Cold Open: In 1973, 21 year old German college student Anneliese Michel began to descend into an existence of pure and utter madness. She had begun to see the faces of demons appear around her with increasing frequency. She awoke more and more often in the middle of the night, unable to move, unable to scream out, feeling an evil presence overtake her body. Her life had become a never ending parade of visits to doctors and prayer. And neither priest nor neurosurgeon seemed able to help her.

Every time her possession like symptoms would fade for a few days, or a few weeks, or even for a few months, and she’d begin to hope that a normal life might still be possible for her… those voices, faces, and feelings of a foreign entity overtaking her body would return - stronger and more malevolent than before. Finally, in September of 1975, after years of virtually fruitless prayer, medication, and brain scans, the Catholic Church approved that an exorcism ritual be conducted. And then, for the last ten months of her life, one exorcism after another would be performed on the deteriorating mind and body of this fragile, frightened, and tormented young woman.

And today, we dig into the details of the final years of her life and leave you at the end to decide if A) demons are in fact real, and B) demonic forces are what took her life on July 1st, 1976.

The second of a two part Suck on the Demonic Possession of Anneliese Michel, today, on Timesuck!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

Welcome! A. Happy Monday Timesuckers! I’m the Reverend Doctor Dan Suckmaster Cummins and you are a bonafide member of the Cult of the Curious! Hail Nimrod!

Or, maybe you’re just someone who stumbled into our strange little world because you were simply curious about today’s topic. Or maybe you hit the wrong button on your phone. Or maybe a sadistic madman who happens to be a fan of mine has you tied up in a basement and begging for your life and this is what he choose to let you listen to you for your final moments on this Earth….

Well, regardless of why you are here, welcome to the Suck!

B. Theo Von Cross Promotion!! And today’s Timesuck is brought to you by the This Past Weekend podcast hosted by the fucking hilarious Theo Von. I first worked with Theo in South Africa way back in 2011. I laughed my ass off watching him in theaters in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, and we went on a safari together and talked AT LENGTH about how manly it would be to fuck a lion. Killing a lion is one thing, but, if you could, with no weapon other then your own cunning and man-strength, walk up on a wild lion, wrestle it to the ground, and then fuck it - you’re officially the toughest dude on the planet. You’re also very insane, BUT - that doesn’t take anything away from the tough part. I’ve been a fan of this man ever since.

And now he has a kick ass podcast! Theo is one of the few other comics crazy enough to host it solo - just like Timesuck. On This Past Weekend, new episodes drop on Monday’s, just like the Suck, and most weeks he drops a This Past Thursday episode on, you guessed it, Thursdays. On this gem of a podcast, Theo talks about life like only his crazy Louisiana ass can. What he’s been up to and what’s going on in the world, and he also takes calls from fans to talk about anything and everything. He’s a captivating storyteller who’s led and continues to lead a super interesting life. So check out his fucking podcast already! Listen, like, and subscribe to This Past Weekend with Theo Von today you Mothersuckers!

C. My West Coast Buds! This podcast is ALSO brought you today by ANOTHER kick ass podcast - the My West Coast Buds podcast! Hell yes! Hosted by comic, Edible Jedi and TIMESUCKER Joe Dimeo, My West Coast Buds is an inside baseball look at Cannabis, coffee, comedy, and spirits - all of Joe’s favorite vices - and so much more. It’s a fun and funny conversation where you learn a lot about the explosive new industry of legal marijuana.

On this week’s episode, dropping today, Joe and his co host, Ben, have comedian and whiskey maker Travis Nelson in studio to teach Ben and Joe all about whiskey. How its made? What does all the terminology mean? What is a single malt? You learn all this and more. Also, if any time suckers want to see Joe and Ben live - they’re very funny guys - buy a pass to the Undertow Comedy Festival in Lincoln City, Oregon. It’s this weekend, April 26th, 27th, and 28th and you can get $10 off any pass with the code "getpulledunder"

So listen and subscribe to the My West Coast Buds podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud and all sorts of other podcast players - including, of course, www.mywestcoastbuds.com - link in today’s episode description. You can also find them in the sponsor section of the app. Just push their button!

D. Tour Dates! And speaking of comedy, a HUGE thank you to you SLC Suckers - holy shit. Friday night late show was the only show not completely sold out. The rest were sold out before you could even try and get tickets at the door. Unreal. More people came out this weekend than they did when I actually shot a special there a few years back and the shows were even more fun.

SLC professional photographer Logan Sorenson came out and took a bunch of photos. He does all kinds of bands that come through town, like Queens of the Stone Age, and it was awesome to have him come take some pics. His website is http:// www.lmsorenson.net/

It’s been feeling like a dream lately at a lot of these shows on the road - hope the fun continues. Some amazing fans showed up in Chikatilo outfits at a couple different shows. Track suits, Chikatilo shirts, sweatpants, unreal. Can’t want to get more live Timesucks on the books. Hope I can get a ton for 2019.

San Francisco Punchline coming up this week and weekend, Wednesday through Saturday run, April 25-28th! If half as many Timesuckers come out as they did in Salt Lake, it’s gonna be amazing.

Spokane is up Sunday Fun-day, May 6th, at the fantastic Spokane Comedy Club. Gary Ridgeway. The Green River killer. Gonna suck that piece of shit live.

Sacramento Punchline May 10th - 12th.

Tempe, Arizona Improv May 31st - June 3rd.

I’ll announce a bunch more dates after that, just waiting for a ton of lazy fucking comedy club mangers to get their shit together and put the dates we have on their websites so customers can actually buy tickets. I’m amazed that some of these places, as fun as they are to perform at, are able to stay in business.

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv.

The Pootie and Juju limited edition, Danger Brain designed mugs are already sold out! Incredible! Sorry to those who didn’t get ‘em quick enough. We’ll do more Pootie and Juju stuff, don’t you worry. Thanks so much for the continually increasing amount of support.

There was a quality issue with 40 of the mugs. So, 40 mugs will become available as soon as the mug people make 40 more mugs that aren’t fucked up. Silly mug people.

Also, my wife Lynze, Queen of the Suck. Office manager and more - she coordinated with Harmony Vellecamp to ask fans to nominate me for a Ted Talk. I didn’t even realize that had happened because I was slammed in Salt Lake City with shows and promotion and some writing, et cetera. But, I guess a lot of you responded. So, thank you! If you would like to nominate for a Ted Talk, I’m sure it would be a long shot but I’d love to do one. I’d love to talk about why I think Timesuck works and I’d love to encourage people to not give up and how if you work really, really hard at something, you still not might get it, but you do give yourself the very best odds of getting it. And that’s all you can hope for in life.

TED TA LK LINK

One more thing - Timesucker Adam Dayton sent two huge, custom, hand-painted Cornhole boards to the Suck Dungeon. They’re amazing. And he’ll make them for you. I’ll have pics up on social media, @timesuckpodcast His email is [email protected]

Alright. Let’s get to it now!

Bonus episode 20, The Demonic Possession of Anneliese Michel, Part 2 of 2, right now! Beware of Lucifina! Her force is strong in this one.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. ** Weird scary shit** : Weird energy around today’s Suck! As I began to dig into today’s Timesuck Timeline, I had three Pages documents open. That’s right PC lovers, I use a Mac. And I had a document open of over 30,000 words worth of notes the great Lillie twins had compiled for this document to give me plenty of info to sift through. And then I also had my notes from part one open as a second document, and then today’s script as the third document.

And I just arranged them around on the screen so I could click between them. and as I was working on today’s script document, suddenly the place where I’d stopped working on the Lillie Twins notes document started moving around. Does that make sense? The document I wasn’t working on had it’s text start scrolling around as if I were scrolling even though my cursor was on today’s document AND I wasn’t moving it.

And then it did this again when I went back to the notes document, rediscovered the place I had been looking at, scrolled back to where I had left off and then brought today’s notes back up to the front. Super creepy!

I probably accidentally hit some button or my palm hit my track pad or something but it creeped me out. It was just odd because I bounce back and forth between multiple open documents all the time. I do it for every episode and this is the first time that has ever happened. Very unfortunate and odd timing.

Just needed to let you know where I am mentally with this one.

III. Timeline intro/recap: So, last episode, we left off with Anneliese Michel in the summer of 1973. She’d been battling a variety of strange ailments since the summer of ’69. (Bryan Adams) It was the summer of ’69! Oh yeah! Oh, yeah Back in the summer of sixty-nine, oh Man, we were killin' time, we were young and restless We needed to unwind I guess nothin' can last forever, forever, no. Yeah”

Sorry about that. You just got Bryan Adams’d!

That didn’t feel right. “Yah mo be there - Up and over - Yah mo be there - Up and over” Ahhhh. That felt right. All is good again.

But for real, Anneliese had been battling a variety of illnesses and some form of epilepsy for 4 years. She’d actually had her first seizure five years before, in 1968, when she was 16. She’d been a sickly child, she had caught the mumps, measles, scarlett fever - basically if something was going around, Anneliese was gonna catch it. But, she’d also enjoyed long stretches of good health. She lived in the little German town of Klingenberg am main and was raised in a strict, very Catholic household. She also, if you recall, played the accordion aka THE DEVIL’S HAND PIANO!

She’d seen a shit ton of doctors. She suffered a severe bout of pneumonia. She’d spent a lengthy amount of time in a sanatorium. Back when she was 16 and had her first seizure, she also experienced her first bout of either sleep paralysis or was visited by some sort of demonic shadow person, or both.

For the past three years, she’d been seeing the occasional demon face which she didn’t seem to enjoy. She’s been hearing strange knocking sounds around her room. In the Spring of 1973, her mom had walked into the living room to find Anneliese staring at an image of the Mother Mary with black, evil eyes and some kind of demon claws for hand which her mother didn’t seem to particularly care for.

And then, in the summer of 73, her dad took her on a religious pilgrimage to San Damiano, a church and monastery near Assissi, Italy where there have been incidents of the faithful having allegedly been miraculously healed for centuries. Pretty nice thing to do. But instead of being grateful, Anneliese refused to go into the church, refused to wear a religious necklace her dad bought her, weirded out everyone else on the guided trip, insulted the tour guide, and, worse of all, smelled like “burning shit” on the bus ride back home.

And that was when her fam decided to talk to some priests about an exorcism. It was the burning shit that broke the camel’s back. And that, dear Timesucker, takes us into today’s Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

IV. Exorcism Timesuck Timeline A. September 1973: First half of September 1973 was a busy time in the Michel household. Anneliese’s siblings, even ugly ol’ Gertrude, were preparing for work and new jobs while Anneliese grew more and more depressed about her future. The medication she’d been prescribed for epilepsy had left her feeling depressed and despondent.

Frau Hein, the woman who organized the trip to San Damiano, told the Michel’s that they should contact a Priest named Father Habiger, the pastor of the mother of God Parish in Afschasenberg (Off-shazen-burg). The family met with the Priest, told them about the trip to San Damiano, told them about Anneliese’s aversion to religious items. They talked about the demon faces, the claw hands, the black eyes, the otherworldly accordion skills.

But, in person, Father Habiger found Anneliese entirely normal, albeit a little bit shy. He saw no signs of possession. But, based on what the Michel’s told him, he put them in touch with an exorcism specialist, a Priest by the name of Father Ezekiel WhistleFingers.

That’s not true. What a tragic name that would be? If you were ambitious and wanted to be successful, but you were born with the name of Father Ezekiel WhistleFingers, wouldn’t you have to change your name? You certainly couldn’t make it to Pope with that bullshit. Pope WhistleFingers? Not a chance. Absolutely not.

No. Father Habiger recommended the Michels to a Jesuit priest named Father Tinkle McButtMuffin.

Of course that’s not his name. Another tragically unfortunate name. His name was Adolf Rodewyk, and he was based in Frankfurt. Gotta say, Adolf also not the best name in post WWII Germany. But still arguably better than Whistlefingers of McButtMuffin.

Anyway.

Father Rodewyk was the local expert in matters of possession, having published several books on the topic. He was born in 1894 and was a second lieutenant in the First World War. After the war, in 1918, he’d joined the Jesuit priesthood in the Netherlands.

After studying theology in Bonn, Innsbruck, and Valkenburg, he was ordained a priest in 1925 and then later became rector of the college in Bad Godesberg and Hamburg and the Superior in Koblenz and Bonn.

During the Second World War, Father Rodewyk was Chaplain of the military hospital. He met a nurse he believed to be possessed during the War, carried out an exorcism which became widely known amongst fellow priests, and then this led to hundreds of others over the following decades.

When he was told about Anneliese, he requested a written account of the events and he responded by stating that he did believe she may in fact be possessed but due to his advanced age of 79 he wouldn’t personally be able to become involved. He suggested contacting Father Herrmann (Er-man) in Aschaffenburg. (Ah-shoffen- burg) B. Fall of 1973: Anneliese would see Father Herrmann about ten times between the Summer of 1973 and the Summer of 1975.

Father Herrmann found Anneliese to be a nice young woman from a deeply religious home. Anneliese complained about not feeling herself and about not feeling like she was always in control of herself. She tried to describe the demonic faces she’d been seeing in detail but couldn’t. She presented no blatant signs of demonic possession in his presence sho he suggested she see a neurologist. Anneliese told him she’d already been down that road - many times. She’d had brain scans, she’d been prescribed medication, and nothing seemed to help.

How terrible would that feel? Can you imagine starting to see demon faces, waking up in the middle of the night being paralyzed - suddenly feeling a strong aversion to religious objects, feeling that something else was taking control of your soul, occasionally hearing voices - and despite going to doctors and being prescribed various medications and receiving a battery of tests and given all sorts of treatments and STILL - nothing is helping. And now, after years of suffering - you’re seeing a priest and he doesn’t know how to help you either? That would be Hell for me.

I’m an absolute control freak and the not knowing would drive me absolutely fucking mad. I hate not having a plan. Not knowing what I’m supposed to do to fix a problem. This mentality is why flesh wounds, like bruises and cuts, have never bothered me, but I’m a whiny bastard whenever I catch a cold. I would MUCH prefer some type of cut, even if it requires stitches, than a prolonged cold. Because with the cut, I understand the healing process. It seems very manageable and straight forward. You get cut and then immediately your body works to heal the cut and you get to watch the progress. Visual, instantly recognizable progress. A scab forms, the skin and tissue underneath the scab repairs itself. The scab flakes away to reveal new skin. The new skin fades into a scar and over time, the scar itself fades. And you get to watch all of this progress. You see yourself getting better. The end is in sight.

But not with a lingering virus or cold. Sometimes, you start to feel better and then suddenly, a whole new set of symptoms manifests itself. You think you’re healed and then you relapse. You have no idea when it’s gonna end.

Same mentality is why I prefer the forest to the sea. There are predators and dangers in both places but in the forest - I can see the dangers. I can hear them coming. I can watch them getting closer or moving far away and I can constantly reassess the threat. Not true in the sea when you’re treading water and God knows what could be coming for you.

Fear of the unknown is one of the most powerful fears out there - imagine the fear Anneliese must have felt not knowing what was inside her. Not knowing if it was psychological or spiritual. Never knowing what it would do next or what was possible. And this not knowing just drags on for years and years. Absolutely terrible.

So Anneliese tries to convince Father Herrmann that medical treatment just won’t work. Her parents tell him about the disrespect Anneliese has felt at times towards holy objects and about the times when the stench of burning feces has appeared in whatever room she happens to be in.

What if after all this they finally discovered that she had just been suffering from really, really, really bad gas? In secret, this whole time, she’d been snacking on rotten eggs and rancid pinto beans. Rinsing it down with spoiled milk and eating so much cheese, especially limburger and munster. It messed up her digestive tract so bad it actually started to make her hallucinate. And how pissed would you be if you were her parent and she admits this after five years of Hell.

(Priest) “And you have absolutely no idea where the smell of burning feces could be coming from dear child?”

(Anneliese) “Well Father… now that I think about it…my midnight snack ritual may have something to do with all of this…”

Well, despite what Anneliese and her parents told Father Herrmann, he just didn’t experience these things during their meetings so he couldn’t justify an exorcism. Instead, he and Anneliese frequently prayed the rosary together. During these times, she was calm, pious, and showed no behavior that would lead him to suspect anything.

C. Fall of 1973 continued: And then, another Priest hears of Anneliese’s case - and Anneliese is also introduced to Father Whipple Von Dingleberry, I mean, Father Alt, around September of 1973.

A man who, years later when Father Alt is put on trial for bearing responsibility in Anneliese’s death, would have his own mental health questioned. Based on his descriptions in letters to church officials about his dealings with Anneliese, a neurologist would suspect him of being a paranoid schizophrenic.

On September 30th, 1974, Father Alt wrote a letter to his bishop describing how he’d come to hear about Anneliese the year before and what his initial impressions were regarding her claim of demonic possession. Keep in mind, in this letter he is writing about all the stuff that happens before he even meets her. He’s only been shown some pictures and told about her.

1. “After much consideration and considerable hesitation, I should now like to acquaint you with a case of spiritual counseling about which I spoke to you very briefly when you were here for a visit. This is the case of Anneliese Michel of Klingenberg. I will attempt to relate the case to you in order, as it happened.

My friend, Father Roth, came to me one evening and asked me to help him and some of his priest colleagues in solving a case of spiritual counseling. This concerned a girl, Anneliese Michel, whom he had not yet met. According to the opinion of some persons, she was alleged to be possessed or at least molested by the devil.

Strange way of saying that.

“Molested” by the Devil. And weird how that is inferred to not be as bad as being possessed.

(Priest 1) “My God, was she possessed by the Devil!?!”

(Priest 2) “No, no. It wasn’t nearly that serious. She was only molested. The Devil had no interest in her soul. It was her tits he wanted. And her tight, sweet, Catholic wiener hole wedged between her virginal thighs. He just wanted to put the tip in. Maybe get his Devil face down there and soak up her sweet lady scent! That Catholic schoolgirl outfit REALLY does it for the Devil. It was molestation he was after!!!! ”

Damn you Lucifina! That was WAY too sexually explicit!

Back to the letter.

I was supposed to tell, by tuning in on whatever she was radiating, whether she was sick or not. Suddenly I was able to describe the whole family, father, mother, sisters, and grandmother, something I could not possibly know since I had never seen them. Later all of this could be verified. As to Anneliese, I felt an enormous radiation that originated from her neck or, rather, from her thyroid and her head. I did not detect any illness. This, of course, did not permit any conclusions as to whether she was possessed or not.

Two days later a fellow priest (Father Herrmann) who was going to take charge of the case visited me. He handed me two letters, one written by Anna Michel, the other by Anneliese. I was unable to read them because, all of a sudden, I became so nauseated that I thought that at any moment I was going to faint. I experienced a strange excitation such as I had never been subject to before, considerably frightening and startling my fellow priest, who was a witness to all of this. Naturally, even this experience, of course, did not prove we were dealing with a case of possession. That evening I celebrated mass. I was mentally prepared for the transubstantiation [“tran-suhb-stan-shee-ey- shuhn”] (the moment in the mass when the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ occurs) and also included that unknown girl in the sacrifice. All of a sudden something hit me in the back, the air turned cold and, at the same time, there was an intense stench as though something was burning. I had to lean against the altar. With great effort and only a dint of considerable concentration was I able to speak the rest of the text. I felt deeply distressed, as if a negative force were surrounding me, which, however, aside from vexing me, could inflict no real harm. After the service I went to a fellow priest and reported everything to him calmly and in detail. The subsequent night was the most restless I have ever spent. I had taken a very effective sleeping pill, one that previously had always helped, but I could find no rest. My apartment was filled with a variety of stenches, as though something were burning of dung, of an open sewer, of fecal matter and these kept alternating.

And here we are with the burning shit again!

Man, this must be the stinkiest of all stinks because the Devil clearly prefers to torment you with it. They never say what kind of shit it is though. Is it human? Some other animal? I haven’t done a sniff by sniff comparison, but, compared to what I’ve experienced in bathrooms versus cleaning up dog and deer shit in the yard, I feel like human shit smells worse than deer shit but that dog shit smells worse than human shit. However, to get a truly fair assessment, I’d have to also shit in the yard and have my family do the same - then, all of the shit has been exposed to the same elements. Left out in the sun, rained on, exposed to more insects, etc.

I Googled, “What animal has the smelliest shit?” and I came across one of those top ten list sites. It was “the top tens dot com”, and they list human poo as being the stinkiest, followed by cow, horse, pig, then dog, elephant, cat, monkey, goat, and then rhino.

However, they cite zero scientific studies so I question their claims. But, until someone sends me a study, I guess I’ll assume that human poo is in fact the stinkiest, so, we’re talking burning human shit.

Glad we were able to dig into that. More letter now.

It didn’t matter whether I reached out to the rosary or whether I spoke some other prayer, the stench continued. It was literally infernal.

Literally infernal! It didn’t just smell like it was from Hell. It WAS from Hell!

In addition, there was an occasional loud thumping in my wardrobe. I lay in bed, feeling sorely pressed. I tried to pray. In my own words I spoke an exorcism, thinking of my priestly power. For a few minutes I felt easier, but I was simultaneously ice cold and yet bathed in perspiration. In my extremity, I called to Father Pio for help, since I knew he had experienced similar tribulations. Nothing happened. I repeated my prayer to him and suddenly my room was filled with such an intense fragrance of violets that I thought I had dumped aftershave lotion on my pajamas. But it smelled only of my own sweat.

So many smells in this Suck! Are violets what Heaven smells like? Google doesn’t even rank them in the top 10! Why not roses or jasmine? What about pussy willow? Is that what Heaven smells like it? Does it smell like pussy…Willow?

Strangely, at the same time I stopped perspiring and my body felt warm. I breathed with relief and then only to discover, to my amazement, that my field of vision had been very much narrowed, and that my color perception was reduced. Now I was able to see colors once more in their normal intensity. The pressure on my head had disappeared. Before having to get up, I fell into an hour’s restful sleep. “My night” had lasted from eleven the previous evening until five o’clock in the morning. When, the following evening I told my fellow priests about all of this, they were suddenly able to smell the same strange stench. The entire parish house smelled as though of burning, although the windows were open.

So much fire! So much burning. It’s like Hell is just one big flaming sack of shit.

The “molestations” did return a few more times, but they became less vivid, and if I prayed the exorcism prayer to myself, they stopped quite abruptly. Occasionally it was as if I had to struggle against them. In the evening I took a walk with my friend, Father Roth, and once more as we talked about Anneliese Michel, we smelled the same series of stenches. Finally, now, I heard some of the details about the girl’s affliction. [He listed them here.] A few weeks later I also met her personally. She was very depressed, but in our conversation she was able to express herself very clearly, and she obviously had a considerable gift of analysis.

So that is the bulk of one of Father Alt’s letters. Clearly something demonic is going on or he is one extremely melodramatic collar-wearer.

Shortly after he experiencing all this craziness, Father Alt actually meets Anneliese for the first time. During one her first conversations with Father Alt, Anneliese’s face suddenly changes: her eyes darken in a way that the color of her eyes were no longer distinguishable, and it was as though her soul left her body. The lights were still kind of on but Anneliese was no longer home. Father Alt worried that she was being molested. A damn Devil diddler had gotten ahold of her!

But then he gives her some sort of priestly blessing, and suddenly she appears normal again.

D. October, 1973: And after this initial blessing, life begins to become normal again for Anneliese as well. She returns to school and majoring in education and theology at the University of Wurzburg. She stays at a Catholic hostel and quickly acquaints herself with many of the churches in her search for places to pray.

She starts sleeping with a metal chastity belt and wraps her breasts down in linen soaked in holy water to make it that much harder for the Devil to do His evil diddling.

Of course that part is not true.

She’s taking her medication and she visits with Father Alt every two weeks, and everything is cool for a sec, but then, the demon faces start showing up again, which makes focusing during lectures a wee bit difficult. Yeah, I bet. I would think it would be challenging to pay attention to an hour long theology lecture when you’re operating at 100%, but then, you add some distracting demon faces into the mix and forget it. You’re not making the honor roll.

E. November, 1973: And then, in November of 1973, Anneliese meets a boy, a boy named Peter, and she gets her first taste of young love. Her classmates and family notice she is suddenly the happiest they’d ever seen her, and over the next few weeks, Peter literally fucks the Devil right out of her! Good dick! Turns out that was all she needed. And now, an entirely new exorcism method has been created. The deep dickin’ method!

No. Peter does not fuck the Devil out of her but they do share a few happy weeks. Necking I’m guessing. She was very religious. Maybe a little over the sweater boob cupping. MAYBE half a dry hump.

But then two weeks later Anneliese tells Peter he has to go. She’s been experiencing feeling paralyzed at night again and she is still battling feelings of depression and she’s afraid for him to see all of that.

F. November 27, 1973: On November 27, 1973, Peter, who w as not deeply religious, convinced Anneliese to go to yet another doctor. A therapist this time. A man named Dr. Lenner.

And Dr. Lenner asked her a lot of questions about her relationship with her parents. He felt she suffered from a case of neurosis caused by a domineering father and a mother whom she hated because she wasn’t allowed to have any boyfriends.

It is amazing how often overbearing, oppressive parenting comes up when you’re digging into the lives of psychologically damaged human beings.

Based on Anneliese’s description of her symptoms, Dr. Lenner suspected epilepsy as the cause of the seizures. He referred her to the University Neurological clinic.

The next day Anneliese went for an EEG. Dr. Irgmand Schleip, the academic director of the clinic, reported irregular patterns in the left temporal area of her brain. The previous five EEG’s showed no abnormalities. She assumed it was epilepsy. Dr. Schleip switched her from Dilantin to Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall), since Dilantin hadn’t completely suppressed the epilepsy-like activity in her brain. Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) , like Dilantin, has various potential side effects. It can cause fatigue, nausea and dizziness.

Anneliese told Dr. Schleip of her homesickness for her family, and that she couldn’t feel for Peter the way she felt she should. She also spoke of the nauseating stenches which Dr. Schleip thought were psychomotor seizures. Dr. Lenner diagnosed her ailments as psychological, and Dr. Schleip diagnosed them as physiological. She didn’t mention the demonic faces to either of the doctors. G. December 1973: Peter tolerated Anneliese’s depressed moods, which came and went unpredictably. They discussed religious matters and Peter started going to church again. It was only in December 1973 that Anneliese told Peter of the demonic faces and the stenches.

Anneliese told Peter that perhaps the switch to Tegretol (Teg-rah- tall) had helped. However, it didn’t help the horrid stenches which came without any visible source. Her whole family could smell them. Her depression coincided with the stenches and demonic faces. Peter suggested she might be hallucinating. Anneliese explained that when these things happened she had no control over herself and she had no say about anything. She struggled against this loss of control, but always lost.

H. March 1974: In March 1974, Anneliese began to visit Father Alt more often. She couldn’t entirely get rid of the demonic faces in spite of her taking her medication regularly. At times she was unable to pray. She quickly improved when Father Alt prayed with and over her. Anneliese tried to visit Father Alt often as she felt his prayers and blessings helped. He thought she might be improving and suggested she practice a stricter religious lifestyle and continue her visits to the doctor.

I. April 1974: She saw Dr. Schleip again in April 1974. And then she visited Dr. Lenner on May 7, 1974 due to having increasingly frequent severe headaches, mainly emanating from her forehead. This may have been a side effect of the Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) . Her reflexes were slow and she slept more than usual. Dr. Schleip wondered if Anneliese was not taking her medication on a regular basis. Dr. Schleip found her EEG improved, but wanted her to continue with Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall).

J. Summer 1974: Everything continues - the smells, the faces, the headaches, et cetera, into the summer of 1974. Father Alt has been sharing what he’s been hearing from Anneliese during their meetings with all of his priest friends and they all agree that Peter’s deep dickin’ exorcism method isn’t working. They must try something else! They do actually all agree that some form of demonic work is at play, but, they’re still not ready to pull the trigger on an actual exorcism.

To call for an exorcism, several conditions had to be met. The demon had to completely control the body, rendering the person helpless. This didn’t seem to quite be the case. At least not yet.

Anneliese and Peter are still dating despite all of the strange goings on and despite her mother Anna being a bit of a maniac. Her mom won’t let her and Peter be alone in a room together when she’s around and doesn’t want Peter visiting her more than once a week. Old school!

Throughout the rest of 1974, Anneliese becomes more and more depressed. Her parents don’t approve of her having a boyfriend, doctors can’t stop the demonic faces she continues to see from going away, she still deals with the occasional sleep paralysis, the Church won’t sign off on an exorcism. She feels again like God has abandoned her. She’s devoted herself to God but not even the Church is helping her. She grows steadily more depressed and thinks of suicide again. In May of 1975 her grandma dies. She’s still dating Peter who must really care for her to deal with all this shit. Or, maybe she wasn’t quite THAT religious. Maybe she’s giving Peter such good lovin’ that he’s willing to rationalize dating a girl who believes she’s possessed by demonic forces, sees demon faces, and constantly hears a voice in her head telling her she’s damned. I bet the sex, if they had it, was probably amazing. K. June/July 1975: Then, in late June and early July of 1975, shit went to the next level with Anneliese. During a meeting with Father Alt on June 28 that was also attended by her boyfriend Peter and her sister Roswitha, Annaliese flipped out and started throwing shit at Peter and her sister.

On the following Tuesday, Father Alt visited Anneliese in Wurzburg and found her in deep despair. She told him that she was condemned. They began to pray a rosary and then suddenly she was unable to continue. Tears ran down her face. She assured Father Alt that she was still taking her medication.

At the end of their meeting, Father Alt prayed an exorcism prayer to himself and Anneliese immediately stood up as if to defend herself and ripped the rosary to pieces. And then when Peter arrived, Anneliese told him, in a deep guttural voice, to leave.

Father Alt was now convinced of Anneliese’s possession. He told Anneliese’s parents they needed to bring her home from school on July 17. And then she did return home to Klingenberg. Shortly before she left Wurzburg, a friend of hers, Anna Lippert, recalled witnessing the following incident:

“I remember an incident from July 1975. I sat with her in her room, and her boyfriend Peter, was also present. Suddenly, right in the middle of the conversation, her face contracted into a real Fratze, a hideous, grimacing countenance I cannot describe in detail. Her body became completely stiff. It took half an hour before the cramp disappeared. Her boyfriend explained to me that her condition was due to the fact she was possessed. I too thought it must be a possession, for her grimace was so demonic I could think of nothing else.”

Again - he must of really cared for her. I love my wife Lynze, but, if from time to time a demon starts to take over and starts, among other things, turning her sweet Lynze face into a demon mask… I’m not saying I’m gonna leave her, BUT, she’s gonna have to find a new place to stay until the demon stuff calms down.

“Aright baby, it’s almost sundown, so, time for you to head down to your demon apartment. I need to not sleep with one eye open tonight.”

After returning home, Anneliese’s condition worsened immensely. Something very strange, whether it was physical, mental, spiritual, or some combo of the 3 was clearly going on. Her body would stiffen for hours at a time and she would have to half-walk, half-drag suddenly useless legs around the house. She looked terribly frightened all the time. She became chronically unable to pray.

When Father Alt was unable to visit, another priest who lived closer to the Michel family home, Father Roth, began stopping by to pray for Anneliese. Father Roth would later recount an incident late in the summer of 1975 when Anneliese charged him when he came inside the home and screamed in an unfamiliar voice, “Get out!” And then she screamed, “You are tormenting me!” And then she screamed “Gotcha!!”

And then she behaved absolutely, totally normal for the first time in years, saying, “Oh shit! Man I fucking got you guys good. You should see your face right now Father Roth. And mom, dad, you guys should really see your faces. I’ve been punking you gullible motherfuckers for years! The whole time I’ve been joking around. Seven YEARS I’ve been working this joke. I got you, Peter, all my doctors, all the priests, oh shit!”

And decades later Anneliese’s long con would inspire Ashton Kutcher to create the show Punk’d on MTV.

Of course not. She really did yell at Father Roth and then she threw some rosaries at him. She tried to throw a big five liter jug of water at him when he tried to take a cross out of his pocket.

And strangely, in the summer of 1975, the physical stiffening worsened. Most of the time she could no longer bend her knees and was barely able to limp along.

And then one day, in late July, while she was limping along with Peter who had offered to take her for a walk, she suddenly dropped to her knees, her legs suddenly bending, and she fell into a trance where she was unresponsive for roughly 10 minutes. Then, she suddenly jumped back up and shouted that she was free! She claimed to have seen the Mother Mary.

And then, a true miracle occurred - Peter still didn’t break up with her.

This is where I am for sure out. If Lynze acts this way for this long, I will come visit her in the mental hospital but I will not let her stay at home. No way! And if I was just dating someone, nope, I’m out.

I don’t know. I say that, but, love overrides reason so much of the time. Maybe I’d just deal with it. That’d be tough though. If someone couldn’t walk for days and then suddenly went into a trance and then said they saw the Mother Mary and then started jumping up and down, I would think they were batshit fucking crazy. Get the right therapy, take the right meds, or I’m outta here.

For the next few months, Anneliese acted normal, according to the sources I read. I’m guessing “normal” for Anneliese was talking about Mother Mary and the Devil all the time but not being actively possessed by the Devil. She seems super whackadoodle to me at this point. Maybe she was possessed by some entity, but, even if thats true, I feel like she was also severely mentally ill. This poor, tortured woman.

L. September 1975: Then, in September 1975, Anneliese believes that she’s seen the Virgin Mary again and this time, Mary wants her to do something. She wants Anneliese to take penance for the sins of her country. As in self-punishment. Not weird at all. Just gonna start physically harming herself to save her fellow Germans from damnation. However, she doesn’t seem to actually start doing this at that time.

And then, the next month, in October of 1975, she returns to the University of Wurzburg. What the fuck? How has she not been committed to a mental institution at this point? Seriously. I’m not kidding. For her own safety! She is CLEARLY not well. She’s not in the ballpark of well. How is she not in a padded room being evaluated by psychiatrists on a daily fucking basis. This poor girl is FUCKED UP. If one of my kids does half of what she’d done by this point, they’re getting locked up until we figure out what the Hell is going on.

Well, of course things do not go well when she returns to school. Upon reentering her old hostel room her body freezes and she becomes completely rigid. SO WEIRD. She is standing, frozen still, in front of a crucifix hanging on the wall in front of her, and her face distorts and she begins to growl like an animal.

And then another true miracle occurs. Her boyfriend, Peter, doesn’t yell, “FUCK! THIS! SHIT! I’m out!”, and storm off. He starts to pray for her silently and Anneliese, or whatever Anneliese has become, orders him to stop. When she finally snaps out of it, Peter convinces her to return with him to her family in Klingenberg.

Hearing about this new episode, and hearing about Father Roth’s recent encounter with Anneliese, Father Alt makes a new plea to his bishop to be granted permission to perform an exorcism ritual on Anneliese. The entity is clearly taking control of her body. Bishop Stangl grants Father Alt permission, essentially to perform some sort of exorcism light, called a “small exorcism”. Apparently, this is the baby exorcism you test out first. It’s a couple prayers, not a big four hour deal.

M. August 3, 1975: On August 3rd, 1975, Father Alt and Father Roth went to Klingenberg to begin their mission. During the praying of this small exorcism, Anneliese whimpers and moans that she’s burning. She also tries to knock the book containing the exorcism prayers out of Father Alt’s hand.

After Father Alt and Father Roth completed the small exorcism ritual, well, things got worse. It REALLY didn’t work. It seemed to amplify whatever delusion and/or possession Anneliese was caught up in or taken by. She started only sleeping about two hours a night. She’d shout the prayer “my Jesus forgiveness and mercy, forgiveness and mercy…" for hours on end.

Can you imagine living in the same house as her while this going on? Her whole family is in a living Hell now. I mean really. Your daughter, or sister, or girlfriend starts freaking out on priests or chanting the same prayer for hours on end. Wow. I’ve thought about breaking up with people because I didn’t like the sound their mouth made when they chewed their food.

Anneliese would repeat certain patterns for hours. She’d kneel down, get up, kneel down, and get up quickly over and over and over so many times that her knees swole up and became ulcerated. She’d run through the house screaming, and after long periods, would tremble, twitch, then collapse and remain rigid for several days. DAYS! Sometimes the muscles in her neck would tense up like bands of steel.

Why was she so stiff? Maybe she was sleeping on the wrong mattress? Maybe all of this could’ve been avoided if Anneliese Michel had been sleeping on a Leesa Mattress.

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Back to Anneliese. Back to her freaking out at home. Why didn’t they take her somewhere?

Anneliese was terrified of being committed to a mental institution, but, at this point, you gotta lock her up for her own good.

Anneliese suddenly couldn’t eat solid foods and could drink fluids only sparingly. The rigidity spread to her chest and she had to struggle to breathe. When Anna tried to put a pillow under her head to try and help her, Anneliese asked her not to help or she would be forced to undergo something worse. When her father Josef tried to hold her up, Anneliese turned red as she choked and gasped for air.

While she felt as though she was not allowed to eat, she was able to eat flies and spiders and did so. She urinated on the kitchen floor. She licked her urine off the floor. And then she started to attack her family. Everyone learned to duck to avoid being kicked, punched or bitten. She ripped holy pictures off the wall, tore rosaries apart, and once shattered a crucifix on the corner of a bed.

Sometimes during the heat of the day she would put her head in the toilet to cool off. Once she rolled around in the coal dust and then climbed into bed. She was out of control. There were days when Anneliese fought with Peter and her sisters from morning until night. Peter’s shirts were torn and the sleeves ripped off. By evening they were all exhausted.

On the eve of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Anneliese prayed through the night until the following morning. Later when she was herself again, she told Peter that August 15 was the worst day of her life. She was not able to pray or enter the church, as she felt prevented from entering by an invisible force. When the exorcism prayers were said quietly, it felt like her hands were in a wasps nest. For some time the demons had tempted Anneliese with despair and thoughts of suicide. She was tempted to jump out the window or into the river. One day Anneliese was under the kitchen table barking like a dog. Everyone tried to get her to come out. Nothing worked. Josef called a friend from church who came and found her under the table. She instructed Anneliese three times in the name of the Blessed Trinity to come out and sit down. Like a lamb she slowly came out and took a seat at the table.

She also started either harming herself or exhibiting signs of some kind of stigmata. This is what her mom said,

“One morning I entered Anneliese’s room and said, Anneliese, you are in bed today. I usually found her kneeling before the crucifix or doing some other form of penance. I noticed the wounds on her feet which were very swollen. This had occurred during the night. She later received the same on her hands. Her hands were not as bad as her feet. She suffered very much from these wounds.”

Peter, sister Roswitha and her parents took two hour shifts attempting to prevent Anneliese from injuring herself as the situation became unbearable. They tried to contact Father Alt who was on vacation.

They got ahold of Father Rodewyk in Frankfurt. He decided not to interrupt Father Alt’s vacation. Instead, Father Rodewyk decided to come to Klingenberg and observe Anneliese himself. In early September 1975, Father Rodewyk traveled by train to Aschaffenburg. Thea and Father Herrmann picked him up and drove him to Klingenberg. In a subsequent statement, he described his visit to the Michel home:

“When I entered the house, Anneliese Michel lay, fully dressed, on the floor of the kitchen and could obviously not be addressed. I am of the opinion she was in a typical hypnotic state, in a kind of deep sleep. I should like to remark that such a state is a symptom of possession. I designated it as a crisis situation. First I went to the living room with her parents and had them report to me about the condition of their daughter. Then I directed them to bring Anneliese into the room and make her sit on the sofa. Her father led her in and held her by the hand because she tried to hit her parents. She did not look emaciated. I sat down beside her and held her hands. In her trance state, a second personage announced itself, calling itself Judas. I had asked, “What is your name?” and her answer came, “Judas.” She spoke with an altered, much lower voice. I had held her by the wrists. During the conversation I noticed that her cramped muscles relaxed. She came to and looked at me with surprise. Apparently it was not until then that she noticed me consciously. Subsequently I was able to carry on an entirely reasonable conversation with her. I told her that we would not desert her and we would help her. I was thinking of priestly aid through exorcism... Suddenly the cramps started again. I asked her family to take her back to the kitchen. I told them I knew enough about the case, that I found confirmation of my surmise that we were dealing with a case of possession, and that I would have to consider what could be done. When I left the house, Anneliese came out of the kitchen and slapped my cheek.

When Father Rodewyk went back in after getting slapped, Anneliese was playing All Along the Watchtower the ACCORDION, the Devil’s Hand Piano, AT a PRESTO TEMPO! YES! The Spirit of Jimi Hendrix was now inside of her! Walking on the ceiling as she wailed that Accordion. Her head spun a full 360 degrees as she shifted from verse to chorus. Then she flew around the room and played it behind her head for the solo.

No.

She was suddenly playing the piano as if nothing happened. For Father Rodewyk, important elements in defining possession were now present. The spirit’s name had been revealed and Anneliese showed an aversion to consecrated objects and a fear of exorcism.

As soon as Father Alt returned from his vacation, Father Rodewyk called him to update him on Anneliese’s condition. As far as he was concerned, this was definitely a case of total possession. He suggested they get together to consult on how to proceed. They agreed that they needed to bring in some priests with more experience and a higher standing in the church’s hierarchy to help them. And they contacted a priest named Father Renz and another named Father Rodewyk, that priest we talked about earlier who’d written about exorcisms, got them to agree, and then sent a letter asking permission to perform a full exorcism ritual on Anneliese to the bishop.

N. September 16, 1975: And on September 16, 1975, Bishop Stangl responded with the following letter to Father Renz:

After due consideration and with good information, I now charge the Reverend Father Renz, Salvatorian, Superior in Ruck-Schippach to proceed with Anna Lieser within the terms of CIC can 1151 1. For some time my prayers have been directed to this concern. May God give us his help. I thank everyone sincerely for their efforts. With best wishes and my blessing, + Josef Bishop of Wurzburg.

Supposedly, that is church code for, “Okay, enough’s enough bros. Get the fucking Devil out of her!”

O. September 23, 1975: On September 23, 1975, the day Father Renz received the Bishop’s letter, he visited the Michels. Father Renz found Anneliese exhibiting no signs of possession. To the contrary, he found her quite reserved, polite and deeply religious. He returned the next day to perform the first exorcism rite.

On arrival, Father Renz was accompanied upstairs by Anneliese’s sisters Roswitha and Barbara, her parents, her boyfriend Peter, Peter Hein and Fathers Alt, Herrmann and Roth. An altar was set up on a side table covered by an embroidered tablecloth. On it stood a statue of Jesus and framed pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. Michael the archangel and Padre Pio. Chairs were set up around the perimeter of the room.

The first exorcism session, according to the Roman Ritual, began at about 4:00 pm September 24, 1975. Before the session began, Anneliese spoke and laughed with everyone. She then asked Father Alt to hold her hands because she did not know what was going to happen. Then, she farted. Not a super loud one but loud enough for everyone to know it was her and then she wouldn’t ‘fess up to it which set an awkward tone to the whole procedure.

I have no proof that this happened.

No, after behaving quietly at the beginning of the exercise, Anneliese reacted violently to the sprinkling of holy water. When Father Renz made the sign of the cross over her or sprinkled her with holy water, Anneliese roared and raged and her body trembled and twitched. One could perceive the hatred in her facial expressions. She was fully aware of her actions and heard everything spoken through her by the demons, unlike some previous documented cases, where the victim was totally unaware of what was taking place. Later, when Father Alt asked Anneliese what she saw, she responded: “I only observed and had no influence on what was happening. I am only in the background, just looking on.” Josef, Peter and Peter Hein held Anneliese as she attempted to bite and kick those before her. In spite of being restrained by the three men, she continued to struggle. At times she screamed and howled like a dog. She often repeated: “Put away that shit” (holy water), or “stop with that shit.” To all the required textbook questions, such as what is your name, reason for possession, when are you leaving etc., no answers were provided. Father Renz prayed again and again in the name of the Blessed Trinity and called upon the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the angels and saints to expel the demons from Anneliese. At the end, when the group prayed, Anneliese was furious. The first session lasted approximately 3.5 hours. All those present, especially Anneliese, placed all their hopes in the exorcisms to end the possession, so life could get back to normal.

And what, exactly, is the Roman Exorcism Ritual?

1. Roman Ritual: The directions for conducting an exorcism comprise a single section in the Roman Ritual (Rituale Romanum), one of the books describing the official rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Prior to 1999, when the Vatican issued a revised exorcism rite to be used by Catholic priests, the official exorcism rite dated back to 1614.

And, you can find copies of the entire document online if you Google Roman Exorcism Ritual 1614. And it is wordy. I get why it took 3.5 hours.

It’s mostly a series of prayers, statements and appeals.

In addition to recitations, the priest takes certain actions at particular times during the rite: He sprinkles holy water on everyone in the room, lays his hands on the subject, makes the sign of the cross both on himself and on the subject and touches the subject with a Catholic relic (usually an object associated with a saint).

There’s typically four stages of an exorcism: (1) Pretense - The demon is hiding its true identity. (2) Breakpoint - The demon reveals itself. (3) Clash - The exorcist and the demon fight for the soul of the possessed. (4) Mushroom Tattoo - This is when the exorcist slaps the tip of his dick on the victim’s forehead hard enough to cause the skin to redden in the shape of a mushroom, hence the name of mushroom tattoo. Only circumcised priests can pull this off and demons really, really hate it when you slap them with your dick.

No, number four is Expulsion - If the exorcist wins the battle, the demon leaves the body of the possessed.

2. Example of Exorcism prayer: Here’s an example of an exorcism prayer, taken from the 1614 version of the Roman Exorcism Ritual:

(Priest) “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every satanic power of the enemy, every spectre from hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus + Christ Begone and stay far from this creature of God. + For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell. It is He who commands you, He who once stilled the sea and the wind and the storm. Hearken, therefore, and tremble in fear, Satan, you enemy of the faith, you foe of the human race, you begetter of death, you robber of life, you corrupter of justice, you root of all evil and vice? seducer of men, betrayer of the nations, instigator of envy, font of avarice, fomentor of discord, author of pain and sorrow. Why, then, do you stand and resist, knowing as you must that Christ the Lord brings your plans to nothing? Fear Him, who in Isaac was offered in sacrifice, in Joseph sold into bondage, slain as the paschal lamb, crucified as man, yet triumphed over the powers of hell. (The three signs of the cross which follow are traced on the brow of the possessed person). Begone, then, in the name of the Father, + and of the Son, + and of the Holy + Spirit. Give place to the Holy Spirit by this sign of the holy + cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever!

ALL: Amen. PREIST: Lord, heed my prayer. ALL: And let my cry be heard by you. PREIST: The Lord be with you. ALL: May He also be with you. Priest: Let us pray!

Yeah. Intense shit. And his but one of many, many prayers to be recited at the afflicted during the ritual.

P. Since Father Renz read in Latin, led the prayers, sprinkled holy water, made the sign of the cross or touched his stole to Anneliese’s forehead for a blessing etc., all according to the ritual, there was no time for him to write an account of what was transpiring. From September 29 on, at the suggestion of Thea Hein, he began to tape record the sessions. Thea and Josef also recorded the sessions. Father Renz later produced two tapes which highlighted the more important sessions. Father Alt played this tape for Bishop Stangl during a visit with him in Wurzburg. Anneliese had expressed her approval that the tapes be given to the Bishop.

Let’s hear a few samples, obviously, with some creepy music layered in. I like it better than the raw audio. Scarier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-IdHU3A5M

1:00 - 1:32, and then, 3:16 - 3:40

So, fun stuff, right? I keep going back and forth with this Suck. Sometimes it starts to see a little ridiculous and I feel very strongly that this is for sure mental illness we’re dealing with and not anything supernatural. And then I hear something like this and I get real creeped out and think, “I don’t know - maybe I guess.”

Q. September 29, 1975: September 29, 1975. Another exorcism. Father Renz stated that Anneliese began to tremble when he arrived for this session. This is a translation of some of the guttural shit Anneliese was saying that day. A spirit who identified itself as Lucifer said, several times, “The pretentious one is obsessed. This is our work. She cannot take any exams. I’ll take care of it. The snotnose is cursed. I will not let her free. I will not get out alone. And we are so many inside her! The snotty slut is ours! You have to pray much more. By order of that one (Virgin Mary) they should still recite… (rosary) or else, we cannot come out. This affair will last at least for half a year still. By order of that Lady, people should fast. She was cursed from the beginning. She was cursed before birth!”

And then another voice, or spirit, that identified itself as Judas said, “People standing during Holy Communion. This pleases me more than kneeling, I hate it. That thing that you wear, (cassock) the great majority do not wear it any more. They no longer obey the Pope in Rome. It is the one in Rome who keeps the Church going. (To Father Renz) I know you have been to China and there you have offended me much. You snatched souls from me. The one from Frankfurt (Father Rodewyk) has expelled me several times, but now he can no longer do so as he is old. That other one (Gertraud), goes down there to Portugal (Fatima) and preaches of that one (the Virgin Mary) and speaks of the apparitions in 1917. No one believes in them now days. That one is taking so many from me, the snotty slut, that stupid, that cursed one.”

Various other demons identified themselves. They cursed at the priests, argued with each other, all kinds of super weird shit. Catholic Martyrs from centuries past showed up to chat. The emperor Nero showed up. Supposedly this is all possible. In addition to actual demons, in Christian exorcism mythology, the souls of the damned can show up.

So like, technically, if you got possessed today, Chikatilo could show up, “Hello! It is I! Shadow Chikatilo! What is big deal? I just hear to jerk new cock. Cock once hard, now soft and full of shame! It is curse of Chikatilo! I wrassle you priest! C’mon Priest, let us lock cocks, let us cock wrassle for possession of soul! Can you beat Chikatilo? Maybe we tag team! You get other priest, I get Richard Ramirez. He good friend. I jerk soft cock and he sexes up feet down in Hell!”

It’s possible. According to exorcism lore. It is possible.

But he didn’t die until 1994, so he didn’t show up with Anneliese. But Hitler did. And Cain.

It’s this kind of stuff that makes me sway back to the skeptical side for a moment here. If evil spirits are gonna show up, why do they seem to be evil people the possessed person clearly knew of? If any damned should could take over Anneliese’s body, why not HH Holmes, that piece of shit American serial killer from Timesuck 25. Died in 1896, and odds are, Anneliese hadn’t heard of him. When you suddenly become Hitler, it reads a little too over the top. Little cartoonish. Just my two cents.

During one session, Anneliese grabbed a family friend by the throat and it took two of the men to come to pull Anneliese off of her. This woman, Thea, a local woman the Michels went to church with who had initially arranged the whole ill-fated, burning shit scented San Damiano trip, spoke of the incident: “She had the strength of a bear, yet she was a delicate thing. You can’t imagine the strength she had. I thought at the time she would ring my neck. Five men were there, the priest, Peter my husband, Mr. Michel, Peter and I believe Father Alt. I thought she was going to strangle me.”

So, you know, that’s pretty strange. Can that be explained by mental illness? Maybe. I can’t find any studies that correlate an dramatic increase in physical strength with mental illness.

Anneliese once stated: “I can speak any language but feel free to speak to me in German.” Although Father Renz normally read from his prayer book in Latin, on one occasion he spoke freely without his book. Anneliese immediately pointed out that he had made a mistake and his Latin was poor. It was also astonishing to the priests to see Anneliese’s immediate responses to questions put to her in Dutch and Chinese. I didn’t listen to any direct audio of that happening, but, if she really did suddenly start answering questions asked of her in Chinese, how do you explain that?

Apparently, this is used as a strong indicator of possession because Demons apparently understand all languages because, in addition to having to supposedly having a higher intellect than human beings - not quite sure how that’s been established - they have existed since the creation of the world. Their knowledge of the dead languages has been proven in many cases of possession throughout history.

I can’t find any concrete Biblical basis for demons being smarter than humans. I know that Pope Francis talks about the Devil and how the Devil is smarter than us and that other popes and theologians have said the same thing, but I don’t think there is a biblical verse that states that demons are like 20% smarter than humans or anything.

Anyway, constant exorcisms and conversations between the damned and the Priests via Anneliese’s body go on all the way from September of 1975 through February 29th of 1976.

R. February 29, 1976: From February 29, 1976 forward, the demons have nothing more to say. I guess they got bored or something. They only rave and roar; they make mindless inhuman sounds as Anneliese’s body jerks around like a rag doll.

In all, 67 exorcism sessions would end up being performed, one or two each week, lasting up to four hours, between September of 1975 and her death on July 1st, 1976.

What’s really interesting to me is that while all this is going on, she’ll have periods of being lucid and herself again. Her life, for much of this period, was like having some sort of spiritual bipolar disorder. She’d be having Judas take hold of her body and be screaming at the priests, she’d be trying to choke someone out, she’d be hurting herself, and then, she’d be okay for a few days. She was some how able to keep up with a portion of her schooling throughout all of this. I have no idea how, but she did.

S. March 3rd, 1976: On March 3rd, 1976, she actually travelled to Wurzburg to work on a school theology thesis. Seems fitting. But, she’s unable to finish it. She flips out again, freezing stiff in her room. It’s like she was playing a many year long game of freeze tag with an invisible friend. Also with the freezing in place. She also flips out at chapel near school, bashing her knees bloody by constantly getting up and down in prayer.

T. April 14th, 1976: Yet, on April 14th, 1976, despite all she’d already been through up until this point, she is still able to meet with one of her professors, Dr. Veth who would later describe to investigators that she appeared at that time to be in good health, both psychologically and physically. So fucking weird. One day she’s stark raving mad and slamming her knees into a church floor and snarling at her crucifix and the next day she’s having a productive meeting with a college professor.

U. April 30th, 1976: And then on April 30th, she’s losing her shit again. She freezes in her room and starts shrieking. Loudly and continuously. Her friends and her boyfriend can’t get her to stop. They call two of the priests, Father Renz and Father Alt, who agree to come the next day.

Anneliese screams until she falls asleep and then the next morning, acts like nothing happened. The constant back and forth continues.

For the next few days, she alternates between periods of being in good health and good spirits, eating and drinking, and periods of screaming and guttural noises where she won’t eat. One night, her sister Roswitha found her gasping for air. She indicated that she was being choked by some unseen force.

Around that time - and this is super spooky - she went to a church with Peter in Ettleben, and then her face contorted demonically after sitting in one of the pews, and she froze in place. Peter tried to pick her up and move up, and allegedly, he couldn’t lift her. She was not a big woman.

This is a phenomena, according to a book I read on Anneliese’s possession, known as possessed gravity where the possessed basically take on a new amount of mass that shouldn’t be physically possible and can become unmovable. Similar to how the possessed can also supposedly be far stronger than what should be physically possible.

And, I can’t find cases of this captured on video or anything, I’ve never seen it for myself, but, if that is true, how do you explain it scientifically? With sudden extra strength, you can talk about huge adrenaline spikes or other physical factors that can give some sort of rational explanation for what’s happening. But how do you explain suddenly becoming far heavier than you should be? That would freak me out. If that happened to me, there would be no doubt in mind I was dealing with something supernatural.

V. May 9th, 1976: On May 9th, this possessed gravity phenomena happens again, when Anneliese’s parents, Josef and Anna, Peter, and a friend Barbara, all working together, can still barely lift this tiny frozen woman into a car.

During the rest of May and June, things seemed to ease up a bit, and then things became worse than ever in July. She started barely sleeping again. She stopped eating. A lot of the pictures on the web of Anneliese are from this period. She looks emaciated. Her eyes are black and blue from self-harm.

She started injuring herself in various ways. She’d hit her head against objects, punch herself in the face, bit herself, rub her face against the wall and on and on. She started asking her family to tie her up so she couldn’t hurt herself.

She’d throw herself to the ground. Or, something else would slam her to the ground. That’s what it looked like to her family.

And somehow, in the middle of this violent chaos, she’s still trying to complete a portion of her studies. Still working on that theology thesis, asking to have the deadline for it’s submission extended.

And she’s still having exorcisms performed on her.

W. May 30th, 1976: On May 30th, 1976, Father Alt brings a physician friend of his to witness an exorcism, Dr. Richard Roth, and allegedly, upon witnessing some of the craziness we’ve been talking about, he cried out, “My God! She has the stigmata! There is no injection against the Devil!”

Hopefully Anneliese wasn’t aware enough to hear the doctor say that. That would NOT be a morale boost to hear a doctor essential say, “Official medical diagnosis?? She is FUBAR’d! Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition!”

X. June 8th, 1976: June 8th would be the last time Father Alt would see Anneliese alive. One of her eyes was swollen shut that day. She’d thrown herself through a glass door. Jesus. She was sickly and emaciated. She refused to eat almost all the time. When she could eat, it was as if she only had a brief window in which she was allowed to do so, pounding a few liters of juice, or eating like an animal.

She would sometimes scream, in the voices of the damned, clear through the night. Hours of constant screaming.

Y. June 30th, 1976: June 30th was the date of her last exorcism. Her parents, two of her sisters, and her boyfriend Peter were all present. She’d come down with a fever of around 102, and after hours of exorcism rituals, she asked for absolution from Father Renz, a declaration of forgiveness from all her sins. He gave it to her and then she said goodbye to Peter, her father, and her sisters. She asked her mother to stay at her side and for everyone else to leave the room. Her last words were, “Mama, please stay with me. I’m afraid.” She feel asleep from exhaustion, and then sometime that night, in the early morning of July 1st, with her mother by her side, 23 year old Anneliese died in her sleep.

She had once told her family that she hoped she’d be free of demons by July. She has also talked to Peter about wanting to get married that Fall.

Well, I guess she got one of the things she hoped for. Through death, she was finally free. We hope.

And that takes us out of this Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

V. The Trial A. Not long after Anneliese’s death, some of the priests involved in her exorcism would be put on trial for manslaughter resulting from negligence.

Before I give a brief overview of this trial, let’s check in real quick with the most heavily viewed Anneliese video on Youtube, with nearly 40 million views. The video is called, simple, the Real Exorcism of Anneliese Michel. And many of the comments underneath it are written, or course, by the Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

VI. Idiots of the Internet A. Okay, before the idiotic comments, some pretty funny ones in here. Little reminder of what they’re listening to here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4n9vK0_mdk. Play from 1:00 to 1:20.

Okay, so, that’s what they’re commenting on. Roughly two minutes of that.

1. And user Markek UTD posts, “that's just how german people talk.” That’s pretty good, Markek. Well played! 2. User Erkica Platz posts, “I thought it was the new single from Katy Perry.”

3. User Ya Boi posts “Sound like my ass after taco bell”.

4. User Todd Lynch posts, “Still better than Nickelback…"

5. And, User Apollo posts, “ successfully masturbated to this ;D”

Well played everyone! Thanks to all of you for participating in the internet.

Now for some dumb.

6. User Jennifer Jelli Sushi Hunter posts a reply to someone who had their original comment removed, but I’m posting this anyway because it’s so ridiculous: “+Anonymous Pookie Whether she was mentally retarded or not, that does not give you ANY right to start calling her a RETARD and of ALL THINGS a BITCH!!!! WTF is wrong with you, you sound mentally retarded to me so should I start calling you a RETARDED ASSHOLE?!?!?! I guess so, Your an egotistical, DISGUSTING, retarded ASSHOLE who IS STUPID and IGNORANT!”

Whoa! Easy Jenny!

So, let me get this straight. You’re mad because someone referred to Anneliese as a “retard”. And, I’m with you on that part. It’s not a good word. I’m really not a fan of it either. It’s one of the words I don’t toss around anymore like I did when I was a kid and I didn’t understand how hurtful it is.

So, why are you then throwing this word back? That’s so fucking stupid. You don’t like that someone uses that word, so you call them that word three times in one post?

That’s like getting mad about someone dropping an N bomb, and then referring to them three times as an N bomb. So weird to hate someone for saying a word that you then use over and over. “Don’t ever say the word apple! Don’t ever say that word you rotten fucking apple ass apple-eating motherfucking apple.”

Just replace the word “apple” with the word you find most derogatory to make that joke work for yourself.

7. User Gabby Diomand does something I see all the time on the web, that I just learned the proper term for. She posts, “I feel so bad for her.” And this is called “virtue signaling”.

“Virtue signaling” is defined by Google as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.”

Bert Kreischer just told me what that is. I did his podcast, Bertcast, for the first time this past Saturday in Salt Lake City. Had a blast. He really is a super fun dude. He was at the other comedy club in town. Not sure when that episode will air. I’ll let you know when it does.

But he talked about how much he hates it when people do virtue signaling with their posts. It’s just meaningless cheerleading. It’s letting other people who you want to like you know that you agree with them. It happens in a political way all the time. Someone will pick their team, liberal or conservative, and then just post whatever lines up with that ideology in a hollow, meaningless way.

Like, under a video about a school shooting, someone could virtue signal with a post of, “I’m sick of kids getting shot!”

Yeah, we all are you dumb fuck. No one is arguing in favor of more kids getting shot. That’s not the issue. You’re not adding anything intelligent to the discussion with that silly captain obvious shit.

In this case, “I don’t like what happened to her!” Or “I feel so bad for her.” Yeah, we all feel bad for her you shit head. That goes without saying. No rational, somewhat decent person is glad that this happened to her.

That’s an obvious post you put on there just to remind everyone that you’re a good person, I guess. It’s meaningless. And now it’s a pet peeve of mine as well. Add something interesting to the dialogue or shut the fuck up. Not just, “That is messed up how she starved to death! I don’t approve of that!”

One more.

8. User EchoXRuby posts something that makes me hope she really isn’t a teacher. She says, “I have a class of children diagnosed with autism. And one of them does that noise, and speaks that way really often. This has nothing to do with demons…"

Autism? What in the fuck are you talking about? I can make this noise too. It’s not a noise limited to Anneliese or autistic kids. You’re focusing way too much on one tiny part of a giant picture.

Anneliese’s issues went a little deeper than the type of voice she used. Do your autistic kids also speak fluently in other languages while they make that voice? Do they pin themselves to their seats and go into a trance and suddenly become heavier when you try to lift them out of their desk? Do they choke classmates with super human strength?

I’m not saying exorcisms are legit but if you’re gonna mock them, mock in a way that makes sense. How are you a teacher? Who put you in charge of a class of autistic kids?

Focusing on only the sound she’s making as the reason she couldn’t be possessed because other people make the same sound, is sort of like thinking a murder suspect can’t be guilty because they supposedly murdered someone with the same type of knife that you have at home, and you haven’t murdered anyone with that type of knife, so no could have.

The murder isn’t about the knife - the knife is just one small part of the murder. In a similar way, possession isn’t about a scary demon voice that any one can do. If possessions are real, the voice is just one small part of a much more serious condition.

Let’s get the Hell out of here.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET

VII. Trial/Last Thoughts A. Okay - so the trial. Let’s talk about it.

1. Dr. Roth came to write out the death certificate but he didn’t have the proper forms so he called Dr. Kehler who came to inspect the body. He wrote out that the death was not due to natural causes. Father Alt contacted the state attorney’s office. A postmortem examination was done. Pathologists said her death was not caused by “natural causes”, it was caused by starvation, possibly aggravated by all of the physical activity that she was doing during her final weeks.

Interestingly, the autopsy revealed that her inner organs were healthy, including her brain. Her brain didn’t show any damage that could have caused any epileptic seizures.

Also odd was that her pupils were unusually dilated and her body showed no decubitus [dih-kyoo-bi-tuh s] 2. ulcers (ulcerations of the skin customarily found in patients who had starved to death.

The local rumor mill goes crazy and the press catches wind of her exorcisms and questionable death. Local non-religious journalists go hardcore against the church, framing the narrative of Anneliese’s death as the fault of medieval and superstitious church practices.

There were also local people that did believe in the devil and did believe that Anneliese was possessed. A number of people reported being possessed by the devil or Annelise, where they would report messages basically saying that she didn’t die because of demons or the exorcism, but instead she chose to die as a sort of sacrificial victim for Germany so that evil would not win. There are still that believe that someone can, essentially, pay for the sins of others by being punished by the Devil. Not sure what kind of sense that makes, but it’s a belief and some people, including Anneliese’s mother to her dying day, choose and have chosen to believe this. They think she was some sort of Jesus like sacrificial lamb. Anneliese believed this was happening to her, that she was paying for the sins of others.

A criminal investigation begins slowly, the authorities were taking their time. They gathered evidence regarding the circumstances of Anneliese’s death for a whole year. There was even a rumor for awhile because of how slow they were moving that the state attorney’s office just didn’t want to prosecute anyone.

There were those in the wake of Anneliese’s death that claimed to hear from Anneliese herself. Sister Dorthea, a Carmelite nun, claimed to be receiving messages from Anneliese that Anneliese wanted to have her body exhumed to provide proof that there was a hell, demons, God etc. This proof would come in the form of Anneliese’s body not being putrefied. Her body was exhumed the following year, and, buzzkill, her body HAD rotted. Sorry Sister Dorthea but you didn’t hear anything other than your own imagination.

Finally, Anneliese’s parents and the two priests with her at the end, Ernst Alt and Arnold Renz, are charged with negligent homicide. And the trial of priests charged with being responsible for someone dying as a result of an exorcism becomes international news. The courtroom had the seating capacity of 100 and 80 seats were reserved for the international press.

Josef Michel suggested that since this was a case involving the devil and possession, everyone should kneel down and pray, but the presiding judge, judge Elmar Bohlender, said something along the lines of that this was a court of law not a church” and the idea was rejected.

I bet he wanted to say, “Look - that’s the kind of shit that got us here in the first place. We all say what a bunch of prayer got us in this situation - it got us a dead 23 year old.

The judge was actually quick to distance this case from religion. Part of the judge’s opening remarks were: “This was a matter of two civilians facing the court, not two servants of the Church. What was involved, he said was that some citizens violated the law; it was a neglect in a sense of the law. It was therefore important to state clearly that this was not an attack against the faith, Against the exorcism. The only point to consider, he maintained, was the fact that the girl had starved to death.”

And then the case kicked off, and I feel like all those journalists ended up getting the stories they wanted. Lot of good soundbites.

At one point, Father Alt said to the judge, “ Your honor, you may laugh about this, and even 50 million people relax about this, if I am to tell you that we did cast out 6 demons. I stand by what I am saying because I am here representing also the authentic belief of the Catholic Church.”

Can you imagine something along those lines being said today in a US court? “Did I tie my wife up in the basement for several days your honor? No. I tied up six demons that were using my wife’s body for several days.”

That kind of talk would not help your case. That’s not gonna get your case dismissed. Might get some extra time added to your sentence.

Father Alt never thought she was dangerously ill. He spoke about the various demons, and how Anneliese didn’t want to eat because of demon influence. Father Renz said that if he suspected a real physical illness, he would have been the first to contact medical help.

A lot of testimony was given during Anneliese’s trial. Her friends, classmates, family, doctors, and other members of the clergy testified.

At the end of the first week of the trial (on a Friday) the Court heard some exorcism tapes to show that she was possessed. Father Rodewyk was also called up to testify, and he said that out of the 1,000 cases of possession that he had data on, no one had ever died, and he compared a state of possession to a hypnotic state in the sense that people have no idea/control over what they are doing. Peter and Thea Hein also testified on Friday that Annelies did not want to talk to a physician because she was terrified of being called crazy and sent to the state mental institution.

Regarding the medicine Anneliese took to try to control her epilepsy, Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) a Dr. testified that while some of the drugs prescribed for the treatment of epilepsy could themselves produce a psychosis, this is not known to be the case with Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall).

Annelie’s parents dig a proverbial hole for the priests when they kept saying that they entrusted their daughter body and soul to the care of the Church and the priests. The prosecution used that as their argument saying that when the priests undertook the exorcism, they assumed responsibility for the care of Anneliese and through their negligence she had died.

And here’s what the court ended up deciding on this death.

The Court Opinion was that the parties to the affair could not have known that the epilepsy had morphed into the psychosis, which is what had taken place. And then in May 1976, Anneliese no longer had the ability to decide her fate freely. The exorcisms had influenced her illness. By not calling a doctor all of the defendants had become guilty of negligent homicide.

The Sentencing was a Half a year’s prison terms, suspended for 3 years, and court costs for all four defendants.

The defense said they would appeal but they never did. Father Alt had the best chance of having his sentence revised, but he refused to appeal saying, “This is a matter of God. Worldly courts could not pass any judgement on it.

And then, after the trial, some more weird shit went on: People keep spreading messages attributed to her speaking from beyond the grave. Dr. Veth, that theology professor she kept trying to finish her thesis for, a man who spoke against Father Alt at the trial, died shortly after the trial of a heart failure. Another priest who testified against the defendants also also died suddenly. Two men who had built a float spoofing the exorcism during Carnival in Klingenberg were injured in a freak accident. Peter’s eyes turned jet black, horns sprouted from his head, his legs turned into goat legs, he sprouted bat wings, and everybody started to feel like he’d changed somehow.

Of course not.

3. Final questions: This Suck leaves us with so many questions. Was Anneliese just mentally ill? If she wasn’t a part of a culture deeply rooted in Catholicism and peasant tradition, would this have happened?

A Freudian (pronounced Froidian like the “oid” in steroid) psychoanalysis of Anneliese’s “possession” is that it was a symptom of hysteria caused by sexual conflict. Did Anneliese have some form of hysteria because her father was authoritarian and she hated her mother? Is alleged possession really just some sort of regression into childhood behavior?

Women seem to experience possession more often than men, why is that? Also, possession “trances” occur most often in agricultural societies, where women are brought up to be obedient and nurturing as opposed to independent. Is possession somehow cultural? Anneliese clearly wasn’t raised to be a strong, independent woman. You never hear about some independent career climbing ass-kickin’ woman getting possessed. I feel like it’s women like Anneliese - very religious household. Dominated at home.

Did the drug Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) somehow kill Anneliese? Possible drug intoxication, could explain her strongly dilated pupils at the moment of her death. Drug intoxication could account for the scary vocalizations at the end.

A patient in London around 1995 was given a very high LSD 25 dose during a psychiatric consultation. The patient tried to speak but instead of words, he went into a vocalization that was just as scary as Anneliese’s vocalizations. His were faster but like Annelies’s vocalizations, they varied erratically at the end.

By the end of May, the damage caused by Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) could have become irreversible, so that even when she stopped taking it, her condition did not improve. Instead it got worse.

The effect of Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) on the blood, especially the platelets, causes users to bruise easily. Could account for Father Renz’s description of Anneliese looking, “black, red and blue” after hitting herself. Ulceration of the gums is another symptom Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) users suffer from.

The fasting could be some unrecognized side affect of the drug.

According to the PDR (physicians desk reference) when a patient is taken off Tegretol (Teg-rah-tall) a status epilepticus (a dangerous condition in which epileptic seizures follow one another without recovery of consciousness between them), with fever and hypoxia (deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues) could occur. Is that part of what happened to Anneliese?

Towards the end, she showed all three symptoms; uncontrolled rapid movements during the last two months of her life, she had a fever during the last few days of her life, she died laying down and not moving again.

We’ll never know for sure. And that’s why this topic is creepy. Yeah, there are a lot of possible scientific explanations for a lot of what happened. But, it is tricky to scientifically describe all of what happened. But maybe it still can be explained!! Probably it can. But what if, what if it can’t? How much would that reality completely destroy your worldview.

We have so many things to worry about in life. Money. Health. Relationships. Being harmed by some psychotic stranger. Being harmed by some seemingly non-threatening friend or family member. Natural disasters. War, famine, et cetera. But what if something actually does exist that’s scarier than all of the that? The fucking devil and his minions. What if that son of a bitch is a real thing? A real entity? What if the shadow people, demons, devils - what if they really are real? I hope not, but, a lot of people believe.

I say I don’t believe it. And most of the time I don’t, but sometimes when it’s real dark, and you’re alone, and it’s too quite. (get quieter) and then you think you hear something. Something that doesn’t just sound off. It feels off. You suddenly feel a presence. Have you ever had that happen? I can hear something right now actually. Can you hear that? Right here. It’s in the room. It’s (yell) BOJANGLES!! And he’s telling me to wrap this fucking episode up and get to the Top Five Takeways. Damn that sometimes scary one-eyed, three-legged beautiful mascot pitbull of ours.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VIII.Top Five Takeaways.

1. Number one: Anneliese Michel, at 23 years of age, definitely did die early in the morning of July 1st, 1976. That we know for sure. The events that led to her death will be questioned forever. 2. Number two: Two of the priests involved in Annaliese’s exorcism and her parents were found of guilty of negligent homicide but could her death really have been prevented? If you believe that the demons are real, probably not.

3. Number three: “Possessed gravity” - that term will stick with me forever. If you go to lift your normally liftable friend, watch out! They may have recently put on some demon weight!

4. Number four. Virtue signaling! “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.” - now that you know what that is, check out how much of it there is on-line. It’s amazing.

5. Number five. New info! Don’t let this suck inspire you to go out and try and commit exorcisms on your own. The sisters called it an exorcism. Police call it assault and kidnapping. South Carolina sisters Brittany Jones, 28, and Tiara Jones, 26, are now facing charges for allegedly assaulting a neighbor with a cross in what police called an "exorcism attempt."

The incident happened last month, on, March 19, when the sisters held the 56-year-old neighbor against her will for an "extended period of time," according to a police report cited by The State in Columbia. The sisters allegedly hit the woman on the upper and lower parts of her body with a cross, believing she was "possessed."

The woman escaped and got help from a neighbor. Officers arrived at her residence and found her home in "disarray," according to The Post And Courier in Charleston. South Carolina.

So, while exorcisms might be real, you should probably not attempt one. Especially on a neighbor.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

IX. Closing Announcements A. The Demonic Possession of Anneliese Michel part one AND part two are now in the Suck pile next to the Suck shed.

B. Thanks to Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Lynze Cummins, Josh Krell, and the entire Timesuck team for their help and huge thanks to the Lillie Twins - Rebecca and Sarah - those OG members of the Bojangles Research department for crushing it on the research.

So what’s next? Monday we Suck on The Spanish Inquisition! According to modern estimates, around 150,000 were prosecuted for various offenses during the three century-long duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed, many of them horrifically tortured before dying. Interesting little run through Christianity we’ve had lately. I’m looking on the calendar, and after this next one, we’re out of this wormhole for awhile. I’ve always wanted to learn about the Inquisition. I have a feeling we’re going to know a lot more about medieval torture devices in a week than we do right now.

C. And now, let’s find out what you Suckers have been thinking on this past week, Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

X. Timesucker Updates A. Nick Glaser has written in to try and set some of our minds at ease regarding the possibility of demonic intervention in our lives. Here’s what Nick writes:

Dear Sucker of All Things Suckable,

I am 20 minutes into Time Suck bonus episode 20 as I write you this message. I just heard you say that Richard Gallagher’s endorsement of demonic possession has you frightened and believing it might be real. I applaud your open mindedness, but in this case I can ease your fears, for Dr. Gallagher has committed an important logical fallacy in reaching this conclusion.

He noted that there were some cases that he could not explain, and concluded that they must be demonic possession, but, countless other equally logical explanations also exist. For example, the secret knowledge you mentioned that had convinced him of his first case, might just be a psychic. That’s not something a psychologist would be able to explain, and is at LEAST as plausible as ethereal Hell beasts. For him to have leapt all the way from “I don’t know what’s going on here” to “demons are real” betrays an inadequate understanding of logic that is certainly present in the rest of his work as well.

So take heart, O Sucker Supreme, demons are no more likely now than they were before you began researching this episode. It’s nothing but a network of psychic pranksters delving into the innermost secret parts of our minds and making us THINK demons are real. No big deal.

Hail Nimrod, Screw Lucifina, and switch those up every now and then. Nick

Thank you Nick! And, you know, this raises an excellent point I didn’t think of. Just because something that we can’t see might exist that also might be affect our decisions, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily Satan or some other minion. Something else could be out there, and it could some intelligent life form that just enjoys, for whatever reason, making us think that demons are real.

When you enter the realm of the unprovable and unknown, suddenly everything and anything becomes possible, not just demons. Interesting food for to suck on, Nick. Thank you and Hail Nimrod!

B. John Perkins wrote in with a pronunciation update for a word I don’t even remember saying, but I have no doubt that I did, and apparently, did so incorrectly.

He writes, “What person over thirteen doesn’t know how to pronounce the name of the city of Prague? Hail Nimrod!”

Apparently, this person I guess. I can’t believe I fucked that one up [prahg] What did I say? Pray-gg? Maybe I was just talking too fast. Damn it! Sorry John.

C. This message isn’t really an update to anything, I just found it funny. Sucker Jeremy Bayman sent in the following:

Parents just asked me to leave dinner, they were talking religion and I played "I keep forgetting," promptly yelling "you've been Michael mother fucking McDonald'd." Hail Nimrod and his prophet!!!

You really painted quite a picture there with only a few words Jeremy. Sounds like you live in a weird, fun house. I love it!

D. Northwest Nicholas Carbonell writes in with a flaming shit update:

Sir suckington the turd, first time caller long time listener. Timesuck was the first podcast I listened to after being hounded by friends. My better half and I just listened to to the first part of bonus 20, to answer your question who knows what burning poo smells like, well I do. I've burned my fair share of Doo Doo while in iraq. 15 months of it, and honestly its not that bad. I'll tell you there's nothing like drinking beer while bullshitting around a 55 gallon drum of burning shit haha. Anyways seen you perform stand up in Spokane and will be there for the live recording in May. Love the podcast, keep up the good work, and hope you make it to Missoula sometime! Also i shit you now there was a three legged pitbull mix that sexually assaulted my dog at the dog park. I'm sure this was your doing. Hail nimrod and hail lucifina's fine ass!! Nick and Shelby

E. Religious Sucker and Good Human Breck Squier sent in an awesome update, saying “I know you aren’t religious but as a christian I have some thought on this as well. Put yourself in a world where God is real and so is Hell. This is the world I believe in. That being said, people who aren’t being saved are going to Hell anyway. So why would a demon target a non-religious person? That would be damning the damned. Instead I think it is way more playsible that they would target those who are likely to go to heaven in order to prevent as many from going.

And all that being said, know that I have been praying for you to come know Jesus! You are a standup guy and it would be great to know that you are saved as well. Can’t wait for part two Monday! Super pumped, and hail Bojangles!”

F. And a really cool, final update from a young master sucker, Harley Russell: Dear King and Queen Cummins, the Master Dr. Reverend, and the entire research crew,

I want to thank you all for your hard work on putting together this awesome podcast. I’ve been listening for a year or so now and for the past 6 months I’ve been slowly working my way to get into the Coast Guard. Well tomorrow is the big day for me, where I swear in and fly out to begin on Tuesday the 23rd. You’ve all kept me entertained on my runs, and with that I’ve been able to improve my run time by about 7 minutes per mile and dropped nearly 45 pounds to finally make it below the weight requirement. The one upside to me being gone for these two months is that when I get back to having my phone again I will be able to soak up much suck knowledge in my downtime, what little of it I may have. To the listeners please send your thoughts and positive vibes, as I will need all the help I can get I’m sure.

Thanks again, I can’t wait to hear your shenanigans through my headphones again in a couple months.

Sincerely, [Soon to be] Seaman Recruit [and Space Lizard] Russell

XI. Goodbye A. Well that’s all for today Timesuckers. Hope to see you a bunch of you in San Fran. Don’t get possessed this week. If it is possible, it doesn’t seem to be a good time at all. So keep off of demons, and keep on suckin’!

Primary Source for Part Two: Anneliese Michel A true story of a case of demonic possession Germany-1976. written by Lawrence LeBlanc. https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/ exorcism3.htm http://www.lastgasps.com/page19.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr-IdHU3A5M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Anneliese_Michel#Exhumation_and_aftermath https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/13/dont-argue-devil-much- intelligent-us-says-pope-francis/

The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel by Felicitas D. Goodman http://www.oxygen.com/crime-time/brittany-tiara-jones-sisters-exorcism-assault-kidnapping