eoinh
21/12/2004, 11:24 AM
Did anybody see that the programme on Sunday night on RTE1 aqbout exorcisms. I didnt see it myself but my partner did and she said it was very wierd.
One case involved a Church of Ireland rector and the other case a catholic priest.
Anybody see it? :confused:
Dublin12
21/12/2004, 11:33 AM
Yeah,I watched it alright,it was a bit weird.I'm a bit sceptical about the paranormal so unless it happens to me I don't believe it.But if something like that did happen in me gaff I'd be out the door pronto :rolleyes: .Could you imagine if you bought a gaff and the previous owner was murdered in the bath or something horrible like that,could you move in??,don't think I could.
eoinh
21/12/2004, 11:47 AM
Apparently the catholic couple had the most problematic time with their furniture turned upside, things been moved and stuff being drawn on their inside doors and walls (in one case an eye was drawn on a door). They showed the exorcism being done in the catholic couples house. At one stage the man of the house rushed out of the sitting room and puked into the sink. He also said he felt a burning sensation on his back and when they lifted his shirt there was a big red mark there.
Apparently there should be an exorcist in every parish in Ireland but there isnt the expertise in the field for this. I think the different religions share experts. I was telling my Mom about this and she said similiar things had been happening to my aunts neighbours house in Dublin.
Apparently the catholic couple had the most problematic time with their furniture turned upside, things been moved and stuff being drawn on their inside doors and walls
I have that happen in my house regularly. All this time I was blaming the kids!
pineapple stu
21/12/2004, 1:52 PM
Wasn't the film The Exorcist based on a real event?
Think so, yeah. Read something about it in the newspaper a few years back. 'Twas in America somewhere (where else?! :rolleyes: :p )
dortie
21/12/2004, 2:35 PM
Wasnt the film The Exorcist based on a real event?
The Exorcist was based on a true story, although the kid involved was actually a young boy. I watched a documentary on it before. Mental freaky stuff.
A face
21/12/2004, 4:08 PM
Think so, yeah. Read something about it in the newspaper a few years back. 'Twas in America somewhere (where else?! :rolleyes: :p )
Yeah ... why is it only in the states that people see UFO's ?? :eek:
lopez
22/12/2004, 12:22 AM
Yeah ... why is it only in the states that people see UFO's ?? :eek:Why is it Mary only visits Lourdes, Fatima, Knock and Montessori (??that gaff in Bosnia), etc. instead of the Ibrox, the Shankill Road, or the FP mission on the Ravenhill Road? :confused: :confused:
Why is it Mary only visits Lourdes, Fatima, Knock and Montessori (??that gaff in Bosnia), etc. instead of the Ibrox, the Shankill Road, or the FP mission on the Ravenhill Road? :confused: :confused:
She only flys with Ryanair. She was tricked into believing these were the main airports. I mean Lourdes isnt near Paris at all. The rail link was promised years ago.
Risteard
24/12/2004, 7:15 AM
After its release in 1973, the film The Exorcist elicited extreme reactions.
People either loved it or hated it.
The Catholic Church, for instance, praised The Exorcist as 'deeply spiritual', while sections of the press slammed it as 'sickening, gruesome and hateful.'
Audience response to this powerful story of demonic possession was no less extreme.
Within weeks of the first public screening, stories were circulating of people fainting, vomiting and having heart attacks, as well as miscarriages. Yet the predominantly black audiences in Harlem were reported to have enjoyed the film so much, they made a party of it, drinking beers, passing joints, and yelling along with the dialogue.
The film's story centres around actress Chris MacNeil's 12-year-old daughter Regan (played by Linda Blair), who becomes possessed by a demonic entity.
During the possession, the previously innocent and good-natured Regan indulges in all manner of shocking behaviour, including masturbating with a crucifix, yelling obscenities, and vomiting over the Catholic priest who comes to exorcise her.
Paranormal events also occur; in one scene, Regan levitates high above her bed and on other occasions furniture and ornaments move of their own volition.
Strange Affliction
The movie was based on the 1972 novel The Exorcist by American writer William Peter Blatty. Although a work of fiction, the inspiration for the book came from a real-life case of apparent demonic possession.
In William Blatty On The Exorcist: From Novel To Film (1974), Blatty recalls how in 1949 - as a twenty-year-old student at Georgetown University, Washington DC - he heard about a youth from nearby Mount Rainier, Maryland, who had become the victim of demonic possession, and had been cured by a priest.
The story was covered by the Washington Post, but details were scant. However, it was later established as fact that a 14-year-old boy, referred to as Robbie Mannheim or John Hoffman (his real identity is still protected), had an unusual affliction, which had been exacerbated by the death of his aunt Harriet, a self-professed medium, whom he was very close to.
Robbie, an only child, shared his aunt's passion for spiritualism, learning from her how to 'contact the dead' using a Quija board.
Whether this accounted for the difficult-to-explain disturbances - such as untraceable dripping - which occurred in the Mannheim home prior to Harriet's death is hard to say.
But one thing is certain, shortly after her death on January 26, 1949, the disturbances increased dramatically.
Strange scratching noises started coming from the walls of the Mannheim's house and also from within the boy's mattress. Assuming it was rodents, exterminators were called in, but nothing was found - leaving the Mannheims puzzled.
Sinister
Things then took a sinister turn. Not only did the noises become more frequent, but during the night Robbie would be woken by the violent shaking of his bed, often to find the furniture rearranged around the room.
Fearing their property was haunted, the family fled the house and waited for the activity to subside. But it soon became apparent that the phenomena was not centred on the house, but on Robbie himself; at school, for instance, his desk moved around the classroom as if it were on wheels.
Robbie's health also appeared to deteriorate. He began to complain of internal pains and would lapse into blackouts.
During the blackouts, the psychokinetic phenomena became particularly intense; amongst other things, fruit and ornaments would fly around the house.
Later, Robbie started to babble incoherently while he was unconscious; he also become violent and eventually had to be put under restraint.
Doctors could not offer a diagnosis.
A physics professor, having witnessed Robbie's bedside table levitate, could only say...
'There is much we have yet to discover concerning the nature of electromagnetism.'
Concluding that Robbie was possessed, in all probability by Aunt Harriet, the family tried ordering the entity to leave.
It didn't.
In fact it soon began to look as if several personalities were now lurking within Robbie's troubled psyche.
In desperation, the family contacted their Lutheran minister, the Reverend Schulze. He didn't believe in demonic possession. But when Robbie stayed overnight at his house and he witnessed Robbie's bed shaking and a heavy armchair moving of its own volition, Shulze told the Mannheims...
'You have to see a Catholic priest. The Catholics know about things like this.'
Know That I Am The Devil
The Mannheims followed this advice and soon after were visited by Father E Albert Hughes. On seeing the priest, Robbie immediately became vicious and obscene.
Interestingly, when Hughes heard Robbie's 'incoherent babble', he recognised it as Latin, a language the boy had never studied. At one point, Robbie stated in Latin...
'O Sacerdos Christi, tu scis me esse diabolim' ('Oh Priest of Christ, you know that I am the Devil').
By February 27, Robbie had been admitted to the Jesuit-run Georgetown University Hospital and the 29-year-old Hughes, having obtained official sanction from the Catholic Church, set about exorcising the boy.
Unfortunately, he failed.
On March 4, after five nights, the exorcism - performed according to the dictates of the 'Rituale Romanum' liturgy of 1614 - came to an abrupt end when Robbie worked a bedspring free and sliced Hughes down the length of his arm.
The wound, requiring 100 stitches, permanently disabled the priest, leaving him unable to perform Mass unaided again. Perhaps because the exorcism was a failure, Hughes involvement with the case was not revealed publicly and the Catholic church decreed that all records concerning the exorcism be sealed.
Indeed, Hughes himself refused for years to talk about the exorcism, even to colleagues.
Towards the end of his life, however, he talked through the events with his curate, Father Frank Bober...
'Speaking in tongues, levitation, puking, he said all that was valid,' recalls Bober. 'There are some things that you just can't explain medically, because the boy supposedly not only spoke Latin but ancient Aramaic and ancient Hebrew - I mean, languages you don't just pick up.'
Father William Bowdern
After the failure of Hughes's exorcism, the Mannheim family went to stay with relatives in St.Louis, where another priest was consulted - the 52-year-old, and more worldly, William Bowdern.
He had Robbie placed in a secure ward at the Alexian Brothers Hospital and assisted by fellow priests Raymond Bishop and Walter Halloran, Bowdern set about exorcising the boy.
Despite their best efforts, Robbie's condition became even more inexplicable, with blotched 'writing' manifesting on his skin, starting with the word 'Hell' and going on to more complex messages. After gaining permission from his archbishop, Bowdern began a further exorcism and was subjected to a barrage of projectile vomiting, flung excreta, and obscene taunting. Even worse, the young Father Halloran, an athlete, suffered a broken nose while trying to hold Robbie down.
The ritual continued for four weeks.
Then finally, on the night of April 18, Saint Michael apparently entered into Robbie...
'Satan! I am Saint Michael,' announced Robbie/Saint Michael, 'and I command you, Satan, and the other evil spirits, to leave this body in the name of Dominus. Immediately! Now! Now! Now!'
At this, Robbie's symptoms abruptly vanished.
To be sure that this was not more devilish trickery, Bowdern asked for a sign to confirm the success of the exorcism and a sound like a gunshot echoed through the corridors of the hospital.
Robbie was duly despatched home.
Although Bowdern's participation in the exorcism was never officially acknowledged, William Peter Blatty did contact him in the mid-sixties when he was considering writing a non-fiction book about the case...
'He was eager to help (with the project) but then the Archbishop wouldn't give him permission because of the family,' recalls Blatty. 'They were aghast at the thought of this ever being released - which, of course, inflamed my belief in the phenomenon because these were not wacky, over-credulous priests. Something peculiar had happened and they did not want the world to know.'
Blatty, by then a successful Hollywood comedy writer, decided to fictionalise the case instead, protecting the identity of the boy, by making his central character a 12-year-old girl.
The novel The Exorcist became a world-wide best-seller and Blatty later became the producer and ultimately Oscar-winning screenwriter of the film.
The Diary.
But the story did not end there.
In 1978, when a wing of the Alexian Brothers Hospital was to be demolished, workmen prised open the door to a fifth-floor room in the wing for the seriously disturbed. It had not been occupied in the 29 years since the exorcism, having induced spasms of fear in several people.
In the drawer of the bedside table, a faded diary was found, containing a record of what happened back in 1949. This was given to Father Halloran, by then the only surviving priest from the exorcism conducted there. In 1988, he gave an interview to the Lincoln Star, Nebraska, finally revealing all.
Thomas B Allen, a Washington-based author, read of the case, and after locating Halloran (now ailing in a retirement home), he pieced together his book, Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism, the definitive study of the case...
'He (Halloran) felt that he had actually fought with the Devil,' says Allen, 'and he wanted subsequent exorcists to have something to go on.'
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