Ever since I started telling horror stories, people come up to me and ask the exact same question: “What is the most dangerous, most haunted, most terrifying horror movie in the world?”
I always recommend that they watch The Conjuring. We all know it’s worth watching. The Amityville Horror is also worth your time. There are a few others you can sort of tolerate.
But there is one movie that ranks at the very top of the list when it comes to sheer horror. The name of that movie is The Exorcist.
It came out in 1973. Now, so many years have passed, you might be thinking, “Well, I can just watch it now.” You absolutely can. But that movie was so ahead of its time that even if you watch it today, your heart will tremble. That’s why people prefer not to watch it, and I rarely ever suggest The Exorcist to anyone.
But I feel like it’s time to actually talk about the story behind it. The actual movie isn’t easily available everywhere anyway. Because The Exorcist is based on a true story. A real incident. And in that real incident, things happened that were so disturbing, the movie makers didn’t even include them in the film. They were scared the audience simply wouldn’t be able to handle it.
That is exactly what I want to tell you today. So, get ready.
Now, imagine this. It’s nighttime. Just picture it in your head. Everyone in your house is sleeping, including you.
Suddenly, from one of the rooms, you hear a scratching sound. As you’re lying there half-asleep, you think, “It’s probably just a rat.” That’s normal. You close your eyes again.
But the scratching comes back. Only this time, there’s a difference. Along with the scratching, you hear a voice crying.
Now, you know that is no rat. When you go upstairs and look inside the room, you realize it’s your own child. You ask him, “What are you doing? Why are you crying? Why are you scratching the floor?”
And your child answers you: “I am not doing this. Someone is making me do it.”
What would you do?
Something exactly like this happened in 1949, when a boy named Roland lived in an American city. Suddenly, weird, inexplicable things started happening to him. Accidents started happening around him.
Like I said, this true story is what The Exorcist is based on. Movies always add some fiction, but everything I am going to tell you here is the absolute truth. Guys, this true story was so complicated, and so disturbing, that they actually hid the family’s real names. They even removed Roland’s real name from the records, even though he was the main victim.
And just think about this: Roland was only 14 years old. Imagine how much he must have gone through at that age.
The Ouija Board
The story starts off completely normal. Roland was just an ordinary, school-going kid. He went to school, joked around, played, jumped around, and came home to study. He was a good student. But he didn’t really have anyone special to play with at home.
One day, his aunt came over to visit. Her real name was Harriet, but everyone lovingly called her Aunt Tilly.
She came to the house with a box in her hands. She sat down with Roland and said, “You just play around all day and study and don’t do anything else.” Roland told her, “No, I do other things too.”
Then Aunt Tilly said, “Okay fine, I brought a board game for you. It’s called a Ouija board. If you play this, you’ll have a lot of fun. Using this game, you can talk to people from the other world who probably aren’t alive anymore.”
Roland got really excited. They played it together. But while they were playing, Roland was taking every single thing very lightly. He was just treating it like a joke. He didn’t know that because of this game he was playing, his entire life was going to change.
Days passed normally. Then, suddenly, Roland gets the news that his aunt is dead. Aunt Tilly passed away.
How did she die? We don’t know. Seriously, nobody knows. If you research his aunt’s death, you can’t find anything anywhere.
After that, Roland became completely lonely. He didn’t have anyone left to play board games or indoor games with.
The Scratching
Then comes a night when Roland’s parents are sleeping. Suddenly, from one of the rooms, they hear a scratching sound. His parents get up and go inside the room. They look around, and there is absolutely nothing there that could be making that scratching noise.
They go back to bed. But around 3:30 in the morning, the scratching sound starts coming again. And this time, it’s even louder.
They go back upstairs. By now, they are tired and completely irritated. They ask, “Roland, are you doing all this right now?”
The noise stops immediately. But Roland doesn’t give any answer in return. He just stays quiet.
And as soon as his mom and dad turn around to go back to sleep, the noise comes again. They go and look in Roland’s room again, and there is nothing there.
Now, Roland’s mother is starting to feel like this isn’t Roland doing it. This is something else.
So she yells out into the room and asks, “Is that you, Tilly?”
She asks two or three times. And at that exact moment, the noises go completely quiet again. As soon as things settle down, they start to leave. Roland’s mother is just about to go inside her room to sleep.
Right at that moment, there are three knocks on the door.
Roland’s mother stops right where she is. She says, “If this is you, Tilly, knock three times on the door.”
The sound comes again. Three knocks.
Now they are standing there, confused and scared. They are thinking, if this is Tilly, then why is she making all these scary noises? It wasn’t making any sense. They are just standing there thinking about all this, looking outside the curtains, and it’s almost morning.
And right then, Roland’s voice comes. But they felt immediately that this wasn’t Roland’s voice. It sounded like the voice of some evil spirit.
Seeking Help
Morning comes. Roland gets ready completely normally and leaves for his school.
A little while later, Roland’s mother gets a call from the school teacher. The teacher is complaining. She says Roland is doing really weird, strange things. He is throwing things here and there. He is bothering the other kids. And he keeps talking in a different, demonic voice… in some totally different language.
The teacher says, “I can’t understand what he is doing. You have to get him treated for this.”
His mother realizes that if he is doing this at school, he isn’t just messing around. He isn’t joking. Something is genuinely wrong. She goes to the school, picks him up, and takes him straight to a psychologist.
The psychologist examines him and says, “Your child is completely fine. 100% fine.”
His mother wasn’t getting any comfort from this at all. Maybe the psychologist gave her a little reassurance, but she was not completely satisfied. She knew what she was seeing at home.
So, she called a clergyman, Reverend Luther Miles Schulze. She told him every single thing. She mentioned the weird noises, the scratching at home, the knocking on the doors.
After hearing all these things, Reverend Schulze felt that there was some demonic force in Roland’s house that just wanted to ruin everything, and that’s why it wasn’t letting them live in peace.
The Reverend said, “Okay fine, I won’t come to the house right now, but I want to take your son Roland to my house for one night. I will keep an eye on him.”
That same night, Reverend Schulze puts Roland to sleep in his guest room. As the Reverend is stepping just outside the room… he looks back and sees that the bed he had put Roland to sleep on is suddenly shaking. You can hear the sound of it shaking.
The Reverend immediately rushes inside. He looks, and the bed is perfectly still. Exactly in its place.
He felt something was very mysterious here. Something was fishy.
He tells Roland, “Roland, do one thing. There is a rocking chair here. Go and sleep on that chair.”
Roland didn’t say anything. He just quietly got up, went to that chair, and sat down to sleep.
A little while later, everything is completely fine, and the Reverend turns the lights off.
Suddenly, the chair starts shaking. But it wasn’t rocking back and forth the way a rocking chair does. It was moving in a circle… which is impossible for a rocking chair.
When the Reverend sees this happening, he starts shaking. He had never seen a thing like this before. And after that, right in front of the Reverend’s eyes, Roland falls straight down from that rocking chair onto the floor.
The Reverend starts checking Roland to see if he got hurt. He sees that there are strange scratches all over his body.
The Reverend tells Roland’s mother everything that happened, including the scratches. His mother says, “We have the exact same scratches appearing on him at our house too.”
The Reverend tells them, “I feel like such a demonic force has entered him that we cannot fix this. You need to take him to a Catholic priest, because they are the only ones who will have knowledge about this kind of possession.”
Father Hughes and the Trap
The next day, Roland’s parents take him to a Catholic priest’s office. This priest’s name was Father Hughes.
As soon as Roland sits on the chair in the office, a heavy telephone kept on Father Hughes’ desk suddenly slides really fast, falls straight down to the floor, and breaks.
At that exact moment, Roland starts talking in a totally different language. And this wasn’t his voice at all. It sounded like a demonic voice. Like there is some monster sitting inside him doing the talking.
Father Hughes immediately says, “A normal spirit cannot do this. A normal spirit might stay inside his body, maybe make him cry. But moving heavy things here and there seems like the work of a very powerful spirit. Roland has definitely touched something that has come inside his body.”
Right then, Roland’s mother says, “When I was cleaning Roland’s closet, I found a weird box. And in that box, there was a board game. Are all these things connected to that?”
Father Hughes says, “That is not possible… unless and until it was a Ouija board.”
Roland’s mother confirmed it looked exactly like that.
Father Hughes went and told all of this to his senior, the Archbishop, and told him they might have to do an exorcism.
And guys, as soon as Roland heard the word exorcism, he became completely quiet. Completely normal. Like just a little while ago everything was fine, like nothing had ever happened.
Father Hughes started saying some prayers. And at that time, Roland’s behavior started changing aggressively, and a strange mark started appearing on his skin from the inside out. As the mark formed, it turned into a word.
The word said: LOUIS.
It was like this was some kind of message. Or maybe some way they could save him.
Roland’s parents said, “We have some relatives who live in St. Louis, Missouri. We will go there and find out how we can get out of this.”
The three of them leave for St. Louis, and when they get there, they stay at Roland’s uncle’s house.
But Father Hughes thought that just by doing prayers and an exorcism, Roland would get out of all this. He just had a normal thinking in his mind.
But the reality wasn’t like that at all. This force that they thought was just a normal force… it wasn’t. This is a very clever spirit. It is highly manipulative. It intentionally led them to St. Louis. It wanted them there.
The Roman Rituals
That same night, when they are staying at Roland’s uncle’s house, they see a lot of things happening there too. Things are falling here and there, and Roland’s cousin also saw all of this happening.
Now, Roland’s cousin happened to study right there at St. Louis University. The next day she went there, found the senior Archbishop, and told him everything. The Archbishop felt very bad hearing all of this, and Roland’s cousin was begging for help.
So the Archbishop called his assistant, Father Bowdern, and told him to go to Roland’s house.
When Father Bowdern arrived, they saw that every single thing looked normal. There was nothing that made you feel like things were bad there.
They started to leave. Roland’s room was right in the middle of the hallway. As soon as they started passing by it, noises of things crashing and falling inside started coming. Along with that, noises of screaming and shouting started coming. Both of these priests saw all these things with their own eyes.
Father Bowdern didn’t have deep knowledge about how a full exorcism is done, but he said, “We can definitely do Roman Rituals here.” He had a book related to that, and he started preparing for everything according to it. They wanted to do something here similar to an exorcism.
Suddenly Roland’s parents came, exhausted and terrified, and asked the Archbishop, “What do we do now?” Because at that time, everyone was just so scared of that spirit.
The Archbishop says, “I won’t do anything, but Father Bowdern can definitely do something.”
The Archbishop felt that if they messed with this spirit too quickly, or if they tried to overpower it even a little, all these things could backfire on them. If they tried to do a full exorcism, it could take control of the priests too. So it was better that they let Father Bowdern do what he is doing, the Roman Rituals.
Father Bowdern started gathering his things. A crucifixion cross, which is used during exorcisms. Holy water. He already had his Bible.
He starts doing all the rituals. He starts saying a lot of prayers.
Suddenly, Roland starts screaming loudly, because at that time, weird marks started showing up on Roland’s body, just like before. So the priests pushed their rituals to an even more extreme level.
Then, just minutes later, Roland literally raised up from his bed into the air, and fell straight back down.
From this, the priests realized one thing: this spirit is not weak. It is getting stronger and stronger day by day.
The next day, they come back and start these rituals again. This was a trick by the priests. They thought, “We can provoke him like this. We can provoke the demon inside him. And then maybe it will try to come out and scare us.”
But nothing like that happened. Roland was exactly the same. He was acting perfectly normal.
Think about this. For days, the demon just hid. It acted like everything was proper. He was behaving exactly the way a 14-year-old boy should behave. Playing, jumping around here and there.
But as soon as evening came, in the blink of an eye, everything completely changed.
He started behaving completely like a lunatic. His body became completely uncontrollable. Whoever went near him, he tried to bite them. The ground in the house literally started shaking.
His desperate parents called the priests and said, “You have to do an exorcism on him again. Do something and bring our child back to us.”
The Hospital Ward
The priests then called Professor Bob. Professor Bob was a scientist and a paranormal investigator who had a lot of deep knowledge about all these things. He started writing all his notes.
While Professor Bob was working on all these things and they started a few rituals, a lamp kept beside them came flying and crashed down near them.
They realized then that they couldn’t touch Roland at home. At home, the entity is way too strong. They had to take him out of there.
Father Bowdern told them, “I know a local hospital. There is a psych ward in it. We can do these things there.” Catholic monks ran that hospital.
They moved him there, and the exorcism things began again.
Roland grabbed a purple shawl worn by one of the priests, took it off, and tore it apart. Roland started standing in the air again, completely straight, without moving.
One of the priests placed a statue of St. Michael in front of Roland. St. Michael is considered to be a spiritual warrior who defeated demons.
Seeing that statue, foam started coming out of Roland’s mouth, and the color of his body started changing.
Roland started talking in a completely new language. And that voice sounded exactly like St. Michael to those priests. The priests pushed really hard on this and told that spirit to get out.
As soon as the priest said this, Roland’s hands and legs started twisting in terrible directions. It was as if that demon wanted to torture Roland from the inside.
The priests immediately tied him up with that torn purple cloth and started throwing holy water on him.
As soon as they did this, Roland came down from the air and lay back on the bed. A very slow voice came out of his mouth.
He said, “He is gone.”
Everyone thought that this thing had finally left.
But then, such a massive noise echoed in the whole hospital that everyone started running here and there in a panic. One person came into that ward and said that there is a church nearby, and someone’s huge shadow was seen over it. And this wasn’t anyone else’s shadow… it was the shadow of St. Michael.
Both priests knew then that this spirit was finally gone.
Roland’s parents picked Roland up and took him outside. Right there, the priests locked their ritual books and the statue of St. Michael inside that same ward.
The priests never told anyone about this case. This talk never officially came out from them. But whispers definitely reached the media. Just very slowly, little bits of talk reached there.
But what was actually happening in that room, in that ward when the exorcism was going on… that talk never came out. It just stayed right there. All those things remained locked inside that ward.
Now, as far as Roland is concerned, Roland went back to normal. He went back to his ordinary life. He was just a 14-year-old boy again, exactly how he used to be. He completed his studies.
And this is a fact… he became a rocket scientist at NASA after all this. He became really, really successful in his life. Nothing related to all those paranormal things ever wandered around him again.
