I'm a huge horror fan and ever since I was a child I would hear people talking about the movie 'The Exorcist'. The movie had been banned in the UK for a long time and that made it seem even more exciting to me. As a child whilst other kids were watching Disney films, I was watching The Silence of The Lambs and 18 certificate horror movies. I saw a documentary about The Exorcist before watching the film itself and the whole thing had me gripped, the actors, the makeup artistry, the locations, the back story, the spooky things that happened on and off set which were connected to the film. Everything from start to finish, from production to screen just intrigued me and still does to this day.
It was in the documentary that William Peter Blatty (Who, I just have to add in here, if you haven't had the chance to listen to the audiobook of 'The Exorcist' read by William himself. I advise you to stop what you're doing, click out of this post, come back to it later and grab some tea, put your feet up and indulge yourself in William's fantastic narration of his book. It is no short of incredible, anyone who's ever heard it will tell you. He brings the characters to life, he acts the roles out, does the voices. It's just pure brilliance) explained that he had heard from a University professor about a young boy who had gone through some sort of demonic possession. The story had William hooked and he set about doing some research into it.
So became the masterpiece that is 'The Exorcist' book that has gone on to sell more than 13 million copies and that's just in the USA alone, the movie franchise has grossed over $661 Million worldwide. I have a physical copy of the book but I still purchased the audio of it just for the pure delight of hearing the man himself read the book (I also have the BluRay). To all horror fans and just anyone with good taste really, to have a copy of The Exorcist book, movie or both is a treasure to have and is enjoyed over and over again. To this very day, the film may have been made many decades ago and the book released a long time ago but both are still at the top of the list where horror literature and movies go (and I'm sure Stephen King would agree).
I'm just thinking about how perfect The Exorcist book and the movie is and how it has stood the test of time. What they were able to create in that movie was extraordinary especially for the 1970s. Even the movie poster and the commercials for the film were and remain iconic. But that's enough about me raving about this masterpiece (both the book and movie), let's get into the shocking story that inspired William to write his book.
So I'm sure a lot of people are aware that there is a true story behind 'The Exorcist', they might be aware that there was a case where a young boy was said to have been allegedly possessed by demons and that a exorcism on this boy had taken place. That was more or less the story that I was aware of over the years before I went down my little rabbit hole of research myself. Never one to leave a stone unturned, I set about finding as many books on demonic possession as I could (I'm so old school) as well as newspaper articles and whatever else I could find. I spent a considerable amount of time researching this story and I was shocked to say the least. Obviously in William's book, names were changed, some details changed, some details added for more dramatic effect so it wasn't a step by step mirror of what had happened to the young boy but there was a lot of similarities.
The story of a young boy who was originally named 'Roland Doe' in the press because his identity was being protected (and it would remain protected right up until he passed away) was a true story. His real name was eventually revealed to be Ronald Erwin Hunkeler. Ronald had been born into a German-American family and his background has been the point of many discussions. He was brought up in a decent household, with a decent family who were religious but there was a lot of tension and negativity. Being an only child and a young boy, being stuck in the house with an overbearing mother and grandmother had it's difficulties for Ronald. There was a lot of bitchiness between his mother, grandmother and auntie Tillie and Ronald, I'm sure could obviously pick up on that sort of atmosphere. I couldn't find out any sort of reason why the women didn't see eye to eye but sometimes that can happen in families. Ronald absolutely adored his auntie Tillie, she wasn't uptight like his mother and grandmother, she was such a free spirited person who always had lots of stories. She was also into spirituality and the paranormal. For years, some people have claimed that Tillie had given Ronald a Ouija board and taught him how to contact spirits, this has never been confirmed.
One of the problems when looking up this story is that you will get various versions of the events. I was surprised to have seen a number of mistakes made in certain newspaper articles which seemed to look like they had been copied and pasted by lazy journalists. It's not that hard to put the grind in and find out the true facts for yourself but that is the issue with this story, there's a lot of 'Chinese whispers' going on and the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. It seems that the more this story is told, the more dramatic it becomes with new details thrown in for extra spice without confirmation or evidence. From what I have learned about Ronald was that he was quite a loner and didn't know how to really interact with other kids, in some cases he was reported to have been quite nasty to other children, he seemed to spend most of his time around adults. He struggled academically during his younger years but it seemed the older that he got he blossomed into a very intelligent young man. So back to what I was saying about him being very close to his auntie Tillie. Even though he had this close relationship with his aunt, things at home were not so great. As well as Ronald having behavioural issues, strange things were happening in the house. It reportedly began with noises such as a sound like squeaking shoes and scratching on the walls.
Nobody knew what the noises were and assumed that there must be rats causing the noises. After further investigation, nobody could get to the bottom of it and no rats were found. So strange goings-on were happening before the sad death of his beloved auntie Tillie. Some people have reported that all the drama started when his auntie died but there was problems beforehand which only got worse with Tillie's death.
Ronald spiralled out of control and was an absolute terror at age just 14, his parents were tearing their hair out trying to get psychiatrists involved, taking him to Doctors, trying to find an answer to what was going on with him and these strange things that just kept on happening. He underwent various physical and psychological tests at hospital and nothing untoward could be found. The situation grew worse and things would seemed to take place predominantly at night. There was the odd occasion where things would happen during the day and it didn't even have to be in the house. He was in his classroom at school when the chair he was sitting in began to shake. The teacher thought he was misbehaving but he tried to tell her that it was out of his control. That incident led him to drop out of school at that time.
If Ronald laid down on his bed in the evening it would start shaking, sometimes he'd be thrown off the bed or the bed sheets would be removed. Objects would just suddenly fly across the room. This was witnessed by members of his family and nobody could understand why it was happening. His mother and grandmother came to the conclusion that all of this poltergeist-like activity must have been his auntie Tillie trying to haunt the family.
Getting no closer to any answers, his parents discussed with priests the possibility of an exorcism. During my research into exorcisms, I found out that some exorcisms can take place over weeks, even months. I always thought the duration of an exorcism was maybe a day or two. So with Ronald, his exorcism which first took place on the 16th of March 1949, took a number of months and was conducted in different locations including a hospital. The majority of what went on was noted in a journal by the priest William Bowdern who allegedly conducted 20 exorcisms on Ronald. The journal, famously known as 'The Exorcist Diary' does have some of the details missing apparently, William Bowdern claimed that some things, like the offensive vocabulary were not noted down because they were too extreme. When Ronald was going though these 'trances' during the exorcisms, he would be covered in sweat and urinate all over his bed, he would also vomit continuously despite having nothing in his stomach as he hadn't been eating. His tone of voice would change from high pitched screeching to very deep and gravely. Like in 'The Exorcist' movie he shouted profanities at the priests and pretended to perform sexual acts. He would say sexually explicit things and spit in the faces of the priests.
Every night this would happen, the constant urinating all over the bed, lying there in his own mess and vomit for hours on end. It mostly happened during the night but come the day, Ronald was acting pretty normal which was surprising. For someone who was supposed to be possessed, he was able to switch from what looked like normal behaviour to this absolute monster at night. The other thing I found surprising was that the priests involved were able to go about their everyday business during daytime hours. So the priests were going to church or to college and carrying out their normal duties, sometimes without any sleep at all and then when night came, it was back to continuing the exorcism.
What I just stated before is part of the reason why some people began to find holes in the case and were finding it very hard to believe. How can all of that go on and then as soon as daylight hits, everybody's acting normal? This saga continued until eventually out of the blue, Ronald announced ''HE'S GONE'.
Apparently he had felt the demon leave his body finally and that he'd seen an angel with a sword in a vision. During the daytime after these disturbing nights, Ronald claimed to have no recollection of what had gone on. He claimed to have no memory of any of it.
So with the possession finally over, Ronald and his family left town shortly after. The priests kept in contact with Ronald for a few years afterwards and claimed that Ronald still said that he had no memory of any of it. He went on to have a normal life and did incredibly well at school and university. He actually went on to work as a NASA engineer, had gotten married but sadly divorced in 1986. He had three children, a son and two daughters and retired in 2001.
48 witnesses had signed a document to confirm that Ronald's exorcism had taken place and that they had witnessed some of the strange goings-on. As I mentioned earlier, his identity was protected right up until his death and none of the priests involved spoke publicly about what happened in 1949.
The priests involved kept their silence for decades but began to speak towards the end of their lives, the majority kept their story consistent. The majority of the people involved believed that Ronald was indeed possessed because they could see no explanation for some of the things that happened which included red marks appearing all over his body and words such as 'Evil', 'Hell' and 'X' appearing on his skin. Some people looked back and questioned whether it could have been mental illness.
There's been a lot of sceptics over the years who believe that Ronald created this whole thing himself, they argue that nobody checked his finger nails and that the priests were basically in with whole thing in an attempt to make a story and get some money. In the case of Ronald speaking Latin during the exorcisms, it was reported that he copied and repeated back to the priests what they had previously said to him. The question of why all the carry-on at night but everything being fine during the day?
When sceptics visited Ronald's childhood friends and neighbours they painted a picture of Ronald as a notorious troublemaker who was always pulling tricks and stunts to get attention. Later on in life, Ronald was able to live quite low-key, started his own family and had an impressive career at NASA but reportedly told a friend that what happened in 1949 was all lies. He apparently told this friend that he made the whole thing up because he was just a bad kid.
Ronald, although he had some successes in his life he was forever looking over his shoulder. Constantly paranoid that a friend or a work colleague would find out that he was the one who inspired The Exorcist. He was embarrassed and ashamed and refused to read the book or watch the movie. As far as he was concerned he claimed that he had no memory of what had happened, only the memories of what other people had told him. He claimed that his family never spoke about it again.
A close friend who spoke to a reporter after Ronald's death at the age of 84 from a stroke, claimed that Ronald dreaded every Halloween because he was scared that people would discover who he was especially with the internet and the ways people have nowadays of tracking people down.
Ronald died in sad circumstances, divorced and his three children were estranged from him. They didn't even attend his funeral.
So the questions will forever remain about this story. Do we believe the 'friend' who claimed that Ronald had confided that he had made the whole thing up or do we believe that he was really possessed? Is it a case that he went through a period of very severe mental illness? Some people say that it could have been some sort of poltergeist activity that followed Ronald around and not an actual possession.
Thinking about all that had occurred, to have made up a whole scam like this, every night for months, lying for hours in a urine, vomit covered bed, why would anyone do that for attention? A lot of the time he appeared to be in a lot of physical pain, he was just as exhausted as the priests were. And for it all to suddenly stop, never to be spoken of or experienced again. It just throws up so much confusion and questions.
It would be interesting (although it's highly unlikely that it will ever happen) to hear what his children have to say about all of this. Did he tell them the truth? Did they experience any negative behaviour from him and that's maybe why they completely cut him out of their lives, who knows? It seemed to be that anyone associated with this story didn't want people to know, they didn't want their names attached to it. One priest said that on one hand people would be fascinated if you told them that you were involved in an exorcism and then on the other hand, some people would look at you like you were crazy and being an important figure in the community (ie priest) it wasn't seen as appropriate for a priest to go around saying such things.
So, I hope that you've been able to take away a lot of information and knowledge from this post. I highly recommend the book The Devil Came To St Louis: The Uncensored True Story of The 1949 Exorcism by Troy Taylor
So many rumours and speculations about what happened to Ronald with the exorcism have done the rounds for years. Another question remains is why would he do all of that for attention and was he very mentally ill? Stories of possible sexual abuse by a relative have been mentioned but there's no evidence that Ronald ever said this or ever gave an indication of any abuse from relatives.
Imagine a prank (a really massive, crazy, out of control one at that) going so out of hand that someone ends up writing a book inspired by you and then a movie is made and the whole thing blows up and never goes away. It's hard to imagine what he must have felt but we do know that he wasn't happy about any of it. When you think about it, himself and his children could have made a fortune writing books, doing interviews about the whole thing but they shunned it all.
My personal opinion is that Ronald went through some sort of psychological breakdown for whatever reason, some breakdowns can last months, He was already vulnerable and strange things were happening but when his auntie died it was like that was the final straw. Some children can actually go through a brief period of schizophrenia and come out of it never to have had an episode again. Some people believe that he had a combination of psychiatric disorders including ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). I think this is the case too. Could something traumatic like sexual abuse have occurred before? It's quite possible but we don't know, if it was the case then it would explain a lot of his behaviours and what he was doing and going through.
It's a really sad story and it ended really sad too but we don't know all of the details about what went on with Ronald and his children but RIP Ronald, as sad and horrendous as your childhood story was, your experience whether it was intentional or something that happened not of your own doing, you inspired an incredible writer to create a masterpiece which went on to become a huge part of history and you are very much a part of that and I'm sure many horror fans, including myself have a lot of sympathy for you. At the end of the day you were just a child and you did go on to do some incredible things with your life.
Further Reading & Sources:
- The Devil Came to St Louis | Book by Troy Taylor
- The Exorcist | Book by William Peter Blatty
- Demonic Possession & Mental Health | Book by J.N. Caputo
- Dictionary of Demons | Book by Prayer M Madueke
- The Penguin Book of Demonic Possession | Book by Joseph P Laycock
- William Peter Blatty | Wikipedia
- Exorcism of Roland Doe | Wikipedia
- Ronald Hunkeler: Article | The Guardian
- Ronald Hunkeler: Article | The New York Post
- Ronald Hunkeler: Discussion | Reddit
- Ronald Hunkeler: Article | Inside Edition
- Ronald Edwin Hunkeler | Find A Grave
- NASA.GOV
- St. Alexius Hospital | Wikipedia
So, this was a really long post and it's late as I finish typing the last few lines but I just wanted to mention that I will be taking a short break, just a couple of weeks because my birthday is coming up (5th of November!!). I will be continuing on with this series when my little break is done and I'm really thankful for all the positive feedback about it so far. I will be on my socials as usual so I'll hopefully see you on there and here when I return. In the meantime, if you enjoy my posts, please consider donating or buying me a cheeky birthday drink (here are some links for possible donations: My PayPal / Buy Me A Coffee (Kofi Page & Updates) / Buy Me A Coffee / Wishlist)
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