Truth and Consequences
After talking with so many people who had personally known Rob Doe it was disheartening to review the published material on the case from a new perspective and observe the various discrepancies between what has been written by others and what was told to me by individuals close to the family in question.
In Possessed Thomas Allen bases much of his investigation on a series of alleged events culled from the mysterious diary kept by Father Bishop during the St. Louis exorcism.
This diary, which also inspired William Peter Blatty’s novel and movie, began chronicling events on January 15, 1949 and ended on April 19, 1949, and was designed to act as a guide for future exorcisms. As a surviving case artifact it is shrouded in mystery. No one really knows for sure how many copies are circulating or even its actual page count (as previously mentioned, Steve Erdmann says 16 pages, Thomas Allen puts the number at 26). Passages from this case study have been published by both of the aforementioned writers and from their examples one discovers: the keeper of the diary, Father Bishop, did not arrive on the scene or meet any family members until Wednesday, March 9, 1949—almost two months after the initial symptoms occurred—rendering much of his reported background information as hearsay; Bishop does not always make it clear who actually witnessed the events being described—he often fails to mention when the priests are in the room, when they are absent, and when the information comes secondhand from the boy’s mother; the possibility of fraudulent activity is neither considered nor investigated (for example, no control experiment was set up where an individual could observe the boy’s actions when no one else was in the room); no mention is made whatsoever of the alleged first exorcism attempt by Father Hughes at Georgetown University Hospital; nothing is written of the boy’s father’s feelings or level of involvement (sources close to the family told me he did not believe the boy was possessed); and the possible presence of psychosomatic illness within the boy is never discussed.
In addition to the diary, an array of places and persons play critical roles in his story told by author Thomas Allen: the family’s alleged Mount Rainier homesite; the plight of the first exorcist, Father Hughes; information supplied by local expert Father Bober; and interviews with eyewitness Father Halloran. With so much questionable material being culled from the diary, I felt it was imperative to study these miscellaneous factors and sources with a critical eye.
I called Thomas Allen. After identifying myself and explaining what I was doing, he declined to comment for this article. I had planned to offer help in correcting the errors in Possessed (free of charge) for any revised edition he might be planning. I also planned to ask him a number of questions. Why, for example, does he have a mindset about the boy having lived in Mount Rainier? Did he ever consider the possibility that the priests involved in the case could have used Mount Rainier as a front to discourage the discovery of the boy’s true identity? How come he never checked the Cottage City address that Father Bishop’s diary listed with phone directory listings for the family in question from 1939 to 1958? Why had he never looked for former friends of Rob Doe in Cottage City (or talked with long-standing community members like the town chairman, fire chief, or residents of 40th Avenue—all of whom could have provided him with valuable facts)? Why did he never verify any of the information he wrote regarding Father Hughes’s involvement with the family and post-exorcism-attempt activities? And, finally, if he was really so concerned about keeping Rob Doe’s identity a secret, then why was he a writer of the video production In The Grip Of Evil in which the boy’s home at 3807 40th Avenue in Cottage City was shown, knowing full well that it would then be possible for anybody to locate the house and identify its occupants in local city directories from that period? Only Thomas Allen knows the answers.
Possessed is based on the widespread misconception that the family had resided in Mount Rainier. The book’s first four chapters are filled with references to this erroneous location: Allen claims neighbors knew something odd was happening at 3210 Bunker Hill Road; he claims neighbors heard maniacal cries and saw lights radiating around the house; and he claims the family moved to a similar house about a half-mile away. In reality, none of these things happened, as I have demonstrated. In fact, sources close to this case have verified that the diary kept by Father Bishop never once mentions 3210 Bunker Hill Road, Mount Rainier as the family’s home—but it does identify the site as 3807 40th Avenue. Allen does not mention this in Possessed.
Regarding the first exorcism attempt at Georgetown University Hospital by Father Hughes, Allen makes several bold presumptions: Hughes “apparently” visited the boy at his house, further claiming that there is some question about this action stemming from the priest’s own “confusion”; Hughes decided the boy belonged in a hospital, under restraints, and that “on Hughes’s orders” the boy was strapped down; when Hughes’s arm was allegedly slashed by the boy, the priest “screamed” and struggled to his feet while his arm hung limp; Hughes subsequently “disappeared” from St. James, suffered a nervous breakdown, and during later masses could only hold the consecrated host aloft with one hand.
The suppositions regarding Father Hughes seemed so absurd I decided to do some in-depth research into the actions of this mysterious priest from St. James Church in Mount Rainier, Maryland. Born Edward Albert Hughes on August 28, 1918, he was assigned as assistant pastor of St. James (the pastor at the time was Rev. William M. Canning) on Wednesday, June 16, 1948 and served without a break until Saturday, June 18, 1960. Despite what is written in Possessed, there is absolutely no written record of the alleged exorcism attempt by Father Hughes at Georgetown University Hospital. A source close to the case verified for me that Rob Doe was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital under his real name on the morning of Monday, February 28, 1949 and released at 12 noon on Thursday, March 3, 1949. The facts surrounding this Georgetown stay are: Father Hughes never initially visited the boy at his Cottage City home (Mrs. Doe took her son to the St. James parish for their one and only consultation); there is no evidence that Father Hughes was ever confused at all about this entire situation; there is no evidence whatsoever that Father Hughes had the boy admitted to Georgetown University Hospital or held under restraints—Thomas Allen himself gives no reference in Possessed regarding these alleged actions; there is no evidence that while hospitalized Rob Doe ever slashed Father Hughes’s arm or what the priest’s reaction to the attack may have been—Allen even mentions that while Father Hughes mentioned this exorcism attempt during a lecture at Georgetown University, he made no reference to the alleged attack at all. Of further significance is that the St. Louis contingency, Father Bowdern and Father Bishop, were never informed of the alleged first exorcism attempt and their diary makes no mention of the event.
Even if Rob Doe had slashed the arm of Father Hughes, would it really cause the priest to have a breakdown and disappear from St. James Parish? I easily located several individuals who were in daily contact with Father Hughes throughout the spring of 1949, the time period that immediately followed his alleged exorcism attempt on Rob Doe. I wondered if the priest showed any signs of injury, any change in behavior, or if any evidence existed of a breakdown or personal hiatus from his busy job. I found just the opposite.
Thomas Kearney, an eighth-grader at St. James during the 1948-49 school year revealed that Father Hughes was the parish’s CYO junior boys baseball coach that spring: “I saw Father Hughes every day at St. James that school year and I don’t remember him being missed and I don’t remember him being beat up or hurt or anything like that. He coached baseball that spring and would pitch us the ball and there was nothing wrong with him.”
Another eighth-grade classmate that year was Joan Flanagan, who recalled: “The recent story going around now was that Father Hughes’s arm was slashed back then. I never heard that at the time. I never noticed a slash or an injury and he was the P. E. teacher for our class. He never missed a class and I remember him pitching us softballs in the spring. Something like that would have been a big story at the time. I just don’t believe it happened.”
The prefect for the Ladies Sodality of St. James for all of 1949 and 1950 was Gloria Nowak, who today is 74 years old and is still a Mount Rainier resident. She told me, “I knew Father Hughes very well because he was director of the Sodality and would come to each meeting and start it off with a prayer. I never knew that he had any kind of arm wound. I had heard about the possessed boy but it was something we didn’t ask about. Father Hughes was a very nice person, very outgoing and friendly and a very holy priest. I never noticed any change in behavior or any absence while I was prefect. He was always there and always in a good mood.”
Furthermore, the neighborhood columns for Brentwood and Mount Rainier in The Prince George’s Post throughout the spring of 1949 seemed to go out of their way to document the activities of the very popular young priest. In their pages they document that Father Hughes, among other activities: attended a dinner given for Father William E. Kelly of St. Martin’s Church on Sunday, February 27, 1949; missed a social given by the Mother’s Club of St. James on Tuesday, March 1, 1949 (possibly the night he was visiting Rob Doe at Georgetown University Hospital); spoke at the “Communism in Religion” seminar sponsored by the Washington General Assembly Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus held at the Hyattsville Town Hall on Monday, March 7, 1949; said mass at the “KCs To Inaugurate Day Of Recollection,” an annual Day of Recollection inaugurated by the Prince George’s Council of the Knights of Columbus on Sunday, March 20, 1949 at St. John de Matha Monastery in Hyattsville; presided over a wedding between Mildred O’Dea and Edward A. Williams on Saturday, April 30, 1949 at St. Jerome’s Church; performed a wedding on Saturday, June 4, 1949 for Francis Wersick and Sam Morina at St. James Church; addressed Commencement Exercises for St. Jerome’s first graduating class on Sunday, June 12, 1949; and according to the June 16, 1949 Brentwood column, hosted an outing and picnic for the St. James graduating class at Chapel Point. Coverage of the dynamic Father Hughes in the pages of The Prince George’s Post continued throughout 1949, all the way up to his departure in 1960 without any noticeable break in the action. In the June 16, 1960 edition of The Prince George’s Post, Joseph Bianchini writes in the Mount Rainier column that Father Hughes had performed 2,712 baptisms, 486 marriages, 251 baptisms of converts, and 247 burial masses during his assignment. Not bad for a priest who “disappeared.” (Hughes was later reassigned to St. James in 1973 and remained there until his death in October 1980.)
The one local clergyman that Father Hughes confided in before his death was his assistant pastor Frank Bober, who has since figured prominently in this scenario, mainly because of his accessibility to journalists and general congeniality. Bober has appeared in literally dozens of television specials, news broadcasts, and printed articles on the subject. In Possessed Allen cites him as one of his “extremely reliable” sources for the first exorcism attempt that Hughes was involved in. However, despite the accolades, it was my opinion that over time the comments that these journalists attributed to Bober began to take on a more dramatic tone with each retelling.
At this point in my investigation I felt that it was Bober who had been responsible during the early ’80s for the implication that 3210 Bunker Hill Road had been the actual home of the possessed boy. I harbored these feelings despite the fact that he told The Washington Post of May 6, 1985 that “Father Hughes never told me the exact spot (of the residence).” In the same article he later told the reporter, “I think it was common knowledge in Mount Rainier.” At first Father Bober claims Father Hughes did not reveal where the boy lived, but in later interviews he maintains that Father Hughes told him the boy was from Mount Rainier. This conflict over something as simple as where the boy resided calls into question everything that Father Bober alleges was told to him by Father Hughes.
Hoping Father Bober would straighten his stories out, I located him in Washington, D.C., where he was enjoying an extended sabbatical. He was extremely friendly and cooperative and told of what Father Hughes reportedly experienced during his time with the boy: coldness in the room, the movement of a phone, the speaking of archaic languages and of course the slashing of his arm by the possessed boy during the aborted exorcism attempt. He claimed that he thought Father Hughes told him the boy had lived in Mount Rainier on Bunker Hill Road. All of this was interesting, but when I presented to him my evidence that the boy never lived in Mount Rainier and attempted to clarify Bober’s original statements to the newspapers he became a bit defensive. “I never did any in-depth investigating, I just accepted his word and that’s what he said,” Bober insisted. “All I know is Father Hughes gave me certain information which I communicated to the press and the Archdiocese and so on and that was his information. You know I was not around in 1949. I was ordained much later in 1969 and was at St. James from 1980 to 1985. When people interview me I just tell what I know and that’s all I can do.”
We discussed certain aspects of the case which curiously had never been printed in any previously published accounts. My investigation led me to conclude that the mother initiated contact with the church and that Father Hughes never actually visited the family. Bober confirmed this. “Father Hughes never went to the boy’s home,” he said. “Basically it was the mother that brought the kid to the rectory and the thing is she’s the one who gave Father Hughes all the information. Everything that I know of that he shared with me took place in the rectory, not at the house.”
Bober continued, “I cannot affirm where the family lived because I was not there at that point in time. Maybe the guy did live in Cottage City, I don’t know. If the mother wanted to shield the identity she might have said it was Mount Rainier, I don’t know. It could be the church’s approach. The church likes to keep it all secret. They might suggest this is where it is to keep the person’s identity secret and leave it at that. I just don’t know.”
While Father Bober became entangled in the Exorcist saga by simply lending an ear to his weary pastor, Father Walter Halloran emerged as a central figure for his role in the actual St. Louis exorcism conducted by Father Bowdern. In 1949 Halloran was a 26-year-old scholar at St. Louis University studying for a master’s degree and preparing for priesthood. He was called upon by Bowdern to assist the priests in different aspects of the exorcism and today is the one living eyewitness to those events who is still willing to discuss his experiences. In August 1997 Halloran was reassigned from San Rafael Church in San Diego, California to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where today he works as the hospital chaplain.
When I contacted Halloran by phone, he sounded tired and clearly was not interested in discussing the incident with me. Still, to his credit, he thoughtfully answered every one of my questions. I first asked Halloran if he would go on record as saying whether he thought the boy was possessed or not. “No, I can’t go on record,” he told me. “I never made an absolute statement about the things because I didn’t feel I was qualified. I hadn’t studied the phenomena and that sort of thing. All I did was report the things that I saw and whether I would make a statement one way or another wouldn’t make any difference because I just don’t think I was qualified to do so.”My questions to Halloran a were met with brief, direct responses.
“Did the boy speak in any languages other than English?”
“Just Latin.”“Did it appear he understood the Latin he was speaking?”
“I think he mimicked us.”“Was there any change in the boy’s voice?”
“Not really.”“When the boy struck you in the nose, did he exhibit extraordinary strength?”
“I don’t know, I never even thought very much about it. It certainly wasn’t [former world boxing champion Mike] Tyson hitting me in the nose or something like that (laughs).”
I asked Halloran to elaborate and describe to me some of the things he witnessed that he could not explain. He paused and slowly said, “I saw a bottle slide from a dresser across the room—there was no one near it. The bed moving....” I interrupted and asked if the bed was stationary or on rollers. He said, “It was on rollers like any bed, but I was leaning on it when it moved one time.”
I inquired about the boy’s spitting, urinating and vomiting, all activities that he was said to have indulged in with great vigor during various points of the exorcism. Halloran responded, “Well, spitting was frequent...it wasn’t significant...there wasn’t any vomiting or urinating that I recall.”
I wanted to know about the boy’s father’s level of involvement. Had Halloran even met the father? Had the father been present during all of this? “I met him once, I think. I think that he was back home in Maryland working most of the time. He wasn’t really a part of this.”
I asked about the markings or brandings that were said to have appeared on the boy’s body out of nowhere. Did Halloran actually see them materialize on his skin? Did he feel the boy or someone else was responsible? “I saw them...well, right on the skin...yeah, I did. It wasn’t the boy doing it himself, you know, as far as I could see.” I wanted to know if the markings ever formed numbers or letters or words, as other writers had reported. “It was kind of hard to really tell.” Was there blood dripping from the marks? “It looked more like lipstick. There were just some very clear marks like that.” Continuing on this subject I asked if the priests had ever bothered to check the boy’s fingernails for flesh or blood deposits. Halloran was taken aback. After a long pause he said, “When I was there his hands were nowhere near the markings. No, we didn’t check.”
And of course, I inquired about the famous diary of Father Bishop. “I don’t have it any more,” Father Halloran reported. “I burned it.”
Problem Child
It is a fact that no journalist has ever identified and spoken with the subject of this alleged exorcism, Rob Doe. While I felt it was imperative that I establish some type of contact with him, I realized that in all likelihood an interview with him would prove anticlimactic. If Rob Doe had actually been the victim of demonic possession, he very well may not have any memory of the events. If his behavior had been staged and there had never been a possession, he would probably not admit to the sham. With that in mind I waited until my investigation drew to a close to contact him. I believe that the strength of this investigation lies within the factual framework that has been constructed. Several key issues have been defined and verified—where the boy actually lived, where he went to school, what his friends had to say, and what he was like prior to the questionable events that engulfed his family in the winter and spring of 1949. I wondered if Rob Doe would have anything significant to say even if he was willing to discuss his life experiences.
From a Cottage City source I obtained an East Coast address where the Haunted Boy now resides and his current phone number. I called and Rob Doe himself answered. Our conversation was brief and direct and he gruffly spoke to me in a very deep, gravelly voice. He admitted to me that he had grown up in Cottage City and had never lived in Mount Rainier. He stated that he had seen the movie The Exorcist but did not offer his take on the film. He seemed very alarmed that I had contacted him and told me there would be no cooperation on his part whatsoever. He would not confirm that he was the subject of this investigation and firmly stated he did not want me to ever call him back again. His response was typical of someone who did not want to be reminded of some distant embarrassing event from his past.
While Rob Doe was unaware of it at the time, the events that centered around the troublesome teenage boy from Cottage City between January and April 1949 would later have a profound effect on people all over the globe. As the inspiration for The Exorcist, this case emerged as one of the most significant examples of paranormal phenomena in history. It spawned movies, books, and videos, and influenced hundreds of “copycat” cases around the world that led to exorcism-styled assaults, mutilations, and even deaths.
Despite the widespread popularity of this story in the aftermath of William Peter Blatty’s novel and movie, no one had ever actually investigated this case prior to my involvement. Rob Doe had never been interviewed, nor identified. No investigator had ever talked with his childhood friends or people from the neighborhood in which he grew up. In fact, no journalist ever got the location right in the first place. All previous accounts had placed the boy at 3210 Bunker Hill Road in Mount Rainier, an inexcusable error.
With the completion of this adventure we now know who the boy was, where he really lived, where he attended school, who his friends were, what his family life was like, and what behavior and personality traits he exhibited before his alleged “possession.” The credibility of the mysterious diary has now been called into question. I have shown that Father Walter Halloran—the one living, talking eyewitness to the St. Louis exorcism attempts, maintains that he did not witness any supernatural behavior by Rob Doe—no strange foreign languages (other than mimicked Latin), no changes in tone of voice, no prodigious strength, no excessive vomiting or urinating, and—to top it off—he is uncertain about the nature of the markings or skin brandings on the boy’s body. Perhaps most important of all, this case illustrates the need in paranormal investigation for close scrutiny of both initial newspaper accounts and highly touted individuals as providers of information. In this instance, both sources muddled the picture by embellishing the story when facts were uncertain.
Personally, I do not believe Rob Doe was possessed. There is simply too much evidence that indicates that as a boy he had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life. There is not one shred of hard evidence to support the notion of demonic possession. The facts show that he was a spoiled and disturbed only child with a very overprotective mother and a non-responsive father. To me his behavior was indicative of an outcast youth who desperately wanted out of Bladensburg Junior High School at any cost. He wanted attention and he wanted to leave the area and go to St. Louis. Throwing tantrums was the answer. He began to play his concocted game. For his efforts he got a collection of priests (who had no previous exorcism experience) who doted over him as he lay strapped to a bed. His response was that of any normal child—he reacted with rage, he wanted out. Without delving into the dynamics of psychosomatic illness, there is no question there was something wrong with Rob Doe prior to January 1949, something that modern-era psychiatry might have best addressed. Rob Doe was not just another normal teenage boy.
Each of the parties involved in this case approached it from its own frame of reference. To psychiatrists, Rob Doe suffered from mental illness. To priests this was a case of demonic possession. To writers and film/video producers this was a great story to exploit for profit. Those involved saw what they were trained to see. Each purported to look at the facts but just the opposite was true—in actuality they manipulated the facts and emphasized information that fit their own agendas.
While my efforts in this investigation were not meant to be all-inclusive, we now have a wealth of previously uncovered information about the alleged possession of Rob Doe. Future investigative work into this case will hopefully begin at the heart of the matter, rather than weave its way through a confusing maze of myths, false leads, and self-serving propaganda.
References
Thomas B. Allen, Possessed: The True Story Of An Exorcism (New York: Doubleday July 1993, Bantam Books, April 1994). (Discussed in this article.)
William Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty On The Exorcist From Novel To Film (New York: Bantam Books, 1974). (The 41-page introduction provides some valuable information on how Blatty became aware of the story and how he developed his novel. The rest of the book deals with the movie’s screenplay.)
Denis Brian, The Enchanted Voyager: The Life Of J. B. Rhine (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982). (Chapter 29 consists of six pages on the case. J. B. Rhine learned of the case from Reverend Luther Miles Schulze, the first clergyman called in by the family. It is revealed that Rhine never witnessed any of the phenomena himself and actually wondered if Reverend Schulze “unconsciously exaggerated” some of the facts. Rhine’s feelings have been conveniently ignored by other journalists.)
Martin Ebon, Exorcism: Fact Not Fiction (New York: Signet Books, January 1974). (This pocket paperback reprints the April 1951 Fate article and mainly summarizes the early newspaper accounts of the case.)
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia Of Ghosts And Spirits (New York: Facts On File, 1992), pp. 226-227.
Dennis William Hauck, The National Directory Of Haunted Places (Sacramento: Athanor Press, 1994), page 184.
Rev. John J. Nicola, Diabolical Possession and Exorcism (Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974), chapter 10. (Nicola poorly reconstructs the case that inspired The Exorcist, providing no documented sources for his sensational version of the alleged possession.)
Peter Travers and Stephanie Reiff, The Story Behind The Exorcist (New York: Signet Books, 1974). (A rather disappointing treatment of how the movie was filmed. There is very little here on the actual background of the 1949 possession.)
Periodicals (in chronological order):Bill Brinkley, “Pastor Tells Eerie Tale of ‘Haunted’ Boy,” The Washington Post, 10 August 1949.
“Minister Tells Parapsychologists Noisy ‘Ghost’ Plagued Family,” The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 10 August 1949.
William Flythe Jr., “‘Haunted’ Boy’s Parents Tell Of Ghost Messages,” The Times-Herald (Washington, D.C.), 11 August 1949.
“Priest Freed Boy of Possession By Devil, Church Sources Say,” The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 19 August 1949.
“New Details of Boy’s Exorcism In Catholic Ritual Disclosed,” The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 20 August 1949.
Bill Brinkley, “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip,” The Washington Post, 20 August 1949.
“Report Of A Poltergeist,” Parapsychology Bulletin, Number 14, August 1949.D.R. Linson, “Washington’s Haunted Boy,” Fate, April 1951.
Chris Chase, “Everyone’s Reading It, Billy’s Filming It,” The New York Times, 27 August 1972.
Gwen Dobson, “Luncheon With Father John J. Nicola,” The Evening Star and the Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.), 3 November, 1972.
Sally Quinn, “Exorcism: Beating The Devil,” The Washington Post, 6 November 1972.
Curtis Fuller, “I See by The Papers: Exorcism And Possession,” Fate, March 1973.
Gary Arnold, “Exorcist: The Word Made Flesh,” The Washington Post, 23 December 1973.
Jeremiah O’Leary, “The Exorcist: Story That Almost Wasn’t,” Washington Star-News, 29 December 1973.
Ronald V. Borst, “The Exorcist,” Photon, Number 25, 1974.
Tom Shales, “‘Exorcist’: No One Under 17 Admitted,” The Washington Post, 3 January 1974.
Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Back To the Ouija Board,” The New Yorker, 7 January 1974.
Cathe Wolhowe, “Bedeviled By Film, Curious Go To GU,” The Washington Post, 10 January 1974.
“Movies: The Ghoul Next Door,” Newsweek, 21 January 1974.
James L. Foye, M.D. “A Psychiatrist On Rites Of Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 22 January 1974.
William Gildea, “Confronting Satan’s Wrongs With Rites,” The Washington Post, 29 January 1974.
Elizabeth Peer, “The Exorcism Frenzy,” Newsweek, 11 February 1974.
Steve Erdmann, “The Truth Behind The Exorcist,” Fate, January 1975.
Lynda Hoover, “The Devil In Prince George’s County?” The Prince George’s Journal, 19 June 1975.
Sharon Page, “Q And A: Father Nicola Pursues Trail Of The Devil,” The Washington Star, 19 August 1975.
Spencer Gordon, “The Exorcist: The real incident involved a Mt. Rainier priest in 1949,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 4 February, 1981.
Brenda Caggiano, “Exorcism: Demonic possession still haunts Mt. Rainier residents,” The Prince George’s Sentinel, 28 October 1983.
Arthur S. Brisbane, “Youth’s Bizarre Symptoms Led To 1949 Exorcism,” The Washington Post, 6 May 1985.
Arthur S. Brisbane, “Violent Deaths Plague Old ‘Exorcist’ Haunts,” The Washington Post, 6 May 1985.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Is Town Viewing Live Rerun Of The Exorcist? Some Say Demons Have Come Back,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
Vincent F.A. Golphin, “Priest Says Not Devil, But Force Of Evil,” National Catholic Reporter, 24 May 1985.
Marybeth Burke, “‘Exorcist’ Based On 1949 Event,” The Prince George’s Journal, 22 July 1986.
John M. McGuire, “The Exorcist Revisited,” The Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 17 April 1988.
Mary Mann, “Setting The Exorcism Record Straight,” South Side Journal (St. Louis, MO), 14 March 1990.
Thomas B. Allen, “Possessed,” Washingtonian, June 1993.
Susan Adeletti, “The Exorcist: The Real Story,” The Prince George’s Journal, 11 July 1997.
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