we get into it um for those who aren't familiar with the concept of genu genu collecting yeah again getting down to the kneeling prayer position

[00:24:25] is what we're talking about there but um yeah talk about just so she she starts to go to conventional doctors initially for treatment and goes to multiple different doctors before they eventually consult the church and and bring in fathers Arnold Renz and Ernst Alt

[00:24:44] who are assigned to help conduct the exorcism so talk about the process that led her to eventually consulting the church for help yeah so um trying to find the the part before when the torments begin um one of one of the interesting things with with her is that

[00:25:16] her family had just been on pilgrimage to San Domeano which you might think Damien like in the omen or something but this is you know the church that st. Francis was rebuilding and so her life and connection with the rebuilding of the church is a significant connection

[00:25:40] one of uh one of the things that's always striking to me is this girl that was so pious um you know her behavior she starts you know barking like a dog um the the stench

[00:26:02] just became overwhelming um and what you you see with a lot of these and what we kind of alluded to before um where the demons will know if something's blessed but they'll also have

[00:26:24] repugnance to any kind of anything holy and like it began it came on slowly like an infection for Annalisa but um eventually like the side of the Eucharist was um just she couldn't handle it

[00:26:43] that ultimately is one of the things that uh which sent her into a tailspin so when all these things are happening the diagnoses the diagnosis became relatively straightforward yeah gosh yeah and um and obviously you know once the uh the the catholic

[00:27:05] priests come involved one of the things that you mentioned that i think is is so different about this case than the other ones the other ones you know within you know a couple sessions generally

[00:27:18] speaking you know problem solved demons demons are gone you know in this case not so much they hung in there and as you said there were over a hundred exorcisms performed over a period of

[00:27:29] of quite a quite a while yeah so um uh father's rinse and alt carried out the right the right of exorcism um 67 times over 10 months it says one or two exorcism sessions a week

[00:27:48] um and each of those that's where you can easily get into hundreds but no depending on how you divide this up each one of those sessions could last four hours um and all during this time i mean

[00:28:05] so me and my boys we alter serve and after mass you know we can be pretty full of sweat sometimes like the liturgy is hard work and it's only an hour these priests are doing this for

[00:28:21] four hours and you can imagine how exhausted they would be after uh but god just it just breaks my heart how what would have at least started as a young person you know but uh and a young person

[00:28:39] could withstand a lot of this um uh the beatings you know the inflections that the demons with the demons inflicted on her but four hours of that it's like i mean it makes you think of uh chemo

[00:28:56] sessions you know when people are having to drink in this poison and um but but like physical beatings it's just and with her you know it's you never want to trust in what a demon says right um but the

[00:29:15] transcripts there's a lot of interesting things said in the transcripts um um both judas and lucifer claim to be possessing anelisa lucifer can possess i don't i don't see how judas could that doesn't seem to make sense since he's human you know there's not like a process where

[00:29:38] you become a demon right demons angels each one of them is its own species uh you can't there's no transpeciation uh when you die so i don't know how all that would happen

[00:29:53] maybe the same demon that possessed judas uh you know let him to hang himself after betraying christ maybe that's what happened with anelisa i don't know um but some of the things they take

[00:30:06] credit for are eye opening but again you know part of me wants to read too much into this so the demons take credit for the catholic practice we chain it became much more common post

[00:30:23] Vatican II for us to receive holy communion on our hands there's a movement uh several people i mean several um there's a movement in the church to return to a greater posture of reverence

[00:30:45] that not to actually touch the Eucharist that we receive on our knees and you know as an image of the Passover lamb we receive the Eucharist on our tongue so we never even

[00:31:00] touched the um out of reverence uh and the demons actually claim uh that that change was something they accomplished that convincing us to uh receive to take the Eucharist in our hands

[00:31:18] instead of kneeling and on the tongue that was very interesting yeah oh no we can believe them but it was very interesting you're like out of all the things they could have taken credit for

[00:31:32] you know yeah like but it's funny like okay what i mean maybe part of this is building on anelisa's thoughts in some kind of way you know maybe that's something that was of interest to her

[00:31:48] i don't know but it's funny that if they're gonna claim they're not gonna claim hey that car wreck right that airliner going down no they're gonna claim what to them is most significant

[00:32:03] right the most devastating so it makes you it makes you think you know yeah absolutely um oh just lost my notes one sec um yeah you you mentioned that uh you mentioned the recordings

[00:32:20] and the fact that those are fairly common it is interesting because i think now with uh the the advancement of technology um there are some accounts of exorcisms where i've read that uh look

[00:32:33] for example to go back to dr. m scott peck anytime he was a part of an exorcism not only were the parties involved and maybe this is something that they learned from uh the anelisa case but

[00:32:43] they would sign waivers and on top of that they recorded it just for uh for their own protection as well as docus documentary purposes so it is kind of interesting because it feels like that's probably more and more common with with modern exorcism so from that perspective is

[00:33:02] is that something that you've seen in more modern cases and uh it sort of feels like sort of like the late 70s again in terms of we're sort of seeing another move back towards

[00:33:14] more of a traditional uh more of the traditional ways and we're seeing you know a lot of these movies crop up again and sort of renewed interest in this type of topic so what's what's your sense of

[00:33:26] sort of where we are today with this particular topic um i think yeah i can't wait for the day when there will be a video audio recording of an exorcism that it's a demonstration of the

[00:33:43] supernatural right because we have a big problem of most of i'd say america maybe not most of the world i think the rest of the world might have more sense than we do that america we think just

[00:33:58] just what we can see in here we're very materialist right and i don't mean that in terms of madonna material girl just about clothes and cars and stuff though that's a problem too uh

[00:34:09] that we believe that only what we can see is real only what we can test in a petri dish and a test tube is real proof um and the art with uh a hyper empirical understanding of the world uh very little

[00:34:29] supernatural or metaphysical understanding and i cannot wait for there to be like a video of an exorcism that's just so obvious that it i don't want people to start worshiping satan obviously but i would like them to break out of this materialist um uh delusion of reality

[00:34:54] oh and i you know it's just like and people ask why don't we just record this so we can show everybody the reality what's going on here well when we do people believe that it's just faked

[00:35:08] right like yeah happening which happens again and again like our lady of fatima appears in fatima portugal and there's testimony of 40 50 000 people that the sun um danced in the sky it zoomed to earth they were all soaking wet because they've been raining then they're suddenly dry

[00:35:31] that testimony though it's dismissed right shout of turn dismissed uh recordings van alesa michelle dismissed so um you know there is there's a very popular book out there right now the warning that's talking about all these um uh i don't want to say profits this profits with a

[00:35:56] lower case p right not like old testament like the age of prophecy true prophecy is is over but you have all these mystics catholic and otherwise that are that are each being told in their own

[00:36:11] way that there's a coming um illumination of conscience i don't know if you've heard about that or it's just it's a very interesting confluence of um of prophecies and i just i just i just

[00:36:30] want to all at least we can be speaking about reality with the same tongue again you know it's like we don't even see the world we don't even see the same realities anymore so i i this might be

[00:36:44] not the answer to the question you're looking for but the more data videographic photographic we get of these sorts of things happening i hope it will convince people but um you know the more if

[00:37:00] you if you believe with people have an incredible faith that only what they can see is real and that faith is hard to break with evidence right that faithful people presenting evidence i think that's very it's it everything's upside down and topsy turvy these days yeah

[00:37:27] yeah if we could if we could just get to the point where people can acknowledge the fact that there are mysteries that still remain in the world that cannot be explained explained at least at this

[00:37:37] point by science yeah and that there's room out there for mystery to still exist i think is uh it is a first step in the right direction and that makes life really interesting yeah i mean a

[00:37:49] life where it's just walmarts and best buys and big box stores and concrete parking lots is boring could not agree more well well scott thank you so much for coming on today this is

[00:38:03] fascinating uh definitely have to have you back on talk about your new book we can talk about some near-death experiences but uh this is a lot of fun and uh thank you so much again for coming

[00:38:12] on absolutely thanks for having me is it a lot of fun thank you for listening to this week's episode of from the void if you enjoyed this episode or any of the previous episodes please consider rating reviewing subscribing and sharing with a friend

[00:38:33] we'll be back next week with a brand new mystery so until then you've been listening to from the void