Roland Doe, the boy who was believed to be possessed by the devil and whose story served as inspiration for “The Exorcist”

“In perhaps one of the most extraordinary experiences of its kind in recent religious history, a 14-year-old boy from Mount Rainier (a suburb about 15 km from Washington, DC) was freed by a Catholic priest after being possessed by the devil,” reported the American newspaper Washington Post on August 20, 1949.

Citing “Catholic sources,” the newspaper stated that in order to free the young man from demonic possession, he had had to undergo “between 20 and 30 exorcisms,” during which he had “began shouting, shouting profanities and phrases in Latin – a language he had never studied – every time the priest reached the climatic point of the ritual.

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Some time later, not far from where all this had happened, a young man named William Peter Blatty heard the story for the first time while he was studying at Georgetown University.

In 1971, when Blatty was already working as a writer and film scriptwriter, with some hits such as “The Pink Panther”, he published his novel “The Exorcist”, on which the film of the same name would be based, which would redefine the horror genre, creating one of the most emblematic stories of modern cinema.

Surprisingly, despite the immense success of the novel and the film, whose release marks 50 years, and the impact they had on the popular culture of the time, The true identity – and history – of the young man who inspired the work of fiction remained in the dark.

Scratches and chairs that move

Press reports from 1949 said that the 14-year-old boy identified as Roland Doe (Doe is a generic surname used in the US to maintain people’s anonymity) He began hearing strange sounds coming from the walls of his room, just a few days after the death of a close family member..

“Aunt Tillie,” say documents from St. Louis Catholic University in Missouri, “was particularly close to the boy. Some reports claim that it was she who introduced him to the Ouija board, a game conceived in the 19th century, when spiritualism became a religious phenomenon.”

Priests from St. Louis University performed the exorcisms.

According to the press at the time, the family believed that the boy’s attempts to contact his aunt through the Ouija board had been the trigger for the paranormal phenomena they were experiencing: they claimed that they saw chairs moving on their own, that Roland’s bed was shaking. in a strange way and that the floors had deep marks without explanation, as if someone was dragging heavy furniture.

Seeing that neither doctors, psychologists or psychiatrists could offer satisfactory answers about what was happening, the young man’s mother went to her Lutheran pastor Luther Miles Schulze, who He recommended that he visit the Catholic community in Washington given the experience that the Catholic Church has with cases of demonic possession.

The practice of exorcising demons in the Church is almost as old as the religion itself: the wills mention how Jesus himself ordered the demons to leave the bodies of the possessed, and since 1614, the Church has had specific parameters to carry it out. the ritual (which were reviewed and modified in 1999).

A letter Schulze sent to the Department of Parapsychology at Duke University presents him as one of the witnesses to the phenomena that Roland’s family was reporting: “The chairs moved next to him, and one threw him away. Her bed shook every time he was in it.”

“An excellent day for an exorcism”

The search for the young man’s relatives took them to the city of St. Louis, Missouri, where they came into contact with the university’s Jesuit community.

The priest Raymond Bishop became interested in the young man’s story and took it to the authorities of the institution., who authorized him to make a visit to see first-hand what was happening. Bishop began keeping a diary of his visits, which was later kept by the university.

According to the priest in his writings, Roland’s bed was shaking when he first saw it, but it stopped when he blessed it and made the sign of the cross with holy water.

This led him to seek the help of the university’s church priest, an experienced priest named William H. Bowdern.

“Bowdern, 52, a World War II veteran with extensive teaching and pastoral experience, visited Ronald two days later. During the visit, Roland suffered two long scratches in the shape of a cross, while objects such as holy water flew around the rooms.” reads a compilation of the facts made by St. Louis University.

According to the university, Bishop and Bowdern made a request to the Archbishop of St. Louis to perform an exorcism and the church authority approved the ritual.

“The power of Christ compels you”

Bishop’s diaries recount details of the nearly two months of rituals that priests carried out between March and April 1949.

“The exorcism prayers were continued and R (Roland) convulsed violently, struggling with his pillow and bedclothes. R’s arms, legs and head had to be controlled by three men. The contortions revealed physical strength beyond natural power.”

“R spat in the faces of those who held him and prayed. He spat at religious images and at the hands of priests. He shivered when they sprinkled him with holy water. He struggled and screamed in a high-pitched, devilish voice.”

St. Louis University says that the rituals were carried out in different places, “seeking to alleviate the boy’s torment.” Bishop recounts strange events in the different places they were: at a retreat center, Roland tried to jump down a ravine after being blessed by sprinkling holy water at the entrance.

Bishop also says that on Easter Day, after he had been taken to the university hospital, Ronald woke up upset, while Bowdern continued with the exorcism ritual. In his diary, he recounts an exchange between Bowdern and Roland that draws attention.

Bowdern, at one point in the rite, demanded that the demon identify himself and leave the boy’s body, to which Roland, with a distorted voice, reportedly responded: “He (Roland) just has to say one more word, one more word.” small word, I mean a BIG word. He will never tell it. I’m always in it. I may not always have much power, but I am always in it. He will never say that word.”

Bishop says that after that, a few minutes before midnight, they heard a different voice coming out of Roland, saying: “Satan! Satan! I am Saint Michael and I order you Satan, and the other evil spirits, to leave the body in the name of Dominus, immediately. Already! Already! ALREADY!”.

When Roland woke up, he told the priests that the archangel Saint Michael had fought a great battle to save him and had won: “He is gone.”.

Who was Roland Doe?

St. Louis church authorities closed the case without making public statements on the matter, seeking to protect Roland’s identity. However, in August 1949 the family’s Lutheran pastor spoke to the newspaper Washington Postwho then published the story that would end up reaching the ears of William Peter Blatty.

But despite how striking the case was when it was published and the massive success of both the book and the film inspired by it, Roland managed to remain anonymous.

Over the years, Different authors who investigated what happened identified Ronald as a man born in 1935 in the state of Maryland, who worked as an aerospace engineer for NASA.

In 2021, several media outlets in the US claimed that the man had died in 2020 shortly before turning 86 years old.

Although there has been much speculation about the events that occurred in those two months of 1949, the voices of two of its protagonists can shed some light.

In his 1974 book “The Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft,” historian Henry A. Kelly obtained direct testimony from Father Bowdern, who told him that the order to carry out the exorcism had come to him directly from church authorities, and that he had done his job.

“But what were those signs of possession that led the ecclesiastical authorities of St. Louis to resort to an exorcism? Father Bowdern’s response was simple and direct: there were no signs of demonic possession reported or observed before the exorcisms began.”Kelly explained in his book.

For Kelly, previous investigations into the case were deficient and phenomena such as things moving could have had different explanations. Worse, the lack of medical supervision during the rituals casts doubt on the veracity of the testimony in Bishop’s diaries.