THE EXORCISM OF ANNELIESE MICHEL

This is a true life story. 

• Year: 1976

• Country: Germany 

• State/Region: Bavaria

• Place: Klingenberg am Main.

My name is Father Ernst Alt, and though my faith has guided me through countless hardships, the events of that year still haunt me. 

And Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old theology student, was at the center of it all.

She was beautiful young woman, a devote Catholic with a kind heart and dreams of teaching Theology.

But when I met her, she was standing between spiritual torment and madness.

---

It began innocently enough— or at least, that was what I was told. 

Her parents, Mr Josef and Mrs Anna, told me the changes had started in very small ways.

"She'd wake up at night," Mr Josef explained, in a low voice, not only to hide his pain, I suspected but to keep the pain in his voice from reaching his wife's hearing.

Mrs Anna, I was told, always broke down whenever her daughter's name was mentioned at that time.

So for now, I respected the vows I took when I became a priest and avoided mentioning the young lady's name, using only the pronouns 'she' and 'her'.

"Screaming. Saying something was in the room with her."

"Something?" I asked.

Mrs Anna nodded. "She said it was a shadow, or... a figure. Watching her."

I glanced at Anneliese, sitting quietly in the corner of their living room with low candle lights on.

Her body's stature and frame, was rather frail and seemed to be swallowed by the oversized armchair. 

Turning, I left where I and the parents stood, going over to where she was and stood in front of her.

Very gently, I set a stool down, sitting down carefully while watching her, not wanting to get her startled or make her to withdraw.

She sat, huddled deep into the armchair like she wanted to become one with it and avoided my eyes, staring instead at her hands, which trembled as if she were cold.

"Anneliese," I started gently.

"Can you tell me what's been happening to you?"

Her head raised up, and I recoiled innerly.

For someone so young, her were so… hollow inside like she had no life in them.

"They're here."

"Who?"

"They watch me. They speak to me. They tell me I'm damned."

"Who tells you this?" I pressed.

She stared at my eyes then, not at me, my eyes, like she had nothing to do with my body.

It was like she was searching and more in interested in what was within me. 

And when she was sure she had found what she was looking for, she opened her eyes so wide, to its full extent, so severely her eyeballs bulged out.

Then her lips curled up, stretching in a smile, revealing the two dimples on the sides of her cheeks that looked like bottomless pits, as I dug her fingers into the crucifix that I held in my palm.

"The demons."

—--------

Doctors were involved, before the Roman Catholic were invited.

At first, the physicians diagnosed her with epilepsy and prescribed medications to help control the seizures. 

But the episodes only grew worse. Anneliese would convulse violently and scream obscenities, foul words that she wouldn't say before all these started.

Then she would claw at her own skin until it bled.

Her parents said sometimes, she licked the blood of her skin.

One of the reports Mrs Anna gave was of when she found her daughter crouched in the corner of the kitchen, eating a spider.

"Anneliese! What are you doing?" she said she had asked.

But then the daughter had laughed and told her, "It's their food, Mama. Not yours."

The doctors dismissed it as psychosis when she reached out to them, but no medication seemed to work on her.

By the time I was called, the family was desperate, convinced this was no ordinary affliction.

—--------------

The first exorcism took place on a cold October evening. 

I prepared the room with holy water, a crucifix, and my Bible. 

Anneliese sat calmly in the center of the room, her wrists bound with cloth to prevent her from harming herself.

As I began the rite, her behaviour changed to the drop.

"Father," she said in a mocking voice, 

"Do you think that will save her?"

I froze. 

The voice wasn't hers.

"In the name of Jesus Christ," I raised my voice, holding the crucifix up high. 

"I command you to reveal yourself!"

Anneliese thrashed violently, filling the room with her screams.

Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her body contorted and twisted past their joints. 

"Legio sumus!" ("WE are Legion!") she bellowed.

Her voice was a mix of different tones, as if multiple voices were speaking at once through her.

The smell of sulfur began to go round the room.

"Leave this child of God!" I shouted, splashing her with holy water.

She screeched, writhing and started tugging on the bindings that held her, eventually managing to tear at her flesh again, soaking the binds with her blood.

"إنها ملك لنا! لا يمكنك إنقاذها"

(She belongs to us! You cannot save her)

«Είμαστε εδώ λόγω των αμαρτιών της»

("We are here because of her sins")

The young woman in front of me had just spoken in Latin, Arabic and Greek respectively even though her and her family didn't speak in the languages at all.

I was fluent in Latin and Arabic but I was having trouble understanding what was said in the Greek words.

All I got from the sentence was 'Her sins,' so I asked, "What sins?" 

She—- THEY answered me.

"Her pride. Her faithlessness. She questions Him, and now we punish her."

Mrs Anna burst into tears as her husband Mr Josef held her, standing by the door both holding out their rosary. 

"That's not true! She's a good girl!"

The young woman's head moved, turning slowly toward her mother.

"Are you sure, Mama?"

The next thing we all knew, she snapped by binds to shreds and climbed, hanging by the ceiling, then pounced on her mother.

She sunk her teeth in, scratching wildly as I and the attendant priest who accompanied me, together with Mr Josef, struggled to get her off Mrs Anna.

We managed to pull her off but she slipped out of our grasps, crawling backwards till she reached Mrs Anna again and began to choke her.

"YOU VILE DAMNING HAG!!!!!" 

Her voice was glutteral, like she herself was the one being choked.

Eventually, Mr Josef had to use a side stool to knock out his own daughter, weeping when she slumped to the floor.

For the remainder of the time she stayed passed out, tears fell from her closed eyelids.

—--------

By December, Anneliese was completely unrecognizable. 

Her body was emaciated, her face thin with her cheeks and eyes sunken in, and her once-vibrant skin pale was marred by too many scratches and bruises. 

She often barked like a dog, crawling on all fours for hours while her parents cried in despair.

One evening, as Anneliese lay on the floor after another session of attempted exorcism, she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

"Father," she whispered in her own voice her, 

"Am I going to die?"

Looking at her vulnerability, I swallowed a lump in my throat. 

"God is with you, child. You must hold on."

She nodded weakly. 

"I see them, you know. They're waiting for me."

----------

On July 1, 1976, Anneliese passed away. Her official cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration, but the scars on her body mind and soul told an entirely different story.

To this day, I question what truly happened i

n that house. 

Were we fighting demons? 

Or did we fail a troubled young woman in need of medical help?

Remembering her words, 'Father, am I going to die?' I wonder: 

Did I save her, or did I damn her?

This true life story inspired the horror movie: THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE