I was going through my email the other day when I ran across an article that mentions Gregg Braden and promotes something called "The Science of Miracles and the Power of Prayer."
Well, I'm always interested in checking out what's going on in the New-Age Spirituality and stuff but I never heard of this guy, so I did some looking around and thought I'd share it with you.
Before we get to the "goodies", let me build some context, K?
First of all, you might occasionally run across something that sounds like this: "Everything that exists is connected by a subtle web of energy. It responds to human emotion. Are miracles possible?" Sheesh, I'll admit it got my attention, but it's just an attention grabber. Speaking of "grabbing", right now, Braden's "out there" grabbing attention with pleas like: "The World Is In Crisis, You Can Help!"
Braden & Co. appear to be ramping up for some 'global initiatives', like:
Quote from: _http://www.greggbraden.com/home/the-world-is-changing-you-can-help/
A Call To Conscious Evolution: In September of 2008, a group of Evolutionary Leaders (including in alphabetical order, Michael Beckwith, Joan Borysenko, Gregg Braden, Deepak Chopra, Gordon Dveirin, Duane Elgin, Debbie Ford, Ashok Gangadean, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Bruce Lipton, Lynne McTaggart, Marianne Williamson and many others!) Completed a collective Call to Conscious Evolution: Our Moment of Choice. It is now being circulated throughout the world, giving a voice to our role in the changing world, and an invitation to declare your support for key initiatives!
The Global Coherence Initiative is the first-of-its-kind science-based initiative uniting millions of people in heart-focused care and intention, to shift global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and enduring peace! This project is designed to help individuals and groups work together, synchronistically and strategically to increase the impact of their efforts to create positive global change.Together we will
* Increase personal coherence for the benefit of ourselves and the planet
* Help shift the planetary consciousness baseline from self-centeredness to wholeness care
* Increase connection and social harmony
* Empower our ability to navigate through global changes with less stress and more ease
* Empower environmental responsibility and stewardship of the planet
Next Two Events:
20 November:
I Can Do It Tampa
November 20-22, 2009
4 December:
ConferenceWorks! presents:
Gregg Braden in Cincinnati, OH
December 4-5, 2009
...and that's not all that's going on, but it seems the most important thing is to understand that all of this hoopla is based on Quantum Scientific studies that demonstrate a relationship between observer and the observed. Those studies have been around for quite some time, it's just that the concepts are being re-translated into a vague new agey generality that "we are affecting our world" as a basis for all this New Age activity that Braden is pushing.
So, who is this Gregg Braden? Gregg Braden is at the forefront of the New Age movement with his books, Awakening to Zero Point, The Isaiah Effect and Walking Between The Worlds. An ex-computer programmer, Braden presents himself as a scientist and modern-day prophet at the cutting edge of research into our collective destiny and the science of prayer.
His 'About' page on his website says:
New York Times best selling author Gregg Braden is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science and spirituality. Following a successful career as a Computer Geologist for Phillips Petroleum during the 1970s energy crisis, he became a Senior Computer Systems Designer for Martin Marietta Defense Systems during the last year of the Cold War. In 1991 he was appointed the first Technical Operations Manager for Cisco Systems where he led the development of the global support team that assures the reliability of today’s Internet. For more than 22 years, Gregg has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to uncover their timeless secrets. To date, his work has led to such paradigm-shattering books as The Isaiah Effect, The God Code, The Divine Matrix and his 2008 release, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits. Gregg’s work is now published in 17 languages and 27 countries...
Quote from: _http://www.greggbraden.com/about/
New York Times best selling author?? Well, let's take a look at some books he has authored from the point of view of someone who has, in his own words, "always given Braden the benefit of the doubt and overlooked the obvious scientific BS because I personally share much of Braden's worldview."
Andrew P:
Recently, however, it has been pointed out to me that Braden was never a scientist: he was actually a software engineer who had worked in the scientific arena. This does not make him an "earth science expert" as he claims, or indeed a "scientist" at all.
"I am throwing my hands up in despair because it now appears that the foundation of Braden's writing and lectures is pure fiction."
Continuing, I first heard of Gregg Braden when he published his book, Awakening to Zero Point back in 1995. To myself and to many others interested in New Age spirituality and science, this book was a revelation — one of the most exciting contemporary books on spirituality and our collective destiny to have been published. What is more, Braden presented himself as a scientist and geologist, with access to the very latest research findings and "inside" scientific opinion from around the world, so the information he presented seemed to be corroborated by the leading-edge scientific community.
Braden's next book, Walking Between The Worlds, explored the science of compassion, emotion and prayer, relating to 2000 years old Essene texts. I found the book hugely inspiring and it certainly established Braden as a modern day prophet and spiritual teacher.
A few years later Braden brought out a third book called The Isaiah Effect which is based around one of the documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Isaiah Scroll. What was remarkable about this scroll is that it was the only one among the 25,000 fragments of papyrus, parchment and hammered copper, collectively known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, that was completely intact. Braden's suggestion is that Isaiah, the first Old Testament prophet, left precise instructions to the people of the future, us, on how to effectively pray. Once again, this book was a huge hit in the New Age community, and by this time, Braden had become one of the leading lights on the New Age lecture circuit, with his work regarded as an important bridge between the scientific and spiritual worlds.
Then, he made a mistake: in January 2004, he published a new book, The God Code, in which he claimed to have found a secret message in our DNA from the Creator Herself: "God Eternal within the body." My introduction to this book was actually a lecture that he gave in London a few months after publication. The mistake he made was to present evidence for his theory that was so obviously contrived that it broke the spell for many of us that had previously regarded him as a modern day prophet. I wrote of my experience at that lecture in an article that I published.
[My note: Here is the article]:
A critique of Braden's latest work: The God Code
I HAVE JUST GOT BACK from a lecture at Alternatives in London given on the 29/3/04 by Gregg Braden, which covers the material of his new book, The God Code. I had been looking forward to this lecture for many months: I am a HUGE fan of Braden's work, and it is very rare to see him in this part of the world. So it was with absolute delight that I went to hear him speak… and ended up almost walking out.
This was the biggest load of pseudoscience I have heard for a long time, and it was delivered in a thoroughly patronizing manner (his target audience when preparing this material can only be imbecilic). I cannot understand this because none of this comes through in his previous work — although I have never heard him lecture before, I have read his previous books, some of which were fantastic and are recommended on this site. I have also listened to one radio interview, which was great.
Braden prides himself on being a scientist, and in his other material he presents the right balance between scientific fact and "spiritual" interpretation of those facts. But his latest work, The God Code, seems to be fantasy masquerading as science, and actually ends up discrediting his previous works. Throughout his lecture he keeps trying to reassure the audience with "this is proved scientifically" or "scientists do not doubt this", when in fact nobody with any scientific understanding could accept what he is claiming on the evidence that he presents. It just isn't science, period.
The crux of The God Code is that our DNA sequence, when read by assigning Hebrew characters to the base sequence, spells out the words of our Creator. His mystical justification for this comes from the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation) which is one of the central texts in the Kabala tradition. Braden gives us a quote from this mystical text which says, "Within the letter is a great, concealed mystical exalted secret… from which everything was created."
From this he looks at DNA and questions whether the DNA base sequence lettering could be the lettering referred to in the Sefer Yetzirah. Perhaps our DNA is the "great, concealed mystical exalted secret" because, after all he reasons, it also contains letters and it is universal to life. He then presents his theory that our DNA is a library of information (nothing new there… even orthodox scientists would agree with that), that each chromosome is a book (if you want to call it a book Gregg… that's fine) and that each gene-length is a sentence (yes… DNA is the language of our Biology so the analogy is obvious and has been made many times before). But his next step is to say that code is literally translatable into Hebrew! And he bases this grand hypothesis on just single and very dubious 4-letter correlation. (There is exciting new evidence suggesting that the 90% "junk DNA" in our cells actually has grammatical structure and so may well be a language of some sort, but this is a far cry from Braden's puerile reasoning.)
To justify this revolutionary claim, Braden appeals to numerology: he states that because the base molecules in our DNA — the language codes of thymine, adenine, cytosine and guanine — are made up of the elements hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon, with respective "atomic masses" 1, 5, 6 and 3 [these are wrong], they actually correspond with the 1st, 5th, 6th and 3rd letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. Therefore, they spell YH VG which means "God/Eternal… Within the Body". Braden is blown away by this… although the audience seems less sure of the connection or have been bamboozled by his pseudoscience build up.
So this is the big secret that he has discovered (at least I presume it is his discovery): within each cell of our body is God's signature in Hebrew (and because Hebrew is a Semitic language, this supposedly works for Arabic as well). From this tiny numerological connection he bases his entire case and claims a whole new science. He tells the audience that it has taken ten years to translate this "introduction to the DNA" or "first level" but that subsequent translations should now be much faster. (Quite why such a basic numerological calculation would take 10 years is beyond me.) It is easy to play around to get just 4 letters to fit, but to then state that this implies the entire DNA is a library that will shortly be read in Hebrew with the right translation is absurd.
Just in case there are doubters in the audience thinking along these lines, Braden then makes the point that the chance of getting this by accident is 1 in 234,256… a figure calculated by "a statistician at the University of Los Angeles." But is this statistic really accurate? Braden repeatedly gives the audience the impression that this is bona fide science, that scientists are welcoming his work or at the very least cannot deny it, but anyone with scientific training knows immediately that this is not the case.
The holes in his theory are very easy to spot and as wide as the Grand Canyon. Braden links the elements hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon to the Hebrew Alphabet with "atomic mass". But the respective atomic masses of these elements, which he gives as 1, 5, 6 and 3, are actually 1, 14, 16 and 12. To make the evidence fit, he has resorted to a numerological trick: 14 becomes 1 + 4 = 5; 16 becomes… well 6 (it does have 6 valence electrons though!); and 12 becomes 1 + 2 = 3. Also, the 1st letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is actually alep. Yod, the Y in his YH VG translation, is Hebrew letter number 10. But Braden justifies calling 10 a 1 because 10 = 1 + 0 = 1.
The problem with this sort of fiddling, to get the evidence to fit the theory, is that it invalidates the "statistician's probability" above. If unscientifically adding numbers together is okay, which he has done with nearly all his "evidence", then the following must be valid: nitrogen, with atomic mass 14, could equally pertain to Hebrew letter 14 (1 + 4 =5), or even letter 15 by just getting rid of the 1 as he did with oxygen; oxygen, with atomic mass 16, could also be Hebrew letter 15 (5+1=6) or Hebrew letter 16; and carbon with atomic mass 12, could also be Hebrew letter 12 or even 21 (2 + 1 =3). The link between these "alphabets" now seems more tenuous, and the 1 in 234,256 statistic starts to look a bit optimistic.
But if the link is valid, as he says it is, then it must be valid both ways. So Y, the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, could be relating to neon which has atomic mass 10 or manganese with atomic mass 55 (5+5) or silicon with atomic mass 28 (2+8) or fluoride with atomic mass 18 (1+8) or even radium with atomic mass 226 (2+2+6). And that is just one letter and just some of the transitional elements. Try doing it with the other three letters and you come up with loads of other elements. Also, why put the elements in the particular order to give YV VG? The "introduction to our genetic code" could just as well have been YG VH (which, as any linguist from Los Angeles will tell you, means "Yo, Gregg Vas Here"). There is HUGE room here to cook the facts, which is exactly what Braden seems to have done.
So his revelation is is just a clever numerological trick that is faintly entertaining. 4 letters? Big deal! But to base a whole scientific theory on such contrivance is pure fantasy. Braden may well be right in that the DNA is a message from our creator, and it is entirely possible it is related to ancient alphabets — who knows — but the way that he has tried to justify this with very selective and subjective "evidence" with just a 4 letter "fit" is nothing short of astonishing. And the fact that his book is selling so well is a testimony to the credulity and scientific illiteracy of the New Age community (although it has no doubt also sold on the strength of his previous work).
But how does he cover up the lack of scientific or logical justification for his assertion of DNA being a transcript of the Hebrew alphabet? It was simple: he continually played the "I don't have the time to go into all the science" card whilst rushing through a padded out explanation of his theory in 30 minutes. The truth is that one and a half hours was way too long for him to present his theory, let alone 30 minutes (5 minutes on a Post-It note would have sufficed - seriously). So what does he do to fill the time? He shows two "touchy feely" videos which, although great watching (no words, just music to pictures of people of different religions and pictures of people's faces), have little relevance to this sort of lecture except as a time filler and to trigger in his audience sentiments that he feels his theory deserves. Braden wasn't in a rush, he was actually desperate to fill up the time slot! His theory is so weakly supported that, although he was forced to pad it out ad nauseam to fill up time and to make it seem a substantial theory, he was also forced to rush through the little he had.
His actual lecture, outside the videos, is supported by a slick Power Point presentation, and mixes genuine science with pseudoscience in a way in which the authority of the former all too easily rubs off on the latter. This is deceptive to the non-scientific and, I am afraid, intellectually dishonest (if he is indeed a genuine scientist he must realize what he is doing). I had the distinct impression during this lecture that I was in the presence of a preacher, and not a scientist or even a spiritual teacher. "Am I going to fast?" he would continually ask, to which I would mentally reply, "Yes you are Gregg, but if you go any slower the audience will see how contrived and vacuous your theory really is."
So what has happened to Gregg Braden? Why is he now so firmly on the pseudoscience track? His sentiments are admirable: he wants the whole world to be as One and for humanity to forget its differences and live in peace. We all want this. But in his effort to get across this very valid message and goal, Braden tries to justify it with numerology (and even then the "evidence" doesn't quite fit), which he parades as frontier science. In the process of this scientific charade, he not only damages his own former works, but also the credibility of genuine frontier science so excellently reported by authors such as Lynne McTaggart, Rupert Sheldrake and Michael Talbot, who have a genuine understanding of what science is and what it can and cannot justify.
Braden seems confused on this issue, but believing him to be sincere, I can only conclude that he can't really be a scientist. It would be better for him to keep entirely away from science and just speak about prayer, which he is excellent at, as evidenced by his book, The Isaiah Effect. But Braden seems caught up in the role of a scientific New Age prophet, and he is now compelled to dredge up pseudoscience if no real science is there to back up his claims. In The God Code, I feel he has jumped on the "Bible Code" bandwagon, and in the process has morphed from scientist to preacher.
If you want to read more, visit this website:
http://www.energygrid.com/science/2004/03ap-godcode.html
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
The TRUTH about “The Exorcist”
[Reprinted with permission]
Hi ya’ll.
I was involved in a discussion the other day when someone made a comment about “addressing the issue of ouija boards and the false representation put forward by the media. Like propagating the TRUTH about the kid behind the movie “The Exorcist” and how this was twisted and a whole “New Age Belief” grew out of a lie.”
Well, Ok. That sounds like a good idea, except I never watched the movie in it’s entirety. Not that I didn’t like it or anything, it’s just that for every “horror” movie I ever watched, I probably saw about 3 or 4 “behind the scenes making of” kinds of movies and video clips. It was special-effects that were MY major interest. Heck, I never even knew there was a ouija board in the movie “The Exorcist.”
So I went looking around the internet for some source material on the subject and the rest of this blog article is about what I found. It’s a little long, but I wanted to share it with you.
What is interesting is that the Ouija board occupies such a small role in "The Exorcist" and is quickly forgotton by most viewers; yet, because the board and the activity of working it serves a pivotal role as a 'doorway' to everything that happens afterward, as long as the story can be kept in people's minds, the Ouija board will always be there, even if only implicitly, to serve as "cause" for everything evil, and never mind the facts.
Quote from: _http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/Film.html
The Ouija board sequence in the film ["The Exorcist"] is a small but significant one. In it, Chris (Ellen Burstyn) asks her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) if she knows how to use the family Ouija board:
"Sure Mom, I do it all the time with Captain Howdy," answers Regan.
"Who is Captain Howdy?" asks Chris.
"You know. Captain Howdy. I ask the questions and he gives the answers!"
In The Exorcist, the Ouija board acts as the threshold through which Captain Howdy takes possession of Regan. The film is a classic Christian psychodrama starring the Devil as absolute unmitigated evil whose sole purpose is to corrupt the innocent and torment the living. The Ouija scene, so essential to the plot, is quickly forgotten, eclipsed by the horror that follows.
Before researcher/writer Mark Opsasnick came along, it was generally considered that the most fascinating and in-depth article ever to appear on the subject appeared in the January 1975 edition of Fate magazine. In a feature titled “The Truth Behind The Exorcist,” author Steve Erdmann reveals never-before-known information regarding the facts behind the story.
Erdmann begins his account by providing the readers with basic background information. The 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy, referred to in the aforementioned “diary” as “Roland Doe,” became possessed by an “invisible entity” after he and his “Aunt Tillie” began experimenting with an Ouija Board in January 1949. He was treated at D.C.’s Georgetown University Hospital before having the demon successfully exorcised by Jesuit priests at St. Louis University.
As to how the real story about a boy became a book and movie of a female character, Opsasnick writes:
Quote from: Opsasnick
The most interesting aspect of this work is that William Peter Blatty tells of a letter he composed to the priest who conducted the actual 1949 exorcism. Blatty prints a censored version of the exorcist’s response, revealing for the first time the existence of a diary kept by an attending priest that recorded the daily events of the ongoing exorcism. Blatty writes that he requested to see the diary but the exorcist declined. Blatty decided to ease the exorcist’s anxiety and change the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to that of a 12-year-old girl.
In October, 1997, Mark Opsasnick began investigating 'The Exorcist' to answer some questions like: Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
My interest in The Exorcist tale gradually escalated during the 1992 to 1996 time period. Most of my spare hours were spent during those years conducting research for my book Capitol Rock (Riverdale: Fort Center Books, 1997). Consequently, for a lengthy chapter on blues-rock guitar great Roy Buchanan, I spent a great deal of time canvassing the city of Mount Rainier, Maryland—a smallish working-class community of approximately 8,000 residents quietly tucked away in Victorian homes and bungalows on the D.C. line. The town was known for two things: the home of the great Roy Buchanan—and the alleged site of the story behind The Exorcist.
...
The various published writings on the 1949 possession case contained a great deal of conflicting and confusing information. Still, I felt it would be a tremendous personal challenge to conduct this investigation from an entirely different viewpoint and in October 1997 I began my pursuit.
Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
For reasons that will later become obvious I will from now on refer to this individual as “Rob Doe” (a combination of previously used pseudonyms). His date of birth was June 1, 1935, meaning he was actually 13 when the rite of exorcism was finally completed. Rob’s home address was 3807 40th Avenue, Cottage City, Maryland, a small working-class community of around 1,200 residents that quietly sits one mile from Washington, D.C.’s northeast border. Nestled between the towns of Colmar Manor and Brentwood, Cottage City is located about two miles due east across Rhode Island Avenue (Route One) from Mount Rainier.
Why must “Rob Doe” remain anonymous?
At the conclusion of his investigation, Mark describes his contact with "Rob Doe":
Quote from: Opsasnick
From a Cottage City source I obtained an East Coast address where the Haunted Boy now resides and his current phone number. I called and Rob Doe himself answered. Our conversation was brief and direct and he gruffly spoke to me in a very deep, gravelly voice. He admitted to me that he had grown up in Cottage City and had never lived in Mount Rainier. He stated that he had seen the movie The Exorcist but did not offer his take on the film. He seemed very alarmed that I had contacted him and told me there would be no cooperation on his part whatsoever. He would not confirm that he was the subject of this investigation and firmly stated he did not want me to ever call him back again. His response was typical of someone who did not want to be reminded of some distant embarrassing event from his past.
Some examples of the so-called possession?
No one who actually knew him believed he was 'possessed', but they DO have some interesting examples of "Rob's" behavior:
Quote from: _http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=288680
J. C.’s brother “B.C.” was said to be Rob Doe’s best friend throughout childhood.
J.C.:
I don’t think he [Rob] was ever possessed. I think it was psychological. They [the family] were German Lutherans and he [Rob] was an only child and I think the grandmother is actually the central figure. She played a very influential role in all of this. You had this old world religion superstition and the mother got caught up in it and the father just kind of stayed in the background—I think he could see what was going on which is why he is never mentioned. The true story is much more intriguing from a psychological point of view. The basis of the real thing could be a damn good story, no doubt about it in my mind. The rest of it I can run a parallel. You had these two mischief makers that had a strong tendency to take advantage of people who were weaker than themselves. They were a pair of connivers and they had their act down. In pairs like that they compete with each other and they don’t get along well and they have to keep doing something to retain their relationship and all the time this is mischief in one form or another. They were trying to outdo each other.
One thing happened regarding all of this and I have a hard time clearing it in my mind. We were in eighth grade, it was the ’48-’49 school year and we were in a class together at Bladensburg Junior High. He was sitting in a chair and it was one of those deals with one arm attached and it looked like he was shaking the desk—the desk was shaking and vibrating extremely fast and I remember the teacher yelling at him to stop it and I remember he kind of yelled “I’m not doing it” and they took him out of class and that was the last I ever saw of him in school.
Quote from: Opsasnick
I can say that B. C. provided a detailed profile of an only child who went through anything but a normal childhood: smothered by his obsessively religious mother and grandmother who held deep interests in spiritualism and Ouija Boards; shunned by his classmates at school; prone to tantrums and even violent outbursts towards his family and his few friends; exhibiting cruel and at times even sadistic behavior towards other children and even animals. It was evident that elements of the alleged possession had always been there, going back years and years. “Dysfunctional” would be the word modern-era psychiatrists would use to describe the boy’s home life and upbringing.
B.C., Rob's best friend, had some odd theories on what may have happened regarding the “possession”:
Quote from: B.C.
The reason behind it, you’re going to laugh but I don’t care. There was this dog that ran around the neighborhood at that time…. It was half-red cocker spaniel and it looked like it was half-chow. This dog was mean and nobody ever knew who owned it. It just came out of nowhere. Well, [Rob] basically adopted that dog. That dog was really his best friend, not me. That dog hated everyone and everything and would bite anyone in sight but he loved [Rob]. [Rob] would feed it and bring it in the house with him. One time he called me up and told me to come over and I never really trusted him because he was sneaky and a real mean little bastard. I was going over there and he was looking out from the basement window and when I got to his house I heard the back porch door slam and I knew right away what he’d done. He’d done this sort of thing many times before to different kids. I started running like hell because he’d sicked that dog on me. When I got home he called me up and was laughing like hell. That’s what kind of person he was. He did that all the time. He’d always sic that dog on anyone who came around…. I could tell you many, many other stories like that.
Opsasnick's summary of Rob Doe's behavior:
Quote from: Opsasnick
Personally, I do not believe Rob Doe was possessed. There is simply too much evidence that indicates that as a boy he had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life. There is not one shred of hard evidence to support the notion of demonic possession. The facts show that he was a spoiled and disturbed only child with a very overprotective mother and a non-responsive father. To me his behavior was indicative of an outcast youth who desperately wanted out of Bladensburg Junior High School at any cost. He wanted attention and he wanted to leave the area and go to St. Louis. Throwing tantrums was the answer. He began to play his concocted game. For his efforts he got a collection of priests (who had no previous exorcism experience) who doted over him as he lay strapped to a bed. His response was that of any normal child—he reacted with rage, he wanted out.
The following timeline may, or may not address the issue of "ouija boards and the false representation put forward by the media", but it may serve to present an idea of "how this was twisted and a whole "New Age Belief" grew out of a lie."
As the inspiration for The Exorcist, this case emerged as one of the most significant examples of paranormal phenomena in history. It spawned movies, books, and videos, and influenced hundreds of “copycat” cases around the world that led to exorcism-styled assaults, mutilations, and even deaths.
April, 1949
...an exorcism ended after a little more than six weeks, on April 19, 1949
August 10
The media first became involved in this case when The Washington Post ran an article on August 10, 1949 titled “Pastor Tells Eerie Tale of ‘Haunted’ Boy.” Written in an almost tongue-in-cheek style by reporter Bill Brinkley, the piece tells an “out-of-this-world” story of a local 13-year-old boy.
..
The story came to light when an unnamed minister gave a speech before a local meeting of the Society of Parapsychology at the Mount Pleasant Library in Washington, D.C. According to the minister the family had experienced many strange events in their suburban Maryland home beginning January 18th.
The minister, described as being intensely skeptical, arranged for the boy to spend the night of February 17th in his home. With the boy sleeping nearby in a twin bed the minister reported that in the dark he heard vibrating sounds from the bed and scratching sounds on the wall. During the rest of the night he allegedly witnessed some strange events—a heavy armchair in which the boy sat seemingly tilted on its own and tipped over and a pallet of blankets on which the sleeping boy lay inexplicably moved around the room. Curiously, the article described the minister as laughing as he related these incidents to his audience. He admonished the boy by saying, “Now, look, this is enough of this....” The article ended by saying that the minister called in the family doctor, who prescribed phenobarbital for the whole family.
That same day:
The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) followed up the Post’s scoop with an uncredited article later that evening on August 10, 1949 titled “Minister Tells Parapsychologists Noisy ‘Ghost’ Plagued Family.” The Evening Star’s account differed from the Post’s in that the family was referred to as “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe” and their 13-year-old son “Roland.”
August 11
The Times-Herald (Washington, D.C.) joined the fray with an article by William Flythe, Jr. on August 11, 1949 titled “‘Haunted’ Boy’s Parents Tell Of Ghost Messages.” A basic rehash of the previous two accounts, this piece adds that the boy lived in the “Brentwood section northeast” and also tells that the family had found dermographic messages written in a rash on the boy’s body.
August 19
On August 19, 1949 The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) featured the article “Priest Freed Boy of Possession By Devil, Church Sources Say.” As the first account to provide any exorcism details to the public, the article opens by saying, “A Catholic priest has successfully freed a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Md., boy of reported possession by the devil here early this year, it was disclosed today.”
The next day the same paper ran a follow-up titled “New Details of Boy’s Exorcism In Catholic Ritual Disclosed,” though in reality few new details were revealed. It did cite church sources as saying that during the rite the boy had recited a stream of blasphemous curses, intermingled with Latin phrases. The article then recapped events that had earlier been printed regarding the minister at a meeting of the Society of Parapsychology.
August 20 [This is the article that would stick in William Peter Blatty’s mind and serve as the later inspiration for 'The Exorcist'].
The Washington Post chimed in on August 20, 1949 with another Bill Brinkley-authored piece, this one titled “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” At greater length than the previous published accounts, Brinkley recounts the family’s entire haunting episode and reveals that only after 20 to 30 performances of the ancient ritual of exorcism was the devil finally cast out of the boy. He also tells that during the rite the youngster would break into violent tantrums of screaming, cursing, and voicing of Latin phrases.
Also in August
The Parapsychology Bulletin (August 1949, Number 14), a periodical of the New York-based Parapsychology Foundation, weighed in with the uncredited “Report Of A Poltergeist,” an article that finally published the name of the anonymous clergyman of the haunted boy’s family. He turned out to be Reverend Luther Miles Schulze and in this article his experiences with the boy were reported in detail.
1950 - Spring
In the spring of 1950 Father Gallagher loaned the diary to then-Georgetown University dean Father Brian McGrath, S.J. When Father Gallagher attempted to retrieve the diary, he was told by Father McGrath’s secretary that only nine carbon pages remained. [Erdmann wonders whether or not the diary had somehow found its way into Blatty’s hands.]
1951
D.R. Linson, “Washington’s Haunted Boy,” Fate, April 1951.
1969
William Peter Blatty began writing The Exorcist in 1969, drawing upon the material he had discovered some twenty years earlier, and finished his project during the summer of 1971.
1971
William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist: the novel published in May, 1971.
The Exorcist is a horror novel written by William Peter Blatty. It is based on a 1949 exorcism Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit and Catholic school.
The exorcism was partially performed in both Mount Rainier, Maryland and Bel-Nor, Missouri. Several area newspapers reported on a speech a priest gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from a thirteen-year-old boy named Ronald, and that the ordeal lasted a little more than six weeks, ending on April 19, 1949.
_http://www.squidoo.com/the-exorcist-movie
1972
When filming of The Exorcist began in August 1972, articles surfaced in newspapers and magazines around the country that explored the author-producer’s various reference sources.
August, 1972
The first of many major publications to consider Blatty’s literary sources was The New York Times, which weighed in with an article by Chris Chase on August 27, 1972 titled “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It.” The article chronicles how director William Friedkin became involved in the project and touches upon the fact that Blatty based his novel on a local story of demonic possession that he learned of while attending college.
November 3, 1972
...in the November 3, 1972 edition of The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.). Titled “Luncheon With Father John J. Nicola,” the article explains that Nicola, then 43-year-old assistant director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C. and regarded as one of the country’s leading authorities on exorcism, was called upon to serve as the movie’s technical consultant. Details of the entire case are recapped along with Nicola’s views on the subject as a whole.
November 6, 1972
Sally Quinn, “Exorcism: Beating The Devil,” The Washington Post, 6 November 1972.
1973
March
Curtis Fuller, “I See by The Papers: Exorcism And Possession,” Fate, March 1973.
December 23
Gary Arnold, “Exorcist: The Word Made Flesh,” The Washington Post, 23 December 1973.
December 26
The Film, The Exorcist, was released by Warner Brothers on December 26, 1973. It was produced by William Peter Blatty himself and directed by William Friedkin (who received a 1971 academy award for Best Director for the movie The French Connection). Blatty had based the story on a supposedly real event that took place in the Washington, D.C. area back in 1949.
Jeremiah O’Leary, “The Exorcist: Story That Almost Wasn’t,” Washington Star-News, 29 December 1973.
1974
William Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty On The Exorcist From Novel To Film (New York: Bantam Books, 1974). (The 41-page introduction provides some valuable information on how Blatty became aware of the story and how he developed his novel. The rest of the book deals with the movie’s screenplay). Basically, this book filled in the gaps on how he devised this literary project. He writes that as a 20-year-old English Literature major at Georgetown University he spied an article in the August 20, 1949 Washington Post (Bill Brinkley, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held In Devil’s Grip”), that told of a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Maryland boy who had been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil through the ancient ritual of exorcism. For years the notion of demonic possession stuck in his mind though he failed to incorporate the information into his work product.
Additionally, Blatty prints a censored version of the exorcist’s response, revealing for the first time the existence of a diary kept by an attending priest that recorded the daily events of the ongoing exorcism. Blatty writes that he requested to see the diary but the exorcist declined. Blatty decided to ease the exorcist’s anxiety and change the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to that of a 12-year-old girl. In this book Blatty goes on to mention that five copies of the diary were known to exist at that time: two were in the possession of people who watched over the boy; copies were in the archives of two separate archdioceses; and one was in the files of an unnamed public city hospital where the boy had stayed. (It has since been determined that there are several other copies floating around out there among private collectors.) Blatty maintains that he did indeed eventually read the diary and based much of his book and movie on that material, though he does not reveal how he came upon his copy.
January, 1974
Martin Ebon, Exorcism: Fact Not Fiction (New York: Signet Books, January 1974). (This pocket paperback reprints the April 1951 Fate article and mainly summarizes the early newspaper accounts of the case.)
Rev. John J. Nicola, Diabolical Possession and Exorcism (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974), chapter 10. (Nicola poorly reconstructs the case that inspired The Exorcist, providing no documented sources for his sensational version of the alleged possession.)
Peter Travers and Stephanie Reiff, The Story Behind The Exorcist (New York: Signet Books, 1974). (A rather disappointing treatment of how the movie was filmed. There is very little here on the actual background of the 1949 possession.)
Tom Shales, “‘Exorcist’: No One Under 17 Admitted,” The Washington Post, 3 January 1974.
Ronald V. Borst, “The Exorcist,” Photon, Number 25, 1974.
Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Back To the Ouija Board,” The New Yorker, 7 January 1974.
Cathe Wolhowe, “Bedeviled By Film, Curious Go To GU,” The Washington Post, 10 January 1974.
“Movies: The Ghoul Next Door,” Newsweek, 21 January 1974.
James L. Foye, M.D. “A Psychiatrist On Rites Of Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 22 January 1974.
William Gildea, “Confronting Satan’s Wrongs With Rites,” The Washington Post, 29 January 1974.
February
Elizabeth Peer, “The Exorcism Frenzy,” Newsweek, 11 February 1974.
Nominated in 1974 for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture), The Exorcist was the recipient of two: “Best Screenplay Based On Material From Another Medium”—William Peter Blatty, and “Best Sound”—Robert Knudson and Chris Newman.
1975
January 1975
...in the January 1975 edition of Fate magazine. In a feature titled “The Truth Behind The Exorcist,” author Steve Erdmann reveals never-before-known information regarding the facts behind the story.
Erdmann begins his account by providing the readers with basic background information. The 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy, referred to in the aforementioned “diary” as “Roland Doe,” became possessed by an “invisible entity” after he and his “Aunt Tillie” began experimenting with an Ouija Board in January 1949. He was treated at D.C.’s Georgetown University Hospital before having the demon successfully exorcised by Jesuit priests at St. Louis University.[/quote]
June
Lynda Hoover, “The Devil In Prince George’s County?” The Prince George’s Journal, 19 June 1975.
August
Sharon Page, “Q And A: Father Nicola Pursues Trail Of The Devil,” The Washington Star, 19 August 1975.
February, 1981
Spencer Gordon, “The Exorcist: The real incident involved a Mt. Rainier priest in 1949,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 4 February, 1981.
1981
Two of the more influential articles to appear on this subject (at least as far as local lore goes) can be found within the pages of The Prince George’s Sentinel, a weekly published in Hyattsville, Maryland. The first, “The Exorcist: The real incident involved a Mt. Rainier priest in 1949,” was written by Spencer Gordon, and appeared in the February 4, 1981 edition. The article reveals for the first time that Father E. Albert Hughes of St. James Church in Mount Rainier was the priest who conducted the mysterious, much-rumored first exorcism attempt on the boy at Georgetown University Hospital. The article tells that after psychiatrists failed to help the boy at Georgetown University Hospital, Father Hughes was called in to perform the exorcism.
1982
Denis Brian, The Enchanted Voyager: The Life Of J. B. Rhine (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982). (Chapter 29 consists of six pages on the case. J. B. Rhine learned of the case from Reverend Luther Miles Schulze, the first clergyman called in by the family. It is revealed that Rhine never witnessed any of the phenomena himself and actually wondered if Reverend Schulze “unconsciously exaggerated” some of the facts. Rhine’s feelings have been conveniently ignored by other journalists.)
Brenda Caggiano, “Exorcism: Demonic possession still haunts Mt. Rainier residents,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 28 October 1983. This was the second Sentinel article, that was referred to under the "1981" heading, above, and just in time for the Halloween season. This rambling article includes rough interviews conducted with local residents and tavern occupants, none of whom knew the possessed boy’s name.
May 1985
Arthur S. Brisbane, “Youth’s Bizarre Symptoms Led To 1949 Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 6 May 1985. The real significance of this article lies in the quotes attributed to Father Frank Bober. Discussing where the boy lived, Bober tells the reporter, “Father Hughes never told me the exact spot (of the residence) but people who were familiar with the case who are still living in Mt. Rainier identified it.” Curiously, Bober does not identify the people who identified that location. I would discover the reason later in my investigation: no such individuals existed.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Is Town Viewing Live Rerun Of The Exorcist? Some Say Demons Have Come Back,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Priest Says Not Devil, But Force Of Evil,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
July 1986
Marybeth Burke, “‘Exorcist’ Based On 1949 Event,” The Prince George’s Journal, 22 July 1986.
April 1988
John M. McGuire, “The Exorcist Revisited,” The Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 17 April 1988.
March 1990
Mary Mann, “Setting The Exorcism Record Straight,” South Side Journal (St. Louis, MO), 14 March 1990.
1994
Thomas B. Allen, “Possessed,” Washingtonian, June 1994.
Books, television specials, and video documentaries on the subject have appeared, with the most recent offerings being the 1994 book Possessed: The True Story Of An Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen. Possessed is the only book to focus entirely on the exorcism of the possessed boy (who Allen refers to as “Robbie”) and is essentially based on two sources: the 26-page diary (Steve Erdmann claims the diary was 16 pages long in his January 1975 Fate article) that Allen reveals was kept by Father Raymond Bishop; and interviews with Father Walter H. Halloran, a then-Jesuit scholastic who assisted in the St. Louis exorcism.
The book suffers many shortcomings: the possessed boy’s identity is not revealed; the schools he attended are not mentioned; no interviews are conducted with any of the boy’s childhood friends or classmates; no interviews are conducted with any friends or neighbors of the boy’s family (once again raising suspicion as to the dubious Mount Rainier location); and the possessed boy himself is not interviewed.
July 1997
Susan Adeletti, “The Exorcist: The Real Story,” The Prince George’s Journal, 11 July 1997.
A 50-minute video titled In The Grip Of Evil, which was produced in 1997 by Henninger Media Development Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, in conjunction with the Discovery Channel. Thomas B. Allen also served as story consultant and writer for this video. It combines theatrical reenactments with Unsolved Mysteries-styled cameo commentaries by a host of characters including Allen himself, Father Walter Halloran and Father Frank Bober. Curiously, Allen opens the video explaining that the family was from Mount Rainier (which I felt from the beginning was a critical error), though clips shown in two different parts of the video depicting the boy’s home reveal a still-intact house that is clearly not at the famed corner of 33rd Street and Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier.
1997
October, 1997, Mark Opsasnick began investigating 'The Exorcist' to answer some questions like: Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
Despite the widespread popularity of this story in the aftermath of William Peter Blatty’s novel and movie, no one had ever actually investigated this case prior to my involvement. Rob Doe had never been interviewed, nor identified. No investigator had ever talked with his childhood friends or people from the neighborhood in which he grew up. In fact, no journalist ever got the location right in the first place. All previous accounts had placed the boy at 3210 Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier, an inexcusable error.
With the completion of this adventure we now know who the boy was, where he really lived, where he attended school, who his friends were, what his family life was like, and what behavior and personality traits he exhibited before his alleged “possession.” The credibility of the mysterious diary has now been called into question. I have shown that Father Walter Halloran—the one living, talking eyewitness to the St. Louis exorcism attempts, maintains that he did not witness any supernatural behavior by Rob Doe—no strange foreign languages (other than mimicked Latin), no changes in tone of voice, no prodigious strength, no excessive vomiting or urinating, and—to top it off—he is uncertain about the nature of the markings or skin brandings on the boy’s body. Perhaps most important of all, this case illustrates the need in paranormal investigation for close scrutiny of both initial newspaper accounts and highly touted individuals as providers of information. In this instance, both sources muddled the picture by embellishing the story when facts were uncertain.
Each of the parties involved in this case approached it from its own frame of reference. To psychiatrists, Rob Doe suffered from mental illness. To priests this was a case of demonic possession. To writers and film/video producers this was a great story to exploit for profit. Those involved saw what they were trained to see. Each purported to look at the facts but just the opposite was true—in actuality they manipulated the facts and emphasized information that fit their own agendas.
For further information contact Mark Chorvinsky at Strange Magazine, c/o Dream Wizards, 11772 Parklawn Drive, Rockville MD 20852, phone 301-570-7561, fax 301-570-7562, or email strange1(at)strangemag.com
Sources for Mark Opsasnick's quotes:
_http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html
_http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=288680
Hi ya’ll.
I was involved in a discussion the other day when someone made a comment about “addressing the issue of ouija boards and the false representation put forward by the media. Like propagating the TRUTH about the kid behind the movie “The Exorcist” and how this was twisted and a whole “New Age Belief” grew out of a lie.”
Well, Ok. That sounds like a good idea, except I never watched the movie in it’s entirety. Not that I didn’t like it or anything, it’s just that for every “horror” movie I ever watched, I probably saw about 3 or 4 “behind the scenes making of” kinds of movies and video clips. It was special-effects that were MY major interest. Heck, I never even knew there was a ouija board in the movie “The Exorcist.”
So I went looking around the internet for some source material on the subject and the rest of this blog article is about what I found. It’s a little long, but I wanted to share it with you.
What is interesting is that the Ouija board occupies such a small role in "The Exorcist" and is quickly forgotton by most viewers; yet, because the board and the activity of working it serves a pivotal role as a 'doorway' to everything that happens afterward, as long as the story can be kept in people's minds, the Ouija board will always be there, even if only implicitly, to serve as "cause" for everything evil, and never mind the facts.
Quote from: _http://www.museumoftalkingboards.com/Film.html
The Ouija board sequence in the film ["The Exorcist"] is a small but significant one. In it, Chris (Ellen Burstyn) asks her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) if she knows how to use the family Ouija board:
"Sure Mom, I do it all the time with Captain Howdy," answers Regan.
"Who is Captain Howdy?" asks Chris.
"You know. Captain Howdy. I ask the questions and he gives the answers!"
In The Exorcist, the Ouija board acts as the threshold through which Captain Howdy takes possession of Regan. The film is a classic Christian psychodrama starring the Devil as absolute unmitigated evil whose sole purpose is to corrupt the innocent and torment the living. The Ouija scene, so essential to the plot, is quickly forgotten, eclipsed by the horror that follows.
Before researcher/writer Mark Opsasnick came along, it was generally considered that the most fascinating and in-depth article ever to appear on the subject appeared in the January 1975 edition of Fate magazine. In a feature titled “The Truth Behind The Exorcist,” author Steve Erdmann reveals never-before-known information regarding the facts behind the story.
Erdmann begins his account by providing the readers with basic background information. The 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy, referred to in the aforementioned “diary” as “Roland Doe,” became possessed by an “invisible entity” after he and his “Aunt Tillie” began experimenting with an Ouija Board in January 1949. He was treated at D.C.’s Georgetown University Hospital before having the demon successfully exorcised by Jesuit priests at St. Louis University.
As to how the real story about a boy became a book and movie of a female character, Opsasnick writes:
Quote from: Opsasnick
The most interesting aspect of this work is that William Peter Blatty tells of a letter he composed to the priest who conducted the actual 1949 exorcism. Blatty prints a censored version of the exorcist’s response, revealing for the first time the existence of a diary kept by an attending priest that recorded the daily events of the ongoing exorcism. Blatty writes that he requested to see the diary but the exorcist declined. Blatty decided to ease the exorcist’s anxiety and change the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to that of a 12-year-old girl.
In October, 1997, Mark Opsasnick began investigating 'The Exorcist' to answer some questions like: Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
My interest in The Exorcist tale gradually escalated during the 1992 to 1996 time period. Most of my spare hours were spent during those years conducting research for my book Capitol Rock (Riverdale: Fort Center Books, 1997). Consequently, for a lengthy chapter on blues-rock guitar great Roy Buchanan, I spent a great deal of time canvassing the city of Mount Rainier, Maryland—a smallish working-class community of approximately 8,000 residents quietly tucked away in Victorian homes and bungalows on the D.C. line. The town was known for two things: the home of the great Roy Buchanan—and the alleged site of the story behind The Exorcist.
...
The various published writings on the 1949 possession case contained a great deal of conflicting and confusing information. Still, I felt it would be a tremendous personal challenge to conduct this investigation from an entirely different viewpoint and in October 1997 I began my pursuit.
Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
For reasons that will later become obvious I will from now on refer to this individual as “Rob Doe” (a combination of previously used pseudonyms). His date of birth was June 1, 1935, meaning he was actually 13 when the rite of exorcism was finally completed. Rob’s home address was 3807 40th Avenue, Cottage City, Maryland, a small working-class community of around 1,200 residents that quietly sits one mile from Washington, D.C.’s northeast border. Nestled between the towns of Colmar Manor and Brentwood, Cottage City is located about two miles due east across Rhode Island Avenue (Route One) from Mount Rainier.
Why must “Rob Doe” remain anonymous?
At the conclusion of his investigation, Mark describes his contact with "Rob Doe":
Quote from: Opsasnick
From a Cottage City source I obtained an East Coast address where the Haunted Boy now resides and his current phone number. I called and Rob Doe himself answered. Our conversation was brief and direct and he gruffly spoke to me in a very deep, gravelly voice. He admitted to me that he had grown up in Cottage City and had never lived in Mount Rainier. He stated that he had seen the movie The Exorcist but did not offer his take on the film. He seemed very alarmed that I had contacted him and told me there would be no cooperation on his part whatsoever. He would not confirm that he was the subject of this investigation and firmly stated he did not want me to ever call him back again. His response was typical of someone who did not want to be reminded of some distant embarrassing event from his past.
Some examples of the so-called possession?
No one who actually knew him believed he was 'possessed', but they DO have some interesting examples of "Rob's" behavior:
Quote from: _http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=288680
J. C.’s brother “B.C.” was said to be Rob Doe’s best friend throughout childhood.
J.C.:
I don’t think he [Rob] was ever possessed. I think it was psychological. They [the family] were German Lutherans and he [Rob] was an only child and I think the grandmother is actually the central figure. She played a very influential role in all of this. You had this old world religion superstition and the mother got caught up in it and the father just kind of stayed in the background—I think he could see what was going on which is why he is never mentioned. The true story is much more intriguing from a psychological point of view. The basis of the real thing could be a damn good story, no doubt about it in my mind. The rest of it I can run a parallel. You had these two mischief makers that had a strong tendency to take advantage of people who were weaker than themselves. They were a pair of connivers and they had their act down. In pairs like that they compete with each other and they don’t get along well and they have to keep doing something to retain their relationship and all the time this is mischief in one form or another. They were trying to outdo each other.
One thing happened regarding all of this and I have a hard time clearing it in my mind. We were in eighth grade, it was the ’48-’49 school year and we were in a class together at Bladensburg Junior High. He was sitting in a chair and it was one of those deals with one arm attached and it looked like he was shaking the desk—the desk was shaking and vibrating extremely fast and I remember the teacher yelling at him to stop it and I remember he kind of yelled “I’m not doing it” and they took him out of class and that was the last I ever saw of him in school.
Quote from: Opsasnick
I can say that B. C. provided a detailed profile of an only child who went through anything but a normal childhood: smothered by his obsessively religious mother and grandmother who held deep interests in spiritualism and Ouija Boards; shunned by his classmates at school; prone to tantrums and even violent outbursts towards his family and his few friends; exhibiting cruel and at times even sadistic behavior towards other children and even animals. It was evident that elements of the alleged possession had always been there, going back years and years. “Dysfunctional” would be the word modern-era psychiatrists would use to describe the boy’s home life and upbringing.
B.C., Rob's best friend, had some odd theories on what may have happened regarding the “possession”:
Quote from: B.C.
The reason behind it, you’re going to laugh but I don’t care. There was this dog that ran around the neighborhood at that time…. It was half-red cocker spaniel and it looked like it was half-chow. This dog was mean and nobody ever knew who owned it. It just came out of nowhere. Well, [Rob] basically adopted that dog. That dog was really his best friend, not me. That dog hated everyone and everything and would bite anyone in sight but he loved [Rob]. [Rob] would feed it and bring it in the house with him. One time he called me up and told me to come over and I never really trusted him because he was sneaky and a real mean little bastard. I was going over there and he was looking out from the basement window and when I got to his house I heard the back porch door slam and I knew right away what he’d done. He’d done this sort of thing many times before to different kids. I started running like hell because he’d sicked that dog on me. When I got home he called me up and was laughing like hell. That’s what kind of person he was. He did that all the time. He’d always sic that dog on anyone who came around…. I could tell you many, many other stories like that.
Opsasnick's summary of Rob Doe's behavior:
Quote from: Opsasnick
Personally, I do not believe Rob Doe was possessed. There is simply too much evidence that indicates that as a boy he had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life. There is not one shred of hard evidence to support the notion of demonic possession. The facts show that he was a spoiled and disturbed only child with a very overprotective mother and a non-responsive father. To me his behavior was indicative of an outcast youth who desperately wanted out of Bladensburg Junior High School at any cost. He wanted attention and he wanted to leave the area and go to St. Louis. Throwing tantrums was the answer. He began to play his concocted game. For his efforts he got a collection of priests (who had no previous exorcism experience) who doted over him as he lay strapped to a bed. His response was that of any normal child—he reacted with rage, he wanted out.
The following timeline may, or may not address the issue of "ouija boards and the false representation put forward by the media", but it may serve to present an idea of "how this was twisted and a whole "New Age Belief" grew out of a lie."
As the inspiration for The Exorcist, this case emerged as one of the most significant examples of paranormal phenomena in history. It spawned movies, books, and videos, and influenced hundreds of “copycat” cases around the world that led to exorcism-styled assaults, mutilations, and even deaths.
April, 1949
...an exorcism ended after a little more than six weeks, on April 19, 1949
August 10
The media first became involved in this case when The Washington Post ran an article on August 10, 1949 titled “Pastor Tells Eerie Tale of ‘Haunted’ Boy.” Written in an almost tongue-in-cheek style by reporter Bill Brinkley, the piece tells an “out-of-this-world” story of a local 13-year-old boy.
..
The story came to light when an unnamed minister gave a speech before a local meeting of the Society of Parapsychology at the Mount Pleasant Library in Washington, D.C. According to the minister the family had experienced many strange events in their suburban Maryland home beginning January 18th.
The minister, described as being intensely skeptical, arranged for the boy to spend the night of February 17th in his home. With the boy sleeping nearby in a twin bed the minister reported that in the dark he heard vibrating sounds from the bed and scratching sounds on the wall. During the rest of the night he allegedly witnessed some strange events—a heavy armchair in which the boy sat seemingly tilted on its own and tipped over and a pallet of blankets on which the sleeping boy lay inexplicably moved around the room. Curiously, the article described the minister as laughing as he related these incidents to his audience. He admonished the boy by saying, “Now, look, this is enough of this....” The article ended by saying that the minister called in the family doctor, who prescribed phenobarbital for the whole family.
That same day:
The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) followed up the Post’s scoop with an uncredited article later that evening on August 10, 1949 titled “Minister Tells Parapsychologists Noisy ‘Ghost’ Plagued Family.” The Evening Star’s account differed from the Post’s in that the family was referred to as “Mr. and Mrs. John Doe” and their 13-year-old son “Roland.”
August 11
The Times-Herald (Washington, D.C.) joined the fray with an article by William Flythe, Jr. on August 11, 1949 titled “‘Haunted’ Boy’s Parents Tell Of Ghost Messages.” A basic rehash of the previous two accounts, this piece adds that the boy lived in the “Brentwood section northeast” and also tells that the family had found dermographic messages written in a rash on the boy’s body.
August 19
On August 19, 1949 The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) featured the article “Priest Freed Boy of Possession By Devil, Church Sources Say.” As the first account to provide any exorcism details to the public, the article opens by saying, “A Catholic priest has successfully freed a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Md., boy of reported possession by the devil here early this year, it was disclosed today.”
The next day the same paper ran a follow-up titled “New Details of Boy’s Exorcism In Catholic Ritual Disclosed,” though in reality few new details were revealed. It did cite church sources as saying that during the rite the boy had recited a stream of blasphemous curses, intermingled with Latin phrases. The article then recapped events that had earlier been printed regarding the minister at a meeting of the Society of Parapsychology.
August 20 [This is the article that would stick in William Peter Blatty’s mind and serve as the later inspiration for 'The Exorcist'].
The Washington Post chimed in on August 20, 1949 with another Bill Brinkley-authored piece, this one titled “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip.” At greater length than the previous published accounts, Brinkley recounts the family’s entire haunting episode and reveals that only after 20 to 30 performances of the ancient ritual of exorcism was the devil finally cast out of the boy. He also tells that during the rite the youngster would break into violent tantrums of screaming, cursing, and voicing of Latin phrases.
Also in August
The Parapsychology Bulletin (August 1949, Number 14), a periodical of the New York-based Parapsychology Foundation, weighed in with the uncredited “Report Of A Poltergeist,” an article that finally published the name of the anonymous clergyman of the haunted boy’s family. He turned out to be Reverend Luther Miles Schulze and in this article his experiences with the boy were reported in detail.
1950 - Spring
In the spring of 1950 Father Gallagher loaned the diary to then-Georgetown University dean Father Brian McGrath, S.J. When Father Gallagher attempted to retrieve the diary, he was told by Father McGrath’s secretary that only nine carbon pages remained. [Erdmann wonders whether or not the diary had somehow found its way into Blatty’s hands.]
1951
D.R. Linson, “Washington’s Haunted Boy,” Fate, April 1951.
1969
William Peter Blatty began writing The Exorcist in 1969, drawing upon the material he had discovered some twenty years earlier, and finished his project during the summer of 1971.
1971
William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist: the novel published in May, 1971.
The Exorcist is a horror novel written by William Peter Blatty. It is based on a 1949 exorcism Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit and Catholic school.
The exorcism was partially performed in both Mount Rainier, Maryland and Bel-Nor, Missouri. Several area newspapers reported on a speech a priest gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from a thirteen-year-old boy named Ronald, and that the ordeal lasted a little more than six weeks, ending on April 19, 1949.
_http://www.squidoo.com/the-exorcist-movie
1972
When filming of The Exorcist began in August 1972, articles surfaced in newspapers and magazines around the country that explored the author-producer’s various reference sources.
August, 1972
The first of many major publications to consider Blatty’s literary sources was The New York Times, which weighed in with an article by Chris Chase on August 27, 1972 titled “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It.” The article chronicles how director William Friedkin became involved in the project and touches upon the fact that Blatty based his novel on a local story of demonic possession that he learned of while attending college.
November 3, 1972
...in the November 3, 1972 edition of The Evening Star and The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.). Titled “Luncheon With Father John J. Nicola,” the article explains that Nicola, then 43-year-old assistant director of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C. and regarded as one of the country’s leading authorities on exorcism, was called upon to serve as the movie’s technical consultant. Details of the entire case are recapped along with Nicola’s views on the subject as a whole.
November 6, 1972
Sally Quinn, “Exorcism: Beating The Devil,” The Washington Post, 6 November 1972.
1973
March
Curtis Fuller, “I See by The Papers: Exorcism And Possession,” Fate, March 1973.
December 23
Gary Arnold, “Exorcist: The Word Made Flesh,” The Washington Post, 23 December 1973.
December 26
The Film, The Exorcist, was released by Warner Brothers on December 26, 1973. It was produced by William Peter Blatty himself and directed by William Friedkin (who received a 1971 academy award for Best Director for the movie The French Connection). Blatty had based the story on a supposedly real event that took place in the Washington, D.C. area back in 1949.
Jeremiah O’Leary, “The Exorcist: Story That Almost Wasn’t,” Washington Star-News, 29 December 1973.
1974
William Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty On The Exorcist From Novel To Film (New York: Bantam Books, 1974). (The 41-page introduction provides some valuable information on how Blatty became aware of the story and how he developed his novel. The rest of the book deals with the movie’s screenplay). Basically, this book filled in the gaps on how he devised this literary project. He writes that as a 20-year-old English Literature major at Georgetown University he spied an article in the August 20, 1949 Washington Post (Bill Brinkley, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held In Devil’s Grip”), that told of a 14-year-old Mount Rainier, Maryland boy who had been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil through the ancient ritual of exorcism. For years the notion of demonic possession stuck in his mind though he failed to incorporate the information into his work product.
Additionally, Blatty prints a censored version of the exorcist’s response, revealing for the first time the existence of a diary kept by an attending priest that recorded the daily events of the ongoing exorcism. Blatty writes that he requested to see the diary but the exorcist declined. Blatty decided to ease the exorcist’s anxiety and change the lead character from a 14-year-old boy to that of a 12-year-old girl. In this book Blatty goes on to mention that five copies of the diary were known to exist at that time: two were in the possession of people who watched over the boy; copies were in the archives of two separate archdioceses; and one was in the files of an unnamed public city hospital where the boy had stayed. (It has since been determined that there are several other copies floating around out there among private collectors.) Blatty maintains that he did indeed eventually read the diary and based much of his book and movie on that material, though he does not reveal how he came upon his copy.
January, 1974
Martin Ebon, Exorcism: Fact Not Fiction (New York: Signet Books, January 1974). (This pocket paperback reprints the April 1951 Fate article and mainly summarizes the early newspaper accounts of the case.)
Rev. John J. Nicola, Diabolical Possession and Exorcism (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974), chapter 10. (Nicola poorly reconstructs the case that inspired The Exorcist, providing no documented sources for his sensational version of the alleged possession.)
Peter Travers and Stephanie Reiff, The Story Behind The Exorcist (New York: Signet Books, 1974). (A rather disappointing treatment of how the movie was filmed. There is very little here on the actual background of the 1949 possession.)
Tom Shales, “‘Exorcist’: No One Under 17 Admitted,” The Washington Post, 3 January 1974.
Ronald V. Borst, “The Exorcist,” Photon, Number 25, 1974.
Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Back To the Ouija Board,” The New Yorker, 7 January 1974.
Cathe Wolhowe, “Bedeviled By Film, Curious Go To GU,” The Washington Post, 10 January 1974.
“Movies: The Ghoul Next Door,” Newsweek, 21 January 1974.
James L. Foye, M.D. “A Psychiatrist On Rites Of Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 22 January 1974.
William Gildea, “Confronting Satan’s Wrongs With Rites,” The Washington Post, 29 January 1974.
February
Elizabeth Peer, “The Exorcism Frenzy,” Newsweek, 11 February 1974.
Nominated in 1974 for ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture), The Exorcist was the recipient of two: “Best Screenplay Based On Material From Another Medium”—William Peter Blatty, and “Best Sound”—Robert Knudson and Chris Newman.
1975
January 1975
...in the January 1975 edition of Fate magazine. In a feature titled “The Truth Behind The Exorcist,” author Steve Erdmann reveals never-before-known information regarding the facts behind the story.
Erdmann begins his account by providing the readers with basic background information. The 14-year-old Mount Rainier boy, referred to in the aforementioned “diary” as “Roland Doe,” became possessed by an “invisible entity” after he and his “Aunt Tillie” began experimenting with an Ouija Board in January 1949. He was treated at D.C.’s Georgetown University Hospital before having the demon successfully exorcised by Jesuit priests at St. Louis University.[/quote]
June
Lynda Hoover, “The Devil In Prince George’s County?” The Prince George’s Journal, 19 June 1975.
August
Sharon Page, “Q And A: Father Nicola Pursues Trail Of The Devil,” The Washington Star, 19 August 1975.
February, 1981
Spencer Gordon, “The Exorcist: The real incident involved a Mt. Rainier priest in 1949,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 4 February, 1981.
1981
Two of the more influential articles to appear on this subject (at least as far as local lore goes) can be found within the pages of The Prince George’s Sentinel, a weekly published in Hyattsville, Maryland. The first, “The Exorcist: The real incident involved a Mt. Rainier priest in 1949,” was written by Spencer Gordon, and appeared in the February 4, 1981 edition. The article reveals for the first time that Father E. Albert Hughes of St. James Church in Mount Rainier was the priest who conducted the mysterious, much-rumored first exorcism attempt on the boy at Georgetown University Hospital. The article tells that after psychiatrists failed to help the boy at Georgetown University Hospital, Father Hughes was called in to perform the exorcism.
1982
Denis Brian, The Enchanted Voyager: The Life Of J. B. Rhine (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982). (Chapter 29 consists of six pages on the case. J. B. Rhine learned of the case from Reverend Luther Miles Schulze, the first clergyman called in by the family. It is revealed that Rhine never witnessed any of the phenomena himself and actually wondered if Reverend Schulze “unconsciously exaggerated” some of the facts. Rhine’s feelings have been conveniently ignored by other journalists.)
Brenda Caggiano, “Exorcism: Demonic possession still haunts Mt. Rainier residents,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 28 October 1983. This was the second Sentinel article, that was referred to under the "1981" heading, above, and just in time for the Halloween season. This rambling article includes rough interviews conducted with local residents and tavern occupants, none of whom knew the possessed boy’s name.
May 1985
Arthur S. Brisbane, “Youth’s Bizarre Symptoms Led To 1949 Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 6 May 1985. The real significance of this article lies in the quotes attributed to Father Frank Bober. Discussing where the boy lived, Bober tells the reporter, “Father Hughes never told me the exact spot (of the residence) but people who were familiar with the case who are still living in Mt. Rainier identified it.” Curiously, Bober does not identify the people who identified that location. I would discover the reason later in my investigation: no such individuals existed.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Is Town Viewing Live Rerun Of The Exorcist? Some Say Demons Have Come Back,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Priest Says Not Devil, But Force Of Evil,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
July 1986
Marybeth Burke, “‘Exorcist’ Based On 1949 Event,” The Prince George’s Journal, 22 July 1986.
April 1988
John M. McGuire, “The Exorcist Revisited,” The Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 17 April 1988.
March 1990
Mary Mann, “Setting The Exorcism Record Straight,” South Side Journal (St. Louis, MO), 14 March 1990.
1994
Thomas B. Allen, “Possessed,” Washingtonian, June 1994.
Books, television specials, and video documentaries on the subject have appeared, with the most recent offerings being the 1994 book Possessed: The True Story Of An Exorcism by Thomas B. Allen. Possessed is the only book to focus entirely on the exorcism of the possessed boy (who Allen refers to as “Robbie”) and is essentially based on two sources: the 26-page diary (Steve Erdmann claims the diary was 16 pages long in his January 1975 Fate article) that Allen reveals was kept by Father Raymond Bishop; and interviews with Father Walter H. Halloran, a then-Jesuit scholastic who assisted in the St. Louis exorcism.
The book suffers many shortcomings: the possessed boy’s identity is not revealed; the schools he attended are not mentioned; no interviews are conducted with any of the boy’s childhood friends or classmates; no interviews are conducted with any friends or neighbors of the boy’s family (once again raising suspicion as to the dubious Mount Rainier location); and the possessed boy himself is not interviewed.
July 1997
Susan Adeletti, “The Exorcist: The Real Story,” The Prince George’s Journal, 11 July 1997.
A 50-minute video titled In The Grip Of Evil, which was produced in 1997 by Henninger Media Development Inc. of Arlington, Virginia, in conjunction with the Discovery Channel. Thomas B. Allen also served as story consultant and writer for this video. It combines theatrical reenactments with Unsolved Mysteries-styled cameo commentaries by a host of characters including Allen himself, Father Walter Halloran and Father Frank Bober. Curiously, Allen opens the video explaining that the family was from Mount Rainier (which I felt from the beginning was a critical error), though clips shown in two different parts of the video depicting the boy’s home reveal a still-intact house that is clearly not at the famed corner of 33rd Street and Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier.
1997
October, 1997, Mark Opsasnick began investigating 'The Exorcist' to answer some questions like: Who Was This Possessed Kid and Where Did He Really Live?
Quote from: Opsasnick
Despite the widespread popularity of this story in the aftermath of William Peter Blatty’s novel and movie, no one had ever actually investigated this case prior to my involvement. Rob Doe had never been interviewed, nor identified. No investigator had ever talked with his childhood friends or people from the neighborhood in which he grew up. In fact, no journalist ever got the location right in the first place. All previous accounts had placed the boy at 3210 Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier, an inexcusable error.
With the completion of this adventure we now know who the boy was, where he really lived, where he attended school, who his friends were, what his family life was like, and what behavior and personality traits he exhibited before his alleged “possession.” The credibility of the mysterious diary has now been called into question. I have shown that Father Walter Halloran—the one living, talking eyewitness to the St. Louis exorcism attempts, maintains that he did not witness any supernatural behavior by Rob Doe—no strange foreign languages (other than mimicked Latin), no changes in tone of voice, no prodigious strength, no excessive vomiting or urinating, and—to top it off—he is uncertain about the nature of the markings or skin brandings on the boy’s body. Perhaps most important of all, this case illustrates the need in paranormal investigation for close scrutiny of both initial newspaper accounts and highly touted individuals as providers of information. In this instance, both sources muddled the picture by embellishing the story when facts were uncertain.
Each of the parties involved in this case approached it from its own frame of reference. To psychiatrists, Rob Doe suffered from mental illness. To priests this was a case of demonic possession. To writers and film/video producers this was a great story to exploit for profit. Those involved saw what they were trained to see. Each purported to look at the facts but just the opposite was true—in actuality they manipulated the facts and emphasized information that fit their own agendas.
For further information contact Mark Chorvinsky at Strange Magazine, c/o Dream Wizards, 11772 Parklawn Drive, Rockville MD 20852, phone 301-570-7561, fax 301-570-7562, or email strange1(at)strangemag.com
Sources for Mark Opsasnick's quotes:
_http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html
_http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?p=288680
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