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The 2005 movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was not an entirely fictional story & was actually based on the experiences of a young German girl, Anneliese Michel who was subjected to sixty-seven Catholic exorcism rites that ultimately led to her death at age 23 on July 1, 1976.
Anneliese was born in 1952 & was raised in Bavaria, West Germany in a devoutly religious Roman Catholic family who attended mass twice weekly & read the Bible daily. She lived with her parents, Anna & Josef, & her three younger sisters, Roswitha, Gertrud & Barbara. Her father had considered training as a priest & three of her aunts were nuns.
Four years before Anneliese was born her mother Anna gave birth to her first daughter, Martha, who died at age eight during a surgery to remove a kidney tumor. Because Anna was unmarried at the time of Martha’s birth, she suffered great shame & was forced to wear a black veil on her wedding day.
As a child, Anneliese was often encouraged to atone for her sins. As she grew, the young girl also often atoned for the sins of others & as a teenager, she slept on a cold stone floor to atone for the sins of wayward priests & drug addicts, who could be seen sleeping on the ground at local train stations.
At age sixteen in 1968, Anneliese developed health issues that first presented when she blacked out & lost consciousness at school. When she awoke, her classmates indicated that she seemed to be in a daze. She had absolutely no memory of the event & those in her presence described her as being in a trance-like state.
One year later in 1969, Anneliese experienced a similar occurrence when she yet again woke up in a trance-like state & this time, she wet her bed after she lost control of her bladder. She began to shake, tremble & convulse, leaving some to eventually believe that she was possessed by a demon. When this scary episode happened, Anneliese said it felt like something was pressing down on her.
After another shaking event, Anneliese was taken to see her doctor on August 24, 1969 & she was referred to a neurologist, Dr. Siegfried Luthy. On August 27 an EEG was done which showed normal results, but the doctor believed that she was suffering from grand mal seizures. Because she only experienced about two events, he chose not to prescribe any medications at this point in time.
During her time under Dr. Luthy’s care, Anneliese’s tonsils became inflamed & she had a tonsillectomy. Shortly after her surgery, she had complications of pneumonia which was further complicated with tuberculosis. Because of her illness, she was forced to withdraw from school in the 1969-1970 school year. In February 1970, Anneliese’s health worsened to the point that she had to be admitted to a hospital that specialized in treating children with lung diseases. Since she still wasn’t improving as expected, Anneliese was then transferred to a tuberculosis clinic in Bavaria.
Because of her quiet nature, Anneliese often isolated herself from the other children seeking treatment at the same hospital & she was thus labeled stuck up & anti-social. During her hospitalization, she had a third seizure during the night in which she experienced sleep paralysis. She felt the sensation of a heavy weight upon her & again, lost control of her bladder. As she came out of it, she began screaming & the other children went on to taunt her because of it, saying that she was crazy or possessed by the devil. When Anneliese was first found after her screams rang out, an angry expression was locked onto her face & her hands were rigidly locked like a cat extending their claws.
Several days later, Anneliese had another event; it started while she was saying the rosary & noticed the odor of violets in the air while a feeling of euphoria washed over her. Other children were asking if she was okay while her hands were once again locked in a position that resembled a cat extending its claws. The feeling of euphoria continued throughout the day which Anneliese attributed to the Virgin Mary. Anneliese tried to chase her previously experienced feeling of euphoria & spent much of her time praying to the Virgin Mary.
After this event, Anneliese was seen by another neurologist, von Haller & on this EEG, he saw irregular brain waves & determined that she had a form of epilepsy. With this, antiseizure medication was prescribed. The doctor also diagnosed her with heart & circulatory issues.
Despite her new medications, her seizures persisted & during another event, while Anneliese was saying the rosary one evening, she saw a quick flash of a menacing face. She later wrote that this made her fearful of saying the rosary. These scary visions would continue to plague her for the rest of her life. Most doctors who had access to this case believe that the visions or hallucinations were related to epilepsy or the onset of psychosis.
As Anneliese’s overall condition continued to improve, she was released from the hospital & sent back home to live with her family. Once home, her sister indicated that Anneliese was frequently angry, had outbursts & began to voice a hatred at the church for her condition.
During the 1970-1971 school year Anneliese continued to have seizures which prompted her family to take her to additional doctors & specialists. Frustrated about her lack of improvement, she immersed herself in Christian literature & came to believe that she was suffering for a greater spiritual reason.
From a medical perspective, it is believed that Anneliese was suffering from epilepsy & extreme episodes of schizophrenic psychosis.
The diagnosis of epilepsy can be difficult since seizures are so unpredictable & in most cases, don’t happen in a healthcare setting in the presence of medical professionals. Doctors will oftentimes review a patient’s history & utilize brain imaging & other tests to assess for abnormal patterns of electrical activity within the brain. There are more than sixty types of seizures & symptoms can vary as not all seizures involve shaking or convulsing. In some cases, a person might go blank for a couple of seconds, they may wander around in a confused state.
A seizure is a sudden burst of electrical activity within the brain that can cause changes in behavior, movements, feelings & levels of consciousness. Epilepsy may be diagnosed when two or more unprovoked seizures occur within 24 hours that have an unknown cause. They usually last from thirty seconds to two minutes & can happen after a stroke or head injury as well as an infection. In many cases, the cause is unknown.
A tonic-clonic seizure, formerly known as a grand mal seizure, is what most people think of when they hear the word seizure. Tonic means stiffening & clonic means rhythmic jerking. The tonic phase happens first & a person’s muscles will stiffen, they may release a cry or groan as air is forced past the vocal cords, the person loses consciousness & falls to the floor & they may bite their tongue or the inside of their mouth during this time. The clonic phase follows & involves the jerking of limbs which eventually slows & stops after a few minutes. As their body relaxes, they may lose control of their bowel or bladder & their consciousness slowly returns. After a seizure a person may feel sleepy, confused, irritable or depressed.
When Anneliese noted the smell of violets during her stay in the hospital, she was likely experiencing an aura that she described as a sweet odor wafting about her like the fragrance of violets. An aura is a warning sign that a seizure is going to happen. When some described that her blue eyes turned black, her pupils would have been dilated.
It was suggested that Anneliese had temporal lobe epilepsy which is a condition that can cause seizures, loss of memory & visual & auditory hallucinations. It can also cause Geschwind syndrome, a characteristic personality syndrome that can cause hyperreligiosity. This can cause an increased tendency to report supernatural or mystical experiences, spiritual delusions as well as religious hallucinations. It can also come out as intense atheistic beliefs. With her continued visits with doctors, Anneliese was taking Zentropil, an anti-seizure medication & her EEG on June 4, 1973 showed normal brain function. Children who have experienced tonic-clonic seizures & have a normal EEG & neurological exam have a 70% chance of being seizure-free without medication.
Anneliese enrolled at the University of Wurzburg in 1973 where she graduated after studying to be a teacher. During her time in college, she hung pictures of saints on her dorm room walls, kept holy water near the door & regularly prayed the rosary.
On September 3, 1973, during her appointment with Dr. Luthy, Anneliese announced that the devil was inside her & the doctor determined that she was no longer capable of making her own decisions. Again, it was believed that she was suffering from not only epilepsy but schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Those close to Anneliese began to notice changes in her behavior & moods. Because of worsening depression she was more withdrawn & lashed out in anger. Her depression was severe enough that she contemplated suicide & later described it as no longer a depression, this is a condition. She felt as if she was being manipulated by something out of her control & indicated that her will was not her own. She described feeling numb, with the inability to love.
She started to distance herself from her close group of friends & began hanging out with more deeply religious students. She believed that the end of the world was coming, something she would warn others of & she felt a connection with the Virgin Mary.
She also developed hallucinations & indicated that started to hear things when she was praying. Throughout the day, she would see what she described as devilish faces & as time went on, she indicated that she was intolerant to Christian symbols & relics which included the crucifix. She heard whispered voices that told her she was damned & would rot in hell when she attempted to pray. She smelled terrible odors that no one else could detect such as fecal matter or a burning stench.
During a visit to San Damiano, a church with a nearby monastery near Assisi, Italy in 1973, Anneliese’s aversion to religious & sacred objects was apparent when she refused to enter the shrine. She indicated that the soil burned like fire & she simply could not stand it. She had to avert her glance from the picture of Christ. She also said that she could no longer look at medals or images of saints.
It was during the summer of 1973 that her family & community began to wonder if Anneliese was suffering from a demonic possession & her parents began to consider treatment outside of medicine. With this, Anneliese started seeing a Roman Catholic priest, Father Ernst Alt who indicated that he could tell the difference between someone who was suffering from a demonic possession or if they were just physically ill.
In December of 1973, the movie, The Exorcist, was released which was based on William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, which is based on a true story of a 14-year-old boy who underwent Catholic exorcisms in Maryland & Missouri in 1949. By the 1960s exorcisms were very rare among Catholics, but the movie, The Exorcist, caused a renewed interest in the practice.
In relation to Anneliese’s treatment, there was discussion about performing an exorcism, however, the local priests denied this suggestion, stating that they would need a bishop’s approval. It was their recommendation to continue to seek medical treatment as they did not believe that she met the standards to be considered possessed.
In the meantime, Anneliese’s delusions were intensifying as she continuously ripped her clothing off, compulsively performed up to 400 squats a day, continued to self-harm, crawled under a table & barked like a dog for two days. She ate spiders & coal, bit the head off of a dead bird & licked up her own urine from the floor. As her condition worsened, she could no longer differentiate between reality & delusion.
Between 1973-1975, Anneliese & her family continued to consult with different priests & she once told Father Alt that she wanted to suffer for other people, but also felt that what she was going through was cruel. She wrote him a letter, I am nothing, everything about me is vanity, what should I do, I have to improve, you pray for me.
When Anneliese’s grandmother died on May 15, 1975, her condition drastically declined. Father Alt sought assistance from a local bishop, Bishop Josef Stangl, who now gave permission for the exorcism, which began in September 1975. This is despite the fact that they were fully aware of her history & diagnosis of epilepsy. Bishop Stangl based his approval on faith, never requesting documentation of Anneliese’s mental health history or a secondary medical opinion from a neurologist or psychiatrist. After Stangl granted a local priest, Father Arnold Renz, permission to perform the exorcism, he insisted that it be carried out in complete secrecy.
Exorcism is a prayer or ritual that is done to remove the influence of a demonic, evil power over a person. It is most commonly associated with Christianity, especially Catholisicm. The first mention of Jesus casting away evil spirits appears in the Gospel of Mark.
After the bishop obtained permission to perform Anneliese’s exorcism according to the 1614 Ritual for Exorcism which is composed of 11 prayers & 17 biblical texts. It is designed to last 20-25 minutes & is then repeated over & over, most sessions lasting anywhere from 2-12 hours. Until January 1999 this was the only officially published text for Latin rite exorcists.
Anneliese underwent her first session on September 24, 1975 & she was subjected to a total of sixty-seven sessions, each lasting up to four hours, over the course of ten months. As the exorcisms began, her parents had full faith in the procedure & stopped consulting doctors despite the fact that her weight & her health continued to rapidly decline. Despite her wasting frame, Anneliese was said to exhibit incredible strength.
During these sessions, Anneliese indicated that she believed that she was possessed by six demons: Lucifer, Cain, Judas Iscariot, Adolf Hitler, Nero & Fleischmann, who was a disgraced priest. The spirits would fight each other for power of the young girl’s body & would communicate from her mouth with a low growl. There are audio recordings of some of her exorcisms that are available online, but are highly haunting & disturbing.
During the exorcisms the voices of the alleged demons would argue with one another with Hitler saying, People are stupid as pigs. They think it’s all over after death. It goes on. Judas accused Hitler of being a big mouth who had no real say in Hell.
Anneliese would speak of dying to atone for the wayward youth of the day & the apostate priests of the modern church. She was so often in a kneeling position in prayer that her knees swelled. To prove her possession, Father Renz reportedly filled five bottles with water, some containing tap water while others contained holy water. It was determined that Anneliese demonstrated a reaction when specifically the holy water was sprinkled on her.
Oftentimes Anneliese was restrained so that the priests could conduct their exorcisms & she slowly stopped eating & drinking, claiming that the demons wouldn’t allow her to eat. She slept only one to two hours a night & while she was awake, she ran through the house in prayer, begging Jesus for mercy.
The final exorcism was held on June 30, 1976 & her last voiced requests were, Please, absolution (meaning forgiveness) & Mama, stay with me. I am afraid. With this last exorcism, they declared that the demons within her had been exorcised. The following day, at about 8 am on July 1, 1976, Anneliese’s mother, Anna Michel, found her daughter deceased at age 23.
When a physician was called to the home to issue a death certificate, they refused on the grounds that it did not appear that Anneliese had died from natural causes. In addition to the contusions on her face, arms & legs, the doctor noted immediately just how emaciated the young girl was. An autopsy determined that Anneliese died from advanced emaciation related to severe dehydration & malnutrition. At the time of her death, she weighed as little as 68-72# (31-33 kg).
Her autopsy also showed fractured teeth, broken knees & pneumonia. The ligaments in her knees were ruptured due to 600 genuflections, the falling to one’s knees in worship, which she performed obsessively during each exorcism session. By her last exorcism, she was far too weak to perform the genuflection on her own so her parents helped carry her through the motions. The skin around her eyes were black & blue. Her temporal lobe showed no anatomical defects, tumors or scarring, however, in about one in four cases of temporal lobe epilepsy, the causes remain unknown. Many factors can cause temporal lobe epilepsy including infections such as encephalitis (inflammation or swelling of the brain), or meningitis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the brain & spinal cord), malformations of the blood vessels in the brain or genetic mutations.
It’s likely that as Anneliese’s mental & physical condition continued to deteriorate, she was no longer taking her medication as prescribed. If this were the case, without the appropriate doses of her anticonvulsant & mood stabilizing medications, it would explain the deterioration in her condition. Because Anneliese was not following-up with her medical team to seek out other treatment options, her medication doses were not adjusted & her symptoms were not monitored.
Throughout the nearly one year of exorcisms, the priests as well as her parents, who presided over Anneliese, failed to recognize the seriousness of her deteriorating condition & failed to intervene. Sadly, Anneliese believed that her suffering was an act of penance & she resigned herself to die. Perhaps they could have reasoned with her & convinced her to seek medical attention, indicating that it was God’s will that she be well. It was their negligence that led to her death which, with proper medical treatment, could have been prevented within one week of her death.
Father Ernst Alt called the district attorney’s office to explain that they had been conducting a series of exorcisms because they fully believed that Anneliese was possessed. He was asked why he hadn’t sought medical treatment & he indicated that he never believed Anneliese to be dangerously ill; he said that had he, he would have immediately called for medical assistance.
Father Alt also specifically said, The exorcism ritual expressly states that the clergymen should not burden themselves with medical matters. When Bishop Stengl was contacted, he indicated that in the nearly ten months that Anneliese had been undergoing exorcisms, he did not have any direct contact with her, so he was fully unaware of her condition & the fact that she was not receiving medical treatment.
To this day, people still discuss & question if Anneliese was really possessed or suffering from a neurological or mental disorder.
The trial began on March 30, 1978 & both of Anneliese’s parents, Josef & Anna, as well as the two priests who conducted the exorcisms, Father Arnold Renz & Father Ernst Alt were charged with negligent homicide & Anneliese’s story became a national sensation in Germany. The prosecutors requested that if found guilty, no one be jailed & that the priests only be fined. They suggested that the parents had suffered enough which is allowed in German penal law.
The prosecution indicated that Anneliese required medical attention that she did not receive. It was clear that the four defendants should have recognized this & instead, continued to follow through with the exorcisms. Doctors testified that the reason for Anneliese’s hallucinations was not a demonic possession & instead, from her epilepsy. Some of the side effects could have been from her mind that resulted from her religious upbringing.
The defense played recordings from Anneliese’s exorcisms, arguing that it was obvious that the young girl was possessed by demons. The priests indicated that it was their attempt to free Anneliese of these demons after four years of medical treatment failed to cure her. The basis for their defense was that the German constitution protected citizens in the unrestricted exercise of their religious beliefs. They argued that they should be immune from punishment since the priests were acting in a sanctioned manner while the parents relied on them in a professional capacity.
In April 1978 all four defendants were convicted & given six month sentences & three years of probation & the church/priests were subject to a small fine. Their jail time was then reduced to three months & finally suspended altogether. Because the four never served any time behind bars, it caused a massive public stir, first for the sanctioned practice of exorcisms by the German Catholic Church & second, because of the light sentences recommended by the prosecution. People believed that the state was taking the side of the Church rather than the psychiatrists.
In 2005 the famous horror movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was released which was loosely based on Anneliese’s story. The movie follows a lawyer who takes on a negligent homicide case involving a priest who allegedly performed a deadly exorcism on a young woman. The film is set in modern day America & focuses on the courtroom drama & debate while flashing back to the events that led to the death of 19-year-old Emily Rose.
After her death, Anneliese was buried next to her sister Martha at the outer edges of the cemetery, an area that is normally reserved for illegitimate children & victims of suicide. On February 25, 1978, nearly two years after her death, the body of Anneliese was exhumed & transferred to a new oak coffin. Anna indicated that at the time of her daughter’s death they had been in a rush to bury her & they wanted her to be placed in a more expensive coffin. Some indicate that this was only a ruse to have her body exhumed & they were instead acting on a message received from a nun who told Anna & Josef that she had a vision that their daughter’s body was still intact. However, when Anneliese’s body was exhumed, official reports state that the body showed significant decomposition.
In 2013, the home where Anneliese lived caught on fire & many locals attributed this to the exorcism despite the fact that authorities determined it a case of arson.
The number of U.S. Catholic priests trained as exorcists have exponentially grown. In 2005, there were only about 12 Catholic priests in the U.S. & as of 2022, there are about 150 who are trained to handle four types of demonic activity: Demonic possession (a demon using someone’s body as their own), infestation (the presence of evil in a location such as a haunted house or an object such as a voodoo doll), vexation (physical attacks on a person’s body such as cuts, bite marks or bruises) & obsession (the attack on someone’s mind).
Anneliese’s story has been a source of controversy between the medical & spiritual communities. Because religion was the center of Anneliese’s life, paired with mental illness, Satan & demons could very well have been tangible figures in her life. Few members of the church have a sufficient understanding of psychiatric conditions which can mimic symptoms of demonic possession. Anneliese died a slow, painful death & sadly, had she received medical attention, she would have survived.
References:
- Wikipedia: Hyperreligiosity
- History: Exorcisms: The centuries-long history of expelling evil
- Mayo Clinic: Seizures
- Mayo Clinic: Tuberculosis
- Mirror: Horrifying photos show tragic woman who died after 67 exorcisms because parents thought she was ‘possessed by devil’
- Skeptical Inquirer: Seized by the spirit: Temporal lobe epilepsy & the exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- Medium: Mental illness or demonic possession: Anneliese Michel
- Ati: Anneliese Michel & the shocking images from the exorcism of the real Emily Rose
- The New York Times: 2 priests charged in exorcism death of German woman
- Chasing the Frog: The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
- CVLT Nation: The horrific case of Anneliese Michel’s possession & exorcism
- Medium: The exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- The Columbus Dispatch: The Catholic church still practices exorcism. 7 things to know about the ancient practice
- Medium: The criminal exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- Johns Hopkins Medicine: Diagnosing seizures & epilepsy
- Epilepsy society: Epilepsy facts & myths
- Medium: True exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- Fish Eaters: Father X on the New Rite of Exorcism vs. the Old
- Last Gasps Paranormal: The exorcism of Anneliese Michel
- Epilepsy Foundation: Tonic-Clonic Seizures
