The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren (31 page)

The charges were just a bit simplistic, though, because it made it seem as if the Jesuit exorcists were responsible for the girl’s death, which was hardly the case. Ms. Michel died not because exorcism had been attempted on her, but because she could no longer withstand the ordeal of possession. Furthermore, contrary to the legal charges, the exorcists did not deny the girl sustenance; there would have been no point in that. A medical doctor attended the girl throughout the whole ordeal. According to Ed, “The fact was that for six months, during the entire process of exorcism, Anneliese Michel existed entirely
without
food or water.”

Moreover, Ms. Michel had been under varying degrees of possession for three years before exorcism was attempted; during that time, medical doctors and psychiatrists had every opportunity to cure her of any mental or physical malady. But despite the medical profession’s best efforts, the girl’s health degenerated significantly between 197 3 (when the possession began) and 1976. Anneliese Michel was involved in a supernatural battle that concerned not her body, but her soul; exorcism was performed only as a last resort in an effort to
prevent
her death.

Still, the question that persists is not legal, but religious: why did Anneliese die?

“People have asked me this question many times,” Ed replies, “but they usually aren’t prepared for the real answer. I end up sidestepping the issue by explaining that not all exorcisms have a happy ending. But the reason this German girl died is because she had to. The case is complicated but it amounts to murder on the part of the demonic.

“The girl was a ‘soul victim,’ as the Church calls it. She came under possession not because she had done anything wrong—but because she was so good. This happens about once every ten years: the religious term for it is ‘iniquity’—meaning gross moral crime. The demonic seized on this girl
because
she was a devout, kindly human being. It possessed her body in a deliberate effort to impurify her
and
to provoke a confrontation with the Almighty. So the act of possession had both physical and metaphysical significances. Demonic spirits first entered the girl's body in 1973. Then, as I understand it, devils joined the possession in 1975. Their presence in this realm is rare, as I've said, except in significant cases of possession.

“These devils called themselves ‘Hitler’ and ‘Nero,’ by the way, but the names were only symbolic to keep them from being identified. Yet reviewing the data I have on that exorcism, it is recorded that the high devil Beelzebub
was
present in the possessed, and responsible for the seizure.

“Now, desperate to help their daughter, the girl's parents—being practicing Roman Catholics—sought the help of the Jesuit clergy. During the early period of possession, the girl had lucid moments and gave instructions to the Jesuits not to compromise with the entities that had taken her over. In turn, these priests did everything that could possibly have been done for the girl, short of exorcism. They prayed for her continuously. They put themselves in physical and psychological danger by confronting the entities and trying to talk them out of the possession. But exorcism was purposely held off as the last resort. Exorcism was not considered, you see, because all those involved were working under an impossible proposition put out by the possessing entities—the classic one in cases of this sort:
Believe in me, and the girl will live; believe in God, and the girl will die!

“For the family and the exorcists, the whole idea was completely unthinkable: they would not trade her body for her soul! Consequently, the situation evolved into a matter of faith. The issue was not food and water: like Teresa Neumann, a twentieth-century stigmatic, this girl lived with no food or water at all. Instead, the issue was whether the devil was going to be permitted to take on incarnate form in the year 1975, anno Domini. And the reply from these people was
No!
Though the girl's family lived in anguish every minute of every day for the three years she was possessed, they understood what was happening, and their faith never faltered.

“Eventually, because of this unflinching resistance, the diabolical entities subjected the girl to terrible mental and physical torment, such that the only remaining alternative was to resort to exorcism before these things destroyed her completely. As a result, early in 1976, the Jesuit exorcists began reading the Roman Ritual of exorcism over the girl. After six arduous months, the exorcists had read the ritual a total of sixty-six times—notice the number—at which point she succumbed to death. Death was a release for the girl: like a martyr, it was her only access to freedom.”

Why didn’t the entities obey the commands of the exorcist, as they’re supposed to do?

“The demonic entities
did
leave. The devils, on the other hand, defied not only the exorcist’s commands but the laws of God, for which they will experience rebuke beyond all our reasoning. Rather than give up the possession, these diabolical entities used it instead to
affirm
their hate for God. Like Christ, the girl’s life was unfairly taken away from her by others. And though she died in a physical sense, she survived with her soul intact and her spirit unblemished. It wasn’t the priests who killed her. Nor did the ritual of exorcism have anything remotely to do with it. The girl was killed by the devil, and that’s a fact documented on tape.”

Some cling to the belief that diabolical possession is a purely psychological event—that there’s no such thing as “external entities,” and talk of spirits is hogwash. Considering that so much of the activity of the demonic does have a psychological interlink, it is only fair to ask where pyschology stands on the subject of demoniacal oppression and possession.

Until roughly a century ago,
all
mental illness was treated as a sign of possession. Today, all oppression and possession is treated as a sign of mental illness. This drastic change from one absolute interpretation to another has done nothing to solve the ongoing problem of demoniacal influence: it has only resulted in a change of labels. Thus, in the past, an individual who displayed unseemly behavior was branded as “possessed” and locked away in an institution. Today, the oppressed or possessed individual (who also displays unseemly behavior) is diagnosed as being “mentally ill” and once again locked away in an institution.

“The majority of people who complain about being oppressed or possessed by spirits
are
mentally ill,” Ed notes, “but this isn't always the case, as I’ve learned by experience.

“Back in 1971, I was approached by a family who calmly and reasonably told me they believed their son was under possession by a demonic spirit. I let them talk, then said, ‘Okay, where’s your son so I can take a look at him?’ They told me he was in a New York state mental hospital, where he’d been committed eight years before as a schizophrenic.

“As a patient, the young man complained about something else
in
him, while making occasional murmurings about the devil. No one took him seriously except his parents, who read about the subject of possession and found enough data to convince themselves that their son just might be possessed.

“A few weeks later, I accompanied the family to the hospital to see the son. Well, he was a dribbling, mental wreck; he hardly moved, and recognized no one. I’d brought a cross with me at the time and started to walk up behind him. I was about to put it behind the boy’s head when he suddenly swung around, his eyes wide open like saucers, and stared at me with that look of furious hate so characteristic in the possessed. What we all saw was not the boy who had been brought into the room in a wheelchair. We saw another being emerge: this one alert and vicious, which had been provoked by a religious object that the boy never saw.

“The son’s previously healthy background, coupled with his reaction to the cross, gave me reason to believe that he just might be possessed. To make a long story short, I went ahead and assembled all the facts available on the case, which kept tilting toward the possibility of possession. I then went through a lot of effort, even putting my reputation on the line, to get an exorcist assigned to the case. Well, I succeeded, and a few months later the Catholic Church assigned an exorcist to conduct the ritual.

“When the priest flew into New York from abroad, I had everything arranged. With the permission of the hospital authorities, the parents picked up the boy and brought him home. He was limp and lifeless and had to be helped around like a child. The boy was laid down on a bed. The exorcist then read the ritual of exorcism over him. During the reading, nothing unusual happened. The boy just lay there, inert and barely conscious. There was absolutely no indication of possession until the very, very end, when the exorcist commanded the spirits to vacate the boy’s body. Suddenly he convulsed and thrashed around and moaned and panted and sweated and hollered and yelled.

“A minute later, he collapsed back into bed. A look of serenity and peace swept over his face. The boy opened his eyes, now clear and devoid of any negative influence, and articulately said, ‘It’s over: the spirit is gone.’ Well! Twenty minutes later, that young man stood up and was just as sane and well-spoken as anyone in the room. A few days later, he was discharged from the hospital, and he’s never had a problem since. Whether that boy’s condition was mental illness—or possession, as I contend—the fact remains that exorcism cured his problem.”

Psychology tends to see all cases of oppression and possession as being the manifestation of one or another type of mental disorder. The prevailing tendency is to diagnose such cases as paranoia, hysteria, or schizophrenia because the outward symptoms of spirit oppression or possession (stress, anxiety, disorientation, fantasy images)
are
similar to textbook symptoms of neurosis and psychosis. Yet no matter how similar the overt symptoms, the etiology or cause of the problem is not the same. Rather, closer scrutiny of the oppressed or possessed individual’s complaints should reveal that, although his behavior may
appear
abnormal, he is functionally sane. All he’s really doing is reporting exactly what’s happening to him—namely, that he is being harassed by external forces. However, because these “external forces” have long ago been exorcised from scientific literature, closer scrutiny is rare. And so the spiritually-afflicted individual gets put away in an institution instead.

Dr. Jean Lhermitte is a French neurologist and medical examiner for the Catholic Church to whom many potentially possessed individuals have been referred for diagnosis. In
True and False Possession,
*
Dr. Lhermitte notes:

Whatever sceptics, unbelievers and the ill-informed may think, demonopathic manifestations are not extinct; we still observe the phenomena which startled and alarmed our forefathers, but with a critical sense and knowledge they did not possess. But I must make clear that while the neurologist and the psychiatrist are qualified to discern and define an abnormal structure of the mind or some bodily disorder, they should remain physicians and not exceed their powers, so that in cases where mental illness is not clearly present, the neuro-psychiatrist ought to call in the help and cooperation of the theologian.

Given such concepts, it is no wonder priests and psychologists have been called “half brothers” in the study of man. But how can true cases of diabolical possession be differentiated from mental illness?

The first, and probably most significant distinction would be
loss of self.
Nowhere in psychology is loss of self considered to be a real factor in mental illness. Indeed, Freud notes in his
Outline of Psychoanalysis
that loss of self
is not a
medical condition, no matter how complete the degeneration of mind might appear to be.

Even in a state so far removed from the reality of the external world as one of hallucinatory confusion, one learns from patients after their recovery that at the time in some corner of their mind (as they put it) there was a normal person hidden who, like a detached spectator, watched the hubbub of illness go past him.

Yet, in true cases of possession the individual
does
experience the phenomenon of loss of self. What replaces the self, or spirit, of the human being is an entity totally independent of the person. As Ed explains: “The demonic spirit may either dislodge the human spirit
or
cohabit the body with the human spirit. When this happens, both the possessing entity and the person may speak from the body
at the very same time.
In cases where more than one entity is possessing a human body, as often occurs, the problem is determining
how many
possessing entities are in the group. In those rare cases where more than one person in the family is under possession, the possessing entities tend to reveal their identity inadvertently by speaking from
either
of the two bodies.

“As for distinguishing characteristics, possessing entities usually talk in the gruff, manlike voice I mentioned earlier, even when speaking out of the body of a woman or young child. When speaking through a woman, though, the demonic will occasionally use a high-pitched falsetto. Utterances may emanate from the voice box—-although the possessed individual may be inert and unconscious at the time—or else simply resonate from somewhere out of the body. If it so desires, the demonic
may
identify itself by name: It will tend to say, for instance, ‘I am Hate; I am Sloth; I am Lust’; or else go further and give its demonic name, usually one of ancient origin that is already on the books. The possessing entity or entities may use familiar language, but it isn’t uncommon for them to lapse off into foreign or dead languages of which the possessed individual has no knowledge whatsoever.”

Not only does the truly possessed individual experience a loss or displacement of self; there are additional symptoms that bear no relation whatever to classic psychological disorders. One factor is “metamorphosis,” for want of a better term. In other words, physical transformation of the face and body may occur. Again, this phenomenon
is not a medical condition.
People cannot and do not grossly transform from one appearance to another—unless possession is a factor. Yet, as Ed states, “I, along with other witnesses, have seen the appearance of the possessed change into that of a wolf, a pig, and most often, a gorilla. I have seen the possessed take on the features of the dead, as well as transform into things that could only be described as macabre grotesqueries. And all these changes are
physical.
The skin and bones actually change their form, then recede back to normal once possession has passed.”