The devil made me do it
In 1949, a young boy in Maryland, known only by the pseudonym “Roland Doe,” became the subject of one of the most disturbing cases of alleged demonic possession in modern history. What happened to Roland, is known as the real-life inspiration for The Exorcist. The events would haunt not only his family but also the clergymen who sought to save him.
Even today, those involved remember the chilling events as if they were yesterday, refusing to speak openly about the terror they witnessed.
Roland was only 14 when things began to spiral out of control. He was close to his Aunt Harriet, a spiritual woman with an interest in the supernatural. She introduced him to the Ouija board, encouraging him to explore it with her as a bit of fun. After she passed away unexpectedly, Roland began to experience unusual events that defied all explanation. Strange scratching sounds echoed through the walls of his bedroom, and furniture began to shift on its own.
His family tried to explain away the disturbances, thinking it might be grief or an overactive imagination. The scratching turned to banging, and in a terrifying escalation, Roland himself began to display disturbing changes. He spoke in languages he had never learned, in voices not his own, and strange words seemed to carve themselves across his skin.
Father William Bowdern was enlisted to help, as was known for his resilience and devotion. By all accounts, Bowdern’s first interaction with the boy revealed a presence that felt menacing and inhuman.
It was clear that something beyond comprehension was tormenting Roland.
What followed was an ordeal of relentless horror. Over the next several weeks, multiple exorcism sessions were conducted. The scenes from these sessions were said to be indescribably disturbing: as priests prayed, Roland thrashed violently, his face contorting in unnatural ways. He spat, cursed, and let loose inhuman growls, his voice changing with each utterance as if multiple entities were trapped inside him. Objects flew across the room, and the bed Roland was tied to would shake uncontrollably, levitating off the ground in what the priests described as supernatural defiance.
The priests later recounted moments where Roland, with eyes half-shut and voice eerily calm, would recite personal details about each person in the room details he couldn’t have known as if the entity within him had access to knowledge far beyond human reach.
Just as suddenly one evening in May 1949, Roland’s body fell limp.
The room, once filled with screams and flying objects, grew silent.
The priests recalled Roland letting out one final, blood-curdling scream before collapsing. When he finally woke, he was calm, dazed as if waking from a long nightmare. He said he remembered nothing.
Roland and his family quietly returned to their lives, and though they never spoke of the incident again, the scars both literal and psychological remained.
*Roland Doe, whose real name is Ronald Hunkeler, currently lives in New York and is 89 years old, Father William Bowdern passed in 1983 after serving the Catholic Church for 6 decades. Walter Halloran lived until 2005 when he succumbed to cancer. He was the last surviving member of the team that had performed the exorcism of “Roland Doe.”
No credits were given to them for the Movie and the true-life tellings.
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