Original subtitles

[Narrator] September 1632, Loudun, France.

People's lives have been scarred by bubonic plague,

conflict between Catholics and Protestants,

and then out of nowhere, a deeply disturbing event.

The town of 14,000 people

is home to a convent for young nuns.

They are meant to lead a holy life dedicated to God.

Then, an invisible evil power appears to penetrate

the walls of the convent

and the souls of these young women.

[Professor] The nuns themselves,

who lived such rigid, controlled lives,

were beginning to act in unusual and extraordinary ways.

They began swearing and shouting and barking uncontrollably.

This was not only unusual, but terrifying.

[Expert] They would bend backwards into a position

that's sometimes called the hysterical arch.

[Historian] What is happening in this convent?

Why are these young women becoming so hysterical?

[Narrator] The nuns say they've been possessed by demons,

demons no one can see,

demons sent from hell.

Loudun is one of history's most notorious claims

of mass possession.

This is the story of why the idea of demons

has persisted over the millennia.

♪ ♪

In a time of plague, poverty, and religious tension,

God-fearing Christians

are also concerned with the salvation

of their mortal souls.

[Darren Reid] The Catholic Church was a space

in which mysticism existed,

where there were a whole pantheon

of possible creatures that could corrupt you, take your soul,

enhance that original sin by making you commit more sins

that would confine you to an afterlife in hell.

[Narrator] In the mindset of 17th-century France,

where the devil and evil are understood to be

literal, physical facts,

the Ursuline convent in Loudun should have been a refuge.

[Fern Riddell] And the Ursulines are a form

of Roman Catholic nuns, often young women,

who take their name from the patron saint, Ursula.

And this is the one opportunity young women had

for an education was to be a nun.

So, it's a very privileged existence,

but it's also an incredibly claustrophobic one.

And you are with teenagers, women in their early 20s,

who are inexperienced in the wider world

and are dedicating their life to God.

[Scott Bruce] The Ursuline nuns were cloistered and followed

very strict rules of conduct.

They rarely spoke.

They spent most of their time

taking part in liturgical services,

and they had almost no interaction

with the outside world,

except through intermediaries like priests.

[Narrator] But somehow,

this sanctuary has seemingly been breached.

[Bruce] What kind of external influence could have possibly

infiltrated the nunnery to make them act in this way?

[Narrator] For the nuns and people of Loudun,

there's one conclusion--

demons.

[Riddell] Demons are some of our most ancient monsters,

and they are something that humanity has never managed

to get away from.

[Bruce] Unlike other monsters,

we continue to be frightened of demons,

in no small part because we never see them.

Demons lurk in our minds, in our thoughts.

They guide our intentions.

They are so intimate.

[Joseph Laycock] These are not simply monsters

that want to eat someone.

They really represent the forces of cosmic evil,

an attempt to destroy the world as we know it.

Reports of strange activity begin when a young nun

goes to the Mother Superior

and says that she has seen this apparition of a dead priest.

And the Mother Superior says,

"I've seen an apparition of this dead priest also."

[Narrator] And there is more.

The Mother Superior, Jeanne des Anges,

says she has felt an invisible hand holding hers.

When she opened her hand,

she saw three bloody thorns in her palm.

[Laycock] Some of the other nuns describe invisible hands

punching or pinching or slapping them.

Some of them describe this irresistible compulsion

to laugh at inappropriate moments

such as when they're praying.

There are reports of skeletons

walking the halls of the convent at night

and even of this mysterious black orb

moving through the convent.

[Riddell] Now, throughout the history of nuns and convents,

religious visions have kind of gone hand in hand

with convent life.

A lot of nuns write beautiful poems

about being visited by God.

But what happens in Loudun is very different

because these nuns say they aren't being visited by God,

they're being visited by the devil.

[Narrator] When word of the nuns' behavior

spreads out into the wider community,

Church officials fear demons have infiltrated the convent.

17th-century Christian ideas of demons and possession

go back to the religion's very beginning.

[Laycock] Everywhere Jesus goes,

there are people with unclean spirits,

and He is driving the spirits out.

And this is how He's healing the people.

He's not only healing them mentally,

but He's healing them physically.

In the first century, they thought demons might cause you

to be unable to hear, unable to speak, unable to walk.

[Narrator] One striking episode in the Gospels

involves the Gerasene demoniac,

a man possessed who has been cast out from his community.

[Laycock] They've tried to restrain him,

but he has supernatural strength and he can break through chains.

But when this person sees Jesus,

he immediately goes and kneels before Him.

And Jesus commands the demons, "Who are you?"

And they say, "Our name is Legion, for we are many."

And Jesus commands them to leave.

And so the demons go into this herd of pigs,

and the pigs run into the ocean and drown.

[Narrator] The early Christian view of demons

was not shared by all.

Contemporary Greeks, Romans, and other so-called pagans

saw demons in a very different light.

[Tok Thompson] Today, usually that word is associated

with a spirit that is sort of diabolical

or working on the side of the devil.

But this is a radical transformation

of sort of the original idea and the original meaning

behind the word.

The word demon was demonized.

[Narrator] For Greeks, demons were an intimate,

even necessary, part of their world.

[Bruce] Ancient pagans believed in a world that was filled

with all sorts of invisible spiritual beings.

Every mountain, tree, body of water

had an invisible attendant spirit.

But also part of the cosmology of Greeks and Romans

was this belief in creatures that they called daemones,

from which we get our word demon.

Demons in Greco-Roman antiquity were not evil.

They were morally ambivalent spiritual creatures, that is,

they were spirits of the air who served as intermediaries

between the gods and mortals.

Socrates claimed that he had a personal demon,

a demon that kept him company,

a demon who he spoke with in his thoughts,

and a demon who guided his moral choices.

Nowadays, we would call this demon our conscience.

But for Socrates, it seems to have been

a living spiritual entity that resided with him

up into the moment of his death,

reassuring him and guiding him

as he made significant choices in his life.

[Narrator] As Christianity spread

throughout the Hellenic world,

the early Christians did not adopt

the benign Greek view of demons.

[Thompson] There was a big push to say,

"No, no, these spirits are not neutral.

"These guys are evil, all these different forces.

"If they're not working for the Church,

then they must be working for the devil."

[Narrator] From Christianity's earliest years

into the next millennium,

this negative view defines how believers perceive demons.

[Reid] God has His angels.

Satan has his demons.

Their whole existence is built around tormenting you,

destroying you, punishing you.

[Thompson] We're not just talking about what's

what's happening now, we're talking about eternity.

We're talking about the afterlife.

We're talking about what's gonna happen to you after you die.

[Narrator] In 1632,

Church authorities are so alarmed

by signs of possession in the Loudun convent

that they summon a team of exorcists.

[Bruce] The practice of exorcism is one of the oldest practices

in the Christian religion.

[Narrator] In Loudun, the clergy must follow

officially sanctioned procedures

laid down in the Rituale Romanum.

Promulgated in 1614,

this document gives detailed instructions

on how to conduct sacred rites

like baptisms, weddings, funerals, and exorcism.

[Laycock] Only a priest may perform this rite

and only with the permission of their local bishop.

You are supposed to first rule out any sort of medical

or mental health cause of the behavior,

and you're supposed to look for certain signs.

One of these is blasphemous rage.

Do they respond with anger

to things like holy water or relics?

Do they have superhuman strength?

Do they have the ability to speak in a language

that they have never studied?

Can they know things that they couldn't possibly know?

[Narrator] When priests conclude that a person

is indeed possessed,

they turn to the power of prayer and divine intervention.

[Bruce] The process usually involves a laying on of hands

or the application of holy water,

and then a command for the demon to leave the possessed person

in the name of Christ through the authority

of God and the saints.

[Narrator] At Loudun, the exorcists appear to face

a formidable challenge.

[Laycock] The nuns are exhibiting behavior

that is wildly inappropriate for a nun,

including things like masturbating

in front of the exorcist

and saying obscene things to the priests.

[Narrator] At times, the exorcists speak directly

to the demon they believe is responsible

for the shocking behavior.

[Laycock] They will ask the demon to reveal its name

because there's a very old idea in the Bible

that if you know the name of something,

you have a degree of power over it,

and then they will command it to leave.

[Priest] Leave!

[Narrator] The nuns do name some of the demons

they say are tormenting them.

But the exorcists want more.

After months of further interrogation,

the women offer up another name.

It's not a demon.

[Riddell] They say the name of a local priest

who is causing all of these awful things to happen to them.

[Narrator] This is a disturbing revelation.

How could a priest, a man of God,

be involved with this demonic possession?

[Narrator] Urbain Grandier is a well-known figure in Loudun.

Educated, charming, confident.

He speaks his mind.

He doesn't think priests should be celibate.

There are stories of him seducing young women

and even getting one pregnant.

Grandier has a lot of enemies.

[Riddell] He's got in a lot of trouble with the local clergy

for being outspoken,

for being a womanizer.

What Grandier has also done is get involved in local politics.

So he's really causing as much trouble as he can.

From his point of view, he's just calling out

all the things that he feels the Catholic Church are doing wrong.

But this is not a time when you can do that.

[Narrator] Grandier has even dared to criticize

Louis XIII's ambitious and powerful chief minister,

Cardinal Richelieu.

[Bruce] Cardinal Richelieu had every reason to want

to get rid of Urbain Grandier.

The possession of the nuns of the Ursuline convent

provided an excellent pretext

for Richelieu to get rid of his political rival.

[Narrator] It also appears

that Grandier's previous interactions

with the Ursuline convent may have made him a target.

[Laycock] The Mother Superior

asked for Urbain Grandier to be someone

who would come and visit the nuns

and the nuns could confess all of their sins,

including all of their impure thoughts

to this priest.

And he refused.

And it is possible that by spurning the Mother Superior,

he made yet one more enemy.

Normally under French law,

there would be a preliminary investigation

and then an indictment and then an arrest.

[Narrator] Officials skip the usual legal steps.

On trial for witchcraft,

Grandier faces political forces determined to destroy him.

[Laycock] Grandier was not allowed to bring in witnesses

that would speak in his defense under threat of treason.

And these nuns who were giving testimony were being coached

by priests who were sympathetic to the people

who were trying to destroy him.

[Narrator] Grandier's accusers are determined

to secure a confession.

[Bruce] Confession derived from torture was considered

to be legitimate evidence in these cases.

[Narrator] Throughout his ordeal,

Grandier insists he is innocent.

His enemies decide they will destroy him

even without a confession.

To prove his guilt, someone forges the evidence.

[Laycock] The Mother Superior, during one of the exorcisms,

begins vomiting up strange objects,

and she vomits up a contract written in backwards Latin,

and it is covered in demonic sigils.

And this contract is signed between Urbain Grandier

and various demons.

Most historians assume that this was probably given to her,

concealed under her habit.

[Narrator] As planned in advance,

this forged document seals Grandier's fate.

But he has still not confessed to witchcraft.

His accusers turn to torture.

They will use a device some call the Spanish boot.

[Laycock] The Spanish boot is basically a series

of wooden planks that are set around someone's leg bones

and then wedges are hammered between the planks

so that slowly the pressure on the bones

becomes greater and greater.

And in fact, they ended up shattering his legs.

But he never admitted to sorcery.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] On August 18, 1634,

Urbain Grandier is found guilty of witchcraft

and burned at the stake.

[Laycock] In addition to being a story

about demons and the supernatural,

what happened in Loudun is also a story

about politics, about revenge.

People really wanted to hurt this young priest

for his outrages around the town,

and they came up with a perfect plan to do that.

[Narrator] But Grandier's death changes nothing.

The nuns' demonic behavior continues.

[Laycock] So, the exorcisms go on for several more years.

The Mother Superior says that she has seven demons

living within her and begins to exhibit signs of pregnancy.

Her belly grows. She begins to even lactate.

And she says, "This is a demon baby."

It's recorded that eventually they command the demon to leave,

and she vomits forth a great quantity of blood

and ceases to have the signs of pregnancy.

And in the end, she's considered a holy woman,

and she does this tour of holy sites throughout Europe

and is remembered as this very saintly sort of figure.

[Narrator] The tragic story of Urbain Grandier

leaves behind a troubling question.

What could account for the nuns' strange

and seemingly demonic behavior?

[Laycock] The events in Loudun, where an entire convent of nuns

was possessed, sounds extraordinary,

and yet we know that almost everywhere

where there were Catholic convents of nuns,

not only throughout Europe, but even in what is now Mexico,

sometimes this would happen.

All of the nuns would exhibit this bizarre behavior

and become possessed.

[Narrator] To explain other similar cases,

some historians have suggested ergot poisoning,

a toxin that may have been present

in the bread the nuns were eating.

[Dan Riskin] It's a fungus that grows

on different kinds of cereals like rye.

And if you have severe cases,

it's something called convulsive ergotism,

which can cause muscle twitching, hallucinations,

paranoia, and other kinds of mental changes.

[Narrator] Between 900 and 1300 of the Common Era,

France was ravaged by epidemics of ergot poisoning.

Tens of thousands were killed.

It would come to be called St. Anthony's fire

because of the burning sensation

in the victims' legs and arms.

It's possible ergot poisoning caused the early stages

of the nuns' behavior.

It doesn't explain why the so-called possessions

lasted for years.

[Laycock] In the final stage of ergotism,

blood can no longer get to your fingers and toes

and they fall off.

So while we have some descriptions

that are consistent with hallucinations

in these accounts of witchcraft and demonic possession,

we don't have things like fingers and toes falling off.

[Narrator] There is another factor that might explain

the demonic spectacle at Loudun.

[Laycock] These exorcisms go on for years and years

and become almost a tourist attraction.

And so there were these voyeuristic

and lascivious elements to these exorcisms.

There's also a sense that for some people,

this had become a business.

And the show must go on.

[Narrator] The story of the Loudun nuns

endures for centuries.

A turning point in understanding the symptoms

comes in Paris in the late 19th century

at a world-renowned clinic.

Pioneering neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot

has been investigating a condition

then called hysteria.

[Laycock] Originally, they thought hysteria was caused

by the womb being knocked out of alignment,

and this was causing mental illness in women.

Charcot studied women who had been diagnosed with hysteria,

and they would exhibit this strange, irrational behavior.

And Charcot noted that there were certain positions

that hysterical women would assume when they were thrashing.

And he coined the term the hysterical arch.

And he drew a connection between early modern accounts

of possessed women and hysterical women

in the 19th century.

And he assumes our ancestors must have encountered hysteria

and mistaken it for demonic possession.

[Narrator] Charcot never realizes his goal

to find a neurological cause for this condition.

But his approach is a leap forward.

[Riskin] What really is going on

is that scientists are trying to come up with an understanding

of why the brain works the way it does

and why people would have these kinds of symptoms.

[Narrator] The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud,

studied briefly under Charcot

and built on his exploration of so-called hysteria.

[Riskin] In the early 20th century,

Sigmund Freud was working with a group of young women

of a similar age to the nuns in France.

They were in their 20s and early 30s.

And some of those patients had the same symptoms.

They had hallucinations, they had convulsions.

[Laycock] And Freud's big break in the field of psychology

was he found that some of these women,

if you simply talked to them, would get better.

And in many cases, these women had experienced sexual abuse

that they had never told anyone about.

And when they could finally tell that story to someone

who was sympathetic, the symptoms subsided.

And so Freud said, "I think that the body is expressing something

that has been repressed by the mind."

So today we no longer call this hysteria.

[Narrator] A more commonly used term is mass psychogenic

or mass sociogenic illness.

Outbreaks tend to occur in isolated, tightly knit,

strictly controlled groups

like boarding schools or religious orders.

The condition can be triggered by a sudden community tragedy

or ongoing tensions from the outside world.

Once one individual is affected,

the condition moves through the group like an infection.

The young nuns at Loudun met all these conditions,

living in a cloistered setting in uncertain times.

[Reid] Although France had a Catholic majority,

it had a very sizable Protestant minority,

the Huguenots.

And what that created was the foundation

for sectarian violence throughout the 17th century,

and it's really not solved until the very end of that century.

This is also a time of plague.

This is also a time of famine.

This is also a time where infant mortality rates

were exceptionally high.

So, on top of all the normal challenges of life

that people faced in this period,

you've got this layer of sectarian tension,

you've got this layer of spiritual angst,

and you've got this layer of interspiritual hatred.

[Narrator] Beyond these societal forces,

it's impossible to know, on a personal level,

what kind of trauma any of the nuns may have suffered.

[Laycock] Most of these women did not choose to be nuns.

Their families could not afford a dowry to marry them off.

And so a good alternative was to simply send them off

to the convent to live as nuns.

[Narrator] Perhaps the strange events at Loudun

were put in motion by teenagers rebelling

against a claustrophobic lifestyle.

Perhaps the nuns had suffered a deep individual

and collective trauma.

[Laycock] Historians still debate about what exactly

was happening in this convent.

[Narrator] Despite the work of Charcot, Freud,

and other scientists,

old beliefs in spirits and demons do not fade away.

They take new forms in new settings.

[Narrator] 200 years after the Loudun drama,

belief in spirit possession remains, for some,

a powerful truth.

19th-century New York state.

Former Quakers have emigrated from Britain to establish

new religious communities in New York,

including a communal farm in Groveland.

They're known as the Shakers.

During their services,

they claim to be seized by the Holy Spirit

and shake and dance about wildly.

1830. Joseph Smith Jr. publishes the Book of Mormon,

translated from a set, he claims, of divine plates

he says he found in upstate New York.

This belief in, and desire to, connect to spirits

opens the door to what will become

a large spiritual movement.

In 1848, the Fox family are newcomers

to the hamlet of Hydesville, New York.

Their daughters, 11-year-old Kate and 14-year-old Maggie,

are about to become local celebrities.

[Riddell] The family had moved from Canada a year earlier

into a house that they hoped would be

their new family home.

But for the two young sisters, Kate and Maggie,

it suddenly seemed to be filled with noises,

rappings, weird movements.

These rappings or knockings that the girls claim to hear

came from floorboards, came from ceilings.

Very quickly, the girls managed to convince their parents

that these noises are real and are happening.

[Narrator] Word spreads through the area.

Neighbors come by to experience

these mysterious sounds.

Some believe unseen spirits are at work.

[Laycock] More people start arriving at the house

to see the spirit, to hear the rapping sounds.

And the spirits continue to perform.

Everyone can hear these strange rapping noises.

[Narrator] In front of all these witnesses,

the sisters take matters with the spirit

to a whole new level.

[Laycock] They start by asking it simple questions

and telling it, "For yes, rap once

and for no, rap twice."

And by doing this, they start to communicate with the spirit

and get it to tell its story.

[Narrator] The girls say the spirit

belongs to a 31-year-old peddler

murdered and buried beneath the cottage.

[Laycock] So, as excitement builds around the Fox sisters,

some people think this is an amazing scientific discovery.

Some people are suspicious

that this might be some kind of a hoax or a con.

And some people think this is clearly evidence

of demons and witchcraft.

[Narrator] Two centuries earlier,

the sisters might have been burned at the stake.

But they say they're not talking with evil demons.

They're reaching out to lost loved ones.

[Riddell] This new thing,

this ability to communicate with the dead

is so captivating because when you lose the love of your life,

when you lose a partner, when you lose a family member,

the chance to speak to them one more time

is incredibly precious.

[Narrator] The Fox sisters help to inspire a movement

that comes to be called Spiritualism.

They have their sights set on the big time.

In 1850, they set up shop in New York City,

conducting lucrative séances.

They are famous, celebrated.

The Spiritualism movement just keeps growing.

[Laycock] So, by the end of the 19th century,

you have something like eight million spiritualists

in North America and Europe

and even spreading into South America.

And you have prominent, educated people

who are excited about Spiritualism,

including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

who wrote the Sherlock Holmes novels,

including the wife of Abraham Lincoln who had lost a son

and was bringing spiritualists to the White House.

So, Spiritualism was absolutely everywhere

by the end of the 19th century.

[Narrator] But then the Fox sisters' financial

and personal fortune take a turn for the worse.

[Laycock] So, as often happens with child celebrities,

the Fox sisters were sort of broken by their celebrity.

[Riddell] And they both unfortunately developed

terrible alcohol problems and become alcoholics.

[Narrator] Maybe there is also the constant pressure

of keeping up appearances,

for unbeknownst to their devoted followers,

the sisters are hiding a secret.

They've been making it all up.

[Riddell] In 1888, when the money has almost run out,

when their celebrity is almost at its low ebb,

they're offered a huge amount of money, $1,500,

to do an exposé and say that they are frauds,

and they take it.

[Narrator] 40 years after she first claimed

to communicate with spirits,

Maggie Fox makes an admission before a packed house

in the New York Academy of Music.

[Laycock] And in 1888,

Maggie Fox approaches an audience and tells them,

"This has all been a hoax from start to finish.

We were making the raps the whole time."

[Riddell] "It's nothing to do with spirits,

"it's nothing to do with being a medium,

"it's definitely not a gift from God.

And you have not been communicating with the dead."

[Laycock] And she takes off her shoe

and shows them how she can pop her toes

to make these loud, mysterious noises.

She also describes tying a string to an apple

in her home in New York and using a string

to bang the apple against the floorboards and said,

"Our mother thought we were too innocent

and not smart enough to be able to trick anyone in this way."

[Narrator] The audience is outraged.

But Maggie Fox's public confession

does not end the Spiritualist movement.

[Riddell] Human beings love the unexplained.

Even if you're presented with something being an untruth

and being a fraud, if you want to believe it's possible,

that's what you're going to do.

The Spiritualist movement is too big by this point.

[Narrator] The 19th-century belief

in spirits, possessions, and demons

survives into the 20th century and inspires

one of the biggest selling horror stories of all time.

[Narrator] August 1949.

A major newspaper reports that a 14-year-old boy

has been cured of demonic possession by exorcism.

The boy would come to be known by a pseudonym--Roland Doe.

[Laycock] He had a favorite aunt named Aunt Tilly

who was interested in Spiritualism.

And he would spend time with Aunt Tilly,

and they would play the Ouija board together.

[Narrator] When Roland was 14, his beloved Aunt Tilly dies.

In his grief, Roland spends hours at the Ouija board

trying to contact her.

At some point, the house becomes full

of mysterious knocking, drumming,

and scratching sounds.

[Laycock] There were strange sounds like rats in the walls,

there were paintings falling off the wall,

objects seeming to move by themselves.

And Roland Doe began to exhibit strange behavior.

He would scream. He would thrash.

And most disturbingly,

scratch marks would begin to appear all over his body.

And sometimes these scratch marks

would spell out words like "hell."

[Narrator] Roland's parents come to believe he is possessed

and turn to the Catholic Church to help their son.

Over several months, priests perform a series of exorcisms.

At times, some doubt Roland is possessed

and believe he is simply acting out.

[Laycock] So the boy is exhibiting blasphemous rage,

screaming at the priests.

He is speaking in Latin,

a language that he has supposedly never studied.

At one point,

he pulled a bedspring

out of the bed he was on and slashed the priest's arm

from elbow to wrist, requiring stitches.

So after repeated exorcisms,

Roland goes into this trance and says, “He's gone.”

And he appears to become normal,

and he has no further episodes

with this kind of behavior ever again.

And we now know that his real name was Ronald Hunkeler

and that he went on to work for NASA.

[Narrator] Afterwards, Church officials conduct an inquiry

and conclude that young Roland was not, in fact, possessed.

He did not display demonic strength,

he could not speak Latin,

and likely just repeated what he'd heard from the priests.

Some 50 years later, an investigator speaks

with childhood friends and former neighbors,

and they describe Roland as a trickster

who liked to play pranks.

Roland Doe's story comes to the attention

of a university student

who has been raised in a devout household.

[Laycock] William Peter Blatty is a Catholic,

and he was at Georgetown University,

which is a Jesuit university.

And some of his Jesuit professors knew the priests

who were performing these exorcisms.

[Narrator] Roland Doe's story stays with Blatty.

After a successful career

writing comedy screenplays and novels,

he decides to write about exorcism.

His book, The Exorcist,

is published in 1971 and becomes a cultural phenomenon.

It spends 17 weeks at the top

of The New York Times bestseller list,

selling 13 million copies in the US alone.

[Reporter] In more than 22 US and Canadian cities,

the old box office champ, The Godfather,

is being flattened by that movie about diabolical possession,

The Exorcist.

[Narrator] The movie version is released on December 26, 1973.

It shows classic details of possession

that would've been familiar to the people of Loudun

like bending backwards, the hysterical arch.

[Laycock] Audiences had never seen anything like this,

and the special effects in The Exorcist

were well ahead of their time.

[Narrator] Writer Peter Blatty has the priests following

historically accurate guidelines

laid out centuries before.

[Laycock] And of course, the Rituale Romanum

rite of exorcism is shown in the film.

[Priest] Our Father, who art in Heaven...

[spits]

...hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

[Laycock] So, in some ways,

this is still the most realistic depiction of an exorcism

that's ever been in a movie.

[Priest] Holy Lord, Almighty Father,

everlasting God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[Reid] The Exorcist was one of those pieces of cinema

that reshaped how people saw and interacted with certain ideas.

You might know what an exorcism was intellectually,

but you didn't know what it meant in here.

[Narrator] Just like the townspeople of Loudun,

moviegoers in the 1970s are compelled to witness

the spectacle of exorcism.

[Reporter] What do you mean, gross?

[Moviegoer 1] Sickening. It was sickening.

[Moviegoer 2] I'm glad we saw it during the day.

[Moviegoer 3] Out of my seat. It was really scary.

[Reporter] The theater owners tell us that an average

of three men, but only two women,

faint at every evening performance.

[Laycock] There's a very famous interview with a janitor

who worked at a movie theater who said, "I hate this movie.

"Every time they show it,

there are puddles of vomit everywhere."

Some people even did things like attack the screen

and had to be hospitalized afterwards.

[Narrator] Like so many successful horror stories,

The Exorcist had tapped into cultural fears

and distilled them into a demonic entity.

[Bruce] In some ways, the history of modern horror

literature and film is an index of the anxiety

of the people that created it.

[Narrator] In the 1950s,

anxieties about the Cold War communist threat

are reflected in movies featuring strange monsters

and alien invasion.

The 1960s would produce its own set of anxieties.

[Laycock] So, in places like California,

the baby boomers were adopting Zen Buddhism.

They were joining the Hare Krishnas

and the Unification Church.

People began to become anxious about so-called religious cults.

At the same time, everyone believed that organized religion

and Christianity were dying out.

And if you read The Exorcist,

it describes the changing American religious landscape.

All of this is present in that novel.

[Reporter] The militants of women's liberation

have exchanged their brassieres for banners!

[Narrator] The 1960s also saw the rise of women's liberation.

To some eyes, these women were acting

in a strange, unusual fashion.

[Bruce] The women's liberation movement in particular

was a moment of great anxiety for many people in the country.

And some of this fear, one could argue,

is expressed through the story of a young girl

who becomes the victim of demonic possession.

[Narrator] The Exorcist movie sparks a surge of interest

in the practice of exorcism.

Just two and a half years after its release,

the death of a young woman in Germany

shows that ancient beliefs persist in the modern world.

[Narrator] July 1, 1976.

In a small town in what was West Germany,

the lifeless body of 23-year-old Anneliese Michel

is found by her parents.

[Laycock] Here is this young woman

who is now completely unrecognizable

after months of, essentially, starvation.

She is skin and bones

and is covered with bedsores and contusions.

[Narrator] Anneliese Michel's death is a tragic example

of how belief in demonic possession

can go terribly wrong.

Anneliese Michel was raised

in a deeply religious Catholic family.

A few years before her death,

she had been diagnosed with epilepsy.

[Laycock] She goes to college,

and she begins having hallucinations.

She says that she is seeing these horrifying faces.

She tells her family about this,

and the family, being Catholic, want to get an exorcism.

They go to the Church.

The Church says, “You don't need an exorcism.

This is a mental health issue. You need a doctor."

Anneliese Michel's behavior deteriorates sharply.

After this, she starts acting like a true demoniac

and is hurting herself, is eating spiders.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] The Church relents

and sends two priests to help Anneliese.

Over 10 months, they perform 67 exorcisms.

[Laycock] She also says that she is seeing visions

of the Virgin Mary and that Mary tells her

that she has this great spiritual mission

that she must fulfil on Earth

for which she will suffer greatly.

[Bruce] In the Middle Ages,

there's a history of extreme fasting

among female Catholic saints.

Some of them would commit acts of self-starvation,

subsisting only on the Eucharistic host.

[Laycock] And Anneliese Michel stops eating.

She essentially becomes anorexic.

And her family, and she has a boyfriend,

encourage her to eat.

She won't listen. She won't go to the hospital.

She says she must have the exorcisms continue.

[Narrator] It's possible Anneliese's epilepsy

played a role in her belief that she is possessed.

[Riskin] Temporal lobe epilepsy,

which is what Anneliese had,

can have symptoms that are a little bit different

from other kinds of epilepsy.

Things like hallucinations,

sudden emotional changes like fear or anxiety.

[sobbing]

You've got this strange set of symptoms,

and if you don't understand the scientific basis,

it's gonna seem like a demonic possession.

[Narrator] Anneliese dies in her bed,

physically battered from her ordeal.

♪ ♪

[Laycock] The cause of death is determined to be malnutrition,

and the priests are charged with negligent homicide

in what becomes this sort of media spectacle in West Germany

that becomes a tremendous embarrassment

for the Catholic Church.

But in the end, the priests were found guilty

but were sentenced to time served,

so they did not do additional time in prison.

[Narrator] A few years after Anneliese's death

and a decade after The Exorcist terrified moviegoers,

people continue to see signs

of what they believe are demonic possession.

[Laycock] The Satanic Panic of the 1980s was a moment

where thousands of Americans were told there was

a conspiracy of Satanists living among us

who seemed like normal people,

but in secret were doing these satanic rituals

where they were murdering people as human sacrifices to Satan.

Part of what was fueling this was a conservative backlash

to the perceived excesses of the 1960s and '70s.

So one of the first targets was rock music.

Conservatives became preoccupied with the idea that bands

were putting subliminal messages within rock music

to try to get teenagers to kill themselves or to worship Satan.

[Bruce] Evangelical preachers took advantage of the fear

stoked by the Satanic Panic in the 1980s.

They cast out demons on television

in ways that would have been very familiar to people

from a thousand years ago.

[Laycock] You could watch someone be anointed

by their pastor and pass out

with the power of the Holy Spirit

and jump up and say, "I'm healed. Hallelujah."

[Narrator] The Satanic Panic eventually subsided.

But in the 21st century,

fear of demonic possession has not vanished.

Polls show that even as church attendance declines,

more than half of Americans

believe people can be possessed by evil spirits.

[Reid] For some Christians,

demons are not abstract creatures.

They're not paintings on a church.

They are real creatures

that reflect an understanding

of the universe and how it functions.

Because demons are associated

with something that's still vibrant

and held in here by so many peoples, they won't die.

[Laycock] In a lot of ways, the movie The Exorcist

changed the Catholic Church's stance on exorcism.

When that film came out,

the Catholic Church was performing exorcisms,

but it was very rare and it was kept very secret

because it was viewed as an embarrassment.

Catholics didn't want to look superstitious

compared to the Protestants.

In fact, exorcism isn't really an embarrassment.

It's an asset.

That's one of the things that people like

about the Catholic Church.

And exorcism is once again thriving in the Catholic Church.

[Bruce] One of the most fascinating aspects

of the history of monsters

is the way that we've domesticated them

in modern literature, modern popular culture.

So, dragons, vampires, werewolves,

these creatures that caused such fear for our ancestors

are now our friends and allies and helpers and lovers.

But demons have resisted this.

They've rarely been domesticated

in the way that other monsters have.

[Narrator] Four centuries after the nuns at Loudun

said they were possessed,

the belief in demons has not gone away.

[Laycock] Demons are different from other monsters

in that they don't have a body we can see.

But demons help to explain all of the misfortune

and suffering and evil in the world.

For some people, this gives us a way of understanding

why these things happen.

So in that sense, I think that we will always have

this discourse of demons because we live in an imperfect,

dangerous, and unsatisfying world.