From Universitas, Saint Louis University’s alumni magazine:
In January 1949, a 13-year-old Maryland boy — not the 12-year-old girl depicted in The Exorcist — started experiencing strange, troublesome episodes: scratching sounds coming from the walls and floor of his room, the sound of water dripping, movement of a mattress and other objects. At first, his family thought he might have been plagued by the spirit of a recently deceased aunt, who had introduced the boy to the Ouija board. The family consulted physicians, psychiatrists and a minister from their Lutheran church. They grew desperate as the situation worsened.
“They go to Rev. Luther Miles Schulze, a Lutheran minister who happened to be greatly interested in the paranormal, as it was called at that time, and he said, ‘Go to a Catholic priest; the Catholics know about this kind of thing,’” Allen said.
(Incidentally, Schulze later spoke at a meeting of a Washington, D.C., branch of the Society for Parapsychology about this case. That information made its way to the press, and the published Schulze interview led to the leaking of the exorcism story by Catholic sources. Studying at Georgetown at that time, William Peter Blatty read the story in the Washington Post and years later used it as inspiration for The Exorcist.)
On Schulze’s advice, the family went to a local priest, Father E. Albert Hughes, who “gave them a bottle of holy water and candles and sent them on their way,” Allen said.
Hughes later asked the archbishop of Washington, D.C., for permission to perform an exorcism on the boy. That attempt ended when the boy broke off a piece of a spring from the mattress he was strapped to and slashed Hughes “from shoulder to wrist,” Allen said.
The boy’s mother, a St. Louis native, suggested a change of scenery. After several incidents of scratches appearing on the boy’s body without apparent cause, the word “LOUIS” emerged on his rib cage. The family took this as confirmation: They should take the boy to St. Louis.
You can find the whole story here.
— Michael R. Strain is a resident scholar and economist at the American Enterprise Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/MichaelRStrain.