The Young Witch Spooks Close to Home

Since it is the weekend of my mother's birth, I made the executive decision (since I live alone with a cat and can actually drive to see my parents) that it was time for a visit home.

Ah, home. How I miss it...

Well, I miss the weirdos who invaded my apartment a few weeks ago...and the puppies...and Howl...and my family...I suppose.

But most of all, I miss the spooky season out there. Yes, it's June. Yes, it's no where near Halloween. Yes, I have absolutely no reason to be in a spooky mood (except for ya know...everything about me), but really all I want to do is watch scary movies and freak myself out in panic because GHOSTS. Sadly, my new bedtime is 2 p.m. in the afternoon, so it's a little hard to freak myself out with horror movies when you have beautiful sunlight streaming through the windows...and my supposed black out curtains. So....

CONGRATULATIONS!!! I'M GOING TO TELL YOU A HORROR STORY INSTEAD!!!

And it's close to home...the last place I could normally watch a horror movie...because I wasn't forced to an early afternoon bedtime. Sigh.

Anyway...

I'm sure we've all heard about the movie "The Exorcist" at some point. It's kind of impossible for anyone not to know the classic movie, especially with it's lovely creepy soundtrack (which I incidentally used for one of my exes because he was that bad). But did you know it was in fact, based on something that happened in real life.

Also probably at least a bit, if you like ghosts, watch too much "Ghost Adventures" or decide to do a review of your ghost tour your senior year of high school for the paper(too specific?).

But you probably don't know all the details. Even after researching, I'm not even I do, but it's still an interesting story to hear and tell, but to be honest, it didn't really start in St. Louis.

It all started in Maryland in 1949, where a young boy was dealing with the loss of his aunt. In my research, I found a lot of the names were changed to preserve some sort of privacy for the family, so all the papers and sources called him Roland, but did say he about 14 at the time.

Roland and his aunt were very close. While she was alive, she practiced spiritualism and in fact introduced Roland to Ouija boards.

Well....if you're my parents, you would scream and that's where you went wrong (.....I still want one).

After his aunt passed, that supposedly when some crazy things started happening. The usual crazy ghost stuff. Strange noises, furniture moving around, scratching. All of this specifically around Roland.

Now, of course his parents are extremely concerned because what in the actual hell is going on? So they start seeking out the help of everyone, including their Lutheran Pastor. According to All That's Interesting, their, and again I repeat, LUTHERAN PASTOR tells them to go to a Jesuit. I don't know if you know this, but the fact that a Lutheran is telling more Lutherans to go to CATHOLICS should maybe tell you how freaky the situation was (if you not a nerd/religious/know too much about religion like me, world history tells us those two groups don't particularly like each other...of course this is the 50s and not the 1500s...nope, they still hate each other.)

So they go to a priest, who performs the first of what turned into many, many exorcisms. But after this first one, something strange happened. Scratched on to Roland's chest was the word "Louis." Mom thought, at least according to my sources, this meant the family had to head to St. Louis. And luckily they had family there, so...sleepover?

So off they headed! And they found some more priests. And those priests saw the crazy things happening. And some scary demon stuff occurs. And of course, they were concerned. So, a few weeks of more exorcisms, Roland was taken to Alexian Brothers Hospital.

Interestingly enough, it's closed. But has also been sold...multiple times in the last decade. Thanks Post Dispatch for that little factoid. Also, Mom...if it ever actually reopens...never take me here please?

Anyway, back to the story.

So, it's now April. Roland and his family have been dealing with his little demon possession problem for a few month now. But the Monday after Easter, a miracle apparently occurred. Roland awoke with seizures and saying, according to my new friend All that's Interesting, "Satan would always be with him."

Oh, dear.

Well, the priests, being ya know, priests, immediately started to perform yet another exorcism. The article continues that after seven minutes, Roland said "He's gone." He also had a vision of St. Michael, who the priests had been calling for, defeating Satan on a battlefield.

And after that, things seemed to get better. No more creepy stuff happened. No more strange noises, no more furniture moving, no more scratches. Roland apparently went on to live a normal life, if one can achieve normalcy and if my sources are correct. I'm not above Wikipedia. Of course, eventually, some books were written about the case and we all know the movie.

Speaking of Wikipedia, as I was researching, I did see there are those who believe Roland was no actually possessed. That shouldn't be surprising. There a lot of people who don't believe in the supernatural (that's cool, just don't make fun of me for doing so. You got your thing, I got mine.) Those that don't of course don't have their own theories for what Roland went through.

Some think he was just a mentally ill kid. I can understand that. Others think he was just really good at tricks and pranks. That's fair. Others think he was just spoiled teenage brat. Possible.

But I'll leave the sticks where they fall.

I'd be a little remiss though if I left you without telling you my dad's favorite joke we heard about the case while on that ghost tour of St. Louis in High School.

Again, this is a JOKE. Did not really happen.

So, after the boy was released from the hospital, the Catholic Church sent the family a bill for the exorcism services. The family was having trouble paying the bill. After a while, they couldn't pay the bill at all. So you know what happened?

The boy got repossessed.